Koontz, Dean R. - Hideaway

by Hideaway(Lit)

  girl with the gray eyes.

  After Hatch freshened up for dinner, while Lindsey finished getting

  ready in the bathroom, he sat alone on the edge of their bed and read

  the article by S. Steven Honell in Arts American. He could shrug off

  virtually any insult to himself, but if someone slammed Lindsey, he

  always reacted with anger. He couldn't even deal well with reviews of

  her work that she thought had made valid criticisms. Reading Honell's

  vicious, snide, and ultimately stupid diatribe dismissing her entire

  career as "wasted energy," Hatch grew angrier by the sentence.

  As had happened the previous night, his anger erupted into fiery rage

  with volcanic abruptness. The muscles in his jaws clenched so hard, his

  teeth ached. The magazine began to shake because his hands were

  trembling with fury. His vision blurred slightly, as if he were looking

  at everything through shimmering waves of heat, and he had to blink and

  squint to make the fuzzy-edged words on the page resolve into readable

  print.

  As when he had been lying in bed last night, he felt as if his anger

  opened a door and as if something entered him through it, a foul spirit

  that knew only rage and hate. Or maybe it had been with him all along

  but sleeping, and his anger had roused it. He was not alone inside his

  own head. He was aware of another presence, like a spider crawling

  through the narrow space between the inside of his skull and the surface

  of his brain.

  He tried to put the magazine aside and calm down. But he kept reading

  because he was not in full possession of himself Vassago moved through

  the Haunted House, untroubled by the hungry fire, because he had planned

  an escape route. Sometimes he was twelve years old, and sometimes he

  was twenty. But always his path was lit by human torches, some of whom

  had collapsed into silent melting heaps upon the smoking floor, some of

  whom exploded into flames even as he passed them.

  In the dream he was carrying a magazine, folded open to an article that

  angered him and seemed imperative he read. The edges of the pages

  curled in the heat and threatened to catch fire. Names leaped at him

  from the pages. Lindsey. Lindsey Sparling. Now he had a last name for

  her. He felt an urge to toss the magazine aside, slow his breathing,

  calm down. Instead he stoked his anger, let a sweet flood of rage

  overwhelm him, and told himself that he must know more. The edges of

  the magazine pages curled in the heat. Honell. Another name.

  Steven Honell. Bits of burning debris fell on the article. StevenS.

  Honell. No. The 5 first. 5. Steven Honell. The paper caught fire.

  Honell. A writer. A barroom. Silverado Canyon. In his hands, the

  magazine burst into flames that flashed into his lab He shed sleep like

  a fired bullet shedding its brass jacket, and sat up in his dark

  hideaway. Wide awake. Excited. He knew enough now to find the woman.

  One moment rage like a fire swept through Hatch, and the next moment it

  was extinguished. His jaws relaxed, his tense shoulders sagged, and his

  hands unclenched so suddenly that he dropped the magazine on the floor

  between his feet.

  He continued to sit on the edge of the bed for a while, stunned and

  confused. He looked toward the bathroom door, relieved that Lindsey had

  not walked in on him while he had been.. . Been what? In his trance?

  Posession?

  He smelled something peculiar, out of place. Smoke.

  He looked at the issue of Arts American on the floor between his feet.

  Hesitantly, he picked it up. It was still folded open to Honell's

  article about Lindsey. Although no visible van rose from the magazine,

  the paper exuded the heavy smell of smoke. The odors of burning wood,

  paper, tar, plastics. and something worse. The edges of the paper were

  yellow-brown and crisp, as if they had been ex to almost enough heat to

  induce spontaneous combustion.

  7

  When the knock came at the door, Honell was sitting in a rocking chair

  by the fireplace. He was drinking Chivas Regal and reading one of his

  own novels, Miss Culvert, which he had written twenty-five years ago

  when he was only thirty.

  He re-read each of his nine books once a year because he was in

  perpetual competition with himself, striving to improve as he grew old

  instead of settling quietly into sea the way most writers did.

  Constant betterment was a formidable challenge because he had been

  awfully good at an early age. Every time he re-read himself, he was

  surprised to discover that his body of work was considerably more

  impressive than he remembered it.

  Miss Culvert was a fictional treatment of his mother's self-absorbed

  lite in the respectable upper-middle-class society of a downstate

  Illinois town, an indictment of the self-satisfied and stiflingly bland

  "culture" of the Midwest. He had really captured the essence of the

  bitch. Oh how he had captured her. Reading Miss Culvert, he was

  reminded of the hurt and horror with which his mother had received the

  novel on first publication, and he decided that as soon as he had

  finished the book, he would take down the sequel, Mrs. Towers, which

  dealt with her marriage to his father, her widowhood, and her second

  marriage. He remained convinced that the sequel was what had killed

  her. Officially, it was a heart attack. But cardiac infarction had to

  be triggered by something, and the timing was satisfyingly concurrent

  with the release of Mrs. Towers and the media attention it received.

  ,1 When the unexpected caller knocked, a pang of resentment shot through

  Honell. His face puckered sourly. He preferred the company of his own

  characters to that of anyone who might conceivably come visiting,

  uninvited. Or invited, for that matter. All of the people in his books

  were carefully refined, claahed, whereas people in real lite were

  unfailingly ... well, rezzy, murky, pointlessly complex.

  He glanced at the clock on the mantel. Ten past nine o'clock.

  The knock sounded again. More insistent this time. It was probably a

  neighbor, which was a dismaying thought because his neighbors were all

  fools.

  He considered not answering. But in these rural canyons, the locals

  thought of themselves as "neighborly," never as the pests they actually

  were, and if he didn't respond to the knocking, they would circle the

  house, peeping in windows, out of a country-folk concern for his

  welfare.

  God, he hated them. He tolerated them only because he hated the people

  in the cities even more, and loathed suburbanites.

  He put down his Chivas and the book, pushed up from the rocking chair,

  and went to the door with the intention of giving a firy dressing down

  to whoever was out there on the porch. With his command of language, he

  could mortify anyone in about one minute flat, and have them running for

  cover in two minutes. The pleasure of meting out humiliation would

  almost compensate for the interruption.

  When he pulled the curtain back from the glass panes in the front door,

  he was surprised to see that his visitor was not
one of the neighbors-in

  fact, not anyone he recognized. The boy was no more than twenty, pale

  as the wings of the snowflake moths that batted against the porch light.

  He was dressed entirely in black and wore sunglasses.

  Honell was unconcerned about the caller's intentions. The canyon was

  less than an hour from the most heavily populated parts of Orange

  County, but it was nonetheless remote by virtue of its forbidding

  geography and the poor condition of the roads. Crime was no problem,

  because criminals were generally attracted to more populous areas where

  the pickings were more plentiful. Besides, most of the people living in

  the cabins thereabouts had nothing worth stealing.

  He found the pale young man intriguing.

  "What do you want?" he asked without opening the door.

  "Mr. Honell?"

  "That's right."

  "5. Steven Honell?"

  "Are you going to make a torture of this?"

  "Sir, excuse me, but are you the writer?"

  College student. That's what he had to be.

  A decade ago-well, nearly two-Honell had been besieged by college

  English majors who wanted to apprentice under him or just worship at his

  feet. They were an inconstant crowd, however, on the lookout for the

  latest trend, with no genuine appreciation for high literary art.

  Hell, these days, most of them couldn't even read; they were college

  students in name only. The institutions through which they matriculated

  were little more than days centers for the terminally immature, and they

  were no more likely to study than to By to Mars by flapping their arms.

  "Yes, I'm the writer. What of it?"

  "Sir, I'm a great admirer of your books."

  "Listened to them on audiotape, have you?"

  "Sir? No, I've read them, all of them."

  The audiotapes, licensed by his publisher without his consent, were

  abridged by two-thirds. Travesties.

  "Ah. Read them in comic-book format, have you?" Honell said sourly,

  though to the best of his knowledge the sacrilege of comic-book

  adaptation had not yet been perpetrated.

  "Sir, I'm sorry to intrude like this. It really took a lot of time for

  me to work up the courage to come see you. Tonight I finally had the

  guts, and I knew if I delayed I'd never get up the nerve again. I am in

  awe of your writing, sir, and if you could spare me the time, just a

  little time, to answer a few questions, I'd be most grateful."

  A little conversation with an intelligent young man might, in fact, have

  more charm than re-reading Miss Culvert. A long time had passed since

  the last such visitor, who had come to the eyrie in which Honell had

  then been living above Santa Fe. After only a brief hesitation, he

  opened the door.

  "Come in, then, and we'll see if you really understand the complexities

  of what you've read."

  The young man stepped across the threshold, and Honell turned away,

  heading back toward the rocking chair and the Chivas.

  "This is very kind of you, sir," the visitor said as he closed the door.

  "Kindness is a quality of the weak and stupid, young man. I've other

  motivations." As he reached his chair, he and said, "Take off those

  sunglasses. Sunglasses at night is the worst kind of Hollywood

  affectation, not the sign of a serious person."

  "I'm sorry, sir, but they're not an affectation. It's just that this

  world is so much more painfully bright than Hell-which I'm sure you'll

  eventually discover."

  Hatch had no appetite for dinner. He only wanted to sit alone with the

  inexplicably beat-led issue of Arts American and stare at it until, by

  God, he forced himself to understand exactly what was happening to him.

  He was a man of reason. He could not easily embrace supernatural

  explanations. He was not in the antiques business by accident; he had a

  need to surround himself with things that contributed to an atmosphere

  of order and stability.

  But kids also hungered for stability, which included regular mealtimes,

  so they went to dinner at a pizza parlor, after which they caught a

  movie at the theater complex next door. It was a comedy. Though the

  film couldn't make Hatch forget the strange problems plaguing him, the

  frequent sound of Regina's musical giggle did somewhat soothe his

  abraded nerves.

  Later, at home, after he had tucked the girl in bed, kissed her

  forehead, wished her sweet dreams, and turned off the light, she said,

  "Goodnight ... Dad."

  He was in her doorway, stepping into the hall, when the word "dad"

  stopped him. He turned and looked back at her.

  "Goodnight," he said, deciding to receive her gift as casually as she

  had given it, for fear that if he made a big deal about it, she would

  call him Mr. Harrison forever. But his heart soared.

  In the bedroom, where Lindsey was undressing, he said, "She called me

  Dad."

  "Who did?"

  "Be serious, who do you think?"

  "How much did you pay her?"

  "You're just jealous cause she hasn't called you Mom yet."

  "She will. She's not so afraid any more."

  "Of you?"

  "Of taking a chance."

  Before getting undressed for bed, Hatch went downstairs to check the

  telephone answering machine in the kitchen. Funny, after all that had

  happened to him and considering the problems he still had to sort out,

  the mere fact that the girl had called him. Dad was enough to quicken

  his step and raise his spirits. He climbed the stairs two at a time.

  The answering machine was on the counter to the left of the

  refrigerator, below the cork memo board He was hoping to have a response

  from the estate executor to whom he had given a bid for the Wedgwood

  collection that morning. The window on the machine showed three

  messages. The first was from Glenda Dockridge, his right hand at the

  antique shop. The second was from Simpson Smith, a friend and antique

  dealer on Melrose Place in Los Angeles. The third was from Janice

  Dimes, a friend of Lindsey's. All three were reporting the same news:

  Hatch, Lindsey, Hatch and Lindsey, have you seen tv? have you read the

  paper, have you heard the news about Cooper, about that guy who ran you

  off the road, about Bill Cooper, he's dead he was killed he was killed

  last night.

  Hatch felt as if a refrigerant, instead of blood, pumped through his

  veins.

  last evening he had raged about Cooper getting off scot-free, and had

  wished him dead. No, wait. He'd said he wanted to hurt him, make him

  pay, pitch him in that icy river, but he hadn't really wanted Cooper

  dead.

  And so what if he had wanted him dead? He had not killed the man. He

  was not at fault for what had happened.

  Punching the button to erase the messages, he thought: The cops will

  want to talk to me sooner or later.

  Then he wondered why he was worried about the police. Maybe the

  murderer was already in custody, in which case no suspicion would fall

  upon him. But why should he come under suspicion anyway? He had done

  nothing. Nothing. Why was guilt creeping through him like the

  Millipe
de inching up a long tunnel?

  He hurried upstairs.

  Millipede?

  The utterly enigmatic nature of that image chilled him. He couldn't

  reference the source of it. As if it wasn't his own thought but

  something he had... received.

  Lindsey was lying on her back in bed, adjusting the covers around her.

  The newspaper was on his nightstand, where she always put it. He

  snatched it up and quickly scanned the front page.

  "Hatch?" she said. "What's wrong?"

  "Cooper's dead."

  "What?"

  "The guy driving the beer truck. William Cooper. Murdered."

  She threw back the covers and sat on the edge of the bed.

  He found the story on page three. He sat beside Lindsey, and they read

  the article together.

  According to the newspaper, police were interested in talking to a young

  man in his early twenties, with pale skin and dark hair. A neighbor had

  glimpsed him fleeing down the alleyway behind the Palin Court

  apartments. He might have been wearing sunglasses. At night.

  "He's the same damned one who killed the blonde," Hatch said fearfully.

  "The sunglasses in the rearview mirror. And now he's picking up on my

  thoughts. He's acting out my anger, murdering people that I'd like to