Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers

  therapy at St. Joseph's Hospital for Children three weeks ago, the

  young priest had been so troubled by his loss of faith that he'd been

  growing rapidly thinner. Now he had stopped losing weight. He was

  still thirty pounds lighter than usual, but he was no longer as wan and

  haggard as he had been following his shocking outburst during Mass on

  the first of December. In spite of his spiritual fall, there was a glow

  to his skin and a light in his eyes that was almost ... beatific.

  "You feel splendid, don't you?" Stefan asked. "Yes, though I'm not sure

  why."

  "Your soul's no longer troubled."

  "No."

  "Even though you've still not found your way back to God."

  "Even though," Brendan agreed. "Maybe it has something to do with the

  dream I had last night."

  "The black gloves again?"

  "No. Haven't had that one in a while," Brendan said. "Last night I

  dreamed that I was walking in a place of pure golden light, beautiful

  light, so bright I could see nothing around me, and yet it didn't hurt

  my eyes." A peculiar note, perhaps Of reverence, (intered the curate's

  voice. "In the dream, I keep walking and walking, not knowing where I

  am or where I'm going, but with the sense that I'm approaching a thing

  or a place of monumental importance and unbearable beauty. Not just

  approaching but . . . being called to it. Not an audible call but a

  summons that just ... reverberates in me. My heart is pounding, and I'm

  a little afraid. But it isn't a bad fear, Father, what I feel in that

  bright place, not bad at all. So I just keep walking through the light,

  toward something magnificent that I can't see but that I know is there."

  Drawn by Brendan's hushed voice as if by a magnet, Father Wycazik moved

  to the bed and sat upon the corner of it. "But surely this is a

  spiritual dream, the call of God coming to you in sleep. He's calling

  you back to your faith, back to the duties of your office."

  Brendan shook his head. "No. There was no religious quality to the

  dream, no sense of a divine presence. It was a different kind of awe

  that filled me, a joy unlike the joy I knew in Christ. I woke up four

  times during the night, and each time I woke, the rings were on my

  hands. And each time that I fell back to sleep, I dropped into the same

  dream again. Something very strange and important is happening, Father,

  and I'm a part of it; but whatever it is, it's not anything that my

  education, experiences, or previous beliefs have prepared me for."

  Father Wycazik wondered if the call that had come to Brendan in the

  dream had been from Satan instead of God. Perhaps the devil, aware that

  a priest's soul was in jeopardy, had dressed his hateful form in this

  deceptively attractive golden light, the better to lead the curate from

  the righteous path.

  Still firmly determined to bring his curate back into the fold, but

  temporarily out of winning strategies, Stefan Wycazik decided to call a

  truce. He said, "So . . . what now?

  You aren't ready to put on your Roman collar and resume your duties, as

  I thought you'd be by now. Do you want me to contact Lee Kellog, the

  Illinois Provincial, and ask him to authorize psychiatric counseling?"

  Brendan smiled. "No. That doesn't appeal to me any more. I don't

  believe it'd do any good. What I'd like to do-if it's all right with

  you, Father-is move back into my room in the rectory and wait this out,

  see what happens. Of course, as I remain a fallen-away priest, I can't

  hear confessions or say Mass. But while I'm waiting to see what

  happens, I could do some cooking, help you catch up on the filing."

  Father Wycazik was relieved. He had expected Brendan to express the

  intention of returning to a secular life. "You're welcome, of course.

  There's much you can do. I'll keep you busy; no need to worry about

  that. But tell me, Brendan . . . you do think there's a possibility

  that you'll find your way back?"

  The curate nodded. "I don't feel alienated from God any more. Just

  empty of Him. As this situation develops, perhaps it'll lead me back to

  the Church, as you're convinced it will. I just don't know."

  Still frustrated and disappointed by Brendan's refusal to see the

  miraculous presence of God in the healing of Emmy and Winton, Father

  Wycazik was nonetheless glad that he would have the curate close and be

  provided the opportunity to continue guiding him back to salvation.

  Brendan went downstairs with Father Wycazik, and at the front door the

  two men embraced in such a way that a stranger, without any knowledge of

  their occupation, would have thought them father and son.

  Accompanying Father Wycazik as far as the front stoop, where a blustery

  wind gave a howl more suited to Halloween than to Christmas, Brendan

  said, "I don't know why or how, Father Stefan, but I feel we're about to

  embark upon an amazing adventure."

  "The discovery-or rediscovery-of faith is always an amazing adventure,

  Brendan," Father Wycazik said. Then, having gotten in the last clean

  jab, as a good fighter for souls should always do, he left.

  Reno, Nevada.

  Whimpering, gasping for breath, struggling valiantly against the

  narcotizing effect of his lunar obsession, Zeb Lomack clambered through

  the garbage and squirming roaches that carpeted the kitchen, grabbed the

  shotgun that lay upon the table, jammed the barrel between his teeth and

  suddenly realized that his arms were not long enough to reach the

  trigger. The urge to look up at the bewitching moons on the walls was

  so overpowering that he felt as if someone had hold of him by the hair

  and was pulling his head back to force his gaze up from the floor. And

  when he closed his eyes defensively, it seemed as if some invisible

  adversary began to pry insistently at his. eyelids. In his horror of

  being committed to a madhouse like his father, he found the strength to

  resist the mesmeric moon-call. Eyes still closed, he collapsed into a

  chair, kicked off one shoe, stripped away the sock, braced the shotgun

  with both hands, put the barrel in his mouth, raised his unshod foot,

  and touched one bare toe to the cold trigger. Imagined moonlight on his

  skin and imagined lunar tides in his blood (no less forceful for being

  imaginary) demanded his attention with such sudden power that he opened

  his eyes, saw the many moons on the walls, and cried "no!"

  into the barrel of the gun. Even as the spellbinding mooncall pulled

  him back toward a trance, even as he pressed his foot down upon the

  trigger, the swelling memory balloon at last burst in his mind, and he

  remembered everything that had been taken away from him: the summer

  before last, Dom inick, Ginger, Faye, Ernie, the young priest, the

  others, Interstate 80, the Tranquility Motel, oh, God, the motel, and

  oh, God, the moon!

  Perhaps Zebediah Lomack was unable to check the downward motion of his

  bare foot or perhaps, instead, the suddenly revealed memory was so

  terrible that it encouraged suicide. Whichever the case, the .12-gauge

  went off with a roar, and the back of his head blew out, and fo
r him

  (though for no one else) the terror ended.

  Boston, Massachusetts.

  All Christmas afternoon, Ginger Weiss read Twilight in Babylon, and at

  seven o'clock that evening, when it was time to go downstairs for drinks

  and dinner with the Hannaby family, she resented the interruption and

  did not want to put the book aside. She was a willing captive of the

  engrossing story, but she was more captivated by the photo of the

  author. Dominick Corvaisis' commanding eyes and dark good looks

  continued to arouse in her an uneasiness bordering on fear, and she

  could not overcome the peculiar feeling that she knew him.

  Dinner with her hosts, their children and grandchildren, might have been

  pleasurable if Dominick Corvaisis had not exerted a mysteriously

  powerful claim on her attention. At ten o'clock, when she could at last

  gracefully withdraw without offending anyone, she cast out and gathered

  in a final series of Christmas wishes for happiness and health, then

  returned to her room.

  She began reading where she had left off, and with a minimum of

  interruptions to scrutinize the author's photograph again, she finished

  the book at three-forty-five A. M. In the deep post-midnight silence

  that had settled over Baywatch, Ginger sat with the book in her lap, the

  jacket photo turned up, her eyes fixed on Dominick Corvaisis' hauntingly

  familiar face. Minute by minute, as she sat in her strange, silent,

  onesided communion with the writer's image, Ginger became increasingly

  convinced that she had met the man somewhere and that he was, in some

  unimaginable fashion, part of her recent troubles. Although her

  steadily growing conviction was tempered by the realization that this

  intuition might be part of the same mental disturbance that generated

  her fugues, and might therefore be unreliable, her agitation and

  excitement increased until, shaky and distraught, she was finally driven

  to action.

  Leaving her room with exaggerated stealth, she went downstairs, through

  the dark and untenanted rooms of the great slumbering house, into the

  kitchen. She switched on the light and used the wall phone to call

  information in Laguna Beach. It was one o'clock in the morning in

  California, too rude an hour to wake Corvaisis. But if she could get a

  number for him, she would sleep better, knowing that she could get in

  touch with him in the morning. To her dismay, though not to her

  surprise, his number was unlisted.

  Switching off the kitchen light and creeping quietly back to her room,

  Ginger made up her mind to write Corvaisis in the morning, care of his

  publisher. She would dispatch the message by express mail, with an

  urgent plea to the publisher to forward the letter immediately.

  Perhaps attempting to contact him was precipitate and irrational.

  Perhaps she had never met him, and perhaps he had nothing to do with her

  bizarre affliction. Perhaps he'd think she was a crackpot. But if this

  million-to-one shot proved a good bet, the payoff might be her very

  salvation, which was sufficient reward to risk making a fool of herself.

  Laguna Beach, California.

  As yet unaware that an advance review copy of his book had made a vital

  link between himself and a deeply troubled woman in Boston, Dom remained

  at Parker Faine's house until midnight, discussing the possible nature

  of the conspiracy that he had theorized. Neither he nor Parker had

  enough information to put together a detailed or even slightly useful

  picture of the conspirators, but the very process of sharing and

  exploring the mystery with a friend made it less frightening.

  They agreed that Dom should not fly to Portland and begin his odyssey

  until he saw how bad his sleepwalking became now that he had thrown away

  the Valium and Dalmane. Maybe somnambulism would not recur, as he

  expected it would, in which case he could travel without fear of losing

  control of himself in a distant place. But if he resumed his night

  rambling, he would need a couple weeks to decide on the best way of

  restraining himself during sleep, before heading to Portland.

  Besides, by waiting awhile, he might receive additional letters from his

  unknown correspondent. Those clues might make the trek from Portland to

  Mountainview unnecessary or might target a specific area along that

  route as the place where Dom would encounter some sight or experience

  that would free his imprisoned memories.

  By midnight, when Dom rose to leave Parker's hillside house, the artist

  had become so intrigued by the situation that he looked as if he would

  be up for hours yet, his mind spinning. "You're sure it's wise to be

  alone tonight?" he asked at the front door.

  Dom stepped outside onto a walkway patterned with spikey geometric forms

  of darkness and wedge-shaped slices of yellow light, which were formed

  by the beams of a decorative iron lantern half obscured by

  shadow-casting palm fronds. Looking back at his friend, he said, "We've

  been through this before. It might not be wise, but it's the only way."

  "You'll call if you need help?"

  "I'll call," Dom said.

  ,,And take those precautions we talked about."

  Dom attended to those precautions a short while later at home. He

  removed the pistol from his nightstand, locked it in a drawer of his

  office desk, and buried the desk key under a package of ice cream in the

  freezer. Better to be unprepared for a burglar than to risk firing the

  gun while sound asleep. Next, from a coil of rope in the garage, he cut

  a ten-foot length. After brushing his teeth and undressing, he knotted

  one end of the line securely around his right wrist in such a way that

  he could escape only by untying four difficult knots, He secured the

  other end of the rope to one post of the headboard, taking care to

  fasten it tightly. With one foot of the line's length used for the

  knots, he was left with nine feet of play, enough to assure his comfort

  while keeping him tethered within a safe distance of the bed.

  In previous somnambulistic episodes, he had performed complex tasks that

  had required some concentration, though nothing quite so tedious as the

  unraveling of well-made knots, which were often a challenge to him when

  he was awake. In his sleep, he would surely lack the coordination and

  mental focus to free himself and the effort to do so would be

  frustrating enough to wake him.

  Being thus hampered involved some danger. If a fire broke out in the

  night or if the house were damaged in an earthquake, he might be so

  delayed by the need to untie himself that he would perish in the smoke

  or beneath a collapsing wall. He had to risk it.

  When he turned out the bedside light and slipped under the blanket,

  trailing the rope from one arm, the glowing red numerals of the digital

  clock read twelve-fifty-eight. Staring at the dark ceiling, wondering

  what in the name of God he had become involved in out there on the road

  the summer before last, he waited for sleep to creep upon him.

  On the nightstand, the telephone was silent. If his number had not been

  unlisted, he
might have received, at that moment, a long-distance call

  from a lonely and frightened young woman in Boston, a call that would

  have radically changed the course of the next few weeks and might have

  saved lives.

  Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

  In the guest room of her only daughter's house, where a nightlight

  burned in consideration of Ernie's phobia, Faye Block listened to her

  husband as, asleep and dreaming, he mumbled into his pillow. A few

  minutes ago, she had been awakened when he had let out a soft cry and

  had thrashed for a moment in the sheets. Now she raised herself on one

  elbow, cocked her head, and listened intently, trying to decipher his

  muffled speech. He was saying the same thing again and again into the

  pillow. The almost panicky urgency in his voice made Faye nervous. She

  leaned closer to him, straining to understand.

  Suddenly he shifted his head just enough to turn his mouth from the

  pillow, and his words became clear though no less mysterious than when

  they had been muffled: "The moon, the moon, the moon, the moon .

  Las Vegas, Nevada.

  Jorja took Marcie into her own bed that night, because it did not seem

  like a good idea to leave the girl alone after the disturbing events of

  the day. She did not get much rest because all night Marcie seemed to

  phase in and out of nightmares, frequently kicking at the sheets,

  squirming vigorously as if to free herself from restraining hands, and

  talking in her sleep about doctors and needles. Jorja wondered how long

  this had been going on. Their bedrooms were separated by back-to-back

  closets insulated by hanging clothes, and the child's sleep-talk was

  very soft, so it was possible that she had passed a lot of nights in