The Servants of Twilight by Dean Koontz

much-needed sense of security—as it did now, once again.
    The phone rang and rang.
    When Joey had come into her life, especially when he had begun to walk, she’d been afraid that, in his ceaseless curiosity, he would find the weapon and play with it. Protection against burglars had to be weighed against the more likely—and more frightening—possibility that Joey would hurt himself. She had unloaded the gun, had put the empty magazine in a dresser drawer, and had buried the gun itself beneath the sweaters in the highboy, and fortunately had never needed it since then.
    Until now.
    The shrill ringing of the telephone became louder and more irritating by the moment.
    Pistol in hand, Christine went to the dresser and located the empty magazine. She hurried to the closet where she kept a box of ammunition on the top shelf, all the way at the back. With trembling and clumsy fingers, she pushed cartridges into the magazine until it was full, then slapped it into the butt of the pistol hard enough to lock it in place.
    Joey watched in wide-eyed fascination.
    At last the telephone stopped ringing.
    The sudden silence had the force of a blow. It briefly stunned Christine.
    Joey was the first to speak. Still chewing on a thumbnail, he said, “Was it the witch on the phone?”
    There was no point in hiding it from him and no point in telling him the old woman wasn’t really a witch. “Yeah. It was her.”
    “Mommy . . . I’m scared.”
    For the past several months, ever since he had overcome his fear of the imaginary white snake that had disturbed his sleep, he had called her “Mom” instead of “Mommy” because he was trying to be more grown-up. His reversion to “Mommy” was an indication of just how badly frightened he was.
    “It’ll be all right. I’m not going to let anything happen to . . . either of us. If we’re just careful, we’ll be okay.”
    She kept expecting to hear a knock at the door or see a face at the window. Where had the old woman been calling from? How long would it take her to get here now that the cops were gone, now that she had a clear shot at Joey?
    “What’re we gonna do?” he asked.
    She put the loaded gun on top of the six-drawer highboy and dragged two suitcases from the back of the closet. “I’m going to pack a bag for each of us and then we’re getting out of here.”
    “Where’re we going?”
    She threw one of the suitcases onto her bed and opened it. “I don’t know for sure, sweetheart. Anywhere. To a hotel, probably. We’ll go someplace where that crazy old hag won’t be able to find us no matter how hard she looks.”
    “Then what?”
    As she folded clothes into the open suitcase, she said, “Then we’ll find someone who can help us . . . really help us.”
    “Not like the cops?”
    “Not like the cops.”
    “Who?”
    “I’m not sure. Maybe . . . a private detective.”
    “Like Magnum on TV?”
    “Maybe not exactly like Magnum,” Christine said.
    “Like who, then?”
    “We need a big firm that can provide us with bodyguards and everything while they’re tracking down that old woman. A first-rate organization.”
    “Like in them old movies?”
    “What old movies are those?”
    “You know. Where they’re in real bad trouble, and they say, ‘We’ll hire Pinkelton.’”
    “Pinkerton,” she corrected. “Yeah. Something like Pinkerton. I can afford to hire people like that and, by God, I’m going to hire them. We’re not just going to be a couple of sitting ducks the way the cops would have us.”
    “I’d feel a whole bunch safer if we just went and hired Magnum,” Joey said.
    She didn’t have time to explain to a six-year-old that Magnum wasn’t a real private eye. She said, “Well, maybe you’re right. Maybe we will hire Magnum.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Yeah.”
    “He’ll do a good job,” Joey said soberly. “He always does.”
    At her direction, Joey took the empty suitcase and headed toward his room. She followed, carrying the suitcase