Dean Koontz - Strange Highways

by Steven Leonard

  Drying his face on a filthy hand towel, Ollie realized that he was a sorry sight. He bathed, shaved, and dressed in clean clothes. He still looked like a vagrant, but a vagrant by choice rather than chance. A disillusioned artist, perhaps. Or, as in certain old movies, a rich man escaping from the boring responsibilities of wealth and position.

  He was surprised by this fanciful turn of thought. He considered himself a man of routine and restricted vision.

  Unsettled, he turned from his reflection in the bathroom mirror and went into the main room to check on the girl. Sleeping, she was serene, pure. He would let her sleep a while yet.

  Three hours later, after cleaning the two small rooms, Ollie changed her sheets while she slept. Even while admitting the impossibility of the notion, he toyed with the prospect of keeping her asleep and tending to her for years, as if he were a nurse and she were his comatose patient. He would be happy doing that - perhaps happier than he had ever been in his life to date.

  But now he was hungry, and he knew that she would be hungry, too, when she woke. He left the apartment, locking the door behind him. Two blocks away, at a small grocery, he bought more food in one order than he had ever done before.

  "Thirty-eight dollars, twelve cents," the cashier said. He did not conceal his disdain. Clearly, he felt that Ollie could not pay.

  Ollie raised a hand, touched his forehead, and stared hard at the cashier.

  The cashier blinked, smiled tentatively, and folded his hand over empty air. "Out of forty dollars," he said. He carefully placed the nonexistent currency in the cash register, handed Ollie the proper change, and bagged the food.

  On his way home, Ollie was uneasy, because he had never before used his power to cheat anyone. If the girl hadn't come along, he would have finished his previous night's work at the garbage bins, perhaps completing another set of flatware, and would have gone on to other tasks like sensing out dropped coins in subway stations, earning a buck here and there. Therefore, the responsibility for this deceit was not entirely his. Nevertheless, dark portents of judgmental disaster plagued him.

  At home he prepared dinner-stew, salad, fresh fruit - and woke Annie. She regarded him strangely as he pointed at the laden table. He sensed her blooming terror, a red flower. He swept his hand to take in the cleaned and ordered room, and he smiled encouragingly.

  The girl sat up, propelled into her nightmare again - the cruel nightmare of being alive - and she shrieked in misery.

  Ollie raised his hands imploringly, tried to speak, couldn't.

  Blood rushed to her face as she sucked a deeper breath and tried to pull herself out of the bed.

  He was forced to lay hands on her and put her to sleep again.

  Tucking her in, he knew that he had been naive to imagine that she would be a different girl, with fewer fears and more composure, simply because he had bathed himself, shaved, cleaned the apartment, and cooked dinner. She would be different only if he helped her, which would take time, hard work - and sacrifice.

  He threw the food away. He was no longer hungry.

  Throughout the long night, he sat by the bed, elbows propped on his knees, his head held between his hands. The tips of his fingers seemed to merge with his temples while his palms lay against his cheeks. He sensed into her, sensed her despair, her hope, her dreams, her ambition, her limitations, her joys, her hard-won knowledge, her persistent misconceptions, and her moments of intellectual surety. He dwelt in the center of her soul - which was, by turns, beautifully in bloom and withered.

  In the morning he used the bathroom, drank two glasses of water, and helped her to drink even while keeping her more than half asleep. Then he settled into the chiaroscuro world of her mind and remained there, except for brief rest periods, all through that day and night, diligently searching, learning, and making cautious adjustments to her psyche.

  He never wondered why he made this expenditure of time, energy, and emotion, perhaps because he didn't dare risk the realization that his ultimate motive was loneliness. He merged with her, touched her, changed her, and gave no consideration to the consequences. By dawn of the next day, he was done.

  Once more he partially awakened her and made her drink to keep from dehydrating; then he put her into deep sleep and lay beside her on the bed. He took her hand in his. Exhausted, he slept, dreaming that he floated in a vast ocean, a mere speck, about to be consumed by something prehistoric swimming in the gloom below him. Curiously, the dream did not frighten him. He had expected to be swallowed up by one thing or another all his troubled life.

  Twelve hours later, Ollie woke, showered, shaved, dressed, and prepared another dinner. When he woke the girl, she sat straight up again, bewildered. But she did not scream. She said, "Where am I?"

  Ollie worked his dry lips, instantly unsure of himself again, but finally he managed to sweep his hand around to indicate the room that by now must be at least somewhat familiar to her.

  She appeared curious, ill at ease, but no longer possessed by that crippling fear of life itself. He had cured her of that.

  She said, "Yeah, you've got a cozy place. But - how'd I get here?"

  He licked his lips, searched for words, found none, pointed at himself, and smiled.

  "Can't you speak?" she asked. "Are you mute?"

  He thought a moment, opted for the out that she had offered, and nodded.

  "I'm sorry," she said. She examined her bruised arm, staring at the hundreds of needle marks, doubtlessly remembering the overdose that she had carefully prepared and booted into her bloodstream.

  Ollie cleared his throat and pointed to the table.

  She instructed him to turn his back. She got out of the bed, stripped off the top sheet, and twisted it about herself as though it were a toga. As she sat at the table, she grinned at him. "I'm starving."

  Such a waif. She charmed him.

  He grinned back at her. What could have been the worst moment had passed without much strain. He put the food on the table and made a disparaging gesture to indicate his lack of culinary finesse.

  "Everything looks delicious," she assured him. She reached for the main serving dish and began to heap food onto her plate. She did not speak again until she had finished eating.

  She tried to help with the dishes, although she soon tired and had to retreat to the bed. When he had finished and sat in the straight-backed chair beside her, she said, "What do you do?"

  He shrugged.

  "For a living, I mean."

  He thought of his hands, wondered how he possibly could have told her about them even if he had been able to talk. He shrugged as if to say, Nothing much.

  She looked around the shabby room. "Panhandling" When he did not respond, she decided that she'd hit on it. "How long can I stay here?"

  By gesture, expression, and pantomime, Ollie made her understand that she could stay as long as she liked.

  When this was clear, she studied him a long moment and finally said, "Could we have less light?"

  He got up and switched off two of the three lamps. When he turned to her again, she was lying nude on top of the covers, her legs slightly spread to receive him.

  "Look," she said, "I figure you didn't bring me here and nurse me back to health for nothing. You know? You expect a ... reward. And you have a right to expect one."

  Confused, frustrated, he got clean sheets from a stack in the corner and, ignoring her offer, proceeded to change the bed under her without once touching her. She stared at him in disbelief, and when he was done, she said that she didn't want to sleep. He insisted. He touched her and put her out for the night.

  In the morning, she ate breakfast with the greedy efficiency that she had shown at dinner the night before, wasting nothing, then asked if she could take a bath. He washed dishes while her sweet voice came through the bathroom door, singing a lovely melodic song that he had never heard before.

  She came out of her bath with clean hair as dark as burnt honey, stood nude at the foot of the bed, and bec
koned to him. Already she seemed sleeker, healthier than when he had found her, though she was still leaner than she needed to be.

  She said, "I was so stupid last night. My hair was a dirty mess and my body odor would've turned off a bull. Now I'm soapy-smelling."

  Ollie turned away from her and stared at the few dishes that he still had to dry.

  "What's the matter?" she asked.

  He had no reply.

  "You don't want me?"

  He shook his head - No.

  She drew a sudden deep breath.

  Something struck him painfully on the hip. Turning, he saw that the girl was wielding a heavy glass ashtray. Drawing her lips back from her teeth, she hissed at him as though she were an angry cat. She pounded his shoulders with the ashtray, struck him repeatedly with one tiny balled fist, kicked, and screeched. Then she lost her grip on the ashtray and sagged against him, exhausted, crying.

  He put his arm around her to comfort her, but she had enough energy to twist violently away. She turned, tried to reach the bed, stumbled, fell, and passed out.

  He lifted her and put her to bed.

  He pulled the covers around her, tucked her in, and sat down in his chair to wait for her to regain consciousness.

  When she awakened half an hour later, she was trembling and dizzy. He soothed her, smoothing her hair away from her face, wiping her teary eyes, placing cold compresses on her brow.

  In time, when she could speak, she asked, "Are you impotent or something?"

  He shook his head.

  "Then why? I wanted to repay you. That's how I repay men. I don't have anything else to give."

  He touched her. Held her. With his expression and with his clumsy pantomime he tried to make her understand that she had a great deal to give. She was giving just by being here. Just by being here.

  That afternoon, he went out to buy her pajamas, street clothes, and a newspaper. She was amused by his chaste choice of pajamas: full-sleeved, long-legged flannels. She put them on, then read the newspaper to him - comics and human-interest stories. She seemed to think that he couldn't read, and he was willing to play along with the misconception, since his illiteracy tended to reinforce his cover: Winos didn't collect books.

  Besides, he liked to listen to her read. Her voice was sweet.

  The following morning, Annie dressed in her new blue jeans and sweater to accompany Ollie to the corner grocery store, although he tried to dissuade her. At the register, when he handed a nonexistent twenty-dollar bill to the cashier and collected change, he thought that Annie was looking elsewhere.

  Outside, however, as they walked home, she said, "How'd you do that?"

  He feigned perplexity. Do what?

  "Don't try to fool Annie," she said. "I almost croaked when he grabbed a handful of air and gave change."

  He said nothing.

  "Hypnotism?" she pressed.

  Relieved, he nodded - Yes.

  "You'll have to teach me."

  He didn't reply.

  But she was not going to be put off. "You have to teach me how you conned that guy. With that little trick I wouldn't need to hustle my body any more, you know? Christ, he smiled at that handful of air! How? How? Teach me! You've got to!"

  Finally, at home, unable to tolerate her persistent pleading any longer, afraid that he would be foolish enough to tell her about his hands, Ollie shoved her away from him. The back of her knees caught the bed, and she sat down hard, surprised by his sudden anger.

  She said no more, and their relationship returned to an easier pitch. But everything had changed.

  Since she couldn't nag him about learning the con game, she had time to think. Late in the evening, she said, "I had my last fix days ago, but I don't feel any need for drugs. I haven't been this long without the crap in at least five years."

  Ollie held his guilty hands out to his sides to indicate his own puzzlement.

  "Did you throw away my tools, the skag?"

  He nodded.

  A while later, she said, "The reason I don't need dope ... is it you, something you did? Did you hypnotize me and make me not want it?" When he nodded, she said, "The same way you made the clerk see the twenty-dollar bill?"

  He agreed, using his fingers and eyes to do a comic imitation of a stage hypnotist hamming it up for an audience.

  "Not hypnotism at all," she said, fixing him with her piercing eyes, seeing through his facade as no one had done in years. "ESP?"

  What's that? he asked with gestures.

  "You know," Annie said. "You know."

  She was a more observant girl, a much brighter girl than he had thought.

  She began to nag again, but not about the con game any longer. "Come on! Really, what's it like? How long have you had it, this power, this gift? Don't be ashamed of it! It's wonderful! You should be proud! You have the world on a string!"

  And so on.

  Sometime during the long night - later, Ollie could never recall the precise moment or understand what single telling argument she used to finally break him down - he agreed to show her what he could do. He was nervous, wiping his magical hands on his shirt. He was excited about showing her his abilities, felt like a young boy trying to impress his first date - but he also feared the consequences.

  First he handed her a nonexistent twenty-dollar bill, made her see it, and then made it disappear. Then, with a dramatic wave of his hand, he levitated a coffee cup (empty), a coffee cup (filled), the straight-backed chair, a lamp, the bed (empty), the bed (with Annie in it), and finally himself, floating off the floor as though he were an Indian fakir. The girl whooped and hollered with delight. She persuaded him to give her a ride around the room on a broomstick of air. She hugged him, kissed him, asked for more tricks. He turned on the water in the sink without touching the faucet, divided the stream into two streams that fell on both sides of the drain. He let her throw a cup of water at him and diverted it in a hundred different sprays, keeping himself dry.

  "Hey," she said, more flushed and excited than he had ever seen her, "no one is going to tramp on us again, not ever. No one!" She stood on her toes and hugged him. He was grinning so hard that his jaws ached. She said, "You're fabulous!"

  He knew, with sweet anticipation and awful dread, that one day soon they would be ready to share a bed. Soon. From that moment his life would be changed. She still did not fully understand what his talent meant, what a wall between them his hands might soon become.

  She said, "I still don't understand why you hide your - talent."

  Eager that she understand, he forced himself to confront hideous memories of childhood that he had long suppressed. He tried to tell her, first with words that wouldn't come and then with gestures, why he hid his abilities.

  Somehow she got the gist of it. "They hurt you."

  He nodded. Yes. Very much.

  The talent came upon him without warning when he was twelve, as if it were a secondary sex characteristic accompanying puberty, manifested in modest ways at first, then increasingly strong and demanding. It was the sort of thing a boy knew must be concealed from adults. For months he even hid it from other children, from his friends, confused and frightened by his own hands, in which the power seemed to be focused. Slowly, however, he revealed himself, did tricks for his friends, performed, became their secret from the grown-up world. But it wasn't long until they rejected him - subtly at first, then with increasing vigor until they beat and kicked him, knocked him in the mud, forced him to drink filthy water, all because of his talent. He could have used his power to protect himself from one of them, perhaps from two, but even he could not protect himself from a gang. For a time he hid his powers again, even from himself. But as the years passed, he learned that he could not conceal and deny the talent without causing himself physical and psychological damage. The urge to use the power was a need stronger than the need for food, for sex, for the breath of life itself. To refuse it was to refuse to live; he lost weight, grew nervous and ill. He was forced to use the
power then, but refrained from exhibiting it in front of others. He began to understand that he would always be alone as long as he had the power - not from choice, from necessity. Like athletic agility or a cleverness with words, it could not be successfully hidden in company: It flowered unexpectedly, startling friends. And whenever he was found out, friends were lost, and the consequences were more dangerous than he cared to face. The only sensible life for him was that of a hermit. In the city he naturally gravitated to the life of a vagrant, one of the invisible men of the concrete jungle - unnoticed, friendless, safe.

  "I can understand people being jealous or afraid of you," she said. "Some of them ... but not everyone. I think you're great."

  With gestures, he explained what little he could. Twice he grunted, trying words, without success.

  "You read their minds," she interpreted. "So? I guess everyone has secrets. But to hurt you for it ..." She shook her head sadly. "Well, you don't have to run away from it any longer. Together, we can turn it into a blessing. Us against the world."

  He nodded. But he was deeply sorry to have misled her, for at that moment the mesh occurred. Just like that: Flick! And he knew that this time would be no different from others. When she learned about the mesh, she would panic.

  In the past it had happened only when a relationship had progressed to intimacy. But Annie was special, and this time the mesh occurred even before they made love.

  The next day, Annie spent hours making plans for their future, while he listened. All day he enjoyed planning with her, for he knew that soon there would be no more joy to share, none at all, nothing. The mesh made joy impossible.

  After dinner, as they lay on the bed holding hands, the trouble began just as he had known it would. She was quiet, thinking, and then she said, "Have you been reading my mind today?"

  It was useless to lie. He nodded.

  "Very much?"