The Eyes of Darkness by Dean Koontz

Posted by admin_akashic on Aug 7th, 2022 in Stories

miniature bottles of enamel in every color, and a variety of model-crafting tools stood in soldierly ranks on one half of the desk, and the other half was bare, waiting for him to begin work. Nine model airplanes filled a display case, and three others hung on wires from the ceiling. The walls were decorated with evenly spaced posters—three baseball stars, five hideous monsters from horror movies—that Danny had carefully arranged.

Unlike many boys his age, he’d been concerned about orderliness and cleanliness. Respecting his preference for neatness, Tina had instructed Mrs. Neddler, the cleaning lady who came in twice a week, to vacuum and dust his unused bedroom as if nothing had happened to him. The place was as spotless as ever.

Gazing at the dead boy’s toys and pathetic treasures, Tina realized, not for the first time, that it wasn’t healthy for her to maintain this place as if it were a museum. Or a shrine. As long as she left his things undisturbed, she could continue to entertain the hope that Danny was not dead, that he was just away somewhere for a while, and that he would shortly pick up his life where he had left off. Her inability to clean out his room suddenly frightened her; for the first time it seemed like more than just a weakness of spirit but an indication of serious mental illness. She had to let the dead rest in peace. If she was ever to stop dreaming about the boy, if she were to get control of her grief, she must begin her recovery here, in this room, by conquering her irrational need to preserve his possessions in situ.

She resolved to clean this place out on Thursday, New Year’s Day. Both the VIP premiere and the opening night of Magyck! would be behind her by then. She’d be able to relax and take a few days off. She would start by spending Thursday afternoon here, boxing the clothes and toys and posters.

As soon as she made that decision, most of her nervous energy dissipated. She sagged, limp and weary and ready to return to bed.

As she started toward the door, she caught sight of the easel, stopped, and turned. Danny had liked to draw, and the easel, complete with a box of pencils and pens and paints, had been a birthday gift when he was nine. It was an easel on one side and a chalkboard on the other. Danny had left it at the far end of the room, beyond the bed, against the wall, and that was where it had stood the last time that Tina had been here. But now it lay at an angle, the base against the wall, the easel itself slanted, chalkboard-down, across a game table. An Electronic Battleship game had stood on that table, as Danny had left it, ready for play, but the easel had toppled into it and knocked it to the floor.

Apparently, that was the noise she had heard. But she couldn’t imagine what had knocked the easel over. It couldn’t have fallen by itself.

She put her gun down, went around the foot of the bed, and stood the easel on its legs, as it belonged. She stooped, retrieved the pieces of the Electronic Battleship game, and returned them to the table.

When she picked up the scattered sticks of chalk and the felt eraser, turning again to the chalkboard, she realized that two words were crudely printed on the black surface:

NOT DEAD

She scowled at the message.

She was positive that nothing had been written on the board when Danny had gone away on that scouting trip. And it had been blank the last time she’d been in this room.

Belatedly, as she pressed her fingertips to the words on the chalkboard, the possible meaning of them struck her. As a sponge soaked up water, she took a chill from the surface of the slate. Not dead. It was a denial of Danny’s death. An angry refusal to accept the awful truth. A challenge to reality.

In one of her terrible seizures of grief, in a moment of crazy dark despair, had she come into this room and unknowingly printed those words on Danny’s chalkboard?

She didn’t remember doing it. If she had left this message, she must be having blackouts, temporary amnesia of which she was totally unaware. Or she was walking in her sleep. Either possibility was unacceptable.

Dear God, unthinkable.

Therefore, the words must have been here all along. Danny must have left them before he died. His printing was neat, like everything else about him, not sloppy like this scrawled message. Nevertheless, he must have done it. Must have.

And the obvious reference that those two words made to the bus accident in which he had perished?

Coincidence. Danny, of course, had been writing about something else, and the dark interpretation that could be drawn from those two words now, after his death, was just a macabre coincidence.

She refused to consider any other possibility because the alternatives were too frightening.

She hugged herself. Her hands were icy; they chilled her sides even through her nightgown.

Shivering, she thoroughly erased the words on the chalkboard, retrieved her handgun, and left the room, pulling the door shut behind her.

She was wide awake, but she had to get some sleep. There was so much to do in the morning. Big day.

In the kitchen, she withdrew a bottle of Wild Turkey from the cupboard by the sink. It was Michael’s favorite bourbon. She poured two ounces into a water glass. Although she wasn’t much of a drinker, indulging in nothing more than a glass of wine now and then, with no capacity whatsoever for hard liquor, she finished the bourbon in two swallows. Grimacing at the bitterness of the spirits, wondering why Michael had extolled this brand’s smoothness, she hesitated, then poured another ounce. She finished it quickly, as though she were a child taking medicine, and then put the bottle away.

In bed again she snuggled in the covers and closed her eyes and tried not to think about the chalkboard. But an image of it appeared behind her eyes. When she couldn’t banish that image, she attempted to alter it, mentally wiping the words away. But in her mind’s eye, the seven letters reappeared on the chalkboard: NOT DEAD. Although she repeatedly erased them, they stubbornly returned. She grew dizzy from the bourbon and finally slipped into welcome oblivion.