The Moonlit Mind (Novella): A Tale of Suspense by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online

in soft prismatic patterns.
    Crossing the threshold, he quietly closes the door behind him. He hurries north along the hallway, past the sewing room.
    Mirabell’s bedroom is on the west side of the hall, adjacent to Clarette and Giles’s suite. Crispin listens at the door, but he hears nothing.
    After a hesitation, he raps softly, waits, and raps again. When Mirabell does not reply, Crispin tries the door, finds it unlocked, and warily enters her room.
    The bedside lamps burn at the lowest setting, but they are just bright enough for him to see that Mirabell is not here and that he is alone.
    If his sister endured her migraine in bed, the bed has since been made. The quilted spread is smooth, taut.
    From under the door to her bathroom, a yellow light beckons like the light in dreams that promises some revelation a moment before the sleeper wakes in darkness.
    No sounds come from within.
    Crispin whispers his sister’s name, waits, whispers it somewhat louder, but receives no response.
    Easing the bathroom door inward, he enters a wilderness of white candles in clear glass containers. They line the deep windowsill, are clustered here and there on the marble bathtub surround, stand on the floor in every corner in groups of three, and flicker on the sink and vanity counters, where opposing mirrors clone and reclone them into a receding forest of burning tapers.
    The quivering flames, sensitive to the slightest movement of the air, produce faint, trembling shadows that wriggle up the walls like ghost lizards.
    She must have been bathed here hours earlier. The tub is dry. The wet towels have been removed.
    Stuck to the white bathtub, however, are six scarlet rose petals.
    On the floor beside the tub gleam two silver bowls with beaded rims. He picks up one and sees words in a foreign language engraved all around the exterior.
    In the bottom of the bowl shimmers no more than a tablespoon of clear liquid, which he supposes is
aqua pura
. He dips a finger, raises it to his lips, and licks away the single drop.
    The liquid has no taste, although the instant that it wets his tongue, he hears his sister’s whispered yet urgent plea,
“Crispin, help me!”
    Startled, he lets the bowl slip from his fingers. He catches it before it can ring off the marble floor.
    He turns, but Mirabell is neither in the bath nor in the room beyond. If she spoke the words, she did so at a distance, and he heard them not with his ears but with his heart.
    After carefully setting the silver bowl on the floor, he returns to his sister’s bedroom, where for the first time he notices that her teddy bears and other plush toys are gone. Mirabell must have had two dozen of them on the bed, the armchair, and the window seat. Not one remains.
    The shelves that once held her collection of picture books are empty.
    On her nightstand, where her Mickey Mouse clock once glowed with green numbers, there is nothing to tell the time.
    On a hunch, Crispin yanks open the door to her walk-in closet and switches on the light. Nothing hangs on the rods, and the shoe shelves do not contain a single pair.

7
     
    Early December, three years and four months later …
    Since the close call on the recent Halloween night, Crispin and faithful Harley have been less bold, traveling more by greenbelts, alleyways, and storm drains than by the main streets.
    Entirely separate from the sewer system, the massive drains are not dangerous in dry weather. They are secret highways, shadowing the avenues and byways above them.
    Occasionally he encounters a rat or a pack of them, but they always run from him. City employees can reliably be spotted far in advance because of their work lights, and can be avoided by taking a branch different from the pipe in which they’re doing maintenance.
    Initially, the boy and his dog were limited to entering and exiting the storm-drain system by way of open culverts that sloped up from ditches and streambeds to join that subterranean network. Manholes and