Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz Page B

about to receive a double-shot chaser, and I needed to get a grip, stay sober, steady.
    To the east, the leaded windows were now full of night—except for the lazy eight embedded in the center of each. Those copper figures glowed without transmitting their luminescence through the dark glass, and I didn’t think their brightness was just a reflection of the red—and increasingly sullen—light that burned through the western windows opposite them.
    Following Kenny’s hasty exit, a hush at first lay over the stable, but suddenly I heard something bumping softly outside, against the western wall. More than one thing. Several. At various points along that flank of the building.
    A figure rose at a reddened window, but it was without detail, silhouetted against the drowning sun. I had an impression of a head, a flailing arm, a grasping hand.
    At first I assumed that it was a man. Although head and arm and hand were misshapen, the extreme angle of the sun and imperfections in the thick glass might have been the cause of the distortions.
    As the scarlet sunset purpled, shadows loomed at other windows, less distinct, more deformed, perhaps half a dozen individuals. By the second, I was less inclined to believe that those knocking and scraping their way along the wall of the stable were human.
    For one thing, they seemed not to care about the noise they made, yet no voices were raised. Even with the intention to be quiet, human beings seldom can restrain from comment or at least grumbled cursing; we are the chattering species, as much as we are anything else.
    Furthermore, those at the wall were not testing its sturdiness or announcing their arrival. They were fumbling their way along it, no doubt seeking a door, but not as ordinary men would seek it. The descending night did not fully reign. The land was light enough for a man to find his way. Their halting, thumping progress suggested that, if people, they were blind or lame, or both.
    I couldn’t believe that a legion of the disabled had crossed the fields of Roseland to explore the stable or to confront me—for what reason?—as I huddled in it.
    Whatever creatures threw their twisted shadows on the windows and knocked their limbs against the walls, I preferred not to meet them. And whatever they might want from me, I was not prepared to give it.
    The first of them turned the corner and found the north door, by which Kenny had recently fled. It beat upon the bronze, not as if knocking politely for admission but as if determining the nature of the barrier. In addition to the pounding, there were questing sounds in the area of the door handle.
    Wondering for the first time how Kenny had gotten those facial scars, I hurried from the middle of the stable toward the south door.
    I didn’t want to risk making my way through this goblin night to the stone tower in the eucalyptus grove. I was even less charmed, however, by the prospect of remaining here for whatever hoedown these visitors had planned.
    As I approached the south door, that great bronze panel rang with the blows of something seeking entrance. Being a mere fry cook and seer of ghosts, lacking the talent to teleport, I now had no way out.
    To my left, the tack room couldn’t be locked. It contained no furniture these days, and therefore the door couldn’t be barricaded.
    The ten empty stalls behind me offered no hope of concealment.
    Beyond a door to my right lay the feed room, which was about twelve feet on a side. Because it had no windows, it was now as black as any dungeon.
    I had seen the feed room on a previous visit. I knew that along the right-hand wall were empty shelves, and opposite them stood two five-foot-long bins, each about four and a half feet deep and four feet back to front.
    The bin nearest the door had three lids on top, hinged at the back, and was divided into three compartments. Unless I dismembered and distributed myself, I wouldn’t fit.
    The second had two lids but was one big compartment.