Koontz, Dean R. - Hideaway

by Hideaway(Lit)

that it made her darkly radiant, she would be an incomparable vision as

  she walked to her destiny among Vassago's collection and accepted the

  killing blow, a willing sacrifice for his repatriation to Hell.

  He knew, however, that she would not accede to his fantasy and die for

  him even if death was what she wanted. She would die only for herself,

  when she eventually concluded that termination was her deepest desire.

  The moment she began to realize what he really wanted from her, she

  would lash out at him. She would be harder to control-and would do more

  damage-than Neon. He preferred to take each new acquisition to his

  museum of death while she was still alive, extracting the life from her

  beneath the malevolent gaze of the funhouse Lucifer. But he knew that

  he did not have that luxury with Lisa. She would not be easy to subdue,

  even with a sudden unexpected blow. And once he had lost the advantage

  of surprise, she would be a fierce adversary.

  He was not concerned about being hurt. Nothing, including the prospect

  of pain, could frighten him. Indeed, each blow she landed, each cut she

  opened in him, would be an exquisite thrill, pure pleasure.

  The problem was, she might be strong enough to get away from him, and he

  could not risk her escape. He wasn't worried that she would report him

  to the cops. She existed in a subculture that was suspicious and

  scornful of the police, seething with hatred for them. If she slipped

  out of his grasp, however, he would lose the chance to add her to his

  collection.

  And he was convinced that her tremendous perverse energy would be the

  final offering that would win him readmission to Hell.

  "You feeling anything yet?" she asked, still looking ahead at the fog,

  into which they barreled at a dangerous speed.

  "k little," he said.

  "I don't feel anything." She opened her purse again and began rummaging

  through it, taking stock of what other pills and capsules she possessed.

  "We need some kind of booster to help the crap kick in good."

  While Lisa was distracted by her search for the right chemical to

  enhance the PCP, Vassago drove with his left hand and reached under his

  seat with his right to get the revolver that he had taken off Morton

  Redlow. She looked up just as he thrust the muzzle against her left

  side.

  If she knew what was happening, she showed no surprise. He fired two

  shots, killing her instantly.

  Hatch cleaned up the spilled Pepsi with paper towels. By the time he

  stepped to the kitchen sink to wash his hands, he was still shaking but

  not as badly as he had been.

  Terror, which had been briefly allonsuming, made some room for

  curiosity. He hesitantly touched the rim of the stainless-steel sink

  and then the faucet, as if they might dissolve beneath his hand. He

  struggled to understand how a dream could continue after he had

  awakened. The only explanation, which he could not accept, was

  insanity.

  He turned on the water, adjusted hot and cold, pumped some liquid soap

  out of the container, began to lather his hands, and looked up at the

  window above the sink, which faced onto the rear yard. The yard was

  gone. A highway lay in its place. The kitchen window had become a

  windshield. Swaddled in fog and only partially revealed by two

  headlight beams, the pavement rolled toward him as if the house was

  racing over it at sixty miles an hour. He sensed a presence beside him

  where there should have been nothing but the double ovens. When he

  turned his head he saw the blonde clawing in her purse. He realized

  that something was in his hand, firmer than mere lather, and he looked

  down at a revolver-the kitchen snapped completely out of existence. He

  was in a car, rocketing along a foggy highway, pushing the muzzle of the

  revolver into the blonde's side. With horror, as she looked up at him,

  he felt his finger squeeze the trigger once, twice. She was punched

  sideways by the dual impact as the ear-shattering crash of the shots

  slammed through the car.

  Vassago could not have anticipated what happened next.

  The gun must have been loaded with magnum cartridges, for the two shots

  ripped through the blonde more violently than he expected and slammed

  her into the passenger door. Either her door was not properly shut or

  one of the rounds punched all the way through her, damaging the latch,

  because the door flew open. Wind rushed into the Pontiac, shrieking

  like a living beast, and Lisa was snatched out into the night.

  He jammed on the brakes and looked at the rearview mirror. As the car

  began to fishtail, he saw the blonde's body tumbling along the pavement

  behind him.

  He intended to stop, throw the car into reverse, and go back for her,

  but even at that dead hour of the morning, other traffic shared the

  freeway. He saw two sets of headlights maybe half a mile behind him,

  bright smudges in the mist but clarifying by the second. Those drivers

  would encounter the body before he could reach it and scoop it into the

  Pontiac.

  Taking his foot off the brake and accelerating, he swung the car hard to

  the left, across two lanes, then whipped it back to the right, forcing

  the door to slam shut. It rattled in its frame but didn't pop open

  again. The latch must be at least partially effective.

  Although visibility had declined to about a hundred feet, he put the

  Pontiac up to eighty, bulleting blindly into the churning fog. Two

  exits later, he left the freeway and rapidly slowed down. On surface

  streets he made his way out of the area as swiftly as possible, obeying

  speed limits because any cop who stopped him would surely notice the

  blood splashed across the upholstery and glass of the passenger door.

  In the rearview mirror, Hatch saw the body tumbling along the pavement,

  vanishing into the fog. Then for a brief moment he saw his own

  reflection from the bridge of his nose to his eyebrows. He was wearing

  sunglasses even though driving at night. No. He wasn't wearing them.

  The driver of the car was wearing them, and the reflection at which he

  stared was not his own. Although he seemed to be the driver, he

  realized that he was not, because even the dim glimpse he got of the

  eyes behind the tinted lenses was sufficient to convince him that they

  were peculiar, troubled, and utterly different from his own eyes.

  Then-he was standing at the kitchen sink again, breathing hard and

  making choking sounds of revulsion. Beyond the window lay only the

  backyard, blanketed by night and fog.

  "Hatch?"

  Startled, he turned.

  Lindsey was standing in the doorway, in her bathrobe. "Is something

  wrong?"

  Wiping his soapy hands on his sweatshirt, he tried to speak, but terror

  had rendered him mute.

  She hurried to him. "Hatch?"

  He held her tightly and was glad for her embrace, which at last squeezed

  the words from him.

  "I shot her, she flew out of the car, Jesus God Almighty, bounced along

  the highway like a rag doll!"

  At Hatch's request, Lindsey brewed a pot of coffee. The
familiarity of

  the delicious aroma was an antidote to the strangeness of the night.

  More than anything else, that smell restored a sense of normalcy that

  helped settle Hatch's nerves. They drank the coffee at the breakfast

  table at one end of the kitchen.

  Hatch insisted on closing the Levolor blind over the nearby window. He

  said, "I have the feeling... something's out there ... and I don't

  want it looking in at us." He could not explain what he meant by

  "something."

  When Hatch had recounted everything that had happened to him since

  waking from the nightmare of the icy blonde, the switchblade, and the

  mutilated eye, Lindsey had only one explanation to offer. "No matter

  how it seemed at the time, you must not have been fully awake when you

  got out of bed. You were sleepwalking. You didn't really wake up until

  I stepped into the kitchen and called your name."

  "I've never been a sleepwalker," he said.

  She tried to make light of his objection. "Never too late to take up a

  new affliction."

  "I don't buy it."

  "Then what's your explanation?"

  "I don't have one."

  "So sleepwalking," she said.

  He stared down into the white porcelain cup that he clasped in both

  hands, as if he were a Gypsy trying to foresee the future in the

  patterns of light on the surface of the black brew. "Have you ever

  dreamed you were someone else?"

  "I suppose so," she said.

  He looked hard at her. "No supposing. Have you ever seen a dream

  through the eyes of a stranger? A sic dream you can tell me about?"

  "Well... no. But I'm sure I must've, at one time. I just don't

  remember.

  dreams are smoke, after all. They fade so fast. Who remembers them for

  long?"

  "I'll remember this one for the rest of my life," he said.

  Although they returned to bed, neither of them could get to sleep again.

  Maybe it was partly the coffee. She thought he had wanted the coffee

  precisely because he hoped that it would prevent sleep, sparing him a

  return to the nightmare. Well, it had worked.

  They both were lying on their backs, staring at the ceiling.

  At first he had been unwilling to turn off the bedside lamp, though he

  had revealed his reluctance only in the hesitancy with which he clicked

  the switch. He was almost like a child who was old enough to know real

  fears from false ones but not quite old enough to escape all of the

  latter, certain that some monster lurked under the bed but ashamed to

  say as much.

  Now, with the lamp off and with only the indirect glow of distant

  streetlamps piercing the windows between the halves of the drapes, his

  anxiety had infected her. She found it easy to imagine that some

  shadows on the ceiling moved, bat-lizard-spider forms of singular

  stealth and malevolent purpose.

  They talked soflly, on and on about nothing special. They both knew

  what they wanted to talk about, but they were afraid of it. Unlike the

  creepy lesson the ceiling and things that lived under kid's beds, it was

  a real fear. Brain damage.

  Since waking up in the hospital, after being sedated, Hatch had been

  having bad dreams of unnerving power. He didn't have them every night.

  His sleep might even be undisturbed for as long as three or four nights

  in a row. But he was having them more frequently, week by week, and the

  intensity was increasing.

  They were not always the same, as he remembered them, but they contained

  similar elements. Violence. Horrific images of naked, rotting bodies

  contorted into positions. Always, the unfolded from the point of view

  of a stranger, the same mysterious figure, as if Hatch were a spirit in

  possession of the man but unable to control him, along for the ride.

  Routinely the nightmares began or end-or began and ended-in the same

  setting: an assemblage of unusual bags and other queer structures that

  resisted identification, all of it unlighted and seen most often as a

  series of backing silhouettes against a night sky. He also saw

  cavernous rooms and mazes of concrete corridors that were somehow

  revealed in spite of having no windows or artificial lighting. The

  location was, he said, familiar to him, but recognition remained

  elusive, for he never saw enough to be able to identify it.

  Until tonight, they had tried to convince themselves that his affliction

  would be short-lived. Hatch was full of positive thoughts, as usual.

  Bad dreams were not remarkable. Everyone had them. They were often

  caused by stress. Alleviate the stress, and the nightmares went away.

  But they were not fading. And now they had taken a new and deeply

  disturbing turn: sleepwalking.

  Or perhaps he was beginning, while awake, to hallucinate the same images

  that troubled his sleep.

  Shortly before dawn, Hatch reached out for her beneath the sheets and

  took her hand, held it tight. "I'll be all right. It's nothing,

  really. Just a "First thing in the morning, you should call Nyebern,"

  she said, her heart sinking like a stone in a pond. "We haven't been

  straight with him.

  He told you to let him know immediately if there were any symptoms-"

  "This isn't really a symptom," he said, trying to put the best face on

  it.

  "Physical or mental symptoms," she said, afraid for him-and for herself

  if something was wrong with him.

  "I had all the tests, most of them twice. They gave me a clean bill of

  health. No brain damage."

  "Then you've nothing to worry about, do you? No reason to delay seeing

  Nyebern."

  "If there'd been brain damage, it would've showed up right away. It's

  not a residual thing, doesn't kick in on a delay."

  They were silent for a while.

  She could no longer imagine that creepy-crawlies moved through the

  shadows on the ceiling. False fears had evaporated the moment he had

  spoken the name of the biggest real fear that they faced.

  At last she said, "What about Regina?"

  He considered her question for a while. Then: "I think we should go

  ahead with it, fill out the papers assuming she wants to come with us,

  of course."

  "And if... you've got a problem? And it gets worse?"

  "It'll take a few days to make the arrangements and be able to bring her

  home. By then we'll have the results of the physical, the tests.

  I'm sure I'll be fine."

  "You're too relaxed about this."

  "Stress kills."

  "If Nyebern finds something seriously wrong...?"

  "Then we'll ask the orphanage for a postponement if we have to. The

  thing is if we tell them I'm having problems that don't allow me to go

  ahead with the papers tomotrow, they might have second thoughts about

  our suitability. We might be rejected and never have a chance with

  Regina."

  The day had been so perfect, from their meeting in Salvatore Gujilio's

  office to their lovemaking before the dinner and again in the massive

  old Chinese sleigh bed. The future had looked so bright, the worst

  behind them. She was stunned at how suddenly they had taken another

  n
asty plunge.

  She said' "God' Hatch, I love you." In the darkness he moved close to

  her and took her in his arms. Until long after dawn, they just held

  each other, saying nothing because, for the moment, everything had been

  said.

  Later, after they showered and dressed, they went downstairs and had

  more coffee at the breakfast table. Mornings, they always listened to

  the radio, an all-news station. That was how they heard about Lisa

  Blaine, the blonde who had been shot twice and thrown from a moving car

  on the San me to Freeway the previous night-at precisely the time that

  Hatch, standing in the kitchen, had a vision of the trigger being pulled

  and the body tumbling along the pavement in the wake of the car.

  8

  For reasons he could not understand, Hatch was compelled to see the

  section of the freeway where the dead woman had been found. "Maybe

  something will click," was all the explanation he could offer.

  He drove their new red Mitsubishi. They went north on the coast

  highway, then east on a series of surface streets to the South Coast

  Plaza Shopping Mall, where they entered the San Diego Freeway heading

  south.

  He wanted to come upon the site of the murder from the same direction in

  which the killer had been traveling the previous night. By nine-n,