by Dean Koontz
When he had removed the mess and was ready to return to bed, she asked, "Yuri, why have you been pretending with me?"
"Pretending, Miss Sellers?"
"Yes, like you are now. I don't believe this superstitious streak of yours for one minute, and I think you know I don't. Yet you go on playing this role. What do you hope to gain by it?"
He was upset out of all proportion to the question. "I haven't been playing any role," he said. "I deeply believe the things I told you. I not only believe in them, but I know they are facts. I've seen all this as a child in my mountain village."
"Okay," she said, confused by the earnestness of his response.
"Not okay," he said. "You don't believe me yet. But there is nothing more that I can tell you to change your mind."
"I'm sorry I upset you," she said.
As she closed her door, he said, "Bolt it, please."
She did.
Then she went to bed and turned out the light. She told herself jokes and tried to remember what a bright future she had ahead of her. But the depression remained this time, stubborn, more deeply entrenched than any bad mood she had ever experienced before.
During the night, the owls hooted eerily in the rafters above.
CHAPTER 10
A light but steady snowfall had begun early the following morning, coming straight down in the absence of any wind. It gradually smoothed out the tracks and spots in the earlier ground cover, padded the corners of windows and doors.
Yuri knocked on Katherine's door shortly after nine and informed her that Lydia would like her to join the family breakfast at ten. She wished to hear Katherine's story, in detail. According to Yuri, she was terribly upset to think that an intruder had so easily gained entrance to Owlsden.
In the smallest dining room, over shirred eggs, toast, fresh fruit and pastries, Katherine discovered that, though both Lydia and Alex seemed upset over the notion that the sanctity of Owlsden could be so off-handedly violated, neither of them wanted to face up to the most likely explanation for that violation.
"How do you suppose they got in?" Lydia asked at one point, when the discussion had been just about exhausted of new insights. "I checked all of the windows-rather, Yuri checked them-and reported they were still locked from the inside. He says he locked all the doors last night, and he is not likely to forget something like that. Indeed, he almost has a mania about locks."
"Perhaps one of the cultists is a lock-picker," Alex suggested.
"That sounds too melodramatic," Lydia said.
"Perhaps, then," Katherine said, "the intruder was a friend of the family."
They looked at her as if she had not finished a sentence, or as if what she had said was utterly incoherent.
Alex said, "Excuse me?"
Patiently, she explained, "It could be possible that the intruder had a key to Owlsden. I understand that a number of your acquaintances have keys and that-"
"Not acquaintances, though," Alex said.
His mother amplified his meaning, "They're friends, not just casual acquaintances."
"Just the same," Katherine insisted, "isn't it conceivable that one of them might be a member of the cult, without your knowledge?"
"No," Alex said quickly.
"You didn't even give the notion a chance," Katherine said. "You didn't even pause to consider the people who have keys."
This time, more to humor her than to give it any real thought, he waited a few moments before speaking. "None of them would get involved in something that silly; They're all realists."
"And, from what I saw," Katherine said, "they're all pessimists as well. Isn't it within reason to conjecture that someone so depressed with the state of the world might turn to odd hopes, unusual beliefs from which they could hope to salvage the future?"
Lydia put down the pastry she was nibbling at, patted her lips with a linen napkin. "I'm afraid I'd have to agree with Alex," she said. "His friends are just not the type for foolishness like this."
"Yours, then," Katherine said, turning directly to Lydia and giving up the previous line of argument. She wondered, as she pressed the point, if she had already said too much, gone too far. No one enjoyed having their friends put down, even by inference.
"My friends?" Lydia asked.
"You said a couple of people close to you have keys," Katherine said. She had stopped eating too. She no longer felt hungry.
"Yes, but they aren't the sort to-"
"Of course they aren't," Alex said. "Besides, they're not young, not a one of them. I can hardly see them stomping about in deep snow, risking jail by breaking into a house-all to pull off some foolish prank."
"I suppose," Katherine said. "But it was something I thought we should consider, at least."
Now, Lydia and Alex relaxed. "Of course," he said. "Consider every angle. That's the only way to handle it."
"Do you think I should inform Constable Cartier?" Lydia asked.
"Hardly," Alex asked. "We don't want him bumbling around the house, getting in everyone's way. Besides, what laws did they break-aside from illegal entry? They didn't harm anyone or take anything. And what damage they did to the door of Katherine's bedroom was taken care of with a rag and water. The police wouldn't have much interest in expending a lot of man-hours to come up with the culprits."
"The locks really ought to be changed," Katherine said.
"Only if they came in with a key, and we've already decided that-"
She interrupted him, somewhat frustrated with both of them. Her good humor had not returned with the sun, and she was as agitated about circumstances in Owlsden as she had been the previous night. She had never liked people who were gloomy, who faced the future with negative expectations, and she had always felt that only disaster could result from that attitude. Yet, since finding the bloody circle on her door, she had adopted that very outlook. She supposed she would not like herself now, if she were someone else meeting her. She could somehow sense approach of disaster, like a cold wind or the fall of rocks from a clifftop. She had to regain her optimism or become a victim of the swamps she was helping to create. She said, "We only decided that none of your friends could be involved. But suppose one of them left his key somewhere, on a dresser at home or a desk at the office, perhaps on a restaurant table or in a store. It is conceivable, don't you think, that someone could have lifted the keys long enough to duplicate them before returning them to their rightful owner?"
"That's a thought," Alex agreed.
Lydia was enthusiastic about such an explanation, and she agreed to authorize Yuri to phone a locksmith and have the doors changed that very afternoon. New keys would be made, and their friends would be given copies-with a special warning about the care to be taken with the key.
It all sounded very positive and efficient. Somehow, though, Katherine felt that it wouldn't do any good at all, because she was increasingly certain that the intruder had not gotten his key by accident or theft. When she considered the scene in the recreation room the night before, she was certain one of Alex's friends was involved.
The remainder of the morning, the lunch hour and the early part of the afternoon, she spent with Lydia, answering some correspondence for her and for Alex, who dealt with the family's financial management, buying and selling stocks and securities with a finesse and canniness that indicated he was a most clever investor. Too, they discussed a number of books and writers, all of which they agreed upon, though offering each other new insights and points of view. Normally, Katherine would have enjoyed the discussion. But these were not normal times.
At 2:30, Lydia dismissed her for the afternoon. By three, she had changed into her ski clothes and made the trek out to the slope, through the curtain of cold, dry snow. She knew that she needed to get away from the house for a while, meet some people from the town and get a bit of fresh mountain air. Then she'd be her old self again, jolted out of her mood by the change of scenery. At least, that's what she hoped.
She descended th
e brisk, winding trail at top speed, the wind hard, the snow like a spray of ice in her face, frosting her lashes and brows. At the bottom, she carefully stacked the skis in the racks, stabbed the poles into a snow mound by the pylon, and went for a walk into town.
At the cafe on the square, where she intended to have a cup of coffee and talk again with Bertha, she found Michael Harrison and a group of his friends dawdling over what they called a "late lunch" but which was obviously a good, long, mid-afternoon gab-fest. Eight of them sat at the long table, three girls and five men, laughing as they worked at pastries and steaming mugs of coffee.
"You've got to join us," Michael said, fetching an extra chair to the already crowded table by the window and jamming it in next to his own, patting it as an invitation.
"I don't want to interrupt anything," Katherine said, though she did sit down beside him.
"You won't be interrupting at all!" he assured her. He motioned to his friends. "These loose-lipped wonders wouldn't stop chattering for the end of the world."
"Especially not then," a tall, blond boy said. His name, she learned later, was Kerry Markwood. "If it was the end of the world, we'd have to talk twice as fast to be sure that we got everything in!"
As simply as that, she was included in the group and made to feel perfectly at home. Indeed, in one minute, these people did more by their attitudes to make her comfortable than Alex's friends had done in several hours. Introductions were hurriedly made as Michael described each friend in turn with some good-humored insult that brought laughter from all present. Katherine learned their names slowly, however, as the afternoon wore on and the conversation got better and better. There was no unrelieved pessimism here-indeed, hardly a single note of glum-ness. As an antidote to Alex's crowd, these people could hardly be equaled.
Too, she was unaccountably pleased to see that, though there were girls present, they seemed to be with other men, not with Michael. He was as solicitous of her as he might have been of a wife, anxious that she have coffee when she wanted it and that there was always a plate of pastries near her. More than the others even, he was careful to include her in all conversations, and in time he put his arm over the back of her chair, giving the illusion of protection.
The restaurant clock read 6:15 when someone suggested they break it up for the day. Surprised that darkness had crept in without her noticing, Katherine realized that she would be hard-pressed to reach the top of the mountain again and have sufficient time to clean up and make it to dinner with the Bolands.
"Let me take you up in the Rover."
"I don't think Alex would like it."
"You mean you care what he thinks that much?" he asked, his voice suddenly brittle.
"Only as concerns my job," she said.
"He can't object to me driving you home."
She said, "Oh, Michael, you don't know how he can go on about you when the subject comes up. And I have to sit there and listen to it."
He softened perceptibly. "I'm sorry," he said.
They were standing outside the restaurant now, the snow still falling slowly but steadily, a new three inches of powdery stuff on the straight, narrow streets.
"It isn't your fault," she said. "There's no reason for you to be sorry. It's just that he has this obsession, this crazy need to make you look bad. His mother usually calms him down, but I don't think I should get into an argument with him. It's not my place, not in his own house. I almost had a fight with him this morning, and I don't want another near-argument."
"What was it about?"
"I'll tell you in the Rover on the way out to the bottom of the Roxburgh ski slope. If you'll take me there, that is."
The Rover was parked by the grass in the center of the square. In five minutes, they had reached the bottom of the slope, and she had been able to complete the story of the post-midnight intruder who had painted the Satanic symbols on her door.
"I don't think you should go back up there," Michael said, holding her hand as they stood by the pylon where her skis were racked.
"What else can I do?"
"I'd see about getting you someplace to stay here tonight."
"But I work up there."
He was silent a moment, looking up the dark ski run. "I suppose that's reason enough to go back. But do you have to go this way, up that damned run in the middle of the night?"
"It isn't the middle of the night," she said. "It's just dark. And if I want to get there in time for supper, I'd better get going now."
She sat down and put on her skis, then stood up and grabbed her poles, flipped the switch that started the ski-lift cables moving.
"You aren't frightened of the dark, going up there through the trees at night?" he asked, making one last effort to dissuade her.
"Not at all," she said. And she realized that, though she had not completely regained her normal mood of optimism, the few hours with Michael's friends had alleviated the worst of the gloom that had settled over her after the previous night's activities. She truly was not frightened.
He slid her to the cable, her skis making a shishing noise in the new snow, and kissed her before she started upwards. It was a languorous kiss that seemed to last forever. "Be careful," he said. Then he stepped back as she grasped the steel line and was whisked up the gentle bottom slopes.
Though the pines seemed to close in on her now and then, as if they were alive and seeking her, she did not lose the moderately rosy glow which his kiss had left with her, and she reached the top of the run fifteen minutes later, weary but safe.
She had just enough time to change, brush her hair and freshen her makeup, arriving in the small dining room only five minutes late for dinner. The conversation was pleasant, lighter than usual, especially since Alex seemed happy to let everything remain trivial. He did not once mention Michael Harrison. Indeed, the only sour note in the evening was when Lydia said the locksmith would not be in for a few days.
"But surely-" Katherine began.
"He doesn't live in Roxburgh," Alex explained. For some reason or other, she thought that his dark eyes were watching her more intently than usual. If he didn't have that air of brooding anger about him, she thought, he would be decidedly attractive-overwhelmingly attractive in fact. "He's a carpenter who works on locks as a sideline, lives about fifteen miles away in another village. If it weren't for this snow, he'd have come. But it has been coming down steadily -and now the radio weather reports call for a greater accumulation than we got a few days ago."
"I see."
"Don't worry," Lydia said. "No one's going to come around bothering us in the middle of a blizzard. The winds are supposed to intensify tonight. It's going to be a real mess. I love it, all of it." She went on to describe some of the record storms of her childhood and enchanted them with a number of anecdotes about life in the mountains before the advent of the auto and the snowplow.
Katherine went to bed early, without seeing Yuri, and was asleep by eleven, exhausted from the skiing, the conversation with Michael's friends in the cafe, the ride up the slope in the cold and wind, the long and delightful chatter over dinner and, later, over cordials in the main drawing room.
The day seemed to have slipped past as if it were greased, a good day all-in-all, one that made her glad she had not opted to leave Owlsden the previous day.
She did not dream but slept so deeply that she might never have awakened-except for the scream of agony that echoed through the house at shortly past two in the morning. It woke everyone and caused the owls to begin hooting in panic above her head...
She was out of the bed and into her slippers and robe before half a minute had passed, though she made no move to unbolt the door.
A moment later, someone rattled the knob, then knocked.
"Who is it?" she asked, having a distinct feeling of deja vu.
"Katherine?" Lydia asked.
She went quickly to the door, threw the bolt back and opened it. Lydia was standing in the well-lighted corridor, wearing a flowin
g yellow bedgown, her face weary and lined more than it appeared to be in daylight. Alex stood behind her in a lounging robe and pajamas, his dark eyes swiftly assessing her condition and the state of the room beyond.
"What was the scream?" Katherine asked.
"I thought perhaps it was you," Lydia said. She took Katherine's hand and squeezed it. "After that warning on your door last night..."
Alex interrupted, speaking in a clipped, nervous tone. "I told you, Mother, that it was a man's scream."
To the left, Patricia Keene and her husband appeared, blinking sleepily, attired in nightclothes. "Is everyone all right?" she asked.
"Fine here," Lydia said. "What was the noise?"
"Someone screamed," Patricia Keene said. Her husband nodded.
Alex said, "Where is Yuri?"
"In his room?" Lydia suggested.
As a group, they went down the corridor and knocked at his door. When he did not answer, they opened it and looked in. He was not there or, as Alex reported, in his private bath either.
"I think the scream was downstairs," Mason Keene said. His voice sounded thick, as if he had been drinking and was still a little tight, despite his sleep. Was that something else about Owlsden that had been hidden from her?
"I'll go look," Alex said.
"No," Lydia said. "We'll all go look."
In a close train, they went down the grand staircase and found, almost immediately, that the front door was standing open, a furious whirl of snow pouring in on the foyer carpet. Alex went and closed it, came back and said, "There are footprints in the snow, leading away from the house."
No one said anything until Katherine finally asked, "What next?"
"We check the rooms down here," Alex said, leading the way.
They all knew what they were going to find. It was not any special extra-sensory perception, Katherine thought, not something you could call pre-cognition or "fey," just a deep, animal dread that went even beyond the level of instinct.
In the main drawing room, the furniture had been pushed back to make a circle for the ceremony. The wine-colored carpet was now marked with a number of chalk designs, and several thick, black candles burned on endtables all around. Yuri lay at the edge of the markings, sprawled on his face, his hands outstretched in front of him as if he were desperately reaching for something. He was clearly dead.