Koontz, Dean R. - Hideaway

by Hideaway(Lit)

  held minor roles. Nevertheless, he had been drawn to her and Lindsey,

  and his own master apparently judged them to be suitable sacrifices.

  The house was so still that he would have to move as quietly as a cat.

  He could manage that.

  He glanced back at the girl on the bed, able to see her better in the

  darkness than he could see most of the details of the too-bright

  hallway.

  She was still unconscious, one of her own scarves wadded in her mouth

  and another tied around her head to keep the gag in place. Strong

  lengths of cord, which he had untied from around storage boxes in the

  garage attic, tightly bound her wrists and ankles.

  Control.

  Leaving Regina's door open behind him he eased along the hallway,

  staying close to the wall, where the plywood sub-flooring under the

  thick carpet was least likely to creak.

  He knew the layout. He had cautiously explored the second floor while

  the Harrisons had been finishing dinner.

  Beside the girls room was a guest bedroom. It was dark now. He crept

  on toward Lindsey's studio.

  Because the main hallway chandelier was directly ahead of him, his

  shadow fell in his wake, which was fortunate. Otherwise, if the woman

  happened to be looking toward the hall, she would have been warned of

  his approach.

  He inched to the studio door and stopped.

  Standing with his back flat to the wall, eyes straight ahead, he could

  see between the balusters under the handrail of the open staircase, to

  the foyer below. As far as he could tell, no lights were on downstairs.

  He wondered where the husband had gone. The tall doors to the master

  bedroom were open, but no lights were on in there. He could hear small

  noises coming from within the woman's studio, so he figured she was at

  work. If the husband was with her, surely they would have exchanged a

  few words, at least, during the time Vassago had been making his way

  along the hall.

  He hoped the husband had gone out on an errand. He had no particular

  need to kill the man. And any confrontation would be dangerous.

  From his jacket pocket, he withdrew the supple leather sap, filled with

  lead shot, that he had appropriated last week from Morton Redlow, the

  detective. It was an extremely effective-looking blackjack. It felt

  good in his hand. In the pearl-gray Honda, two blocks away, a handgun

  was tucked under the driver's seat, and Vassago almost wished he had

  brought it. He had taken it from the antique dealer, Robert Lofiman, in

  Laguna Beach a couple of hours before dawn that morning.

  But he didn't want to shoot the woman and the girl. Even if he just

  wounded and disabled them, they might bleed to death before he got them

  back to his hideaway and down into the museum of death, to the altar

  where his offerings were arranged. And if he used a gun to remove the

  husband, he could risk only one shot, maybe two. Too much gunfire was

  bound to be heard by neighbors and the source located. In that quiet

  community, once gunfire was identified, cops would be crawling over the

  place in two minutes.

  The sap was better. He hefted it in his right hand, getting the feel of

  it.

  With great care, he leaned across the doorjamb. Tilted his head.

  Peeked into the studio.

  She sat on the stool, her back to the door. He recognized her even from

  behind. His heart galloped almost as fast as when the girl had

  struggled and passed out in his arms. Lindsey was at the drawing board,

  charcoal pencil in her right hand. Busy, busy, busy. Pencil making a

  soft snaky hiss as it worked against the paper.

  No matter how determined she was to keep her attention firmly on the

  problem of the blank sheet of drawing paper, Lindsey looked up

  repeatedly at the window. Her creative block crumbled only when she

  surrendered and began to draw the window. The uncurtained frame.

  Darkness beyond the glass. Her face like the countenance of a ghost

  engaged in a haunting. When she added the spider web in the upper

  right-hand corner, the concept jelled, and suddenly she excited. She

  thought she might title it The Web of Life and Death, and use a surreal

  series of symbolic items to knit the theme into every corner of the

  canvas. Not canvas, Masonite. In fact, just paper now, only a sketch,

  but worth pursuing.

  She repositioned the drawing tablet on the board, setting it higher.

  Now she could just raise her eyes slightly from the page to look over

  the top of the board at the window, and didn't have to keep raising and

  lowering her head.

  More elements than just her face, the window, and the web would be

  required to give the painting depth and interest. As she worked she

  considered and rejected a score of additional images.

  Then an image a- almost magically in the glass above her own reflection:

  the face that Hatch had described from nightmares. Pale.

  A shock of dark hair. The sunglasses.

  For an instant she thought it was a supernatural event, an apparition in

  the glass. Even as her breath caught in her throat, however, she

  realized that she was seeing a reflection like her own and that the

  killer in Hatch's dreams was in their house, leaning around the doorway

  to look at her. She repressed an impulse to scream. As soon as he

  realized she had seen him, she would lose what little advantage she had,

  and he would be all over her, slashing at her, pounding on her,

  finishing her off before Hatch even got upstairs. Instead, she sighed

  loudly and shook her head as if displeased with what she was getting

  down on the drawing paper.

  Hatch might already be dead.

  She slowly put down her charcoal pencil, letting her fingers rest on it

  as if she might decide to pick it up again and go on.

  If Hatch wasn't dead, how else could this bastard have gotten to the

  second floor? No. She couldn't think about Hatch being dead, or she

  would be dead herself, and thin Regina. Dear God, Regina.

  She reached toward the top drawer of the supply cabinet at her side, and

  a shiver went through her as she touched the cold chrome handle.

  Reflecting the door behind her, the window showed the killer not just

  leaning around the jamb but stepping boldly into the open doorway.

  He paused arrogantly to stare at her, evidently relishing the moment.

  He was unnaturally quiet. If she had not seen his image in the glass,

  she would have had no awareness whatsoever of his presence.

  She pulled open the drawer, felt the gun under her hand.

  Behind her, he crossed the threshold.

  She drew the pistol out of the drawer and swung around on her stool in

  one motion, bringing the heavy weapon up, clasping it in both hands,

  pointing it at him. She would not have been entirely surprised if he

  had not been there, and if her first impression of him only as an

  apparition in the windowpanee had turned out to be correct. But he was

  there, all right, one step inside the door when she drew down on him

  with the Browning.

  She said, "Don't move, you son of a bitch."

  Whether he thought he sa
w weakness in her or whether he just didn't give

  a damn if she shot him or not, he backed out of the doorway an-into the

  hall even as she swung toward him and told him not to move.

  "Stop, damn it!"

  He was gone. Lindsey would have shot him without hesitation, without

  moral compunction, but he moved so incredibly fast, like a cat springing

  for safety, that all she would have gotten was a piece of the doorjamb.

  Shouting for Hatch, she was off the high stool and leaping for the door

  even as the last of the killers black shoe, his left foot-vanished out

  of the door frame. But she brought herself up short, thinking he might

  not have gone anywhere, might be waiting just to the side of the door,

  expecting her to come through in a panic, then stepping behind her and

  pound her across the back of the head or push her into the stair railing

  and over and out and down onto the foyer floor. Regina. She couldn't

  delay. He might be going after Regina. A hesitation of only a second,

  then she crashed through her fear and through the open door, all- this

  time shouting Hatch's Looking to her right as she came into the hall,

  she saw the guy going for Regina's door, also open, at the far end. The

  room was dark beyond when there ought to have been lights, Regina

  studying. She didn't have time to stop and aim. Almost squeezed the

  trigger. Wanted to pump out bullets in the hope that one of them would

  nail the bastard. But Regina's room was so dark, and the girl could be

  anywhere. Lindsey was afraid that she would miss the killer and blow

  away the girl, bullets flying through the open doorway.

  So she held her fire and went after the guy, screaming Regina's name now

  instead of Hatch's.

  He disappeared into the girls room and threw the door shut behind him, a

  bell of a slam that shook the house. Lindsey hit that barrier a second

  later, bounced off it. Locked. She heard Hatch shouting her name-thank

  God, he was alive, he was alive-but she didn't stop or turn around to

  see where he was. She stepped back and kicked the door hard, then

  kicked it again. It was only a privacy latch, lIimsy, it ought to pop

  open easily, but didn't.

  She was going to kick it again, but the killer spoke to her through the

  door. His voice was raised but not a shout, menacing but cool, no panic

  in it, no fear, just businesslike and a liNe loud, terrifyingly smooth

  and calm: "Get away from the door, or I'll kill the little bitch."

  Just before Lindsey began to shout his name, Hatch was sitting at the

  desk in the den, lights off, holding Arts American in both hands. A

  vision hit him with an electric sound, the crackle of a current jumping

  an are, as if the magazine were a live power cable that he had gripped

  in his bare hands.

  He saw Lindsey from behind, sitting on the high stool in her office, at

  the drawing board, working on a sketch. Then she was not Lindsey any

  more. Suddenly she was another woman, taller, also seen from behind but

  not on the stool, in an armchair in a different room in a strange house.

  She was knitting. A bright skein of yarn slowly unraveled from a

  retaining bowl on the small table beside her chair. Hatch thought of

  her as "mother," though she was nothing whatsoever like his mother. He

  looked down at his right hand, in which he held a knife, immense,

  already wet with blood. He approached her chair. She was unaware of

  him. As Hatch, he wanted to cry out and warn her. But as the user of

  the knife, through whose eyes he was seeing everything, he wanted only

  to savage her, tear the life out of her, and thereby complete the task

  that would free him. He stepped to the back of her armchair. She

  hadn't heard him yet. He raised the knife high. He struck. She

  screamed. He struck. She tried to get out of the chair. He moved

  around her, and from his point of view it was like a swooping shot in a

  movie meant to convey flight, the smooth glide of a bird or bat. He

  pushed her back into the chair, struck. She raised her hands to protect

  herself. He struck. He struck. And now, as if it was all a loop of

  film, he was behind her again, standing in the doorway, except she

  wasn't "mother" any more, she was Lindsey again, sitting at the drawing

  board in her upstairs studio, reaching to the top drawer of her supply

  cabinet and pulling it open. His gaze rose from her to the window.

  He saw himself-pale face, dark hair, sun glasses and knew she had seen

  him. She spun around on the stool, a pistol coming up, the muzzle aimed

  straight at his chest "Hatch!"

  His name, echoing through the house, shattered the link. He shot up

  from the desk chair, shuddering, and the magazine fell out of his hands.

  "Hatch!"

  Reaching out in the darkness, he unerringly found the handgrip of the

  Browning, and raced out of the den. As he crossed the foyer and climbed

  the stairs two at a time, looking up as he went, trying to see what was

  happening, he heard Lindsey stop shouting his name and start screaming

  "Regina!" Not the girl Jesus, please, not the girl.

  Reaching the top of the stairs, he thought for an instant that the

  slamming door was a shot But the sound was too distinct to be mistaken

  for , and as he looked back the hall he saw Lindsey bounce off the door

  to Regina's room with another crash. As he ran to join her, she kicked

  the door, kicked again, and then she stumbled back from it as he reached

  her.

  "lemme try," he said, pushing her.

  "No! He said back off or he'll kill her."

  For a couple of seconds, Hatch stared at the door, literally shaking

  with frustration. Then he took hold of the knob, tried to turn it

  slowly. But it was locked, so he put the muzzle of the pistol against

  the base of the knob plate.

  "Hatch," Lindsey said plaintively, "he'll kill her."

  He thought of the young blonde taking two bullets in the chest, flying

  backward out of the car onto the freeway, tumbling, tumbling along the

  pavement into the fog. And the mother suffering the massive blade of

  the butcher knife as she dropped her knitting and struggled desperately

  for her life.

  He said, "He'll kill her anyway, turn your face away," and he pulled the

  trigger.

  Wood and thin metal dissolved into splinters. He grabbed the brass

  knob, it came off in his hand, and he threw it aside. When he shoved on

  the door, it creaked inward an inch but no farther. The cheap lock had

  disintegrated. But the shank on which the knob had been seated was

  still bristling from the wood, and something must have been wedged under

  the other knob on the inside. He pushed on the shank with the palm of

  his hand, but that didn't provide enough force to move it; whatever was

  wedged against the other side-most likely the girls desk chair-was

  exerting upward pressure, thereby holding the shank in place.

  Hatch gripped the Browning by its barrel and used the butt as a hammer.

  Cursing, he pounded the shank, driving it inch by inch back through the

  door.

  Just as the shank flew free and clattered to the floor inside, a vivid

  series of images flooded
through Hatch's mind, temporarily washing away

  the upstairs hall. They were all from the killer's eyes: a weird angle,

  looking up at the side of a house, this house, the wall outside Regina's

  bedroom.

  The open window. Below the sill, a tangle of trumpet-vine running A

  hornlike flower in his face. Latticework under his hands, splinters

  digging into his skin. Clutching with one hand, searching with the

  other for a new place to grip, one foot dangling in space, a weight

  bearing down hard over his shoulder. Then a creaking, a splitting sound

  A sudden sense of perilous looseness in the geometric web to which he

  clung Hatch was snapped back to reality by a brief, loud noise from

  beyond the door: clattering and splintering wood, nails popping loose

  with tortured screeches, scraping, a crash.

  Then a new wave of psychic images and sensations surged through him.

  Falling. Backward and out into the night. Not far, hitting the ground,

  a brief flash of pain. Rolling once on the grass. Beside him, a small

  huddled form, lying still. Scuttling to it, seeing the face.

  Regina. Eyes closed. A scarf tied across her mouth "Regina!" Lindsey

  cried.

  When reality clicked into once again, Hatch was already sag his shoulder

  against the bedroom door. The brace on the other side fell away. The

  door shuddered open. He went inside, slapping the wall with one hand

  until he found the light switch. In the sudden glare, he stepped over

  the fallen desk chair and swung the Browning right, then left. The room