The Darkest Evening of the Year. Dean Koontz

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СКАЧАТЬ drizzle of fuel across the grass connects the porches, and with the last contents of the can, he spills a fuse along the front walk toward the open gate in the picket fence.

      While Moongirl waits for him at the safe end of the fuse, he returns to the house to set the empty utility can quietly on the porch. The still air hangs heavy with fumes.

      He has dripped nothing on himself. As he walks away from the house, he cups his hands around his nose, and they smell fresh.

      From a pocket of her leather jacket, Moongirl has extracted a box of matches. She uses only those with wooden stems.

      She strikes a match, stoops, and ignites the wet trail on the walkway. Low blue-and-orange flames dance away from her, as if the magical night has brought forth a procession of capering faeries.

      Together, she and Harrow walk to the west side of the house, where they have a view of both porches. The only doors are at the front and back. Along this wall are three windows.

      Fire leaps high across the front of the house, seethes between the railings, and dispatches more dancing faeries along the drizzle that connects the porches.

      As always, after an immediate whoosh, the flames initially churn in near silence, feeding on the gasoline, which needs no chewing. The crunch and crackle will come soon, when the fire takes wood in its teeth.

Chapter 11

      Following the hallway to the living-room archway, Amy said, “Hello? Who’s there?”

      Golden retrievers are not bred to be guard dogs, and considering the size of their hearts and their irrepressible joy in life, they are less likely to bite than to bark, less likely to bark than to lick a hand in greeting. In spite of their size, they think they are lap dogs, and in spite of being dogs, they think they are also human, and nearly every human they meet is judged to have the potential to be a boon companion who might, at any moment, cry “Let’s go!” and lead them on a great adventure.

      Nevertheless, they have formidable teeth and are protective of family and home.

      Amy assumed that any intruder who was able to induce three adult goldens to submit without one bark must be not foe but friend, or at least harmless. Yet she approached the living room with a curiosity that included a measure of wariness.

      When Amy had answered Janet Brockman’s plea to rescue Nickie, she had not left Fred and Ethel in a dark house. One lamp in her bedroom and a brass reading lamp in the living room provided comfort.

      Now the hallway ceiling fixture blazed. Also, ahead and to her right, the front room loomed brighter than she had left it.

      When she passed the open bedroom door on her left and stepped through the living-room archway, she found no intruder, only three delighted dogs.

      As any golden would do in a new environment, Nickie had gone exploring, chasing down the most interesting of all the new smells, weaving among chairs and sofas, mapping the landscape, identifying the coziest corners.

      Filled with pride of home, Fred and Ethel followed the newcomer, pausing to note everything that she had noted, as if sharing with her had made the bungalow new again to them.

      Sniffing, grinning, chuffing with approval, tails lashing, the new girl and her welcoming committee rushed past Amy.

      By the time that she turned to follow them, they had vanished across the hall, into her bedroom. A moment ago, only a nightstand lamp had illuminated that room, but now the ceiling fixture burned bright.

      “Kids?”

      Matching plump sheepskin-covered dog beds mushroomed in two corners of the bedroom.

      As Amy crossed the threshold, Nickie bumped a tennis ball with her nose, and Fred snatched it on the roll. Nickie checked out but didn’t want a plush blue bunny, so Ethel snared it.

      The bedroom and the attached bath lacked an intruder, and by the time Amy followed the pack to the study, the fourth and last room in the bungalow, the ceiling light was on there, too.

      Fred had dropped the ball, and Ethel had cast aside the bunny, and Nickie had decided not to stake a claim to a discarded pair of Amy’s socks that she had fished out of the knee space under the desk.

      Paws thumping, nails clicking, tails knocking merrily against every crowding object, the dogs returned to the hall, then to the kitchen.

      Puzzled, Amy went to the only window in the study and found it locked. Before leaving the room, she frowned at the wall switch and flipped it down, up, down, turning the ceiling fixture off, on, off.

      She stood in the hall, listening to thirsty dogs lapping from the water bowls in the kitchen.

      In the bedroom again, she checked both windows. The latches were engaged, as was the one in the bathroom.

      She peered in the closet. No boogeyman.

      The front-door deadbolt was locked. The security chain remained in place.

      All three living-room windows were secure. With the dampers closed, no sinister Santa out of season could have come down the fireplace chimney to play games with the lights.

      Behind her, she left on only the single nightstand lamp and the reading lamp in the living room. At the end of the hall, she stopped and looked back, but no gremlins had been at work.

      In the kitchen, she found the three goldens lying on the floor, gathered around the refrigerator, heads raised and alert. They looked from her to the refrigerator, to her again.

      Amy said, “What? You think it’s snack time—or am I going to find a severed head in the lettuce drawer?”

Chapter 12

      Fire spawns fitful drafts in the still night, brief twists of hot wind that stir Harrow’s hair but dissipate behind him.

      The people asleep in the house, if in fact anyone is at home, are strangers to Harrow. They have done nothing to him. They have done nothing for him, either.

      They mean nothing to him.

      He doesn’t know what they mean to Moongirl. They are strangers to her, as well, but they have some meaning for her. They are more to her than a mere medicine for boredom. He wonders what that might be.

      Although curious, he will not ask her. He believes that he is safer if she thinks his understanding of her is complete, if she believes they are alike.

      Flames engulf the back porch, and the sounds of consumption begin to arise from the front.

      Moongirl’s hands are in the pockets of her black leather jacket. Her face remains expressionless. In her eyes is nothing more than a reflection of the fire.

      Like her, Harrow has discipline of his intellect and of his body, but unlike her, he also has discipline of his emotions. Those are the three hallmarks of sanity.

      Boredom is a state of mind akin to an emotion. Perhaps the emotion to which boredom most often leads is despair.

      She СКАЧАТЬ