Dean Koontz: The Servants of Twilight

With a nod of his head, he turned away and went down the walk, toward the street, where his partner waited.

A minute later, as Christine and Joey stood at the living room windows, watching the patrol car drive away, the boy said, "She was out there, Mom. Really, really. This isn't like the snake."

She believed him. What he had seen at the window could have been a figment of his imagination or an image left over from a nightmare-but it hadn't been that. He had seen what he thought he'd seen: the old woman herself, in the flesh. Christine didn't know why she was so sure of that, but she was. Dead sure.

She gave him the option of spending the rest of the night in her room, but he was determined to be brave.

"I'll sleep in my bed," he said." Brandy'll be there. Brandy'll smell that old witch coming a mile away. But. could we sorta leave a lamp on?"

"Sure," she said, though she had only recently weaned him away from the need for a night light.

In his room she closed the draperies tight, leaving not even a narrow crack through which someone might be able to see him.

She tucked him in, kissed him goodnight, and left him in Brandy's care.

Back in her own bed once more, with the lights out, she stared at the tenebrous ceiling. She was unable to sleep. She kept expecting a sudden sound-glass shattering, a door being forcedbut the night remained peaceful.

Only the February wind, with an occasional violent gust, marred the nocturnal stillness.

In his room Joey switched off the lamp that his mother had left on for him. The darkness was absolute.

Brandy jumped onto the bed, where he was never supposed to be (one of Mom's rules: no do, in bed), but Joey didn't push him off.

Brandy settled down and was welcome.

Joey listened to the night wind sniffing and licking at the house, and it sounded like a living thing. He pulled the blanket all the way up to his nose, as if it were a shield that would protect him from all harm.

After a while he said, "She's still out there somewhere."

The dog lifted his square head.

"She's waiting, Brandy."

The dog raised one ear.

"She'll be back."

The dog growled in the back of his throat.

Joey put one hand on his furry companion." You know it, too, don't you, boy? You know she's out there, don't you?"

Brandy woofed softly.

The wind moaned.

The boy listened.

The nilit ticked toward dawn.

In the middle of the night, unable to sleep, Christine went downstairs to Joey's room to look in on him. The lamp she had left burning was off now, and the bed-room was tomb-black. For a moment fear pinched off her breath. But when she snapped on the light, she saw that Joey was in bed, asleep, safe.

Brandy was comfortably ensconced in the bed, too, but he woke when she turned on the light. He yawned and licked his chops, and gave her a look that was rich with canine guilt.

"You know the rules, fuzzy-butt," she whispered." On the floor."

Brandy got off the bed without waking Joey, slunk to the nearest corner, and curled up on the floor. He looked at her sheepishly.

"Good dog," she whispered.

He wagged his tail, sweeping the carpet around him.

She switched off the light and started back toward her own room. She had gone only a step or two when she heard movement in the boy's room, and she knew it was Brandy returning to the bed. Tonight, however, she just didn't care all that much whether he got dog hairs on the sheets and blankets. Tonight, the only thing that seemed to matter was that Joey was safe.

She returned to her bed and dozed fitfully, tossing and turning, murmuring in her sleep as night crept toward dawn. She dreamed of an old woman with a green face, green hair, and long green fingernails that hooked wickedly into sharp claws.

Monday morning came at last, and it was sunny. Too damned sunny. She woke early, and light speared through her bedroom windows, making her wince. Her eyes were grainy, sensitive, bloodshot.

She took a long, hot shower, steaming away some of her weariness, then dressed for work in a maroon blouse, simple gray skirt, and gray pumps.

Stepping to the full-length mirror on the bathroom door, she examined herself critically, although staring at her reflection always embarrassed her. There was no mystery about her shyness; she knew her embarrassment was a result of the things she had been taught during the Lost Years, between her eighteenth and twentieth birthdays. During that period she had struggled to throw off all vanity and a large measure of her individuality because gray-faced uniformity was what had been demanded of her back then. They had expected her to be humble, self-effacing, and plain. Any concern for her appearance, any slightest pride in her looks, would have brought swift disciplinary action from her superiors. Although she had put those grim lonely years and events behind her, they still had a lingering effect on her that she could not deny.

Now, almost as a test of how completely she had triumphed over the Lost Years, she fought her embarrassment and resolutely studied her mirror image with as much vanity as she could summon from a soul half-purged of it. Her figure was good, though she didn't have the kind of body that, displayed in a bikini, would ever sell a million pin-up posters. Her legs were slender and well shaped. Her hips flared just right, and she was almost too small in the waist, though that smallness made her bustline-which was only average-seem larger than it was. She sometimes wished she were as busty as Val, but Val said that very large breasts were more of a curse than a blessing, that it was like carrying around a pair of saddlebags, and that some evenings her shoulders ached with the strain of that burden. Even if what Val said was true and not just a white lie told out of sympathy for those less amply endowed, Christine nevertheless wished she had big boobs, and she knew that this desire, this hopeless vanity, was a blatant reaction to-and rejection of-all that she had been taught in that gray and dreary place where she had lived between the ages of eighteen and twenty.

By now, her face was flushed, but she forced herself to remain in front of the mirror a minute more, untit she had determined that her hair was properly combed and that her makeup was evenly applied. She knew she was pretty. Not gorgeous. But she had a good complexion, a delicate chin and jawline, a good nose. Her eyes were her best feature, large and dark and clear.

Her hair was dark, too, almost black. Val said she would trade her big boobs for hair like that any day, but Christine knew that was only talk.

Sure, her hair looked good when the weather was right, but as soon as the humidity rose past a certain point, it got either lank and flat or fizzy and curly, and then she looked like either Vampira or Gene Shalit.

At last, blushing furiously but feeling that she had triumphed over the excessive self-effacement that had been hammered into her years ago, she turned away from the mirror.

She went to the kitchen to make coffee and toast, and found Joey already at the breakfast table. He wasn't eating, just sitting there, face turned away from her, staring out the window at the sun-splashed rear lawn.

Taking a paper filter from a box and fitting it into the basket of the dripolator, Christine said, "What can I get for you for breakfast, Skipper?"

He didn't answer.

Spooning coffee into the filter, she said, "How about cereal and peanut butter toast? English muffins? Maybe you even feel like an egg."

He still didn't answer. Sometimes-not often-he could be cranky in the morning, but he always could be teased into a better mood. By nature, he was too mild-mannered to remain sullen for long.

Switching on the dripolator and pouring water into the top of it, she said, "Okay, so if you don't want cereal or toast or an egg, maybe I could fix some spinach, brussel sprouts, and broccoli. They're all your favorites, aren't they?"