Dean Koontz - The Servants of Twilight

"Are you taking Joey with you?" Charlie asked. He noticed that his voice was stronger than before; speaking did not require as much effort as it had done a few minutes ago." Are you getting him out?"

"No," Christine said." Joey's staying with us."

"I'll move faster without him," Barlowe said." Besides, the two of you need him to put wood on the fire every now and then."

Joey said, "I'll take care of them, Mr. Barlowe. You can count on me.

Chewbacca and me."

The dog barked softly, once, as if in affirmation of the boy's pledge.

Barlowe favored the boy with another malformed smile, and Joey grinned at him in return. Joey had accepted the giant's conversion with considerably greater alacrity than Charlie had, and his trust seemed to be reciprocated and well placed.

Barlowe left them.

They sat in silence for a moment.

They did not even glance at Grace Spivey's corpse, as if it were only another formation of stone.

Clenching his teeth, preparing for an agonizing and most likely fruitless ordeal, Charlie tried pulling himself up into a sitting position. Although he had possessed insufficient strength to do it before, he now found the task remarkably easy. The pain from the bullet wound in his shoulder had dramatically subsided, much to his surprise, and was now only a dull ache which he could endure with little trouble.

His other injuries provided a measure of discomfort, but they were not as bothersome or as sapping of his energy as they had been. He felt somewhat. revitalized. and he knew that he would be able to hold onto life until the rescue team had arrived and had gotten them off the mountain, to a hospital.

He wondered if he felt better because of Joey. The boy had come to him, had laid a hand on him, and he had slept for a couple of minutes, and when he had regained consciousness he was… partially healed. Was that one of the child's powers? If so, it was an imperfect power, for Charlie had not been entirely or even mostly healed; the bullet wound had not knitted up; his bruises and lacerations had not faded; he felt only a little bit better. The very imperfection of the healing power-if it existed at all-seemed to argue for the psychic explanation that Barlowe had offered them. The inadequacy of it indicated that it was a power of which Joey was unaware, a paranormal ability expressed in an entirely unconscious manner. Which meant he was just a little boy with a special gift. Because if he was the Antichrist, he would possess unlimited and miraculous power, and he would quickly and entirely heal both his mother and Charlie.

Wouldn't he? Sure. Sure he would.

Chewbacca returned to Charlie.

There was still blood crusted in the dog's ears.

Charlie stared into its eyes.

He petted it.

The bullet wound in Christine's leg had stopped bleeding, and the pain had drained out of it. She felt clear-headed. With each passing minute she developed a greater appreciation of their survival, which was (she now saw) a tribute-not to the intervention of supernatural forces, but-to their incredible determination and endurance. Confidence returned to her, and she began to believe, once more, in the future.

For a few minutes, when she had been bleeding and helpless, when Spivey had been looming over Joey, Christine had surrendered to an uncharacteristic despair. She had been in such a bleak mood that, when the angry bats had responded to the gunfire and had attacked Spivey, Christine had even briefly wondered if Joey was, after all, what Spivey had accused him of being. Good heavens! Now, with Barlowe on his way for help, with the worst of her pain gone, with a growing belief in the likelihood of her and Charlie's survival, watching Joey as he fumblingly added a few branches to the fire, she could not imagine how such dark and foolish fears could have seized her. She had been so exhausted and so weak and so despondent that she had been susceptible to Spivey's insane message. Though that moment of hysteria was past and equilibrium restored, she was chilled by the realization that even she had been, however briefly, fertile ground for Spivey's lunacy.

How easily it could happen: one lunatic spreads her delusions to the gullible, and soon there is a hysterical mob, or in this case a cult, believing itself to be driven by the best intentions and, therefore, armored against doubt by steely selfrighteousness. There was evil, she realized: not in her little boy but in mankind's fatal attraction to easy, even if irrational, answers.

From across the room, Charlie said, "You trust Barlowe?"

"I think so," Christine said.

"He could have another change of heart on the way down."

"I think he'll send help," she said.

"If he changes his mind about Joey, he wouldn't even have to come back.

He could just leave us here, let cold and hunger do the job for him."

"He'll come back, I bet," Joey said, dusting his small hands together after adding the branches to the fire." I think he's one of the good guys, after all. Don't you, Mom? Don't you think he's one of the good guys?"

"Yeah," Christine said. She smiled." He's one of the good guys, honey."

"Like us," Joey said.

"Like us," she said.

Hours later, but well before nightfall, they heard the helicopter.

"The chopper will have skis on it," Charlie said." They'll land in the meadow, and the rescue team will walk in from there."

"We're going home?" Joey asked.

Christine was crying with relief and happiness." We're going home, honey. You better get your jacket and gloves, start getting dressed."

The boy ran to the pile of insulated sportswear in the corner.

To Charlie, Christine said, "Thank you."

"I failed you," he said.

"No. We had a bit of luck there at the end… Barlowe's indecision, and then the bats. But we wouldn't have gotten that far if it hadn't been for you. You were great. I love you, Charlie."

He hesitated to reply in kind, for any embrace of her was also an embrace of the boy; there was no escaping that. And he was not entirely comfortable with the boy, even though he was trying hard to believe that Barlowe's explanation was the right one.

Joey went to Christine, frowning. The drawstring on his hood was too loose, and he could not undo the clumsy knot he had put it in." Mommy, why'd they have to put a shoelace under my chin like this?"

Smiling, Christine helped him." I thought you were getting really good at tying shoelaces."

"I am," the boy said proudly." But they gotta be on my feet."

"Well, I'm afraid we can't think of you as a big boy until you're able to tie a shoelace no matter where they put it."

"Jeez. Then I guess I'll never be a big boy."

Christine finished retying the hood string." Oh, you'll get there one day, honey."

Charlie watched as she hugged her son. He sighed. He shook his head.

He cleared his throat. He said, "I love you, too, Christine. I really do."

Two days later, in the hospital in Reno, after enduring the attention of uncountable doctors and nurses, after several interviews with the police and one with a representative of the press, after long phone conversations with Henry Rankin, after two nights of much-needed drug-induced sleep, Charlie was left to find unassisted rest on the third night. He had no difficulty getting to sleep, but he dreamed.

He dreamed of making love to Christine, and it was not a fantasy of sex but more a memory of their lovemaking at the cabin. He had never given himself so completely as he had to her that night, and the next day she had gone out of her way to tell him that she had done thins with him that she had never contemplated doing with another man. Now, in the dream, they coupled with that same startling fervor and energy, casting aside all inhibitions. But in the dream, as it had been in reality, there was also something… savage about it, something fierce and animalistic, as if the sex they shared were more than an expression of love or lust, as if it were a. ceremony, a bonding, which was somehow committing him totally to Christine and, therefore, to Joey as well. As Christine straddled him, as he thrust like a bull deep within her, the floor under them began to split open-and here the dream departed from reality-and the couch began to slip into a widening aperture, and although both he and Christine recognized the danger, they could not do anything about it, could not cease their rutting even to save themselves, but continued to press flesh to flesh as the crack in the floor grew ever wider, as they became aware of something in the darkness below, something that was hungry for them, and Charlie wanted to pull away from her, flee, wanted to scream, but could not, could only cling to her and thrust within her, as the couch collapsed through the yawning hole, the cabin floor vanishing above them. And they fell away intoHe sat up in the hospital bed, gasping.