by Dean Koontz
“Because we’ve been down the big hole,” Gunny said, “and had our heads talked in by the mother of all gone-wrongs.”
“That’s right,” Nick said. “The dog, he knows.”
The Duke of Orleans tentatively wagged his tail.
“He smells like a good dog,” Nick said. “He smells the way I’d want to smell if I didn’t have just some canine genes but was all the way a dog. He smells perfect for a dog. You’re lucky to have him.”
Carson gave Michael a look that asked, Are we crazy to go with them into this dark and lonely place?
He read her clearly, because he said, “Well, it’s dark and it’s lonely, but we’ve been through crazy for three days, and I think we’re coming out the other side tonight. I say trust Deucalion and the Duke.”
CHAPTER 52
ERIKA CARRIED JOCKO from the windowless Victorian drawing room, along the secret passageway.
When the troll passed out, he passed way out. He fell so deep into unconsciousness that during this short vacation from awareness, he must have had a room with a view of death.
As limp as rags, his body draped over her cradling arms. Head lolling, mouth open, flaps flopping, he held an iridescent bubble between his teeth, and it didn’t pop until she settled him in an armchair in the library.
Jocko remained the antithesis of beauty If any child were to come upon him accidentally, the unfortunate tyke might need years to regain control of his bladder and would be traumatized for life.
Yet Jocko’s vulnerability, his effervescence, and his touching perseverance endeared him to Erika. Somewhat to her surprise, her affection for the troll grew by the hour.
If this mansion were a cottage in the woods, if Jocko frequently broke into song, and if there were six more of him, Erika would have been a real-life Snow White.
She returned to the windowless drawing room. From the threshold, she stared for a moment at the shapeless shadow nesting within the radiant reddish-gold substance.
The care taken with the decor suggested that Victor came here regularly to sit at length with the creature in the glass casket. If he spent little time in this room, he would not have furnished it so cozily.
She closed the steel door and engaged the five deadbolts. At the end of the hall that bristled with rods, she closed the next door and bolted it, as well.
When she returned to the library, where the pivoting section of bookshelves rotated into place, concealing all beyond it, Erika found that Jocko had regained consciousness. Feet dangling well short of the floor, arms on the arms of the chair, he was sitting up straight, clutching the upholstery with both hands, as if he were on a roller coaster, nervously anticipating the next plunge.
“How do you feel, Jocko?”
He said, “Pecked.”
“What does that mean?”
“Like, say, ten birds want to peck your head, you try to protect yourself, their wings flutter against your hands and arms, flutter-flutter-flutter against your face. Jocko feels fluttery all over.”
“Have you ever been attacked by birds?”
“Only when they see me.”
“That sounds horrible.”
“Well, it just happens when Jocko’s in open air. And mostly in daylight, only once at night. Well, twice if bats count as birds.”
“There’s a bar here in the library. Maybe a drink will settle your nerves.”
“Do you have storm-drain water with interesting sediment?”
“I’m afraid we only have bottled water or from the tap.”
“Oh. Then I’ll have Scotch.”
“You want that on the rocks?”
“No. Just some ice, please.”
Moments later, as Erika gave Jocko his drink, her cell phone rang. “Only Victor has this number.”
She thought that Jocko’s voice had a note of bitterness in it when he muttered, “He who made he who I was,” but she may have been imagining it.
She fished the phone from a pocket of her slacks. “Hello?”
“We’re leaving New Orleans for a while,” Victor said. “We’re leaving immediately.”
Because her husband sometimes found questions impertinent, Erika didn’t ask why they were leaving, but said simply, “All right.”
“I’m already on my way to the tank farm. You’ll go there in the bigger Mercedes SUV, the GL550.”
“Yes, Victor. Tomorrow?”
“Don’t be stupid. I said ‘immediately.’ Tonight. Within the hour. Pack two weeks’ clothes for yourself. Get the staff to help. You’ve got to move fast.”
“And should I bring clothes for you?”
“I have a wardrobe at the farm. Just shut up and listen.”
Victor told her where to find the mansion’s walk-in safe and explained what she should bring from it.
Then he said, “When you go outside, look to the northwest, the sky is burning,” and he terminated the call.
Erika closed her phone and stood in thought for a moment.
In the armchair, Jocko said, “Is he mean to you?”
“He … is who he is,” she replied. “Wait here. I’ll be back in a minute.”
French doors opened from the library to a covered terrace. As Erika stepped outside, she heard sirens in the distance.
To the northwest, a strange luminosity played through the low storm clouds: throbbing, wildly flailing forms of light, as radiant and fiercely white as spirits might be, if you were one who believed in such things as spirits.
The burning sky was a reflection of an unimaginably hot and hungry blaze below. The place where she was conceived and born, the Hands of Mercy, must be on fire.
The rain driving through the trees and spending itself on the soaked lawn made a sizzle something like fire, but here the night had no scent of smoke. The washed air smelled clean and fresh, and the fragrance of jasmine came to her, and in this moment, for the first time in her brief but event-packed existence, she felt fully alive.
She returned to the library and sat on the footstool in front of Jocko’s armchair. “Little friend, you have followed the secret passageway to the hidden room and seen all those lock bolts on the two steel doors.”
“Jocko isn’t going there again. Jocko’s been in enough scary places. He wants just nice places from now on.”
“You have seen the hidden room and the glass casket, and the shapeless shadow alive within.”
Jocko shuddered and drank some Scotch.
“You have heard it speak from the casket.”
Unsuccessfully trying to make his voice deeper and rougher and menacing, the troll quoted, “‘You are Erika Five, and you are mine.’”
In his natural voice, he said, “There’s something in the glass box that’s at least fourteen hundred times too scary for Jocko. If Jocko had genitals, they would’ve shriveled up and fallen off. But Jocko could only faint.”
“Remember, I took you there so I could ask your opinion about something. Before I ask, I must emphasize that I want to know what you truly feel. Truly, truly.”
Clearly somewhat embarrassed but nevertheless meeting Erika’s stare forthrightly, the troll said, “Truly, truly. No more Jocko-needs-to-pee-Jocko-is-gonna-vomit. That’s the old me. Good-bye to that Jocko.”
“All right, then. I want your honest opinion about two things. We don’t know what that shapeless shadow is. But based on what you’ve heard and seen, is the thing in that glass casket just another thing—or is it malevolent?”
“Malevolent!” the troll said at once. “Malevolent, malignant, venomous, and potentially very troublesome.”
“Thank you for your honesty.”
“You’re welcome.”
“Now my second question.” She leaned toward Jocko, riveting his gaze with hers. “If the thing in the glass case was made by some man, conceived and designed and brought to life by some man, do you think that man is good … or evil?”
“Evil,” Jocko said. “Evil, depraved, wicked, corrupt, vile, vicious, rotten, hateful, totally unpleasant.”
Erika held his gaze for half a minute. Then she rose from the footstool. “We’ve got to leave New Orleans and go to the tank farm farther upstate. You’ll need clothes.”
Plucking at the picnic tablecloth that he had fashioned into a sarong, Jocko said, “This is the only clothes Jocko ever had. It works okay.”
“You’ll be out in public, at least in the Mercedes.”
“Put Jocko in the trunk.”
“It’s an SUV. It doesn’t have a trunk. I’ve got to find you clothes that make you look more like a normal little boy.”
Amazement made yet another fright mask of the troll’s face. “What genius would make such clothes?”
“I don’t know,” Erika admitted. “But I’ve got an idea who might. Glenda. The estate provisioner. She shops for everything needed here. Food, paper goods, linens, staff uniforms, holiday decorations….”
“Does she shop for soap?” Jocko asked.
“Yes, everything, she shops for everything.”
He put aside his empty Scotch glass and clapped his hands. “Jocko would like to meet the lady who shops for soap.”
“That’s not a good idea,” Erika said. “You stay here, out of sight. I’ll talk to Glenda and see what she can do.”
Getting up from the armchair, the troll said, “Jocko is feeling like he better twirl or cartwheel, or walk on his hands. Whatever.”
“You know what you could do?” Erika asked. “You could browse the shelves in here, choose some books to take along.”
“I’m going to read to you,” he remembered.
“That’s right. Choose some good stories. Maybe twenty.”
As the troll moved toward the nearest shelves, Erika hurried to find Glenda.
At the door to the hall, she paused and looked back at Jocko. “You know what … ? Also choose four or five books that seem a little dangerous. And maybe … one that seems really, really dangerous.”
CHAPTER 53
THE POWERFUL ENGINE transmits vibrations through the frame of the car.
The tires on the blacktop raise vibrations that are likewise transmitted through the vehicle.
Even in the plush upholstery of the backseat, these vibrations can be felt faintly, especially by one made sensitive to vibrations by the tedium of semisuspended animation, in which there was, for so long, little other sensory input.
Like the freezer-motor vibrations in the liquid-filled sack, these are neither pleasant nor unpleasant to Chameleon.
It is no longer tormented by extreme cold.
Nor is it any longer tormented by its powerless condition, for it is no longer powerless. It is free, free at last, and it is free to kill.
Currently, Chameleon is tormented only by its inability to locate a TARGET. It has detected the scents of numerous EXEMPTS, and even most of them were dead.
The sole TARGET located in the laboratory suddenly became an EXEMPT just seconds before Chameleon would have killed it.
Frustrated, Chameleon cannot account for this transformation. Its program does not allow for such a possibility.
Chameleon is adaptable. When its program and real experience do not comport, it will reason its way toward an understanding of why the program is inadequate.
Chameleon is capable of suspicion. In the lab, it continued to maintain surveillance on the one who transformed. It knew the man’s face from the past and from the film, but because of the transformation, it thought of him as the PUZZLE.
The PUZZLE had gotten busy, busy in the lab, rushing this way and that. Something about the PUZZLE’s frantic activity made Chameleon more suspicious.
In the hallway, the PUZZLE encountered a thing unlike any creature in the extensive species-ID file in Chameleon’s program. This thing, large and moving erratically, looked not at all like an EXEMPT, but it smelled like one.
The PUZZLE had run from the building, and because Chameleon had no whiff of any TARGET, no reason to remain there, it followed.
On the way out of the building, Chameleon detected faint traces of a TARGET’s scent under the EXEMPT scent of the PUZZLE.
Interesting.
Once they were in the car and in motion for a while, the PUZZLE seemed less agitated, and as he became calmer, the TARGET scent slowly faded.
Now there is only the scent of an EXEMPT.
What does it all mean?
Chameleon broods on these events.
On the backseat, looking exactly like the backseat, Chameleon waits for a development. It confidently anticipates that there will be a development. There always is.
CHAPTER 54
ERIKA PHONED GLENDA, the estate provisioner, at the dormitory and asked for a meeting immediately in the staff lunchroom. This was in the south wing on the first floor, and it could be entered either from the south hall or from an exterior door.
In a few minutes, Glenda arrived at the exterior door. She left her umbrella outside and came into the lunchroom, saying, “Yes, Mrs. Helios, what is needed?”
A sturdy New Race woman with short chestnut-brown hair and a scattering of freckles, wearing an off-duty jumpsuit, she appeared accustomed to lifting and toting. As the sole shopper for the estate, her job included not just browsing the aisles of stores but also the physical labor of transporting goods and stocking shelves.
“I’ve been out of the tank little more than a day,” Erika said, “so my downloaded data hasn’t yet been complemented by enough real-world experience. I need to buy something right away, tonight, and I hope your knowledge of the marketplace will be helpful.”
“What do you need, ma’am?”
Erika brazened through it: “Boys’ clothing. Shoes, socks, pants, shirts. Underwear, I suppose. A light jacket. A cap of some kind. The boy is about four feet tall, weighs fifty or sixty pounds. Oh, and his head is big, quite big for a boy, so the cap should probably be adjustable. Can you get me those things right away?”
“Mrs. Helios, may I ask—”
“No,” Erika interrupted, “you may not ask. This is something Victor needs me to bring to him right away. I never question Victor, no matter how peculiar a request may seem, and I never will. Do I need to tell you why I never question my husband?”
“No, ma’am.”
The staff had to know that the Erikas were beaten and were not permitted to turn off their pain.
“I thought you’d understand, Glenda. We’re all in the same quicksand, aren’t we, whether we’re the provisioner or the wife.”
Uncomfortable with this intimacy, Glenda said, “There’s no store open at this hour, selling boys’ clothing. But …”
“Yes?”
Fear rose in Glenda’s eyes, and her previously placid face tightened with worry. “There are many articles of boys’ and girls’ clothing here in the house.”
“Here? But there are no children here.”
Glenda’s voice fell to a whisper. “You must never tell.”
“Tell what? Tell whom?”
“Never tell … Mr. Helios.”
Erika pressed the battered-wife sympathy play as far as she probably dared: “Glenda, I am beaten not just for my shortcomings, but for any reason that suits my … maker. I am quite sure I would be beaten for being the bearer of bad news. All secrets are safe with me.”
Glenda nodded. “Follow me.”
Also off the south hall on the ground floor were a series of storage rooms. One of the largest of these was a twenty-by-eighteen-foot walk-in cooler where a dozen of the highest-quality fur coats were stored—mink, ermine, arctic fox…. Victor had no sympathy for the antifur movement, as he was engaged in the much more important antihuman movement.
In addition to the rack of coats, there were numerous cabinets containing clothes of all kinds that would not fit even in Erika’s enormous closet in the master suite. By having a series of wives who were identical in every detail, Victor spared himself the expense of purchasing new wardrobes. But he did want his Erika to be at all times stylishly attired, and he did not expect her
to choose from a limited garment collection.
From several drawers in the farthest corner of the room, Glenda nervously produced children’s clothing, article after article, both for boys and girls, in various sizes.
“Where did all this come from?” Erika asked.
“Mrs. Helios, if he learns about it, he’ll terminate Cassandra. And this is the only thing that’s ever made her happy. It’s made us all happy—her daring, her secret life, she gives the rest of us a little hope.”
“You know my position on being the bearer of bad news.”
Glenda buried her face in a striped polo shirt.
For a moment, Erika thought that the woman must be crying, for the shirt trembled in her hands, and her shoulders shook.
Instead, Glenda inhaled deeply, as if seeking the scent of the boy who had worn the shirt, and when she looked up from it, her face was a portrait of bliss.
“For the past five weeks, Cassandra has been sneaking off the estate at night, to kill Old Race children.”
Cassandra, the laundress.
“Oh,” Erika said. “I see.”
“She couldn’t wait any longer to be told the killing could at last begin. The rest of us … we so admire her nerve, but we haven’t been able to find it in ourselves.”
“And … what of the bodies?”
“Cassandra brings them back here, so we can share in the excitement. Then the trash men who take other bodies to the dump, they take the children, too, no questions asked. Like you said—we’re all in this quicksand together.”
“But you keep the clothes.”
“You know what the dormitory is like. Not an inch of extra space. We can’t store the clothes there. But we can’t bear to get rid of them. We take these clothes out some nights, take them over to the dormitory and, you know, play with them. And, oh, it’s very wonderful, Mrs. Helios, thinking of the dead kids and listening to Cassandra tell how each one happened. It’s the best thing ever, the only good thing we’ve ever had.”
Erika knew that something profound must be happening to her when she found Glenda’s story disturbing, even creepy, and when she hesitated at the prospect of dressing the poor sweet troll in the clothes of murdered children. Indeed, that she should think murdered instead of merely dead had to be an indication of a revolution in her thinking.