Dean R. Koontz - Moonlight Bay 1 - Fear nothing

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Fear Nothing [039 5.0]

By Dean R. Koontz

Synopsis:

Christopher Snow is different from all the other residents of Moonlight

Bay, different from anyone You've ever met. For Christopher Snow has

made his peace with a very rare genetic disorder shared by only one

thousand other Americans, a disorder that leaves him dangerously

vulnerable to light. His life is filled with the fascinationg rituals

of one who must embrace the dark. He knows the night as no one else

ever will, ever can-the mystery, the beauty, the many terrors, and the

eerie, silken rhythms of the night-for it is only at night that he is

free. Until the night he witnesses a series of disturbing incidents

that sweep him into a violent mystery only he can solve, a mystery that

will force him to rise above all fears and confront the many-layered

strangeness of Moonlight Bay and its residents.

We have a weight to carry, a destination we can't know.

We have a weight to carry and can put it down nowhere.

We are the weight we carry from there to here to there.

-The Book of Counted Sorrows

On the desk in my candlelit study, the telephone rang, and I knew that

a terrible change was coming.

I am not psychic. I do not see signs and portents in the sky. To my

eye, the lines in my palm reveal nothing about my future, and I don't

have a Gypsy's ability to discern the patterns of fate in wet tea

leaves.

My father had been dying for days, however, and after spending the

previous night at his bedside, blotting the sweat from his brow and

listening to his labored breathing, I knew that he couldn't hold on

much longer. I dreaded losing him and being, for the first time in my

twenty-eight years, alone.

I am an only son, an only child, and my mother passed away two years

ago. Her death had been a shock, but at least she had not been forced

to endure a lingering illness.

Last night just before dawn, exhausted, I had returned home to sleep.

But I had not slept much or well.

Now I leaned forward in my chair and willed the phone to fall silent,

but it would not.

The dog also knew what the ringing meant. He padded out of the shadows

into the candleglow, and stared sorrowfully at me.

Unlike others of his kind, he will hold any man's or woman's gaze as

long as he is interested. Animals usually stare directly at us only

briefly-then look away as though unnerved by something they see in

human eyes. Perhaps Orson sees what other dogs see, and perhaps he,

too, is disturbed by it, but he is not intimidated.

He is a strange dog. But he is my dog, my steadfast friend, and I love

him.

On the seventh ring, I surrendered to the inevitable and answered the

phone.

The caller was a nurse at Mercy Hospital. I spoke to her without

looking away from Orson.

My father was quickly fading. The nurse suggested that I come to his

bedside without delay.

As I put down the phone, Orson approached my chair and rested his burly

black head in my lap. He whimpered softly and nuzzled my hand. He did

not wag his tail.

For a moment I was numb, unable to think or act. The silence of the

house, as deep as water in an oceanic abyss, was a crushing,

immobilizing pressure. Then I phoned Sasha Goodall to ask her to drive

me to the hospital.

Usually she slept from noon until eight o'clock. She spun music in the

dark, from midnight until six o'clock in the morning, on KBAY, the only

radio station in Moonlight Bay. At a few minutes past five on this

March evening, she was most likely sleeping, and I regretted the need

to wake her.

Like sad-eyed Orson, however, Sasha was my friend, to whom I could

always turn. And she was a far better driver than the dog.

She answered on the second ring, with no trace of sleepiness in her

voice. Before I could tell her what had happened, she said, "Chris,

I'm so sorry," as though she had been waiting for this call and as if

in the ringing of her phone she had heard the same ominous note that

Orson and I had heard in mine.

I bit my lip and refused to consider what was coming. As long as Dad

was alive, hope remained that his doctors were wrong. Even at the

eleventh hour, the cancer might go into remission.

I believe in the possibility of miracles.

After all, in spite of my condition, I have lived more than

twenty-eight years, which is a miracle of sorts-although some other

people, seeing my life from outside, might think it a curse.

I believe in the possibility of miracles, but more to the point, I

believe in our need for them.

"I'll be there in five minutes," Sasha promised.

At night I could walk to the hospital, but at this hour I would be too

much of a spectacle and in too great a danger if I tried to make the

trip on foot.

"No," I said. "Drive carefully. I'll probably take ten minutes or

more to get ready."

"Love You, Snowman."

"Love You," I replied.

I replaced the cap on the pen with which I had been writing when the

call had come from the hospital, and I put it aside with the yellow

legal-size tablet.

Using a long-handled brass snuffer, I extinguished the three fat

candles. Thin, sinuous ghosts of smoke writhed in the shadows.

Now, an hour before twilight, the sun was low in the sky but still

dangerous. It glimmered threateningly at the edges of the pleated

shades that covered all the windows.

Anticipating my intentions, as usual, Orson was already out of the

room, padding across the upstairs hall.

He is a ninety-pound Labrador mix, as black as a witch's cat.

Through the layered shadows of our house, he roams all but invisibly,

his presence betrayed only by the thump of his big paws on the area

rugs and by the click of his claws on the hardwood floors.

In my bedroom, across the hall from the study, I didn't bother to

switch on the dimmer-controlled, frosted-glass ceiling fixture.

The indirect, sour-yellow light of the westering sun, pressing at the

edges of the window shades, was sufficient for me.

My eyes are better adapted to gloom than are those of most people.

Although I am, figuratively speaking, a brother to the owl, I don't

have a special gift of nocturnal sight, nothing as romantic or as

thrilling as a paranormal talent. Simply this: Lifelong habituation to

darkness has sharpened my night vision.

Orson leaped onto the footstool and then curled on the armchair to

watch me as I girded myself for the sunlit world.

From a pullman drawer in the adjoining bathroom, I withdrew a squeeze

bottle of lotion that included a sunscreen with a rating of fifty. I

applied it generously to my face, ears, and neck.

The lotion had a faint coconut scent, an aroma that I associate with

palm trees in sunshine, tropical skies, ocean vistas spangled with

noontime light, and other things that will be forever beyond my

experience. This, for me, is the fragrance of desire and denial and

hopeless yearning, the succulent perfume of the unattainable.

Sometimes I dream that I am walking on a Caribbean beach in a rain of

sunshine, and the white sand under my feet seems to be a cushion of

pure radiance. The warmth of the sun on my skin is more erotic than a

lover's touch. In the dream, I am not merely bathed in the light but

pierced by it. When I wake, I am bereft.

Now the lotion, although smelling of the tropical sun, was cool on my

face and neck. I also worked it into my hands and wrists.

The bathroom featured a single window at which the shade was currently

raised, but the space remained meagerly illuminated because the glass

was frosted and because the incoming sunlight was filtered through the

graceful limbs of a metrosideros. The silhouettes of leaves fluttered

on the pane.

In the mirror above the sink, my reflection was little more than a

shadow. Even if I switched on the light, I would not have had a clear

look at myself, because the single bulb in the overhead fixture was of

low wattage and had a peach tint.

Only rarely have I seen my face in full light.

Sasha says that I remind her of James Dean, more as he was in East of

Eden than in Rebel Without a Cause.

I myself don't perceive the resemblance. The hair is the same, yes,

and the pale blue eyes. But he looked so wounded, and I do not see

myself that way.

I am not James Dean. I am no one but me, Christopher Snow, and I can

live with that.

Finished with the lotion, I returned to the bedroom. Orson raised his

head from the armchair to savor the coconut scent.

I was already wearing athletic socks, Nikes, blue 'cans, and a black

T-shirt. I quickly pulled on a black denim shirt with long sleeves and

buttoned it at the neck.

Orson trailed me downstairs to the foyer. Because the porch was deep

with a low ceiling, and because two massive California live oaks stood

in the yard, no direct sun could reach the sidelights flanking the

front door; consequently, they were not covered with curtains or

blinds. The leaded panes-geometric mosaics of clear, green, red, and

amber glass-glowed softly like jewels.

I took a zippered, black leather jacket from the coat closet. I would

be out after dark, and even following a mild March day, the central

coast of California can turn chilly when the sun goes down.

From the closet shelf, I snatched a navy-blue, billed cap and pulled it

on, tugging it low on my head. Across the front, above the visor, in

ruby-red embroidered letters, were the words Mystery Train.

One night during the previous autumn, I had found the cap in Fort

Wyvern, the abandoned military base inland from Moonlight Bay. It had

been the only object in a cool, dry, concrete-walled room three stories

underground.

Although I had no idea to what the embroidered words might refer, I had

kept the cap because it intrigued me.

As I turned toward the front door, Orson whined beseechingly.

I stooped and petted him. "I'm sure Dad would like to see You one last

time, fella. I know he would. But there's no place for You in a

hospital."

His direct, coal-black eyes glimmered. I could have sworn that his

gaze brimmed with grief and sympathy. Maybe that was because I was

looking at him through repressed tears of my own.

My friend Bobby Halloway says that I tend to anthropomorphize animals,

ascribing to them human attributes and attitudes which they do not, in

fact, possess.

Perhaps this is because animals, unlike some people, have always

accepted me for what I am. The four-legged citizens of Moonlight Bay

seem to possess a more complex understanding of life-as well as more

kindness-than at least some of my neighbors.

Bobby tells me that anthropomorphizing animals, regardless of my

experiences with them, is a sign of immaturity. I tell Bobby to go

copulate with himself.

I comforted Orson, stroking his glossy coat and scratching behind his

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摘要：

FearNothing[0395.0] ByDeanR.Koontz Synopsis: ChristopherSnowisdifferentfromalltheotherresidentsofMoonlightBay,differentfromanyoneYou'veevermet. ForChristopherSnowhasmadehispeacewithaveryraregeneticdisordersharedbyonlyonethousandotherAmericans,adisorderthatleaveshimdangerouslyvulnerabletolight. Hisli...

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Dean R. Koontz - Moonlight Bay 1 - Fear nothing

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