by Dean Koontz
entertain them, and prevent them from getting cranky for an entire busy
day unless he was in extraordinarily good health. Speaking as the other
half of the Fabulous Stillwater Parenting Machine, Paige was exhausted.
Curiously, after putting away the popcorn, she found herself checking
window and door locks.
Last night Marty had been unable to explain his own heightened sense of
a need for security. His trouble, after all, was internal.
Paige figured it had been simple psychological transference. He had
been reluctant to dwell on the possibility of brain tumors and cerebral
hemorrhages because those things were utterly beyond his control, so he
had turned outward to seek enemies against which he might be able to
take concrete action.
On the other hand, perhaps he had been reacting on instinct to a real
threat beyond conscious perception. As one who incorporated some
Jungian theory into her personal and professional worldview, Paige had
room for such concepts as the collective unconscious, synchronicity, and
intuition.
Standing at the French doors in the family room, staring across the
patio to the dark yard, she wondered what threat Marty might have sensed
out there in a world that, throughout her lifetime, had become
increasingly fraught with danger.
His attention deviates from the road ahead only for quick glances at the
strange shapes that loom out of the darkness and the rain on both sides
of the highway. Broken teeth of rock thrust from the sand and scree as
if a behemoth just beneath the earth is opening its mouth to swallow
whatever hapless animals happen to be on the surface.
Widely spaced clusters of stunted trees struggle to stay alive in a
stark land where storms are rare and drenching downpours rarer still,
gnarled branches bristle out of the mist, as jagged and chitinous as the
spiky limbs of insects, briefly illuminated by headlights, thrashing in
the wind for an instant but then gone.
Although the Honda has a radio, the killer does not switch it on because
he wants no distraction from the mysterious power which pulls him
westward and with which he seeks communion. Mile by dreary mile, the
magnetic attraction increases, and it is all that he cares about, he
could no more turn away from it than the earth could reverse its
rotation and bring tomorrow's sunrise in the west.
He leaves the rain behind and eventually passes from under the ragged
clouds into a clear night with stars beyond counting. Along part of the
horizon, luminous peaks and ridges can be seen dimly, so distant they
might define the edge of the world, like alabaster ramparts protecting a
fairy-tale kingdom, the walls of Shangri-la in which the light of last
month's moon still glimmers.
Into the vastness of the Southwest he goes, past necklaces of light that
are the desert towns of Tucumcari, Montoya, Cuervo, and then across the
Pecos River.
Between Amarillo and Albuquerque, when he stops for oil and gasoline, he
uses a service-station restroom reeking of insecticide, where two dead
cockroaches lie in a corner. The yellow light and dirty mirror reveal a
reflection recognizably his but somehow different. His blue eyes seem
darker and more fierce than he has ever seen them, and the lines of his
usually open and friendly face have hardened.
"I'm going to become someone," he says to the mirror, and the man in the
mirror mouths the words in concert with him.
At eleven-thirty Sunday night, when he reaches Albuquerque, he fuels the
Honda at another truckstop and orders two cheeseburgers to go.
Then he is off on the next leg of his journey--three hundred and
twenty-five miles to Flagstaff, Arizona eating the sandwiches out of the
white paper bags in which they came and into which drips fragrant
grease, onions, and mustard.
This will be his second night without rest, yet he isn't sleepy. He is
blessed with exceptional stamina. On other occasions he has gone
seventy-two hours without sleep, yet has remained clear-headed.
From movies he has watched on lonely nights in strange towns, he knows
that sleep is the one unconquerable enemy of soldiers desperate to win a
tough battle. Of policemen on stakeout. Of those who must valiantly
stand guard against vampires until dawn brings the sun and salvation.
His ability to call a truce with sleep whenever he wishes is so unusual
that he shies away from thinking about it. He senses there are things
about himself that he is better off not knowing, and this is one of
them.
Another lesson he has learned from movies is that every man has secrets,
even those he keeps from himself. Therefore, secrets merely make him
like all other men. Which is precisely the condition he most desires.
To be like other men.
In the dream, Marty stood in a cold and windswept place, in the grip of
terror. He was aware that he was on a plain as featureless and flat as
one of those vast valley floors out in the Mojave Desert on the drive to
Las Vegas, but he couldn't actually see the landscape because the
darkness was as deep as death. He knew something was rushing toward him
through the gloom, something inconceivably strange and hostile, immense
and deadly yet utterly silent, knew in his bones that it was coming,
dear God, yet had no idea of the direction of its approach.
Left, right, in front, behind, from the ground beneath his feet or from
out of the sable-black sky above, it was coming. He could feel it, an
object of such colossal size and weight that the atmosphere was
compressed in its path, the air thickening as the unknown danger drew
nearer. Closing on him so rapidly, faster, faster, and nowhere to hide.
Then he heard Emily pleading for help somewhere in the unrelenting
blackness, calling for her daddy, and Charlotte calling, too, but he
could not get a fix on them. He ran one way, then another, but their
increasingly frantic voices always seemed to be behind him.
The unknown threat was closer, closer, the girls frightened and crying,
Paige shouting his name in a voice so freighted with terror that Marty
began to weep with frustration at his inability to find them, oh dear
Jesus, and it was almost on top of him, the thing, whatever it was, as
unstoppable as a falling moon, worlds colliding, a weight beyond
measure, a force as primal as the one that had created the universe, as
destructive as the one that would someday end it, Emily and Charlotte
screaming, screaming-West of the Painted Desert, outside Flagstaff,
Arizona, shortly before five o'clock Monday morning, flurries of snow
swirl out of the predawn sky, and the cold air is a penetrating scalpel
that scrapes his bones. The brown leather jacket that he took from the
dead man's closet in the motorhome less than sixteen hours ago in
Oklahoma is not heavy enough to keep him warm in the early-morning
bitterness.
He shivers as he fills the tank of the Honda at a self-service pump.
On Interstate 40 again, he begins the three-hundred-fifty-mile trip to
Barstow, Cal
ifornia. His compulsion to keep moving westward is so
irresistible that he is as helpless in its grip as an asteroid captured
by the earth's tremendous gravity and pulled inexorably toward a
cataclysmic impact.
Terror propelled him out of the dream of darkness and unknown menace,
Marty Stillwater sat straight up in bed. His first waking breath was so
explosive, he was sure he had awakened Paige, but she slept on
undisturbed. He was chilled yet sheathed in sweat.
Gradually his heart stopped pounding so fearfully. With the glowing
green numerals on the digital clock, the red cable-box light on top of
the television, and the ambient light at the windows, the bedroom was
not nearly as black as the plain in his dream.
But he could not lie down. The nightmare had been more vivid and
unnerving than any he'd ever known. Sleep was beyond his reach.
Slipping out from under the covers, he padded barefoot to the nearest
window. He studied the sky above the rooftops of the houses across the
street, as if something in that dark vault would calm him.
Instead, when he noticed the black sky was brightening to a deep
gray-blue along the eastern horizon, the approach of dawn filled him
with the same irrational dread he had felt in his office on Saturday
afternoon. As color crept into the heavens, Marty began to tremble.
He tried to control himself, but his shivering grew more violent. It
was not daylight that he feared, but something the day was bringing with
it, an unnameable threat. He could feel it reaching for him, seeking
him--which was crazy, damn it--and he shuddered so viol windowsill to
steady himself.
"What's wrong with me?" he whispered desperately. "What's happening,
what's wrong?"
Hour after hour, the speedometer needle quivers between 90 and 100 on
the gauge. The steering wheel vibrates under his palms until his hands
ache. The Honda shimmies, rattles. The engine issues a thin unwavering
shriek, unaccustomed to being pushed so hard.
Rust-red, bone-white, sulfur-yellow, the purple of desiccated veins, as
dry as ashes, as barren as Mars, pale sand with reptilian spines of
mottled rock, speckled with withered clumps of mesquite, the cruel
fastness of the Mojave Desert has a majestic barrenness.
Inevitably, the killer thinks of old movies about settlers moving west
in wagon trains. He realizes for the first time how much courage was
required to make their journey in those rickety vehicles, trusting their
lives to the health and stamina of dray horses.
Movies. California. He is in California, home of the movies.
Move, move, move.
From time to time, an involuntary mewling escapes him. The sound is
like that of an animal dying of dehydration but within sight of a
watering hole, dragging itself toward the pool that offers salvation but
afraid it will perish before it can slake its burning thirst.
Paige and Charlotte were already in the garage, getting in the car,
when they both cried, "Emily, hurry up!"
As Emily turned away from the breakfast table and started toward the
open door that connected the kitchen to the garage, Marty caught her by
the shoulder and turned her to face him. "Wait, wait, wait."
"Oh," she said, "I forgot," and puckered up for a smooch.
"That comes second," he said.
"What's first?"
"This." He dropped to one knee, bringing himself to her level, and with
a paper towel he blotted away her milk mustache.
"Oh, gross," she said.
"It was cute."
"More like Charlotte."
He raised his eyebrows. "Oh?"
"She's the messy one."
"Don't be unkind."
"She knows it, Daddy."
"Nevertheless."
From the garage, Paige called again.
Emily kissed him, and he said, "Don't give your teacher any trouble."
"No more than she gives me," Emily answered.
Impulsively he pulled her against him, hugged her fiercely, reluctant to
let her go. The clean fragrance of Ivory soap and baby shampoo breath.
He had never smelled anything sweeter, better. Her back was frightfully
small under the flat of his hand. She was so delicate, he could feel
the beat of her young heart both through her chest--which pressed
against him--and through her scapula and spine, against which his hand
lay. He was overcome with the feeling that something terrible was going
to happen and that he would never see her again if he allowed her to
leave the house.
He had to let her go, of course--or explain his reluctance, which he
could not do.
Honey, see, the problem is, something's wrong in Daddy's head, and I
keep getting these scary thoughts, like I'm going to lose you and
Charlotte and Mommy. Now, I know nothing's going to happen, not really,
because the problem is all in my head, like a big tumor or something.
Can you spell "tumor"? Do you know what it is? Well, I'm going to see
a doctor and have it cut out, just cut out that bad old tumor, and then
I won't be so frightened for no reason....
He dared say nothing of the sort. He would only scare her.
He kissed her soft, warm cheek and let her go.
At the door to the garage, she paused and looked back at him.
"More poem tonight?"
"You bet."
She said, "Reindeer salad . .."
". . . reindeer soup . .."
". . . all sorts of tasty . .."
". . . reindeer goop," Marty finished.
"You know what, Daddy?"
"What?"
"You're soooo silly."
Giggling, Emily went into the garage. The ca-chunk of the door closing
behind her was the most final sound Marty had ever heard.
He stared at the door, willing himself not to rush to it and jerk it
open and shout at them to get back into the house.
He heard the big garage door rolling up.
The car engine turned over, chugged, caught, raced a little as Paige
pumped the accelerator before shifting into reverse.
Marty hurried out of the kitchen, through the dining room, into the
living room. He went to one of the front windows from which he could
see the driveway. The plantation shutters were folded away from the
window, so he stayed a couple of steps from the glass.
The white BMW backed down the driveway, out of the shadow of the house
and into the late-November sunshine. Emily was riding up front with her
mother, and Charlotte was in the rear seat.
As the car receded along the tree-lined street, Marty stepped so close
to the living-room window that his forehead pressed against the cool
glass. He tried to keep his family in view as long as possible, as if
they were certain to survive anything--even falling airplanes and
nuclear blasts--if he just did not let them out of his sight.
His last glimpse of the BMW was through a sudden veil of hot tears that
he barely managed to repress.
Disturbed by the intensity of his emotional reaction to his family's
departure, he turned away from the window and said savagely, "What the
hell's the matter with me?"
After all, the girls were mere
ly going to school and Paige to her
office, where they went more days than not. They were following a
routine that had never been dangerous before, and he had no logical
reason to believe it was going to be dangerous today--or ever.
He looked at his wristwatch. 7,48.
His appointment with Dr. Guthridge was only slightly more than five
hours away, but that seemed an interminable length of time.
Anything could happen in five hours.
Needles to Ludlow to Daggett.
Move, move, move.
9,04 Pacific Standard Time.
Barstow. Dry bleached town in a hard dry land. Stagecoaches stopped
here long ago. Railroad yards. Waterless rivers. Cracked stucco,
peeling paint. Green of trees faded by a perpetual layer of dust on the
leaves. Motels, fast-food restaurants, more motels.
A service station. Gasoline. Men's room. Candy bars. Two cans of
cold Coke.
Attendant too friendly. Chatty. Slow to make change. Little pig eyes.
Fat cheeks. Hate him. Shut up, shut up, shut up.
Should shoot him. Should blow his head off. Satisfying. Can't risk
it. Too many people around.
On the road again. Interstate 15. West. Candy bars and Coke at eighty