Short Stories
1965-Present



Many thanks go out to:

Phil Stephensen-Payne - For release dates and other information, as well reissue UK scans.
Jim Olson - For very rare proof and numbered/lettered edition images and info.
Paul Evans - For very rare proofs, images and info.
Allen Norby - For very rare images and info.
Tom Daniels - For very rare Oval & Cameo Library images.
Bryan McKinney - For rare Swank and Mr. issues information.
All the people who have worked so hard to gather obscure Dean Koontz items, through the years.
YOU - Contribute to Koontz Project and your name will be added to the credits list.

Thank you all!!
Without your kind efforts, this would not be possible.



1965
The Kittens
This Fence

1966
A Miracle Is Anything
"Some Disputed Barricade"

1967
Soft Come The Dragons
Love 2005
To Behold The Sun

1968
A Darkness In My Soul
The Psychedelic Children
The Twelfth Bed
Dreambird

1969
Glunk!
Whoop, The Dead Gerkle
In The Shield
Temple Of Sorrow
The Face In His Belly
Les Infants Du Voyage
Killerbot!
Where The Beast Runs
Dragon In The Land
Muse

1970
A Third Hand
The Good Ship Lookoutworld
The Mystery Of His Flesh
Emanations
Beastchild
The Crimson Witch
A Season For Freedom(Killerbot)
Nightmare Gang
Unseen Warriors
Shambolain

1971
Bruno

1972
The Terrible Weapon
Cosmic Sin
Alterboy
A Mouse In The Walls Of The Global Village
Ollie's Hands

1973
Grayworld
Wake Up To Thunder
The Sinless Child
Terra Phobia
The Undercity

1974
The Night Of The Storm
We Three

1986
Down In The Darkness
Weird World
The Monitors Of Providence
Snatcher
The Black Pumpkin

1987
The Interrogation
Hardshell
Miss Attila The Hun
Twilight Of The Dawn

1988
Graveyard Highway

1989
Trapped

1995
Strange Highways

1998
Pinkie

1999
Black River

2000
The Scariest Thing I Know


?????????
The Flames Of Fire
From the Swedish fanzine Mentat (1967-1972)

The Kittens
Readers & Writers - May/June 1966

If you have any info or scans of the above, please email me!

Bogus Alert
There's a newer book out called "Dragons: The Greatest Stories" which on the ebay info page lists Koontz as one of the authors - to the best of my knowledge he is NOT.

There is also a 2003 paperback edition of Kirby McCauley's "Frights" which has Koontz listed on the actual cover image of the book as one of the authors - the real book does NOT.












""She looked up at him out of eyes that were far away in distant mists.  "Walt! My good God - Walt - our precious angels.  The bathtub - our precious angels!""












"There was this fence were we pressed our suntanned faces and felt the wind turn warm and held to the fence and forgot who we were and where we came from but dreamed only of who we might be and where we might go..."












"The forty-foot, sixty-eight hundred pound madonna had been standing on the red-brown hillside for three hundred years.  For a trio of centuries, the Mexican wind had battered her, the seasonal rains had washed and rewashed her face, but the weathering seemed not to faze her.  The elements, storming and ranting, gentle and insidious, had served only to smooth her delicate features into a kind of soft mask.  Her face was pale as white marble, her smile gentle, her left hand clutched to her sacred heart, her right hand raised in the two-fingered blessing.

The Virgin of Aguascalientes."












"It was his birthday, and he knew that two things would happen when he went home.  Laura and the children would have dinner and a cake for him, and the android from Population Control  would come trundling up the walk shortly after to blast a hole through his head, right between the eyes, in three seconds flat"












"And what will you do when the soft breezes come and the dragons drift in to spread death?"












HERBIE WAS OH SO INNOCENT!
BUT ALSO- WAS HE DETERMINED!

"This is a story about a boy soon to turn into a man, about a girl who measured 42-23-36, and a considerable misunderstanding on the part of the former, whom we shall call Herbie Cohen, for that was his given name.  He was twenty years of age and not yet a man because he had been coddled through infancy, adolescence, and what should have been his early manhood.

Now, I'm certain you men will read this because certain numbers have already grabbed your attention and appeal to you because of this wonderful bi-sexual planet we live on.  And you women out there will read this too - partly out of envy at first."












"The Sun is one great god-eye.  The Sun taketh away, and only the Sun can returneth."












"I wonder if Dragonfly is still in the heavens and whether the Spheres of Plague still float in airlessness, blind eyes watching.  There is no way to find out, for I live in Hell."












"He unleashed the phsychic forces at them, watched them go up in flames, watched their faces melt, their insides smoke.  But there were more of them..."












"Now with Death hovering near me and now that I have to face him alone, I have decided to record the whole marvelous affair."












"Everyone wanted to steal the Pheasant for it's Dreams.  But Sloane knew only nightmares..."












"Description"












"Description"












"There were three to shape destiny...a Poet; a Mue; and - perhaps - a Man".












"His black eyes sparkled like polished coal in his green cotton face, and they were red-rimmed from the fumes of the incense."












"Description"












The Psychedelic Children ????












"The war was humane, as wars went.  It didn't destroy nations.  It merely destroyed families, wives, children..."












"Bounty hunting is never for the squeamish.  But this Beast was one no sane man could ever kill."












"We invaded China.  No guns...Something had conquered China, but it was not us; it was an unknown killer that had already left eleven million dead in the land of the dragon."












"He was the most famous musician in the galaxy, but when he came home all they saw was the hump between his shoulders, the symbiote slug..."












"Timothy was not human. Not wholly..."












"It paraded about the cage, blue waves of lubricant washing its lidless orb, clacking its razor teeth together in a mouth that accupied a third of its skull."












"The mystery of His flesh wrapped us like a blanket and carried us into the New World."












"He began with the kitchen, for he wanted to work slowly toward the climax...  Aikens ran his hands across the counter - lightly, lightly - feeling the places where Mary Spalding's hands must often have touched"
"When there was nothing more to be sensed from the emanations here, he went into the living room."












"The Naoli had struck first, their goal being the complete destruction of the Human race, and they had been almost 100% successful...

For Hullan, a Naoli archaeologist for the occupation force, the battle was no longer with the Humans but with his own guilt, a conflict that would lead him to the terrible truth about the war."












"He found himself in a strange world, wherein lived people with unusual Talents, among them the beautiful Crimson Witch of the Eye Mountain.  Taming her was to be only the beginning of his dangerous quest...!"












"The monster's resting; he's not really dead.  And the idea scares me.  I think we still might one day be capable of the atrocities that form the narrative of this story." - Dean Koontz












"Cottery was a knife man.  He carried six of them laid flat and invisible..."












"They may one day hide in the woman you love - or in others you cherish..."












"It was Christmas - and all he wanted was to give!"












"What kind of man would accept the existence of probability worlds and an intelligent bear, plus take on the job of tracking down a criminal alien?  Obviously a man with a compulsion for action, such as the American private eye.  Afterall, a punk is a punk."












"Description"












"Jake assists the probability police in tracking down two enormous and sexy heads of cabbage."












"Even the most faithful believer can serve a false god..."












"Description"












"He thought of Annie, of moments and flesh unshared, futures destroyed..."












"The creature took another step, raising its pale white hand.  It had no face.  Where its features should have been, there was only a smooth sheen of flesh...  It touched him with fingers so cold that they stung his wrist..."












"Thunder was no God.  He was a demon, a mechanical demon of our own making, a puppet-master built by his marionettes...

I am a renegade.  Thunder is not immediately aware of my existence and may not send the hunters after me for some time...
 
Either death or triumph awaits me."












THE SINLESS CHILD EXPERIMENT:

June 21, 2020.
The five of them arrived promptly a 9 o'clock: Highet and four doctors.  They shut Amelia and me out of the lab suite and covered over the viewports.  They did not come out again for more than 6 hours, and when they did show themselves, none of them looked happy.

"Well?" I asked Highet.  Amelia stood close, her arm around me, needing to touch.  Truthfully  I required her nearness as much as she did mine.

"It's as bad as you feared," he said.  "We've been careful about it - to be sure we were getting the true results from the tests.  He's an enormously self-assured child - but only because he sees no limits to his control of the world around him and expects no ill consequences for his deeds.  He is so thoughtlessly amoral that he is extremely dangerous...

A child could not be raised in ignorance of all evil - or 'sin' - without losing all his value judgments."












After 1116 years in empty space could the crewmen adjust to the claustrophobia of a new earth-like planet?

"At the window, Tucker blanched at the sight of the tiny land beyond and turned quickly away again.  Life out there, in the dirt and heat and oppressive gravity seemed impossible.  Much better, the gleaming, self-repairing starship with its frictionless machines that would never wear out.

Yet he had to learn to face it, had to come to grips with reality and initiate the colonization for which the entire trip had been made..."












"Once, when the cities weren't a tenth as large as they are now...we were called the underworld..."












"Halfway down toward the valley floor, the tunnel between the trees narrowed drastically.  The trees loomed closer, spread their boughs lower.  And it was here, in these tight quarters, in the deepest shadows, that they were attacked.

Something howled in triumph, its mad voice echoing above the constant whining of the wind."












"The Government had assigned a contingent of twelve Marines and eight plainclothes operatives to our house.  Supposedly, these men were to guard us and keep us from harm.  Actually, they were there only to be sure that we remained prisoners.  When we were finished with Mother, we dragged these other bodies onto the lawn and cremated them one at a time.

Jonathan was exhausted.  He sat down between two smoldering skeletons and wiped sweat and ashes from his face.  Maybe we made a big mistake."

"Mistake?" Jessica asked.  She was immediately defensive.

"Maybe we shouldn't have killed all of them," Jonathan said.

Jessica stamped one foot.  Her golden ringlets of hair bounced prettily.  "You're a stupid bastard, Jonathan!  You know what they were going to do to us.  When they discovered just how far-ranging our powers were and just how fast we were acquiring new powers, they finally understood the danger we posed.  They were going to kill us...

...we three are higher on the ladder of evolution than anyone who came before us."












Darkness dwells within even the best of us.
In the worst of us, darkness not only dwells but reigns.

"I am a good man.

But the temptation is great.

I have begun to prepare a list of people who have, at one time or another, made my life difficult.  I don't intend to do anything about them, of course.  The list is merely a game.  I will make it and then tear it to pieces and flush the pieces down the toilet.

I am a good man.
The list means nothing.
The cellar door will stay closed forever.
I will not open it again.
I swear by all that's holy.
I am a good man.

The list is longer than I had expected."












"Description"












"Description"












"He knew what was going to happen to him.  In his racing, fear-swollen heart, he knew..."












"It raised one thick, twisted, powerful, vinelike arm and thrust a rootlike finger at him.  "YOU," it said, in a deep whispery voice that made him think of wet slush pouring down a drain."












"Description"












"Skagg reached out with his right hand in such a way that for one disconcerting moment it seemed to Frank that the killer was going to change tactics and begin pleading for his life.

Then the hand began to change.  The palm grew longer, broader.  The fingers lengthened by two inches.  The knuckles became thicker, gnarled.  The hand darkened until it was singularly unhealthy, mottled brown-black-yellow.  Coarse hairs sprouted from the skin.  The fingernails extended into wickedly sharp claws.

"So tough you were.  Imitation Clint Eastwood.  But you're afraid now, aren't you, little man?  Afraid at last, aren't you?""












"Through frost and thaw, through wet and dry seasons, the thing on the forest floor had waited many hundreds of years for a chance to live again.  Not that it was dead.  It was alive, aware, always alert to the passage of warm-blooded creatures in the dense woods around it...

Deer, bears, badgers, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, possums, wolves, mice, foxes, raccoons, cougars, quail that had strayed in from the fields, dogs, toads, chameleons, snakes, worms, beetles, spiders, and centipedes had passed near enough to the thing to have been seized if they had been suitable.  Some, of course, were not warm-blooded, which was one of the creature's primary requirements of a host.  Those that did have warm blood - the mammals and the birds - did not meet the other important requirement: a high order of intelligence.

The thing did not grow impatient.  It had found hosts in one form or another for millions upon millions of years.  It was confident that it would eventually have an opportunity to ascend from its cold dreams and experience this new world, as it had experienced - and conquered - many others."












"A man might live a hundred years, yet his long life is but the twilight of the dawn"












"Mason's sense of dread increased... soon he was running"












"On the night it happened, a blizzard swept across the entire Northeast..."












"P. J. had been the best brother in the world.

But he was also a brutal killer.

Joey couldn't reconcile those two facts.  It would've been easy to go mad trying.

Remaining on his knees on the top of the altar step, Joey released the dead woman's cold wrist.  From the touch of her flesh, in a manner almost mystical, he'd received a dreadful and shattering revelation..."












"My first name is Ishmael. My middle name is Ahab. My mother and father love literature, especially Moby Dick. They're outrageously smart but have no common sense. Ishmael Ahab Potts. Makes you want to puke, doesn't it?"












"But you'll always know I'm out here, Bo.
You'll see signs of my work in the world around you, all around you.
You'll know I care, son.  You'll always know I love you."
The line went dead

"I didn't realize I was a loser, I thought I was smart and tough..."