Dean Koontz - The Servants of Twilight

The need to be quiet, the oath of silence, had a strangely powerful erotic effect. Even when Charlie climaxed, he did not cry out, but gripped her hips and held her against him and arched his back and opened his mouth but remained mute, and somehow, by containing the cry he also contained his energy and virility, for he didn't lose his erection, not even for a moment, and they paused only to change positions, remaining welded together, but sliding around on the sofa until she was on top, and then she rode him with a pneumatic fluidity and a sinuous rhythm that was unlike anything he had ever known before, and he lost track of time and place, lost himself in the soft, silken, silent song of flesh and motion.

She had never in her life been so lacking in self-consciousness while making love. For long moments she forgot where she was, even who she was; she became an animal, a mindlessly copulating organism intent on taking pleasure, oblivious of all else. Only once was the hypnotic rhythm of their lovemaking interrupted, and that was when she was suddenly stricken by the feeling that Joey had come downstairs and was standing in the shadows, watching them, but when she lifted her head from Charlie's chest and looked around, she saw nothing but the shadowy forms of the furniture, backlit by the dying fire, and she knew she was only imagining things. Then love-lust-sex seized her again with a power that was startling and even scary, and she gave herself to the act, was unable to do anything else, was lost, utterly.

Before they were done, Charlie had been shaken by three orgasms, and he had lost count of the number of times she had climaxed, but he didn't need a scorecard to know that neither of them had ever experienced anything like this in the past. When it was over, he was still trembling, and he felt drugged. They lay for a time, neither speaking, until they gradually became aware of the wind howling outside and realized that the dying fire had allowed a chill to creep back into the room. Then, reluctantly, they dressed and went upstairs, where they prepared the second bedroom for her.

"I should sleep with Joey and let you have this bed," she said.

"No. You'll only wake him if you go in there now. The poor kid needs his rest."

"But where will you sleep?" she asked.

"In the gallery."

"On the floor?"

"I'll put a sleeping bag at the head of the stairs."

For a moment anxiety replaced the dreaminess in her eyes." I thought you said there was no way they could get here tonight even if-"

He put a finger to her lips." There isn't any way. No way at all. But it wouldn't do for Joey to find me sleeping in your bed in the morning, would it? And most of the sofas downstairs are too soft for sleeping.

So if I'm going to use a sleeping bag, I might as well put it at the head of the stairs."

"And keep a gun at your side?"

"Of course. Even though I won't need it. I really won't, you know. So let's get you tucked in."

When she was under the covers, he kissed her goodnight and backed out of the room, leaving her door ajar.

In the gallery, he looked at his watch and was startled to see how late it was. Could they have been making love for almost two hours?

No. Surely not. There had been something frighteningly, deliciously animalistic about their coupling; they had indulged with an abandon and an intensity that stole the meaning from time, but he had never thought of himself as a rampaging stud, and he could not believe that he had performed so insatiably for so long. Yet his watch had never run fast before; surely it couldn't have gained an extra hour or more in just the past thirty minutes.

He realized he was standing there, alone, outside her bedroom door, grinning like the Cheshire cat, full of self-satisfaction.

He built up the fire downstairs, carried a sleeping bag to the gallery and unrolled it, switched off the landing light, and slipped into the bedroll. He listened to the storm raging outside, but not for long.

Sleep came like a great dark tide.

In the dream, he was tucking Joey into bed, straightening the covers, fluffing the boy's pillow, and Joey wanted to give him a goodnight kiss, and Charlie leaned over, but the boy's lips were hard and cold on his cheek, and when he looked down he saw the boy no longer had a face but just a bare skull with two staring eyes that seemed horribly out of place in that otherwise calcimined countenance.

Charlie hadn't felt lips against his cheek but a fleshless mouth, cold teeth. He recoiled in terror. Joey threw back the covers and sat up in bed. He was a normal little boy in every respect except for having only a skull instead of a complete head. The skull's protuberant eyes fixed on Charlie, and the boy's small hands began unbuttoning his Space Raiders pajamas, and when his shallow little chest was revealed it began to split open, and Charlie tried to turn and run but couldn't, couldn't close his eyes either, couldn't look away, could only watch as the child's chest cracked apart and from it streamed a horde of red-eyed rats like the one in the battery room, ten and then a hundred and then a thousand rats, until the boy had emptied himself and had collapsed into a pile of skin, like a deflated balloon, and then the rats surged forward toward Charlie — and he woke, sweating, gasping, a scream frozen in his throat. Something was holding him down, constraining his arms and legs, and for a moment he thought it was rats, that they had followed him out of the dream, and he thrashed in panic until he realized he was in a zippered sleeping bag. He found the zipper, pulled the bag open, freed himself, and crawled until he came to a wall in the darkness, sat with his back to it, listening to his thunderous heartbeat, waiting for it to subside.

When at last he had control of himself, he went into Joey's room, just to reassure himself. The boy was sleeping peacefully.

Chewbacca raised his furry head and yawned.

Charlie looked at his watch, saw that he had slept about four hours.

Dawn was nearing.

He returned to the gallery.

He couldn't stop shaking.

He went downstairs and made some coffee.

He tried not to think about the dream, but he couldn't help it. He had never before had such a vivid nightmare, and the shattering power of it led him to believe that it had been less a dream than a clairvoyant experience, a foreshadowing of events to come. Not that rats were going to burst out of Joey. Of course not. The dream had been symbolic. But what it meant was that Joey was going to die. Not wanting to believe it, devastated by the very idea that he would fail to protect the boy, he was nevertheless unable to dismiss it as only a dream; he knew; he felt it in his bones: Joey was going to die. Maybe they were all going to die.

And now he understood why he and Christine had made love with such intensity, with such abandon and fiercely animalistic need. Deep down, they both had known that time was running out, subconsciously, they had felt death approaching, and they had tried to deny it in that most ancient and fundamental of life-affirming rituals, the ceremony of flesh, the dance done lying down.

He got up from the table, left his half-finished coffee, and went to the front door. He wiped at the frosted glass until he could look out at the snow-covered porch. He couldn't see much of anything, just a few whirling flakes and darkness. The worst of the storm had passed. And Spivey was out there. Somewhere.

That's what the dream had meant.

By dawn the storm had passed.

Christine and Joey were up early. The boy was not as ebullient as he had been last night. In fact he was sinking back into gloom and perhaps despair, but he helped his mother and Charlie make breakfast, and he ate well.

After breakfast, Charlie suited up and went outside, alone, to sight-in the rifle that he had purchased yesterday in Sacramento.