The House at the End of the World

by Dean Koontz

As Katie ascends, she sees a raven on the chimney cap. The bird faces east, as if it is a sentinel charged with welcoming the night that, just beyond the horizon, crawls up the turning world.

Unloaded and propped in one corner are a pistol-grip pump-action 12-gauge shotgun and an AR-15 that is often called an assault rifle by people who don’t know anything about guns.

In addition to the three mortal fears—of terrible pain and disability and death—everyone needs at least one additional reason to live, a task that inspires. Since her adolescence, Katie’s art has been one of her reasons for being. In her life on the island, art has become her only inspiration.

tenderness is a vain form of pity indulged in by those who want to feel good about themselves without being put to the inconvenience of doing something.

Lindblom is obviously among those naive souls who believe what authorities tell them in the name of science. These days, “science” is often nothing more than a cover story.

Life has taught her that it’s mentally exhausting and spiritually depressing to waste energy and time fanning the flames of anger when the reason for her outrage is someone who can’t be affected by anything she does or some malignant force in society that, when challenged, will engulf her and dissolve her in a metastatic frenzy. Patience, steadiness, and hope are healthier than anger; therefore, in spite of evidence to the contrary, she still trusts that the world has been shapen to a purpose and that the purpose is not the triumph of evil.

she feels that she has his sincere sympathy rather than unwanted pity.

anger can never conjure justice where justice does not already exist.

Paranoia can be a serious mental illness. It can also be the proper state of mind for prey in a universe of predators.

Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare,

Katie feels as if she’s gone down the rabbit hole, where she and the Mad Hatter are conversing without the amenities of tea and table.

The lake darkles.

Focus intently on quotidian needs and trust that maintaining routines will eventually restore meaning to life and quiet fear.

Even though comfort based on an illusion is itself illusory, it is for a while a deliverance from the anxiety and existential dread that the world today can generate in abundance. She does not believe that any political ideology can shape society into a utopia. She knows that, instead, even the most earnest utopians always and everywhere create horrific dystopias. She does not believe that scientists are always honest, that rapidly advancing technology will inevitably save us, that everything that is called “progress” is in fact progress. She knows that “experts” are often frauds, that “intellectuals” can be as ignorant as anyone, and that those who most strenuously signal their virtue and are celebrated for it will always prove to be among the most corrupt. Such innate clearheadedness ensures that comforting illusions will elude her, though there are times, as now, when she might welcome the comfort of them. When a majority of people in any society share the same array of illusions and cling passionately to them, they will encourage one another until illusion becomes delusion, until delusion becomes mass insanity. Whole societies do go mad. History is filled with chilling examples.

“If you’re concerned about the environmental effects of the flatulence of cattle, don’t be. It’s a myth. What’ll kill us all is the flatulence of politicians.”

Time to escape the cordon sanitaire was fast running out;

“The Hollow Men” by T. S. Eliot, chanting them over and over as she uncaps the gallon of drain cleaner and pours it into the sink: “‘This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.’”

As always when this phobic reaction overtakes her, the cause is largely the same—her inability to understand why. What is happening matters to her less than why, because what happened is always known sooner or later, but the why of it, the true reason why, is often not revealed. And as long as the why remains a mystery, the what will surely happen again and again; there will never be any relief from it.

Why do the authorities allow the criminal gangs that terrorize neighborhoods and entire cities to thrive as they do? Politicians, attorneys general, district attorneys, and the FBI have the power to destroy the gangs and prevent most of the crimes they commit, the murdering and raping and human trafficking and the endless flood of drugs across the border, the hateful murdering murdering murdering of faithful husbands and little girls in their Sunday dresses. Yet the people with the power to stop men like Hamal and Lupo and Parker often facilitate their activities. Maybe the majority of politicians and their appointees are corrupt, but not all. Are those uncorrupted individuals so often ineffective because they are cowards or lazy or stupid? Does loyalty to party, class, club, or ideology matter to them more than doing what is right? Why? Why can’t such people see that the crime and anarchy they permit to flourish in poor and middle-class neighborhoods will eventually metastasize into the enclaves of the elite where they live their privileged lives? Why do they have contempt for those not in their circle? Why can’t they see that being of the people rather than ruling over them is the only way that they themselves will survive?

she has sought—irrationally, she now realizes—to understand evil, even to concretize it in a visual metaphor within a painting that says to the mind and heart, This is why. Now she arrives at the realization that the why of evil is not to be found anywhere in the flaws of society or its institutions, nor can it be pinned down by even the most erudite and loquacious philosopher. The why of evil is in the human soul, which can’t be examined with a CT scan or MRI to locate a dark mass, or dissected in an autopsy to learn in what artery the calcification proved mortal. Evil is a mystery for theologians, of which she is not one. Evil is irrational. There is no why formed so complete that it will satisfy her. Rather than spend her life in a fruitless effort to understand evil and those who commit it, she can do no more—and no less—than resist it.

Together, she and Libby consider all the ways their plan could go wrong, not because negativity has gripped them after the events at the convenience store, but because being alert to the risks might give them an advantage at a crucial moment. Avi always said that speaking the devil’s name doesn’t summon him, but pretending there is no devil will ensure that proudest of demons will put in an appearance to mock you.