
The Psychedelic Children
Dean Koontz
Whether or not one believes the scientific "evidence" that LSD-25 causes
damage to the chromosomes, one has to admit that the
\idea of a child mutated by LSD use is an intriguing one. It must be
intriguing. For I received about a dozen letters from
readers about this story, and it has been published in French and will be
included in a book of stories and author interviews to
be published later this year in Spain. What interests readers, I think and
hope, is not so much the plot, hut the style (ah, now
the traditionalists leap down my throat!). I have attempted to write a story
whose style (typography and scene-switching, and
of the psychedelic, of a mild acid trip. The end of the story fits into this
attempt, for it is much like a drug dclurealize
how thin is the fabric of what you thought was reality.. . .
HE woke even before she and lay listening to the rasping of her breath:
seafoam whispering over jagged rocks. It would get worse
before she woke. He reached to the night-stand and took a cigarette from the
nearly empty pack, lighted it, and sat up. He tried
not to think of the energies
roaring there. In the darkness, he tried to turn his mind to other things.
The view from the window was pleasant, for snow had been falling since
suppertime, embracing everything. The clouds parted now and
then to let the moon through. It lighted the night, washing onto the white
blanket and splashing back. Beyond the hoary willow
tree lay the highway, a black slash in the calcimined wonderland. It was
obvious that the heater colls in the roadbed had broken
down again, for (he drifts were edging back onto the hard surface unchecked.
Old-fashioned plows were working on
"Ashen dreams fluttering flaked while lightning men with swords
and draw fingernails over the ice ..."
He was not certain whether that was completely senseless or not. It was a mood
piece, na dnubt. He repeated it softly again. He
would have to remember it, polish it-perhaps-for
Minutes later, he looked back .to Laurie. Her face was
pale, her eyes closed and edped with wrinkles, He ran his hand through the
billows of raven hair that cascaded down her pillow.
She moaned in answer, the air rushing in and out of her chest. Harder, harder
she breathed. Deciding to gel a head start this time,
he stood and pulled on his trousers, slipped into a banian shirt.
"Frank?" she said.
"I know."
She slipped out of bed. naked, and dressed in a slieath-a red and black one
that he liked.
"I'll pull the car out of the garage," he said.
The snow-"
"They seem to have it under control. Don't worry. I'D pick you up at the front
door in five minutes."
"I love you," she said as he went through the doorway into the shadow-filled
living room. That always sent shivers through him:
that face, that voice, those words.
He took a flashlight and the gun that lay beside it from the kitchen catchal!
drawer. Stepping into the glittering night, he
stuffed the gun in a jacket pocket and sniffed the cold air. It hurt all the
way down into his Kings and woke him all the way up.
The path between house and garage was unshoveled: the snow lay a pood twelve
or fourteen inches deep. He plodded through it,