What the Night Knows

Dean Koontz is scary.  We all know that and accept it as a fact.  What I don't understand is why I read his books?  Sometimes they get a little "out there" and you wonder what in the world the author thinks about when he is in bed falling asleep.  Where do his ideas originate from?

This one wasn't any exception to the rule.  The main character was 14 when he lost his entire family to a sadistic, crazy serial murderer, who he ended up killing when he walked in on the ritual.  (I say ritual, because this murderer was crazy with a capital C).  That is not a spoiler alert, it actually tells you on the inside flap.  What is so scary is what happens to his family when he grows up and marries, having kids who are all special in there own way.

I couldn't sleep while reading this book.  There were alot of images of shadow people in the novel, and things seen in mirrors or out of the corner of your eye.  You know, like when you are just starting to fall asleep and suddenly think you see something but it is only a trick of your imagination.  One focus of the story was about children and animals "sensing" what adults refuse to admit to.  When the main character is at his wits end, he seeks out someone to do an exorcism, and believes a defrocked priest can help him.

The former Catholic priest, Abelard, is creepy in his own right.  He was kicked out of the church because of molesting children, and Koontz describes him exactly as you would imagine what someone who does that to children who would look like:  chain smoking with tobacco stained fingertips and hair, unwashed, and undernourished.  It really disgusted me when the priest showed John he wore two watches, one on each wrist, to explain how he handled his guilt over his own crime.  The one watch was just for telling time, like any other human would use.  The other didn't run, he merely kept it piece with the date feature set on a certain day, month and year.  He explained what the date meant, it was the last time he "sinned" with a child, which had been just a few weeks earlier.  It was to remind him of his sins.

The priest explains he can't do the exorcism because he is no longer allowed to practice, but gives him some advice:  "Abelard said, 'We don't live in Biblical times.  God doesn't appear in burning bushes and the like.  Angels no longer materialize in all their winged glory.  I think the divine has taken a few steps back from humankind, perhaps in revulsion, perhaps because we don't deserve to look directly upon holy beings anymore.  In my experience, when the divine enters the world these days from outside of time, it manifests discreetly through children and animals.' ".

Well, it is a clue to how the book ends.  As I am writing this, it is quiet in the house and dark outside.  Just mentioning this book gives me a little scare.  It doesn't help when your cat his running through the place in what appears to be playing with something I can't see (or is it someone)?