Free Ticktock by Dean Koontz Page A

the cunning little demon would hide and let the police transfer their raving ward to a windowless but well-lighted room with rubber wallpaper.
    At this moment, Tommy almost didn’t care which of the two scenarios played out. In either case, the immediate terror would be over, and he would be able to avoid peeing in his pants. He’d have time to catch his breath, think, maybe even puzzle out an explanation for what had happened here—although that seemed no more likely than his arriving at an understanding of the meaning of life.
    The fiend hissed again.
    A new possibility occurred to Tommy, and it wasn’t a good one. Maybe the hateful little thing would secretly follow him to the psychiatric ward and continue to torment him there for the rest of his life, cleverly avoiding being seen by the physicians and attendants.
    Instead of charging again, the minikin abruptly darted toward the sofa, which still stood away from the wall where Tommy had left it during the search.
    With the pistol sight, Tommy followed the creature, but he wasn’t able to track it closely enough to justify squeezing off one of his remaining shots.
    The thing disappeared behind the sofa.
    Buoyed slightly by his adversary’s retreat, Tommy dared to hope that the .40-caliber round had done some damage after all, at least enough to make the little beast cautious. Seeing the minikin run from him, he regained a degree of perspective regarding the indisputable advantage of size that he enjoyed. A modest measure of his lost confidence returned to him.
    Tommy eased across the room to peer around the sofa. The far end of it still touched the wall, so the space behind it was a V-shaped dead end, yet the minikin wasn’t there.
    Then he saw the torn flaps of fabric and the ragged hole in the upholstery. The creature had burrowed into the sofa and was now hiding inside it.
    Why?
    Why ask why?
    From the moment the stitches had pulled out of the doll’s face and the first monstrous eye had blinked at him through the tear in the cloth, Tommy had been beyond all the
why
questions. They were more suitable for a sane universe where logic ruled, not for this place in which he currently found himself. The main issue now was
how
—how could he stop the beast, how could he save himself? And he also had to ask
what next?
Even if the utter irrationality of these events made it impossible to anticipate where the night would lead before dawn, he had to try to puzzle out the purpose behind the doll, the course of the plot.
    THE DEADLINE IS DAWN.
    He didn’t understand that message at all. What deadline, for God’s sake? Who had established it? What did he have to do to
meet
the deadline?
    TICKTOCK .
    Oh, he understood
that
message well enough. Time was running out. The night was passing as fast as the rain was falling outside, and if he didn’t get his act together, then he was going to be toast before sunrise.
    TICKTOCK .
    Toast for the hungry minikin.
    TICKTOCK .
    Munch, munch. Crunch, crunch.
    His head was spinning—and not simply because he had thumped it hard against the floor when he fell.
    He circled the sofa, studying it as he moved.
    Fire. Maybe a roaring fire could achieve better results than a bullet.
    While the creature was building a nest—or doing whatever the hell it was doing in there—Tommy might be able to sneak down to the garage, siphon a quart of gasoline out of the Corvette, grab a pack of matches from a drawer in the kitchen, and return to set the sofa on fire.
    No. No, that would take too long. The repulsive little creepozoid would realize that he was gone, and when he came back, the thing probably wouldn’t be inside the sofa any more.
    Now the minikin was quiet, which didn’t mean that it was taking a nap. It was scheming at something.
    Tommy needed to scheme too. Desperately.
    Think, think.
    Because of the light-beige carpet, Tommy kept one can of spot remover downstairs and another upstairs