Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers

by Strangers(Lit)

  including Christophson, moved away through a forest of headstones, past

  snow-laden pines and winter-stripped maples, toward the parking lot.

  "I've got to talk to that man," Ginger told Rita. "Be right back."

  Startled, Rita called after her, but Ginger did not pause or offer

  further explanation. She caught up with Christophson in the jagged

  shadows cast by the skeletal branches of an immense oak that was all

  black bark and crusted snow. She called his name, and he turned. He

  had piercing gray eyes, which widened when she told him who she was.

  "I can't help you," he said, and began to turn away from her.

  "Please," she said, putting a hand on his arm. "If you blame me for

  what happened to Pablo-"

  "Why should you care what I think, Doctor?"

  She held fast to his arm. "Wait. Please, for God's sake."

  Christophson surveyed the slowly dispersing crowd in the cemetery, and

  Ginger knew that he was afraid the wrong people-dangerous people-might

  see him with her and assume he was helping her as Pablo had done. His

  head twitched slightly, and Ginger thought it was an indication of his

  nervousness, but then she realized it was the faint tremor of

  Parkinson's disease. He said, "Dr. Weiss, if you're seeking some form

  of absolution, then by all means let me provide it. Pablo knew the

  risks, and he accepted them. He was the captain of his own fate."

  "Did he understand the risks? That's what I've got to know."

  Christophson seemed surprised. "I warned him myself."

  "Warned him about who? About what?"

  "I don't know who or what. But considering the enormous effort expended

  to tamper with your memory, you must've seen something of tremendous

  importance. I warned Pablo that whoever had brainwashed you was no

  amateur and that if they realized the two of you were trying to break

  through the Azrael Block, they might come after not just you but him as

  well." Christophson's gray eyes searched her eyes for a moment, and then

  he sighed. "He did tell you about his conversation with me?"

  "He told me everything-except about your warning. " Her eyes filled

  with tears again. "He didn't breathe a word of that."

  He withdrew one elegant but palsied hand from his pocket

  and gripped her arm reassuringly. "Doctor, now that you've told me

  this, I can't possibly lay any of the blame at your doorstep."

  "But I blame me," Ginger said in a voice thin with misery.

  "No. You can't blame yourself for any of it." Looking around again to

  make sure they were not under surveillance, Christophson opened the top

  two buttons of his overcoat, reached inside, plucked the display

  handkerchief from the breast pocket of his suit jacket, and gave it to

  Ginger. "Please stop punishing yourself. Our friend lived a full and

  fortunate life, Doctor. His death might've been violent, but it was

  relatively quick, which can be a blessing."

  Drying her eyes on the swatch of pale blue silk that he had given her,

  Ginger said, "He was a dear man."

  "He was," Christophson agreed. "And I'm beginning to understand why he

  took the risks he did for you. He said you were a very dear woman, and

  I see his judgment was as accurate and reliable as usual."

  She finished blotting her eyes. Her heart still felt pinched in a vise,

  but she began to believe there was a chance that guilt and grief would

  eventually give way to grief alone. "Thank you." As much to herself as

  to him, Ginger said, "What now?

  Where do I go from here?"

  "I'm in no position to help you," he said at once. "I've been out of

  the intelligence business for almost a decade, and I've no contacts any

  more. I've no idea who might be behind your memory block or why."

  "I wouldn't ask you to help me. I'm not risking any more innocent

  lives. I just thought you might have some idea how I can help myself."

  "Go to the police. It's their job to help."

  Ginger shook her head. "No. The police are slow, too slow. Most of

  them are overworked, and the rest are just bureaucrats in uniforms. My

  problem's too urgent to wait for them to solve it. Besides, I don't

  trust them. Suddenly I don't trust authorities of any kind. The tapes

  Pablo made of our sessions were gone when I took the police back to his

  apartment, so I didn't mention them. I spooked. I didn't tell the cops

  about my fugues or about how Pablo had been helping me. I just said

  we'd been friends, that I'd stopped by to have lunch and walked in on

  the killer. I let them think it was an ordinary

  burglary. Sheer paranoia. Didn't trust them. Still don't. So the

  cops are out." "Then find another hypnotist to regress you-"

  "No. I'm not risking any more innocent lives," she repeated.

  "I understand. But those are the only suggestions I have."

  He shoved both hands into the deep pockets of his overcoat. "I'm sorry."

  "No need to be," she said.

  He started to turn away, hesitated, sighed. "Doctor, I want you to

  understand me. I served in the war, the big war, with some distinction.

  Later, I was a good ambassador. As head of the CIA and as a senator, I

  made many difficult decisions, some that put me in personal danger. I

  never backed away from risk. But I'm an old man now. Seventy-six, and

  I feel older. Parkinson's. A bad heart. High blood pressure. I have

  a wife I love very much, and if anything happens to me, she'll be alone.

  I don't know how well she'd deal with being alone, Dr. Weiss."

  "Please, there's no need to justify yourself," Ginger said. She realized

  how completely and quickly their roles had reversed. In the beginning,

  he had been the one full of reassurances and absolution; now she was

  returning the favor. Jacob, her father, had often said that the capacity

  for mercy was humankind's greatest virtue, and that the giving and

  receiving of mercy formed a bond unbreakable. Ginger remembered Jacob's

  words now because, in allowing Alex Christophson to allay her guilt and

  in trying to allay his, she felt that bond.

  Apparently, he felt it, too, for although he did not stop trying to

  explain himself, his explanations became more intimate and were offered

  now in a tone of voice that was less defensive and more conspiratorial.

  "Quite frankly, Doctor, my reluctance to get involved is not so much

  because I find life infinitely precious but because I am increasingly

  afraid of death." As he spoke, he reached into an inside pocket and

  withdrew a notepad and pen. "In my life I've done some things of which

  I'm not proud." Holding the pen in his palsied right hand, he began to

  print. "True, most of those sins were committed in the line of duty.

  Government and espionage are both necessary, but neither is a clean

  business. In those days, I didn't believe in God or an afterlife. Now

  I wonder.... And wondering, I'm sometimes afraid." He tore the top page

  from the pad. "Afraid of what might await me after death, you see.

  That's why I want to hold on to life as long as I can, Doctor. That's

  why, God help me, I've become a coward in my old age."

  As Christophson folded and passed to her the slip of paper on which he

  had been printing
, Ginger realized that he had managed to put his back

  to all of the remaining mourners before he had removed the notepad and

  pen from his coat. No one could have seen what he had done.

  He said, "I've just given you the phone number of an antique store in

  Greenwich, Connecticut. My younger brother, Philip, owns the place. You

  can't call me direct because the wrong people may have seen us talking;

  my telephone might be tapped. I won't risk associating with you, Dr.

  Weiss, and I won't pursue any investigation of your problem. However, I

  have many years of broad experience in these matters, and there may be

  times when that experience will be of help to you. You may encounter

  something you don't understand, a situation you don't know how to deal

  with, and I may be able to offer advice. Just call Philip and leave

  your number with him. He'll immediately call me at home and use a

  prearranged codeword. Then I'll go out to a pay phone, return his call,

  get the number you left with him, and contact you as quickly as

  possible. Experience, my peculiar kind of malevolent experience, is all

  I'm willing to offer you, Dr. Weiss."

  "It's more than enough. You're not obligated to help me at all."

  "Good luck." He turned abruptly and walked away, his boots crunching in

  the frozen snow.

  Ginger returned to the grave, where Rita, the mortician, and two

  laborers were the only people remaining. The velvet curtain around the

  grave had been collapsed and removed. A plastic tarpaulin had been

  pulled off a waiting mound of earth.

  "What was that all about?" Rita asked.

  "Tell you later," Ginger said, bending down to pick up a rose from the

  pile of flowers beside Pablo Jackson's final resting place. She leaned

  forward and tossed the bloom into the hole, on top of the casket. "Alay

  ha-sholem. May this sleep be only a little dream between this world and

  something better. Baru(Th ha-Shem."

  As she and Rita walked away, Ginger heard the laborers begin to shovel

  dirt onto the casket.

  Elko County, Nevada.

  On Thursday, Dr. Fontelaine was satisfied that Ernie Block was cured of

  his disabling nyctophobia. "Fastest cure I've ever seen," he said. "I

  guess you Marines are tougher than ordinary mortals."

  On Saturday, January 11, after only four weeks in Milwaukee, Ernie and

  Faye went home. They flew into Reno on United, then caught a ten-seat

  commuter flight to Elko, arriving at eleven-twenty-seven in the morning.

  Sandy Sarver met them at the airport in Elko, though Ernie did not

  immediately recognize her. She was standing by the small terminal, in

  the crystalline Winter sunshine, waving as Ernie and Faye disembarked.

  Gond was the pale-faced mouse, the familiar slump-shouldered frump. For

  the first time since Ernie had known her, Sandy was wearing a little

  makeup, eye shadow, and lipstick. Her nails were no longer bitten. Her

  hair, always limp and dull and neglected in the past, was now full,

  glossy. She had gained ten pounds. She had always looked older than

  she was. Now she looked years younger.

  She blushed when Ernie and Faye raved about her makeover. She pretended

  the changes were of little consequence, but she was clearly pleased by

  their praise, approval, and delight.

  She had changed in other ways, as well. For one thing, she was usually

  reticent and shy, but as they walked to the parking lot and put the

  baggage in the back of her red pickup, she asked lots of questions about

  Lucy, Frank, and the grandchildren. She did not ask about Ernie's

  phobia because she knew nothing of it; they had kept his condition

  secret and had explained the extension of their Wisconsin visit by

  saying they wanted to spend more time with the grandchildren. In the

  truck, as Sandy drove through Elko and onto the interstate, she was

  downright garrulous as she spoke of the Christmas just past and of

  business at the Tranquility Grille.

  As much as anything, Sandy's driving surprised Ernie. He knew she had

  an aversion to four-wheel travel. But now she drove fast, with an ease

  and skill Ernie had never seen in her before.

  Faye, sitting between Ernie and Sandy, was aware of this change, too,

  for she gave Ernie meaningful looks when Sandy maneuvered the pickup

  with special fluidity and audacity.

  Then a bad thing happened.

  Less than a mile from the motel, Ernie's interest in Sandy's

  metamorphosis was suddenly displaced by the queer feeling that had first

  seized him on December 10, when he'd been coming home from Elko with the

  new lighting fixtures: the feeling that a particular piece of ground,

  half a mile ahead, south of the highway, was calling him. The feeling

  that something strange had happened to him out there. As before, it was

  simultaneously an absurd and gripping feeling, characterized by the

  eerie attraction of a talismanic place in a dream.

  This was an unsettling development because Ernie had supposed that the

  peculiar magnetism of that place had been, somehow, a part of the same

  mental disturbance that resulted in his crippling dread of the dark. His

  nyctophobia cured, he had assumed that all other symptoms of his

  temporary psychological imbalance would disappear along with his fear of

  the night. So this seemed like a bad sign. He did not want to consider

  what it might indicate about the permanency of his cure.

  Faye was telling Sandy about Christmas morning with the grandkids, and

  Sandy was laughing, but to Ernie the laughter and conversation faded. As

  they drew nearer the plot of ground that exerted a mesmeric attraction

  on him, Ernie squinted through the sun-streaked windshield, possessed by

  a sense of impending epiphany. Something of monumental importance

  seemed about to happen, and he was filled with fear and awe.

  Then, as they were passing that beguiling place, Ernie became aware that

  their speed had dropped. Sandy had slowed to under forty miles an hour,

  half the speed she had maintained since Elko. Even as Ernie realized

  the truck had slowed, it accelerated again. He looked at Sandy too late

  to be certain that she also had been temporarily spellbound by that same

  portion of the landscape, for now she was listening to Faye and watching

  the road ahead and bringing the pickup back to speed. But it seemed to

  him there was a strange look on her face, and he stared at her in

  bewilderment, wondering how she could share his mysterious and

  irrational fascination with that piece of quite ordinary land.

  "It's good to be home," Faye said as Sandy switched on the right-turn

  signal and steered the truck toward the exit lane.

  Ernie watched Sandy for an indication that she had slowed the truck in

  answer to the same eerie call that he felt, but he saw none of the fear

  that the call engendered in him. She was smiling. He must have been

  wrong. She had slowed the truck for some other reason.

  A chill had taken residence in his bones, and now as they drove up the

  sloped county road and turned into the motel lot, he felt a cold damp

  dew of sweat on his palms, on his scalp.

  He looked at his watch.
Not because he needed to know the time. But

  because he wanted to know how long until sundown. About five hours.

  What if it wasn't darkness in general that he feared? What if it was a

  specific darkness? Perhaps he had quickly overcome his phobia in

  Milwaukee because he was only mildly frightened by the night out there.

  Perhaps his real fear, his deep fear, was of the darkness of the Nevada

  plains. Could a phobia be that narrowly focused, that localized?

  Surely not. Yet he looked at his watch.

  Sandy parked in front of the motel office, and when they got out of the

  truck and went around to the tailgate to get the luggage, she hugged

  both Faye and Ernie. "I'm glad you're back. I missed you both. Now

  I'd better get over to the diner and help Ned. Lunch hour's started."

  Ernie and Faye watched Sandy as she hurried away, and Faye said, "What

  on earth do you suppose happened to her?"

  "Damned if I know," Ernie said.

  Her breath steaming in the cold air, Faye said, "At first, I thought she

  must've learned she's pregnant. But now I don't think so. If she was

  pregnant and overjoyed about it, she'd have told us. She'd have been

  bursting with the news. I think it's something . . . else."

  Ernie pulled two of the four suitcases out of the back of the truck and

  stood them on the ground, surreptitiously glancing at his watch as he

  put the bags down. Sundown was five minutes closer.

  Faye sighed. "Well, whatever the cause, I'm sure happy for her."