Read Online The Book of Counted Sorrows by Dean Koontz - Free Book Online Page B

good.
                       1956. Jimmy Crackcorn, an itinerant gerbil groomer, spun himself into butter, then past butter, finally coming to a halt when he was a soft cheese.
                       1957. Jack Benimble. University professor and well-regarded Spam sculptor. Head exploded.
                       1959. Jack Bequick. Buttermaker. Turned to butter. Some irony in this one.
                       1962. Lars Ferndahl. Advance scout for a large extraterrestrial invasion force of intelligent giant insects from Andromeda, disguised as human. Head exploded, body continued to move for nine minutes.
                       1965. Dr. Lee Sham. Practiced proctology by acupuncture, with
    many Hollywood stars on his patient list. Head exploded.
                       1966. Bob Roberts. Fob fabricator. Head exploded.
                       1968. Peter Piper. Pickle packer. Ceiling smear.
                       1969. Peter Peter Pumpkineater. Pumpkin eater. Smeared on the dome of his pumpkin-shell living room.
                       1971. Bllly-Bob Beauregard Bodeen. Professional Southern eccentric. Swallowed himself, but started with his left hand instead of his tongue, pausing twice to request another double side order of grits.
                       1973. Unidentified hobo. Panhandler. Spun himself into Ripple marmalade.
                       1976. J. Chandler Witherspoon. Singularly vicious book critic. Bludgeoned, strangled, stabbed, shot forty-seven times, hacked, and immolated. This is the only Counted Sorrows case of its kind, and none of the scholars in this field knows quite what to make of it.
                       1977. Moses Posey. Saintly minister. He anticipated his fate and made suitable arrangements for the distribution of his remains: He spun himself into butter and on Thanksgiving, at his church-operated soup kitchen, was served atop 900 mounds of mashed potatoes with 900 turkey dinners for the indigent.
                       1979. J. Chandler Witherspoon. Singularly vicious book critic. His grave was found excavated, his casket open. His already battered, burned, and thoroughly punctured remains had been scattered on the cemetery grass, saturated with sulfuric acid, mixed with thousands of cloves of garlic, and covered with cow dung. Counted Sorrows scholars agree that this is the only known case in which the book's virulent curse continued to act upon one of its pathetic owners even after he was dead.
                       Finally, in 1980, my Aunt Hortense purchased The Book of Counted Sorrows, intending to present it to me as an Arbor Day gift. Most people know nothing of the history of this volume, but as a novelist, it is part of my job to be well informed about an enormous number of subjects, many of them exotic, some of them arcane, and more than a few of them ridiculous. I was aware of the tome's deadly effect on the many fine and admirable people who'd had the bad luck to come into possession of it. [I'm sure you understand that I do not mean to include J. Chandler Witherspoon as one of the "fine and admirable people," for as everyone who ever knew him will tell you, he was a thorough prick.) I was also aware that although the book had been owned, at times, by women, and that although many of those women had read it cover to cover, and although many of them claimed to have achieved a singular enlightenment from their reading, and although eleven of them had been seen to rise off this earth and ascend in a shaft of golden light into heavens filled with singing cherubs, not any of these fine women had exploded or been violently emulsified, nor had any of them spun herself into butter or soft cheese, or swallowed herself. Consequently, I requested that Aunt Hortense retain ownership of Counted