Free Midnight by Dean Koontz Page A

kind of language when you're talking to me," Sam said, realizing that he was being forced into a confrontation against his will.
    "So sorry. Same old poop ," Scott said in such a way that he might have been referring either to the day at school or to Sam.
    "It's pretty country up here," Sam said.
    The boy did not reply.
    "Wooded hillsides slope right down to the ocean."
    "So?"
    Following the advice of the family counselor whom he and Scott had been seeing both together and separately, Sam clenched his teeth, counted to three again, and tried another approach. "Did you have dinner yet?"
    "Yeah."
    "Do your homework?"
    "Don't have any."
    Sam hesitated, then decided to let it pass. The counselor, Dr. Adamski, would have been proud of such tolerance and cool self-control.
    Beyond the phone booth, the Shell station's lights acquired multiple halos, and the town faded into the slowly congealing mist. At last Sam said, "What're you doing this evening?"
    "I was listening to music."
    Sometimes it seemed to Sam that the music was part of what had turned the boy sour. That pounding, frenetic, unmelodic heavy-metal rock was a collection of monotonous chords and even more monotonous atonal rims, so soul-less and mind-numbing that it might have been the music produced by a civilization of intelligent machines long after man had passed from the face of the earth. After a while Scott had lost interest in most heavy-metal bands and switched allegiance to U2, but their simplistic social consciousness was no match for nihilism. Soon he grew interested in heavy-metal again, but the second time around he focused on black metal, those bands espousing—or using dramatic trappings of—satanism; he became increasingly self-involved, antisocial, and somber. On more than one occasion, Sam had considered confiscating the kid's record collection, smashing it to bits, and disposing of it, but that seemed an absurd overreaction. After all, Sam himself had been sixteen when the Beatles and Rolling Stones were coming on the scene, and his parents had railed against that music and predicted it would lead Sam and his entire generation into perdition. He'd turned out all right in spite of John, Paul, George, Ringo, and the Stones. He was the product of an unparalleled age of tolerance, and he did not want his mind to close up as tight as his parents' minds had been.
    "Well, I guess I better go," Sam said.
    The boy was silent.
    "If any unexpected problems come up, you call your Aunt Edna."
    "There's nothing she could do for me that I couldn't do myself."
    "She loves you, Scott."
    "Yeah, sure."
    "She's your mother's sister; she'd like to love you as if you were her own. All you have to do is give her the chance." After more silence, Sam took a deep breath and said, "I love you, too, Scott"
    "Yeah? What's that supposed to do—turn me all gooey inside?"
    "No."
    "'Cause it doesn't."
    "I was just stating a fact."
    Apparently quoting from one of his favorite songs, the boy said:
    "Nothing lasts forever;
even love's a lie,
a tool for manipulation;
there's no God beyond the sky."
    Click.
    Sam stood for a moment, listening to the the dial tone. "Perfect." He returned the receiver to its cradle.
    His frustration was exceeded only by his fury. He wanted to kick the shit out of something, anything, and pretend that he was savaging whoever or whatever had stolen his son from him.
    He also had an empty, achy feeling in the pit of his stomach, because he did love Scott. The boy's alienation was devastating.
    He knew he could not go back to the motel yet. He was not ready to sleep, and the prospect of spending a couple of hours in front of the idiot box, watching mindless sitcoms and dramas, was intolerable.
    When he opened the phone-booth door, tendrils of fog slipped inside and seemed to pull him out into the night. For an hour he walked the streets of Moonlight Cove, deep into the residential neighborhoods, where there were no streetlamps and where trees and houses seemed