Watchers (75 page)

Authors: Dean Koontz

Tags: #Suspense, #Fiction, #Thrillers

BOOK: Watchers

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Starting next year, Nora thought, there’ll be a baby in the house with which to share Christmas, and won’t
that
be a hoot!

Aside from suffering a little mild morning sickness and having put on a couple of pounds, she’d not yet shown any signs of pregnancy. Her belly was still flat, and Dr. Weingold said that, considering her body type, she had a chance of being one of those women whose abdomen underwent only moderate distension. She hoped she was lucky in that regard because, after the birth, getting back into shape would be a lot easier. Of course, the baby was not due for six months yet, which gave her plenty of time to get as big as a walrus.

Returning from Carmel in the pickup—the back of which was filled with packages and a perfectly formed Christmas tree—Einstein slept half on Nora’s lap. He was worn out from his busy day with Jim and Pooka. They got home less than an hour before dark. Einstein led the way toward the house—

—but suddenly stopped and looked around curiously. He sniffed the chilly air, then moved across the yard, nose to the ground, as if tracking a scent.

Heading toward the back door with her arms full of packages, Nora did not at first see anything unusual in the dog’s behavior, but she noticed that Travis had halted and was staring hard at Einstein. She said, “What is it?”

“Wait a second.”

Einstein crossed the yard to the edge of the woods on the south side. He stood rigid, head thrust forward, then shook himself and moved on along the perimeter of the forest. He stopped repeatedly, standing motionless each time, and in a couple of minutes he came all the way around to the north.

When the retriever returned to them, Travis said, “Something?” Einstein wagged his tail briefly and barked once:
Yes and no
.

Inside, in the pantry, the retriever laid out a message.

FELT SOMETHING.

“What?” Travis asked.

DON’T KNOW.

“The Outsider?”

MAYBE.

“Close?”

DON’T KNOW.

“Are you getting your sixth sense back?” Nora asked.

DON’T KNOW. JUST FELT.

“Felt what?” Travis asked.

The dog composed an answer only after considerable deliberation.

BIG DARKNESS.

“You felt a big darkness?”

Yes.

“What’s that mean?” Nora asked uneasily.

CAN’T EXPLAIN BETTER. JUST FELT IT.

Nora looked at Travis and saw a concern in his eyes that probably mirrored the expression in her own.

A big darkness was out there somewhere, and it was coming.

Christmas was joyous and fine.

In the morning, sitting around the light-bedecked tree, drinking milk and eating homemade cookies, they opened presents. As a joke, the first gift that Nora gave Travis was a box of underwear. He gave her a bright orange and yellow muumuu obviously sized for a three-hundred-pound woman: “For March, when you’ll be too big for anything else. Of course, by May you’ll have outgrown it.” They exchanged serious gifts, also—jewelry and sweaters and books.

But Nora, like Travis, felt the day belonged to Einstein more than to anyone else. She gave him the portrait on which she had been working all month, and the retriever seemed stunned and flattered and delighted that she had seen fit to immortalize him in paint. He got three new Mickey Mouse videotapes, a pair of fancy metal food and water bowls with his name engraved on them to replace the plastic dishes he had been using, his own small battery-powered clock that he could take with him to any room in the house (he was showing an increasing interest in time), and several other presents, but he was repeatedly drawn to the portrait, which they propped against the wall for his inspection. Later, when they hung it above the living-room fireplace, Einstein stood on the hearth and peered up at the picture, pleased and proud.

Like any kid, Einstein perversely took almost as much pleasure in playing with empty boxes, crumpled wrapping paper, and ribbons as he did with the gifts themselves. And one of his favorite things was a joke gift: a red Santa cap with a white pom-pom on the tip, which was held on his head by an elastic strap. Nora put it on him just for fun. When he saw himself in a mirror, he was so taken with his appearance that he objected when, a few minutes later, she tried to take the cap off him. He kept it on most of the day.

Jim Keene and Pooka arrived in the early afternoon, and Einstein herded them straight into the living room to look at his portrait above the mantel. For an hour, watched over by Jim and Travis, the two dogs played together in the backyard. That activity, having been preceded by the excitement of the morning’s gift-giving, left Einstein in need of a nap, so they returned to the house, where Jim and Travis helped Nora prepare Christmas dinner.

After his nap, Einstein tried to interest Pooka in Mickey Mouse cartoons, but Nora saw that he met with only limited success. Pooka’s attention span didn’t even last long enough for Donald or Goofy or Pluto to get Mickey into trouble. In respect of his companion’s lower IQ, and apparently not bored with such company, Einstein turned the television off and engaged in strictly doggy activities: some light wrestling in the den and a lot of lying around, nose to nose, silently communing with each other about canine concerns.

By early evening, the house was filled with the aromas of turkey, baked corn, yams, and other goodies. Christmas music played. And in spite of the interior shutters that had been bolted over the windows when the early-winter night had fallen, in spite of the guns near at hand, in spite of the demonic presence of The Outsider that always lurked in the back of her mind, Nora had never been happier.

During dinner, they talked about the baby, and Jim asked if they had given any thought to names. Einstein, eating in the corner with Pooka, was instantly intrigued by the idea of participating in the naming of their first-born. He dashed immediately to the pantry to spell out his suggestion.

Nora left the table to see what name the dog thought suitable.

MICKEY.

“Absolutely not!” she said. “We’re not naming my baby after a cartoon mouse.”

DONALD.

“Nor a duck.”

PLUTO.

“Pluto? Get serious, fur face.”

GOOFY.

Nora firmly restrained him from pushing the letter-dispensing pedals any more, gathered up the used tiles and put them away, turned off the pantry light, and went back to the table. “You may think it’s hilarious,” she told Travis and Jim, who were choking with laughter, “but
he’s
serious!”

After dinner, sitting around the tree in the living room, they talked about many things, including Jim’s intention of getting another dog. “Pooka needs to have another of his kind,” the vet said. “He’s almost a year and a half old now, and I’m of the belief that human companionship isn’t enough for them after they’re well past the puppy stage. They get lonely like we do. And since I’m going to get him a companion, I might as well get a female purebred Lab and maybe wind up with some nice puppies to sell later. So he’s going to have not only a friend but a mate.”

Nora had not noticed that Einstein was any more interested in that part of the conversation than in any other. However, after Jim and Pooka had gone home, Travis found a message in the pantry and called Nora over to have a look at it.

MATE. A COMPANION, PARTNER, ONE OF A PAIR.

The retriever had been waiting for them to notice the carefully arranged tiles. Now he appeared behind them and regarded them quizzically.

Nora said, “Do you think you’d like a mate?”

Einstein slipped between them, into the pantry, disarranged the tiles, and made a reply.

IT’S WORTH THINKING ABOUT.

“But, listen, fur face,” Travis said, “you’re one of a kind. There’s no other dog like you, with your IQ.”

The retriever considered that point but was not dissuaded.

LIFE IS MORE THAN INTELLECT.

“True enough,” Travis said. “But I think this needs a lot of consideration.”

LIFE IS FEELINGS.

“All right,” Nora said. “We’ll think about it.”

LIFE IS MATE. SHARING.

“We promise to think about it and then discuss it with you some more,” Travis said. “Now it’s getting late.”

Einstein quickly made one more message.

BABY MICKEY?

“Absolutely not!” Nora said.

That night, in bed, after she and Travis made love, Nora said, “I’ll bet he
is
lonely.”

“Jim Keene?”

“Well, yes, I bet he’s lonely, too. He’s such a nice man, and he’d make someone a great husband. But women are just as choosy about looks as men are, don’t you think? They don’t go for husbands with hound-dog faces. They marry the good-looking ones who half the time treat them like dirt. But I didn’t mean Jim. I meant Einstein. He must get lonely now and then.”

“We’re with him all the time.”

“No, we’re really not. I paint, and you do things in which poor Einstein doesn’t get included. And if you do go back to real estate eventually, there’ll be a lot of time when Einstein’s without anyone.”

“He has his books. He loves books.”

“Maybe books aren’t enough,” she said.

They were silent for so long that she thought Travis had fallen asleep. Then he said, “If Einstein mated and produced puppies, what would they be like?”

“You mean—would they be as smart as he is?”

“I wonder . . . Seems to me there’s three possibilities. First, his intelligence isn’t inheritable, so his puppies would just be ordinary puppies. Second, it
is
inheritable, but the genes of his mate would dilute the intelligence, so the puppies would be smart but not as smart as their father; and each succeeding generation would get dimmer, duller, until eventually his great-great-great-grandpups would just be ordinary dogs.”

“What’s the third possibility?”

“Intelligence, being a survival trait, might be genetically dominant, very dominant.”

“In which case his puppies would be as smart as he is.”

“And their puppies after them, on and on, until in time you’d have a colony of intelligent golden retrievers, thousands of them all over the world.”

They were silent again.

Finally she said, “Wow.”

Travis said, “He’s right.”

“What?”