Twilight Eyes by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online Page B

far different from the more rational talents of my siblings and parents. In me the genetic serendipity of Cynthia and Kurt Stanfeuss was not mere magic but almost sorcery.
    According to my Grandmother Stanfeuss, who possesses a treasure of arcane folk wisdom, I have Twilight Eyes. They are the very color of twilight, an odd shade that is more purple than blue, with a particular clarity and a trick of refracting light in such a way that they appear slightly luminous and strange and (I am told) unusually beautiful. Grandma says that not even one in half a million people have such eyes, and I must admit I have never seen others like mine. Upon first seeing me, blanket-wrapped in my mother’s arms, Grandma told my folks that Twilight Eyes in a newborn baby were a harbinger of psychic ability; if they did not change color by the child’s second birthday (as mine did not), then—according to Grandma—folk tales have it that the psychic ability will be unusually strong and manifested in a variety of ways.
    Grandma was right.
    And as I thought of Grandma’s softly seamed and gentle face, as I pictured her own warm and loving eyes (sea-green), I found not peace but at least a state of truce. Sleep stole to me in the armistice like an army nurse bringing anesthetics across a temporarily silenced battleground.
    My dreams were of goblins. They frequently are.
    In the last dream of several, my Uncle Denton screamed at me as I wielded the ax: No! I’m not a goblin! I’m just like you, Carl. What are you talking about? Are you mad? There aren’t goblins. No such thing. You’re crazy, Carl. Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Insane! You’re insane! Insane! In real life he had not screamed, had not denied my accusations. In real life our battle had been grim and bitterly waged. But three hours after sleep claimed me, I woke with Denton’s voice still echoing at me from out of the dream— Insane! You’re insane, Carl! Oh, my God, you’re insane! —and I was shaking, sweat-drenched, disoriented, and feverish with doubt.
    Gasping, whimpering, I stumbled to the nearest sink, turned on the cold water, and splashed my face. The lingering images of the dream receded, faded, vanished.
    Reluctantly I raised my head and looked in the mirror. Sometimes I have difficulty confronting the reflection of my own strange eyes because I am afraid I will see madness in them. This was one of those times.
    I could not rule out the possibility, however remote, that the goblins were nothing more than phantoms of my tortured imagination. God knows, I wanted to rule it out, to be unshaken in my convictions, but the possibility of delusion and insanity remained, periodically draining me of will and purpose as surely as a leech steals vital blood.
    Now I stared into my own anguished eyes, and they were so unusual that the reflection of them was not flat and two-dimensional, as it would have been with any other man’s eyes; the mirror image seemed to have as much depth and reality and power as the real eyes. I probed my own gaze honestly and relentlessly, but I could see no trace of lunacy.
    I told myself that my ability to see through the goblins’ disguises was as unquestionable as my other psychic talents. I knew my other powers were real and reliable, for numerous people had benefited from my clairvoyance and had been astonished by it. My Grandmother Stanfeuss called me “the little seer,” because I could sometimes see the future and sometimes see moments in other people’s pasts. And, damn it, I could see goblins, too, and the fact that I was the only one who saw them was no reason to distrust my vision.
    But doubt remained.
    â€œSomeday,” I said to my somber reflection in the yellowed mirror, “that doubt will surface at the wrong moment. It’ll overwhelm you when you’re fighting for your life with a goblin. Then it will be the death of you.”

chapter five
    FREAKS
    Three