Dean Koontz: False Memory

“No!” Realizing that his voice had been too sharp, Dusty took a deep breath and more calmly said, “Neighborhood like this, people don’t want a fuss made when it can be avoided.”

If the cops came, they might get Skeet down safely, but then they would commit him to a psychiatric ward, where he’d be held for at least three days. Probably longer. The last thing Skeet needed was to fall into the hands of one of those head doctors who were unreservedly enthusiastic about dipping into the psychoactive pharmacopoeia to ladle up a fruit punch of behavior-modification drugs that, while imposing a short-term placidity, would ultimately leave him with more short-circuiting synapses than he had now.

“Neighborhoods like this,” Dusty said, “don’t want spectacles.”

Surveying the immense houses along the street, the regal palms and stately ficuses, the well-tended lawns and flower beds, the guard said, “I’ll give you ten minutes.”

Motherwell raised his right fist and shook it at Skeet.

Under the circling halo of crows, Skeet waved.

The security guard said, “Anyway, he doesn’t look suicidal.”

“The little geek says he’s happy because an angel of death is sitting beside him,” Motherwell explained, “and the angel has shown him what it’s like on the other side, and what it’s like, he says, is really awesomely cool.”

“I’ll go talk to him,” Dusty said.

Motherwell scowled. “Talk, hell. Give him a push.”

As the heavy sky, swollen with unspent rain, sagged toward the earth and as the wind rose, Martie and the dog returned home at a trot. She repeatedly glanced down at her pacing shadow, but then the storm clouds overwhelmed the sun, and her dark companion vanished as if it had seeped into the earth, returning to some nether-world.

She surveyed nearby houses as she passed them, wondering if anyone had been at a window to see her peculiar behavior, hoping that she hadn’t actually looked as odd as she’d felt.

In this picturesque neighborhood, the homes were generally old and small, though many were lovingly detailed, possessing more charm and character than half the people of Martie’s acquaintance. Spanish architecture dominated, but here were also Cotswold cottages, French chaumières, German Häuschens, and Art Deco bungalows. The eclectic mix was pleasing, woven together by a green embroidery of laurels, palms, fragrant eucalyptuses, ferns, and cascading bougainvillea.

Martie, Dusty, and Valet lived in a perfectly scaled, two-story, miniature Victorian with gingerbread mill work. Dusty had painted the structure in the colorful yet sophisticated tradition of Victorian houses on certain streets in San Francisco: pale yellow background; blue, gray, and green ornamentation; with a judicious use of pink in a single detail along the cornice and on the window pediments.

Martie loved their home and thought it was a fine testament to Dusty’s talent and craftsmanship.

Her mother, however, upon first seeing the paint job, had declared, “It looks as if clowns live here.”

As Martie opened the wooden gate at the north side of the house and followed Valet along the narrow brick walkway to the backyard, she wondered if her unreasonable fear somehow had its origins in the depressing telephone call from her mother. After all, the greatest source of stress in her life was Sabrina’s refusal to accept Dusty. These were the two people whom Martie loved most in all the world, and she longed for peace between them.

Dusty wasn’t part of the problem. Sabrina was the only combatant in this sad war. Frustratingly, Dusty’s refusal to engage in battle seemed only to harden her hostility.

Stopping at the trash enclosure near the back of the house, Martie removed the lid from one of the cans and deposited the blue plastic bag full of Valet’s finest.

Perhaps her sudden inexplicable anxiety had been spawned by her mother’s whining about Dusty’s supposed paucity of ambition and about his lack of what Sabrina deemed an adequate education. Martie was afraid that her mother’s venom would eventually poison her marriage. Against her will, she might start to see Dusty through her mother’s mercilessly critical eyes. Or maybe Dusty would begin to resent Martie for the low esteem in which Sabrina held him.

In fact, Dusty was the wisest man Martie had ever known. The engine between his ears was even more finely tuned than her father’s had been, and Smilin’ Bob had been immeasurably smarter than his nickname implied. As for ambition… Well, she would rather have a kind husband than an ambitious one, and you’d find more kindness in Dusty than you’d find greed in Vegas.

Besides, Martie’s own career didn’t fulfill the expectations her mother had for her. After earning a bachelor’s degree — majoring in business, minoring in marketing — followed by an M.B.A., she had detoured from the road that might have taken her to high-corporate executive glory. Instead, she became a freelance video-game designer. She’d sold a few minor hits entirely of her own creation, and on a for-hire basis she had designed scenarios, characters, and fantasy worlds based on concepts by others. She earned good money, if not yet great, and she suspected that being a woman in a male-dominated field would ultimately be an enormous advantage, as her point of view was fresh. She liked her work, and recently she’d signed a contract to create an entirely new game based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which might produce enough royalties to impress Scrooge McDuck. Nevertheless, her mother dismissively described her work as “carnival stuff,” apparently because Sabrina associated video games with arcades, arcades with amusement parks, and amusement parks with carnivals. Martie supposed she was lucky that her mother hadn’t gone one step further and described her as a sideshow freak.

As Valet accompanied her up the back steps and across the porch, Martie said, “Maybe a psychoanalyst would say, just for a minute back there, my shadow was a symbol of my mother her negativity — ” Valet grinned up at her and wagged his plumed tail.

“— and maybe my little anxiety attack expressed an unconscious concern that Mom is… well, that she’s going to be able to mess with my head eventually, pollute me with her toxic attitude.”

Martie fished a set of keys from a jacket pocket and unlocked the door.

“My God, I sound like a college sophomore halfway through Basic Psych.”

She often talked to the dog. The dog listened but never replied, and his silence was one of the pillars of their wonderful relationship.

“Most likely,” she said, as she followed Valet into the kitchen, “there was no psychological symbolism, and I’m just going totally nutball crazy.”

Valet chuffed as though agreeing with the diagnosis of madness, and then he enthusiastically lapped water from his bowl.

Five mornings a week, following a long walk, either she or Dusty spent half an hour grooming the dog on the back porch, combing and brushing. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, grooming followed the afternoon stroll. Their house was pretty much free of dog hair, and she intended to keep it that way.

“You are obliged,” she reminded Valet, “not to shed until further notice. And remember — just because we’re not here to catch you in the act, doesn’t mean suddenly you have furniture privileges and unlimited access to the refrigerator.”

He rolled his eyes at her as if to say he was offended by her lack of trust. Then he continued drinking.

In the half bath adjacent to the kitchen, Martie switched on the light. She intended to check her makeup and brush her windblown hair.

As she stepped to the sink, sudden fright cinched her chest again, and her heart felt as though it were painfully compressed. She wasn’t seized by the certainty that some mortal danger loomed behind her, as before. Instead, she was afraid to look in the mirror.