by Dean Koontz
if there was blood. There wasn’t. Just spit.
He tried again. No blood.
He knew what that meant. He’d been too close to the Bad Thing. Maybe even inside the bad thing, just for a blink. The ugly taste in his mouth was the same taste the Bad Thing tasted, tearing with its teeth at some living, squirming food. Thomas didn’t have blood in his mouth, he just had a memory of blood in his mouth. But that was bad enough; this time wasn’t at all like biting his tongue or getting a tooth yanked, because this time what he tasted wasn’t his own blood.
Though enough warm was in the room, he started shivering and couldn’t stop.
CANDY PROWLED the canyons, in the grip of urgent need, rattling wild animals out of burrows and nests. He was kneeling in the mud beside a huge oak, pummeled by rain, sucking blood from the ravished throat of a rabbit, when he felt someone place a hand atop his head.
He threw down the rabbit and sprang to his feet, turning around as he did so. Nobody was there. Two of his sisters’ blackest cats were twenty feet behind him, visible only because their eyes were luminous in the gloom; they had been following him since he’d left the house. Otherwise he was alone.
For a second or two, he still felt the hand on his head, though no hand was there. Then the queer sensation passed.
He studied the shadows on all sides and listened to the rain snapping through the oak leaves.
Finally, shrugging off the episode, driven by his fierce need, he proceeded farther east, moving upslope. A two-foot-wide stream had formed on the canyon floor, six or eight inches deep, not large enough to hamper his progress.
The drenched cats followed. He did not want them with him, but he knew from experience that he would not be able to chase them away. They did not always accompany him, but when they chose to follow in his tracks, they could not be dissuaded.
After he had gone about a hundred yards, he dropped to his knees again, held his hands in front of him, and allowed the power to erupt once more. Shimmering sapphire light swept through the night. Brush shook, trees stirred, and rocks clattered against one another. In the wake of the light, clouds of dust flew up, ghostly silver columns that rippled like wind-stirred shrouds, then vanished into the darkness.
A bevy of animals burst from cover, and some raced toward Candy. He snatched at a rabbit, missed, but seized a squirrel. It tried to bite him, but he swung it hard by one leg, bashing its head against the muddy ground, stunning it.
VIOLET WAS with Verbina in the kitchen. They were sitting on the layered blankets with twenty-three of their twenty-five cats.
Parts of her mind—and parts of her sister’s—were in Cinders and Lamia, the black cats through which they were accompanying their brother. Watching Candy seize and destroy his prey, Cinders and Lamia were excited, and Violet was excited too. Electrified.
The wet January night was deep, illumined only by the ambient light from the communities to the west, which was reflected off the bellies of the low clouds. In that wilderness, Candy was the wildest creature of them all, a fierce and powerful and merciless predator who crept swiftly and silently through the rugged canyons, taking what he needed and wanted. He was so strong and limber that he appeared to flow up the canyon, over rocks and fallen timber, around prickly brush, as if he were not a man of flesh and blood, but the rippled moonshadow of some flying creature soaring high above the earth.
When Candy seized the squirrel and bashed its head against the ground, Violet divided the part of her mind that was in Lamia and Cinders, and also entered the squirrel. It was stunned by the blow. It struggled feebly and looked at Candy with unalloyed terror.
Candy’s big, strong hands were on the squirrel, but it seemed to Violet that they were on her, as well, moving over her bare legs, hips, belly, and breasts.
Candy snapped its spine against his bent knee.
Violet shuddered. Verbina whimpered and clung to her sister.
The squirrel no longer had any feeling in its extremities.
With a low growl, Candy bit the animal’s throat. He tore at its hide, chewing open the blood-rich vessels.
Violet felt the hot blood spurting out of the squirrel, felt Candy’s mouth fastened hungrily to the wound. It almost seemed as though no surrogate lay between them, as if his lips were pressed firmly to Violet’s throat and as if her own blood was flooding into his mouth. She wished that she could enter Candy’s mind and be on both the giving and receiving end of the blood, but she could only meld with animals.
She no longer had the strength to sit up. She settled back onto the blankets, only half aware that she was softly chanting a monotonous litany: “Yea, yes, yes, yes, yes. . . .”
Verbina rolled atop her sister.
Around them the cats tumbled together in a roiling mass of fur and tails and whiskered faces.
THOMAS TRIED again. For Julie’s sake. He reached out toward the cold. Slowing mind of the Bad Thing. Right away the Bad Thing drew him toward it. He let his mind unwind like a big ball of string. It pierced the window, zoomed into the night, made contact.
He TVed questions: What are you? Where are you? What do you want? Why are you going to hurt Julie?
JUST AS CANDY threw aside the dead squirrel and got to his feet, he felt the hand on his head again. He twitched, turned, and flailed at the darkness with both fists.
No one was behind him. With radiant amber eyes, the two cats watched him from about twenty feet away, dark blots on the pale silt. All the wildlife in the immediate vicinity had fled. If someone was spying on him, the intruder was concealed in the brush farther back along the canyon or in a niche on one of the canyon walls, certainly not near enough to have touched him.
Besides, he still felt the hand. He rubbed at the top of his head, half expecting to find leaves stuck in his wet hair. Nothing.
But the pressure of a hand remained, even increased, and was so well defined that he could feel the outlines of four fingers, a thumb, and the curve of a palm against his skull.
What . . . where ... what . . . why . . . ?
Those words echoed inside his head. No voice had broken through the drizzling sounds of the rain.
What . . . where . . . what ... why . . . ?
Candy turned in a full circle, angry and confused.
A crawling sensation arose in his head, different from anything he had ever known before. As if something was burrowing in his brain.
“Who are your’ he said aloud.
What . . . where . . . what ... why . . . ?
“Who are you?”
THE BAD THING was a man. Thomas knew that now. An ugly-inside man and something else, too, but still at least partly a man.
The Bad Thing’s mind was like a whirlpool, blacker than black, swirling real fast, sucking Thomas down, down, wanting to gobble him alive. He tried to break loose. Swim away. Wasn’t easy. The Bad Thing was going to pull him into the Bad Place, and he’d never be able to come back. He thought he was a goner. But his fear of the Bad Place, of going where Julie and Bobby would never find him and where he’d be alone, was so big he finally tore free and rewound himself into his room at Cielo Vista.
He slid down on the mattress and drew the covers over his head, so he couldn’t see the night beyond the window, and so nothing out there in the night could see him.
34
WALTER HAVALOW, Mrs. George Farris’s surviving brother and heir to her modest estate, lived in a richer neighborhood than the Phans, but he was poorer in courtesy and good manners. His English Tudor house in Villa Park had beveled-glass windows filled with a light that Julie found warm and beckoning, but Havalow stood in the doorway and did not invite them inside even after he had studied their PI license and returned it to her.
“What do you want?”
Havalow was tall, potbellied, with thinning blond hair and a thick mustache that was part blond and part red. His penetrating hazel eyes marked him as a man of intelligence, but they were cold, watchful, and calculating—the eyes of a Mafia accountant.<
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“As I explained,” Julie said, “the Phans told us you could help. We need a photograph of your late brother-in-law, George Farris.”
“Why?”
“Well, as I said, there’s a man going around pretending to be Mr. Farris, and he’s a player in a case we’re working on.”
“Can’t be my brother-in-law. He’s dead.”
“Yes, we know. But this imposter’s ID is very good, and it would help us to have a photo of the real George Farris. I’m sorry I can’t tell you anything more. I’d be violating our client’s privacy.”
Havalow turned away and closed the door in their faces.
Bobby looked at Julie and said, “Mr. Conviviality.”
Julie rang the bell again.
After a moment, Havalow opened the door. “What?”
“I know we arrived unannounced,” Julie said, struggling to remain cordial, “and I apologize for the intrusion, but a photo of your—”
“I was just going to get the picture,” he said impatiently. “I’d have it in hand by now if you hadn’t rung the bell again.” He turned away from them and closed the door a second time.
“Is it our body odor?” Bobby wondered.
“What a jerk.”
“You think he’s really coming back?”
“He doesn’t, I’ll break the door down.”
Behind them, rain dripped off the overhang that sheltered the last ten feet of the walkway, and water gurgled hollowly through a downspout—cold sounds.
Havalow returned with a shoe box full of snapshots. “My time is valuable. If you want my cooperation, you’ll keep that in mind.”
Julie resisted her worst instincts. Rudeness irritated the hell out of her. She fantasized knocking the box out of his grasp, seizing one of his hands, and bending the index finger as far back as it would go, thus straining the digital nerve on the front of his hand while simultaneously pinching the radial and median nerves on the back, forcing him to kneel. Then a knee driven into the underside of his chin, a swift chop to the back of his neck, a well-placed kick to his soft, protruding belly ...
Havalow rummaged through the box and extracted a Polaroid of a man and a woman sitting at a redwood picnic table on a sunny day. “That’s George and Irene.”
Even in the yellowish light of the porch lamp, Julie could see that George Farris had been a rangy man with a long narrow face, the exact physical opposite of Frank Pollard.
“Why would someone be claiming he’s George?” Havalow asked.
“We’re dealing with a possible criminal who uses multiple fake IDs,” Julie said. “George Farris is just one of his identities. No doubt your brother-in-law’s name was probably chosen at random by the document forger this guy used. Forgers sometimes we the names and addresses of the deceased.”
Havalow downed. “You think it’s possible this man using George’s name is the same guy who killed Irene, my brother, my two nieces?”
“No,” Julie said immediately. “We’re not dealing with a killer here. Just a confidence man, a swindler.”
“Besides,” Bobby said, “no killer would link himself to murders he’d committed by getting ID in the name of his victim’s husband.”
Making eye contact with Julie, clearly trying to determine how much they were snowing him, Havalow said, “This guy your client?”
“No,” Julie lied. “He ripped off our client, and we’ve been hired to track him down, so he can be forced to make restitution.”
Bobby said, “Can we borrow this photo, sir?”
Havalow hesitated. He was still making eye contact with Julie.
Bobby handed Havalow a Dakota & Dakota business card. “We’ll get the picture back to you. There’s our address, phone number. I understand your reluctance to part with a family photo, especially since your sister and brother-in-law are no longer alive, but if—”
Apparently deciding that they were not lying, Havalow said, “Hell, take it. I’m not sentimental about George. Never could stand him. Always thought my sister was a fool for marrying him.”
“Thank you,” Bobby said. “We—”
Havalow stepped back and closed the door.
Julie rang the bell.
Bobby said, “Please don’t kill him.”
Scowling with impatience, Havalow opened the door.
Stepping between Julie and Havalow, Bobby held out the forged driver’s license bearing George Farris’s name and Frank’s picture. “One more thing, sir, and we’ll get out of your hair.”
“I live to a very tight schedule,” Havalow said.
“Have you seen this man before?”
Irritated, Havalow took the driver’s license and inspected it. “Doughy face, bland features. There’re a million like him within a hundred miles of here—wouldn’t you say?”
“And you’ve never seen him?”
“Are you slow-witted? Do I have to put it in short, simple sentences? No. I have never seen him.”
Retrieving the license, Bobby said, “Thanks for your time and—”
Havalow closed the door. Hard.
Julie reached for the bell.
Bobby stayed her hand. “We’ve got everything we came for.”
“I want—”
“I know what you want,” Bobby said, “but torturing a man to death is against the law in California.”
He hustled her away from the house, into the rain.
In the car again, she said, “That rude, self-important bastard!”
Bobby started the engine and switched on the windshield wipers. “We’ll stop at the mall, buy you one of those giant teddy bears, paint Havalow’s name on it, let you tear the guts out of it. Okay?”
“Who the hell does he think he is?”
While Julie glowered back at the house, Bobby drove away from it. “He’s Walter Havalow, babe, and he’s got to be himself until he dies, which is a worse punishment than anything you could do to him.”
A few minutes later, when they were out of Villa Park, Bobby drove into the lot at a Ralph’s supermarket and tucked the Toyota into a parking space. He doused the headlights, switched off the wipers, but left the engine running so they would have heat.
Only a few cars were in front of the market. Puddles as large as swimming pools reflected the store lights.
Bobby said, “What’ve we learned?”
“That we loathe Walter Havalow.”
“Yes, but what have we learned that’s germane to the case? Is it just a coincidence that Frank’s been using George Farris’s name and Farris’s family was slaughtered?”
“I don’t believe in coincidence.”
“Neither do I. But I still don’t think Frank is a killer.”
“Neither do I, though anything’s possible. But what you said to Havalow was true—surely Frank wouldn’t kill Irene Farris and everyone else in the house, then carry around fake ID that links him to them.”
Rain began to fall harder than before, drumming noisily on the Toyota. The heavy curtain of water blurred the supermarket.
Bobby said, “You want to know what I think? I think Frank was using Farris’s name, and whoever’s after him found out about it.”
“Mr. Blue Light, you mean. The guy who supposedly can make a car fall apart around you and magically induce streetlights to blow out.”
“Yeah. him,” Bobby said.
“If he exists.”
“Mr. Blue Light discovered Frank was using the Farris name, and went to that address, hoping to find him. But Frank had never been there. It was just a name and address his document forger picked at random. So when Mr. Blue didn’t find Frank, he killed everyone in the house, maybe because he thought they were lying to him and hiding Frank, or maybe just because he was in a rage.”
“He’d have known how to deal with Havalow.”
“So you think I’m right, I’m on to something?”
She thought about it. “Could be.”
He grinned at her. “Isn’t it fun being a detective?”
“Well, I meant ‘interesting.”’
“We’re either representing a man who killed four people, or we’re representing a man who’s been targeted by a brutal murderer, and that strikes you as fun?”
“Not as much fun as sex, but more fun than bowling.”
“Bobby, sometimes you make me nuts. But I love you.”
He took her hand. “If we’re going to pursue the investigation, I’m damned well going to enjoy it as much as I can. But I’ll drop the case in a minute if you want.”
“Why? Because of your dream? Because of the Bad Thing?” She shook her head. “No. We start letting a weird dream spook us, pretty soon anything will spook us. We’ll lose our confidence, and you can’t do this kind of work without confidence.”
Even in the dim backsplash from the dashboard lights, she could see the anxiety in his eyes.
Finally he said, “Yeah, that’s what I knew you’d say. So let’s get to the bottom of it as fast as we can. According to his other driver’s license, he’s James Roman, and he lives in El Toro.”
“It’s almost eight-thirty.”
“We can be there, find the house ... maybe forty-five minutes. That’s not too late.”
“All right.”
Instead of putting the car in gear, he slid his seat back and stripped out of his down-lined, nylon jacket. “Unlock the glovebox and give me my gun. From now on I’m wearing it everywhere.”
Each of them had a license to carry a concealed weapon. Julie struggled out of her own jacket, then retrieved two shoulder holsters from under her seat. She took both revolvers out of the glovebox: two snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38 Chiefs Specials, reliable and compact guns that could be carried in-conspicuously beneath ordinary clothing with little or no help from a tailor.
THE HOUSE was gone. If anyone named James Roman had lived there, he had new lodgings now. A bare concrete slab lay in the middle of the lot, surrounded by grass, shrubbery, and several trees, as if the structure had been snared from above by intergalactic moving men and neatly spirited away.
Bobby parked in the driveway, and they got out of the Toyota to have a closer look at the property. Even in the slashing rain, a nearby streetlamp cast enough light to reveal that the lawn was trampled, gouged by tires, and bare in spots; it was also littered with splinters of wood, pale bits of Sheetrock, crumbled stucco, and a few fragments of glass that sparkled darkly.
The strongest clue to the fate of the house was to be found in the condition of the shrubbery and trees. Those bushes closest to the slab were all either dead or badly damaged, and on closer inspection appeared to be scorched. The nearest