Dean Koontz - Tick Tock

The serpent-eyed Samaritan stared intently after the gull, clearly intrigued. Its arms hung at its sides, and it repeatedly flexed and fisted its plump hands as though working off the excess energy of rage and frustration.

From overhead and west near the stilled Ferris wheel came the thrumming of many wings, as eight or ten seagulls descended in a flock.

The demon swung around to face them. Breaking out of their steep dive only a few feet above the ground, the gulls streaked after the first bird, swarming straight toward the demon and then parting. into two groups that swept around it, disappearing east on Edgewater Avenue. None of them cawed or shrieked in their characteristic manner; but for the air-cutting whoosh of their wings, they passed in eerie silence,

Captivated, curious, the Samaritan-thing faced east to watch them depart.

It took a step after them, another step, but then halted.

Through the wintry lamplight fell sleet-white rain. The demon took another step east. Stopped. Stood swaying.

At the nearby docks, boats creaked on the rising tide, and a halyard clink-clink-clinked against a steel mast.

The Samaritan-thing directed its attention once more to the carousel.

Out of the west came a drumming different from - and louder than - the rain.

The beast turned toward the Ferris wheel, tilting its face up, peering into the bottomless black sky, raising its plump white hands, as though either seeking the source of the drumming or preparing to fend off an assault.

Out of the swarming darkness above the harbour, birds descended once more, not merely eight or ten, but a hundred birds, two hundred, three hundred, seagulls and pigeons and sparrows and blackbirds and crows and hawks, even several enormous and startlingly prehistoric-looking blue heron, beaks open but producing no sound, a river of feathers and small shiny eyes, pour-ing down over the Ferris wheel, along the promenade, splitting into two streams to pass the demon, and then rejoining in a single surging mass to disappear east between the shops and arcades, and still they came, a hundred more and then a hundred behind them, and hundreds arcing down after them, as though the sky would disgorge birds forever, the drumming of frantic pinions reverberating off every hard surface with such formidable volume that it was reminiscent of the freight-train rumble of a medium-magnitude earthquake.

On the carousel, Tommy felt the vibration of the wings, waves of pressure against his face and against his marvelling eyes, and his tympanic membranes began to flutter in sympathy, so that it felt as though the wings themselves, not merely the sound of them, were in his ears. The humid air carried the faint ammonia scent of damp feathers.

He remembered something that Del had said earlier in the night: The world is full of strange stuff Don’t you watch ‘The X Files’?

Although the spectacle of the birds left Tommy as clueless as he was wonderstruck, he suspected that Del understood what was happening, that what was deepest mystery to him was as clear as rainwater to her.

With the apparently infinite flock swooping around the demon, it turned away from the Ferris wheel, and stared east toward where the birds disappeared into the night past the Balboa Pavilion. It hesitated. Took a step in that direction. Stopped. Took another step.

As though finally interpreting the winged visitation as a sign that it could not ignore, the beast broke into a run, drawn by the birds in the night ahead of it, encouraged by the birds rocketing past on both sides of it, harried by the birds behind it. The torn raincoat flapped like great tattered wings, but the Samaritan-thing remained earthbound, borne east by birds and bird shadows.

For perhaps a minute after the Samaritan-thing passed out of sight, the birds continued to descend from the stormy sky above the Ferris wheel to the west, sail along Edgewater Avenue past the carousel, and disappear to the east. Gradually the flock grew thinner, until it ended with a few blackbirds, two gulls, and a single blue heron at least three feet tall.

The blackbirds abruptly broke from their pell-mell eastward flight, spiralled over the dining terrace as if battling one another, and then fell to the promenade, where they fluttered on the wet concrete as though stunned.

The two seagulls landed on the pavement, stumbled forward, flopped on their sides, squawked in distress, sprang to their feet, and wobble-walked in circles, bob-bing their heads, apparently dazed and confused.

Stalk-legged and ungainly in appearance, the giant blue heron was nevertheless a graceful creature - except in this instance. It tottered off the promenade onto the dining terrace, weaving around the boles of the palm trees, curling and bending its long neck as if the muscles were so loose that it couldn’t hold its head up, in general performing as if inebriated.

One by one the blackbirds stopped flopping on the con-crete, hopped onto their feet, shook themselves, spread their wings, and soared into the air.

The pair of gulls regained their composure. They also took wing and disappeared into the deep black sky above the harbour.

Having regained its equilibrium, the heron sprang onto one of the tables on the dining terrace and stood erect, its head held high, surveying the night on all sides, as if surprised to find itself in this place. Then it, too, departed.

Tommy sucked in a deep cool breath and blew it out and said, ‘What the hell was that?’

‘Birds,’ Del said.

‘I know they were birds, even a blind man would know they were birds, but what were they doing?’

The dog shook itself, whined, and padded to Del rubbing against her as if for comfort.

‘Good Scootie,’ she said, crouching to scratch the dog behind the ears. ‘Him were so quiet, so still. Him good baby, him is, mommy’s little Scootie-wootums.’

Scootie wagged his tail happily and chuffed.

To Tommy, Del said, ‘We better get out of here.’

‘You haven’t answered my question.’

‘You have so many questions,’ she said.

‘Right now, only this one about the birds.’

Rising from beside the dog, she said, ‘Will you feel better if I scratch behind your ears too?’

‘Del, damn it!’

‘They were just birds. Agitated about something.’

‘More than that,’ he disagreed.

‘Everything is more than it seems, but nothing is as mysterious as it appears to be.’

‘I want a real answer, not metaphysics.’

‘Then you tell me.’

‘What the hell is going on here, Del, what have I gotten into the middle of, what is this all about?’

Instead of answering, she said, ‘It might come back. We better get moving.’

Frustrated, he followed her and Scootie off the carou-sel and into the rain. They went down the steps to Edgewater Avenue along which the thousands of birds had flocked.

At the end of the wall and the iron railing that defined the raised area where the carousel stood, they stopped and peeked out warily along the Fun Zone, east to where the demon had disappeared. The beast was nowhere to be seen. All of the birds were gone as well.

Scootie led them onto the promenade.

A few dozen feathers in different hues were stuck to the wet concrete or floated in the puddles. Otherwise, it would have been easy to believe that the birds had not been real, but a phenomenal and phantasmagoric illusion.

‘This way,’ Del said, and she headed briskly west, the opposite direction from that in which the Samaritan-thing had gone.

‘Are you a witch?’ Tommy asked.

‘Certainly not.’

‘That’s suspicious.’

‘What?’ she asked.

‘Such a direct answer. You never give them.’

‘I always give direct answers. You just don’t listen to them properly.’