Twilight Eyes by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781101484197
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-10-18T10:00:00+00:00

chapter sixteen

A TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART

Rya was sitting in an armchair in the living room of the Airstream, still dressed in the tan slacks and emerald-green blouse she had been wearing when I had last seen her on the midway. She held a glass of Scotch in one hand, and when I got a look at her face, I stopped three or four words into the deception that I had formulated on the way home. Something was terribly wrong; it was visible in her eyes, in the tremor that softened her mouth, in the sooty rings that had appeared around her eyes, and in the paleness that aged her.

“What is it?” I asked.

She motioned me to the chair that faced hers, and when I indicated the stains on my jeans—not too bad now that I saw them in the light—she said it did not matter and again directed me to the armchair, this time with a note of impatience. I sat, suddenly aware of the earth and blood on my hands, realizing that my face very likely had a smear or two of blood on it. Yet she seemed neither shocked nor curious about my appearance, uninterested in my whereabouts during the past three hours, which must be an indication of the seriousness of the news that she had for me.

As I perched on the edge of the chair, she took a long pull on her Scotch. The glass rattled against her teeth.

She shuddered and said, “When I was eleven, I killed Abner Kady, and they took me away from my mother. I already told you that. They put me in a state-run orphanage. I told you that too. But what I didn’t tell you was that . . . when I went to the orphanage . . . that was where I first saw them.”

I stared at her, uncomprehending.

“Them,” she said. “They ran the place. They were in charge. The director, the assistant director, the head nurse, the doctor who didn’t live in but was on twenty-four-hour call, the counselor, the majority of the teachers, almost the entire staff were their kind, and I was the only kid who could see them.”

Stunned, I started to get up.

With a gesture she indicated that I should remain where I was. She said, “There’s more.”

“You see them too! But this is incredible!”

“Not so incredible,” she said. “The carnival is the best home in the world for social outcasts, and who is more of an outcast than those of us who see . . . the others?”

“Goblins,” I said. “I call them goblins.”

“I know. But isn’t it logical that our kind would drift into the carnival . . . or into insane asylums . . . more than anywhere else?”

“Joel Tuck,” I said.

She blinked in surprise. “He sees them too?”

“Yes. And I suspect he knows you see the goblins.”

“But he’s never told me.”

“Because he says he detects a darkness in you, and he’s a most careful man.”

She finished her Scotch and then stared at the ice cubes in her glass for a long moment, bleaker than I had ever seen her.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.