The House at the End of the World

by Dean Koontz

The thing that surmounts her is perhaps five feet in height, a hundred pounds of pale, muscular coils that appear to writhe in greasy knots, yet it has four pincered legs with which it fastens fiercely to her back. Her coat and other garments shred away like tissue paper. The assailant presses down as though thrusting in sexual congress, a creature so strange that no words can convey the horror of it. Like a demon in a dream, it seems to be ceaselessly changing, a million species encoded in its genes, so that it can summon itself into whatever form it wishes. The worst thing about it is the misshapen head; it’s a human head in which the bones have become as soft as wax, and yet the face, for all its grievous detail, remains recognizable as that of Francesca. Her eyes are sour yellow, and her features twist into an expression of such fury that it far exceeds any emotion she might have felt when she’d been only her passionless self.