The Taking (novel)
 Cover of The Taking | |
| Author | Dean Koontz |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Suspense, Mystery, Horror novel |
| Publisher | Bantam Books |
Publication date | 2004 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 448 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-553-58450-2 Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character |
The Taking is a 2004 novel written by Dean Koontz.
Plot
In the midst of a mysteriously sudden rainstorm, author Molly Sloan awakens in the middle of the night. Unable to return to sleep, she leaves her husband Neil slumbering in bed and goes downstairs to work on a manuscript in progress.
Dark shapes huddle on her porch - coyotes from the nearby forest. She wonders what could have frightened such animals into leaving the sanctuary of the deep woods to brave the proximity of human beings. Disturbed, she steps outside, to stand among the wild beasts, and is frightened herself - not by the animals, but by the strange, silvery rain that has an odd scent.
She and her husband flee their isolated home, gathering at a local tavern with other residents of their small mountain town. A thick, ominous fog obscures everything, reducing trees and buildings to looming shadows, and all communication with the outside world is lost after word reaches them that the eerie weather conditions they face have been encountered by everyone else around the planet as well.
As night deepens, unfamiliar noises are heard and strange lights seen. A peculiar fungus begins growing where the rain has seeped into the tavern's bathroom. Other frightening fungi grow upon plants, houses, and most terrifyingly, people. In addition to the huge object that frequently drifts above the terrified town, large hovering balls of light move about just above the level of the rooftops. In the presence of this light, people feel as if they are "known", completely, by whatever or whoever occupies these craft -- if the silent, drifting objects are crafts of some kind. Adding to the external threats in this bizarre new world are the mundane, but still dangerous, collapse of order among the humans and failure of the institutions of law and safety. As a child, Molly witnessed her father kill five children and several teachers before she shot him in the back with one of his own guns. Placed in a sanitarium instead of a jail, he confronts her after apparently escaping from the facility and climbing through the tavern's bathroom window.
As they search for answers, the tavern-bound group concludes that they are under siege by extraterrestrial invaders who have come as an advance party to reverse-terraform the Earth. Their goal, apparently, to alter our atmosphere to support their alien physiological needs, and in doing so, poison the planet for the human residents. Driven by their perception of the inevitable conclusion of the conflict, as well as ominous 'visions' of their gruesome deaths reflected in the mirrors, many give up hope or lose their grip on reality. Molly, while shaken, is galvanized by the experience and takes on a mission, influenced possibly by her inability previously to save the five children slain by her father. Accompanied by Neil and a dog with seemingly clairvoyant powers, she sets off to rescue the town’s children, many of whom are trapped alone in their homes as their parents and guardians have been killed or taken. They leave for this mission alone, as their friends and neighbors are crippled by fear of the mysterious threat, and have become factionalized trying to decide how to respond to it.
Molly eventually has a direct confrontation with one of the "master" aliens, and she emerges undefeated. She, Neil, and the children they've saved then witness the surprising and chilling object they had been calling "The Mothership". It is not like anything they expected, but is far more disturbing. They stand in shock as the object moves up and away from them, becoming lost in the shroud of clouds that cover the planet. They feel the "presence" leave, and then they take shelter in a fortified bank. A rain, which feels normal and natural, begins during the night. In the morning, all traces of the aliens, the fungi, and the corpses of the dead, have disappeared... washed away during the night.
When dawn arrives, other groups of adults with rescued children begin to appear at the bank. The children who'd lost everything seem completely free from feelings of loss and fear that would be expected, and the adults don't ask the obvious question of why an utterly successful invasion would be completely abandoned. They simply begin to organize themselves to survive and rebuild civilization. Additionally, although Molly and Neil had been unable in seven years of marriage to have a child, she becomes pregnant in the months following the invasion.
The true nature of the invaders is not revealed until the epilogue, when Molly takes a walk on the beach while thinking back on the events of that night. She begins pondering something she heard on the radio in the early hours of the invasion. It had been a rebroadcast of transmissions from the international space station that had been first to encounter the invaders. After slaughtering the station occupants, one of the invaders had been heard to utter "Yimaman see noygel, see refacull, see nod a bah, see naytoss, retee fo sellos." As a writer with an ear for language, she had memorized the quote at the time. She had come to believe that the invading species was terrifyingly cold, cruel, and backwards in its morality. Making an intuitive connection between these two concepts, she writes the words phonetically in the sand, and reads them in reverse, as if reading from a funhouse mirror. When originally heard, the quote had sounded strange and terrifying. In translation it proves to be soul-chilling. My name is Legion, is Lucifer, is Abbadon, is Satan, Eater of Souls. Realizing that some of the taken had cried out in terror, while others laughed in joy, she makes the connection to the Biblical Rapture. She then recognizes the rain for what it was, the same that had ushered in the flood of the Noah's Ark story. Neil, a former priest, explains to her that in addition to the reasons commonly given for the flood, God deemed it necessary because humanity had begun to become too tolerant of murder. Thinking of the genocides of recent history, from Hitler to Darfur, she points out how pre-invasion civilization had also become careless of murder and lenient on those responsible. In the closing sentences, she tells Neil that she is writing a book for an audience of one, as she places her hand upon her belly. She wants to ensure that the story of the end of the world, and why they were spared, is written down for her unborn daughter or son.