Dean Koontz - The Servants of Twilight

Thunder shook the window-walls.

Rain fell harder than ever.

Heat streamed from the ceiling vents, but Charlie couldn't get rid of a chill that made his hands clammy.

Denton Boothe said, "I've talked with people who knew Grace before this religious fanaticism. Many of them mention how close she and her husband were. Married forty-four years, she idolized the man. Nothing was too good for her Albert. She kept his house exactly as he liked it, cooked only his favorite foods, did everything the way he preferred. The only thing she was never able to give him was the thing he would have liked the most-a son. At his funeral, when she broke down, she kept saying, over and over, 'I never gave him a son." It's conceivable that, to Grace, a male child-any male child-is a symbol of her failure to give her husband what he most desired. While he was alive, she could make up for that failure by treating him like a king, but once he was gone she had no way to atone for her barrenness, and perhaps she began to hate little boys. Hate them, then fear them, then fantasize that one of them was the Antichrist, here to destroy the world. It's an understandable if regrettable progression for psychosis."

Henry said, "If I recall, they did adopt a daughter-"

"The one who had Grace committed for psychiatric evaluation when this Twilight business first came up," Charlie said.

"Yes," Boo said." Grace sold her house, liquidated investments, and put the money into this church. It was irrational, and the daughter was correct in seeking to preserve her mother's estate. But Grace came through the psychiatric evaluation with flying colors-"

"How?" Charlie wondered.

"Well, she was cunning. She knew what the psychiatric examiner was looking for, and she had sufficient control of herself to hide all those attitudes and tendencies that would have set off the alarm bells."

"But she was liquidating property to form a church," Henry said."

Surely the doctor could see that wasn't the act of a rational person."

"On the contrary. Provided she understood the risks of her actions and had a firm grip on all the potential consequences, or at least as long as she convinced the examining doctor that she had a firm grip, the mere fact that she wanted to give everything to God's work would not be sufficient to declare her mentally incompetent. We have religious liberty in this country, you know.

It's an important constitutional freedom, and the law steps respectfully around it in cases like this."

"You've got to help me, Boo," Charlie said." Tell me how this woman thinks. Give me a handle on her. Show me how to turn her off, how to make her change her mind about Joey Scavello."

"This kind of psychopathic personality is not frightened, shaky, about to collapse. Just the opposite. With a cause she believes in, supported by delusions of grandeur that are intensely religious in nature. well, despite appearances to the contrary, she's a rock, utterly resistant to pressure and stress. She lives in a reality that she made for herself, and she's made it so well that there's probably no way you can shake it or pull it apart or cause her to lose faith in it."

"Are you saying I can't change her mind?"

"I would think it's impossible."

"Then how do I make her back off? She's a flake; there must be an easy way to handle her."

"You're not listening-or you don't want to hear what I'm telling you.

You mustn't make the mistake of assuming that, just because she's psychotic, she's vulnerable. This sort of mental problem carries with it a peculiar strength, an ability to withstand rejection, failure, and all forms of stress. You see, Grace evolved her psychotic fantasy for the sole purpose of protecting herself from those things. It's a way of armoring herself against the cruelties and disappointments of life, and it's damned good armor."

Charlie said, "Are you telling me she has no weaknesses?"

"Everyone has weaknesses. I'm just telling you that, in Grace's case, finding them won't be easy. I'll have to look over my file on her, think about it awhile… Give me a day at least."

"Think fast," Charlie said, getting to his feet, "I've got a few hundred homicidal religious fanatics breathing down my neck."

At the door, as they were leaving his office, Boo said, "Charlie, I know you put quite a lot of faith in me sometimes-"

" Yeah, I've got a Messiah complex about you."

Ignoring the joke, still unusually somber, Boo said, "I just don't want you to pin a lot of hope on what I might be able to come up with. In fact, I might not be able to come up with anything. Right now, I'd say there's only one answer, one way to deal with Grace if you want to save your clients."

"What's that?"

" Kill her," Boo said without a smile.

"You certainly aren't one of those bleeding-heart psychiatrists who always want to give mass murderers a second chance at life. Where'd you get your degree-Attila the Hun School of Head-Shrinking?"

He very much wanted Boo to joke with him. The psychiatrist's grim reaction to the story of his meeting with Grace this morning was so out of character that it unsettled Charlie. He needed a laugh. He needed to be told there was a silver lining somewhere. Boo's gray-faced sobriety was almost scarier than Grace Spivey's flamboyant ranting.

But Boo said, "Charlie, you know me. You know I can find something humorous in anything. I chuckle at dementia praecox in certain situations. I am amused by certain aspects of death, taxes, leprosy, American politics, and cancer. I've even been known to smile at reruns of 'Lavem & Shirley' when my grandchildren have insisted I watch with them. But I see nothing to laugh at here. You are a dear friend, Charlie. I'm frightened for you."

" You don't really mean I should kill her."

"I know you couldn't commit cold-blooded murder," Boothe said." But I'm afraid Grace's death is the only thing that might redirect these cultists' attention away from your clients."

"So itd be helpful if I was capable of cold-blooded murder."

"Yes.

"Helpful if I had just a little killer in me."

"Yes." "Jesus.

"A difficult state of affairs," Boo agreed.

The house had no garage, just a carport, which meant they had to expose themselves while getting in the green Chevy. Sandy didn't like it, but there was no other choice except to stay in the house until reinforcements arrived, and his gut instinct told him that would be a mistake.

He left the house first, by the side door, stepping directly into the open carport. The roof kept the rain from falling straight down on him, and latticework covered with climbing honeysuckle kept it from slanting in through the long side of the stall, but the chilly wind drove sheets of rain through the open end of the structure and threw it in his face.

Before giving the all-clear signal for Christine and Joey to come outside, he went to the end of the carport, into the driveway, because he wanted to make sure no one was lurking in front of the house. He wore a coat but went without an umbrella in order to keep his hands free, and the rain beat on his bare head, stung his face, trickled under his collar. No one was at the front door or along the walk or crouching by the shrubbery, so he called back to the woman to get into the car with the boy.

He took a few more steps along the driveway in order to have a look up and down the street, and he saw the blue Dodge van.

It was parked a block and a half up the hill, on the other side of the street, facing down toward the house. Even as he spotted it, the van swung away from the curb and headed toward him.

Sandy glanced back and saw that Christine, lugging two suitcases and accompanied by the dog, had just reached the car, where the boy had opened the rear door for her." Wait!" he shouted to them.