by Dean Koontz
The lights immediately beyond the doors were all burned out. There were lights glowing some distance to the left and others to the right, revealing rows of cars and drab concrete walls and massive roof-supporting pillars, but directly in front of the elevator, there was darkness.
How likely was it that three or four lights would be out all at the same time?
That unsettling question flashed into Charlie’s mind the moment the doors slid open, and before he could react, Chewbacca began to bark at the shadows beyond the doors. The dog was shockingly ferocious, as if possessed by a sudden black rage, yet he didn’t rush out of the elevator to pursue the object of his anger, and that was a sure sign that something very bad was waiting out there for them.
Charlie reached toward the elevator’s control board.
Something whizzed into the cab and slammed into the back wall, two inches from Christine’s head. A bullet. It tore a hole through the metal panel. The sound of the shot was almost like an afterthought.
“Down!” Charlie shouted, and hit the CLOSE DOOR button, and another shot slammed into the doors as they started to roll shut, and he punched the button for the top floor, and Chewbacca was still barking, and Christine was screaming, and then the doors were completely shut, and the cage was on its way up, and Charlie thought he heard a last futile shot as they rose out of the concrete depths.
The killers hadn’t planned on the dog reacting so quickly and noisily. They had expected Christine and Joey to come out of the elevator, and they hadn’t been prepared to hit their quarry within the cab itself. Otherwise, the shots would have been more carefully placed, and Joey or his mother—or both—would already be dead.
With any luck, the only gunmen were those on the lowest level of the garage. But if they had planned for this contingency, for the possibility that their prey would be forewarned and would not get out of the elevator, then they might have stationed others on the upper floor. The cab might stop rising at any level, and the doors might open, and another hit squad might be waiting there.
But how did they find us? Charlie asked himself desperately as Christine picked herself up from the floor. In Christ’s name, how?
He was still packing his own gun, which he’d taken to the Church of the Twilight this morning, and he drew it, aimed at the doors in front of them.
The cab didn’t stop until it reached the top floor of the garage. The doors opened. Yellowish lights. Gray concrete walls. Gleaming cars parked in narrow spaces. But no men with guns.
“Come on!” Charlie said.
They ran because they knew the men on the bottom floor of the garage must be coming up quickly behind them.
39
They ran to Hilgarde Avenue, then beyond it, away from UCLA and the commercial area of Westwood, into an expensive and quiet residential neighborhood. Charlie welcomed each convocation of shadows, but dreaded the pools of light surrounding every streetlamp, because here they were the only people on the sidewalks and easily spotted. They turned several times, seeking concealment in the upper-class warren of lushly landscaped streets. Gradually he began to think they had lost their pursuers, though he knew he wouldn’t feel entirely safe for a long time to come.
Although the rain had subsided to little more than a light mist, and although they were all wearing raincoats, they were wet and cold again by the time Charlie began looking for transportation. Automobiles were parked along the street, and he moved down the block, under the dripping coral trees and palms, stealthily trying doors, hoping no one was watching from any of the houses. The first three cars were locked up tight, but the driver’s door on the fourth, a two-year-old yellow Cadillac, opened when he tried it.
He motioned Christine and Joey into the car. “Hurry.”
She said, “Are the keys in it?”
“No.”
“Are you stealing it or what?”
“Yes. Get in.”
“I don’t want you breaking the law and winding up in prison because of me and—”
“Get in!” he said urgently.
The velour-covered bench seat in front accommodated the three of them, so Christine put Joey in the middle, apparently afraid to let him get even as far away as the rear seat. The dog got in back, shaking the rain off his coat and spraying everyone in the process.
The glove compartment contained a small, detachable flashlight that came with the car and that was kept, except when needed, in a specially designed niche where its batteries were constantly recharged. Charlie used it to look under the dashboard, below the steering wheel, where he located the ignition wires. He hot-wired the Cadillac, and the engine turned over without hesitation.
No more than two minutes after he had opened the car door, they pulled away from the curb. For the first block, he drove without headlights. Then, confident they had gotten away unnoticed, he snapped on the lights and headed up toward Sunset Boulevard.
Christine said, “What if the cops stop us?”
“They won’t. The owner probably won’t report it stolen until morning. And even if he discovers it’s gone ten minutes from now, it won’t make the police hot sheets for a while.”
“But they might stop us for speeding—”
“I don’t intend to speed.”
“—or some other traffic violation—”
“What do you think I am—a stunt driver?”
“Are you?” Joey asked.
“Oh, sure, better than Evel Knievel,” Charlie said.
“Who?” the boy asked.
“God, I’m getting old,” Charlie said.
“Are we gonna get in a car chase like on TV?” Joey asked.
“I hope not,” Charlie said.
“Oh, I’d like that,” the boy said.
Charlie checked the rearview mirror. There were two cars behind him. He couldn’t tell what make they were or anything about them. They were just pairs of headlights in the darkness.
Christine said, “But sooner or later, the car will end up on the hot sheets—”
“We’ll have parked it somewhere and taken another car by then,” Charlie said.
“Steal another one?”
“I’m sure not going to Hertz or Avis,” he said. “A rental car can be traced. They might find us that way.”
Jesus, listen to me, he thought. Pretty soon I’m going to be like Ray Milland in Lost Weekend, imagining a threat in every corner, seeing giant bugs crawling out of the walls.
He turned left at the next corner.
So did both of the cars behind him.
“How did they find us?” Christine asked.
“Must’ve planted a transmitter on my Mercedes.”
“When would they’ve done that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe when I was at their church this morning.”
“But you said you left a man in your car while you went in there, someone who could call for help if you didn’t come back out when you were supposed to.”
“Yeah. Carter Rilbeck.”
“So he’d have seen them trying to plant a transmitter.”
“Unless, of course, he’s one of them,” Charlie said.
“Do you think he could be?”
“Probably not. But maybe they planted the bug before that. As soon as they knew you’d hired me.”
At Hilgarde, he turned right.
So did both of the cars behind him.
To Christine, he said, “Or maybe Henry Rankin is a Twilighter, and when I called him from the restaurant awhile ago, maybe he got a trace on the line and found out where I was.”
“You said he’s like a brother.”
“He is. But Cain was like a brother to Abel, huh?”
He turned left on Sunset Boulevard, with UCLA on the left now and Bel Air on the hills to the right.
Only one of the cars followed him.
She said, “You sound as if you’ve become as paranoid as I am.”
“Grace Spivey gives me no choice.”
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Farther away.”
“Where?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“We spent all that time buying clothes and things, and now a lot of it’s gone,” she said.
“We can outfit ourselves again tomorrow.”
“I can’t go home; I can’t go to work; I can’t take shelter with any of my friends—”
“I’m your friend,” Charlie said.
“We don’t even have a car now,” she said.
“Sure we do.”
“A stolen car.”
“It’s got four wheels,” he said. “It runs. That’s good enough.”
“I feel like we’re the cowboys in one of those old movies where the Indians trap them in a box canyon and keep pushing them farther and farther toward the wall.”
“Remember who always won in those movies,” Charlie said.
“The cowboys,” Joey said.
“Exactly.”
He had to stop for a red traffic light because, as luck would have it, a police cruiser was stopped on the other side of the intersection. He didn’t like sitting there, vulnerable. He used the rearview mirror and the side mirror to keep a watch on the car that had followed them, afraid that someone would get out of it while they were immobilized here—someone with a shotgun.
In a weary voice that dismayed Charlie, Christine said, “I wish I had your confidence.”
So do I, he thought wryly.
The light changed. He crossed the intersection. Behind him, the unknown car fell back a bit.
He said, “Everything’ll seem better in the morning.”
“And where will we be in the morning?” she asked.
They had come to an intersection where Wilshire Boulevard lay in front of them. He turned right, toward the freeway entrance, and said, “How about Santa Barbara?”
“Are you serious?”
“It’s not that far. A couple hours. We could be there by nine-thirty, get a hotel room.”
The unknown car had turned right at Wilshire, too, and was still on his tail.
“L.A.’s a big city,” she said. “Don’t you think we’d be just as safe hiding out here?”
“We probably would,” he said. “But I wouldn’t feel as safe, and I’ve got to settle us down somewhere that feels right to me, so I can relax and think about the case from a calmer perspective. I can’t function well in a constant panic. They won’t expect us to go as far away from my operations as Santa Barbara. They’ll expect me to hang around, at least as close as L.A., so I know we’ll be safe up there.”
He drove onto the entrance ramp of the San Diego Freeway, heading north. Checked the rearview mirror. Didn’t see the other car yet. Realized he was holding his breath.
She protested. “You didn’t bargain for this much trouble, this much inconvenience.”
“Sure I did,” he said. “I thrive on it.”
“Of course you do.”
“Ask Joey. He knows all about us private detectives. He knows we just love danger.”
“They do, Mom,” the boy said. “They love danger.”
Charlie looked at the rearview mirror again. No other car had come onto the freeway behind him. They weren’t being followed.
They drove north into the night, and after a while the rain began to fall heavily again, and there was fog. At times, because of the mist and rain that obscured the landscape and the road ahead, it seemed as if they weren’t driving through the real world at all but through some haunted and insubstantial realm of spirits and dreams.
40
Kyle Barlowe’s Santa Ana apartment was furnished to suit his dimensions. There were roomy La-Z-Boy recliners, a big sectional sofa with a deep seat, sturdy end tables, and a solidly built coffee table on which a man could prop his feet without fear of the thing collapsing. He had searched a long time, in countless used furniture stores, before he’d found the round table in the dining alcove; it was plain and somewhat battered, maybe not too attractive, but it was a little higher than most dining tables and gave him the kind of leg room he required. In the bathroom stood a very old, very large claw-foot tub, and in the bedroom he had one big dresser that he’d picked up for forty-six bucks and a king-size bed with an extra-long custom mattress that accommodated him, though with not an inch to spare. This was the one place in the world in which he could be truly comfortable.
But not tonight.
He could not be comfortable when the Antichrist was still alive. He could not relax, knowing that two assassination attempts had failed within the past twelve hours.
He paced from the small kitchen to the living room, into the bedroom, back to the living room again, pausing to look out windows. Main Street was eerily lit by sickly yellow streetlamps, as well as by red and blue and pink and purple neon, all bleeding together, disguising the true colors of every object, giving the shadows fuzzy electric edges. Passing cars spewed up phosphorescent plumes of water that splashed back to the pavement, like rhinestone sequins. The falling rain looked silvery and molten, though the night was far from hot.
He tried watching television. Couldn’t get interested in it.
He couldn’t keep still. He sat down, got up right away, sat in another chair, got up, went into the bedroom, stretched out on the bed, heard an odd noise at the window, got up to investigate, realized it was only rainwater falling through the downspout, returned to bed, decided he didn’t want to lie down, returned to the living room.
The Antichrist was still alive.
But that wasn’t the only thing that was making him nervous. He tried to believe nothing else was bothering him, tried to pretend he was only worried about the Scavello boy, but finally he had to admit to himself that another thing was chewing at him.
The old need. Such a fierce need. The NEED. He wanted—
No!
It didn’t matter what he wanted. He couldn’t have it. He couldn’t surrender to the NEED. He didn’t dare.
He dropped to his knees in the middle of the living room and prayed to God to help him resist the weakness in him. He prayed hard, prayed with all his might, with all his attention and devotion, prayed with such teeth-grinding intensity that he began to sweat.
He still felt the old, despicable terrifying urge to mangle someone, to pummel and twist and claw, to hurt somebody, to kill.
In desperation, he got up and went into the kitchen, to the sink, and turned on the cold water. He put the stopper in the drain. He got ice cubes from the refrigerator and added them to the growing pool. When the sink was almost full, he turned the spigot off and lowered his head into the freezing water, forced himself to stay there, holding his breath, face submerged, skin stinging, until he finally had to come up, gasping for air. He was shivering, and his teeth were chattering, but he still felt the violence building in him, so he put his head under again, waiting until his lungs were bursting, came up sputtering and spitting, and now he was frigid, quaking uncontrollably, but still the urge to do violence swelled unchecked.
Satan was here now. Must be. Satan was here and dredging up the old feelings, pushing Kyle’s face in them, tempting him, trying to get him to toss away his last chance at salvation.
I won’t!
He stormed through the apartment, trying to detect exactly where Satan was. He looked in closets, opened cabinets, pulled aside the draperies to check behind them. He didn’t actually expect to see Satan, but he was sure he would at least sense the devil’s presence somewhere, invisible though the demon might be. But there was nothing to be found. Which only meant the devil was clever at concealing himself.
When he finally gave up searching for Satan, he was in the bathroom, and he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror: eyes wild, nostrils dilated, jaw muscles popping, lips bloodless and skinned back over his crooked yellow teeth. He thought of the Phantom of the Opera. He thought of Frankenstein’s monster and a hundred other tortured, unhuman faces from a hundred other films he had seen on Chiller Theater.
The world hated
him, and he hated the world, all of them, the ones who laughed, who pointed, the women who found him repulsive, all the—
No. God. Please. Don’t let me think about these things. Get my mind off this subject. Help me. Please.
He couldn’t look away from his Boris Karloff-Lon Chaney-Rondo Hatten face, which filled the age-spotted mirror.
He never missed those old horror movies when they were on TV. Many nights he sat alone in front of his black-and-white set, riveted by the ghastly images, and when each picture ended, he went into the bathroom, to this very mirror, and looked at himself and told himself that he wasn’t that ugly, wasn’t that frightening, not as bad as the creatures that crept out of primeval swamps or came from beyond the stars or escaped from mad scientists’ laboratories. By comparison, he was almost ordinary. At worst, pathetic. But he could never believe himself. The mirror didn’t lie. The mirror showed him a face made for nightmares.
He smiled at himself in the mirror, tried to look amiable. The result was awful. The smile was a leer.
No woman would ever have him unless he paid, and even some whores turned him down. Bitches. All of them. Rotten, stinking, heartless bitches. He wanted to make one of them hurt. He wanted to bring his pain to one of them, hammer his pain into some woman and leave it in her, so that for a short while, at least, there would be no pain in him.
No. That was bad thinking. Evil thinking.
Remember Mother Grace.
Remember the Twilight and salvation and life everlasting.
But he wanted. He needed.
He found himself at the door of his apartment without being able to recall how he’d gotten there. He had the door half open. He was on his way out to find a prostitute. Or someone to beat up. Or both.
No!
He slammed the door, locked it, put his back to it, and looked frantically around his living room.
He had to act quickly to save himself.
He was losing his battle against temptation. He was whimpering now, shuddering and mewling. He knew that in a second or two he would open the door again, and this time he would leave, go hunting . . .
In panic, he rushed to a small bookshelf, pulled out one of the inspirational volumes from his collection of a hundred such titles, tore out a fistful of pages and threw them onto the floor, tore out more pages, and more, until only the covers of the book remained, and then he ripped those apart, too. It felt good to mutilate something. He was gasping and shuddering like a horse in distress, and he seized another book, tore it to pieces, pitched the fragments behind him, grabbed another book, demolished it, then another, another . . .