The House at the End of the World by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz [Koontz, Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Published: 2023-01-23T13:00:00+00:00

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DOWN THE DRAIN

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Katie feels as if she has awakened not just from a state of dark enchantment, but also from the corrupt and mad world in which she has been living into one even darker and more insane. In the world fashioned by the nihilists who have ruled it for more than half a century, where children and their grandparents can be gunned down in an ice cream shop on a Sunday morning by men who pay no price for their actions, at least no hostile and mysterious entities had been in the cellar, no sirens speaking out of the plumbing to call her to the rocks of ruin.

Katie hurries from her bedroom into the kitchen, where the susurrant voices, capable of casting a hypnotic net over a listener, are spinning their audial filaments of attraction out of the drain. Somewhat to her surprise, to shield herself from the influence of that eerie chorus, she concentrates on the last four lines from “The Hollow Men” by T. S. Eliot, chanting them over and over as she uncaps the gallon of drain cleaner and pours it into the sink: “‘This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.’”

Michael J. jumps onto a dining chair and watches intently, as though prepared to spring across the table and administer another bloodless nip if Katie slides away into a trance.

“‘This is the way the world ends . . .’”

She doesn’t think that whatever’s whispering out of the drain is able to ascend through it, at least not in sufficient numbers to be a threat, because if that were the case, then they would already have erupted into the kitchen. She also doubts that the toxic substances she’s pouring into the pipe will kill whatever is calling to her, but even a mild acid and bleach should be unpleasant enough to make the horde relent.

“‘This is the way the world ends . . .’”

Finished with the drain cleaner, she quickly uncaps the gallon of Clorox. The whispering has subsided a little. She tips the mouth of the jug into the drain. Astringent bleach fumes steal her breath, and she turns her head to the right, seeking fresher air, rasping out the lines from Eliot’s poem.

“‘Not with a bang, but a whimper.’”

When the gallon is drained, she caps the jug and sets it aside and replaces the sink basket. She twists the inner unit, creating a watertight seal, which also blocks the fumes rising from the drain.

The whispering has stopped.

She turns away from the sink, taking deep breaths of clean air.

When her family had been ripped away from her, she’d had no one but herself, but at least she possessed the power to fantasize about vengeance and ultimately to decide to live for the Promise. If she had nothing else, she’d had the free will to shape her future, as grim and diminished as it might be.

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