Read Online Invasion by Dean Koontz - Free Book Online

Blueberry. I went right upstairs and cried about it then. I got over that.
        There's nothing I can do about it, so I got to live with it." His lips trembled a bit, but he didn't cry. As he had said, he was finished with that.
        "You're something," I said.
        He smiled at me, pleased. "I'm no crybaby."
        "Just so you know it's not shameful to cry."
        "Oh, I know," he said. "The only reason I did it in my room was because I didn't want anyone to kid me out of it until I was good and finished."
        I looked at Connie. "Ten years old?"
        "I truly believe he's a midget," she said, as pleased with him as I was.
        Toby said, "Are we going to go out and track down that old grizzly bear, Dad?"
        "Well," I said, "I don't think it is a grizzly bear."
        "Some kind of bear."
        "I don't think so."
        "Mountain lion?" he asked.
        "No. A bear or a mountain lion-or just about any other wild, carnivorous animal-would have killed the horse there in the barn and would have eaten it on the spot. We would have found blood in the barn, lots of it. A bear or a mountain lion wouldn't have killed Blueberry without leaving blood at the scene, wouldn't have carried her all the way down into the forest before it had supper."
        "Then what is it?" Connie asked. "What is big enough to carry off a pony? And leave a whistle-clean skeleton. Do you have any ideas, Don?"
        I  hesitated. Then: "I have one."
        "Well?"
        "You won't like it. I don't like it."
        "Nevertheless, I have to hear it," she said.
        I sipped my coffee, trying to get my thoughts arranged, and finally I told them all about the flashing purple light in the woods and, more importantly, about the force that had attempted to take control of my mind. I minimized my fear-reaction in the retelling and made it sound as if the takeover attempt had been relatively easy to resist. There was no need to dramatize it, for even when it was underplayed and told in a lifeless monotone, the story was quite frightening.
        I had recounted these events with such force and so vividly that Connie knew I was telling the truth- at least, the truth as I saw it-and that I was entirely serious. She still had trouble accepting it. She shook her head slowly and said, "Don, do you realize exactly what you're saying?"
        "Yes."
        "That this animal, this yellow-eyed thing that can devour a pony, is-intelligent?"
        "That seems to be the most logical conclusion-as illogical as it may seem."
        "I can't get a hold on it," she said.
        "Neither can I. Not a good one."
        Toby looked back and forth, from Connie to me to Connie to me again, as if he were doing the old routine about a spectator at a tennis match. He said, "You mean it's a space monster?"
        We were all quiet for a moment.
        I took a sip of coffee.
        Finally Connie said, "Is that what you mean?"
        "I don't know," I said. "I'm not sure… But it's a possibility we simply can't rule out."
        More silence.
        Then, Connie: "What are we going to do?"
        "What can we do?" I asked. We're snowbound. The first big storm of the year-and one of the worst on record. We don't have a working telephone. We can't drive into town for help; even the microbus would get bogged down within a hundred yards of the house. So… We just have to wait and see what happens next."
        She didn't like that, but then neither did I. She turned her own coffee mug in circles on the table top. "But if you're right, or even only half right, and if this thing can take control of our minds-"
        "It can't," I said, trying to sound utterly confident even while remembering how perilously close the thing had come to taking control of mine. "It tried that with me, but it didn't succeed. We can resist it."
        "But what else might it be able to do?"
        "I don't know.