Demon Child by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-10-13T07:00:00+00:00

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9

She lay on the bed in her room, staring at the ceiling as the leaden minutes passed and the antique clock beside her bed ticked and locked like a mallet slammed repeatedly against a slab of iron. It was twenty minutes past four o'clock. In the hours since she had fled the library, she had had an opportunity to consider Freya's cold, demonic visions. She had attempted to analyze them, to break them down with logic just as Walt might have done. She admired his rationalization of the world and the people around him. But she did not have the talent. Her fear remained. She continued to look at the ceiling, for it was white and neutral and could help her forget, to a degree, exactly where she was.

Did other people find life so hard, so full of challenge and possible catastrophe? If so, how did they manage to go on with it? How did they face the world every day, knowing that the only certain thing was uncertainty?

Weren't they aware of the danger?

That had to be it. If they weren't aware of all the snares along the paths of day-to-day existence, then life wouldn't seem so difficult for them. They would go on living, happy, unaware of the things that might befall them at any moment.

Did that mean they were more sensible than she? Was it better not to think about all that might happen? Maybe, if you were ignorant, you were better off. When disaster came, it would be hard, of course, but then you would have had all the enjoyment, before the disaster, to balance your present heartache.

But she could not be like that. She had learned the truth of life the hard way, through grief and loneliness, and she was constantly alert for the unexpected. Her wariness was as second-nature to her as the process of digestion or drawing breath.

Therefore, she could not remain in this house, pretending that the events in this great mansion were nothing out of the ordinary. Every unidentified sound, every set of footsteps in the corridor, every shadow which was too deep to let the eye penetrate it-each of these was a thing to be feared. Every minute was the minute before trouble, every hour the calm before the storm. If she remained here, her nerves would soon be worn down to their raw ends, until she would find it easier and more tolerable to flee reality and sanity than to remain.

Wolves. Curses. Possessed children. She could not live with those things and carry on normally.

And yet it would be more dangerous to run.

Running from a problem never solved that problem. Grandmother Brighton had been a level-headed, courageous woman, and she had passed on some of her level-headedness to her granddaughter. One had to stay and face up to adversity if one were ever to conquer it.

Too, Jenny remembered the dream she had had on the bus only the previous week. She had, in that dream, fled from the

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