WATCHERS by Dean R. Koontz

Ruffling Einstein’s coat with one hand, Nora said: “I hope you’re right.”

“I am.”

“I hope so.”

“I am.’’

Travis was badly shaken by how close he had come to risking Einstein’s freedom,

and for the next few days he brooded about the infamous Cornell Curse. Maybe it

was happening all over again. His life had been turned around and made livable

because of the love he felt for Nora and for this impossible damn dog. And now

maybe fate, which had always dealt with him in a supremely hostile manner, would

rip both Nora and the dog away from him.

He knew that fate was only a mythological concept. He did not believe there was

actually a pantheon of malevolent gods looking down on him through a celestial

keyhole and plotting tragedies for him to endure—yet he could not help looking

warily at the sky now and then. Each time he said something even slightly

optimistic about the future, he found himself knocking on wood to counter

malicious fates. At dinner, when he toppled the salt shaker, he immediately

picked up a pinch of the stuff to throw it over his shoulder, then felt foolish

and dusted it off his fingers. But his heart began to pound, and he was filled

with a ridiculous superstitious dread, and he didn’t feel right again until he

snatched up more salt and tossed it behind him.

Although Nora was surely aware of Travis’s eccentric behavior, she had the good

grace to say nothing about his jitters. Instead, she countered his mood by

quietly loving him every minute of the day, by speaking with great delight about

their trip to Vegas, by being in unrelieved good humor, and by not knocking on

wood.

She did not know about his nightmares because he did not tell her about them. It

was the same bad dream, in fact, two nights in a row.

In the dream, he was wandering in the wooded canyons of the Santa Ana foothills

of Orange County, the same woods in which he had first met Einstein. He had gone

there with Einstein again, and with Nora, but now he had lost them. Frightened

for them, he plunged down steep slopes, scrambled up hills, struggled through

clinging brush, calling frantically for Nora, for the dog. Sometimes he heard

Nora answering or Einstein barking, and they sounded as if they were in trouble,

so he turned in the direction from which their voices came, but each time he

heard them they were farther off and in a different place, and no matter how

intently he listened or how fast he made his way through the forest, he was

losing them, losing them—

—until he woke, breathless, heart racing, a silent scream caught in his throat.

Friday, August 6, was such a blessedly busy day that Travis had little time to

worry about hostile fate. First thing in the morning, he telephoned a wedding

chapel in Las Vegas and, using his American Express number, made arrangements

for a ceremony on Wednesday, August 11, at eleven o’clock. Overcome by a

romantic fever, he told the chapel manager that he wanted

twenty dozen red roses, twenty dozen white carnations, a good organist (no damn

taped music) who could play traditional music, so many candles that the altar

would be bright without harsh electric light, a bottle of Dom Perignon with

which to conclude events, and a first-rate photographer to record the nuptials.

When those details had been agreed upon, he telephoned the Circus Circus Hotel

in Las Vegas, which was a family-oriented enterprise that boasted a

recreational-vehicle campgrounds behind the hotel itself; he arranged for camp

space beginning the night of Sunday, August 8. With another call to an RV

campgrounds in Barstow, he also secured reservations for Saturday night, when

they would pull off the road halfway to Vegas. Next, he went to a jewelry store,

looked at their entire stock, and finally bought an engagement ring with a big,

flawless three-carat diamond and a wedding band with twelve quarter-carat

stones. With the rings hidden under the seat of the truck, Travis and Einstein

went to Nora’s house, picked her up, and took her to an appointment with her

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