by Dean Koontz
“ ‘If you were anything else’? What anything?”
Before the girl can respond, a rumbling arises, not unlike the subterranean roar of certain earthquakes. It seems to come from overhead, however, and as it grows louder, I look uneasily at the ceiling.
“Probably an eighteen-wheeler,” Jolie says. “We’re under the Coast Highway here, beyond the Corner.”
She leads the way to the end of the room, where four steps ascend to a second threshold. Here she has pried open another set of steel doors. Beyond lies a chamber identical to the first.
She plays the light over the architrave before stepping into that room. “You had to go through these two air locks to escape to the coast. They weren’t taking any chances.”
I follow her. “They who?”
“I’ve got some ideas,” she replies, but offers no more as she leads me across the chamber to another four steps that ascend to a third pried-open door.
Another big truck passes overhead, followed by lighter traffic, but the vibrations no longer disturb me. I am troubled now by an even stronger premonition that ahead waits an unequaled abomination, an evil so pure, so perfectly vicious and thoroughly unwholesome that it belongs in a deeper level of Hell than any Dante ever imagined.
Past that third door, Jolie says, “From here on, there’s power,” and she presses a wall switch.
Warm light springs from tubes hidden in coves along both sides of a corridor that is as long as a football field, about twelve feet wide, maybe eight feet high. Every surface is pale yellow, shiny, and seems to be seamlessly plasticized.
The air is warmer here, and it has an astringent chemical smell that isn’t unpleasant.
“When I first pried open that third set of doors,” she says, “it was a lot warmer in here than this, and the smell was a lot stronger. I first thought the air might be bad for me, like toxic or something, but it doesn’t irritate my throat or eyes, and if the stuff is gonna make me grow a second head, it hasn’t happened yet.”
Compared to the rooms preceding it, this space looks welcoming, but my presentiment of evil remains acute, and I’m glad that I have the pistol.
The girl says, “The next doors are powered-up and locked. Can’t be pried open. All these barriers. So maybe there’s a million bars of gold beyond it or the secret recipe for McDonald’s special sauce. This hallway is as far as we can go.”
About halfway to those distant doors, a figure lies on the hallway floor. At first it might be mistaken for a man, but then not.
As we approach the sprawled form, the girl says, “Whatever’s beyond those last doors, if they are the last ones, there must not be anyone left over there. If anyone was over there, they wouldn’t just leave the thing here so long. They’d take it away.”
I can’t tell for certain how tall the creature might have been in life or exactly what weight, because it appears to have mummified in the greater heat that she mentioned and in the chemical-laden air. As a guess, I would say it stood over seven feet and weighed short of three hundred pounds. But it is radically dehydrated, skin shrunken over its lanky body, over its long hands, and over the once-fearsome features of its huge head, skin as wrinkled as a gray linen suit worn hard and until threadbare and never once pressed.
What I can determine is that it is a primate, legs longer than its arms, more sophisticated than gorillas and other anthropoids, with a spinal curve like that of Homo sapiens, capable of standing fully erect. But there the similarity to a man ends, for this thing has long four-knuckled fingers, five per hand, and two three-knuckled thumbs per hand. Its toes are as long as its fingers, six per foot, with one thumblike toe in each half dozen.
“I call him Orc,” the girl says.
“Why?”
“Well, I had to call him something, and Bob didn’t seem right.”
I don’t know her yet, but I think I’m going to like her.
“Orc because he makes me think of the orcs in The Lord of the Rings.”
Its skull, to which the flesh of the face has been shriveled and shrink-wrapped by the heat, is nearly the size and shape of a watermelon. The eyes have collapsed back into the desiccated brain, but judging by the sockets, they must have been the size of large lemons, set not horizontally like human eyes, but vertically. The remaining nose cartilage and a mass of shriveled tissue draped over it suggest a proboscis like that of an anteater, though three hooked lengths of hornlike structures, each two inches long, bristle from that portion of the face, unlike anything an anteater can boast. The lips have shrunk from the teeth, which are reminiscent of a wolf’s oral weaponry. The mouth cracks uncommonly wide to allow the fullest use of that wickedly sharp and still-gleaming array of cutlery.
The presentiment of evil that has had its claws in me for most of the journey from the beach has not faded, but the reason for it is not this cadaver. Whatever alarms me is behind the closed doors at the end of this corridor, either living specimens related to this corpse or something worse.
One more thing strikes me as important. This carcass appears to be as dry as a mass of parchment, but no stains or time-hardened residue of decomposing tissues mars the floor under it. Where did the bodily fluids go, the dissolving and putrefying fats?
“I’ve been studying old Orc for a few months,” the girl says.
“Studying him?”
“I can learn something from him. Something that’ll help us. I’m sure I can.”
“But … studying him here alone?”
No more than six feet from the body are a few folded, quilted blue moving blankets that Jolie has apparently provided for her comfort. She sits on one and folds her legs Indian-style.
“Orc doesn’t scare me. Nothing much can scare me after five years of Dr. Hiskott.”
“Who?”
The girl spells it for me. “The creep lives in what used to be our house. We’re his animals to torment. Slaves, toys.”
“The puppetmaster.”
“Talking to you on the porch, Mom couldn’t speak his name. He knows when it’s used. But here I’m beyond the bastard’s range. He can’t hear me say how much I hate him, how much I want to kill him really hard.”
I settle onto another folded moving blanket, facing her.
Jolie dresses to express the rebellion in which she dares not engage: dirty sneakers, jeans, a worn-denim jacket appliquéd with decorative copper rivets to suggest chain mail, and a black T-shirt on which a white skull grins.
In spite of that outfit and the settled anger that hardens her face, her tender beauty is greater than her mother has been able to convey. She is one of those girls who, though a tomboy, would always be chosen to play an angel in the church Christmas pageant and would be cast as the secular saint in any school play. Her beauty has no significant quality of nascent sexuality, but rather she is luminous and projects a goodness and an innocence that is a reflection of that profound grace we sometimes glimpse in nature and from which we take assurance that the world is a place of exquisite purpose.
“Dr. Hiskott. Where did he come from, Jolie?”
“He says Moonlight Bay. That’s a couple miles up the coast. But we think he really came from Fort Wyvern.”
“The army base?”
“Yeah. Just inland from Moonlight Bay—and from here. Humongous.”
“How humongous?”
“Like 134,000 acres. A small city. Civilian workers, military guys, their families—forty thousand people used to live there. Not counting.”
“Not counting what?”
“Things like Orc.”
The lighting in the cove flutters, dims, goes out, and comes back on before I can bolt to my feet.
“Don’t freak,” the girl says sweetly. “It happens now and then.”
“How many nows and how many thens?”
“It never stays dark more than a couple seconds. Besides, I’ve got a flashlight, you’ve got a gun.”
As I am not one to unnecessarily frighten children and as I wish not to furthe
r frighten myself, I refrain from suggesting that what comes for us in the dark might find my pistol as unimpressive as her mini flashlight.
“Anyway,” she says, “they closed Wyvern after the end of the Cold War, before I was born. People say there were secret projects at Wyvern, new weapons, experiments.”
Looking at the mummified creature, I ask, “What experiments?”
“No one knows for sure. Weird stuff. Maybe messing around with genes, crap like that. Some say there’s still something going on there, even though it’s officially closed.”
A bass electronic noise pulses along the hall, a whummm-whummm-whummm that seems to stir the marrow in my bones.
“That happens sometimes, too,” the girl says. “I don’t know what it is. Don’t worry about it. Nothing ever happens after it.”
I look toward the sealed doors she has been unable to open. “You think this connects with … someplace in Wyvern?”
“Well, I don’t think it’s a space-warp shortcut to Disney World. Anyway, Dr. Hiskott is sick when he checks into the motor court. He seems exhausted, confused, his hands shaking. My aunt Lois registers him. When he takes his driver’s license from his wallet, he scatters a bunch of cards on the counter. Aunt Lois helps gather them up. She says one was a photo ID for Fort Wyvern. Before she married my uncle Greg, back when Wyvern was still open, she worked there.”
“Why would he still carry a card years after the place closed?”
“Yeah, why?”
I don’t have to be a mentalist to read, in her direct green gaze, that we both know the answer to my question.
“Hiskott stays in his cottage three days, won’t let the maid change the linens or clean. And then he wasn’t just Dr. Hiskott anymore. He was … something else, and he took control.”
The electronic sound comes again, a longer series of notes than before: Whummm-whummm-whummm-whummm-whummm.…
Although shriveled, shrunken, mummified, and long dead, the bony fingers of Orc’s left hand tap the floor, making a rattle like dancing dice, and from its gaping mouth comes an eager keening.
The lights flutter and go out.
TO BE CONTINUED in Odd Interlude #2, on sale June 18, 2012
BY DEAN KOONTZ
77 Shadow Street • What the Night Knows • Breathless • Relentless • Your Heart Belongs to Me • The Darkest Evening of the Year • The Good Guy • The Husband • Velocity • Life Expectancy • The Taking • The Face • By the Light of the Moon • One Door Away From Heaven • From the Corner of His Eye • False Memory • Seize the Night • Fear Nothing • Mr. Murder • Dragon Tears • Hideaway • Cold Fire • The Bad Place • Midnight • Lightning • Watchers • Strangers • Twilight Eyes • Darkfall • Phantoms • Whispers • The Mask • The Vision • The Face of Fear • Night Chills • Shattered • The Voice of the Night • The Servants of Twilight • The House of Thunder • The Key to Midnight • The Eyes of Darkness • Shadowfires • Winter Moon • The Door to December • Dark Rivers of the Heart • Icebound • Strange Highways • Intensity • Sole Survivor • Ticktock • The Funhouse • Demon Seed
ODD THOMAS
Odd Thomas • Forever Odd • Brother Odd • Odd Hours • Odd Interlude (e-original novella) • Odd Apocalypse
FRANKENSTEIN
Prodigal Son • City of Night • Dead and Alive • Lost Souls • The Dead Town
A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog Named Trixie
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DEAN KOONTZ, the author of many #1 New York Times bestsellers, lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Anna, and the enduring spirit of their golden, Trixie.
www.deankoontz.com
Correspondence for the author should be addressed to:
Dean Koontz
P.O. Box 9529
Newport Beach, California 92658
ODD THOMAS IS BACK.
His mysterious journey of suspense and discovery moves to a dangerous new level in his most riveting adventure to date.…
by #1 New York Times bestselling author
DEAN KOONTZ
On sale in hardcover
Summer 2012
ONE
Near sunset of my second full day as a guest in Roseland, crossing the immense lawn between the main house and the eucalyptus grove, I halted and pivoted, warned by instinct. Racing toward me, the great black stallion was as mighty a horse as I had ever seen. Earlier, in a book of breeds, I had identified it as a Friesian. The blonde who rode him wore a white nightgown.
As silent as any spirit, the woman urged the horse forward, faster. On hooves that made no sound, the steed ran through me with no effect.
I have certain talents. In addition to being a pretty good short-order cook, I have an occasional prophetic dream. And in the waking world, I sometimes see the spirits of the lingering dead who, for various reasons, are reluctant to move on to the Other Side.
This long-dead horse and rider, now only spirits in our world, knew that no one but I could see them. After appearing to me twice the previous day and once this morning, but at a distance, the woman seemed to have decided to get my attention in an aggressive fashion.
Mount and mistress raced around me in a wide arc. I turned to follow them, and they cantered toward me once more but then halted. The stallion reared over me, silently slashing the air with the hooves of its forelegs, nostrils flared, eyes rolling, a creature of such immense power that I stumbled backward even though I knew that it was as immaterial as a dream.
Spirits are solid and warm to my touch, as real to me in that way as is anyone alive. But I am not solid to them, and they can neither ruffle my hair nor strike a death blow at me.
Because my sixth sense complicates my existence, I try otherwise to keep my life simple. I have fewer possessions than a monk. I have no time or peace to build a career as a fry cook or as anything else. I never plan for the future, but wander into it with a smile on my face, hope in my heart, and the hair up on the nape of my neck.
Bareback on the Friesian, the barefoot beauty wore white silk and white lace and wild red ribbons of blood both on her gown and in her long blond hair, though I could see no wound. Her nightgown was rucked up to her thighs, and her knees pressed against the stallion’s heaving flanks. In her left hand, she twined a fistful of the horse’s mane, as if even in death she must hold fast to her mount to keep their spirits joined.
If spurning a gift weren’t ungrateful, I would at once return my supernatural sight. I would be content to spend my days whipping up omelets that make you groan with pleasure and pancakes so fluffy that the slightest breeze might float them off your plate.
Every talent is unearned, however, and with it comes a solemn obligation to use it as fully and as wisely as possible. If I didn’t believe in the miraculous nature of talent and in the sacred duty of the recipient, by now I would have gone so insane that I’d qualify for numerous high government positions.
As the stallion danced on its hind legs, the woman reached out with her right arm and pointed down at me, as if to say that she knew I saw her and that she had a message to convey to me. Her lovely face was grim with determination, and those cornflower-blue eyes that were not bright with life were nonetheless bright with anguish.
When she dismounted, she didn’t drop to the ground but instead floated off the horse and almost seemed to glide across the grass to me. The blood faded from her hair and nightgown, and she manifested as she had looked in life before her fatal wounds, as if she might be concerned that the gore would repel me. I felt her touch when she put one hand to my face, as though she, a ghost, had more difficulty believing in me than I had believing in her.
Behind the woman, the sun melted into the distant sea, and several distinctively shaped clouds glowed like a fleet of ancient warships with their masts and sails ablaze.
As I saw her anguish relent to a tentative hope, I said, “Yes, I can see you. And if you’ll let me, I can help you cross over.”
She shook her head violently and took a step backward, as if she feared that with some touch or spoken spell I might release her from this world. But I have no such power.
I thought I understood the reason for her reaction. “You were murdered, and before you go from this world, you want to be sure that justice will be done.”
She nodded but then shook her head, as if to say, Yes, but not only that.
Being more familiar with the deceased than I might wish to be, I can tell you from considerable personal experience that the spirits of the lingering dead don’t talk. I don’t know why. Even when they have been brutally murdered and are desperate to see their assailants brought to justice, they are unable to convey essential information to me either by phone or face-to-face. Neither do they send text messages. Maybe that’s because, given the opportunity, they would reveal something about death and the world beyond that we the living are not meant to know.
Anyway, the dead can be even more frustrating to deal with than are many of the living, which is astonishing when you consider that it’s the living who run the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Shadowless in the last direct light of the drowning sun, the Friesian stood with head high, as proud as any patriot before the sight of a beloved flag. But his only flag was the golden hair of his mistress. He grazed no more in this place but reserved his appetite for Elysian fields.
Approaching me again, the blonde stared at me so intensely that I could feel her desperation. She formed a cradle with her arms and rocked it back and forth.
I said, “A baby?”
Yes.
“Your baby?”
She nodded but then shook her head.
Brow furrowed, biting her lower lip, the woman hesitated before holding out one hand, palm down, perhaps four and a half feet above the ground.