• Complain

Dean Koontz - The Moonlit Mind (Novella): A Tale of Suspense

Here you can read online Dean Koontz - The Moonlit Mind (Novella): A Tale of Suspense full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2011, publisher: Random House Publishing Group, genre: Detective and thriller. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

Dean Koontz The Moonlit Mind (Novella): A Tale of Suspense
  • Book:
    The Moonlit Mind (Novella): A Tale of Suspense
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Random House Publishing Group
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2011
  • Rating:
    5 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 100
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

The Moonlit Mind (Novella): A Tale of Suspense: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "The Moonlit Mind (Novella): A Tale of Suspense" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

Dean Koontz: author's other books


Who wrote The Moonlit Mind (Novella): A Tale of Suspense? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

The Moonlit Mind (Novella): A Tale of Suspense — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "The Moonlit Mind (Novella): A Tale of Suspense" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make
The Moonlit Mind is a work of fiction Names characters places and incidents - photo 1
The Moonlit Mind is a work of fiction Names characters places and incidents - photo 2

The Moonlit Mind is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

2011 Bantam eBook Original

Copyright 2011 by Dean Koontz
Excerpt from 77 Shadow Street 2011 by Dean Koontz

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

BANTAM BOOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-345-53013-4

This book contains an excerpt of the forthcoming title 77 Shadow Street by Dean Koontz. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the published book.

Cover design: Scott Biel
Cover image: gremlin/Getty Images

www.bantamdell.com

v3.1

Contents
1

Crispin lives wild in the city, a feral boy of twelve, and he has no friend but Harley, though Harley never speaks.

Friendship does not depend on conversation. Sometimes the most important communication is not mouth to ear, but heart to heart.

Harley cant speak because he is a dog. He understands many words, but he isnt able to form them. He can bark, but he does not. Neither does he growl.

Silence is to Harley as music to a harp, flowing from him in glissando passages and arpeggios that are melodious to Crispin. The boy has heard too much in his few years. Quiet is a symphony to him, and the profound silence in any hushed place is a hymn.

This metropolis, like all others, is an empire of noise. The city rattles, bangs, and thumps. It buzzes and squeals, hisses and roars. Honks, clangs, tolls, jingles, clicks, clacks, creaks, knocks, pops, and rumbles.

Even in this storm of sound, however, quiet havens exist. Across the vast lawns of St. Mary Salome Cemetery, between tall pines and cedars like processions of robed monks, concentric circles of granite headstones lead inward to open-air mausoleum walls where the ashes of the dead are interred behind bronze plaques. The eight-foot-high, freestanding walls are arranged like spokes in a wheel. On any windless night, the massive evergreens of St. Mary Salome muffle the municipal voice, and the wheel of walls baffles it entirely.

At the hub where the spokes meet lies a wide circle of grass and at its center a great round slab of gray granite that serves as a bench. Here, Crispin sometimes sits in moonlight until the silence soothes his soul.

Then he and Harley move to the grass, where the boy prepares his bedroll. With no guilt to claw at his conscience, the dog sleeps the sleep of an innocent. The boy is not so fortunate.

Crispin suffers nightmares. They are based on memories.

Harley seems to dream of running free, toes spreading and paws trembling as he races across imagined meadows. He does not whimper but makes small thin sounds of delight.

Once, when the boy was ten, he woke well past midnight and saw the silvery shimmering form of a woman in a long dress or robe. She approached between two mausoleum walls, seeming not to walk but rather to glide like a skater on ice.

Crispin sat up, frightened because the woman had no substance. Moonlit objects behind her were visible through her.

She neither smiled nor threatened. Her expression was solemn.

She drifted to a stop about two yards from them, her bare feet a few inches above the grass. For a long moment, she gazed upon them.

Crispin felt that he should speak to her. But he could not.

Although the boy only half rose, Harley stood on all fours. Clearly, the dog saw the woman, too. His tail wagged.

When she moved past them, Crispin caught the scent of perfumed ointment. Harley sniffed with what seemed to be pleasure.

The woman evaporated as if she were a fog phantom encountering a warm current of air.

Crispin first thought she must be a ghost haunting these fields of graves. Later he wondered if hed witnessed instead a visitation, the spirit of Saint Mary Salome, for whom the cemetery was named.

Over the past three years, since he was nine, the boy has lived in this city by his wits and by his daring. He has enjoyed little human companionship or charity.

He doesnt spend every night in the cemetery. He sleeps in many places to avoid following a routine that might leave him vulnerable to discovery.

In places more ordinary than cemeteries, he and the dog often see extraordinary things. Not all their discoveries are supernatural. Most are as real as sunlight and starlight, and some of those things are more terrible than any ghost or goblin could be.

This cityperhaps any cityis a place of secrets and enigmas. Roaming alone with your dog in realms that others seldom visit, you will glimpse disturbing phenomena and strange presences that suggest the world has dimensions that reason alone cannot explain.

The boy is sometimes afraid, but never the dog.

Neither of them is ever lonely. They are family to each other, but more than family. They are each others salvation, each a lamp by which the other finds his way.

Harley was abandoned to the streets. No one but the boy loves this mixed-breed canine, which appears to be half golden retriever and half mystery mutt.

Crispin was not abandoned. He escaped.

And he is hunted.

2

Three years earlier

Crispin, only nine years old, is two days on the run, having fled a scene of intolerable horror on a night in late September. He has no one to whom he can turn. Those who should be trustworthy have already proven to be evil and to be intent on his destruction.

Of the eleven dollars in his possession when he escaped, he now has only four. He has spent the rest on food and drink purchased from vendors with street-corner carts.

The previous night, he slept in a nest of shrubbery in Statler Park, too exhausted to be fully wakened even by the occasional sirens of passing police cars or, near dawn, by the racket of sanitation workers emptying park trash cans into their truck.

On Monday he spends a couple of the daylight hours visiting the library. The stacks are a maze in which he can hide.

He is too much in the grip of fear and grief to be able to read. Now and then he pages through big glossy travel books, studying the photos, but he has no way of getting to those far, safe places. The childrens picture books that once amused him no longer seem at all funny.

For a while he walks along the banks of the river, watching a few fishermen. The water is gray under a blue sky, and the men seem gray, too, sad and listless. The fish are not biting.

Most of the day he wanders alleyways where he thinks he is less likely to encounter those who are surely looking for him. Behind a restaurant, a kitchen worker asks why he isnt in school. No good lie occurs to him, and he runs from her.

The day is mild, as were the previous day and night, but suddenly it grows cool and then cooler in the late afternoon. He is wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and the gooseflesh on his bare arms may or may not be caused by the chilly air.

In a vacant lot between a drugstore and a marshal-arts dojo, a Goodwill Industries collection bin overflows with used clothing and other items. Rummaging among those donations, Crispin finds a gray wool sweater that fits him.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «The Moonlit Mind (Novella): A Tale of Suspense»

Look at similar books to The Moonlit Mind (Novella): A Tale of Suspense. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Dean Koontz - Innocence
Innocence
Dean Koontz
Dean Koontz - Wilderness
Wilderness
Dean Koontz
Dean Koontz - Last Light
Last Light
Dean Koontz
Dean R. Koontz - Lightning
Lightning
Dean R. Koontz
Dean Koontz - Chase
Chase
Dean Koontz
Dean R. Koontz - Beastchild
Beastchild
Dean R. Koontz
Dean R. Koontz - Anti-Man
Anti-Man
Dean R. Koontz
Reviews about «The Moonlit Mind (Novella): A Tale of Suspense»

Discussion, reviews of the book The Moonlit Mind (Novella): A Tale of Suspense and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.