Dean Koontz: Breathless

The dog’s beauty was not just that of a well-bred breed, but also the more profound beauty that confirms its source and inspires hope. Two things that most comforted Grady were making Craftsman-style furniture-which was his trade-and watching Merlin.

When the wolfhound returned to the porch, drank from his water bowl, and lay in happy exhaustion beside the rocking chair, Grady picked up the first of the books on the table. Like the other two, this one was a reference guide to the wildlife in these mountains.

He had traded bustle for rustic, power for peace, and glamor for the honesty of this artless landscape. Artless it was, because nature stood above mere art, with none of art’s pretensions.

Having made this trade, he wanted to know the names of the things he loved about this land. Taking the trouble to know the names of things was a way of paying them respect.

His library contained dozens of volumes about the flora, the fauna, the geology, and the natural history of these mountains. This trio offered more photographs than the others.

None of the three books contained a picture of any animal remotely like the pair in the meadow.

As the sun descended toward the peaks, Merlin rose and moved to the head of the porch steps. He stood as if serving as a sentinel, gazing across the backyard toward the tall grass, the woods beyond.

The wolfhound made a sound that was half purr and half growl, not as if warning of danger, but as if something puzzled him.

“What is it? Smell something, big guy?”

Merlin did not look at Grady but remained intent upon the deepening shadows among the distant trees.

Walls of shimmering gold and a treasure of gold cascading along the blacktop: The private lane that led to High Meadows Farm was flanked by quaking aspens in their autumn dress, which lent value to the late-afternoon sunshine and paid out rich patterns of light and shadow across the windshield of Cammy’s Explorer.

She drove past the grand house, to the equestrian facilities, and parked at the end of a line of horse trailers. Carrying her medical bag, she walked to the exercise yard, which was flanked by two stables painted emerald-green with white trim.

A promising yearling had come down with urticaria-nettle rash, as the older grooms called it. This allergic reaction would eventually clear up naturally, but for the comfort of the horse, Cammy could relieve the urticaria with an antihistamine injection.

At the end of the yard, a third building housed the tack room and the office of the trainer, Nash Franklin. Living quarters for the grooms were on the second floor.

Lights glowed in Nash’s office. The door stood open, but Cammy could find no one. The enormous tack room also proved to be deserted.

In the first stable, Cammy discovered the stall doors open on both sides of the central aisle. The horses were gone.

Stepping outside once more, she heard voices and followed them to the fenced meadow on the north side of the building.

The Thoroughbreds were in the pasture: the yearlings, the colts and fillies, the broodmares, the studhorses, the current racers, at least forty of them in all. She’d never seen them gathered in one place before, and she couldn’t imagine for what purpose they had been brought together.

Many of the horses were accompanied by their pets. High-strung, sensitive creatures, Thoroughbreds tended to be happier and calmer when they had a companion animal that hung with them and even shared their stalls. Goats were successful in this role, and to a lesser extent, dogs. But the meadow also contained a few cats, even a duck.

The fact of this assembly, the herd and its menagerie, was not the most curious thing about the scene. As Cammy passed through the gate and into the pasture, she noted that every one of the animals faced west, toward the mountains. They were extraordinarily still.

Heads raised, eyes fixed, they seemed less to be staring at something than to be… listening.

Suddenly she realized that she was witnessing a scene similar to what Ben Aikens had described when, in her absence, the rescued golden retrievers had gotten to their feet to listen to something that none of the people present had been able to hear.

The eastward-slanting light brightened the equine faces. Black shadows flowed backward from their heads, like continuations of their manes, flowed off their rumps and tails, reaching eastward across the grass even as the horses yearned toward the west.

Also in the pasture were half a dozen grooms. And the owners of High Meadows Farm, Helen and Tom Vironi.

Clearly perplexed, the people moved among the herd, gently touching the Thoroughbreds, speaking softly. But the animals appeared to be oblivious of them.

The goats, the dogs, the cats, the single duck were likewise entranced, seeming to hearken to something only animals could hear.

Tall enough to look into a horse’s eyes even when it stood proud with its head raised, Nash Franklin spotted Cammy. She and the trainer made their way toward each other.

“They’ve been like this for almost fifteen minutes,” Nash said. “It started with a few in the exercise yard, a few in the pasture.”

According to her vet tech Ben Aiken, the golden retrievers had stood in their trance for only a minute or so.

Nash said, “Those in the stables began to kick the walls around them so violently, we worried they’d injure themselves.”

“They were afraid of something?”

“That isn’t how it seemed. More just… determined to be let out. We didn’t know what was happening. We still don’t.”

“You released them?”

“Felt we had to. They came right to the pasture to be with the others. And they won’t be led away. What’s happening here, Cammy?”

She approached the nearest horse, Gallahad. A deep mahogany, almost black, the magnificent three-year-old weighed perhaps twelve hundred pounds.

Like the other horses, in his perfect stillness, Gallahad appeared to be tense, stiff. But when Cammy stroked his loin, his flank, and forward to his shoulder, she found that he was at ease.

She pressed her hand against his jugular groove and traced it along his muscular neck. The horse neither moved nor even so much as rolled an eye to consider her.

Cammy stood five feet four, and Gallahad towered, immense. Great Thoroughbreds were usually tractable, and some might be docile with the right trainer, but few were entirely submissive. Yet in this peculiar moment, Gallahad seemed lamblike. Nothing in the intensity of his concentration on the western mountains suggested fierceness or even willfulness.

His nostrils didn’t flare, neither did his ears twitch. His forelock fluttered against his poll as a faint breeze disturbed it, and his mane stirred along his crest, but otherwise Gallahad remained motionless. Even when she stroked his cheek, his nearer eye did not favor her.

Following his gaze, she saw nothing unusual in the foreground, only the next wave of foothills and the mountains in the background, and ultimately the sun swollen by the lens of atmosphere as Earth resolutely turned away from the light.

At her side, Nash Franklin said, “Well?”

Before she could reply, the horses stirred from their trance. They shook their heads, snorted, looked around. A few lowered their muzzles to graze upon the sweet grass, while others cantered in looping patterns as if taking pure pleasure from movement, from the cool air, from the orange light that seemed to burst through the pasture. The Thoroughbreds’ pets became animated as well, the goats and the dogs, the cats, the duck.

All the animals were behaving only as they ordinarily would, no longer spellbound. Yet here in the aftermath of the event, when all was normal, all seemed magical: the whispering grass, the soft incantatory thud of cantering hooves, the canticle of nickering horses and panting dogs, the season’s last lingering fireflies suddenly bearing their wishing lamps through the pre-dusk air, the sable shadows and the gilding of all things by the descending sun, the sky electric-purple in the east and becoming a cauldron of fire in the west.