Ricochet Joe

by Dean Koontz

This time a darkness swelled behind his eyes, and there rose in his mouth a taste more bitter than bile. When the darkness and foul taste receded, he was overcome with grief. She was already lost to him, whether he killed her or walked away and left her in the control of her otherworldly master.

When she started toward him, Joe saw the fiend within. Dulcie became semitransparent, as if made of milky glass. Fixed to her brain stem, the parasite hung like a fat inky-black poor broken body on the floor leech, a leech with a long, thin tail spiraling down through her spine. When he saw it, he knew its history, which was broadcast to him in a condensed psychic flash. The thing had passed through millennia, across uncounted universes, a cruel rider of humanity and of other species, feeding on the anguish of those it enslaved and on the violence of the others whom it poisoned and used to murderous ends.

For God’s sake, don’t get within arm’s reach of it. And, Joey, I can’t stress enough . . . don’t hesitate to kill it. Act at once.

An old song came into his mind, a favorite of his grandmother’s, written long before Joe had been born: “You Always Hurt the One You Love.” His eyes flooded with tears as he shot her dead.

11

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

The host will die. Parasite has to come out of the host to find another—which might be you.

Never turn your back alone with it. And yes, you can kill it. Though it’s . . . hardy.

It can’t stay in a dead thing more than a few minutes. A few might be three or four. Or might be ten.

12

NOTHING LESS THAN EVERYTHING

Less like a leech outside of its host, the parasite was a thing so different from all other creatures of the earth that there was no name for it, no comparison to be drawn between it and another living thing.

Whatever task you’ve taken, whatever fight you’re facing, you must bring to it nothing less than everything you’ve got, or otherwise you’ll fail for sure and always wonder what might have been if only you had given your all.

When the creature rebounded from the backsplash again, now all black bristle and menacing hiss, Joe could hear Portia speaking as clearly as if she had been in the room: You can kill it. Though it’s . . . hardy.

Three direct hits. Still it came, turning the corner of the L, streaking toward him across the granite, no longer moving evasively.

Every glob and smear of that unearthly tissue spiderwebbed and crackled with a visible electric current. A thin black smoke rose from each morsel, but only briefly. With the withering of the smoke, nothing remained as evidence of invasion.

Suddenly he wanted to see Portia, needed to see her. His need was so urgent, he understood that he had not yet been released from his role as paladin, that a grave task awaited him.

13

THE PUPPET

The sight of Portia dead on the floor brought him to a halt and wrenched from him a wretched sob of grief and self-disgust. Evidently, the chief was not at home. Her uncle Patsy O’Day had come calling with a Colt revolver. Whatever had happened under the pool hall, after Joe and Portia had left, even if Hocker and Jagget had been shot to death, Patsy had been poisoned.

Joe didn’t hesitate to shoot Patsy dead, for otherwise Patsy would have shot him.

Night pressed at the windows. But no rain streamed down the glass. The digital clock on the desk read SATURDAY. The time was ten minutes before he had arrived in this place after shooting Dulcie. The gun safe remained unlocked, and he selected a .45 pistol. He opened a box of ammunition and loaded the magazine. Portia sat at the table in the kitchen, in a state of distress, a half-eaten sandwich on a plate in front of her, a snifter of brandy beside it.

“No. I haven’t returned yet. I’m still at my grandmother’s house.” She regarded him solemnly, and he believed she understood. He put the pistol on the table. “When the doorbell rings, let him in and shoot him in the foyer. He isn’t who he appears to be. And if you let him, he’ll kill you in the living room.”

Joe pursued himself at a distance, for he knew that the first Joe, the self ahead of him, would not look—had not looked—back.

Over there at the house, where a bright future might yet await Joe Mandel, that ordinary young man raced up the steps just as the front door of the Montclair house opened. She appeared, the pistol in one hand. He halted, almost recoiled, surprised by her weapon. But Portia came into his arms, and he embraced her. They held each other in silence for a moment, and then their excited voices carried into the stormy night . . .

He did not know what he would do, where he would go after this night. But he knew it would be somewhere special, for every place on the earth was special in its way. And he knew that whatever life he led would not be ordinary.

Perhaps she would marry that other Joe, the version of himself that never knew his girl had been shot dead and resurrected. Maybe they would have children, a long and happy life.

In the long bus ride away from Little City, he stared out the window at the rainy dark. Sometimes the lights of habitation were many, sometimes they were few and far between in the distance, but he cherished all of them and wondered what lives they illuminated.

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Text copyright © 2017 by Dean Koontz

Illustration copyright © 2017 Oliver Barrett