by Dean Koontz
Baumberg strained his senses.
“The evil,” O’Hara said, his voice reduced to a hoarse whisper. “Feel it.”
Baumberg placed his hands against the cool glass, pressed his forehead to it, stared intently at the Scavello house. After a while he did feel it, just like O’Hara said. The darkness. The evil. It poured forth from that house like atomic radiation from a block of plutonium. It streamed through the night, through the glass in front of Baumberg, contaminating him, a malignant energy that produced no heat or light, that was bleak and black and frigid.
O’Hara abruptly lowered his binoculars, turned away from the window, put his back toward the Scavello house, as if the evil energy pouring from it was more than he could bear.
“It’s time,” Baumberg said, picking up a shotgun and a revolver.
“No,” O’Hara said. “Let them settle in. Let them relax. Give them a chance to lower their guard.”
“When?”
“We’ll leave here at . . . eight-thirty.”
24
6:45 P.M.
Christine watched as Charlie unplugged the telephone in her study and replaced it with a device that he had brought with him. It looked like a cross between a phone, an answering machine, and a briefcase-sized electronic calculator.
Charlie picked up the receiver, and Christine could hear the dial tone even though she was a few feet away.
Replacing the handset in the cradle, he said, “If someone calls, we’ll come in here to answer it.”
“That’ll record the conversation?”
“Yeah. But it’s primarily a tracer phone. It’s like the equipment the police have when you call their emergency number.”
“911?”
“Yeah. When you call 911, they know what number and address you’re calling from because, as soon as they pick up their receiver and establish a connection with you, that information prints out at their end.” He indicated what looked like a short, blank length of adding machine tape that was sticking out of a slot in the device he’d put on her desk. “We’ll have the same information about anyone who phones here.”
“So if this Grace Spivey calls, we’ll not only have a recording of her voice, but we’ll have proof the call was made on her phone—or one that belongs to her church.”
“Yep. It probably wouldn’t be admissible as court evidence, but it ought to help get the police interested if we can prove she’s making threats against Joey.”
7:00 P.M.
The takeout food arrived precisely on the hour, and Christine noticed that Charlie was quietly pleased by how prompt his man was.
The five of them ate at the dining room table—beef ribs, barbecued chicken, baked potatoes, and cole slaw—while Charlie told funny stories about cases his agency had handled. Joey listened, spellbound, even though he didn’t always understand or appreciate the details of the anecdotes.
Christine watched her son watching Charlie. More poignantly than ever, she realized what the boy had been missing by not having a father or any other male authority figure to admire and from whom he could learn.
Chewbacca, the new dog, ate from a dish in the corner of the room, then stretched out and put his head down on his paws, waiting for Joey. Obviously, he had belonged to a family that had cared for him and had trained him well. He was going to fit in quickly and easily. Christine was still disconcerted by his resemblance to Brandy, but she was beginning to think it would work out anyway.
At 7:20, the intermittent, distant sound of thunder suddenly grew louder. A blast split the night sky, and the windows rattled.
Startled, Christine dropped her fork. For an instant she thought a bomb had gone off outside the house. When she realized it was only thunder, she felt silly, but a glance at the others told her that they, too, had been briefly startled and frightened by the noise.
A few fat raindrops struck the roof, the windows.
At 7:35, Frank Reuther finished eating and left the table to make a complete circuit of the house, re-examining all the doors and windows that Pete had checked earlier.
A light but steady rain was falling.
At 7:47, finished eating, Joey challenged Pete Lockburn to a game of Old Maid, and Pete accepted. They went off to the boy’s room, the dog padding friskily and eagerly behind them.
Frank pulled a chair up to one of the living room windows and studied the rain-swept street through a narrow chink in the draperies.
Charlie helped Christine gather up the paper plates and napkins, which they carried to the kitchen, where the sound of the rain was louder, booming off the patio cover at the back of the house.
“Wha now?” Christine asked, stuffing the plates into the garbage can.
“We get through the night.”
“Then?”
“If the old woman doesn’t call tonight and give us something to use against her, then tomorrow I’ll talk to Dr. Boothe, the psychologist I mentioned. He has a special interest in religious neuroses and psychoses. He’s developed some successful deprogramming procedures to rehabilitate people who’ve been brainwashed by some of these weird cults. He knows how these cult leaders think, so maybe he can help us find Grace Spivey’s weak spot. I’m also going to try to talk to the woman herself, face to face.”
“How’re you going to arrange that?”
“Call the Church of the Twilight and ask for an appointment with her.”
“You think she’ll actually see you?”
He shrugged. “The boldness of it might intrigue her.”
“Can’t we go to the cops now?”
“With what?”
“You’ve got proof Joey and I are being followed.”
“Following someone isn’t a crime.”
“That Spivey woman called your office and threatened Joey.”
“We haven’t any proof it was Grace Spivey. And only Joey heard the threat.”
“Maybe if we explain to the cops how this madwoman thinks Joey is the Antichrist—”
“That’s only a theory.”
“Well . . . maybe we could find someone who used to belong to the cult, someone who’s left it, and then they could substantiate this Antichrist nonsense.”
“People don’t leave the Church of the Twilight,” Charlie said.
“What do you mean?”
“When we were hired to pull those two little kids out of the cult, we first figured we’d dig up someone who’d been a follower of Grace Spivey’s but wasn’t anymore, someone who’d become disillusioned and could tell us where the kids might be and how we might best be able to snatch them. But we couldn’t find anybody who’d quit the church. Once they join up, they seem committed for life.”
“There’re always going to be a few disgruntled, disillusioned—”
“Not with the Church of the Twilight.”
“What kind of hold does that crazy old woman have on them?”
“Hard as iron and tight as a vise,” Charlie said.
Lightning pulsed so brilliantly that it was visible through the tiny spaces between the slats of the Levolor blinds.
Thunder crashed, reverberating in the windows, and the rain came down harder than ever.
At 8:15, after giving some final instructions to Lockburn and Reuther, Charlie left.
He insisted that Christine lock the door behind him before he would even walk away from the front porch.
She pulled aside the curtain on the window next to the door and watched him hurry toward the green Chevy, splashing through dark puddles, buffeted by the wet wind, hurrying in and out of dense night shadows that appeared to flap and billow like black draperies.
Frank Reuther suggested she get away from the window, and she took his advice, though reluctantly. Somehow, as long as she could still see Charlie Harrison, she felt safe. But the moment she dropped the curtain and turned away from the window, a crushing awareness of Joey’s vulnerability (and her own) settled over her.
She knew Pete and Frank were well trained, competent, and tr
ustworthy, but neither of them gave her the feeling of security that she got from Charlie.
8:20.
She went to Joey’s room. He and Pete were sitting on the floor, playing Old Maid.
“Hey, Mom, I’m winning,” Joey said.
“He’s a real card shark,” Pete said. “If this ever gets back to the guys in the office, I’ll never live it down.”
Chewbacca lay in the corner, watching his master, tongue lolling.
Christine could almost believe that Chewbacca was actually Brandy, that there had never been a decapitation, that Pete and Frank were just a couple of family friends, that this was merely an ordinary, quiet evening at home. Almost. But not quite.
She went into her study and sat at her desk, looking at the two covered windows, listening to the rain. It sounded like thousands of people chanting so far away that you couldn’t make out their words but could hear only the soft, blended roar of many ardent voices.
She tried to work but couldn’t concentrate. She took a book from the shelves, a light novel, but she couldn’t even keep her attention focused on that.
For a moment she considered calling her mother. She needed a shoulder to cry on. But of course Evelyn wouldn’t provide the comfort and commiseration she needed.
She wished her brother were still alive. She wished she could call him and ask him to come be with her. But Tony was gone forever. Her father was gone forever, too, and although she had barely known him, she missed him now in a way she never had before.
If only Charlie were here . . .
In spite of Frank and Pete and the unnamed man watching the house from the camper outside, she felt terribly alone.
She stared at the tracer phone on her desk. She wished the crazy old woman would call and threaten Joey. At least they would have sufficient evidence to interest the police.
But the phone didn’t ring.
The only sounds were those of the storm.
At 8:40, Frank Reuther came into the study, smiled at her, and said, “Don’t mind me. Just making the rounds.”
He went to the first window, held the drape aside, checked the lock, peered into the darkness for a second, then let the drape fall back into place.
Like Pete Lockburn, Frank had taken off his jacket and had rolled up his shirtsleeves. His shoulder holster hung under his left arm. The butt of his revolver caught the light for an instant and gleamed blackly.
For a moment Christine felt as if, through some inexplicable interchange of fantasy and reality, she was trapped in a ’30s gangster movie.
Frank pulled aside the drape at the second window—and cried out in surprise.
The shotgun blast was louder than the clashing armies of the thunderstorm.
The window exploded inward.
Christine leaped up as a shower of glass and blood cascaded over her.
Before he had time to reach for his own gun, Frank was lifted off his feet by the force of the blast and pitched backward.
Christine’s chair fell over with a bang.
The bodyguard collapsed across the desk in front of her. His face was gone. The shotgun pellets had hammered his skull into bloody ruin.
Outside, the gunman fired again.
Stray pellets found the ceiling light, pulverizing it, bringing down more glass, some plaster, and darkness. The desk lamp already had been knocked to the floor when Frank Reuther had fallen against it. The room was in darkness except for what little light came through the open doorway from the hall.
The pellet-shredded draperies were seized by an intrusive gust of wind. Tattered fragments lashed at one another, fluttered and whirled in the air, like the rotted burial garments of an animated corpse in a carnival funhouse.
Christine heard someone screaming, thought it was Joey, realized it was a woman, then discovered it was her own voice.
A squall of rain burst through the ribboned drapes. But the rain wasn’t the only thing trying to get inside. Frank Reuther’s killer was also clambering through the shattered window.
Christine ran.
25
In an adrenaline-hot, fear-scorched, dreamlike fever, with the urgent yet weirdly slow-motion time sense of a nightmare, Christine ran from her study to the living room. The short journey required only a few seconds, but it seemed as if the distance from one end of her house to the other was a hundred miles and that hours passed during her panicky progress from one room to another. She knew she was awake, yet she felt as if she were asleep. This was reality yet unreal.
When she reached the living room, Pete Lockburn and Joey were just entering from the direction of the boy’s bedroom. Lockburn’s revolver was in his hand.
Chewbacca came behind them, ears flattened, tail down, barking loudly.
A shotgun blast tore the lock out of the front door. Even as the wood chips were still flying, a man burst into the house. He crouched in the foyer that opened into the living room, holding a shotgun in front of him, eyes wide, face white with anger or terror or both, an incongruously ordinary-looking man, short and husky, with a thick black beard jeweled with raindrops. He saw Christine first and leveled his weapon at her.
Joey screamed.
A hard, ear-shattering explosion rocked the room, and Christine was certain that she was in the last milliseconds of her life.
But it was the intruder who was hit. His shirt blossomed with an ugly red flower of blood.
Pete Lockburn had fired first. Now he fired again.
A spray of blood erupted from the intruder’s shoulder. The stranger’s shotgun spun out of his hands, and he stumbled backward. Lockburn’s third shot caught him in the neck, catapulting him off his feet. Already dead, he was pitched into a small foyer table; his head slammed backward, striking a mirror above the table, cracking it, and then he collapsed in a gory heap.
As Joey bolted into Christine’s arms, she shouted to Lockburn: “There’s another man! The study—”
Too late. The gunman who had killed Frank Reuther was already in the living room.
Lockburn whirled. Fast but not fast enough. The shotgun roared. Pete Lockburn was blown away.
Although he had been their dog less than a day, Chewbacca knew where his loyalties ought to lie. Snarling, teeth bared, he leapt at the gunman, bit the intruder’s left leg, sank his fangs in deep and held on tight.
The man cried out, raised the shotgun, slammed the heavy butt down on top of the retriever’s golden head. The dog yelped and crumpled in a heap.
“No!” Joey said, as if the loss of a second pet was worse than the prospect of his own slaughter.
Sobbing in pain, obviously frightened, the gunman said, “God help me, God help me, God help me,” and he turned the 20-gauge on Christine and Joey.
She saw that he, like the bearded man, did not really appear to be mad or degenerate or evil. The ferocity of the terror that gripped him was the most unusual thing about him. Otherwise, he was quite ordinary. Young, in his early twenties. Slightly overweight. Fair-skinned, with a few freckles and rain-soaked reddish hair that was plastered to his head. His ordinariness was the very thing that made him so scary; if this man could become a mindless killer under the influence of Grace Spivey, then the old woman could corrupt anyone; no one could be trusted; anyone might be an assassin in her thrall.
He pulled the trigger.
There was only a dry click.
He had forgotten that both barrels were empty.
Whimpering and squealing as if he were the one in danger, the killer fumbled in his jacket pocket and withdrew a pair of shotgun shells.
With a strength and agility born of terror, Christine scooped Joey up and ran, not toward the front door and the street beyond, for they would surely die out there, but toward the stairs and the master bedroom, where she had left her purse—the purse in which she’d been carrying her own pistol. Joey clung desperately to her, and he seemed to weigh nothing at all; she was briefly possessed with a morethan-human power, and the stairs succumbed to her pumping legs. The
n, almost at the top, she stumbled, nearly fell, grabbed at the banister, cried out in despair.
But it was a good thing she had stumbled, for, in that same moment, the gunman below opened fire, discharging both barrels. Two waves of buckshot smashed into the railing at the top of the stairs, reducing the oak handrail to splinters, tearing plaster from the wall, blowing out the ceiling light up there, at the very place she would have been if she hadn’t misstepped.
As the killer reloaded yet again, Christine plunged ahead, into the upstairs hall. For a moment she hesitated, clutching Joey, swaying, disoriented. This was her own house, more familiar to her than anyplace in the world, but tonight it was alien; the angles and proportions and lighting in the rooms seemed wrong, different. The hallway, for instance, appeared infinitely long, with distorted walls like a passageway in a carnival maze. She blinked and tried to repress the hearthammering panic that twisted her perceptions; she hurried forward and made it to the master bedroom door.
Behind her, from the stairway, came the sound of the killer’s footsteps as he raced after her, favoring his bitten leg.
She stepped into the bedroom, slammed the door behind her, latched it, put Joey down. Her purse was on the nightstand. She grabbed it just as the assassin reached the door and rattled the knob. Her fingers were too frantic; for a moment she couldn’t work the zipper. Then she had her purse open, the gun in hand.
Joey had crawled into a corner, beside the highboy. He cringed, trying to make himself even smaller than he was.
The bedroom door shook and partially dissolved in a storm of buckshot. A hole opened on the right side of it. One hinge was torn out of the frame; it spun into the air, bounced off a wall, clattered across the top of the dresser.
Holding her pistol in both hands, painfully aware that she wasn’t holding it steady, Christine swung toward the door.
Another blast ruined the lock, and the door swung inward, hanging on only one hinge.