Dean R. Koontz - Frankenstein - Prodigal Son

DEAN KOONTZ'S

FRANKENSTEIN

book one

PRODIGAL SON

by

DEAN KOONTZ AND KEVIN J. ANDERSON

ISBN 0-00-720313-6

Version 1.0

FIRST . . .

Although I'm a chatty kind of guy, never before have I found it necessary to explain up front how a book

came to be written. In the case of the series to be known asDean Koontz's Frankenstein, a few words

of explanation seem necessary.

I wrote a script for a sixty-minute television-series pilot with this title. A producer and I made a deal for

the pilot plus episodes to be broadcast on USA Network. Because he liked my script, Martin

Scorsese—the legendary director—signed on as executive producer. A hot young director, also

enamored of the script, signed on as well. At the request of USA Network, I wrote a two-hour version.

On the basis of this script, a wonderful cast was assembled.

Then USA Network and the producer decided that major changes must be made. I had no interest in

the show in its new form, and I withdrew from association with it. I wished them well—and turned to the

task of realizing the original concept in book form. I hopedboth versions would succeed in their different

media.

Subsequently, Marty Scorsese also expressed the desire to exit the series. I am grateful to Marty for

being so enthusiastic and insightful about the show we wanted to make. For a man of his

accomplishments, he is refreshingly humble, the very definition of grace, and anchored to real-world

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

values in a business where many are not.

I would also like to thank the late Philip K. Dick, great writer and nice man, who twenty-three years ago

shared with me the story of asking for "something too exotic for the menu" in his favorite Chinese

restaurant. I've finally found a novel in which the anecdote fits. The entree that sent Phil fleeing makes

Victor Frankenstein lick his lips.

For the power of man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men

to make other men whattheyplease. — C. S.Lewis,The Abolition of Man

FRANKENSTEIN

PRODIGAL SON

ROMBUK MONASTERY TIBET

CHAPTER 1

DEUCALION SELDOM SLEPT, but when he did, he dreamed. Every dream was a nightmare. None

frightened him. He was the spawn of nightmares, after all; and he had been toughened by a life of terror.

During the afternoon, napping in his simple cell, he dreamed that a surgeon opened his abdomen to insert

a mysterious, squirming mass. Awake but manacled to the surgical table, Deucalion could only endure the

procedure.

After he had been sewn shut, he felt something crawling inside his body cavity, as though curious,

exploring.

From behind his mask, the surgeon said,"A messenger approaches. Life changes with a letter."

He woke from the dream and knew that it had been prophetic. He possessed no psychic power of a

classic nature, but sometimes omens came in his sleep.

IN THESE MOUNTAINS OF TIBET, a fiery sunset conjured a mirage of molten gold from the

glaciers and the snowfields. A serrated blade of Himalayan peaks, with Everest at its hilt, cut the sky

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Far from civilization, this vast panorama soothed Deucalion. For several years, he had preferred to avoid

people, except for Buddhist monks in this windswept rooftop of the world.

Although he had not killed for a long time, he still harbored the capacity for homicidal fury. Here he

strove always to suppress his darker urges, sought calm, and hoped to find true peace.

From an open stone balcony of the whitewashed monastery, as he gazed at the sun-splashed ice pack,

he considered, not for the first time, that these two elements, fire and ice, defined his life.

At his side, an elderly monk, Nebo, asked, “Are you looking at the mountains—or beyond them, to

what you left behind?"

Although Deucalion had learned to speak several Tibetan dialects during his lengthy sojourn here, he and

the old monk often spoke English, for it afforded them privacy

"I don't miss much of that world. The sea. The sound of shore birds. A few friends. Cheez-Its."

"Cheeses? We have cheese here."

Deucalion smiled and pronounced the word more clearly than he'd done previously "Cheez-Its are

cheddar-flavored crackers. Here in this monastery we seek enlightenment, meaning, purpose... God.

Yet often the humblest things of daily life, the small pleasures, seem to define existence for me. I'm afraid

I'm a shallow student, Nebo."

Pulling his wool robe closer about himself as wintry breezes bit, Nebo said, "To the contrary. Never

have I had one less shallow than you. Just hearing about Cheez-Its, I myself am intrigued."

A voluminous wool robe covered Deucalion's scarred patchwork body, though even the harshest cold

rarely bothered him.

The mandala-shaped Rombuk monastery—an architectural wonder of brick walls, soaring towers, and

graceful roofs—clung precariously to a barren mountainside: imposing, majestic, hidden from the world.

Waterfalls of steps spilled down the sides of the square towers, to the base of the main levels, granting

access to interior courtyards.

Brilliant yellow, white, red, green, and blue prayer flags, representing the elements, flapped in the breeze.

Carefully written sutras adorned the flags, so that each time the fabric waved in the wind, a prayer was

symbolically sent in the direction of Heaven.

Despite Deucalion's size and strange appearance, the monks had accepted him. He absorbed their

teaching and filtered it through his singular experience. In time, they had come to him with philosophical

questions, seeking his unique perspective.

They didn't know who he was, but they understood intuitively that he was no normal man.

Deucalion stood for a long time without speaking. Nebo waited beside him. Time had little meaning in

the clockless world of the monks, and after two hundred years of life, with perhaps more than that ahead

of him, Deucalion often lived with no awareness of time.

Prayer wheels clicked, stirred by breezes. In a call to sunset prayer, one monk stood in the window of a

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

high tower, blowing on a shell trumpet. Deep inside the monastery, chants began to resonate through the

cold stone.

Deucalion stared down into the canyons full of purple twilight, east of the monastery. From some of

Rombuk's windows, one might fall more than a thousand feet to the rocks.

Out of that gloaming, a distant figure approached.

"Amessenger," he said. "The surgeon in the dream spoke truth."

The old monk could not at first see the visitor. His eyes, the color of vinegar, seemed to have been faded

by the unfiltered sun of extreme altitude. Then they widened. "We must meet him at the gates."

SALAMANDERS OF TORCHLIGHTcrawled the iron-bound beams of the main gate and the

surrounding brick walls.

Just inside the gates, standing in the open-air outer ward, the messenger regarded Deucalion with awe.

"Yeti," he whispered, which was the name that the Sherpas had coined for the abominable snowman.

Words escaping him on plumes of frosted breath, Nebo said, "Is it custom now to precede a message

with a rude remark?"

Having once been pursued like a beast, having lived two hundred years as the ultimate outsider,

Deucalion was inoculated against all meanness. He was incapable of taking offense.

"Were I a yeti," he said, speaking in the messenger's language, "I might be as tall as this." He stood six

feet six. "I might be muscled this solidly But I would be much hairier, don't you think?"

"I... I suppose so."

"A yeti never shaves." Leaning close, as if imparting a secret, Deucalion said, "Under all that hair, a yeti

hasvery sensitive skin. Pink, soft... quick to take a rash from a razor blade."

Summoning courage, the messenger asked, "Then what are you?"

"Big Foot," Deucalion said in English, and Nebo laughed, but the messenger did not understand.

Made nervous by the monk's laughter, shivering not only because of the icy air, the young man held out a

scuffed goatskin packet knotted tightly with a leather thong. "Here. Inside. For you."

Deucalion curled one powerful finger around the leather thong, snapped it, and unfolded the goatskin

wrapping to reveal an envelope inside, a wrinkled and stained letter long in transit.

The return address was in New Orleans. The name was that of an old and trusted friend, Ben Jonas.

Still glancing surreptitiously and nervously at the ravaged half of Deucalion's face, the messenger

evidently decided that the company of a yeti would be preferable to a return trip in darkness through the

bitter-cold mountain pass. "May I have shelter for the night?"

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Anyone who comes to these gates," Nebo assured him, "may have whatever he needs. If we had them,

I would even give you Cheez-Its."

From the outer ward, they ascended the stone ramp through the inner gate. Two young monks with

lanterns arrived as if in answer to a telepathic summons to escort the messenger to guest quarters.

In the candlelit reception hall, in an alcove that smelled of sandalwood and incense, Deucalion read the

letter. Ben's handwritten words conveyed a momentous message in neatly penned blue ink.

With the letter came a clipping from a newspaper, theNew Orleans Times-Picayune. The headline and

the text mattered less to Deucalion than the photograph that accompanied them.

Although nightmares could not frighten him, though he had long ago ceased to fear any man, his hand

shook. The brittle clipping made a crisp, scurrying-insect sound in his trembling fingers.

"Bad news?" asked Nebo. "Has someone died?"

"Worse. Someone is stillalive." Deucalion stared in disbelief at the photograph, which felt colder than

ice. "I must leave Rombuk."

This statement clearly saddened Nebo. "I had taken comfort for some time that you would be the one to

say the prayers at my death."

"You're too full of piss to die anytime soon," Deucalion said. "As preserved as a pickle in vinegar.

Besides, I am perhaps the last one on Earth to whom God would listen."

"Or perhaps the first," said Nebo with an enigmatic but knowing smile. “All right. If you intend to walk

again in the world beyond these mountains, first allow me to give you a gift."

LIKE WAXY STALAGMITES,yellow candles rose from golden holders, softly brightening the room.

Gracing the walls were painted mandalas, geometric designs enclosed in a circle, representing the

cosmos.

Reclining in a chair padded with thin red silk cushions, Deucalion stared at a ceiling of carved and

painted lotus blossoms.

Nebo sat at an angle to him, leaning over him, studying his face with the attention of a scholar

deciphering intricate sutra scrolls.

During his decades in carnivals, Deucalion had been accepted by carnies as though nothing about him

was remarkable. They, too, were all outsiders by choice or by necessity.

He'd made a good living working the freak shows, which were called ten-in-ones because they offered

ten exhibits under one tent.

On his small stage, he had sat in profile, the handsome side of his face turned to the sawdust aisle along

which the marks traveled from act to act, from fat lady to rubber man. When they gathered before him,

puzzling over why he was included in such a show, he turned to reveal the ruined side of his face.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Grown men gasped and shuddered. Women fainted, though fewer as the decades passed. Only adults

eighteen and older were admitted, because children, seeing him, might be traumatized for life.

Face fully revealed, he had stood and removed his shirt to show them his body to the waist. The keloid

scars, the enduring welts from primitive metal sutures, the strange excrescences...

Now beside Nebo stood a tray that held an array of thin steel needles and tiny vials of inks in many

colors. With nimble skill, the monk tattooed Deucalion's face.

"This is my gift to you, a pattern of protection." Nebo leaned over to inspect his work, then began an

even more intricate tracing in dark blues, blacks, greens.

Deucalion did not wince, nor would he have cried out at the stings of a thousand wasps. "Are you

creating a puzzle on my face?"

"The puzzleis your face." The monk smiled down at his work and at the uneven canvas on which he

imprinted his rich designs.

Dripping color, dripping blood, needles pricked, gleamed, and clicked together when, at times, Nebo

used two at once.

"With this much pattern, I should offer something for the pain. The monastery has opium, though we do

not often condone its use."

"I don't fear pain," Deucalion said. "Life is an ocean of pain."

"Life outside of here, perhaps."

"Even here we bring our memories with us."

The old monk selected a vial of crimson ink, adding to the pattern, disguising grotesque concavities and

broken planes, creating an illusion of normalcy under the decorative motifs.

The work continued in heavy silence until Nebo said, "This will serve as a diversion for the curious eye.

Of course, not even such a detailed pattern will conceal everything."

Deucalion reached up to touch the stinging tattoo that covered the surface of the cracked-mirror scar

tissue. "I'll live by night and by distraction, as so often I have before."

After inserting stoppers in the ink vials, wiping his needles on a cloth, the monk said, "Once more before

you leave... the coin?"

Sitting up straighter in his chair, Deucalion plucked a silver coin from midair with his right hand.

Nebo watched as Deucalion turned the coin across his knuckles—walkedit, as magicians say—

exhibiting remarkable dexterity considering the great size and brutal appearance of his hands.

That much, any good magician could have done.

With thumb and forefinger, Deucalion snapped the coin into the air. Candlelight winked off the piece as it

flipped high.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Deucalion snatched it from the air, clutching it in his fist. . . opened his hand to show it empty.

Any good magician could have done this, too, and could have then produced the coin from behind

Nebo's ear, which Deucalion also did.

The monk was mystified, however, by what came next.

Deucalion snapped the coin into the air again. Candlelight winked off it. Then before Nebo's eyes, the

coin just. . . vanished.

At the apex of its arc, turning head to tail to head, it turned out of existence. The coin didn't fall to the

floor. Deucalion's hands were not near it when it disappeared.

Nebo had seen this illusion many times. He had watched it from a distance of inches, yet he couldn't say

what happened to the coin.

He had often meditated on this illusion. To no avail.

Now Nebo shook his head. "Is it truly magic, or just a trick?"

Smiling, Deucalion said, “And what is the sound of one hand clapping?"

"Even after all these years, you're still a mystery"

“As is life itself."

Nebo scanned the ceiling, as if expecting to see the coin stuck to one of the carved and painted lotus

blossoms. Lowering his stare to Deucalion once more, he said, "Your friend in America addressed your

letter to seven different names."

"I've used many more than that."

"Police trouble?"

"Not for a long time. Just... always seeking a new beginning."

"Deucalion... ," the monk said.

"A name from old mythology—not known to many people anymore." He rose from the chair, ignoring

the throbbing pain of countless pinpricks.

The old man turned his face upward. "In America, will you return to the carnival life?"

"Carnivals have no place for me. There aren't freak shows anymore, not like in the old days. They're

politically incorrect."

"Back when there were freak shows, what was your act?"

Deucalion turned from the candlelit mandalas on the wall, his newly tattooed face hidden in shadows.

When he spoke, a subtle pulse of luminosity passed through his eyes, like the throb of lightning hidden

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

behind thick clouds.

"They called me .. . the Monster."

NEW ORLEANS

CHAPTER 2

MORNING RUSH-HOURtraffic on the I-10 Expressway flowed as languidly as the Mississippi River

that wound through New Orleans.

When Detective Carson O'Connor got off the expressway in the suburb of Metairie, intending to use

surface streets to make better time, the morning took a turn for the worse.

Stopped interminably at an intersection, she impatiently kneaded the steering wheel of her plainwrap

sedan. To dispel a growing sense of suffocation, she rolled down the window.

Already the morning streets were griddles. None of the airheads on the TV news, however, would try to

cook an egg on the pavement. Even journalism school left them with enough brain cells to realize that on

these streets you could flash-fry even ice cream.

Carson liked the heat but not the humidity Maybe one day she'd move somewhere nicer, hot but dry,

like Arizona. Or Nevada. Or Hell.

Without advancing a foot, she watched the minute change on the dashboard clock display— then

spotted the reason for the jam-up.

Two young hoods in gang colors lingered in the crosswalk to block traffic each time the light turned

green. Three others worked the line, car to car, tapping on windows, extorting payoffs.

"Clean your windshield. Two bucks."

Like a patter of semiautomatic gunfire, car doors locked one after another as the young entrepreneurs

made their sales pitch, but no car could move forward until the driver paid the tariff.

The apparent leader appeared at Carson's window, smug and full of false good humor. "Clean your

windshield, lady."

He held a filthy rag that looked as if it had been fished out of one of the city's many weedy canals.

A thin white scar on one darkly tanned cheek was puckered at several suture points, suggesting that he'd

gotten into a knife fight on a day when the ER physician had been Dr. Frankenstein. His wispy beard

implied testosterone deficiency.

Getting a second, closer look at Carson, Scar-face grinned. "Hey, pretty lady. What you doin' in these

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

shabby wheels? You was made for Mercedes." He lifted one of the wipers and let it slap back onto the

windshield. "Hello, where's your mind? Not that a long-legged fresh like youneeds a mind."

An unmarked sedan had advantages in low-profile detective work; however, back when she'd driven a

black-and-white patrol car, Carson had never been bothered by crap like this.

"You're breaking the law," she told him.

"Somebody in amood this mornin'."

"The windshield's clean. This is extortion."

"I charge two bucks to clean it."

"I advise you to step back from the car."

The kid lifted his rag, prepared to smear the windshield. "Two bucks to clean it, three bucksnot to clean

it. Most ladies, whether they're male or female ladies, take option two."

Carson unbuckled her seatbelt. "I asked you to step back from the car."

Instead of retreating, Scarface leaned into the window, inches from her. Breath sweetened by a morning

joint, soured by gum disease. "Gimme three bucks, your phone number, a nice apology— and maybe I

don't mess with your fine face."

Carson grabbed the gink's left ear, twisted it hard enough to crack cartilage, and slammed his head

sideways against the door post. His howl sounded less like that of a wolf than like that of an infant.

She let go of his ear and, exiting the sedan, opened the door into him with enough force to knock him off

his feet.

As he sprawled backward, rapping his head on the pavement hard enough to summon constellations to

an inner planetarium, she planted one foot on his crotch, grinding down just enough to make him squirm

and to pin him in place for fear that she'd make paste of his jewels.

Shoving her police ID toward his face, she said, "My phone number is nine-one-one."

Among the hostage cars, heads up and alert, Scarface's four ace kools were looking at him, at her,

stunned and angry but also amused. The guy under her foot was a homey, and a humiliation to one home

boy was a humiliation to all, even if maybe he was a little bit of what they calledhook homey, a phony.

To the nearest of Scarface's friends, Carson said, "Stall it out, shithead, unless you want a hole in your

doo-rag."

The gink under her foot tried to crab-walk away, but she stepped down harder. Tears sprang to his

eyes, and he chose submission over the prospect of three days with an ice pack between his legs.

In spite of her warning, two of the other four gangbangers began to edge toward her.

Almost with the nimbleness of prestidigitation, Carson put away her ID and produced the pistol from her

holster.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Check it out, this lady under my foot, he's been scratched"—which meant embarrassed— "but none of

you has. Nothin' here for you but two years in stir, maybe lit up and crippled for life."

They didn't split, but they stopped moving closer.

Carson knew they were less concerned about her pistol than about the fact that she talked the talk.

Since she knew the lingo, they assumed—correctly—that she had been in situations like this before, lots

of them, and still looked prime, and wasn't afraid.

Even the dumbest gangbanger—and few would win a dime onWheel of Fortune— could read her

credentials and calculate the odds.

"Best to break, best to book," she said, advising them to leave. "You insist on bumping titties, you're

gonna lose."

Ahead of her plainwrap sedan, closer to the intersection, cars began to move. Whether or not they could

see what was happening in their rearview mirrors, the drivers sensed the shakedown had ended.

As the cars around them began to roll, the young entrepreneurs decided there was no point to lingering

when their customer base had moved on. They whidded away like walleyed horses stampeded by the

crack of thunder.

Under her foot, the windshield-washer couldn't quite bring himself to admit defeat. "Hey, bitch, your

badge, it saidhomicide. You can't touch me! I ain't killed nobody."

"What a moron," she said, holstering the pistol.

"You can't call me a moron. I graduated high school."

"You did not."

"Ialmost did."

Before the creep—predictably—took offense at her impolite characterization of his mental acuity and

threatened to sue for insensitivity, Carson's cell phone rang.

"Detective O'Connor," she answered.

When she heard who was calling and why, she took her foot off the gangbanger.

"Beat it," she told him. "Get your sorry ass out of the street."

"You ain't lockin' me?"

"You're not worth the paperwork." She returned to her phone call.

Groaning, he got to his feet, one hand clutching the crotch of his low-rider pants as if he were a

two-year-old overwhelmed by the need to pee.

He was one of those who didn't learn from experience. Instead of hobbling away to find his friends,

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

Dean R. Koontz - Frankenstein - Prodigal Son

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: