Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers

by Strangers(Lit)

cars, trucks, buses, taxis, and delivery vans crowding them on all

  sides. In the Mercedes, the cacophony of the city was muffled but not

  silenced altogether, and when Ginger looked out the window at her side

  to search for the source of a particularly annoying engine roar, she saw

  a large motorcycle. The rider turned his head toward her at that

  moment, but she could not see his face. He was wearing a helmet with a

  tinted visor that came all the way down to his chin.

  For the first time in ten days, the amnesic mist descended over Ginger.

  It happened much faster this time than it had with the black gloves,

  ophthalmoscope, or sink drain. She looked into the blank and shiny

  visor, and her heart stuttered, and her breath was pinched off, and she

  was instantly swept away by a massive wave of terror, gone.

  First, Ginger became aware of horns. Car horns, bus horns, the

  air-horns of trucks. Some like the high squeals of animals, some low

  and ominous. Wailing, whooping, barking, shrieking, honking, bleating.

  She opened her eyes. Her vision swam into focus. She was still in the

  car. The intersection was still in front of them, though evidently a

  couple of minutes had passed and the traffic ahead had moved. With the

  engine running but the gearshift in park, the Mercedes was ten feet

  closer to the crosswalk and angled slightly into the next lane, which

  was what was causing the horn blowing as other vehicles tried to get

  around.

  Ginger heard herself whimpering.

  Rita Hannaby was leaning across the console that separated the driver's

  and passenger's seats, very close, gripping both of Ginger's hands,

  holding them down and holding them very tightly. "Ginger? Are you

  there? Are you all right? Ginger?"

  Blood. After the jarring blasts of the horns, after Rita's voice,

  Ginger became aware of the blood. Red spots marked her lime-green

  skirt. A dark smear stained the sleeve of her suit jacket. Her hands

  were gloved in blood, as were Rita's hands.

  "Oh, my God," Ginger said.

  "Ginger, are you with me? Are you back? Ginger?" One of Rita's

  manicured nails was torn off, with only a splintered stub sticking up

  jaggedly from the cuticle, and both her hands appeared to have been

  gouged. Scratches on the woman's fingers, on the backs of her hands,

  and on her palms were bleeding freely, and as far as Ginger could tell,

  all of the blood was Rita's, none of it her own. The cuffs of the gray

  St. John's suit were wet with blood. "Ginger, talk to me."

  Horns continued to blare.

  Ginger looked up and saw that Rita's perfectly coiffured hair was now in

  disarray. A two-inch-long scratch furrowed her left cheek, and blood

  tinted with makeup was trickling along her jaw to her chin.

  "You're back," Rita said with obvious relief, letting go of Ginger's

  hands.

  "What've I done?"

  "Only scratches," Rita said. "It's all right. You had an attack,

  panicked, tried to leave the car. I couldn't let you go. You might've

  been hit in traffic."

  A passing driver, maneuvering around the Mercedes, angrily shouted

  something unintelligible at them.

  "I've hurt you," Ginger said. Sickness throbbed through her at the

  thought of the violence she had done.

  Other drivers sounded their horns with increasing impatience, but Rita

  ignored them. She took Ginger's hands again, not to restrain her this

  time but to offer comfort and reassurance. "It's all right, dear. It's

  passed now, and a little iodine will patch me up just fine."

  The motorcyclist. The dark visor.

  Ginger looked out the side window; the cyclist was gone.

  He had, after all, been no threat to her, just a stranger passing in the

  street.

  Black gloves, an ophthalmoscope, a sink drain, and now the dark visor of

  a motorcyclist's helmet. Why had those particular things set her off?

  What did they have in common, if anything?

  As tears spilled down her face, Ginger said, "I'm so sorry."

  "No need to be. Now, I better get us out of the way," Rita said. She

  pulled handsful of Kleenex from the box on the console and used them to

  grip the wheel and gearshift, to avoid spreading bloodstains.

  Her own hands wet with Rita's blood, Ginger sagged back against her seat

  and closed her eyes and tried to stop the tears but could not.

  Four psychotic episodes in five weeks.

  She could no longer glide placidly through the gray winter days,

  defenseless, docile in the face of this vicious turn of fate, merely

  waiting for another attack or for a shrink to explain what was wrong.

  It was Monday, December 16, and Ginger was suddenly determined to do

  something before she suffered a fifth fugue. She could not imagine what

  she possibly could do, but she was sure she'd think of something if she

  put her mind to it and stopped feeling sorry for herself. She had

  reached bottom now. Her humiliation, fear, and despair could not bring

  her to any greater depths. There was nowhere to go but up. She would

  claw her way back to the surface, damned if she wouldn't, up toward the

  light, of it of the dark into which she had fallen.

  Christmas Eve-Christmas Day

  1.

  Laguna Beach, California

  At eight A. M., Tuesday, December 24, when Dom Corvaisis got out of bed,

  he went through his morning ablutions in a haze resulting from the

  lingering effects of yesterday's indulgence in Valium and Dalmane.

  For the eleventh night in a row, he had been troubled by neither

  somnambulism nor the bad dream that involved the sink. The drug therapy

  was working, and he was willing to tolerate a period of pharmaceutically

  induced detachment to put an end to his unnerving midnight journeys.

  He did not believe he was in danger of becoming physically addicted

  to-or even psychologically dependent on-Valium or Dalmane. He had been

  exceeding the prescribed dosage, but he was still not worried. He had

  allmost run out of pills, and in order to get another prescription from

  Dr. Cobletz, he had fabricated a story about a break-in at his house,

  claiming that the drugs had been taken along with his stereo and TV set.

  Dom had lied to his doctor in order to obtain drugs, and sometimes he

  saw his action in exactly that harsh and unfavorable light; but most of

  the time, in the soft haze that accompanied continuous tranquilization,

  he was able to dress the shabby truth in self-delusion.

  He dared not think about what would happen to him if the episodes of

  somnambulism returned in January, after the drugs were discontinued.

  At ten o'clock, unable to concentrate enough to work, He put on a light

  corduroy jacket and left the house. The lateDecember morning was cool.

  Except for a few unseasonably warm days now and then, the beaches would

  not be busy again until April.

  As Dom descended the hills in his Firebird, heading for the center of

  town, he noticed that Laguna looked dull under a somber gray sky. He

  wondered how much of the leaden gloom was real and how much resulted

  from the dulling effects of the drugs, but he quickly abandoned that

  disturbing line o
f thought. In acknowledgment of his somewhat fuzzy

  perceptions and impaired responsiveness, he drove with exaggerated care.

  Dom received most mail at the post office. Because he subscribed to so

  many publications, he rented a large drawer rather than just a box, and

  that day before Christmas, the drawer was more than half full. He

  didn't look at the return addresses but carried everything back to the

  car with the intention of reading his mail at breakfast.

  The Cottage, a popular restaurant for decades, was on the east side of

  Pacific Coast Highway, on the slope above the road. At that hour, the

  breakfast rush had passed, and the lunch crowd had not yet arrived. Dom

  was given a table by the window with the best view. He ordered two

  eggs, bacon, cottage fries, toast, and grapefruit juice.

  As he ate, he went through the mail. In addition to magazines and

  bills, there was a letter from Lennart Sane, the wonderful Swedish agent

  who handled translation rights in Scandinavia and Holland, and a padded

  envelope from Random House. As soon as he saw the publisher's address

  on the label, he knew what he had. Finally, his mind began to clear,

  the fuzziness partially dispelled by excitement. He put down the toast

  he had been eating and tore open the large envelope, and an advance copy

  of his first novel slid out. No man can know what a woman feels when

  taking her newborn child in her arms for the first time, but a novelist

  who holds the first copy of his first book must experience a joy similar

  to that of the mother who looks upon the face of her baby for the first

  time and feels its warmth through the swaddling clothes.

  Dom kept the book beside his plate and could barely look away from it.

  He had finished his meal and had ordered coffee by the time he was able

  to tear his attention from Twilight and examine what mail remained.

  Among other things, there was a plain white envelope with no return

  address, which contained a single page of white paper on which had been

  typewritten two sentences that rocked him:

  The sleepwalker would be well-advised to search the past for the source

  of his problem. That is where the secret is buried.

  He read the passage again, astonished. The sheet of paper rattled as a

  tremor passed through him. The back of his neck went cold.

  2.

  Boston, Massachusetts

  When Ginger got out of the cab, she was in front of a sixstory, brick,

  Victorian Gothic building. A blustery wind slapped her, and the

  bare-limbed trees along Newbury Street rasped, clattered, and clicked:

  the sound of rattling bones. Huddling against the bitter wind, she

  scurried past a low iron fence and entered 127 Newbury, the former Hotel

  Agassiz, one of the city's finest historic landmarks, now converted into

  condominiums. She had come to see Pablo Jackson, about whom she knew

  only what she had read in yesterday's Boston Globe.

  She had left Baywatch after George departed for the hospital and after

  Rita went off to do some last-minute Christmas shopping, for she had

  been afraid they would try to stop her. In fact, the maid, Lavinia, had

  pleaded with her not to go out alone. Ginger had left a note,

  explaining her whereabouts, and she hoped they would not be too upset.

  When Pablo Jackson opened his door, Ginger was surprised. That he was a

  black man, that he was in his eighties those things were not surprising,

  for she had learned as much about him from the article in the Globe.

  However, she was not prepared for such a vital and vigorous

  octogenarian. He was about five-eight, slight, but age had not bowed

  his legs, bent his back, or rounded his shoulders. He stood militarily

  erect, in white shirt and sharply creased black trousers, and there was

  a sprightliness and youthfulness in his smile and in the way he waved

  her into the apartment. His thick kinky hair had not receded, but it

  had gone so white that it seemed to glow with a spectral light, giving

  him a curiously mystical aura. He escorted Ginger into the living room,

  moving with the stride of a man forty or fifty years his junior.

  The living room was a surprise, too, not what she expected either of a

  sedate old monument like the Hotel Agassiz or of Pablo Jackson, an

  elderly bachelor. The walls were creamcolored, and the contemporary

  sofas and chairs were upholstered in a matching fabric. An Edward

  Fields carpet of the same creamy shade provided relief from the dominant

  scheme by means of a deeply sculpted wave pattern. Color was provided

  by pastel accent pillows-yellow, peach, green, and blue-on the sofas,

  and from two large oil paintings, one a Picasso. The result was an

  airy, bright, warm, and modern decor.

  Ginger settled into one of two armchairs that faced each other across a

  small table near a long, bay window. She declined coffee and said, "Mr.

  Jackson, I'm afraid I'm here under false pretenses."

  "What an interesting beginning", he said, smiling, crossing his legs,

  resting his long-fingered black hands on the arms of his chair.

  "No, really, I'm not a reporter."

  "Not from People?" He studied her speculatively. "Well, that's all

  right. I knew you weren't a reporter when I let you in. These days,

  reporters have an oily smoothness about them, and they're an arrogant

  lot. Soon as I saw you standing at the door, I said to myself, 'Pablo,

  this bitty girl is no reporter. She's a real person." "

  :'I need some help that only you can provide."

  'A damsel in distress?" he said, amused. He seemed not at all angry or

  uneasy, which she had expected he would be.

  She said, "I was afraid you wouldn't see me if I told you my real

  reasons for wanting to meet you. You see, I'm a doctor, a surgical

  resident at Memorial, and when I read the article about you in the

  Globe, I thought you might be able to help."

  "I'd be delighted to see you even if you were selling magazines. An

  eighty-one-year-old man can't afford to turn anyone away . . . unless

  he prefers to spend his days talking to the walls."

  Ginger appreciated his efforts to put her at ease, though she suspected

  that his social life was more interesting than her own.

  He said, "Besides, not even a burnt-out old fossil like me would turn

  away such a lovely girl as you. But now tell me what this help is that

  only I can give you."

  Ginger leaned forward in her chair. "First, I've got to know if the

  article in the newspaper was accurate."

  He shrugged. "As accurate as newspaper articles ever are. My mother and

  father were expatriate Americans living in France, just as the newspaper

  said. She was a popular chantellse, a cafe singer in Paris, before and

  after World War I.

  My father was a musician, as the Globe said. And it's true that my

  parents knew Picasso and recognized his genius early on. I was named

  after him. They bought two score of Picasso's pieces when his work was

  cheap, and he gave them several paintings as gifts. They had bon got.

  They didn't own a hundred works, as the paper said, but fifty. Still,

  that collection was an embarrassment of riches. Sold gradually over the
>
  years, it cushioned their retirement and gave me something to fall back

  on as well."

  "You were an accomplished stage magician?"

  "For over fifty years," he said, raising both hands in a graceful and

  elegant expression of amazement at his own longevity. That gesture was

  marked by the rhythm and fluidity of prestidigitation, and Ginger

  half-expected him to pluck living white doves from thin air. "And I was

  famous, too. Sans pareil, even if I say so myself. Not famous over here

  so much, you understand, but all over Europe and in England."

  "And your act involved hypnotizing a few members of the audience?"

  He nodded. "That was the centerpiece. It always wowed them."

  "And now you're helping the police by hypnotizing witnesses to crimes,

  so they can recall details they've forgotten."

  "Well, it's not a full-time job," he said, waving one slender hand as if

  to dismiss any such thoughts she might have had. The gesture seemed

  likely to end with the magical appearance of a bouquet of flowers or

  deck of cards. "In fact, they've only come to me four times in the past

  two years. I'm usually their last resort."

  "But what you've done has worked for them?"

  "Oh, yes. Just as the newspaper said. For instance, a by stander might

  see a murder take place and get a glimpse of the car in which the killer

  escaped, but not be able to recall the license number. Now, if he

  glanced at the license even for a split second, that number is buried in