Dean Koontz - Tick Tock

Scootie grinned out of a cowl of white cotton, enjoying his rubdown.

‘We can’t stay long,’ Del told the butler. ‘We’re on the lam from a doll snake rat-quick monster thing. But could we please have coffee and a tray of breakfast pastries?’

‘In a trice, Miss Payne.’

‘You’re a dear, Mummingford.’

‘It’s the cross I bear,’ said Mummingford.

The grand hail, at least a hundred feet long, was floored with highly polished black granite on which their wet rubber-soled shoes squeaked with each step. The white walls were hung with enormous unframed canvases: all abstract art full of motion and colour, each piece illuminated precisely to the edges of the canvas by projector lamps in the ceiling, so it seemed as if the art glowed from within. The ceiling was panelled with bands of polished steel alternating with bands of brushed steel. A double cove provided indirect lighting above, and additional indirect lighting flooded out at floor level from a groove in the black-granite baseboard.

Sensing Tommy’s amazement, Del said, ‘Mom built the outside of the house to please the community architec-tural committee, but inside it’s as modem as a spaceship and as Mediterranean as Coca Cola.’

The music room was two-thirds of the way along the main hall, on the left. A black-lacquered door opened onto a room floored with polished white limestone speck-led with gracefully curved marine fossils. The sound-baffled ceiling and walls were padded and then uphol-stered in charcoal-grey fabric, as if this were a recording studio, and indirect lighting was tucked behind the baffles.

The chamber was huge, approximately forty by sixty feet. In the centre was a twenty-by-thirty custom carpet with a geometric pattern in half a dozen subtly different shades of taupe and gold. In the centre of the carpet were a black leather sofa and four black leather armchairs arranged in a conversational grouping around a solid rectangular-block coffee table veneered with a parquetry of faux-ivory squares.

Although a hundred music lovers could have been seated in the room for a piano recital no piano was pro-vided. The music - Glenn Miller’s ‘Moonlight Serenade’ -didn’t issue from a state-of-the-art entertainment system with. surround-sound speakers, either. It came, instead, from what appeared to be a small, table-model, Art Deco radio that stood in the centre of the faux-ivory coffee table, in a cone of light from a tightly focused halogen lamp in the ceiling. The tinny and static-spotted quality of the sound suggested that the radio was act-ually a cassette or CD player loaded with one of those authentic as-recorded-live-on-dance-night-in-the-forties radio programs.

Del’s mother sat in one of the chairs, eyes closed, smiling as beatifically as Saint Francis in the limestone carvings around the front door, swaying her head from side to side with the music, keeping time by patting her hands against the arms of the chair. Although only fifty, she looked at least ten years younger: quite a striking woman, not blond like Del but olive-skinned with jet-black hair, delicate features, and a swanlike neck. She reminded Tommy of the elfin actress in that old movie, Breakfast at Tiffany’s …Audrey Hepburn.

When Del lowered the volume on the radio, Mrs. Payne opened her eyes. They were as blue as Del’s and even deeper. Her smile widened. ‘Good heavens, dear, you look like a drowned rat.’ She rose from the chair and regarded Tommy. ‘And so do you, young man.’

Tommy was surprised to see that Mrs. Payne was wearing an ao dais, a flowing silk tunic-and-pants ensem-ble similar to those that his own mother wore at times.

Del said, ‘The drowned-rat look is simply the latest thing, very chic.’

‘You shouldn’t joke about such things, darling. The world is ugly enough these days, as it is.’

‘Mom, I’d like you to meet Tommy Phan.’

‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Payne.’

Taking his offered hand in both of hers, Del’s mother said, ‘Call me Julia.’

‘Thank you, Julia. I’m-’

‘Or Rosalyn.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Or Winona.’

‘Winona?’

‘Or even Lilith. They’re all names I quite like.’

Not sure how to respond to her offer of four names, Tommy said, ‘That’s a beautiful ao dais you’re wearing.’

‘Thank you, dear. It is lovely, isn’t it? And so comfort-able. There’s a charming lady in Garden Grove who hand sews them.’

‘I think my mother may buy from the same woman.’

Del said, ‘Mom, Tommy is the one.’

Julia Rosalyn Winona Lilith Payne - or whatever her name was - raised her eyebrows. ‘Is he?’

Absolutely,’ said Del.

Mrs. Payne let go of Tommy’s hand and, oblivious of his wet clothes, embraced him, hugged him tightly, and kissed his cheek. ‘This is wonderful, just wonderful.’

Tommy wasn’t sure what was happening. Releasing him, Mrs. Payne turned to her daughter, and they hugged, laughed, all but jumped up and down like a couple of excited schoolgirls.

‘We’ve had the most wonderful night,’ Del said.

Her mother said, ‘Tell me, tell me.’

‘I set the yacht on fire and crashed it into the Balboa Island sea wall.’

Mrs. Payne gasped and put one hand against her breast as if to quiet her heart. ‘Deliverance, how exciting! You must tell me all about it.’

‘Tommy rolled his new Corvette.’

Wide-eyed, apparently delighted, Mrs. Payne regarded him with what might have been admiration. ‘Rolled a new Corvette?’

‘I didn’t plan to,’ he assured her.

‘How many times did you roll it?’

At least twice.’

And then,’ Del said, ‘it burst into flames!’

All this in one night!’ Mrs. Payne exclaimed. ‘Sit down, sit down, I must have all the details.’

‘We can’t stay long,’ Tommy said. ‘We’ve got to keep moving-’

‘We’ll be safe here for a little while,’ Del said, plopping into one of the commodious leather armchairs.

As Mrs. Payne returned to her chair, she said, ‘We should have coffee - or brandy if you need it.’

‘Mummingford is already bringing coffee and pas-tries,’ Del said.

Scootie entered the room and padded directly to Mrs. Payne. She was so petite and the chair was so wide that there was room for both her and the Labrador. The dog curled up with its massive black head in her lap.

‘Scootie-wootums have fun too?’ Mrs. Payne asked as she petted the mutt. Indicating the radio, she said, ‘Oh, this is a lovely number.’ Although the volume was low, she could identify the tune. ‘Artie Shaw, “Begin the Beguine.”

Del said, ‘I like it too. By the way, mother, it’s not just burning yachts and cars. There’s an entity involved.’

‘An entity? This just gets better and better,’ said Mrs. Payne. ‘What sort of entity?’

‘Well, I haven’t identified it yet, haven’t had time, what with all the running and chasing,’ Del said. ‘But it started out as a devil doll with a curse note pinned to the hand.’

To Tommy, Mrs. Payne said, ‘This doll was delivered to you?’

‘Yes. I-’

‘By whom?’

‘It was left on my doorstep. I think Vietnamese gangs- ‘And you picked it up and brought it into your house?’

‘Yes. I thought-’

Mrs. Payne clucked her tongue and wagged one finger at him. ‘Dear boy, you shouldn’t have brought it into your house. In this sort of situation, the entity can’t become animate and do you harm unless you invite it across your threshold.’

‘But it was just a little rag doll-’

‘Yes, of course, a little rag doll but that’s not what it is now, is it?’

Leaning forward in his chair, agitated, Tommy said, ‘I’m amazed that you just accept all of this so easily.’