by Dean Koontz
Aiii-eee, aiii-eee, aiii-eee . . .
The maddening electronic squeal issued from a pair of small stereo speakers that hung on the wall behind the bed. The CD player and an accompanying AM-FM tuner and amplifier were stacked on one of the nightstands.
Although Vivienne could see where the noise originated, she couldn’t locate any source for the bitterly cold air. Neither window was open, and even if one had been raised, the night wasn’t frigid enough to account for the chill.
Just as she reached the AM-FM tuner, the banshee wail stopped. The sudden silence had an oppressive weight.
Gradually, as her ears stopped ringing, Vivienne perceived the soft empty hiss of the stereo speakers. Then she heard the thumping of her own heart.
The metal casing of the radio gleamed with a brittle crust of ice. She touched it wonderingly. A sliver of ice broke loose under her finger and fell onto the nightstand. It didn’t begin to melt; the room was cold.
The window was frosted. The dresser mirror was frosted too, and her reflection was dim and distorted and strange.
Outside, the night was cool but not wintry. Maybe fifty degrees. Maybe even fifty-five.
The radio’s digital display began to change, the orange numbers escalating across the frequency band, sweeping through one station after another. Scraps of music, split-second flashes of disc jockeys’ chatter, single words from different somber-voiced newscasters, and fragments of commercial jingles blended in a cacophonous jumble of meaningless sound. The indicator reached the end of the band width, and the digital display began to sequence backward.
Trembling, Vivienne switched off the radio.
As soon as she took her finger off the push switch, the radio turned itself on again.
She stared at it, frightened and bewildered.
The digital display began to sequence up the band once more, and scraps of music blasted from the speakers.
She pressed the ON-OFF bar again.
After a brief silence, the radio turned on spontaneously.
“This is crazy,” she said shakily.
When she shut off the radio the third time, she kept her finger pressed against the ON-OFF bar. For several seconds she was certain that she could feel the switch straining under her fingertip as it tried to pop on.
Overhead, the three model airplanes began to move. Each was hung from the ceiling on a length of fishing line, and the upper end of each line was knotted to its own eye-hook that had been screwed firmly into the dry wall. The planes jiggled, jerked, twisted, and trembled.
Just a draft.
But she didn’t feel a draft.
The model planes began to bounce violently up and down on the ends of their lines.
“God help me,” Vivienne said.
One of the planes swung in tight circles, faster and faster, then in wider circles, steadily decreasing the angle between the line on which it was suspended and the bedroom ceiling. After a moment the other two models ceased their erratic dancing and began to spin around and around, like the first plane, as if they were actually flying, and there was no mistaking this deliberate movement for the random effects of a draft.
Ghosts? A poltergeist?
But she didn’t believe in ghosts. There were no such things. She believed in death and taxes, in the inevitability of slot-machine jackpots, in all-you-can-eat casino buffets for $5.95 per person, in the Lord God Almighty, in the truth of alien abductions and Big Foot, but she didn’t believe in ghosts.
The sliding closet doors began to move on their runners, and Vivienne Neddler had the feeling that some awful thing was going to come out of the dark space, its eyes as red as blood and its razor-sharp teeth gnashing. She felt a presence, something that wanted her, and she cried out as the door came all the way open.
But there wasn’t a monster in the closet. It contained only clothes. Only clothes.
Nevertheless, untouched, the doors glided shut . . . and then open again. . . .
The model planes went around, around.
The air grew even colder.
The bed started to shake. The legs at the foot rose three or four inches before crashing back into the casters that had been put under them to protect the carpet. They rose up again. Hovered above the floor. The springs began to sing as if metal fingers were strumming them.
Vivienne backed into the wall, eyes wide, hands fisted at her sides.
As abruptly as the bed had started bouncing up and down, it now stopped. The closet doors closed with a jarring crash—but they didn’t open again. The model airplanes slowed, swinging in smaller and smaller circles, until they finally hung motionless.
The room was silent.
Nothing moved.
The air was getting warmer.
Gradually Vivienne’s heartbeat subsided from the hard, frantic rhythm that it had been keeping for the past couple of minutes. She hugged herself and shivered.
A logical explanation. There had to be a logical explanation.
But she wasn’t able to imagine what it could be.
As the room grew warm again, the doorknobs and the radio casing and the other metal objects quickly shed their fragile skins of ice, leaving shallow puddles on furniture and damp spots in the carpet. The frosted window cleared, and as the frost faded from the dresser mirror, Vivienne’s distorted reflection resolved into a more familiar image of herself.
Now this was only a young boy’s bedroom, a room like countless thousands of others.
Except, of course, that the boy who had once slept here had been dead for a year. And maybe he was coming back, haunting the place.
Vivienne had to remind herself that she didn’t believe in ghosts.
Nevertheless, it might be a good idea for Tina Evans to get rid of the boy’s belongings at last.
Vivienne had no logical explanation for what had happened, but she knew one thing for sure: She wasn’t going to tell anyone what she had seen here tonight. Regardless of how convincingly and earnestly she described these bizarre events, no one would believe her. They would nod and smile woodenly and agree that it was a strange and frightening experience, but all the while they would be thinking that poor old Vivienne was finally getting senile. Sooner or later word of her rantings about poltergeists might get back to her daughter in Sacramento, and then the pressure to move to California would become unbearable. Vivienne wasn’t going to jeopardize her precious independence.
She left the bedroom, returned to the kitchen, and drank two shots of Tina Evans’s best bourbon. Then, with characteristic stoicism, she returned to the boy’s bedroom to wipe up the water from the melted ice, and she continued housecleaning.
She refused to let a poltergeist scare her off.
It might be wise, however, to go to church on Sunday. She hadn’t been to church in a long time. Maybe some churching would be good for her. Not every week, of course. Just one or two Masses a month. And confession now and then. She hadn’t seen the inside of a confessional in ages. Better safe than sorry.
chapter eight
Everyone in show business knew that non-paying preview crowds were among the toughest to please. Free admission didn’t guarantee their appreciation or even their amicability. The person who paid a fair price for something was likely to place far more value on it than the one who got the same item for nothing. That old saw applied in spades to stage shows and to on-the-cuff audiences.
But not tonight. This crowd wasn’t able to sit on its hands and keep its cool.
The final curtain came down at eight minutes till ten o’clock, and the ovation continued until after Tina’s wristwatch had marked the hour. The cast of Magyck! took several bows, then the crew, then the orchestra, all of them flushed with the excitement of being part of an unqualified hit. At the insistence of the happy, boisterous, VIP audience, both Joel Bandiri and Tina were spotlighted in their booths and were rewarded with their own thunderous round of applause.
Tina was on an adrenaline high, grinning, breathless, barely able to abso
rb the overwhelming response to her work. Helen Mainway chattered excitedly about the spectacular special effects, and Elliot Stryker had an endless supply of compliments as well as some astute observations about the technical aspects of the production, and Charlie Mainway poured a third bottle of Dom Pérignon, and the house lights came up, and the audience reluctantly began to leave, and Tina hardly had a chance to sip her champagne because of all the people who stopped by the table to congratulate her.
By ten-thirty most of the audience had left, and those who hadn’t gone yet were in line, moving up the steps toward the rear doors of the showroom. Although no second show was scheduled this evening, as would be the case every night henceforth, busboys and waitresses were busily clearing tables, resetting them with fresh linen and silverware for the following night’s eight o’clock performance.
When the aisle in front of her booth was finally empty of well-wishers, Tina got up and met Joel as he started to come to her. She threw her arms around him and, much to her surprise, began to cry with happiness. She hugged him hard, and Joel proclaimed the show to be a “gargantua if I ever saw one.”
By the time they got backstage, the opening-night party was in full swing. The sets and props had been moved from the main floor of the stage, and eight folding tables had been set up. The tables were draped with white cloths and burdened with food: five hot hors d’oeuvres, lobster salad, crab salad, pasta salad, filet mignon, chicken breasts in tarragon sauce, roasted potatoes, cakes, pies, tarts, fresh fruits, berries, and cheeses. Hotel management personnel, showgirls, dancers, magicians, crewmen, and musicians crowded around the tables, sampling the offerings while Phillippe Chevalier, the hotel’s executive chef, personally watched over the affair. Knowing this feast had been laid on for the party, few of those present had eaten dinner, and most of the dancers had eaten nothing since a light lunch. They exclaimed over the food and clustered around the portable bar. With the memory of the applause still fresh in everyone’s mind, the party was soon jumping.
Tina mingled, moving back and forth, upstage and downstage, through the crowd, thanking everyone for his contribution to the show’s success, complimenting each member of the cast and crew on his dedication and professionalism. Several times she encountered Elliot Stryker, and he seemed genuinely interested in learning how the splashy stage effects had been achieved. Each time that Tina moved on to talk to someone else, she regretted leaving Elliot, and each time that she found him again, she stayed with him longer than she had before. After their fourth encounter, she lost track of how long they were together. Finally she forgot all about circulating.
Standing near the left proscenium pillar, out of the main flow of the party, they nibbled at pieces of cake, talking about Magyck! and then about the law, Charlie and Helen Mainway, Las Vegas real estate—and, by some circuitous route, superhero movies.
He said, “How can Batman wear an armored rubber suit all the time and not have a chronic rash?”
“Yeah, but there are advantages to a rubber suit.”
“Such as?”
“You can go straight from office work to scuba diving without changing clothes.”
“Eat takeout food at two hundred miles an hour in the Batmobile, and no matter how messy it gets—just hose off later.”
“Exactly. After a hard day of crime-fighting, you can get stinking drunk and throw up on yourself, and it doesn’t matter. No dry-cleaning bills.”
“In basic black he’s dressed for any occasion—”
“—from an audience with the Pope to a Marquis de Sade memorial sock hop.”
Elliot smiled. He finished his cake. “I guess you’ll have to be here most nights for a long time to come.”
“No. There’s really no need for me to be.”
“I thought a director—”
“Most of the director’s job is finished. I just have to check on the show once every couple of weeks to make sure the tone of it isn’t drifting away from my original intention.”
“But you’re also the co-producer.”
“Well, now that the show’s opened successfully, most of my share of the producer’s chores are public relations and promotional stuff. And a little logistics to keep the production rolling along smoothly. But nearly all of that can be handled out of my office. I won’t have to hang around the stage. In fact, Joel says it isn’t healthy for a producer to be backstage every night . . . or even most nights. He says I’d just make the performers nervous and cause the technicians to look over their shoulders for the boss when they should have their eyes on their work.”
“But will you be able to resist?”
“It won’t be easy staying away. But there’s a lot of sense in what Joel says, so I’m going to try to play it cool.”
“Still, I guess you’ll be here every night for the first week or so.”
“No,” she said. “If Joel’s right—and I’m sure he is—then it’s best to get in the habit of staying away right from the start.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“Oh, I’ll probably pop in and out a few times.”
“I guess you’ll be going to a New Year’s Eve party.”
“I hate New Year’s Eve parties. Everyone’s drunk and boring.”
“Well, then . . . in between all that popping in and out of Magyck!, do you think you’d have time for dinner?”
“Are you asking me for a date?”
“I’ll try not to slurp my soup.”
“You are asking me for a date,” she said, pleased.
“Yes. And it’s been a long time since I’ve been this awkward about it.”
“Why is that?”
“You, I guess.”
“I make you feel awkward?”
“You make me feel young. And when I was young, I was very awkward.”
“That’s sweet.”
“I’m trying to charm you.”
“And succeeding,” she said.
He had such a warm smile. “Suddenly I don’t feel so awkward anymore.”
She said, “You want to start over?”
“Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?”
“Sure. How about seven-thirty?”
“Fine. You prefer dressy or casual?”
“Blue jeans.”
He fingered his starched collar and the satin lapel of his tuxedo jacket. “I’m so glad you said that.”
“I’ll give you my address.” She searched her purse for a pen.
“We can stop in here and watch the first few numbers in Magyck! and then go to the restaurant.”
“Why don’t we just go straight to the restaurant?”
“You don’t want to pop in here?”
“I’ve decided to go cold turkey.”
“Joel will be proud of you.”
“If I can actually do it, I’ll be proud of me.”
“You’ll do it. You’ve got true grit.”
“In the middle of dinner, I might be seized by a desperate need to dash over here and act like a producer.”
“I’ll park the car in front of the restaurant door, and I’ll leave the engine running just in case.”
Tina gave her address to him, and then somehow they were talking about jazz and Benny Goodman, and then about the miserable service provided by the Las Vegas phone company, just chatting away as if they were old friends. He had a variety of interests; among other things he was a skier and a pilot, and he was full of funny stories about learning to ski and fly. He made her feel comfortable, yet at the same time he intrigued her. He projected an interesting image: a blend of male power and gentleness, aggressive sexuality and kindness.
A hit show . . . lots of royalty checks to look forward to . . . an infinity of new opportunities made available to her because of this first smashing success . . . and now the prospect of a new and exciting lover . . .
As she listed her blessings, Tina was astonished at how much difference one year could make in a life. From bitterness, pain, tragedy, and unrelenting sorrow,
she had turned around to face a horizon lit by rising promise. At last the future looked worth living. Indeed, she couldn’t see how anything could go wrong.
chapter nine
The skirts of the night were gathered around the Evans house, rustling in a dry desert wind.
A neighbor’s white cat crept across the lawn, stalking a wind-tossed scrap of paper. The cat pounced, missed its prey, stumbled, scared itself, and flashed lightning-quick into another yard.
Inside, the house was mostly silent. Now and then the refrigerator switched on, purring to itself. A loose windowpane in the living room rattled slightly whenever a strong gust of wind struck it. The heating system rumbled to life, and for a couple of minutes at a time, the blower whispered wordlessly as hot air pushed through the vents.
Shortly before midnight, Danny’s room began to grow cold. On the doorknob, on the radio casing, and on other metal objects, moisture began to condense out of the air. The temperature plunged rapidly, and the beads of water froze. Frost formed on the window.
The radio clicked on.
For a few seconds the silence was split by an electronic squeal as sharp as an ax blade. Then the shrill noise abruptly stopped, and the digital display flashed with rapidly changing numbers. Snippets of music and shards of voices crackled in an eerie audio-montage that echoed and re-echoed off the walls of the frigid room.
No one was in the house to hear it.
The closet door opened, closed, opened. . . .
Inside the closet, shirts and jeans began to swing wildly on the pole from which they hung, and some clothes fell to the floor.
The bed shook.
The display case that held nine model airplanes rocked, banging repeatedly against the wall. One of the models was flung from its shelf, then two more, then three more, then another, until all nine lay in a pile on the floor.
On the wall to the left of the bed, a poster of the creature from the Alien movies tore down the middle.
The radio ceased scanning, stopping on an open frequency that hissed and popped with distant static. Then a voice blared from the speakers. It was a child’s voice. A boy. There were no words. Just a long, agonized scream.