Koontz, Dean R. - Mr. Murder

by Dean Koontz

  Four rings.

  "Yeah, well, you're not the Snow Queen, either," Emily said.

  "I am too."

  Five.

  "No, you're the Snow Troll."

  "You're the Snow Toad," Charlotte countered.

  siX.

  "Snow Worm.

  "Snow Maggot."

  "Snow Snot."

  "Snow Puke."

  Marty gave them a warning look, which put a stop to the name calling

  competition, though they stuck their tongues out at each other.

  After the seventh ring, he put his finger on the END button.

  Before he could push it, however, the connection was made.

  Whoever picked up the receiver didn't say anything.

  "Hello?" Marty said. "Mom? Dad?"

  Managing to sound both angry and sad, the man on the other end of the

  line said, "How did you win them over?"

  Marty felt as if ice had formed in his veins and marrow, not because of

  the penetrating cold in the cabin but because the voice that responded

  to him was a perfect imitation of his own.

  "Why would they love you more than me?" The Other demanded, his voice

  tremulous with emotion.

  A mantle of dread settled on Marty, and a sense of unreality as

  disorienting as any nightmare. He seemed to be dreaming while awake.

  He said, "Don't touch them, you son of a bitch. Don't you lay one

  finger on them."

  "They betrayed me."

  "I want to talk to my mother and father," Marty demanded.

  "My mother and father," The Other said.

  "Put them on the phone."

  "So you can tell them more lies?"

  "Put them on the phone now," Marty said between clenched

  "They can't

  listen to any more of your lies."

  "What have you done?"

  "They're finished listening to you."

  "What have you done?"

  "They wouldn't give me what I needed."

  With understanding, dread became grief. For a moment Marty could not

  find his voice.

  The Other said, "All I needed was to be loved."

  "What have you done?" He was shouting. "Who are you, what are you,

  damn it, what are you, what have you done?"

  Ignoring the questions, answering them with questions of its own, The

  Other said, "Have you turned Paige against me? My Paige, my Charlotte,

  my sweet little Emily? Do I have any hope of getting them back or will

  I have to kill them too?" The voice cracked with emotion. "Oh God, is

  there even blood in their veins any more, are they human any more, or

  have you made them into something else?"

  Marty realized they could not conduct a conversation. It was madness to

  try. However much they might look and sound alike, they were without

  any common grounds. In fundamental ways, they were as unlike each other

  as if they had been members of different species.

  Marty pushed the END button.

  His hands were shaking so badly that he dropped the phone.

  When he turned from the window, he saw the girls were standing together,

  holding hands. They were staring, pale and frightened.

  His shouting into the telephone had brought Paige out of one of the

  bedrooms where she had been adjusting the electric heater.

  Images of his parents' faces and treasured memories of a life of love

  crowded into his mind, but he resolutely repressed them. If he gave in

  to grief now, wasted precious time in tears, he would be condemning

  Paige and the girls to certain death.

  "He's here," Marty said, "he's coming, and we don't have much time."

  New Maps of Hell Those who would banish the sin of greed embrace the sin

  of envy as their creed.

  Those who seek to banish envy as well, only draw elaborate new maps of

  hell.

  Those with passion to change the world, look on themselves as saints, as

  pearls, and by the launching of noble endeavor, flee dreaded

  introspection forever.

  --The Book of Counted Sorrows

  Laugh at tyrants and the tragedy they

  inflict. Such men welcome our tears as evidence of subservience, but

  our laughter condemns them to ignominy.

  --Endless River, Laura Shane S X 1.

  He stands in his parents' kitchen, watching the falling snow through the

  window above the sink, shaking with hunger, and wolfing down leftover

  meatloaf.

  This is one of those decisive moments that separate real heroes from

  pretenders. When all is darkest, when tragedy piles on tragedy, when

  hope seems to be a game only for idiots and fools, does Harrison Ford or

  Kevin Costner or Tom Cruise or Wesley Snipes or Kurt Russell quit?

  No. Never. Unthinkable. They are heroes. They persevere. Rise to

  the occasion. They not only deal with adversity but thrive on it.

  From sharing the worst moments of those great men's lives, he knows how

  to cope with emotional devastation, mental depression, physical abuse in

  enormous quantities, and even the threat of alien domination of the

  earth.

  Move, move, confront, challenge, grapple, and prevail.

  He must not dwell on the tragedy of his parents' deaths. The creatures

  he destroyed were surely not his mother and father, any way, but mimics

  like the one that has stolen his own life. He might never learn when

  his real parents were murdered and replaced, and in any event he must

  delay grieving for them.

  Thinking too much about his parents--or about anything--is * not

  merely a waste of precious time but anti-heroic. Heroes don't think.

  Heroes act.

  Move, move, confront, challenge, grapple, and prevail.

  Finished eating, he goes to the garage by way of a laundry room off the

  kitchen. Switching on fluorescent lights as he crosses the threshold,

  he discovers two vehicles are available for his use an old blue Dodge

  and an apparently new Jeep Wagoneer. He will use the Jeep because of

  its four-wheel drive.

  The keys to the vehicle hang on a pegboard in the laundry room.

  In a cabinet, he also finds a large box of detergent. He reads the list

  of chemicals on the box, satisfied with what he discovers.

  He returns to the kitchen.

  The end of one row of lower cabinets is finished with a wine rack.

  After locating a corkscrew in a drawer, he opens four bottles and

  empties the wine into the sink.

  In another kitchen drawer he finds a plastic funnel among other odds and

  ends of cooking implements. A third drawer is filled with clean white

  dish towels, and a fourth is the source for a pair of scissors and a

  book of matches.

  He carries the bottles and the other items into the laundry room and

  puts them on the tiled counter beside the deep sink.

  In the garage again, he takes a red five-gallon gasoline can from a

  shelf to the left of the workbench. When he unscrews the cap,

  high-octane fumes waft out of the container. Spring through autumn, Dad

  probably keeps gasoline in the can to use in the lawn mower, but it is

  empty now.

  Rummaging through the drawers and cabinets around the work bench, he

  finds a coil of flexible plastic tubing in a box of repair parts for the

  drinking-water filtration system in the kitchen. With this he siphons

  gasoline out of
the Dodge into the five-gallon can.

  At the sink in the laundry room, he uses the funnel to pour an inch of

  detergent into the bottom of each empty wine bottle. He adds gasoline.

  He cuts the dishcloths into useable strips.

  Although he has two revolvers and twenty rounds of ammunition, he wants

  to add gasoline bombs to his arsenal. His experiences of the past

  twenty-four hours, since first confronting the false father, have taught

  him not to underestimate his adversary.

  He still hopes to save Paige, Charlotte, and little Emily. He

  continues to desire reunion and the renewal of their life together.

  However, he must face reality and prepare for the possibility that his

  wife and children are no longer who they once were. They may simply

  have been mentally enslaved. On the other hand, they might also have

  been infected by parasites not of this world, their brains now hollow

  and filled with writhing monstrosities. Or they might not be themselves

  at all, merely replicants of the real Paige, Charlotte, and Emily, just

  as the false father is a replicant of him, arising out of a seed pod

  from some distant star.

  The varieties of alien infestation are limitless and strange, but one

  weapon has saved the world more often than any other, fire.

  Kurt Russell, when he was a member of an Antarctic scientific-re search

  outpost, had been confronted by an extraterrestrial shape changer of

  infinite forms and great cunning, perhaps the most frightening and

  powerful alien ever to attempt colonization of the earth, and fire had

  been by far the most effective weapon against that formidable enemy.

  He wonders if four incendiary devices are enough. He probably won't

  have time to use more of them, anyway. If something bursts out of the

  false father, Paige, or the girls, and if it's as hostile as the things

  that had burst out of people in Kurt Russell's research station, he

  would no doubt be overwhelmed before he could use more than four

  gasoline bombs, considering that he must take the time to light each one

  separately. He wishes he had a flamethrower.

  Standing by one of the front windows, watching heavy snow filter through

  the trees and onto the lane that led out to the county route, Marty

  plucked handfuls of 9mm ammunition out of the boxes of ammo they'd

  brought from Mission Viejo. He distributed cartridges in the numerous

  zippered pockets of his red-and-black ski jacket and in the pockets of

  his jeans as well.

  Paige loaded the magazine of the Mossberg. She'd had less time than

  Marty to practice with the pistol on the firing range, and she felt more

  comfortable with the 12-gauge.

  They had eighty shells for the shotgun and approximately two hundred 9mm

  rounds for the Beretta.

  Marty felt defenseless.

  No amount of weaponry would have made him feel better.

  After hanging up on The Other, he had considered getting out of the

  cabin, going on the run. But if they had been followed this far so

  easily, they would be followed anywhere they went. It was better to

  make a stand in a defendable location than to be accosted on a lonely

  highway or be taken by surprise in a place more vulnerable than the

  cabin.

  He almost called the local police to send them to his parents' house.

  But The Other would surely be gone before they got there, and the

  evidence they collected--fingerprints and God knew what else--would only

  make it appear that he had murdered his own mother and father.

  The media had already painted him as an unstable character. The scene

  at the house in Mammoth Lakes would play into the fantasy they were

  selling. If he were arrested today or tomorrow or next week--or even

  just detained for a few hours without being booked--Paige and the girls

  would be left on their own, a situation that he found intolerable.

  They had no choice but to dig in and fight. Which wasn't a choice so

  much as a death sentence.

  Side by side on the sofa, Charlotte and Emily were still wearing their

  jackets and gloves. They held hands, taking strength from each other.

  Although they were scared, they weren't crying or demanding reassurance

  as many kids might have been doing in the same situation. They had

  always been real troopers, each in her own way.

  Marty was not sure how to counsel his daughters. Ilsually, like Paige,

  he was not at a loss for the guidance they needed to get them through

  the problems of life. Paige joked that they were the Fabulous

  Stillwater Parenting Machine, a phrase that contained as much self

  mockery as genuine pride. But he was at a loss for words this time

  because he tried never to lie to them, did not intend to start lying

  now, yet dared not share with them his own bleak assessment of their

  chances.

  "Kids, come here, do something for me," he said.

  Eager for distraction, they scrambled off the sofa and joined him at the

  window.

  "Stand here," he said, "watch the paved road out there. If a car turns

  into the driveway or even goes by too slow, does anything suspicious,

  you holler. Got that?"

  They nodded solemnly.

  To Paige, Marty said, "Let's check all the other windows, make sure

  they're locked, and close the drapes over them."

  If The Other managed to creep up on the cabin without alerting them,

  Marty didn't want the bastard to be able to watch them--or shoot at

  them--through a window.

  Every window he checked was locked.

  In the kitchen, as he covered a window that looked out onto the deep

  woods behind the cabin, he remembered that his mother had made the

  drapes on her sewing machine in the spare bedroom of the house in

  Mammoth Lakes. He had a mental image of her, sitting at the Singer, her

  foot on the treadle, intently watching the needle as it chattered up and

  down.

  His chest clogged with pain. He took a deep breath, let it shudder out

  of him, then again, trying not only to expel the pain but also the

  memory that engendered it.

  There would be time for grief later, if they survived.

  Right now he had to think only about Paige and the kids. His mother was

  dead. They were alive. The cold truth, mourning was a luxury.

  He caught up with Paige in the second of the two small bed rooms just as

  she finished adjusting the draperies. She had switched on a nightstand

  lamp, so she wouldn't be in darkness when she closed off the windows,

  and now she moved to extinguish it.

  "Leave it on," Marty said. "With the storm, it'll be a long and early

  twilight. From outside, he'll probably be able to tell which rooms are

  lit, which aren't. No sense making it easier for him to figure exactly

  where we are."

  She was quiet. Staring at the amber cloth of the lampshade. As if

  their future could be prophesied from the vague patterns in that

  illuminated fabric.

  At last she looked at him. "How long have we got?"

  "Maybe ten minutes, maybe two hours. It's up to him."

  "What's going to happen, Marty?"

  It was his turn to be silent a moment. He didn't want to lie to her,

&nb
sp; either.

  When he finally spoke, Marty was surprised to hear what he told her,

  because it sprang from subconscious depths, was genuine, and indicated

  greater optimism than he was aware of on a conscious level.

  ' We're going to kill the fucker." Optimism or fatal self-delusion.

  She came to him around the foot of the bed, and they held each other.

  She felt so right in his arms. For a moment, the world didn't seem

  crazy any more.

  "We still don't even know who he is, what he is, where he comes from,"

  she said.

  "And maybe we'll never find out. Maybe, even after we kill the son of a

  bitch, we'll never know what this was all about."

  "If we never find out, then we can't pick up the pieces."

  "No."

  She put her head on his shoulder and gently kissed the exposed penumbra

  of the bruises on his throat. "We can never feel safe."

  "Not in our old life. But as long as we're together, the four of us,"