Dean Koontz - The Darkest Evening Of The Year

The drawing appeared with such uncanny ease and swiftness that it almost seemed as if the whole image had been rendered earlier and stored magically in the pencil, from which it now flowed as smoothly as music from a recording.

During his courtship of Amy, his heart had been opened to many things, not least of all to the beauty and the joy of dogs, yet he still did not have one of his own. He didn’t trust himself to be equal to the responsibility.

At first he didn’t know that he was rendering not merely the ideal of a golden retriever but also a specific individual. As the face resolved in detail, he realized that from his pencils had come Nickie, so recently rescued.

He did not have more difficulty drawing eyes than he did any other detail of anatomy. This time, however, he achieved effects of line and tone and grading that continually surprised him.

To look real, the eyes must be full of light and marked by the mystery that light evokes in even the most forthright gaze. Brian focused with, for him, such unprecedented passion on the portrayal of this light, this mystery, that he might have been a medieval monk depicting the receiver of the Annunciation.

When he finished the drawing, he stared at it for a long time. Somehow the creation of the portrait had lifted his heart. Vanessa’s hateful e-mails had left him under a pall of sorrow, which now weighed less heavily on him.

Hope and Nickie seemed inextricably entwined, and he felt that he could not have one without the other. He did not know exactly what he meant by this-or why it should be so.

In the study once more, he composed an e-mail to Vanessa, alias pigkeeper . He read the message half a dozen times before sending it.

I am at your mercy. I have no power over you, and you have every power over me. If one day you will let me have what I want, that will be because it serves you best to relent, not because I have earned it or deserve it.

In previous e-mail exchanges, he had either argued with Vanessa or had attempted to manipulate her, although never as obviously as she worked to sharpen his guilt and to put a point on his sorrow. This time he avoided all appeals to reason and all power games, and just acknowledged his helplessness.

He expected neither an immediate response nor any response at all; and even if his plea elicited only vitriol, he would not reply in kind. Over the years, she had humbled him, then further humbled him, until he harbored no more anger toward her than a wizened sailor of a thousand journeys harbored resentment toward the raging sea.

In the kitchen, at the table, he turned to a fresh page in the art-paper tablet. He sharpened his pencils.

An inexplicable exhilaration had overcome him, a perception that new possibilities lay before him. He felt as if he were on the brink of a revelation that would change his life.

He began to draw the dog’s head, but this time not in a slight turn to the left with a moderate up view. Instead, he approached the subject straight on.

Furthermore, he intended to depict the face only from brow line to the part of the cheek called the cushion, thereby focusing on the eyes and the structures immediately surrounding them.

He marveled that his memory of the dog’s appearance should be so exquisitely detailed. He’d seen her only on one occasion and not for long, yet in his mind’s eye, she was as vivid as a fine photograph, a hologram.

From mind to hand to pencil to page, the golden’s gaze took form in shades of gray. From this new perspective and proximity, the eyes were huge and deep, and full of light, of shadow.

Brian was seeking something, a unique quality that he had seen in this dog but that he had not at once consciously recognized. His subconscious wanted now to bring forth what had been glimpsed, to see it rendered and to understand it.

A tremulous expectation filled him, but his hand remained steady and swift.

Veils and shimmery flourishes of eye-deceiving moonlight render the night subtly surreal, yet the pride with which the owners maintain this property is everywhere evident.

The rails and posts and pales of the picket fence are white geometric perfection in the gloom. The lawn lies as even underfoot as a croquet court, lush but precisely mown.

The single-story house is humble yet handsome, white with a dark trim of some color not discernible. A simply carved cornice enhances the eaves and is echoed by window surrounds, no doubt fashioned by the homeowner in his spare time.

From the bentwood rocking chairs on the front and back porches, the birdbaths, the miniature windmill, and the garden gnomes, Harrow infers that the residents are near or past retirement age. The place feels like a nest meant for a long and well-earned rest.

He doubts that a single porch step or floorboard creaks, but he doesn’t risk treading on them. He pours the gasoline between the railings, first at the back porch, which looks out across fields and ancient oaks, and then at the front.

A thin drizzle of fuel across the grass connects the porches, and with the last contents of the can, he spills a fuse along the front walk toward the open gate in the picket fence.

While Moongirl waits for him at the safe end of the fuse, he returns to the house to set the empty utility can quietly on the porch. The still air hangs heavy with fumes.

He has dripped nothing on himself. As he walks away from the house, he cups his hands around his nose, and they smell fresh.

From a pocket of her leather jacket, Moongirl has extracted a box of matches. She uses only those with wooden stems.

She strikes a match, stoops, and ignites the wet trail on the walk-way. Low blue-and-orange flames dance away from her, as if the magical night has brought forth a procession of capering faeries.

Together, she and Harrow walk to the west side of the house, where they have a view of both porches. The only doors are at the front and back. Along this wall are three windows.

Fire leaps high across the front of the house, seethes between the railings, and dispatches more dancing faeries along the drizzle that connects the porches.

As always, after an immediate whoosh, the flames initially churn in near silence, feeding on the gasoline, which needs no chewing. The crunch and crackle will come soon, when the fire takes wood in its teeth.

Following the hallway to the living-room archway, Amy said, “Hello? Who’s there?”

Golden retrievers are not bred to be guard dogs, and considering the size of their hearts and their irrepressible joy in life, they are less likely to bite than to bark, less likely to bark than to lick a hand in greeting. In spite of their size, they think they are lap dogs, and in spite of being dogs, they think they are also human, and nearly every human they meet is judged to have the potential to be a boon companion who might, at any moment, cry “Let’s go!” and lead them on a great adventure.

Nevertheless, they have formidable teeth and are protective of family and home.

Amy assumed that any intruder who was able to induce three adult goldens to submit without one bark must be not foe but friend, or at least harmless. Yet she approached the living room with a curiosity that included a measure of wariness.

When Amy had answered Janet Brockman’s plea to rescue Nickie, she had not left Fred and Ethel in a dark house. One lamp in her bedroom and a brass reading lamp in the living room provided comfort.

Now the hallway ceiling fixture blazed. Also, ahead and to her right, the front room loomed brighter than she had left it.

When she passed the open bedroom door on her left and stepped through the living-room archway, she found no intruder, only three delighted dogs.