Koontz, Dean R. - Hideaway

by Hideaway(Lit)

  and raised a thousand miles apart by utterly different adopted families,

  will still grow up to live similar lives?"

  "Sure, I've heard of that. So?"

  "Even raised apart, with totally different backgrounds, they'll choose

  similar careers, achieve the same income levels, marry women who

  resemble each other, even give their kids the same names. It's uncanny.

  And even if they don't know they're twins, even if each of them was told

  he was an only child when he was adopted, they'll sense each other out

  there, across the miles, even if they don't know who or what they're

  sensing.

  They have a bond that no one can explain, not even geneticists."

  "So how does this apply to you?"

  He hesitated, then picked up his fork. He wanted to eat instead of

  talk.

  Eating was safe. But she wouldn't let him get away with that. His eggs

  were congealing. His tranquzirers. He put the fork down again.

  "Sometimes," he said, "I see through this guy's eyes when I'm sleeping,

  and now sometimes I can even feel him out there when I'm awake, and it's

  like the psychic crap in movies, yeah. But I also feel this ...

  this bond with him that I really can't explain or describe to you, no

  matter how much you prod me about it."

  "You're not saying you think he's your twin or something?"

  "No, not at all. I think he's a lot younger than me, maybe only twenty

  or twenty-one. And no blood relation. But it's that kind of bond, that

  mystical twin crap, as if this guy and I share something, have some

  fundamental quality in common."

  "Like what?"

  "I don't know. I wish I did." He paused. He decided to be entirely

  truthful. "Or maybe I don't."

  Later, after the waitress had cleared away their empty dishes and

  brought them strong black coffee, Hatch said, "There's no way I'm going

  to go to the cops and offer to help them, if that's what you're

  thinking."

  "There is a duty here-"

  "I don't know anything that could help them anyway."

  She blew on her hot coffee. "You know he was driving a Pontiac."

  "I don't even think it was his."

  "Whose then?"

  "Stolen, maybe."

  "That was something else you sensed?"

  "Yeah. But I don't know what he looks like, his name, where he lives,

  anything useful."

  "What if something like that comes to you? What if you see something

  that could help the cops?"

  "Then I'll call it in anonymously."

  "They'll take the information more seriously if you give it to them in

  person."

  He felt violated by the intrusion of this psychotic stranger into his

  life.

  That violation made him angry, and he feared his anger more than he

  feared the stranger, or the supernatural aspect of the situation, or the

  prospect of brain damage. He dreaded being driven by some extremity to

  discover that his father's hot temper was within him, too, waiting to be

  tapped.

  "It's a homicide case," he said. "They take every tip seriously in a

  murder investigation, even if it's anonymous. I'm not going to let them

  make headlines out of me again."

  From the restaurant they went across town to Harrison's Antiques, where

  Lindsey had an art studio on part of the top floor in addition to the

  one at home. When she painted, a regular change of environment

  contributed to fresher work.

  In the car, with the sun-spangled ocean visible between some of the

  buildings to their right, Lindsey pressed the point that she had nagged

  him about over breakfast, because she knew that Hatch's only serious

  character flaw was a tendency to be too easy-going. Jimmy's death was

  the only bad thing in his life that he had never been able to

  rationalize, , and put out of mind. And even with that, he had tried to

  suppress it rather than face up to his grief, which is why his grief had

  a chance to grow.

  Given time, and not much of it, he'd begin to downplay the importance of

  what had just happened to him.

  She said, "You've still got to see Nyebern."

  "I suppose so."

  "Definitely."

  "If there's brain damage, if that's where this psychic stuff comes from,

  you said yourself it was benevolent brain damage."

  "But maybe it's degenerative, maybe it'll get worse."

  "I really don't think so," he said. "I feel fine otherwise."

  "You're no doctor."

  "All right," he said. He braked for the traffic light at the crossing

  to the public beach in the heart of town. "I'll call him. But we have

  to see Gujilio later this afternoon."

  "You can still squeeze in Nyebern if he has time for you."

  Hatch's father had been a tyrant, quick-tempered, shatongued, with a

  penchant for subduing his wife and disciplining his son by the

  application of regular doses of verbal abuse in the form of nasty

  mockery, cutting sarcasm, or just plain threats. Anything at all could

  set Hatch's father off, or nothing at all, because secretly he cherished

  irritation and actively sought new sources of it. He was a man who

  believed he was not destined to be happy-and he insured that his destiny

  was fulfilled by making himself and everyone around him miserable.

  Perhaps afraid that the potential for a murderously bad temper was

  within him, too, or only because he'd had enough tumult in his life,

  Hatch had consciously striven to make himself as mellow as his father

  was high-strung, as sweetly tolerant as his father was narrow-minded, as

  greathearted as his father was unforgiving, as determined to roll with

  all of life's punches as his father was determined to punch back at even

  imaginary blows. As a result, he was the nicest man Lindsey had ever

  known, the nicest by light-years or by whatever measure niceness was

  calculated: bunches, bucketsful, gobs. Sometimes, however, Hatch turned

  away from an unpleasantness that had to be dealt with, rather than risk

  getting in touch with any negative emotion that was remotely reminiscent

  of his old man's paranoia and anger.

  The light changed from red to green, but three young women in bikinis

  were in the crosswalk, laden with beach gear and heading for the ocean.

  Hatch didn't just wait for them. He watched them with a smile of

  appreciation for the way they filled out their suits.

  "I take it back," Lindsey said.

  "What?"

  "I was just thinking what a nice guy you are, too nice, but obviously

  you're a piece of lecherous scum."

  "Nice scum, though."

  "I'll call Nyebern as soon as we get to the shop," Lindsey said.

  He drove up the hill through the main part of town, past the old Laguna

  Hotel. "Okay. But I'm sure as hell not going to tell him I'm suddenly

  psychic. He's a good man, but he won't be able to sit on that kind of

  news.

  The next thing I know, my face'll be all over the cover of the National

  Inquirer. Besides, I'm not psychic, not exactly. I don't know what the

  hell I am-aside from lecherous scum."

  "So what'll you tell him?"

  "Just enough about the dreams so he'll realize how troubling they are
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  and how strange, so he'll order whatever tests I ought to have. Good

  enough?"

  "I guess it'll have to be."

  In the tomb-deep blackness of his hideaway, curled naked upon the

  stained and lumpy mattress, fast asleep, Vassago saw sunlight, sand, the

  sea, and three bikinied girls beyond the windshield of a red car.

  He was dreaming and knew he dreamed, which was a peculiar sensation.

  He rolled with it.

  He saw, as well, the dark-haired and dark-eyed woman about whom he had

  dreamed yesterday, when she had been behind the wheel of that same car.

  She had appeared in other dreams, once in a wheelchair, when she had

  been laughing and weeping at the same time.

  He found her more interesting than the scantily clad beach bunnies

  because she was unusually vital. Radiant. Through the unknown man

  driving the car, Vassago somehow knew that the woman had once considered

  embracing death, had hesitated on the edge of either active or passive

  selfdestruction, and had rejected an early grave water, he saw a watery

  vault, cold and suffocating, narrowly escape:'...

  where after she had been more full of life, energetic, and vivid than

  ever before. She had cheated death. Denied the devil. Vassago hated

  her for that, because it was in the service of death that he had found

  meaning to his own existence.

  He tried to reach out and touch her through the body of the man driving

  the car. Failed. It was only a dream. Dreams could not be controlled.

  If he could have touched her, he would have made her regret that she had

  turned away from the comparatively painless death by drowning that could

  have been hers.

  When she moved in with the Harrisons, Regina almost thought she had died

  and gone to Heaven, except she had her own bathroom, and she didn't

  believe anyone had his own bathroom up in Heaven because in Heaven no

  one needed a bathroom. They were not all permanently constipated in

  Heaven or anything like that, and they certainly didn't just do their

  business out in public, for God's sake (sorry, God), because no one in

  his right mind would want to go to Heaven if it was the kind of place

  where you had to watch where you steps. It was just that in Heaven all

  the concerns of earthly existence passed away.

  You didn't even have a body in Heaven; you were probably just a sphere

  of mental energy, sort of like a balloon full of golden glowing gas,

  drifting around among the angels, singing the praises of God which was

  pretty weird when you thought about it, all those glowing and singing

  balloons, but the most you'd ever have to do in the way of waste

  elimination was maybe vent a liNe gas now and then, which wouldn't even

  smell bad, probably like the sweet incense in church, or perfume.

  That first day in the Harrisons' house, late Monday afternoon, the

  twenty-ninth of April, she would remember forever, because they were so

  ruce. They didn't even mention the real reason why they gave her a

  choice between a bedroom on the second floor and a den on the first

  floor that could be converted into a bedroom.

  "One thing in its favor," Mr. Harrison said about the den, "is the

  view.

  Better than the view from the upstairs room."

  He led Regina to the big windows that looked out on a rose garden ringed

  by a border of huge ferns. The view war pretty.

  Mrs. Harrison said, "And you'd have all these bookshelves, which you

  might want to fill up gradually with your own collection, since you're a

  book lover."

  Actually, without ever hinting at it, their concern was that she might

  find the stairs troublesome. But she didn't mind stairs so much. In

  fact she liked stairs, she loved stairs, she ate stairs for breakfast.

  In the orphanage, they had put her on the first floor, until she was

  eight years old and realized she'd been given ground-level

  accommodations because of her clunky leg brace and deformed right hand,

  whereupon she immediately demanded to be moved to the third floor. The

  nuns would not hear of it, so she threw a tantrum, but the nuns knew how

  to deal with that, so she tried withering scorn, but the nuns could not

  be withered, so she went on a hunger strike, and finally the nuns

  surrendered to her demand on a trial basis. She'd lived on the third

  floor for more than two years, and she had never used the elevator.

  When she chose the second-floor bedroom in the Harrisons' house, without

  having seen it, neither of them tried to talk her out of it, or wondered

  aloud if she were "up" to it, or even blinked. She loved them for that.

  The house was gorgeouream walls, white woodwork, modern furniture mixed

  with antiques, Chinese bowls and vases, everything just so.

  When they took her on a tour, Regina actually felt as dangerously clumsy

  as she had claimed to be in the meeting in Mr. Gujilio's office. She

  moved with exaggerated care, afraid that she would knock over one

  precious item and kick off a chain reaction that would spread across the

  entire room, then through a doorway into the next room and from there

  throughout the house, one beautiful treasure tipping into the next like

  dominoes in a world championship toppling contest, two-hundred-year-old

  porcelains exploding, antique furniture reduced to match sticks, until

  they were left standing in mounds of worthless rubble, coated with the

  dust of what had been a fortune in interior design.

  She was so absolutely certain it was going to happen that she wracked

  her mind urgently, room by room, for something winning to say when

  catastrophe struck, after the last exquisite crystal candy dish had

  crashed off the last disintegrating table that had once been the

  property of the First King of France. "Oops," did not seem appropriate,

  and neither did "Jesus Christ!" because they thought they had adopted a

  good Catholic girl not a foulmouthed heathen (sorry, God), and neither

  did "somebody pushed me," because that was a lie, and lying bought you a

  ticket to Hell, though she suspected she was going to wind up in Hell

  anyway, considering how she couldn't stop thinking the Lord's name in

  vain and using vulgarities.

  No balloon full of glowing golden gas for her.

  Throughout the house, the walls were adorned with art, and Regin: noted

  that the most wonderful pieces all had the same signature at the bottom

  right corner: Lindsey Sparling. Even as much of a screwup as she was,

  she was smart enough to figure that the name Lindsey was no coincidence

  and that Sparling must be Mrs. Harrison's maiden name. They were the

  strangest and most beautiful paintings Regina had ever seen, some of

  them so bright and full of good feeling that you had to smile, some of

  them dark and brooding. She wanted to spend a long time in front of

  each of them, sort of soaking them up, but she was afraid Mr. and Mrs.

  Harrison would think she was a brown-nosing phony, pretending interest

  as a way of apologizing for the wisecracks she had made in Mr. Gujilio's

  office about paintings on velvet.

  Somehow she got through the entire house without destroying anything,

  and th
e last room was hers. It was bigger than any room at the

  orphanage, and she didn't have to share it with anyone. The windows

  were covered with white plantation shutters. Furnishings included a

  corner desk and chair, a bookcase, an armchair with footstool,

  nightstands with matching lamp and an amazing bed.

  "It's from about 1850," Mrs. Harrison said, as Regina let her hand

  glide slowly over the beautiful bed.

  "English," Mr. Harrison said. "Mahogany with hand-painted decoration

  under several coats of laLAuer."

  On the footboard, side rails, and headboard, the dark-red and dark

  yellow roses and emerald-green leaves seemed alive, not bright against

  the deeply colored wood but so lustrous and dewy-looking that she was

  sure she would be able to smell them if she put her nose to their

  petals.

  Mrs. Harrison said, "It might seem a little old for a young girl, a

  little stuffy "Yes, of course," Mr. Harrison said, "we can send it over

  to the store, sell it, let you choose something you'd like, something

  modern. This was just furnished as a guest room."

  "No," Regina said hastily. "I like it, I really do. Could I keep it, I

  mean even though it's so expensive?"

  "It's not that expensive," Mr. Harrison said, "and of course you can

  keep anything you want."