Read Online Legacy Of Terror by Dean Koontz - Free Book Online
Authors: Dean Koontz
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from me.
Christmas Eve?
He said, Yes.
Do you feel you should talk about it?
The memory hurt me for a while, Jacob admitted. But that was only because I'd tried to force it out of my mind. I hadn't fully succeeded, of course, but over the years I had managed to dull the memory. Now, it is back, sharp and clear, and I've learned to accept it again. It'll help if I tell you; it'll unburden me a bit. Besides, I want to be sure that you hear it the way it was, not embroidered by the Bradshaws.
Chapter 7
Christmas Eve, 1957.
Snow. It had begun to snow early in the day, lightly at first, like a fine dusting of powdered sugar spilled across the streets and lawns. As the afternoon wore on, the cloud masses hung lower and became a more leaden gray, evenly colored so that one could not tell where the sun lay behind the sky's shroud. By four o'clock, the road crews were plowing and cindering. Those who had dared the city streets to complete last minute shopping were finding it rough going; cars were angled oddly across the pavement as more inexperienced drivers gritted their teeth and cursed themselves for ignoring the weather reports.
Everything at the restaurants checked out as it should. They would be able to serve a record number of Christmas dinners to those who chose not to eat at home as most people did-the elderly whose children no longer thought of them, young lovers not interested in sharing a magic time with parents, single people without family and afraid to remain alone on such a quiet, bleak day. Jacob left the Brass Lantern Inn, the last of the Matherly eateries to be checked out, got his car from the garage and started the weary drive home.
At twenty minutes of six, he pulled into the garage and shut the engine off. No other cars were there. Lee and the boys were shopping. Jerry and Bess had the day off and wouldn't get back until nine or ten, early enough for Bess to start making a few preparations for tomorrow's traditional feast.
When he stepped through the front door, he sensed something was wrong, though everything looked to be in order. For a moment, he remained on the threshold where a backward step would return him to the crisp snow and the cold December wind. Then he swung the door shut and walked to the drawing room where, at that hour, he expected to find Amelia.
She was not there.
Amelia?
She did not answer.
In the upstairs back room, the grandfather clock chimed the quarter hour. No one had set the seven day time mechanism in motion for more than five years. Who had started it now?
Amelia! he called.
Silence.
He looked through the downstairs and found it uninhabited.
He went upstairs.
At the top landing, he was again possessed of that semi- clairvoyance that had forced him to halt just within the front door. Something was very, very wrong.
He wanted to go to the back room to see why the grandfather clock had been started, but he looked, first, into the nursery where the twins, Lana and Laura, lay in their cribs.
Cribs, then.
And the blood.
He did not know what the blood was. From across the room, it looked colorless, a dark substance running along the slats and legs of the cribs, staining the rug under them.
Hesitantly, he walked toward the children. They lay very still in the shadows, far too still.
He called softly, using the names which they could not yet recognize as their own, but names which he cherished.
The children did not whimper, did not move.
Then he was close enough to see the blood for what it was and to stare, morbidly, into the deep gashes of their awful wounds. Time passed. How much time, he was never later able to ascertain. Indeed, it was as if the laws of the universe, the mechanisms of physical Nature, had stopped altogether. He might have been trapped within a bubble of non-time, staring out through the fragile walls of his prison at a frozen landscape. Whenever time began to flow again and the bubble dissolved around him, he let
Christmas Eve?
He said, Yes.
Do you feel you should talk about it?
The memory hurt me for a while, Jacob admitted. But that was only because I'd tried to force it out of my mind. I hadn't fully succeeded, of course, but over the years I had managed to dull the memory. Now, it is back, sharp and clear, and I've learned to accept it again. It'll help if I tell you; it'll unburden me a bit. Besides, I want to be sure that you hear it the way it was, not embroidered by the Bradshaws.
Chapter 7
Christmas Eve, 1957.
Snow. It had begun to snow early in the day, lightly at first, like a fine dusting of powdered sugar spilled across the streets and lawns. As the afternoon wore on, the cloud masses hung lower and became a more leaden gray, evenly colored so that one could not tell where the sun lay behind the sky's shroud. By four o'clock, the road crews were plowing and cindering. Those who had dared the city streets to complete last minute shopping were finding it rough going; cars were angled oddly across the pavement as more inexperienced drivers gritted their teeth and cursed themselves for ignoring the weather reports.
Everything at the restaurants checked out as it should. They would be able to serve a record number of Christmas dinners to those who chose not to eat at home as most people did-the elderly whose children no longer thought of them, young lovers not interested in sharing a magic time with parents, single people without family and afraid to remain alone on such a quiet, bleak day. Jacob left the Brass Lantern Inn, the last of the Matherly eateries to be checked out, got his car from the garage and started the weary drive home.
At twenty minutes of six, he pulled into the garage and shut the engine off. No other cars were there. Lee and the boys were shopping. Jerry and Bess had the day off and wouldn't get back until nine or ten, early enough for Bess to start making a few preparations for tomorrow's traditional feast.
When he stepped through the front door, he sensed something was wrong, though everything looked to be in order. For a moment, he remained on the threshold where a backward step would return him to the crisp snow and the cold December wind. Then he swung the door shut and walked to the drawing room where, at that hour, he expected to find Amelia.
She was not there.
Amelia?
She did not answer.
In the upstairs back room, the grandfather clock chimed the quarter hour. No one had set the seven day time mechanism in motion for more than five years. Who had started it now?
Amelia! he called.
Silence.
He looked through the downstairs and found it uninhabited.
He went upstairs.
At the top landing, he was again possessed of that semi- clairvoyance that had forced him to halt just within the front door. Something was very, very wrong.
He wanted to go to the back room to see why the grandfather clock had been started, but he looked, first, into the nursery where the twins, Lana and Laura, lay in their cribs.
Cribs, then.
And the blood.
He did not know what the blood was. From across the room, it looked colorless, a dark substance running along the slats and legs of the cribs, staining the rug under them.
Hesitantly, he walked toward the children. They lay very still in the shadows, far too still.
He called softly, using the names which they could not yet recognize as their own, but names which he cherished.
The children did not whimper, did not move.
Then he was close enough to see the blood for what it was and to stare, morbidly, into the deep gashes of their awful wounds. Time passed. How much time, he was never later able to ascertain. Indeed, it was as if the laws of the universe, the mechanisms of physical Nature, had stopped altogether. He might have been trapped within a bubble of non-time, staring out through the fragile walls of his prison at a frozen landscape. Whenever time began to flow again and the bubble dissolved around him, he let
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