Koko

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“The characters are outstanding.… They are the story, enshrouded by a nightmare that never lifts. Peter Straub takes bold risks and he succeeds.”

—San Jose Mercury News

“Enormously entertaining and scary.… Rich, complex, dark, and tough to put down.”

—New York Daily News

“Terrifying psychological horror.… Straub [is] a master storyteller.”

—The Plain Dealer

For Susan Straub

and

For Lila J. Kalinich, M.D.

I believe it is possible and even recommended to play the blues on everything.—FRANK MORGAN, alto saxophonist

PART

ONE

THE

DEDICATION

1

At three o’clock in the afternoon of a grey, blowing mid-November day, a baby doctor named Michael Poole looked down through the windows of his second-floor room into the parking lot of the Sheraton Hotel. A VW van, spray-painted with fuzzy peace symbols and driven by either a drunk or a lunatic, was going for a ninety-eight-point turn in the space between the first parking row and the entrance, trapping a honking line of cars in the single entry lane. As Michael watched, the van completed its turn by grinding its front bumper into the grille and headlights of a dusty little Camaro. The whole front end of the Camaro buckled in. Horns blew. The van now faced a stalled, frustrated line of enemy vehicles. The driver backed up, and Michael thought he was going to escape by reversing down the first row of cars to the exit onto Woodley Road. Instead, the driver nipped the van into an empty space two cars down. “Well, damn,” Michael said to himself—the van’s driver had sacrificed the Camaro for a parking place.

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