The Moonlit Mind by Dean Koontz Ch 8
8 July 26, memorial day for Saints Anne and Joachim, memorial night, three years and four months earlier … Nine-year-old Crispin in his sister's empty closet is pierced by a sharp fear, not fear for himself—not yet—but for Mirabell. Crispin, help me!
He doesn't hear the voice again, but he remembers it clearly. Something is terribly wrong, and it can't be put right by one of Mr. Mordred's jokes or by a kiss from Nanny Sayo. At the thought of Nanny, the intense flavor of lemon candy fills his mouth. An impossible flood of saliva forces him to swallow once, twice, three times, and still a string of spittle escapes, drools down his chin. He wipes it away with a sleeve of his pajamas.
They have lived in Theron Hall for six weeks, and suddenly those days seem to have passed mostly in a haze. Looking back, he has only a vague sense of what happened on which day, as if time has no fixed meaning in this house.
They have gone to bed and risen according to their desires. They have eaten only what they wish. Every toy they've wanted—and many they never requested—have been provided for them. They have been entertained rather than schooled, and their tutor with the horsefly birthmark has indulged them at every turn, always excusing and even encouraging their laziness. They have never left the house. In their three separate rooms, they are gradually being isolated, one from the other, as they already have been isolated from the outside world.
None of that is how things ought to be. Crispin sees now that the past six weeks have been like a dream through which they have been drawn as though responding to invisible strings attached to all their limbs.
Crispin, help me!
The sense of being in a dream only intensifies as Crispin finds himself at the door to Clarette and Giles's bedroom suite without realizing that he has left Mirabell's room. His mother and his new father have made it clear that they value their privacy and that their quarters are strictly off-limits. Until now, Crispin has never tried their door. He assumes that it must be locked, but it is not.
Stained-glass and blown-glass lamps pour out honeyed light so rich that he can almost taste it, and the velvet shadows remind him of a place he cannot name or quite remember, a place that somehow came before everything he's ever known. Of all the grand spaces in Theron Hall, this is the grandest of them all. The dazzling and intricate pattern in the colorful Persian carpet seems to pull gently at his bare feet with every step that he takes, as though it might draw him down into it, into not just the threads that constitute it, but into it and also through it, as if it might be a secret gate to another world more real than this one. The draperies are so soft and hang in such elegant folds, the colors are so appealing, the fringe and tassels are so plush, that no vista he might see through the windows behind them could compete. Here is the furniture of some greater royalty than mere kings, and an ornate mirror of such compelling depth that when Crispin stares past his reflection, the room appears too vast to be contained within Theron Hall, dwindling to infinity.
He is overwhelmed by opulence, on the verge of vertigo, when once more he focuses on the velvet shadows in the corners, which remind him of some place he can't remember, a place that came before everything he's ever known. But this time some alien voice inside his head, with words he's never heard before yet understands, reveals to him that the perfection of these shadows are the darkness of his mother's womb, from which he was born. If he wishes to step into a corner and allow these shadows to fold around him, if he will wait here for his mother, upon her return she will take him back into herself, and he will know again the peace of being part of her and eventually of being uncreated.
His fear for Mirabell erupts into terror, and the fear that he previously did not feel for himself at last squeezes his heart.
He flees from his parents' bedroom suite with no sense of how he might find and help his sister. He sprints along the hallway to the north stairs and spirals down.
By the time he reaches the ground floor, the thought driving him is that someone in the house will want to help him, that they are not all in league against him and his siblings. If not the chief butler, Minos, perhaps the junior butler, Ned. If neither of them, then maybe one of the housekeepers. Not Proserpina! Perhaps the head housekeeper, Mrs. Frigg. Someone will want to help him, one of those who always has a smile for him, who treats him with respect.
Not until weeks later does it occur to Crispin that in his mad search for a confidant and defender, he never thinks to leave the house and seek help from someone in the street, perhaps even from a policeman. He seems almost to be under a spell that prevents him from considering the world beyond Theron Hall.
Gasping for breath, frantic, he can find no one on the ground floor, not in any of the public rooms, not in the kitchen. No one seems to be at work, yet the rooms in the servants' wing are all deserted, the doors standing open as if everyone on the staff left together in response to some urgent call or alarm. Intuition pulls him to the south stairs and down the winding treads to the basement, clutching at the decorative bronze railing for support. The door at the bottom of the stairs won't open. In the vast basement is a room with a steel door that's always locked. He has previously been told that it is a fireproof vault in which are stored irreplaceable heirlooms of great value.
But never before has the main door to the rest of the basement been locked. He tries the lever handle again, with no success.
Beyond the door, from a distance, muffled voices rise and fall in time with one another. Chanting. Crispin isn't able to make out the words, but the rhythm is ominous. Although the voices are those of adults, as he presses his body against the door in an attempt to force it open, Crispin whispers, “Mirabell?” Another door lies at the bottom of the north stairs, a second entrance to the basement. Perhaps that will not be locked. And the elevator serves all floors.
When Crispin turns to climb the stairs, the cook, Merripen, is immediately behind him. Merripen wears a long black silk bathrobe and holds a stainless-steel thermos bottle, the top of which he has unscrewed.
