Dean Koontz - 77 Shadow Street

In the westering sun, something glimmered on the man’s face. Mickey thought it might be the lenses of a pair of binoculars.

Winny continued reading too many books and avoiding manly musical instruments. He spent some time with Iris nearly every day. It wasn’t a boy-girl thing and never could be. They were friends. They never talked about the world of the One, in part because she didn’t talk much and because he didn’t know what to say. Besides, if he did eventually know what to say about that experience, he couldn’t tell anyone without ending up in a nuthouse like Mickey Dime. There was Mr. Hawks to think about, as well. He had killed Mr. Ignis, and if the true story were known, he might go to jail. Killing Mr. Ignis had been the hardest kind of right thing to do, and Mr. Hawks was the hero that Winny could never be. One night Winny dreamed of the Cupp sisters. His grandfather Winston, who died in the coal-cracker explosion when Winny was a toddler, was in the dream, too, and all he remembered of it was that it felt good, like it always felt when he visited his grandma Trahern on the farm that his mom had bought for her. But it was a strange dream, too, because a couple of times he woke from it, and the Cupp sisters were sitting on the edge of his bed, not any bed in a dream but his own real bed, sitting there smiling at him. He swore he could feel one of them smooth the hair back from his forehead the way his mother sometimes did, and he felt the other one kiss him on the cheek, not the way you feel things in dreams but as real as anything. One of them said, “Brave boy,” and whether they were really there or only in a dream, Winny didn’t know what to say to them. After that, however, he felt the sisters were all right. They weren’t stuck in 2049 inside some tree or fungus or anything. They were somewhere better than either the present or the future. One day Iris got a socializing dog from an organization that provided assistance dogs to people with severe disabilities, and what a difference it made. If Iris had ever been happy before, you couldn’t see that she was, but you could see how happy she was with that golden retriever. They said she could rename the dog if she wanted, and for a while Winny hoped that she would name it Winny, but of course that would have caused a lot of confusion. She named him Bambi, and Winny didn’t have any hurt feelings. One day his mom showed him a newspaper story about this scientist who died when for some reason he drove his car over a cliff. His name was Norquist, and he’d worked with Dr. Ignis. Not long after that, his mom and Mr. Hawks were engaged to be married. Boy, the songs she started writing then were really something. She always wrote great stuff, but these were better than great. Old Farrel Barnett remarried, too, some girl named LuLu with big hair, and about four months later she hurried out two babies, twin boys. His mom had a subscription to Variety , and one day Winny saw an ad congratulating his dad on another hit, and it was a new publicity photo, though Winny never did get sent a signed copy. His new dad took Winny just about everywhere, to museums and amusement parks, to movies, you name it, the guy could wear you out taking you so many places. He called him Mr. Hawks at first, and then Bailey because they said that was all right. But one day he realized he was calling him Dad, that he’d been doing that for a while without thinking about it, and that was all right, too. He had two dads, and he loved them both—or wanted to—and that was neat in a way, having two, though old Farrel Barnett was dad with a small d , and Bailey Hawks was Dad with a capital. They got a dog of their own, a golden retriever he named Merle, after a dog in a book he read. And not long after that, there was talk of a baby sister. Life was just one thing after another. Sometimes there were baby sisters, and sometimes there were monsters, sleepovers with friends and stomach flu, student of the year at Mrs. Grace Lyman School and a bowling ball dropped on your foot. The way Winny saw it, the best thing and the worst thing were the same thing: nothing lasted forever, unless maybe he always would have skinny arms. So whatever came your way, you had to make the best of it, grin and bear it, smile through the storm. And the funny thing was, if you made the best of it, if you smiled through every storm, the bad things were never as terrible as you expected them to be, and the good things were better than anything you ever could have wished for yourself. He even began to think that the day would come when he would know what to say to anyone, any darn time, any place. Because what he came to see was that of the uncountable wonderful things in the world, the best of all were people, every one of them a new world and fascinating. That’s why he had always read so many books: to meet new people in stories back in the day when he was not good at meeting real ones. He kept waiting for nightmares about what he had seen in 2049, but they never came. There were even good memories from that journey. The best were his mother standing there with the gun, looking tough and facing down the Pogromite, and Iris for the first time looking directly into his eyes, saying that she was scared, and then trusting him with her life. Really and truly, in 2049 or here in the present, it didn’t get better than that.

From here in the Nutland,

To Ed and Carol Gorman,

Out there in the Heartland,

With undiminished affection

after all these years.

BY DEAN KOONTZ

What the Night Knows • Breathless • Relentless • Your Heart Belongs to Me • The Darkest Evening of the Year • The Good Guy • The Husband • Velocity • Life Expectancy • The Taking • The Face • By the Light of the Moon • One Door Away From Heaven • From the Corner of His Eye • False Memory • Seize the Night • Fear Nothing • Mr. Murder • Dragon Tears • Hideaway • Cold Fire • The Bad Place • Midnight • Lightning • Watchers • Strangers • Twilight Eyes • Darkfall • Phantoms • Whispers • The Mask • The Vision • The Face of Fear • Night Chills • Shattered • The Voice of the Night • The Servants of Twilight • The House of Thunder • The Key to Midnight • The Eyes of Darkness • Shadowfires • Winter Moon • The Door to December • Dark Rivers of the Heart • Icebound • Strange Highways • Intensity • Sole Survivor • Ticktock • The Funhouse • Demon Seed

ODD THOMAS

Odd Thomas • Forever Odd • Brother Odd • Odd Hours

FRANKENSTEIN

Prodigal Son • City of Night • Dead and Alive • Lost Souls • The Dead Town

A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog Named Trixie

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DEAN KOONTZ, the author of many #1 New York Times bestsellers, lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Anna, and the enduring spirit of their golden, Trixie.

www.deankoontz.com

Correspondence for the author should be addressed to:

Dean Koontz

P.O. Box 9529

Newport Beach, California 92658

ODD THOMAS IS BACK.

His mysterious journey of suspense and discovery

moves to a dangerous new level

in his most riveting adventure to date.…

ODD APOCALYPSE

by #1 New York Times bestselling author

DEAN KOONTZ

On sale in hardcover

Summer 2012