The Long Sleep by John Hill & Aka Dean Koontz

Author:John Hill & Aka Dean Koontz [Hill, John & Koontz, Aka Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B000UOFE48
Publisher: Popular Library #00325
Published: 1975-11-15T05:00:00+00:00

XIII

When he woke, Allison was sitting in a rocking chair beside the bed. She was wearing tight red slacks, a pearl gray blouse, and a red choker at her neck. Her black hair fell over her shoulders and curled around the undersides of her heavy breasts. She was prettier than he remembered. She smiled and leaned toward him, and she said, “How do you feel?”

He tried to speak, but his mouth was dry. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

“Water?” she asked.

He nodded.

She went to the dresser and filled a crystal glass from a silver carafe. When she brought it to him, she held his head up while he swallowed. He finished the entire glass. “Well,” she asked again,

“how do you feel?”

He looked around and saw that he was in the guest bedroom of Henry Galing's house where he had first met Allison after waking with amnesia. “As if I'm going mad,” he said.

Sitting on the bed, she leaned down and kissed him once, chastely. “Darling, it's all over now!”

“It is?” He didn't believe her.

“You're out of it!” she said. “You've come back.”

“Out of what? Back from where?” Joel asked warily.

Instead of answering him, she went to the bedroom door and stepped into the upstairs hall.

“Uncle Henry! Come quick! He's awake, and he knows where he is!” Then she returned to the bed, smiling.

He didn't smile back at her.

Henry Galing entered the room a moment later. He looked the same as before: tall, broad-shouldered, authoritarian, with that mane of white hair. At least their physical appearances were not mutable. Otherwise, though, Henry Galing had changed: he was downright pleasant. He hurried over and stood by Joel's bed and grabbed his shoulder and beamed down at him. “My God, we've been so worried about you! We didn't know if you'd ever come out of it!”

“You didn't?”

Galing squeezed his shoulder affectionately. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay, I guess.”

“Dr. Harttle's on his way up,” Galing said.

“With dust in his hair?”

Allison and Galing exchanged a quick look of concern. “What do you mean?” Galing asked.

Joel sighed. “Nothing.”

“Dust?”

“Nothing, Henry.”

To Allison, Gating said: “He's lost that terrible yellow color—and his eyes aren't bloodshot anymore.”

“I can't remember what I'm doing here,” Joel said. “What's going on?” He had decided against leveling charges and demanding explanations, apologies . . . He didn't know if this were another act or whether it was reality, at last.

“You don't know where you are?” Galing asked.

“No,” Joel said. “Well . . . This is your house. Somewhere in New England. Allison's my wife.

But beyond that . . .”

“Amnesia?” Galing asked.

“I guess so.”

“That's a side-effect we hadn't foreseen.” The old man looked frightened, as if he wondered what else they hadn't foreseen.

“Side-effect?” Joel asked. He felt like the straight man in an old-time comedy act—although this scene seemed more real than those which had preceded it. He could smell pork roasting in the downstairs kitchen. A telephone sounded in another part of the house and was answered on the fourth ring. The wind sighed against the bedroom window, and outside a bird called, strident but cheerful.

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