Dean Koontz - The Darkest Evening Of The Year

“Yes. Yes. Yes. No.”

“Am I smart? Am I a bright guy?”

“Smart. Bright. Guy. Three for three.”

“I’m sober, right? I’m rational, right? I’m not given to wild superstition, am I?”

“Right. Right. No.”

“I never believe in stuff like Antoine.”

Clearly puzzled, she asked, “Antoine who?”

“Antoine,” he said impatiently, “Antoine, the blind driving dog in the Philippines.”

“Antoine isn’t blind.”

“You said he was blind.”

“ Marco is blind, not the dog.”

“Whatever. It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to Antoine and Marco.”

“The point is, I’m a skeptic.”

“Marco drives. Antoine directs him.”

“See? That’s nuts. Dogs can’t talk.”

“It’s a psychic thing.”

He took a deep breath. “Are you like this with everyone?”

“Like what?”

“Crazy-making.”

“Not with everyone. Mostly with you.”

He frowned. “Did you just tell me something important?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you did. What was it?”

“You’re a smart, bright, sober, rational, levelheaded, kinda cute architect. You figure it out.”

His head was spinning too much to crunch the meaning out of her words. He just kissed her.

“Too much is happening,” he said. “Let’s stay focused. Come here. Look at these.”

He led her to the kitchen table on which were stacked all of his drawings, in the order that he had executed them.

Smiling at the top picture, she said, “That’s Nickie.”

“Is that what you see?”

“Isn’t it Nickie? It looks just like her.”

“But is that all you see?”

“What more do you expect me to see?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sweetie, I’m no art critic.”

“There’s something about her eyes.”

“Something like what?”

“Something…”

When Brian set aside the top drawing, revealing the second, Amy said, “A closeup.”

“Closer and closer.” He paged through the stack of drawings.

“When did you do these?”

“After you dropped me off.”

“All these since then? Is that possible?”

“No. It isn’t.”

She looked up from the drawings.

“It isn’t possible,” he said. “Not this many drawings, this detailed, in so few hours.”

“What’re you saying?”

“Damn if I know.”

Extraordinary things had happened, were happening, but he lacked the frame of reference to articulate properly what he had experienced or what he felt about it. Until now he had led an ordinary life in which, with the principles of architecture, he had striven to impose order on the chaos of existence. Now chaos had overwhelmed him, and though he sensed a new order under it, he could not see through the tumult of the moment to the meaning beneath.

Glancing at the clock, at the drawings, at the clock, at Amy, he said, “This feeling. Like something stepped into me.”

“Into you. What something?”

“And took me outside of time. I don’t even know what I mean by that. I was here in the kitchen. But I wasn’t. I was drawing, but it wasn’t really me drawing. I saw something in Nickie’s eyes, and my visitor, whatever stepped into me, was trying to help me portray what I saw.”

“You saw something in Nickie’s eyes? What do you mean? What did you see in her eyes?”

“I don’t know. I felt it so strongly. Something.” He spread out the last four drawings, the most abstract of the images, so that they could be studied together. “What do you see, Amy? What do you see?”

“Light, shadow, shapes.”

“They mean something. What do they mean?”

“I don’t know. They’re beautiful.”

“Are they? I think so, too. But why? Why are they beautiful?”

“They just are.”

“You said ‘shapes.’ What shapes do you see?” Brian pressed.

“Just shapes, forms. Shadow and light. Nothing real.”

“It’s something real,” he disagreed. “I just can’t quite draw it. It’s almost there on the page, but it eludes me.”

“What else has happened, Brian? What’re you so agitated about?”

“I’m not agitated. I’m excited, I’m amazed, I’m mystified, I’m scared, but I’m not agitated.”

“Well, you’ve got me all agitated.”

“Hallucinations. I guess that’s what they must’ve been. Auditory hallucinations. Because I was exhausted. This terrible sound. I can’t describe it. Terrible but at the same time…wonderful.”

With the mention of hallucinations, he expected her to look at him askance, but she did not. Intuition told him that she had a story of her own to tell.

“And shadows,” he continued. “Quick shadows, passing and gone. And no apparent source. My eyes ached. I thought I needed sleep. Come on. I have to show you this.”

“Show me what?”

As he took her hand and led her out of the kitchen, into the hallway, he said, “The bedroom. The bed.”

“Whoa, whoa there, Mr. Hormones. You’re not going to agitate me between the sheets.”

“I know that. Who would know that better than me? This isn’t about that. This is astonishing.” He led her into his bedroom, to the foot of the bed. “See?”

“See what?”

“It’s perfect.”

“What is?”

“The bed. Perfectly made, neat and tidy, not a wrinkle.”

“Congratulations. If I had a merit badge, I’d pin it on you with a flourish of trumpets.”

“I’m not explaining this very well.”

“Give it another shot,” she suggested.

“I was born in Kansas.”

“That’s really starting at the beginning.”

“In Kansas, in a tornado.”

“I’ve heard the story.”

“I don’t have any memory of that night.”

“Birth was boring? You couldn’t pay attention?”

“I’ve heard about it, of course. A thousand times, from Grandma Nicholson and from my mother.”

On a windy night, a week before everyone’s expectations, Brian’s mother, Angela, had gone into labor. Her water broke shortly before midnight, and she woke Brian’s father, John. He was dressing to drive her to the hospital when sirens sounded a tornado warning.

Angela’s mother, Cora Nicholson, was staying with them, having traveled from Wichita to be of assistance after the birth. By the time she, her daughter, and her son-in-law stepped out of the house, heading for the car, the wind had escalated from gusts to gale.

The sky, as black and evil as a dragon’s egg, broke open and spilled sharp electric-white gouts of yolk. In an instant the dusty air reeked of ozone and oncoming rain.

“In the dream,” Brian said, “I was an observer. Not part of the action. Have you ever had a dream in which you weren’t part of it, you were just observing other people?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Come to think of it…maybe not.”

“I don’t remember having a dream like that before,” Brian said.

As Cora, Angela, and John reached the old Pontiac, shatters of rain rattled down on them with such force that the droplets stung the skin and bounced high off the hard earth.

“I wasn’t part of the dream, just the audience. I didn’t speak to anyone, didn’t interact with anyone, and nobody saw me. Yet I was immersed in it with all my senses. I felt the rain snapping against me, the wet of it, cold rain for such a warm night. Scraps of green leaves, torn off trees, kept slapping my face, sticking to my skin.”

Behind the crash of the rain rose a greater sound, not thunder, a continuous roar, growing in volume, like a score of passing trains.

“The wall of the tornado, the whirling wall,” Brian said, “out there in the blind dark, concealed, approaching, not on top of us yet but not far off.”