Free TickTock by Dean Koontz Page B

the desk, and out of sight, moving at least as fast as a rat, although running on its hind feet as if it were a man.
    Tommy went after it, hoping to corner it and jam the muzzle of the Heckler & Koch against its head and squeeze off one-two-three rounds at zero range, smash its brain if, indeed, it had a brain, because maybe that would devastate it as a single bullet in the guts had failed to do.
    When Tommy followed the minikin around the desk, he discovered it at an electrical outlet, looking back and up at him. The creature appeared to be grinning through its mask of rags as it jammed the steel spring into the receptacle.
    Power surged through bare steel—
cracklesnap
—and outside in the fuse box, a breaker tripped, and all the lights went out except for a shower of gold and blue sparks that cascaded over the minikin. Those fireworks lasted only an instant, however, and then darkness claimed the room.

THREE

    Depleted by distance and filtered by trees, the yellowish glow of the streetlamps barely touched the windows. Rain shimmered down the glass, glimmering with a few dull-brass reflections, but none of that light penetrated to the room.
    Tommy was frozen by shock, effectively blind, unable to see anything around him and trying not to see the fearsome images that his imagination conjured in his mind.
    The only sounds were the rataplan of rain on the roof and the moaning of wind in the eaves.
    Undoubtedly the doll-thing was alive. The electricity hadn’t fazed it any more than a .40-caliber bullet in the midsection.
    Tommy clutched the P7 as if it possessed magical power and could protect him from all the known and unknown terrors of the universe, whether physical or spiritual. In fact, the weapon was useless to him in this saturant darkness. He couldn’t stun the minikin with a well-placed shot if he couldn’t see it.
    He supposed that by now it had dropped the twisted piece of steel spring and had turned away from the electrical outlet. It would be facing him in the gloom. Grinning through its mummy rags.
    Maybe he should open fire, squeeze off all nine shots remaining in the magazine, aiming for the general area where the creature had been when the lights went out. He was almost sure to get lucky with one or two rounds out of
nine,
for God’s sake, even if he wasn’t any Chip Nguyen. With the minikin stunned and twitching, Tommy could run into the second-floor hallway, slam the door between them, leap down the stairs two at a time, and get out of the house.
    He didn’t know what the hell he would do after that, where he would go in this rain-swept night, to whom he would turn for help. All he knew was that to have any chance of survival whatsoever, he had to escape from this place.
    He was loath to squeeze the trigger and empty the gun.
    If he didn’t stun the minikin with a blind shot, he would never get to the door. It would catch him, climb his leg and his back with centipede-like quickness, bite the nape of his neck, slip around to his throat, and burrow-for-chew-at-tear-out his carotid artery while he flailed ineffectively—or it would scramble straight over his head, intent upon gouging out his eyes.
    He wasn’t just letting his imagination carry him away this time. He could vividly sense the thing’s intentions, as though on some level he was in psychic contact with it.
    If the attack came after the pistol magazine was empty, Tommy would panic, stumble, crash into furniture, fall. Once he fell, he would never have a chance to get to his feet again.
    Better to conserve ammunition.
    He backed up one step, two, but then he halted, overcome by the awful certainty that the little beast was not, after all, in front of him, where it had been when the lights failed, but behind him. It had circled him as he had dithered; now it was creeping closer.
    Spinning around a hundred and eighty degrees, he thrust the pistol toward the suspected threat.
    He was facing into a portion of the room that was even blacker