Read Online The Servants of Twilight by Dean Koontz - Free Book Online Page B

one foot on the floor. He smiled at her. “You have nothing to apologize for. Most people, if they’d had the scare you’ve had, would’ve come through the door blubbering incoherently, and they’d still be blubbering incoherently. You’re holding up quite well.”
    “I don’t feel as if I’m holding up.” She took a handkerchief from her purse and blew her nose. “But I guess you’re right. One crazy old lady isn’t the end of the world.”
    “Exactly.”
    “One crazy old lady can’t be that hard to deal with.”
    “That’s the spirit,” he said.
    But he thought: One crazy old lady? Then who’s the guy with the white truck?

8
     
    Grace Spivey sat on a hard oak chair, her ice-gray eyes shining in the gloom.
    Today was a red day in the spirit world, one of the reddest days she had ever known, and she was dressed entirely in red in order to be in harmony with it, just as she had dressed entirely in green yesterday, when the spirit world had been going through a green phase. Most people weren’t aware that the spirit world around them changed color from day to day; of course, most people couldn’t see the supernatural realm as clearly as Grace could see it when she really tried; in fact, most of them couldn’t see it at all, so there was no way they could possibly understand Grace’s manner of dress. But for Grace, who was a psychic and a medium, it was essential to be in harmony with the color of the spirit world, for then she could more easily receive clairvoyant visions of both the past and future. These visions were sent to her by benign spirits and were transmitted on brilliantly colored beams of energy, beams that, today, were all shades of red.
    If she had tried to explain this to most people, they would have thought her insane. A few years ago her own daughter had committed Grace to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation; but Grace had slipped out of that trap, had disowned her daughter, and had been more cautious ever since.
    Today she wore dark red shoes, a dark red skirt, and a lighter red, two-tone, striped blouse. All her jewelry was red: a double strand of crimson beads and matching bracelets on each wrist; a porcelain brooch as bright as fire; two ruby rings; one ring with four dazzling ovals of highly polished carnelian; four other rings with cheap red glass, vermilion enamel, and scarlet porcelain. Whether precious, semiprecious, or fake, all the stones in her rings glinted and sparkled in the flickering candlelight.
    The quivering flames, adance upon the points of the wicks, caused strange shadows to writhe over the basement walls. The room was large, but it seemed small because the candles were grouped at one end of it, and three-quarters of the chamber lay beyond the reach of their inconstant amber light. There were eleven candles in all, each fat and white, each fitted in a brass holder with an ornate drip guard, and each brass candlestick was gripped firmly by one of Grace’s followers, all of whom were waiting eagerly for her to speak. Of the eleven, six were men and five were women. Some were young, some middle-aged, some old. They sat on the floor, forming a semicircle around the chair on which Grace sat, their faces gleaming and queerly distorted in the fluttering, shimmering, eldritch glow.
    These eleven did not constitute the entire body of her followers. More than fifty others were in the room overhead, waiting anxiously to hear what transpired during this session. And more than a thousand others were elsewhere, in a hundred different places, engaged upon work that Grace had assigned to them.
    However, these eleven at her feet were her most trusted, valued, and capable lieutenants. They were the ones she most cherished.
    She even knew and remembered their names, although it wasn’t easy for her to remember names (or much of anything else) these days, not as easy as it had been before the Gift had been given to her. The Gift filled her, filled her mind, and crowded out so