Read Online A Darkness in My Soul by Dean Koontz - Free Book Online

and a wide variety of land-bound animals, which, though subtly different or wildly mutated from their "real" parallels, were always believable, detailed and rich with color and habits. At first, I catalogued the differences, the fine points of distinction between the real world and this analogue of Child's interior, but that only made me melancholy, unsatisfied, and soon had me acting like a manic-depressive. I realized that, if this were to be my home for the remainder of my days, I would have to forget the other world I had known. And for my own peace of mind, I would also have to forget that when Child died, we all died, trapped here inside him. It was bizarre, but it was my new reality and required my swift adaptation.
        So I adapted.
        At first, there had been a time of madness. When I recovered my wits, I did not know how much time had passed, and I could not remember much of what I had done. I remembered running along canyons of stone which shimmered and changed colors around me, thrust up, dissolved, formed new projections, a living rock that sang mournful dirges and sometime burst into long, wailing screams that made me fall and cover my ears and scream in sympathy. There were visions of mottled skies that were sometimes all shades of yellow, sometimes all shades of red, sometimes an ugly whirl of black and brown. I had climbed in cold places and had followed descending trails into warm ones. I had been on strange seas with waters thick like syrup, and in lakes where the surface reeked of brandy. I had seen dark shapes, like huge spiders, dancing along endless webs of sticky white thread, and I had seen maggots crawling in the walls, disappearing in the stone when I came close enough to examine them. At times, a force of monumental strength passed me, a whirling madness of surging energy, which was He, which was God, the maddest of the three of us. And then I was sane, lying on the floors of a wide tunnel, stretched full length, as if I had fallen while running from something that terrified me.
        I sat up, looked around me, knew that it was so, that I was trapped here, and decided there was nothing to do but make the most of it.
        Besides, I nurtured a grain of hope. Perhaps the mind of the wizened boy, this Child, would regain its sanity.
        Perhaps, then, there would be a way out, a way to return to my own body. They would keep me alive, back there in AC, feed me through my veins, keep my body processes functioning, hoping for my return just as I was. If Child returned to normal, I could go upwards through the nowblocked conscious mind and return to my own flesh. Free.
        With even the smallest minim of such hope, it was better to maintain my sanity instead of losing it again and being able to return to my own body as a madman.
        And, too, there was the possibility that, with my mind intact, I could search out this nightmare landscape and find some chink in the cold stone that kept me from leaving. I could explore for days on end, having nothing better to do, and perhaps discover the passage out. I knew the chances were small. Child's mental analogue was immense, as big as an entire world. It would require years and years just to investigate each corner of it. And a mind destroyed, a mind seeking total refuge from reality, would hardly leave any breach of its seal against the world, no matter how small that breach and no matter in what distant corner it existed.
        But I had hope. It was all I had, and it was warmly nourished.
        

    II
        
        Sane and determined, I set out on foot to know the place where I now found myself. There was no need to provision for the journey, no matter what its length, for I no longer held the needs of flesh. There was no such thing as hunger, only a vague memory of what thirst had once been. I couldn't know pain, nor pleasure-except on an emotional, mental level. Though the world seemed physically as tangible as the