77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online Page B

largest units in the building. She knocked on his door, and he told her to come in, and when she crossed the threshold, she found him in the armchair, legs tucked under himself, three books in his lap.
    He was luminous, at least to her, although she thought not only to her, because she had often seen people staring at him as if his appearance compelled their attention. He had her dark hair—almost black—and his father’s blue eyes, but his looks were not the essence of his appeal. In spite of his shyness and reserve, he possessed some ineffable quality that endeared him to people on first encounter. If a boy so young could be said to have charisma, Winny was charismatic, though he seemed to be oblivious of it.
    “Honey, are you okay?” she asked.
    “Sure. I’m all right. Are you okay?”
    “What was that shaking?” she wondered.
    “You don’t know? I figured you’d know.”
    “I don’t think it was an earthquake.”
    He said, “Maybe something blew up in the basement.”
    “No. That would have set off an alarm.”
    “It happened before.”
    “When?”
    “Earlier but not as bad. Maybe someone’s blasting somewhere. Some construction guys or someone.”
    His bedroom had a twelve-foot-high coffered ceiling with an ornate gilded-plaster medallion in each coffer and exquisite panels of wainscoting with a gilded ground overpainted with a Japanese-style scene of dragonflies and bamboo, original to the Pendleton.
    This almost daunting elegance was balanced by Winny’s toys and books, but Twyla wondered—and not for the first time—if she had made a mistake when she bought the apartment, if this was a suitable environment for a child. This was a safe building in a safe city, a privileged ambiance in which to grow up. But there weren’t many kids in the Pendleton, therefore few opportunities to have playmates. Winny had no interest in playmates; he always seemed to keep himself entertained. If he were to overcome his shyness, however, he needed to be around other kids his age, not just at school, but also playing and having fun.
    Sitting on the footstool in front of her son’s armchair, Twyla said, “Honey, do you like it here in the Pendleton?”
    “I don’t want to live in Nashville or L.A.,” he said at once.
    “No, no,” she said. “That’s not what I mean. I don’t want to live in those places, either. I mean, maybe we could get a house in a regular neighborhood, not so fancy as this, a house with a yard, maybe near a park or something, where there’s lots of other kids. We could get a dog.”
    “We could get a dog right here,” Winny said.
    “Yes, we could, but it’s not as easy to take care of in the city as it would be in a suburb. Dogs like to have room to run.”
    He frowned. “Anyway, you can’t just go and live in a regular neighborhood ’cause of who you are.”
    “Who I am? I’m just me, just someone who writes songs. I’m nobody special.”
    “You’ve been on TV sometimes. You even sang on TV that time. You sang really good.”
    “I grew up in a regular neighborhood, you know. In fact it was a kind of shabby regular neighborhood.”
    “Anyway, I don’t much like parks. I always get some itchy rash or something. You know how I get that rash. Or I can’t stop sneezing ’cause of the flowers and trees and all. Maybe it’s fun to go to a park in winter, you know, when everything’s all dead and frozen and covered in snow, but it’s not so great most of the year.”
    She smiled. “So a park—that’s like a little piece of Hell right here on earth, huh?”
    “I don’t know what Hell’s like, except probably hot. It must be worse than the park, since it’s the worst place ever. Let’s stay where we are.”
    She loved Winny so much that she wanted to shout it out. She could hardly contain so much love. “I want you to be happy, kiddo.”
    “I’m happy. Are you happy?”
    “I’m happy with you,” she said. He was in his stocking feet. She took hold of his right