WATCHERS by Dean R. Koontz

of quicksilver along the well-honed cutting edge.

As she turned the gleaming knife in her hand, she saw her eyes reflected in the

broad, flat blade. She stared at herself in the polished steel, wondering if she

could possibly use such a horrible weapon against another human being even in

self-defense.

She hoped she would never have to find out.

Upstairs again, she put the butcher’s knife on the nightstand, within easy

reach.

She took off her robe and sat on the edge of the bed, hugging herself and trying

to stop shaking.

“Why me?” she said aloud. “Why does he want to pick on me?”

Streck said that she was pretty, but Nora knew it was not true. Her own mother

had abandoned her to Aunt Violet and had returned only twice in twenty-eight

years, the last time when Nora was six. Her father remained unknown to her, and

no other Devon relatives were willing to take her in, a situation which Violet

frankly attributed to Nora’s uncomely appearance. So although Streck said she

was pretty, it could not possibly be her that he wanted. No, what he wanted was

the thrill of scaring and dominating and hurting her. There were such people.

She read about them in books, newspapers. And Aunt Violet had warned her a

thousand times that if a man ever came on to her with sweet talk and smiles, he

would only want to lift her up so he could later cast her down from a greater

height and hurt her all the Worse.

After a while, the worst of the tremors passed. Nora got into bed again. Her

remaining ice cream had melted, so she put the dish aside, on the nightstand.

She picked up the novel by Dickens and tried to involve herself once more with

Pip’s tale. But her attention repeatedly strayed to the phone, to the butcher’s

knife—and to the open door and the second-floor hail beyond, Where she kept

imagining she saw movement.

3

Travis went into the kitchen, and the dog followed him.

He pointed to the refrigerator and said, “Show me. Do it again. Get me a beer.

Show me how you did it.”

The dog did not move.

Travis squatted. “Listen, fur face, who got you out of those woods, away from

whatever was chasing you? I did. And who bought hamburgers for you? I did. I

bathed you, fed you, gave you a home. Now you owe me. Stop being coy. If you can

open that thing, do it!”

The dog went to the aging Frigidaire, lowered its head to the bottom corner of

the enamel-coated door, gripped the edge in its jaws, and pulled backward,

straining with its entire body. The rubber seal let loose with a barely audible

sucking sound. The door swung open. The dog quickly insinuated itself into the

gap, then jumped up and braced itself with a forepaw on each side of the storage

compartment.

“I’ll be damned,” Travis said, moving closer.

The retriever peered into the second shelf, where Travis had stored cans of

beer, Diet Pepsi, and V-8 vegetable juice. It plucked another Coors from the

supply, dropped to the floor, and let the refrigerator door slip shut again as

it came to Travis.

He took the beer from it. Standing with a Coors in each hand, studying the dog,

he said, more to himself than to the animal, “Okay, so somebody could have

taught you to open a refrigerator door. And he could even have taught you how to

recognize a certain brand of beer, how to distinguish it from other cans, and

how to carry it to him. But we still have some mysteries here. Is it likely that

the brand you were taught to recognize would be the same one I’d have in my

refrigerator? Possible, yes, but not likely. Besides, I didn’t give you any

command. I didn’t ask you to get me a beer. You did it on your own hook, as if

you figured a beer was exactly what I needed at the moment. And it was.”

Travis put one can down on the table. He wiped the other on his shirt, popped it

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