Dean Koontz - Tick Tock

In her house on Balboa Peninsula, Del led Tommy upstairs to the studio where she created her paintings.

Canvases were hung on all sides, and others stood in stacks against one wall, at least a hundred altogether. Most of them were exceedingly strange landscapes of places that could never exist on this world, scenes of such stunning beauty that the sight of them brought tears to Tommy’s eyes.

‘I painted these by remote viewing,’ she said, ‘but someday I hope to travel there.’

‘Where?’

‘I’ll tell you later.’

Eight paintings were different from all the others. They were portraits of Tommy, rendered with a photographic realism equal to that with which the landscapes had been painted.

Blinking in astonishment, he said, ‘When did you do these?’

‘Over the past two years. That’s how long I’ve been having dreams about you. I knew you were the one, my destiny, and then last night you just walked into the restaurant and ordered two cheeseburgers.’

The living room in the Phan house in Huntington Beach was remarkably similar to the living room of the Dai House, although the furnishings were somewhat more expensive. A painting of Jesus, revealing His Sacred Heart, hung on one wall, and in a corner was a Buddhist shrine.

Mother Phan sat in her favourite armchair, slack-jawed and pale, having taken the news of the wedding as though she had been hit in the face with a skillet.

Scootie licked one of her hands consolingly, but she didn’t seem to be aware of the dog.

Del sat on the sofa with Tommy, holding his hand. ‘First, Mrs. Phan, I want you to understand that the Payne’s and the Phan’s could be the most wonderful combination of families imaginable, a tremendous union of talents and forces, and my mother and I are prepared to embrace all of you as our own. I want to be given a chance to love you and Mr. Phan and Tommy’s brothers, and I want all of you to learn to love me.’

‘You steal my son,’ said Mother Phan.

‘No,’ Del said, ‘I stole a Honda and later a Ferrari, and then we borrowed the Peterbilt that the demon stole, but I didn’t steal your son. He gave his heart to me of his own free will. Now before you say anything more that might be rash, that you might later come to regret having said, let me tell you about my mother and me.’

‘You bad news.’

Ignoring the insult, Del said, ‘Twenty-nine years ago, when my Mom and Dad were driving from Vegas to a poker tournament in Reno, taking a scenic route, they were abducted by aliens from a lonely stretch of highway near Mud Lake in Nevada.’

Gazing at Del, his head ringing like a gong with remembered lines of conversation that had seemed like sheer lunacy when she had spoken them, Tommy said, ‘South of Tonopah.’

‘That’s right, darling,’ said Del. To Tommy’s mother, she said, ‘They were taken up to the mothership and examined. They were allowed to remember all of this, you see, because the aliens who abducted them were good extraterrestrials. Unfortunately, most of the abductions are perpetrated by evil ET’s whose plans for this planet are nefarious in the extreme, which is why they block abductees’ memories of what happened.’

Mother Phan scowled at Tommy. ‘You rude to Mrs. Dai, won’t even stay for tea, run off and marry crazy woman.’ She discovered Scootie licking her hand, and she shooed him away. ‘You want lose tongue, you filthy dog?’

‘Anyway, in the mothership, hovering above Mud lake,’ Del continued, ‘the aliens took an egg from my mother, sperm from Daddy, added some genetic wizardry of their own, and implanted mother with an embryo - which was me. I am a starchild, Mrs. Phan, and my mission here is to ferret out damage done by certain other extraterrestrials - which often includes teaching people like Mrs. Dai to perform evil mojo - and set things right. Because of this, I lead an eventful life, and often a lonely one. But at last not lonely anymore, because I have Tommy.’

‘World full of lovely Vietnamese girls,’ Tommy’s mother told him, ‘and you run away with crackpot maniac blonde.’

‘When I reached puberty,’ Del said, ‘I began to acquire various extraordinary powers, and I suppose I might continue to acquire even more as the years go by.’

Tommy said, ‘So that’s what you meant when you said you’d have been able to save your father if he hadn’t gotten cancer before you reached puberty.’

Squeezing his hand, Del said, ‘It’s all right. Fate is fate.

Death is just a phase, just a transition between this and a higher existence.’

‘The David Letterman show.’

Grinning, Del said, ‘I love you, tofu man.’ Mother Phan sat as stone-faced as an Easter Island monument.

‘And Emmy, the little girl… the daughter of the guard at the gatehouse,’ Tommy said. ‘You have cured her.’

‘And gave you a massage on the carousel that means you’ll never need to sleep again.’

He raised one hand to the back of his neck, and as his heart began to race with exhilaration, he remembered the tingle of her fingers as they had probed his weary muscles.

She winked. ‘Who wants to sleep when we could use all that time to consummate?’

‘Don’t want you here,’ said Mother Phan. Turning to her mother-in-law again, Del said, ‘When the aliens returned Mom and Daddy to that highway south of Tonopah, they sent along one of their own as a guardian, in the form of a dog.’

Tommy would have thought that nothing on earth could have torn his attention away from Del at that moment, but he turned his head to Scootie so fast that he almost gave himself whiplash.

The dog grinned at him.

‘Scootie,’ Del explained, ‘has greater powers than I do-’

‘The flock of birds that distracted the demon,’ Tommy said.

‘-and with your indulgence, Mrs. Phan, I will ask him to give a little demonstration to confirm what I’ve told you.’

‘Insane crazy American maniac blond lunatic’ Mother Phan insisted.

The Labrador sprang onto the coffee table, ears pricked,

tail wagging, and gazed so intently at Mother Phan that she pressed back into her armchair in alarm.

Above the dog’s head, a sphere of soft orange light formed in the air. It hung there a moment, but when Scootie twitched one ear, the light spun away from him and whirled around the room. When it passed an open door, the door flew shut. When it passed a closed door, the door flew open. All the windows rose as if flung up by invisible hands, and balmy November air blew into the living room. A clock stopped ticking, unlighted lamps glowed, and the television switched on by itself.

The sphere of light returned to Scootie, hovered over his head for a moment, and then faded away.

Now Tommy knew how Del had started the yacht without keys and how she had hot-wired the Ferrari in two seconds flat.

The black Labrador got off the coffee table and padded to his mistress, putting his head on her lap.

To Tommy’s mother, Del said, ‘We’d like you and Mr. Phan and Tommy’s brothers and their wives, all his nieces and nephews, to come to our party tonight in Las Vegas and celebrate our marriage. We can’t fit you all in the LearJet, but Mother has leased a 747, which is standing by at the airport right now, and if you hurry, you can all be there with us tonight. It’s time for me to quit my job as a waitress and get on with my real work. Tommy and I are going to lead eventful lives, Mrs. Phan, and we’d like all of you to be a part of that.’

Tommy couldn’t read the wrenching series of emotions that passed across his mother’s face.

Having said her piece, Del stroked Scootie, scratched behind his ears, and murmured appreciatively to him:

‘Oh, him a good fella, him is, my cutie Scootie-wootums.’ After a while, Mother Phan got up from her chair. She went to the television and turned it off.