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False Memory by Dean Koontz
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(Mass Market Paperback - BANTAM PBK)
- Pub. Date: November 2000
- 784pp
- Sales Rank: 54,191
Reader Rating: (119 ratings)
Detailed Rating: "Characters" See All
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: November 2000
- Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
- Format: Mass Market Paperback, 784pp
- Sales Rank: 54,191
- ISBN-13: 9780553580228
- ISBN: 0553580221
- Edition Description: BANTAM PBK
Synopsis
It's a fear more paralyzing than falling. More terrifying than absolute darkness. More horrifying than anything you can imagine. It's the one fear you cannot escape, no matter where you run...no matter where you hide. It's the fear of yourself. It's real. It can happen to you. And facing it can be deadly.
Fear for your mind.
USA Today - William F. Nicholson
Dean Kootnz's False Memoryis positively chilling, can't-take-your-eyes-off- the-page horror novel.
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
Amazingly prolific and relentlessly suspenseful, Dean Koontz can be counted on for chilling, sometimes gory stories that occasionally overlap genres. His novels can jump from straightforward crime to sci-fi to horror, but the one thing he's consistent about is delivering nail-biting yarns that have kept fans reading for more than three decades.
More About the AuthorCustomer Reviews
- Reader Rating:
- Ratings: 119Reviews: 77
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Just okay...by PiccoultFan
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
August 26, 2009: This book was okay, with the exception of the fact that it could have told the same story in two-hundred less pages. Seemed to drag on at times. While the story was interesting, it seemed to be very unrealistic.
Very Intenseby ColeJustify
Reader Rating:
See Detailed Ratings
May 02, 2009: I started reading this book about 9 months ago but put it down around page 306 because it was very slow in the beginning. Needless to say I ran out of books to read a month ago so I decided to give this book another shot and I am very glad I did. Like a few other people said here if you can get past the first 300 pages then trust me it is definately worth the read. This book reminds me of another older book dean wrote in 1976 called "night chills". It's along the same lines of brainwashing/throwing coded messages out and turning people into personal slaves or zombies. It is really worth the read even if it is 752 pages long....
I Also Recommend: Night Chills.
Fact File
Name:
Dean Koontz
Also Known As:
David Axton, Brian Coffey, K.R. Dwyer, Deanna Dwyer, John Hill, Leigh Nichols, Anthony North, Richard Paige, Owen West, Aaron Wolfe
Current Home:
Newport Beach, California
Date of Birth:
July 09, 1945
Place of Birth:
Everett, Pennsylvania
Education:
B.S. (major in English), Shippensburg University, 1966
Biography
He is one of the most recognized, read, and loved suspense writers of the 20th century. His imagination is a veritable factory of nightmares, conjuring twisted tales of psychological complexity. He even has a fan in Stephen King. For decades, Dean Koontz's name has been synonymous with terror, and his novels never fail to quicken the pulse and set hearts pounding.
Koontz has a lifelong love of writing that led him to spend much of his free time as an adult furiously cultivating his style and voice. However, it was only after his wife Gerda made him an offer he couldn't refuse while he was teaching English at a high school outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that he had a real opportunity to make a living with his avocation. Gerda agreed to support Dean for five years, during which time he could try to get his writing career off the ground. Little did she know that by the end of that five years she would be leaving her own job to handle the financial end of her husband's massively successful writing career.
Koontz first burst into the literary world with 1970's Beastchild, a science fiction novel that appealed to genre fans with its descriptions of aliens and otherworldly wars but also mined deeper themes of friendship and the breakdown of communication. Although it is not usually ranked among his classics, Beastchild provided the first inkling of Koontz's talent for populating even the most fantastical tale with fully human characters. Even at his goriest or most terrifying, he always allows room for redemption.
This complexity is what makes Koontz's work so popular with readers. He has a true gift for tempering horror with humanity, grotesqueries with lyricism. He also has a knack for genre-hopping, inventing Hitchcockian romantic mysteries, crime dramas, supernatural thrillers, science fiction, and psychological suspense with equal deftness and imagination. Perhaps The Times (London) puts it best: "Dean Koontz is not just a master of our darkest dreams, but also a literary juggler."
Good to Know
Shortly after graduating from college, Koontz took a job with the Appalachian Poverty Program where he would tutor and counsel underprivileged kids. However, after finding out that the last person who held his job had been beaten up and hospitalized by some of these kids, Koontz was more motivated than ever to get his writing career going.
When Koontz was a senior in college, he won the Atlantic Monthly fiction competition.
Koontz and Kevin Anderson's novel Frankenstein: The Prodigal Son was slotted to become a television series produced by Martin Scorsese. However, when the pilot failed to sell, the USA Network aired it as a TV movie in 2004. By that time Koontz had removed his name from the project.
Some fun and fascinating outtakes from our interview with Koontz:
"My wife, Gerda, and I took seven years of private ballroom dancing lessons, twice a week, ninety minutes each time. After we had gotten good at everything from swing to the foxtrot, we not only stopped taking lessons, but also stopped going dancing. Learning had been great fun; but for both of us, going out for an evening of dancing proved far less exhilarating than the learning. We both have a low boredom threshold. Now we dance at a wedding or other celebration perhaps once a year, and we're creaky."
"On my desk is a photograph given to me by my mother after Gerda and I were engaged to be married. It shows 23 children at a birthday party. It is neither my party nor Gerda's. I am three years old, going on four. Gerda is three. In that crowd of kids, we are sitting directly across a table from each other. I'm grinning, as if I already know she's my destiny, and Gerda has a serious expression, as if she's worried that I might be her destiny. We never met again until I was a senior in high school and she was a junior. We've been trying to make up for that lost time ever since.
"Gerda and I worked so much for the first two decades of our marriage that we never took a real vacation until our twentieth wedding anniversary. Then we went on a cruise, booking a first-class suite, sparing no expense. For more than half the cruise, the ship was caught in a hurricane. The open decks were closed because waves would have washed passengers overboard. About 90% of the passengers spent day after day in their cabins, projectile vomiting. We discovered that neither of us gets seasick. We had the showrooms, the casino, and the buffets virtually to ourselves. Because the crew had no one to serve, our service was exemplary. The ship dared not try to put into the scheduled ports; it was safer on the open sea. The big windows of the main bar presented a spectacular view of massive waves and lightning strikes that stabbed the sea by the score. Very romantic. We had a grand time.
Feature Interview
In the summer of 2006, Dean Koontz took some time out to talk with us about his favorite books, authors, and interests. What was the book that most influenced your career as a writer?
The high-school grammar textbook with which my teacher, Winona Garbrick, repeatedly rapped my head.
Otherwise, hundreds of books have had an effect on me. Perhaps the book with the most impact on my career, after the aforementioned textbook, was A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, which I did not read until I was in my thirties. The final scene reduced me to tears. More important, I began to think about how modern publishing had compartmentalized fiction into so many narrow genres. A Tale of Two Cities, as a new piece of fiction, would be hard to place on a contemporary publisher's list. It's too much of an adventure story and too much of a love story to win the favor of most editors of "literary" fiction. It is a serious novel of politics and revolution but is also darkly comic in places. Dickens does not shrink from the depiction of evil, and some scenes are horrific, but he also tells a story of redemption and self-sacrifice and hope that some (never me!) would consider almost sentimental.
The more I thought about A Tale of Two Cities, the more determined I became to write novels that bridged genres. This began to bear fruit with Strangers, and to a much greater degree with Watchers. My publisher at the time resisted both the variety I was delivering, book to book, but also the mix of genres within each book. Pressure was exerted to stay within the limits of one label. We had some wonderful rows! In time, readers responded with enthusiasm to my attempts to tell stories with the flavors and the techniques of multiple genres. I doubt I would have had a career half as successful if I had followed another path.
What are your favorite books, and what makes them special to you?
For three decades, I read no fewer than 200 books a year, and I still read a book a week. Out of that volume, choosing eight or ten as my favorites is no easy task, and a final list inevitably has an arbitrary quality dependent on my mood at the moment. In no meaningful order:
The four books I named are radically different from one another, yet you hear the wonderfully assured and ironic Goldman voice unmistakably on the first page of each. The Color of Light is one of the most dead-on portraits of a writer's struggle ever written, hugely entertaining; but if you learn nothing from it other than the mortal danger of taking the write-what-you-know dictum too seriously, it's worth a hundred times its price.
I could go on for pages. So many writers have made my life so much richer than it otherwise would have been.
What are some of your favorite films, and what makes them unforgettable to you?
Films do not move me in the same way that novels do because they lack the ability to explore the interior of a character in any depth. Consequently, I tend to find films of high intellectual intent to be empty shells, and the films that burn themselves into my memory are those that deliver sparkling wit or genuine emotion, or logically crafted suspense. I can watch The Philadelphia Story, Bringing Up Baby, and other screwball comedies every three or four years, and they are fresh to me because the writing crackles. Contemporary comedies seem incapable of the spot-on hilarious dialogue of so many films in the 1930s and '40s.
Two of the most involving and logically tight suspense films I've ever seen are James Cameron's The Terminator and Aliens. And I'm a Hitchcock fan because of the way so many of his movies blended suspense, humor, and love stories. For their ability to convey intense emotion (and a wide variety of emotions) in the service of important themes, I like Schindler's List, A Simple Plan, and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
What types of music do you like? Is there any particular kind you listen to when you're writing?
I listen to everything from classical to pop, but I particularly favor Big Band, Texas swing, and Zydeco. I've written hundreds of thousands of words listening to Chris Isaac, Paul Simon, and especially Israel Kamakawiwo'ole; Iz, the dynamite Hawaiian singer who died several years ago, had a beautiful voice and the ability to convey longing, joy, and other emotions with an effortlessness that enraptured the listener.
What are your favorite kinds of books to give -- and get -- as gifts?
I give books based on the interests and tastes of the recipients, so I give all kinds of things. What I most like to receive are illustrated books on any period of art or any kind of decorative objects -- by which I mean everything from a book on an artist like Childe Hassam to a full-color book on Art Deco radios or on beautiful engraved rifles.
Do you have any special writing rituals? For example, what do you have on your desk when you're writing?
I have to wear a five-point hat with five small bells, each of a different metal from the others, and leather gloves with knuckle spikes. Nothing unique about that. All writers have the five-point hat and the spiked gloves. I like the lighting low, music low, stacks of research surrounding me for easy reference, a bottle of flavored water -- usually cherry -- close at hand, which I'll drink either cold or at room temperature. For at least part of the day, though she might be bored, I like the company of my dog; she is a furry muse.
Many writers are hardly "overnight success" stories. How long did it take for you to get where you are today? Any rejection-slip horror stories or inspirational anecdotes?
I sold the first short story I ever wrote. Then I collected 75 rejections before I sold anything else. I was a part-time writer for two years and a full-time writer for eleven years before I had a paperback bestseller. I wrote for another five years before one of my books appeared on the hardcover bestseller lists. By the time I'd had two hardcover bestsellers, a major national magazine made a snarky remark to the effect that I was an overnight success who had "jumped on the bloody bandwagon of the vampire-novel craze." Because more than 18 years of work seems to stretch the definition of "overnight" a tad too far, and because I'd never written a vampire novel, I figured everything else that I was reading in the magazine must be equally empty of fact, and I canceled my subscription.
What tips or advice do you have for writers still looking to be discovered?
Most of the criticism you receive will be directed at your unique style. You will be pressured to modify your voice, to adopt the attitudes and prejudices of one herd or another. Thriller writers, science fiction writers, mystery writers, writers in every genre are expected to write like the successful models who have gone before them, with just enough exotic spice to intrigue without seeming dauntingly original. Even if you write experimental literary fiction, you will find that people who write and review experimental literary fiction have dogma that they want to enforce, and even out there on the imagined cutting edge, you will be shown the line that you must walk to be considered a serious writer.
Resist. If you conform, you might be granted admittance to the club, you might be "discovered" and acclaimed, but you will not then be the writer you could have been. If you repress your true voice -- and therefore your passion -- long enough, you will burn out. Walker Percy gave the best advice about writing advice that I know: "The best thing to do with advice, even good advice, is to listen as hard as you can, take it to heart, then forget it."
From Barnes & Noble
The specter of mental illness is frightening enough on its own. In the hands of the master of suspense, Dean Koontz, it's both epidemic and horrifying. Never has the saying "There is nothing to fear but fear itself" been more true. And never has fear been so, well, frightening.
In False Memory, a bone-chilling tale of fantasies, phobias, and false memories, Koontz has crafted yet another masterpiece of subtle terror, an all-too-plausible tale with the most powerful and devious of enemies -- one's own mind.
Martie Rhodes is married to a man she adores and has a successful career as a video-game designer and a life many would envy. But there are a few hitches. Once a week, Martie escorts her best friend, Susan, to a psychiatrist's office, where Susan receives treatment for the severe case of agoraphobia that suddenly took over her life 18 months before. And Martie's husband, Dusty, has a younger brother who is sweet, naive, and addicted to drugs.
Still, Martie's life is relatively stable until the morning she awakens with a sudden and inexplicable fear of her own. It is a fear unlike any she has ever encountered or even considered. It is a fear she may not be able to control. It is a fear of the one thing she should be able to master but can't. It is a fear of herself.
It begins innocently enough with a sense of disquiet that Martie experiences while walking the dog, an odd feeling of fright when she sees her own shadow. But things quickly escalate, and within hours, horrifying images fill Martie's mind, images of blood and violence committed by her own hands, committed against herself and the one person she loves most: her husband, Dusty.
Martie soon learns that her condition has a name: autophobia. When she shares her fears with her husband, Dusty finds himself torn. On the one hand he is desperate to be there for Martie, to learn the cause of her mental condition and try to find a way to fight it. On the other hand there is his brother, Skeet, whose recent backslide has led to a suicide attempt -- a harrowing scene that nearly costs Dusty his life as well.
It's while caring for his poor, drug-addled brother that Dusty accidentally stumbles upon a quirk, a quirk that suggests Skeet's problems may not all be of his own making. When Dusty discovers that the same quirk may be behind Martie's mental illness, he is thrown into a nightmare of astonishing proportions. To save those he loves, Dusty must confront a monster whose power over him, Skeet, and Martie is unthinkable, a monster who has already destroyed dozens of lives and thinks nothing of racking up a few more.
Koontz has tapped into the most fertile and terrifying source possible for psychological suspense -- the human mind. As the filter that defines all we see, all we experience, and all we are, it is what makes us most vulnerable to both harm and evil. But its capacity for love combined with the will to survive can also be a formidable weapon. The fear of madness lurks within us all. Leave it to the master of suspense to capitalize on that fear and turn it into yet another deliciously chilling and haunting tale.
—Beth Amos
From the Publisher
It's a fear more paralyzing than falling. More terrifying than absolute darkness. More horrifying than anything you can imagine. It's the one fear you cannot escape, no matter where you run...no matter where you hide. It's the fear of yourself. It's real. It can happen to you. And facing it can be deadly.
Fear for your mind.
USA Today - William F. Nicholson
Dean Kootnz's False Memoryis positively chilling, can't-take-your-eyes-off- the-page horror novel.
VOYA
Martie and her husband, Dusty, a housepainter, are the usual Koontz protagonistshonorable, resourceful, and persevering. Martie's friend, Susan, suffers from agoraphobia. Martie visits her regularly and takes her to her appointments with noted therapist, Dr. Mark Ahriman. Dusty's younger brother, Skeet, has been in and out of therapy with the same doctor. When Skeet jumps off a roof while painting a house with Dusty, he claims that the angel instructed him to do so. Levelheaded video game designer Martie develops autophobia, a terrifying condition in which the victim fantasizes about using sharp objects to create murder and mayhemon those she loves as well as on herself. Only when Dusty takes her to see Dr. Ahriman and looks at the book she has been reading, The Manchurian Candidate, does he begin to suspect that brainwashing might be involved. He questions the blanks in his recent life and takes a closer look at Skeet's and Martie's unusual behavior. Soon they are on the run from a monster of manipulation, who has government connections to protect him and a psycho's disregard for human life. The master of psychological horror strikes again, this time with a powerful look at inner tormentsthe horrors that come from our own minds. Koontz uses nonstop action, likeable characters who confront and overcome horror in their everyday lives, and lots of nailbiting suspense to create another winner. This latest spintingling mystery belongs in any public or high school library. VOYA CODES: 4Q 4P S A/YA (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; Broad general YA appeal; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12; Adult and Young Adult). 1999, Bantam, Ages 16 to Adult, 416p,$24.95.Reviewer: Bonnie Kunzel
Library Journal
Koontz's latest novel should please his longtime fans but probably not newcomers. Martie Rhodes takes her best friend, Susan, to therapy sessions twice a week. Susan suffers from agoraphobia, a fear of crowds, which leaves her afraid to leave her apartment. Getting Susan to therapy is hard enough, but on this particular day it gets even harder. Earlier that morning, Martie looked at herself in the mirror and found she was terrified of her reflection. She has developed autophobia, a fear of self. With the vilest villain Koontz has created, the truth behind their phobias will be more horrible than Susan or Martie can imagine. False Memory could have been trimmed by 200 pages and not lost any impact. Still, the characters are rich, and the main story is compelling. Though it is not great Koontz, good Koontz is still better than most and should be added to general fiction collection. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/99.]--Jeff Ayers, Seattle P.L. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
Beth Amos
The specter of mental illness is frightening enough on its own. In the hands of the master of suspense, Dean Koontz, it's both epidemic and horrifying. Never has the saying "There is nothing to fear but fear itself" been more true. And never has fear been so, well, frightening.
In False Memory, a bone-chilling tale of fantasies, phobias, and false memories, Koontz has crafted yet another masterpiece of subtle terror, an all-too-plausible tale with the most powerful and devious of enemies -- one's own mind.
Martie Rhodes is married to a man she adores. She has a successful career as a video-game designer and a life many would envy. But there are a few hitches. Once a week, Martie escorts her best friend, Susan, to a psychiatrist's office, where Susan receives treatment for the severe case of agoraphobia that suddenly took over her life 18 months before. And Martie's husband, Dusty, has a younger brother who is sweet, naive, and addicted to drugs.
Still, Martie's life is relatively stable until the morning she awakens with a sudden and inexplicable fear of her own. It is a fear unlike any she has ever encountered or even considered. It is a fear she may not be able to control. It is a fear of the one thing she should be able to master but can't. It is a fear of herself.
It begins innocently enough with a sense of disquiet that Martie experiences while walking the dog, an odd feeling of fright when she sees her own shadow. But things quickly escalate, and within hours, horrifying images fill Martie's mind, images of blood and violence committed by her own hands, committed against herself and the one person she loves most: her husband, Dusty.
Martie soon learns that her condition has a name: autophobia. When she shares her fears with her husband, Dusty finds himself torn. On the one hand, he is desperate to be there for Martie, to learn the cause of her mental condition and try to find a way to fight it. On the other hand, there is his brother, Skeet, whose recent backslide has led to a suicide attempt -- a harrowing scene that nearly costs Dusty his life as well.
It's while caring for his poor, drug-addled brother that Dusty accidentally stumbles upon a quirk that suggests Skeet's problems may not all be of his own making. When Dusty discovers that the same quirk may be behind Martie's mental illness, he is thrown into a nightmare of astonishing proportions. To save those he loves, Dusty must confront a monster whose power over him, Skeet, and Martie is unthinkable, a monster who has already destroyed dozens of lives and thinks nothing of racking up a few more.
Koontz has tapped into the most fertile and terrifying source possible for psychological suspense -- the human mind. As the filter that defines all we see, all we experience, and all we are, it is what makes us most vulnerable to both harm and evil. But its capacity for love, combined with the will to survive, can also be a formidable weapon. The fear of madness lurks within us all. Leave it to Dean Koontz to capitalize on that fear and turn it into yet another deliciously chilling and haunting tale.
--Beth Amos
Loading...Product Details
- Pub. Date: November 2000
- Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
- Format: Mass Market Paperback, 784pp
- Sales Rank: 54,191
- ISBN-13: 9780553580228
- ISBN: 0553580221
- Edition Description: BANTAM PBK
Read an Excerpt
On that Tuesday in January, when her life changed forever, Martine Rhodes woke with a headache, developed a sour stomach after washing down two aspirin with grapefruit juice, guaranteed herself an epic bad-hair day by mistakenly using Dustin's shampoo instead of her own, broke a fingernail, burnt her toast, discovered ants swarming through the cabinet under the kitchen sink, eradicated the pests by firing a spray can of insecticide as ferociously as Sigourney Weaver wielded a flamethrower in one of those old extraterrestrial-bug movies, cleaned up the resultant carnage with paper towels, hummed Bach's Requiem as she solemnly consigned the tiny bodies to the trash can, and took a telephone call from her mother, Sabrina, who still prayed for the collapse of Martie's marriage three years after the wedding. Throughout, she remained upbeat—even enthusiastic—about the day ahead, because from her late father, Robert "Smilin' Bob" Woodhouse, she had inherited an optimistic nature, formidable coping skills, and a deep love of life in addition to blue eyes, ink-black hair, and ugly toes.Thanks, Daddy.
After convincing her ever hopeful mother that the Rhodes marriage remained happy, Martie slipped into a leather jacket and took her golden retriever, Valet, on his morning walk. Step by step, her headache faded.
Along the whetstone of clear eastern sky, the sun sharpened scalpels of light. Out of the west, however, a cool onshore breeze pushed malignant masses of dark clouds.
The dog regarded the heavens with concern, sniffed the air warily, and pricked his pendant ears at the hiss-clatter of palm fronds stirred by the wind. Clearly, Valetknew a storm was coming.
He was a gentle, playful dog. Loud noises frightened him, however, as though he had been a soldier in a former life and was haunted by memories of battlefields blasted by cannon fire.
Fortunately for him, rotten weather in southern California was seldom accompanied by thunder. Usually, rain fell unannounced, hissing on the streets, whispering through the foliage, and these were sounds that even Valet found soothing.
Most mornings, Martie walked the dog for an hour, along the narrow tree-lined streets of Corona Del Mar, but she had a special obligation every Tuesday and Thursday that limited their excursion to fifteen minutes on those days. Valet seemed to have a calendar in his furry head, because on their Tuesday and Thursday expeditions, he never dawdled, finishing his toilet close to home.
This morning, only one block from their house, on the grassy sward between the sidewalk and the curb, the pooch looked around shyly, discreetly lifted his right leg, and as usual made water as though embarrassed by the lack of privacy.
Less than a block farther, he was preparing to conclude the second half of his morning business when a passing garbage truck backfired, startling him. He huddled behind a queen palm, peering cautiously around one side of the tree bole and then around the other, convinced that the terrifying vehicle would reappear.
"No problem," Martie assured him. "The big bad truck is gone. Everything's fine. This is now a safe-to-poop zone."
Valet was unconvinced. He remained wary.
Martie was blessed with Smilin' Bob's patience, too, especially when dealing with Valet, whom she loved almost as much as she might have loved a child if she'd had one. He was sweet-tempered and beautiful: light gold, with gold-and-white feathering on his legs, soft snow-white flags on his butt, and a lush tail.
Of course, when the dog was in a doing-business squat, like now, Martie never looked at him, because he was as self-conscious as a nun in a topless bar. While waiting, she softly sang Jim Croce's "Time in a Bottle," which always relaxed him.
As she began the second verse, a sudden chill climbed the ladder of her spine, causing her to fall silent. She was not a woman given to premonitions, but as the icy quiver ascended to the back of her neck, she was overcome by a sense of impending danger.
Turning, she half expected to see an approaching assailant or a hurtling car. Instead, she was alone on this quiet residential street.
Nothing rushed toward her with lethal purpose. The only moving things were those harried by the wind. Trees and shrubs shivered. A few crisp brown leaves skittered along the pavement. Garlands of tinsel and Christmas lights, from the recent holiday, rustled and rattled under the eaves of a nearby house.
Still uneasy, but feeling foolish, Martie let out the breath that she'd been holding. When the exhalation whistled between her teeth, she realized that her jaws were clenched.
She was probably still spooked from the dream that awakened her after midnight, the same one she'd had on a few other recent nights. The man made of dead, rotting leaves, a nightmare figure. Whirling, raging.
Then her gaze dropped to her elongated shadow, which stretched across the close-cropped grass, draped the curb, and folded onto the cracked concrete pavement. Inexplicably, her uneasiness swelled into alarm.
She took one step backward, then a second, and of course her shadow moved with her. Only as she retreated a third step did she realize that this very silhouette was what frightened her.
Ridiculous. More absurd than her dream. Yet something in her shadow was not right: a jagged distortion, a menacing quality.
Her heart knocked as hard as a fist on a door.
In the severe angle of the morning sun, the houses and trees cast distorted images, too, but she saw nothing fearsome in their stretched and buckled shadows--only in her own.
She recognized the absurdity of her fear, but this awareness did not diminish her anxiety. Terror courted her, and she stood hand in hand with panic.
The shadow seemed to throb with the thick slow beat of its own heart. Staring at it, she was overcome with dread.
Martie closed her eyes and tried to get control of herself.
For a moment, she felt so light that the wind seemed strong enough to sweep her up and carry her inland with the relentlessly advancing clouds, toward the steadily shrinking band of cold blue sky. As she drew a series of deep breaths, however, weight gradually returned to her.
When she dared to look again at her shadow, she no longer sensed anything unusual about it. She let out a sigh of relief.
Her heart continued to pound, powered not by irrational terror anymore, but by an understandable concern as to the cause of this peculiar episode. She'd never previously experienced such a thing.
Head cocked quizzically, Valet was staring at her.
She had dropped his leash.
Her hands were damp with sweat. She blotted her palms on her blue jeans.
When she realized that the dog had finished his toilet, Martie slipped her right hand into a plastic pet-cleanup bag, using it as a glove. Being a good neighbor, she neatly collected Valet's gift, turned the bright blue bag inside out, twisted it shut, and tied a double knot in the neck.
The retriever watched her sheepishly.
"If you ever doubt my love, baby boy," Martie said, "remember I do this every day."
Valet looked grateful. Or perhaps only relieved.
Performance of this familiar, humble task restored her mental balance. The little blue bag and its warm contents anchored her to reality. The weird incident remained troubling, intriguing, but it no longer frightened her.
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