With his bestselling blend of nail-biting intensity, daring
artistry, and storytelling magic, Dean Koontz returns with
an emotional roller coaster of a tale filled with enough
twists, turns, shocks, and surprises for ten ordinary
novels. Here is the story of five days in the life of an
ordinary man born to an extraordinary legacy--a story that
will challenge the way you look at good and evil, life and
death, and everything in between.
Jimmy Tock comes into the world on the very night his
grandfather leaves it. As a violent storm rages outside the
hospital, Rudy Tock spends long hours walking the corridors
between the expectant fathers' waiting room and his dying
father's bedside. It's a strange vigil made all the
stranger when, at the very height of the storm's fury,
Josef Tock suddenly sits up in bed and speaks coherently
for the first and last time since his stroke.
What he says before he dies is that there will be five dark
days in the life of his grandson--five dates whose terrible
events Jimmy will have to prepare himself to face. The
first is to occur in his twentieth year; the second in his
twent-third year; the third in his twenty-eighth; the
fourth in his twenty-ninth; the fifth in his thirtieth.
Rudy is all too ready to discount his father's last words
as a dying man's delusional rambling. But then he discovers
that Josef also predicted the time of his grandson's birth
to the minute, as well as his exact height and weight, and
the fact that Jimmy would be born with syndactyly--the
unexplained anomal of fused digits--on his left foot.
Suddenly the old man's predictions take on a chilling
significance.
What terrifying events await Jimmy on these five dark days?
What nightmares will he face? What challenges must he
survive? As the novel unfolds, picking up Jimmy's story at
each of these crisis points, the path he must follow will
defy every expectation. And with each crisis he faces, he
will move closer to a fate he could never have imagined.
For who Jimmy Tock is and what he must accomplish on the
five days when his world turns is a mystery as dangerous as
it is wondrous--a struggle against an evil so dark and
pervasive, only the most extraordinary of human spirits can
shine through.