Midnight by Dean R. Koontz

Here, the stink of urine completely smothered what trace of the blood scent might have ridden the currents of air outward from the bedroom. That was better. It was not a foul odor at all, as it had seemed previously, but acidic and cleansing.

Loman settled Penniworth in an armchair, the only upholstered item in the room that had not been torn to pieces.

“You going to be okay?”

Penniworth looked up at him, hesitated, then nodded. All signs of the beast had vanished from his hands and countenance, though his flesh was strangely lumpy, still in transition. His face appeared to be swollen with a disabling case of the hives, large round lumps from forehead to chin and ear to ear, and there were long, diagonal welts, too, that burned an angry red against his pale skin. However, even as Loman watched, those phenomena faded, and Neil Penniworth laid full claim to his humanity. To his physical humanity, at least.

“You sure?” Loman asked.

“Yes.”

“Stay right there.”

“Yes.”

Loman went into the foyer and opened the front door. The deputy standing guard outside was so tense because of all the shooting and screaming in the house that he almost fired on his chief before he realized who it was.

“What the hell?” the deputy said.

“Get on the computer link to Shaddack,” Loman said. “He has to come out here now. Right now. I have to see him now.”

55

Sam drew the heavy blue drapes, and Harry turned on one bedside lamp. Soft as it was, too dim to chase away more than half the shadows, the light nevertheless stung Tessa’s eyes, which were already tired and bloodshot.

For the first time she actually saw the room. It was sparely furnished: the stool; the tall table beside the stool; the telescope; a long, modern-oriental, black lacquered dresser; a pair of matching nightstands; a small refrigerator in one corner; and an adjustable hospital-type bed, queen-size, without a spread but with plenty of pillows and brightly colored sheets patterned with splashes and streaks and spots of red, orange, purple, green, yellow, blue, and black, like a giant canvas painted by a demented and color-blind abstract artist.

Harry saw her and Sam’s reaction to the sheets and said, “Now, that’s a story, but first you’ve got to know the background. My housekeeper, Mrs. Hunsbok, comes in once a week, and she does most of my shopping for me. But I send Moose on errands every day, if only to pick up a newspaper. He wears this set of … well, sort of saddlebags strapped around him, one hanging on each side. I put a note and some money in the bags, and he goes to the local convenience store—it’s the only place he’ll go when he’s wearing the bags, unless I’m with him. The clerk at the little grocery, Jimmy Ramis, knows me real well. Jimmy reads the note, puts a quart of milk or some candy bars or whatever I want in the saddlebags, puts the change in there, too, and Moose brings it all back to me. He’s a good, reliable service dog, the best. They train them real well at Canine Companions for Independence. Moose never chases after a cat with my newspaper and fresh milk in his backpack.”

The dog raised his head off Tessa’s lap, panted and grinned, as if acknowledging the praise.

“One day he came home with a few items I’d sent him for, and he also had a set of these sheets and pillow cases. I call up jimmy Ramis, see, and ask him what’s the idea, and Jimmy says he doesn’t know what I’m talking about, says he never saw any such sheets. Now, Jimmy’s dad owns the convenience store, and he also owns Surplus Outlet, out on the county road. He gets all kinds of discontinued merchandise and stuff that didn’t sell as well as the manufacturers expected, picks it up at ten cents on the dollar sometimes, and I figure these sheets were something he was having trouble unloading even at Surplus Outlet. Jimmy no doubt saw them, thought they were pretty silly, and decided to have some fun with me. But on the phone Jimmy says, ‘Harry, if I knew anything about the sheets, I’d tell you, but I don’t. And I says, ‘You trying to make me believe Moose went and bought them all on his own, with his own moneys’ And Jimmy says, ‘Well, no, I’d guess he shoplifted them somewhere,’ and I says, ‘And just how did he manage to stuff them in his own backpack so neat,’ and Jimmy says, ‘I don’t know, Harry, but that there is one hell of a clever dog—though it sounds like he doesn’t have good taste.”