Free Odd Hours by Dean Koontz Page A

the plum thorn toward the street.
    Although the vehicle passed less than ten feet away, the dashboard lights were not bright enough to reveal the driver, only a lumpish shadow. I was able, however, to make out the city seal emblazoned on the door. And black letters on an orange background announced MAGIC BEACH/HARBOR DEPARTMENT .
    Fog folded the truck out of sight. Its engine faded to a distant guttural purr.
    Rising to my feet, I breathed fog faintly scented with exhaust fumes. After my third inhalation, the last engine noise whispered away into another neighborhood.
    I wondered what kind of corruption coiled in the heart of the harbor department.
    Moving toward the break in the hedge that accommodated the front walkway, I heard a noise issue from the dark house. Not loud. The low
squeak-ping
of metal tweaking metal.
    Although a sense of danger welled in me once more, I turned from the street and followed the walkway to the foot of the porch steps.
    Intuition told me that pretending to have heard nothing would be taken as a sign of weakness. And weakness would invite attack.
    The subtle sound was a kind of singing, still metallic but also reminiscent of an insect’s clicking serenade.
    No less than the world around it, the porch was filled with fog and shadows.
    “Who’s there?” I asked, but received no reply.
    Climbing the steps, I saw movement to my right. The rhythmic sweep of a slatted form—forward, back—timed to the squeak-ping-click, drew me forward.
    I found a bench swing suspended from ceiling hooks. The chains torqued as the bench came forward, and the torsion was released as it swung backward.
    Someone must have been sitting here in the dark, not swinging but perhaps watching me as I hid from the truck. Judging by the size of the current arc, the watcher had shoved back with his feet and had gotten up mere seconds ago, leaving the swing in motion to attract my attention.
    I stood alone on the porch.
    If he had come down the steps as I ascended, I would have encountered him, and if he had vaulted over the porch railing, I would have heard him.
    The front door, no matter how stealthily pulled open and drawn shut, would have made some noise if he had gone inside.
    Four windows faced me. With no light to reflect, the glass was as black as the sky at the rim of the universe, beyond the light of all stars.
    I took a moment to stare at each window. If someone had been observing me from the other side, I would have seen a form in a paler shade of black than that of the lightless room.
    The swing continued to move.
    For a moment I thought its arc had not diminished, as though an unseen occupant still powered it. The metallic song of the twisting chain links undeniably had subsided…and as I watched, the swing gradually slowed toward a stop.
    I considered rapping softly on one of the windows, to see what I might stir up.
    Instead, I retreated to the steps, descended.
    Around me, fog and dark and quiet pooled.
    On the porch, I had felt that I might be in the company of someone, something.
    As one who sees the lingering dead, I had never imagined that a class of spirits might walk the earth invisible to me.
    Now I considered that possibility—and rejected it. Something strange had occurred, but ghosts were not the explanation.
    Concentrating once more on the face of Annamaria, I left the property of the porch-swing phantom, returned to the public sidewalk, and headed north. Soon I was in the grip of psychic magnetism.
    No night birds sang. No dogs barked. No whiff of breeze, no roosting owl, no stalking cat rustled the leaves of any tree. I had gone too far inland to hear the susurration of the sea.
    Although I repeatedly glanced behind, I caught no glimpse of anyone trailing me. Perhaps the skin on the back of my neck prickled not because someone might be following me but instead because I was
so
alone, with no friend to turn to except an eighty-eight-year-old actor who lived inside himself to such an extent that he