The Eyes of Darkness by Dean Koontz

Posted by admin_akashic on Aug 7th, 2022 in Stories

hard—and I loved every minute of it! God willing, I’m going to do it again. And again and again. I’m going to produce shows that’ll make Magyck! look amateurish by comparison. Some day I may also be a mother again. And I’ll be a damn good mother too. A good mother and a good producer. I have the intelligence and the talent to be more than just one thing. And I certainly can be more than just your trinket and your housekeeper.” “Now, wait a minute,” he said, beginning to get angry. “Wait just a damn minute. You don’t—”

She interrupted him. For years she had been filled with hurt and bitterness. She had never vented any of her black anger because, initially, she’d wanted to hide it from Danny; she hadn’t wanted to turn him against his father. Later, after Danny was dead, she’d repressed her feelings because she’d known that Michael had been truly suffering from the loss of his child, and she hadn’t wanted to add to his misery. But now she vented some of the acid that had been eating at her for so long, cutting him off in midsentence.

“You were wrong to think I’d come crawling back. Why on earth would I? What do you have to give me that I can’t get elsewhere? You’ve never been much of a giver anyway, Michael. You only give when you’re sure of getting back twice as much. You’re basically a taker. And before you give me any more of that treacly talk about your great love of family, let me remind you that it wasn’t me who tore our family apart. It wasn’t me who jumped from bed to bed.”

“Now, wait—”

“You were the one who started fucking anything that breathed, and then you flaunted each cheap little affair to hurt me. It was you who didn’t come home at night. It was you who went away for weekends with your girlfriends. And those bed-hopping weekends broke my heart, Michael, broke my heart—which is what you hoped to do, so that was all right with you. But did you ever stop to realize what effect your absences had on Danny? If you loved family life so much, why didn’t you spend all those weekends with your son?”

His face was flushed, and there was a familiar meanness in his eyes. “So I’m not a giver, huh? Then who gave you the house you’re living in? Huh? Who was it had to move into an apartment when we separated, and who was it kept the house?”

He was trying desperately to deflect her and change the course of the argument. She could see what he was up to, and she was not going to be distracted from her main intention.

She said, “Don’t be pathetic, Michael. You know damn well the down payment for the house came out of my earnings. You always spent your money on fast cars, good clothes. I paid every loan installment. You know that. And I never asked for alimony. Anyway, all of that’s beside the point. We were talking about family life, about Danny.”

“Now, you listen to me—”

“No. It’s your turn to listen. After all these years it’s finally your turn to listen. If you know how. You could have taken Danny away for the weekend if you didn’t want to be near me. You could have gone camping with him. You could have taken him down to Disneyland for a couple days. Or to the Colorado River to do some fishing. But you were too busy using all those women to hurt me and to prove to yourself what a stud you were. You could have enjoyed that time with your son. He missed you. You could have had that precious time with him. But you didn’t want it. And as it turned out, Danny didn’t have much time left.”

Michael was milk-white, trembling. His eyes were dark with rage. “You’re the same goddamn bitch you always were.”

She sighed and sagged. She was exhausted. Finished telling him off, she felt pleasantly wrung out, as if some evil, nervous energy had been drained from her.

“You’re the same ball-breaking bitch,” Michael said.

“I don’t want to fight with you, Michael. I’m even sorry if some of what I said about Danny hurt you, although, God knows, you deserve to hear it. I don’t really want to hurt you. Oddly enough, I don’t really hate you anymore. I don’t feel anything for you. Not anything at all.”

Turning away, she left him in the sunshine, with the ice cream melting down the cone and onto his hand.

She walked back through the shopping arcade, rode the escalator up to the casino, and made her way through the noisy crowd to the front doors. One of the valet-parking attendants brought her car, and she drove down the hotel’s steeply slanted exit drive.

She headed toward the Golden Pyramid, where she had an office, and where work was waiting to be done.

After she had driven only a block, she was forced to pull to the side of the road. She couldn’t see where she was going, because hot tears streamed down her face. She put the car in park. Surprising herself, she sobbed loudly.

At first she wasn’t sure what she was crying about. She just surrendered to the racking grief that swept through her and did not question it.

After a while she decided that she was crying for Danny. Poor, sweet Danny. He’d hardly begun to live. It wasn’t fair. And she was crying for herself too, and for Michael. She was crying for all the things that might have been, and for what could never be again.

In a few minutes she got control of herself. She dried her eyes and blew her nose.

She had to stop being so gloomy. She’d had enough gloom in her life. A whole hell of a lot of gloom.

“Think positive,” she said aloud. “Maybe the past wasn’t so great, but the future seems pretty damn good.”

She inspected her face in the rearview mirror to see how much damage the crying jag had done. She looked better than she expected. Her eyes were red, but she wouldn’t pass for Dracula. She opened her purse, found her makeup, and covered the tear stains as best she could.

She pulled the Honda back into traffic and headed for the Pyramid again.

A block farther, as she waited at a red light, she realized that she still had a mystery on her hands. She was positive that Michael had not done the damage in Danny’s bedroom. But then, who had done it? No one else had a key. Only a skilled burglar could have broken in without leaving a trace. And why would a first-rate burglar leave without taking anything? Why break in merely to write on Danny’s chalkboard and to wreck the dead boy’s things?

Weird.

When she had suspected Michael of doing the dirty work, she had been disturbed and distressed, but she hadn’t been frightened. If some stranger wanted her to feel more pain over the loss of her child, however, that was definitely unsettling. That was scary because it didn’t make sense. A stranger? It must be. Michael was the only person who had ever blamed her for Danny’s death. Not one other relative c acquaintance had ever suggested