by Dean Koontz
Twenty-eight
* * *
The dead don’t talk. I don’t know why. I’ve always thought that they are denied speech because, if they possessed it, they would be likely to reveal something about death that the living are not meant to know.
Mr. Hitchcock had died thirty-two years earlier. There had never been any crazy rumors about him having faked his death, as there had been about Elvis. Besides, he chose to manifest as about fifty years of age, when he’d been in his prime as a filmmaker; but if this was the real Mr. Hitchcock, he would be far past the century mark, having been born in 1899.
I stared at him, aware that my mouth hung open but unable to close it.
“Mr. Thomas,” he said, “the hour is late, the clock is ticking, and this scenario requires James Stewart, not Tab Hunter.”
“Sir … you’re talking.”
“Your powers of observation are impressive. But they alone will not ensure the safety of seventeen children. There are things—”
“But the spirits of the lingering dead don’t talk.”
“I died, as you know. But I have never lingered in my entire existence, either before death or after. One always has too much to do to linger anywhere. Now there are things I need to tell you, Mr. Thomas, but the telling will be pointless if you are not prepared to listen.”
“Call me Odd, sir. Or Oddie. That would be cool. I mean, since I’m such a fan. Your work was brilliant.”
“Thank you, Mr. Thomas. Some of it was quite good, some just all right, some unfortunate. Where you may have serious complaints, I imagine they should be addressed to the producer with whom I had to work on occasion, Mr. David O. Selznick—wherever he may be. Now shall we get to the matter of the children?”
“Wait a minute,” I said, thunderstruck by a sudden realization. “You can’t just—We’ve got to—If you’re talking—I mean, then what are you, sir? Are you my … my guardian angel?”
“I am touched by your high opinion of me, Mr. Thomas.”
“Call me Odd.”
“That’s very kind of you. But angels, Mr. Thomas, are born angels and are never anything else, except of course when they disguise themselves, when visiting Earth, as people or dogs, or whatever. I assure you that during my many years on Earth, I was not an angel pretending to be human, and I am not an angel now.”
“Then what are you?”
“The hierarchy of spirits and the assignment of various tasks and responsibilities after death are issues more complicated than Hollywood has portrayed them. No surprise there. But if you insist on my spelling out all of that, I assure you that by the time I finish, the children will be dead.”
He pushed out his lower lip, raised his eyebrows, and regarded me expectantly, as if to say, Shall we let them die, then, so your curiosity can be satisfied?
In defense of my temporary inability to focus on the children, I can only plead that I had recently fended off three attack dogs, toured a collection of severed heads, visited a satanic temple, just killed a man—killed, not murdered—was afraid that I would have to kill many more, had heard a spirit speak for the first time ever, and he was Alfred Hitchcock.
But his raised eyebrows and his pout of disapproval, subtle as they were, brought me to my senses, as I imagine that expression and others equally well-practiced had brought errant actors back to the script and to the intended tone of a production with little or no argument. I thought of him turning the same look on Gregory Peck or Rod Taylor—surely never on Cary Grant or James Stewart—and I couldn’t help but grin.
As soon as I saw his reaction to my delight, of course, I wiped the grin off my face. “Where are the children, sir?”
“They are under guard on the third floor, Mr. Thomas. Getting them down from there and out of this house will test your wits and courage.”
“But I thought they were here in the basement. Jessie, Jasmine, Jordan, and the others. When I thought about them, I was drawn down here to the basement.”
“You were drawn here by me. Had you gone to the third floor without certain knowledge that you must have, you would by now be stone dead.”
He had my attention. “What knowledge?”
“The people here tonight have come from four states in the West. Most of them know one another, but to some of them, there are new faces.”
“I already figured that out by how the guy reacted to me in the hallway.”
“Good for you. One likes to have a leading man who is credibly clever.”
With some embarrassment, I said, “I don’t think of myself as a leading man, sir.”
“Frankly, Mr. Thomas, neither do I. Now, chances are, if you holster your guns and go to the third floor openly, as though you belong in this place, you will be met with no suspicion.”
“Except for the cowboy guy.”
“Yes. Except for him.”
“He thinks I’m dead.”
“I’m sure that he does.”
“What if I run into him?”
“Don’t.”
“Was I dead in Shower 5, sir?”
“That is not for me to say.”
“Did you … bring me back from … from the dead?”
Instead of answering, he winked. “Pay attention, Mr. Thomas. Now if someone greets you with a raised fist and the word contumax—”
“Even though I feel like an idiot, I raise my fist back at them and say potestas. But what does that mean?”
“The first is Latin for ‘defiant’ or ‘disobedient.’ The second is Latin for ‘power.’ They are a predictable bunch.”
“Except I would have predicted more security.”
Mr. Hitchcock shrugged. “They believe themselves to be charmed, given protection by the prince of this world, and untouchable.”
“Why do they believe that?”
“Because they are.”
“Oh.”
“They have nothing to fear from most people. But because of their worldview, they are incapable of imagining or preparing for someone as different as you, Mr. Thomas.”
“You mean my gift.”
“That is the last thing I mean.”
“Then what’s different about me?”
“Everything.”
“I’m just a fry cook.”
“Exactly.”
He smiled, and I had the strangest feeling that, like Mrs. Fischer, he was going to pinch my cheek. He didn’t. And he didn’t tell me what amused him.
Instead, he said, “Because you’re so intriguingly geared-up, people will think you’re one of the evening’s murderers of children. If they ask who’s your patron, say Zebulun, and they will especially respect you.”
“Who’s Zebulun?”
“One of the more powerful demons.”
“I almost want to laugh, sir.”
“Did you want to laugh when you saw the collection of heads?”
“No, sir. All right. My patron is Zebulun.”
“Just try not to say the name too often.”
“Why not?”
“It is never wise.”
“Okay, all right. Whatever you say.”
He pointed at me, which for him seemed to be as forceful a gesture as he might ever employ. In a confrontational business known for temperamental personalities, he had been famous for never losing his temper and for walking away rather than participate in an argument. “You must avoid the senoculus.”
“What’s the senoculus?”
“A lesser demon. Its usual form is a bull’s head on a man’s body, and it has six eyes, a cluster of three on each side of its face.”
“I’m sure I’ll recognize it.”
“The last time you met the senoculus, it didn’t look that way.”
A chill quivered along my spine. “The thing on that roof in all the blackness?”
“When you cross into what you call Elsewhere, you are known at once by those in the wasteland, Mr. Thomas. Known and hated. Hated because you are the antithesis of what they are. And because they
can enter Elsewhere, one of them will always come for you. The senoculus chooses to look like you now. It will try to suck your life and your soul out of you.”
“ ‘Give me your breath … and the sweet fruit at the end of it.’ ”
“Avoid the senoculus at all costs.”
“If it shows up, how do I avoid it?”
“Run, Mr. Thomas. Run.”
Doubting my ability to handle this, I said, “Maybe I should just call the police, tell them the missing kids are all here. Maybe I can convince them. Maybe they’ll think they have to come take a look.”
He regarded me with sadness, as if I were pitiably naive. “Mr. Thomas, the county sheriff is among the guests downstairs.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. Oh.”
The director began to rise off the floor, as though he would leave through the ceiling, as he had done in the elevator at Star Truck.
I said, “Wait, wait, wait.”
He drifted back to the floor. “Time is short, Mr. Thomas.”
I said, “Why can’t you just take the kids under your wing and get them safely out of here?”
“This world isn’t run by miracles. This world is run by free will, and I can’t interfere with yours or the children’s.”
“But you stepped in to give me all this advice.”
“I was a film director, Mr. Thomas. I don’t give advice. I give instructions. And you have the free will to ignore them.”
When he started to rise again, like a Macy’s-parade balloon, I grabbed his arm to hold him down. “Why didn’t you talk to me right from the start, why all the pantomime until now?”
He smiled and shook his head as if to say that I had much to learn regarding the construction of a drama. “One does not reveal such a twist a moment sooner than the end of the second act.” His expression grew serious, and he searched my eyes as if taking the measure of my mettle. “Children, Mr. Thomas. Innocent children.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
“Do better than your best.”
His usual droll demeanor gave way to more emotion than he had allowed himself in public, during his days of fame. “This world can be hard on children.”
Later, I would learn that he and his wife, Alma, had had one child, a daughter named Patricia, on whom he doted. There are many charming pictures of portly Mr. Hitchcock and tiny Pat on vacation with Alma in exotic places like Paris and Africa and Switzerland. His smile, though ironic when calculated for publicity, could be sweet, and never sweeter than in photographs with Pat or with her children. At play with the grandchildren, he had been like a child himself, Hitchcockian dignity discarded in favor of participating fully in the game of the moment.
Perhaps his regard for children and their happiness had its roots in his own lonely childhood. At the age of nine, he was sent off to a Catholic boarding school. Until he was fourteen, he was raised by Jesuits who believed most strongly in severe corporal punishment, and before he was fifteen, he quit school and took his first job. He was remembered by others as a sensitive and retiring boy, and he called himself “a particularly unattractive youth,” though rare photos from those days don’t really support such a harsh self-assessment. One of his earliest vivid memories was of waking late on Christmas Eve, when he was only five, to discover his mother sneaking two toys from his Christmas stocking, putting them in the stockings of his older siblings, and replacing them with a couple of oranges.
“This world can be hard on children,” he repeated. “Now, these seventeen think they’re being held for ransom. They don’t know what’s going to be done to them, although a few might suspect something. The cultists want to surprise them, the better to savor their terror as the full horror of their fate dawns on them.”
“I’ll remember everything you told me, sir. I feel better now that you’re on my side. Everything’s sure to be all right now.”
He raised one eyebrow. “Is it sure to be, Mr. Thomas? Are you really certain that you’ve seen my films?”
I thought of the end of Vertigo, and wished I hadn’t.
Again he rose off the floor.
This time I didn’t try to stop him, though I did say, “Please call me Odd, sir.”
Halfway to the ceiling, he said, “That’s very kind of you, Mr. Thomas. Please call me Hitch.”
“Yes, sir. Will I see you again, Mr. Hitchcock?”
“I would count on it, Mr. Thomas, whether or not you survive the next half hour.”
He disappeared through the ceiling.
The time had come to kill or die. Or both.
Twenty-nine
* * *
Not being a quick-draw artist, I was reluctant to leave both pistols in their shoulder rigs, as Mr. Hitchcock had suggested. I understood that I would be more likely to arouse suspicion if I went everywhere with one of the Glocks drawn and ready for action, but I had to work up the nerve to do as he had instructed.
I turned out the lights in that room of paper towels and toilet paper. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I stepped into the basement corridor.
As I moved toward the farther end of the hallway and the back stairs by which I’d come here, a door opened on my right, and a woman came out of the office of the man whom I had killed.
In her twenties, pretty even under enough Goth makeup to supply Alice Cooper through a national nostalgia tour, she wore high-heeled shoes, tight and wonderfully supple black-leather pants, and a sort of half jacket of matching leather that bared her midriff. As most belly dancers have a jewel in their navels, this woman had a carved-bone skull.
She didn’t appear to be alarmed, which surely she would have been if she’d discovered a corpse, unless these people found so many corpses with such regularity that all the shock value had gone out of the experience. She smiled at me, and she had the whitest teeth I’d ever seen, though the upper cuspids seemed to have been filed into sharper points than nature would have given them.
I raised my fist and said “Contumax,” but I felt like a satanic geek when instead of replying with “Potestas,” she said, “Hey, look at you, boy toy.”
“Hey,” I said.
Being called a boy toy might have been flattering if she hadn’t been festooned with knives. At each hip, two loaded sheaths were fixed to her belt. In a scabbard against her back hung a full-length sword, which she could draw by reaching over her left shoulder. From each wrist dangled a straight razor, and though the blades were at the moment safely folded into the polished-ivory handles, I suspected that with a flick of her hands, she could bring both razors out, up, and into service. Whatever all she might want to do to a boy toy, I didn’t think I could assume that sex would be part of it.
“You know Rob Burkett, honey?” she asked.
I said, “The twelve rules of successful management.”
The sound she made was half laugh and half snort. “Yeah, he’s kind of an asshole. Where’d he get that stupid shit-happens poster with the cat and the crocodile?”
“Wherever, it wasn’t a Hallmark store.”
“You seen him? He said he’d be down here in his office.”
Evidently, she hadn’t gone around behind the desk and looked in the knee space, where Rob was in the fetal position as if being born into death.
She came close and looked me over from crotch to lips to eyes. “You part of the show tonight?”
“Yeah. Are you?”
“Can’t wait. They’re givin’ me a juicy little boy.”
With a flick of her wrist, she brought the dangling ivory handle into her hand and released the straight razor, which appeared to be sharp enough to divide a human hair from end to end.
“Excellent,” I said, pretending to admire her dexterity and style. “You ever cut one before?”
“A juicy little boy? Nah. Youngest ones I’ve cut are like eighteen, they come on to me, thinkin’ they’re so hot, but they’re pussies. Only thing hot about ’em is their blood. My name’s Jinx.”
Yes, I thoug
ht, I suppose it would be.
But I said, “I’m Lucius.”
“I think you’re luscious,” she said, and she stroked the flat of the razor blade slowly along my left cheek, as if she were giving me a shave.
The steel was cold.
Her eyes were the jaundice yellow of a very sick man’s urine.
“Your eyes are amazing,” I said.
“They’re really blue. I’m wearin’ contacts that make ’em this way. Wild-animal eyes. I want my little boy so scared the second he sees me, he pisses himself right then.”
“I think he will.”
“You think he will?”
“I know he will.”
Jinx said, “I’m from Reno.”
“I’m from Arizona.”
“Where in Arizona?” she asked, flicking open the straight razor in her left hand and drawing the flat of the blade along my right cheek.
“Little town you never heard of.”
“Maybe I have.”
“Lonely Possum, Arizona.”
“Sounds like the ass end of nowhere.”
“You can get a lot of land cheap. Keep neighbors at a distance.”
She said, “Nobody hears nothin’ you’re doin’, huh?”
“None of their business, anyway.”
With a quick gesture of each hand, she flipped the blades back into the handles and let them dangle from her wrists again.
I didn’t feel any safer.
Jinx said, “What’re they givin’ you for the show?”
“This girl. They say she’s eight.”
“Who’s your patron?”
“Zebulun.”
She was impressed. “I want to see her, the girl.”
“What, now?”
“Yeah. Don’t you want to see my juicy little boy?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Maybe in the show, when I’m almost done with him, you can step in and help me finish.”
“And you could step in and help me finish mine.”
Smiling, she put one finger to my mouth. Her nails were long and glossy-black. Slowly she traced the outline of my lips.