Watchers

by Dean Koontz

He had come to these foothills not merely to attempt to recall a time when he had been glad to be alive, but also to kill snakes if he saw any. Lately, alternately depressed and angered by the loneliness and sheer pointlessness of his life, he had been wound as tight as a crossbow spring. He needed to release that tension through violent action, and the killing of a few snakes—no loss to anyone—seemed the perfect prescription for his distress. However, as he stared at this rattler, he realized that its existence was less pointless than his own: it filled an ecological niche,

They went a long way before Travis realized that he had been completely jolted out of the despair and desperate loneliness that had brought him to the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains in the first place.

it’s all about the importance of valuing individuals over groups, about the need to place a far greater value on one man’s or woman’s life than on the advancement of the masses.”

And for a Catholic, suicide is a mortal sin. Murder. Besides, I’m too mean and too stubborn to give up, no matter how dark things get.”

He was filled with both wonder and trepidation, with both wild joy and fear of the unknown, simultaneously awestricken and bewildered. He wanted to laugh because he had never seen anything half as delightful as this dog. He also wanted to cry because only hours ago he’d thought life was bleak, dark, and pointless.

to remind him that the world was full of surprises and that despair made no sense when one had no understanding of the purpose—and strange possibilities—of existence.

she wanted to confirm that she was undesirable. Streck’s unwanted interest rattled Nora because she was comfortable in her homeliness and solitude, and she wanted to reassure herself that he was mocking her, that he would not act upon his threats, that her peaceful solitude would endure. Or so she told herself as she stepped into the bathroom and switched on the light.

“It was just like with Harry. Both of us should have died, my father and me, but I escaped.

But you changed me, Einstein. You turned me around in one day. I swear, it’s like you were sent to show me that life’s mysterious, strange, and full of wonders—and that only a fool withdraws from it willingly and lets it pass him by.”

Lem had pondered how difficult it was for him to become a different man from the one his father had raised, how hard it was for any man to change what life had made him, but

“It’s so damn hard to bloom . . . to change. Even when you want to change, want it more than anything in the world, it’s hard. Desire to change isn’t enough. Or desperation. Couldn’t be done without . . . love.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper, and she was unable to lift it. “Love is like the water and the sun that make the seed grow.”

Hell, the only thing you’re totally and unswervingly committed to is your old man’s crackpot vision of life as a tightrope walk.”

But now, by God, it seemed not only possible but essential that he separate his love for his father from his adherence to his father’s workaholic code. What’s happening to me? he wondered. Freedom? Freedom, at last, at forty-five? Squinting into the mirror, he said, “Almost forty-six.”