Midnight by Dean R. Koontz

Sam climbed the steps to the second floor, motioning for Tessa and Chrissie to follow. They were reluctant, probably embarrassed, feeling out of place, but he was not certain he could do what had to be done if he went up there alone.

The door to Scott’s room was open.

The boy was lying on his bed, wearing black jeans and a black denim shirt. His feet were toward the headboard, his head at the foot of the mattress, propped up on pillows, so he could stare at all of the posters on the wall behind the bed: black-metal rockers wearing leather and chains, some of them with bloody hands, some with bloody lips as if they were vampires who had just fed, others holding skulls, one of them french-kissing a skull, another holding out cupped hands filled with glistening maggots.

Scott didn’t hear Sam enter. With the music at that volume, he wouldn’t have heard a thermonuclear blast in the adjacent bathroom.

At the stereo Sam hesitated, wondering if he was doing the right thing. Then he listened to the bellowed words of the number on the machine, backed up by iron slabs of guitar chords. It was a song about killing your parents, about drinking their blood, then “taking the gas-pipe escape.” Nice. Oh, very nice stuff. That decided him. He punched a button and cut off the CD in midplay.

Startled, Scott sat straight up in bed. “Hey!”

Sam took the CD out of the player, dropped it on the floor, and ground it under his heel.

“Hey, Christ, what the hell are you doing?”

Forty or fifty CDs, mostly black-metal albums, were stored in open-front cases on a shelf above the stereo. Sam swept them to the floor.

“Hey, come on,” Scott said, “what’re you, nuts?”

“Something I should’ve done long ago.”

Noticing Tessa and Chrissie, who stood just outside the door, Scott said, “Who the hell are they?”

Sam said, “They the hell are friends.”

Really working himself into a rage, all lathered up, the boy said, “What the fuck are they doing here, man?”

Sam laughed. He was feeling almost giddy. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe because he was finally doing something about this situation, assuming responsibility for it. He said, “They the fuck are with me.” And he laughed again.

He felt sorry that he had exposed Chrissie to this, but then he looked at her and saw that she was not only unshaken but giggling. He realized that all the angry and bad words in the world couldn’t hurt her, not after what she had endured. In fact, after what they’d all seen in Moonlight Cove, Scott’s teenage nihilism was funny and even sort of innocent, altogether ridiculous.

Sam stood on the bed and began to tear the posters off the wall, and Scott started screaming at him, opening up full volume, a real tantrum this time. Sam finished with those posters he could reach only from the bed, got down, and turned toward those on another wall.

Scott grabbed him.

Gently, Sam pushed the boy aside and clawed at the other posters.

Scott struck him.

Sam took the blow, then looked at him.

Scott’s face was brilliant red, his nostrils dilated, his eyes bulging with hatred.

Smiling, Sam embraced him in a bear hug.

At first Scott clearly didn’t understand what was happening. He thought his father was just making a grab for him, going to punish him, so he tried to pull away. But suddenly it dawned on him—Sam could see it dawn on him—he was being hugged, his old man was for God’s sake embracing him, and in front of people—strangers. When that realization hit him, the boy really began to struggle, twisting and thrashing, pushing hard against Sam, desperate to escape, because this didn’t fit into his belief in a loveless world, especially if he started to respond.

That was it, yes, damn, Sam understood now. That was the reason behind Scott’s alienation. A fear that he’d respond to love, respond and be spurned … or find the responsibility of commitment too much to bear.

In fact, for a moment, the boy met his father’s love with love of his own, hugged him tight. It was as if the real Scott, the kid hidden under the layers of hipness and cynicism, had peeked through and smiled. Something good remained in him, good and pure, something that could be salvaged.