Dean R. Koontz - Twilight of the Dawn

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TWILIGHT OF THE DAWN By Dean R. Koontz SOMETIMES YOU CAN BE THE BIGGEST

JACKASS WHO EVER LIVED," MY wife said the night that I took Santa Claus away

from my son. We were in bed, but she was clearly not in the mood for either

sleep or romance. Her voice was sharp, scornful. "What a terrible thing to

do to a little boy." "He's seven years old-" "He's a little boy," Ellen

said harshly, though we rarely spoke to each other in anger. For the most part

ours was a happy, peaceful marriage. We lay in silence. The drapes were

drawn back from the French doors that opened onto the second-floor balcony, so

the bedroom was limned by ash-pale moonlight. Even in that dim glow, even

though Ellen was cloaked in blankets, her anger was apparent in the tense,

angular position in which she pretended to seek sleep. Finally she said,

"Pete, you used a sledgehammer to shatter a little boy's fragile fantasy, a

harmless fantasy, all because of your obsession with-" "It wasn't

harmless," I said patiently. "And I don't have an obsession." "Yes, you

do," she insisted. "I simply believe in rational-" "Oh, shut up."

"Won't you even talk to me about it?" "No. It's pointless." I sighed. "I

love you, Ellen." She was silent a long while. Wind soughed in the

eaves, an ancient voice. In the boughs of one of the backyard cherry trees,

an owl hooted. At last Ellen said, "I love you too, but sometimes I want to

kick your ass." I was angry with her because I felt that she was not being

fair, that she was allowing her least admirable emotions to overrule her

reason. Now, many years later, I would give anything to hear her say that she

wanted to kick my ass, and I'd bend over with a smile.

* * * From the cradle, my son, Benny, was taught that God

did not exist under any name or in any form, and that religion was the refuge

of weak-minded people who did not have the courage to face the universe on its

own terms. I would not permit Benny to be baptized, for in my view that

ceremony was a primitive initiation rite by which the child would be inducted

into a cult of ignorance and irrationality. Ellen - my wife, Benny's mother

- had been raised as a Methodist and still was stained (as I saw it) by

lingering traces of faith. She called herself an agnostic, unable to go

further and join me in the camp of the atheists. I loved her so much that I

was able to tolerate her equivocation on the subject. Nevertheless, I had

nothing but scorn for others who could not face the fact that the universe was

godless and that human existence was nothing more than a biological accident.

I despised all who bent their knees to humble themselves before an imaginary

lord of creation: all the Methodists and Lutherans and Catholics and Baptists

and Mormons and Jews and others. They claimed many labels but in essence

shared the same sick delusion. My greatest loathing was reserved, however,

for those who had once been clean of the disease of religion, rational men and

women, like me, who had slipped off the path of reason and fallen into the

chasm of superstition. They were surrendering their most precious possessions

- their independent spirit, self-reliance, intellectual integrity - in return

for half-baked, dreamy promises of an afterlife with togas and harp music. I

was more disgusted by the rejection of their previously treasured secular

enlightenment than I would have been to hear some old friend confess that he

had suddenly developed an all-consuming obsession for canine sex and had

divorced his wife in favor of a German-shepherd bitch. Hal Sheen, my

partner with whom I had founded Fallon and Sheen Design, had been proud of his

atheism too. In college we were best friends, and together we were a

formidable team of debaters whenever the subject of religion arose;

inevitably, anyone harboring a belief in a supreme being, anyone daring to

disagree with our view of the universe as a place of uncaring forces, any of

that ilk was sorry to have met us, for we stripped away his pretensions to

adulthood and revealed him for the idiot child that he was. Indeed, we often

didn't even wait for the subject of religion to arise but skillfully baited

fellow students who, to our certain knowledge, were believers. Later, with

degrees in architecture, neither of us wished to work with anyone but each

other, so we formed a company. We dreamed of creating brawny yet elegant,

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functional yet beautiful buildings that would delight and astonish, that would

win the admiration of not only our fellow professionals but the world. And

with brains, talent, and dogged determination, we began to attain some of our

goals while we were still very young men. Fallon and Sheen Design, a

wunderkind company, was the focus of a revolution in design that excited

university students as well as longtime professionals. The most important

aspect of our tremendous success was that our atheism lay at the core of it,

for we consciously set out to create a new architecture that owed nothing to

religious inspiration. Most laymen are not aware that virtually all the

structures around them, including those resulting from modern schools of

design, incorporate architectural details originally developed to subtly

reinforce the rule of God and the place of religion in life. For instance,

vaulted ceilings, first used in churches and cathedrals, were originally

intended to draw the gaze upward and to induce, by indirection, contemplation

of Heaven and its rewards. Underpitch vaults, barrel vaults, grain vaults, fan

vaults, quadripartite and sexpartite and tierceron vaults are more than mere

arches; they were conceived as agents of religion, quiet advertisements for

Him and for His higher authority. From the start, Hal and I were determined

that no vaulted ceilings, no spires, no arched windows or doors, no slightest

design element born of religion would be incorporated into a Fallon and Sheen

building. In reaction we strove to direct the eye earthward and, by a thousand

devices, to remind those who passed through our structures that they were born

of the earth, not children of any God but merely more intellectually advanced

cousins of apes. Hal's reconversion to the Roman Catholicism of his

childhood was, therefore, a shock to me. At thirty-seven, when he was at the

top of his profession, when by his singular success he had proven the

supremacy of unoppressed, rational man over imagined divinities, he returned

with apparent joy to the confessional, humbled himself at the communion rail,

dampened his forehead and breast with so-called holy water, and thereby

rejected the intellectual foundation on which his entire adult life, to that

point, had been based. The horror of it chilled my heart, my marrow. For

taking Hal Sheen from me, I despised religion more than ever. I redoubled my

efforts to eliminate any wisp of religious thought or superstition from my

son's life, and I was fiercely determined that Benny would never be stolen

from me by incense-burning, bell-ringing, hymn-singing, self-deluded,

mush-brained fools. When he proved to be a voracious reader from an early age,

I carefully chose books for him, directing him away from works that even

indirectly portrayed religion as an acceptable part of life, firmly steering

him to strictly secular material that would not encourage unhealthy fantasies.

When I saw that he was fascinated by vampires, ghosts, and the entire panoply

of traditional monsters that seem to intrigue all children, I strenuously

discouraged that interest, mocked it, and taught him the virtue and pleasure

of rising above such childish things. Oh, I did not deny him the enjoyment of

a good scare, because there's nothing essentially religious in that. Benny was

permitted to savor the fear induced by books about killer robots, movies about

the Frankenstein monster, and other threats that were the work of man. It was

only monsters of satanic and spiritual origins that I censored from his books

and films, because belief in things satanic is merely another facet of

religion, the flip side of God worship. I allowed him Santa Claus until he

was seven, though I had a lot of misgivings about that indulgence. The Santa

Claus legend includes a Christian element, of course. Good Saint Nick and all

that. But Ellen was insistent that Benny would not be denied that fantasy. I

reluctantly agreed that it was probably harmless, but only as long as we

scrupulously observed the holiday as a purely secular event having nothing to

do with the birth of Jesus. To us, Christmas was a celebration of the family

and a healthy indulgence in materialism. In the backyard of our big house

in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, grew a pair of enormous, long-lived cherry

trees, under the branches of which Benny and I often sat in milder seasons,

playing checkers or card games. Beneath those boughs, which already had lost

most of their leaves to the tugging hands of autumn, on an unusually warm day

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in early October of his seventh year, as we were playing Uncle Wiggly, Benny

asked if I thought Santa was going to bring him lots of stuff that year. I

said it was too early to be thinking about Santa, and he said that all the

kids were thinking about Santa and were starting to compose want lists

already. Then he said, "Daddy, how's Santa know we've been good or bad? He

can't watch all us kids all the time, can he? Do our guardian angels talk to

him and tattle on us, or what?" "Guardian angels?" I said, startled and

displeased. "What do you know about guardian angels?" "Well, they're

supposed to watch over us, help us when we're in trouble, right? So I thought

maybe they also talk to Santa Claus." Only months after Benny was born, I

had joined with like-minded parents in our community to establish a private

school guided by the principles of secular humanism, where even the slightest

religious thought would be kept out of the curriculum. In fact, our intention

was to ensure that, as our children matured, they would be taught history,

literature, sociology, and ethics from an anticlerical viewpoint. Benny had

attended our preschool and, by that October of which I write, was in second

grade of the elementary division, where his classmates came from families

guided by the same rational principles as our own. I was surprised to hear

that in such an environment he was still subjected to religious

propagandizing. "Who told you about guardian angels?" "Some kids."

"They believe in these angels?" "Sure. I guess." "Do they believe in the

tooth fairy?" "Sheesh, no." "Then why do they believe in guardian

angels?" "They saw it on TV." "They did, huh?" "It was a show you

won't let me watch." "And just because they saw it on TV, they think it's

true?" Benny shrugged and moved his game piece five spaces along the Uncle

Wiggly board. I believed then that popular culture - especially television

- was the bane of all men and women of reason and goodwill, not least of all

because it promoted a wide variety of religious superstitions and, by its

saturation of every aspect of our lives, was inescapable and powerfully

influential. Books and movies like The Exorcist and television programs about

guardian angels could frustrate even the most diligent parent's attempts to

raise his child in an atmosphere of untainted rationality. The unseasonably

warm October breeze was not strong enough to disturb the game cards, but it

gently ruffled Benny's fine brown hair. Wind mussed, sitting on a pillow on

his redwood chair in order to be at table level, he looked so small and

vulnerable. Loving him, wanting the best possible life for him, I grew angrier

by the second; my anger was directed not at Benny but at those who,

intellectually and emotionally stunted by their twisted philosophy, would

attempt to propagandize an innocent child. "Benny," I said, "listen, there

are no guardian angels. They don't exist. It's all an ugly lie told by people

who want to make you believe that you aren't responsible for your own

successes in life. They want you to believe that the bad things in life are

the result of your sins and are your fault, but that all the good things come

from the grace of God. It's a way to control you. That's what all religion is

- a tool to control and oppress you." He blinked at me. "Grace who?" It

was my turn to blink. "What?" "Who's Grace? You mean Mrs. Grace Keever at

the toy shop? What tool will she use to press me?" He giggled. "Will I be all

mashed flat and on a hanger when she's done pressing me? Daddy, you sure are

silly." He was only a seven-year-old boy, after all, and I was solemnly

discussing the oppressive nature of religious belief as if we were two

intellectuals drinking espresso in a coffeehouse. Blushing at the realization

of my own capacity for foolishness, I pushed aside the Uncle Wiggly board and

struggled harder to make him understand why believing in such nonsense as

guardian angels was not merely innocent fun but was a step toward intellectual

and emotional enslavement of a particularly pernicious sort. When he seemed

alternately bored, confused, embarrassed, and utterly baffled - but never for

a moment enlightened - I grew frustrated, and at last (I am now ashamed to

admit this) I made my point by taking Santa Claus away from him. Suddenly

it seemed clear to me that by allowing him to indulge in the Santa myth, I'd

laid the groundwork for the very irrationality that I was determined to

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TWILIGHTOFTHEDAWNByDeanR.KoontzSOMETIMESYOUCANBETHEBIGGESTJACKASSWHOEVERLIVED,"MYwifesaidthenightthatItookSantaClausawayfrommyson.Wewereinbed,butshewasclearlynotinthemoodforeithersleeporromance.Hervoicewassharp,scornful."Whataterriblethingtodotoalittleboy.""He'ssevenyearsold-""He'salittleboy,"Ellens...

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Dean R. Koontz - Twilight of the Dawn

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