Dean Koontz - By the Light of the Moon

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Dean Koontz has surpassed his longtime reputation as "America's most popular suspense novelist"(Rolling Stone) to become one of the most celebrated and successful writers of our time. Reviewers hail his boundless originality, his art, his unparalleled ability to create highly textured, riveting drama, at once viscerally familiar and utterly unique.
Author of one #1 New York Times bestseller after another, Koontz is at the pinnacle of his powers, spinning mysteries and miracles, enthralling tales that speak directly to today's readers, balm for the heart and fire for the mind. In this stunning new novel, he delivers a tour de force of dark suspense and brilliant revelation that has all the Koontz trademarks: adventure, chills, riddles, humor, heartbreak, an unforgettable cast of characters, and a climax that will leave you clamoring for more.
Dylan O'Connor is a gifted young artist just trying to do the right thing in life. He's on his way to an arts festival in Santa Fe when he stops to get a room for himself and his twenty-year-old autistic brother, Shep. But in a nightmarish instant, Dylan is attacked by a mysterious "doctor," injected with a strange substance, and told that he is now a carrier of something that will either kill him...or transform his life in the most remarkable way. Then he is told that he must flee--before the doctor's enemies hunt him down for the secret circulating through his body. No one can help him, the doctor says, not even the police.
Stunned, disbelieving, Dylan is turned loose to run for his life...and straight into an adventure that will turn the next twenty-four hours into an odyssey of terror, mystery--and wondrous discovery. It is a journey that begins when Dylan and Shep's path intersects with that of Jillian Jackson. Before that evening Jilly was a beautiful comedian whose biggest worry was whether she would ever find a decent man. Now she too is a carrier. And even as Dylan tries to convince her that they'll be safer sticking together, cold-eyed men in a threatening pack of black Suburbans approach, only seconds before Jilly's classic Coupe DeVille explodes into thin air.
Now the three are on the run together, but with no idea whom they're running from--or why. Meanwhile Shep has begun exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior. And whatever it is that's coursing through their bodies seems to have plunged them into one waking nightmare after another. Seized by sinister premonitions, they find themselves inexplicably drawn to crime scenes--just minutes before the crimes take place.
What this unfathomable power is, how they can use it to stop the evil erupting all around them, and why they have been chosen are only parts of a puzzle that reaches back into the tragic past and the dark secrets they all share: secrets of madness, pain, and untimely death. Perhaps the answer lies in the eerie, enigmatic messages that Shep, with precious time running out, begins to repeat, about an entity who does his work "by the light of the moon."
By the Light of the Moon is a novel of heart-stopping suspense and transcendent beauty, of how evil can destroy us and love can redeem us--a masterwork of the imagination in which the surprises come page after page and the spell of sublime storytelling triumphs throughout.

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Twenty feet away, a young man in ranch clothes and a battered cowboy hat, getting out of a pickup truck that boasted a rifle rack, looked up at them, did a double take, but didn't cry out 'Teleporters' or 'Proctorians,' or anything else accusatory. He just seemed mildly surprised that he had not noticed them a moment ago.

In the street, none of the passing traffic had jumped a curb, crashed into a utility pole, or rear-ended another vehicle. Judging by the reaction of motorists, none of them had seen three people blink into existence out of thin air.

No one inside the coffee shop rushed out to gape in amazement, either, which probably meant that no one had happened to be looking toward the entrance when Jilly, Dylan, and Shepherd had traded motel carpet for this concrete walkway in front of the main doors.

Dylan surveyed the scene, no doubt making the same calculations that Jilly made, and when his eyes met hers, he said, 'All things considered, I'd rather have walked.'

'Hell, I'd even rather have been dragged behind a horse.'

'Buddy,' Dylan said, 'I thought we had an understanding about this.'

'Cheez-Its.'

The young man from the pickup tipped his hat as he walked past them – 'Howdy, folks' – and entered the coffee shop.

'Buddy, you can't make a habit of this.'

'Shep is hungry.'

'I know, that's my fault, I should have gotten you breakfast as soon as we were showered. But you can't fold yourself to a restaurant anytime you want. That's bad, Shep. That's real bad. That's the worst kind of bad behavior.'

Shoulders slumped, head hung, saying nothing, Shep looked more hangdog than a sick basset hound. Clearly, being scolded by his brother made him miserable.

Jilly wanted to hug him. But she worried that he would fold the two of them to a better restaurant, leaving Dylan behind, and she hadn't brought her purse.

She also sympathized with Dylan. To explain the intricacies of their situation and to convey an effective warning that performing the miracle of folding from here to there in public would be exposing them to great danger, he needed Shepherd to be more focused and more communicative than Shepherd seemed capable of being.

Consequently, to establish that public folding was taboo, Dylan chose not to explain anything. Instead, he attempted to establish by blunt assertion that being seen folding out of one place or folding into another was a shameful thing.

'Shep,' said Dylan, 'you wouldn't go to the bathroom right out in public, would you?'

Shepherd didn't respond.

'Would you? You wouldn't just pee right here on the sidewalk where the whole world could watch. Would you? I'm starting to think maybe you would.'

Visibly cringing at the concept of making his toilet in a public place, Shepherd nevertheless failed to defend himself against this accusation. A bead of sweat dripped off the tip of his nose and left a dark spot on the concrete between his feet.

'Am I to take your silence to mean you would do your business right here on the sidewalk? Is that the kind of person you are, Shep? Is it? Shep? Is it?'

Considering Shepherd's pathological shyness and his obsession with cleanliness, Jilly figured that he would rather curl up on the pavement, in the blazing desert sun, and die of dehydration before relieving himself in public.

'Shep,' Dylan continued, unrelenting, 'if you can't answer me, then I have to assume you would pee in public, that you'd just pee anywhere you wanted to pee.'

Shepherd shuffled his feet. Another drop of perspiration slipped off the tip of his nose. Perhaps the fierce summer heat was to blame, but this seemed more like nervous sweat.

'Some sweet little old lady came walking by here, you might up and pee on her shoes with no warning,' Dylan said. 'Is that what I have to worry about, Shep? Shep? Talk to me, Shep.'

After nearly sixteen hours of intense association with the O'Conner brothers, Jilly understood why sometimes Dylan had to pursue an issue with firm – even obstinate – persistence in order to capture Shepherd's attention and to make the desired impression. Admirable perseverance in the mentoring of an autistic brother could, however, sometimes look uncomfortably like badgering, even like mean-spirited hectoring.

'Some sweet little old lady and a priest come walking by here, and before I know what's happened, you pee on their shoes. Is that the kind of thing you're going to do now, Shep? Are you, buddy? Are you?'

Judging by Dylan's demeanor, this haranguing took as a high a toll from him as it levied on his brother. As his voice grew harder and more insistent, his face tightened not with an expression of impatience or anger, but with pain. A spirit of remorse or perhaps even pity haunted his eyes.

'Are you, Shep? Have you suddenly decided to do disgusting and gross things? Have you, Shep? Have you? Shep? Shepherd? Have you?'

'N-no,' Shep at last replied.

'What did you say? Did you say no, Shep?'

'No. Shep said no.'

'You aren't going to start peeing on old ladies' shoes?'

'No.'

'You aren't going to do disgusting things in public?'

'No.'

'I'm glad to hear that, Shep. Because I've always thought you're a good kid, one of the best. I'm glad to know you're not going bad on me. That would break my heart, kid. See, lots of people are offended if you fold in or out of a public place in front of them. They're just as offended by folding as if you were to pee on their shoes.'

'Really?' Shep said.

'Yes. Really. They're disgusted.'

'Really?'

'Yes.'

'Why?'

'Well, why are you disgusted by those little cheese Goldfish?' Dylan asked.

Shep didn't reply. He frowned at the sidewalk, as though this abrupt conversational switch to the subject of Goldfish confused him.

The sky blazed too hot for birds. As sun flared off the windows of passing traffic and rippled liquidly along painted surfaces, those vehicles glided past like mercurial shapes of unknown nature in a dream. On the far side of the street, behind heat snakes wriggling up from the pavement, another motel and a service station shimmered as though they were as semitransparent as structures in a mirage.

Jilly had only moments ago folded miraculously from one place to another, and now here they stood in this surreal landscape, facing a future certain to be so bizarre at times as to seem like a stubborn hallucination, and yet they were talking about something as mundane as Goldfish cheese crackers. Maybe absurdity was the quality of any experience that proved you were alive, that you weren't dreaming or dead, because dreams were filled with enigma or terror, not with Abbott and Costello absurdity, and the afterlife wouldn't be as chockfull of incongruity and absurdity as life, either, because if it were, there wouldn't be any reason to have an afterlife.

'Why are you disgusted by those little cheese Goldfish?' Dylan asked again. 'Is it because they're sort of round?'

'Shapey,' said Shepherd.

'They're round and shapey, and that disgusts you.'

'Shapey.'

'But lots of people like Goldfish, Shep. Lots of people eat them every day.'

Shep shuddered at the thought of dedicated Goldfish fanciers.

'Would you want to be forced to watch people eating Goldfish crackers right in front of you, Shep?'

Tilting her head down to get a better look at his face, Jilly saw Shepherd's frown deepen into a scowl.

Dylan pressed on: 'Even if you closed your eyes so you couldn't see, would you like to sit between a couple people eating Goldfish and have to listen to all the crunchy, squishy sounds?'

Apparently in genuine revulsion, Shepherd gagged.

'I like Goldfish, Shep. But because they disgust you, I don't eat them. I eat Cheez-Its instead. Would you like it if I started eating Goldfish all the time, leaving them out where you could see them, where you could come across them when you weren't expecting to? Would that be all right with you, Shep?'

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