Demon Child by Dean Koontz Page A

huffing and puffing, cursing the number of steps from one floor of the Brucker mansion to another.
        “People must have been healthier in the previous century,” he said, his face scarlet as he dropped his bag on a chair beside Jenny's bed. “You'd have to have the constitution of an ox to go up and down those stairs every day of the week!”
        He was such a comical character-perhaps intentionally-that he helped to take Jenny's mind off the dark and unexplainable affairs of the household. His tie was askew, his shirt collar slightly open.
        She said, “Maybe people in the last century didn't ride everywhere in a car and didn't drink too many martinis or eat too many high calorie foods. Did they have potato chips back then, for instance?”
        Malmont looked down at his bulging paunch, then up at Jenny with mock consternation on his face. “Young lady, are you inferring that I have not kept myself physically fit?”
        “Oh, no!” Jenny said, exaggerating her response.
        Malmont shrugged. “Well, perhaps I haven't followed my advice to the letter. But I make certain my patient's do!”
        He took her temperature, blood pressure. He checked the size of her pupils, listened to her heart, took her pulse. He was swift and economical in his movements, handling the instruments of his profession as if they were somehow outgrowths of his own body.
        “Perhaps a little shock,” he said. “But you're fine. My recommendations are a big, hot meal for supper, a little earlier than is the Brucker norm. Have it in bed. Will that be too much of an inconvenience, Anna?”
        The cook looked up, surprised that she had been addressed. “No trouble at all, doctor.”
        “Fine. Then, some light television or light reading. No melodrama. And early to bed after two of these.” He took a small bottle of sleeping capsules from his case.
        “Do I have to take pills?” Jenny asked.
        “You're too old to be stubborn,” he said, writing the directions on the white packet.
        “I don't want to sleep,” she said. “I'll have all sorts of terrible nightmares. I know I will!”
        “Not with these,” Malmont said. “They put you so far under that you wouldn't wake up for the end of the world.”
        She didn't argue any further. As long as she didn't dream, she preferred sleep to being awake. Awake, she had too much time to think…
        When Malmont left, Cora went with him.
        That afternoon, Jenny and Anna played 500 rummy, at Anna's insistence, to help to pass the time. The old woman was clever enough to build a rivalry between them for the best of three games. Jenny saw what she was doing, how she was trying to divert her young charge's mind from uglier things, but she didn't mind. If Anna could divert her, that was fine. Heaven knew, she didn't want to continually think of Hollycross, her parents, her grandmother, and of things that howled and crept about after dark.
        She was left alone while Anna went to prepare an early supper, but she filled the two hours with an old comedy that was playing on the late afternoon movie. She supposed it was a senseless and time-wasting film, but it distracted her.
        Anna brought a tray around six, lavishly set with a number of dishes and two thick slices of a cream-filled chocolate cake for dessert. Watching news, she ate everything that had been put before her. She had not thought she could take a bite, but it seemed that her fear and the day's excitement had taken more out of her than she had thought.
        It was shortly before seven o'clock when she heard Richard and Cora arguing. She used her remote control to turn down the volume on the television set, listened closely. She could not make out many individual words, but she could gather the general drift of the fight. Richard was pressing, harder than ever, for a psychiatrist for Freya. Cora was resisting.
        Twice, she could make out loud,