by Dean Koontz
His square, almost ugly face was creased with worry. He spread his arms, his hands, palms up, a supplicant bear. “And who is this living person?”
“The man who killed those nurses in Anaheim. He’s possessed by Lingard, and that’s why the psychic emanations he puts out are so different.”
Max returned to the sofa. “I can’t accept it.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m wrong.”
“The poltergeist phenomena in Cauvel’s office... You think—”
“That was Lingard,” she said.
“There’s a problem with that theory,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows.
“How could Lingard’s spirit be in two places at once?” he asked. “How could Lingard be in possession of a man who he’s forcing to commit murder—and at the same time be throwing glass dogs around Cauvel’s office?”
“I don’t know. Who’s to say what a ghost can do?”
At ten o’clock, Max came to the master bedroom. He had gone downstairs to the library for a novel and had returned carrying a thick volume—not the book he’d been after. “I talked to Dr. Cauvel just now,” he said.
Mary was sitting up in bed. She used a flap of the dust jacket to mark her place in the book she was reading. “What did the good doctor have to say?”
“He thinks you are the poltergeist.”
“Me?”
“He says you were under stress—”
“Aren’t we all?”
“Especially you.”
“Was I?”
“Because you remembered about Berton Mitchell.”
“I’ve remembered about him before.”
“This time you recalled more than ever. Cauvel says you were under great psychological stress in his office, and that you caused the glass dogs to fly about.”
She smiled. “A man your size looks just too cute in pajamas.”
“Mary—”
“Especially yellow pajamas. You should wear just a robe.”
“You’re avoiding this.” He came to the foot of the bed. “What about the glass dogs?”
“Cauvel just wants me to pay for them,” she said airily.
“He didn’t mention money.”
“That’s what he was angling for.”
“He’s not the type,” Max said.
“I’ll pay half the value of the dogs.”
Exasperated, Max said, “Mary, that’s not necessary.”
“I know,” she said lightly. “I didn’t break them.”
“I mean, Cauvel isn’t asking to be paid. You’re trying to avoid the main issue.”
“Okay, okay. So how did I cause glass dogs to fly about?”
“Unconsciously. Cauvel says—”
“Psychiatrists always blame the unconscious.”
“Who’s to say they’re wrong?”
“They’re stupid.”
“Mary—”
“And you’re stupid for believing Cauvel.”
She didn’t want to argue, but she couldn’t control herself. She was frightened by the direction the conversation was taking, although she didn’t know why she should be. She was terrified of some knowledge that lay within her, but she couldn’t understand what that might be.
Standing like a preacher, holding his book as if it were a Bible, Max said, “Will you listen?”
She shook her head to indicate she found him too irritating to bear. “If I’m responsible for his figurines getting busted up, am I also to blame for the bad weather in the East, for the war in Africa, for inflation, for poverty, for the recent crop failures?”
“Sarcasm.”
“You encourage it.”
The tranquilizer was doing her no good whatsoever. She was tense. Trembling. Like a shallow-water, feathery sea anemone quivering in the subtle currents that preceded a storm, she was nervously aware of unseen forces that could destroy her.
Suddenly she felt threatened by Max.
That doesn’t make sense, she thought. Max isn’t any danger to me. He’s trying to help me find the truth, that’s all.
Dizzy, confused, on the verge of anomie, she leaned back against her pillows.
Max opened his book and read in a quiet but urgent voice: “’Telekinesis is the ability to move objects or to cause changes within objects solely by the force of the mind. The phenomenon has most often and most reliably been reported in times of crises or in severe stress situations. For example, automobiles have been levitated from injured people, debris from the dying in fire-swept or collapsed buildings.’”
“I know what telekinesis is,” she said.
Max ignored her, kept reading: “‘Telekinesis is often mistaken for the work of poltergeists, which are playful and occasionally malevolent spirits. The existence of poltergeists as astral beings is debatable and certainly unproven. It should be noted that in most houses where poltergeists have appeared, there resides an adolescent with serious identity problems, or some other person under severe nervous strain. A good argument could be made that the phenomena often attributed to poltergeists are usually the product of unconscious telekinesis.’”
“This is ridiculous,” she said. “Why would I pitch those dogs around just when I was about to see the killer’s face in the vision?”
“You really didn’t want to see his face, so your subconscious threw those figurines to distract you from the vision.”
“That’s absurd! I wanted to see it. I want to stop this man before he kills again.”
Max’s hard gray eyes were like knives, dissecting her. “Are you sure you want to stop him?”
“What kind of question is that?”
He sighed. “Do you know what I think? I think you’ve sensed, through your clairvoyance, that this psychopath will kill you if you pursue him. You’ve seen a possible future, and you’re trying like hell to avoid it.”
Surprised, she said, “Nothing of the sort.”
“The pain you felt—”
“Was the pain of the victims. It wasn’t a foreshadowing of my own death.”
“Maybe you haven’t foreseen the danger consciously,” Max said. “But subconsciously, perhaps, you’ve seen yourself as a victim if you pursue this case. That would explain why you’re trying to mislead yourself with poltergeists and with talk about possession.”
“I’m not going to die,” she said sharply. “I’m not hiding from anything like that.”
“Why are you afraid to even consider it?”
“I’m not afraid.”
“I think you are.”
“I’m not a coward. And I’m not a liar.”
“Mary, I’m trying to help you.”
“Then believe me!”
He looked at her quizzically. “You don’t have to shout.”
“You never hear me unless I shout!”
“Mary, why do you want to argue?”
I don’t, she thought. Stop me. Hold me.
“You started this,” she said.
“I only asked you to consider an alternative to this business about possession. You’re overreacting.”
I know, she thought. I know I am. And I don’t know why. I don’t want to hurt you. I need you.
But all she said was, “Listening to you, I’d think I was never right about anything. I’m always overreacting or mistaken or misled or confused. You treat me as if I’m a child.”
“You’re treating yourself with condescension.”
“Just a silly little child.”
Hug me, kiss me, love me, she thought. Please make me stop this. I don’t want to argue. I’m scared.
He started toward the bedroom door. “This isn’t the time to talk. You’re not in the mood for constructive criticism.”
“Because I’m behaving like a child?”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes you fucking piss me off.”
He stopped, turned back to her. “That’s like a child,” he said calmly. “Like a child who’s trying to shock a grownup with a lot of dirty words.”
She opened her book to the page she had marked and, refusing to acknowledge him, she pretended to read.
She would rather have suffered disabling pain than even temporary estrangement from Max. When they argued, which was rarely, she felt imiserable. The two or three hours of silence that invariably followed a disagreement, and which were usually her fault, were unbearable.
She spent the remainder of the evening in bed with a copy of The Occult by Colin Wilson. As she began each page, she could not remember what had been on the page before it.
Max stayed on his side of the bed, reading a novel and smoking his pipe. He might as well have been a thousand miles away.
The eleven o’clock television news, which she switched on by remote control, headlined a grisly story about slaughter in a Santa Ana beauty salon. There was film of the blood-smeared shop and interviews with police officials who had nothing to say.
“You see?” Mary said. “I was right about the nurses. I was right about the beauty salon. And, by God, I’m right about Richard Lingard, too.”
Even as she spoke, she regretted the words, and especially her tone of voice.
He looked at her but said nothing.
She looked away, down at her book. She hadn’t meant to revive the argument. Quite the opposite. She wanted to get him talking once more. She wanted to hear his voice.
Although she often started arguments, she had never been able to initiate the conclusion of one. Psychologically, she wasn’t capable of making the first gesture for peace. She left that move to the men. Always. She knew that wasn’t fair, but she could not change.
She supposed that this inadequacy dated back to her father’s violent death. He had left her so suddenly that she still sometimes felt abandoned. All of her adult life she had worried about men walking out on her before she was prepared to end the relationship.
And of course she wasn’t ever going to be ready to end her marriage; that was for keeps. Therefore, whenever she and Max argued, whenever she had reason to worry about his leaving, she forced him to pick up the olive branch. It was a test which he could pass only if he would sacrifice more pride than she; and when he had done that, he would have proved that he loved her and that he would never leave her as her father had done.
The death of her father was more important than whatever Berton Mitchell had done to her.
Why couldn’t Dr. Cauvel see that?
In the dark bedroom, when it became evident that neither of them could sleep, Max touched her. His hands affected her in the same way that the rapidly vibrating tines of a tuning fork would affect fine crystal. She trembled uncontrollably and shattered. She broke against him, weeping.
He didn’t speak. Words no longer mattered.
He held her for a few minutes, and then he began to stroke her. He slid one hand over her silk pajamas, along her flank, across her buttocks. Slow, warm movement. And then he popped open two buttons on her blouse, slipped his hand inside, felt her warm breast, his fingers lingering on her nipple only for an instant. She put her open mouth to his neck, against the hard muscle. His strong pulse was transmitted to her through her tender lips. He undressed her and then himself. The bandage on his hand brushed her bare thigh.
“Your finger,” she said.
“It’ll be fine.”
“The cut might come open,” she said. “It might start to bleed again.”
“Sshhh, ” he said.
He was not in the mood to be patient, and although she hadn’t said a word, he sensed she was equally anxious. He rose above her in the lightless air, as if taking flight, then settled over her. Although she had expected nothing more than the special joy of closeness, she climaxed within a minute. Not intensely. A gentle rush of pleasure. However, when she came a second time, moments before he finished far down inside of her, she cried out with delight.
For a while she lay at his side, holding his hand. Finally she said, “Don’t ever leave me. Stay with me as long as I live.”
“As long as you live,” Max promised.
At five-thirty on Wednesday morning, in the middle of a nightmare vision of the killer’s next crime, Mary was catapulted from sleep by the sound of gunfire. A single shot, ear-splitting, too close. Even as the boom was bouncing off the bedroom walls, she sat up, threw off the blanket and sheet, swung her legs out of bed. “Max! What’s wrong? Max!”
Beside her, he switched on the lamp, jumped up from the bed. He stood, swaying, blinking.
The sudden light hurt her eyes. Although she was squinting, she could see there was no intruder in the room.
Max reached for the loaded handgun that he kept on the nightstand. It was not there.
“Where’s the pistol?” he asked.
“I didn’t touch it,” she said.
Then, as her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw the gun. It was floating in the air near the foot of the bed, floating five feet above the floor, as if it were suspended from wires, except that there were no wires. The barrel was pointed at her.
The poltergeist.
“Jesus!” Max said.
Although no visible finger pulled the trigger, a second shot exploded. The bullet tore into the headboard inches from Mary’s face.
She panicked. Gasping, whimpering, she ran across the room, hunched as if she were crippled. The gun traversed to the left, covering her. She came to a corner, stopped. Trapped. She realized she should have gone in the opposite direction, where she could have at least locked herself in the bathroom.
The third shot smashed into the floor beside her feet. Bits of a throw rug and splinters of wood sprayed up.
“Max!”
He grabbed at the gun, but it slid away from him, rose and fell and swung from side to side, bobbled and weaved, forced him into a clumsy ballet.
She looked for something to hide behind.
There was nothing.
The fourth shot passed over her head, piercing a framed, glass-covered watercolor of Newport Beach harbor.
Max connected with the pistol, clutched it. The barrel twisted in his hands until it was pointed at his chest. Sweating, cursing, he struggled to pull the weapon from a pair of hands that he couldn’t see. Surprisingly, after a few seconds, the unseen contestant surrendered, and Max staggered backward with the prize.
She stood with her back to the wall, hands to her face. She couldn’t take her eyes from the barrel of the gun.
“It’s safe now,” Max said. “It’s over.” He started toward her.
“For God’s sake, unload it!” she said, pointing at the gun in his hand.
He stopped, stared at the pistol, and then took the magazine out of the handgrip.
“All of the bullets should be taken from the clip,” she said.
“I doubt that’s necessary if I—”
“Do it!”
His big hands were shaking as he took the bullets from the magazine. He placed all of the pieces on the bed; pistol, empty magazine, unspent ammunition. For a minute he studied the items, as she did, waiting for one of them to rise off the blanket.
Nothing moved.
“What was it?” he asked.
“Poltergeist.”
“Whatever it was—is it still here?”
She closed her eyes, tried to relax, tried to feel. After a while she said, “No. It’s gone.”
Wednesday, December 23
10
PERCY OSTERMAN, THE Orange County sheriff, opened the door for Max and Mary, motioned for them to go ahead of him.
The room was gray. The paint was gray, the floor tile gray, the windowsills gray with dust. A set of gray metal storage shelves was bolted to one wall, and the wall opposite the shelves contained a lot of built-in file drawers with burnished steel fronts. The few pieces of furniture were fashioned of tubular steel and gray vinyl. The screens over the ceiling lights were gray, and the fuzzy fluorescent illumination transformed the scene into a chiaroscuro print.
The only spots of brightness in the room were the well
scrubbed porcelain sinks and the slanted autopsy table, which was fiercely white with polished, gleaming stainless steel fixtures.
The sheriff was all hard lines and sharp angles. He was nearly as tall as Max, but forty pounds lighter and far less muscular. Yet he did not appear wasted or weak. His hands were large, boney, almost fleshless, the fingers like talons. His shoulders sloped forward. His neck was thin with a prominent Adam’s apple. In his pinched, sun-browned face, his eyes were quick, nervous, a curious pale shade of amber.
Osterman’s frown was ominous, his smile easy and kind. He was not smiling when he opened one of the six large drawers and pulled the shroud from the face of the corpse.
Mary stepped away from Max, moved closer to the dead man.
“Kyle Nolan,” Osterman said. “Owned the beauty shop. Worked there as a hair stylist.”
Nolan was short, broad-shouldered, barrelchested. Bald. A bushy mustache. Shave off the mustache, Mary thought, and he’d look like that actor, Edward Asner.
She put one hand on the drawer and waited for a rush of psychic impressions. Although she didn’t understand how or why, she knew that, for a time after passing away, the dead maintained a bubble of energy around them, an invisible capsule that contained memories, vivid scenes of their lives and especially of their last minutes. Ordinarily, contact with the victim of a murder, or with the victim’s belongings, would generate a torrent of clairvoyant images, sometimes clear as reality and sometimes hopelessly blurry and meaningless, most of them dealing with the moment of death and with the identity of the killer.
In this case, for the first time in her experience, she sensed absolutely nothing. Not even a shapeless flurry of movement or color.
She touched the dead man’s cold face.
Still nothing.
Osterman closed the drawer, opened the one next to it. As he folded back the shroud, he said, “Tina Nolan. Kyle’s wife.”
Tina was an attractive but hard-faced woman with brittle, bleached hair that her husband should have found professionally embarrassing. Although they had been closed hours ago by the coroner, her eyes had come open again. She stared at Mary as if she were trying to impart some dreadfully important news; but in the end she provided nothing more than poor Kyle had done.