Midnight by Dean R. Koontz

But now words failed; her life was going to be far different from what she had imagined. She was frightened as much by the loss of the comfortable, bookish future she had foreseen as she was by the changes that had taken place in her parents. Eight months shy of her twelfth birthday, Chrissie had become acutely aware of life’s uncertainty, grim knowledge for which she was ill prepared.

Not that she had already given up. She intended to fight. She was not going to let them change her without resistance. Soon after she had been thrown into the pantry, once her tears had dried, she had looked over the contents of the shelves, searching for a weapon. The pantry contained mostly canned, bottled, and packaged food, but there were also laundry and first-aid and handyman supplies. She had found the perfect thing a small aerosol-spray can of WD-40, an oil-based lubricant. It was a third the size of an ordinary spray can, easily concealed. If she could surprise them, spray it in their eyes and temporarily blind them, she could make a break for freedom.

As though reading a newspaper headline, she said, “Ingenious Young Girl Saves Self with Ordinary Household Lubricant.”

She held the WD-40 in both hands, taking comfort from it.

Now and then a vivid and unsettling memory recurred: her father’s face as it had looked when he had thrown her into the pantry—red and swollen with anger, his eyes darkly ringed, nostrils flared, lips drawn back from his teeth in a feral snarl, every feature contorted with rage. “I’ll be back for you,” he had said, spraying spittle as he spoke. “I’ll be back.”

He slammed the door and braced it shut with a straight-backed kitchen chair that he wedged under the knob. Later, when the house fell silent and her parents seemed to have gone away, Chrissie had tried the door, pushing on it with all her might, but the tilted chair was an immovable barricade.

I’ll be back for you. I’ll be back.

His twisted face and bloodshot eyes had made her think of Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson’s description of the murderous Hyde in the story of Dr. Jekyll, which she had read a few months ago. There was madness in her father; he was not the same man that he once had been.

More unsettling was the memory of what she had seen in the upstairs hall when she had returned home after missing the school bus and had surprised her parents. No. They were not really her parents any more. They were … something else.

She shuddered.

She clutched the can of WD-40.

Suddenly, for the first time in hours, she heard noise in the kitchen. The back door of the house opened. Footsteps. At least two, maybe three or four people.

“She’s in there,” her father said.

Chrissie’s heart stuttered, then found a new and faster beat.

“This isn’t going to be quick,” said another man. Chrissie did not recognize his deep, slightly raspy voice.

“You see, it’s more complicated with a child. Shaddack’s not sure we’re even ready for the children yet. It’s risky. She’s got to be converted, Tucker.” That was Chrissie’s mother, Sharon, though she did not sound like herself. It was her voice, all right, but without its usual softness, without the natural, musical quality that had made it such a perfect voice for reading fairy tales.

“Of course, yes, she’s got to be done,” said the stranger, whose name was evidently Tucker.

“I know that. Shaddack knows it too. He sent me here, didn’t he? I’m just saying it might take more time than usual. We need a place where we can restrain her and watch over her during the conversion.”

“Right here. Her bedroom upstairs.”

Conversion?

Trembling, Chrissie got to her feet and stood facing the door.

With a scrape and clatter, the tilted chair was removed from under the knob.

She held the spray can in her right hand, down at her side and half behind her, with her forefinger on top of the nozzle.

The door opened, and her father looked in at her.

Alex Foster. Chrissie tried to think of him as Alex Foster, not as her father, just Alex Foster, but it was difficult to deny that in some ways he was still her dad. Besides, “Alex Foster” was no more accurate than “father” because he was someone altogether new.