Dean Koontz - From the Corner of His Eye

The old woman crumpled with a papery rustle, as though she were an elaborately folded piece of origami. She would be unconscious for a while, and after she came around, she probably wouldn't remember who she was, let alone what make of car she'd been driving, until Junior was well out of Eugene.

The doors were unlocked on a pickup parked next to the Pontiac. Junior lifted the granny onto the front seat of the truck. She was so light, so unpleasantly angular, and she rustled so much that she might have been a new species of giant mutant insect that mimicked human appearance. He was glad, after all, that he hadn't killed her: Granny's prickly—bur spirit might have proved to be as difficult to eradicate as a cockroach infestation. With a shudder, he tossed her purse on top of her, and slammed the truck door.

He snatched the woman's car keys off the pavement, slid behind the wheel of the Pontiac, and drove off to find a pharmacy, the only stop that he intended to make until he reached Spruce Hills.

WALLY HAD NOT gone home with Death, but they had definitely been at the dance together.

When Celestina first entered his ICU cubicle, the sight of his face scared her in spite of the surgeon's assurances. Gray, he was, and sunken-cheeked-as though this were the eighteenth century and so many medicinal leeches had been applied to him that too much of his essential substance had been sucked out.

He was unconscious, wired to a heart monitor, pierced by an intravenous-drip line. Clipped to his septum, an oxygen feed hissed faintly, and from his open mouth rose the barely audible wheeze of his breathing.

For a long time, she stood beside the bed, holding his hand, confident that on some level he was aware of her presence, though he gave no indication whatsoever that he knew she was there.

She could have used the chair. Sitting, however, she wouldn't be able to see his face.

In time, his hand tightened feebly on hers. And a while after that hopeful sign, his eyelids fluttered, opened.

He was confused initially, frowning at the heart monitor and at the IV rack that loomed over him. When his eyes met Celestina's, his gaze clarified, and the smile that he found for her brought as much light into her heart as the diamond ring he had slipped onto her finger so few hours before.

Frown quickly followed smile, and he said thinly, “Angel ... ?"

“She's all right. Untouched."

A matronly nurse arrived, alerted to the patient's return to consciousness by the telemetry device associated with the heart monitor.

She fussed over him, took his temperature, and spooned two chips of ice into his parched mouth. Leaving, she gave Celestina a meaningful look and tapped her wristwatch.

Alone again with Wally, Celestina said, “They told me that once you regained consciousness, I can only visit ten minutes at a time, and not that often, either."

He nodded. “Tired."

“The doctors tell me you'll make a full recovery."

Smiling again, speaking in a voice hardly louder than a whisper, he said, “Got a wedding date to keep."

She bent down and kissed his cheek, his right eye, his left, his brow, his dry cracked lips. “I love you so much. I wanted to die when I thought you weren't with me anymore.

“Never say die,” he admonished.

Blotting her eyes on a Kleenex, she said, “All right. Never."

“Was it Angel's father?"

She was surprised by his intuition. Three years ago, when first she moved to Pacific Heights, Celestina had shared with him the fear that the beast would find them one day, but she hadn't spoken of that possibility in perhaps two and a half years.

She shook her head. “No. It wasn't Angel's father. You're her father.

He was just the son of a bitch who raped Phimie."

“They get him?"

“I almost did. With his own gun."

Wally raised his eyebrows.

“And I hit him with a chair, hurt him some."

“Wow."

She said, “Didn't know you were going to marry an Amazon, huh?"

“Sure did."

“He got away just as the police arrived. And they think he's psychotic, plenty crazy enough to try again if they don't find him soon."

“Me too,” he said worriedly.

“They don't want me to go back to the apartment."

“Listen to them."

“And they're even worried about me hanging around St. Mary's too long, 'cause he'll expect me to be here with you."

“I'll be okay. Lots of friends here."

“You'll be out of ICU tomorrow, I bet. You'll have a phone, I'll call. And I'll come soon as I can."

He found the strength to squeeze her hand tighter than before. “Be safe. Keep Angel safe."

She kissed him again. “Two weeks,” she reminded him.

He smiled ruefully. “Might be ready for a wedding by then, but not a honeymoon."

“We've got the rest of our lives for the honeymoon."

WHEN AT LAST Paul Damascus reached the parsonage late Friday afternoon, January 12, he arrived on foot, as he arrived everywhere these days.

A cold wind raised a haunting groan as it harried itself around and around in the bronze hollow of the bell atop the church steeple, shook dead needles from the evergreens, and resisted Paul's progress with what seemed to be malicious intent. Miles ago, between the towns of Brookings and Pistol River, he had decided that he wouldn't again walk this far north at this time of year, even if the guidebooks did claim that the Oregon coast was a comparatively temperate zone in winter.

Although he was a stranger, arriving unannounced, and something of an eccentric by anyone's definition, Paul was received by Grace and Harrison White with warmth and fellowship. At their doorstep, raising his voice to compete with the wailing weather, he hurriedly blurted out his mission, as if they might reel back from his wild windblown presence if he didn't talk quickly enough: “I've walked here from Bright Beach, California, to tell you about an exceptional woman whose life will echo through the lives of countless others long after she's gone. Her husband died the night their son was born, but not before naming the boy Bartholomew, because he'd been so impressed by 'This Momentous Day. And now the boy is blind, and I hope you'll be able and willing to give some comfort to his mother.” The Whites failed to reel backward, didn't even flinch from his unfortunately explosive statement of purpose. Instead, they invited him into their home, later invited him to dinner, and later still asked him to stay the night in their guest room, They were as gracious as any people he had ever met, but they also seemed genuinely interested in his story. He wasn't surprised that Agnes Lampion would enthrall them, for hers was a life of clear significance. That they seemed equally interested in Paul's story, however, surprised him. Perhaps they were merely being kind, and yet with apparent fascination, they drew out of him so many details of his long walks, of the places he had been and the reasons why, of his life with Perri.

Friday night, he slept more soundly than he'd slept since coming home from the pharmacy to discover Joshua Nunn and the paramedic in solemn silence at Perri's bedside. He didn't dream of trekking across a wasteland, neither salt flats nor snow-whipped plains of ice, and when he woke in the morning, he felt rested in body, mind, and soul.

Harrison and Grace had welcomed him in spite of the fact that a friend and parishioner had died on Thursday, leaving them both bereft and with church obligations.

“You're heaven-sent,” Grace assured Paul at breakfast Saturday morning. “With all your stories, you lifted our hearts when we most needed to be lifted."

The funeral was at two o'clock, after which family and friends of the deceased would gather here in the parsonage for a social, to break bread together and to share their memories of the loved one lost.