Dean Koontz - Winter Moon

Downstairs in the kitchen again, he slid aside the brass bolt on the cellar door. It worked only from the kitchen. Nothing could have gone down there and relocked from the far side.

On the other hand, the front and back doors of the house had been bolted when he'd driven into town. No one could have gotten inside-or locked up again upon leaving-without a key, and he had the only keys in existence. Yet the damned bolts were engaged when he'd come home, his search had revealed no broken or unlatched window, yet an intruder definitely had come and gone.

He went into the cellar and searched the two large, windowless rooms.

They were cool, slightly musty, and deserted.

For the moment, the house was secure.

He was the only resident.

He went outside, locking the front entrance after him, and drove the Cherokee into the garage. He put down the door with the remote control.before getting out of the wagon.

For the next several hours, he scrubbed and vacuumed the mess in the house with an urgency and unflagging energy that approached a state of frenzy. He used liquid soap, strong ammonia water, and Lysol spray, determined that every soiled surface should be not merely clean but disinfected, as close to sterile as possible outside of a hospital surgery or laboratory. He broke into a sustained sweat that soaked his shirt and pasted his hair to his scalp. The muscles in his neck, shoulders, and arms began to ache from the repetitive scouring motions.

The mild arthritis in his hands flared up, his knuckles swelled and reddened from gripping the scrub brushes and rags with almost manic ferocity, but his response was to grip them tighter still, until the pain dizzied him and brought tears to his eyes.

Eduardo knew he was striving not merely to sanitize the house but to cleanse himself of certain terrible ideas that he could not tolerate, would not explore, absolutely would not. He made himself into a cleaning machine, an insensate robot, focusing so intently and narrowly on the menial task at hand that he was purged of all unwanted thoughts, breathing deeply of the ammonia fumes as if they could disinfect his mind, seeking to exhaust himself so thoroughly that he would be able to sleep and, perhaps, even forget.

As he cleaned, he disposed of all used paper towels, rags, brushes, and sponges in a large plastic bag. When he was finished, he knotted the top of the bag and deposited it outside in a trash can.

Ordinarily, he would have rinsed and saved sponges and brushes for reuse, but not this time.

Instead of removing the disposable paper bag from the vacuum sweeper, he put the entire machine out with the trash. He didn't want to think about the origin of the microscopic particles now trapped in its brushes and stuck to the inside of its plastic suction hose, most of them so tiny that he could never be sure they were expunged unless he disassembled the sweeper to scrub every inch and reachable crevice with bleach, and maybe not even then.

From the refrigerator, he removed all the foods and beverages that might have been touched by… the intruder. Anything in plastic wrap or aluminum foil had to go, even if it didn't appear to have been tampered with: Swiss cheese, cheddar, leftover ham, half a Bermuda onion. Resealable containers had to be tossed: a one-pound tub of soft butter with a snap-on plastic lid, jars of dill and sweet pickles, olives, maraschino cherries, mayonnaise, mustard, and more, bottles with screw-top caps-salad dressing, soy sauce, ketchup. An open box of raisins, an open carton of milk. The thought of anything touching his lips that had first been touched by the intruder made him gag and shudder. By the time he finished with the refrigerator, it held little more than unopened cans of soft drinks and bottles of beer.

But after all, he was dealing with contamination. Couldn't be too careful. No measure was too extreme… Not merely bacterial contamination, either. If only it was that simple. God, if only. Spiritual contamination. A darkness capable of spreading through the heart, seeping deep into the soul.

Don't even think about it. Don't. Don't.

Too tired to think. Too old to think. Too scared.

From the garage he fetched a blue Styrofoam cooler, into which he emptied the entire contents of the bin under the automatic ice-maker in the freezer. He wedged eight bottles of beer into the ice and stuck a bottle opener in his hip pocket.

Leaving all the lights on, he carried the cooler and the shotgun upstairs to the back bedroom, where he had been sleeping for the past three years. He put the beer and the gun beside the bed.

The bedroom door had only a flimsy privacy latch in the knob, which he engaged by pushing a brass button. All that was needed to break through from the hallway was one good kick, so he tilted a straight-backed chair under the knob and jammed it tightly in place.

Don't think about what might come through the door.

Shut the mind down. Focus on the arthritis, muscle pain, sore neck, let it blot out thought.

He took a shower, washing himself as assiduously as he had scoured the soiled portions of the house. He finished only when he had used the entire supply of hot water.

He dressed but not for bed. Socks, chinos, a T-shirt. He stood his boots beside the bed, next to the shotgun.

Although the nightstand clock and his watch agreed that it was two-fifty in the morning, Eduardo was not sleepy. He sat on the bed, propped against a pile of pillows and the headboard.

Using the remote control, he switched on the television and checked out the seemingly endless array of channels provided by the satellite dish behind the stables. He found an action movie, cops and drug dealers, lots of running and jumping and shooting, fistfights and car chases and explosions. He turned the volume all the way off because he wanted to be able to hear whatever sounds might arise elsewhere in the house.

He drank the first beer fast, staring at the television. He was not trying to follow the plot of the movie, just letting his mind fill with the abstract whirl of motion and the bright ripple-flare of changing colors. Scrubbing at the dark stains of those terrible thoughts.

Those stubborn stains.

Something ticked against the west-facing window.

He looked at the draperies, which he had drawn tightly shut.

Another tick. Like a pebble thrown against the glass… His heart began to pound.

He forced himself to look at the TV again. Motion. Color. He finished the beer. Opened a second.

Tick. And again, almost at once. Tick.

Perhaps it was just a moth or a scarab beetle trying to reach the light that the closed drapes couldn't entirely contain.

He could get up, go to the window, discover it was just a flying beetle that was banging against the glass, relieve his mind.

Don't even think about it.

He took a long swallow of the second beer.

Tick.

Something standing on the dark lawn below, looking up at the window.

Something that knew exactly where he was, wanted to make contact.

But not a raccoon this time.

Don't, don't, don't.

No cute furry face with a little black mask this time. No beautiful coat and black-ringed tail.

Motion, color, beer. Scrub out the diseased thought, purge the contamination.

Tick.

Because if he didn't rid himself of the monstrous thought that soiled his mind, he would sooner or later lose his grip on sanity. Sooner.

Tick.

If he went to the window and parted the draperies and looked down at the thing on the lawn, even insanity would be no refuge. Once he had seen, once he knew, then there would be only a single way out. Shotgun barrel in his mouth, one toe hooked in the trigger.

Tick.

He turned up the volume control on the television. Loud. Louder.

He finished the second beer. Turned the volume up even louder, until the raucous soundtrack of the violent movie seemed to shake the room.