by Dean Koontz
Grinning broadly, Roy mashed the insects into the concrete. A dozen. Two dozen. As he killed them other ants came out of the hill and raced into his shadow, as if they had abruptly realized that their destiny was not mindless labor in the hive but sacrificial death under the hands of a monster god a million times their size.
Roy paused now and then to look at the greasy, rust-colored remains that stained his fingers. “No bones,” he said. “They squash into nothing, into just a little drop of juice, ‘cause they don’t have any bones.”
Colin watched.
17
After Roy had smashed a great many ants and had kicked apart their hill, he and Colin played water polo with a blue-and-green beach ball. Roy won.
By three o‘clock they were tired of the pool. They changed out of their swimsuits and sat in the kitchen, eating chocolate-chip cookies and drinking lemonade.
Colin drained his glass, chewed on a sliver of ice, and said, “Do you trust me?”
“Sure.”
“Did I pass the test?”
“We’re blood brothers, aren’t we?”
“Then tell me.”
“Tell you what?”
“You know. The big secret.”
“I already told you,” Roy said.
“You did?”
“I told you Friday night, after we left the Pit, before we went out to the Fairmont to see that porno flick.”
Colin shook his head. “If you told me, I didn’t hear.”
“You heard, but you didn’t want to.”
“What kind of double-talk is that?”
Roy shrugged. He rattled the ice in his glass.
“Tell me again,” Colin said. “This time I want to hear.”
“I kill people.”
“Jeez. That’s really your big secret?”
“Seemed like a hell of a secret to me.”
“But it’s not true.”
“Am I your blood brother?”
“Yeah.”
“Do blood brothers lie to each other?”
“They’re not supposed to,” Colin admitted. “Okay. If you killed people, they must have had names. What were their names?”
“Stephen Rose and Philip Pacino.”
“Who were they?”
“Just two kids.”
“Friends?”
“They could have been if they’d wanted.”
“Why’d you kill ‘em?”
“They refused to be blood brothers with me. After that I couldn’t trust them.”
“You mean you’d have killed me if I hadn’t wanted to be blood brothers?”
“Maybe.”
“Bullshit.”
“If it makes you happy to think so.”
“Where’d you kill them?”
“Right here in Santa Leona.”
“When?”
“I got Phil last summer, the first day of August, the day after his birthday, and I nailed Steve Rose the summer before that.”
“How?”
Roy smiled dreamily and closed his eyes, as if he were reliving it in his mind. “I pushed Steve off the cliff at Sandman’s Cove. He hit the rocks at the bottom. You should have seen him bounce. When they brought him up the next day, he was such a mess that even his old man couldn’t make a positive ID.”
“What about the other one—Phil Pacino?”
“We were at his house, building a model airplane,” Roy said. “His parents weren’t home. He didn’t have any brothers or sisters. Nobody knew I’d gone there. It was a perfect opportunity, so I squirted lighter fluid on his head and lit him.”
“Jeez.”
“As soon as I could see for sure that he was dead, I got the hell out of there. The whole house burned down. It was a real popper. A couple of days later, the fire marshal decided that Phil had started it by playing with matches.”
“You sure tell a good story,” Colin said.
Roy opened his eyes but didn’t speak.
Colin took their plates and glasses to the sink, washed them, and stacked them in the rack. As he worked he said, “You know, Roy, with your imagination, maybe you ought to write horror stories when you grow up. You’d make a bundle at it.”
Roy made no move to help with the clean-up. “You mean you still think I’m playing some sort of game with you?”
“Well, you make up a couple of names—”
“Steve Rose and Phil Pacino were real people. You can check on that easy enough. Just go to the library and look through the back issues of the News Register. You can read all about how they died.”
“Maybe I’ll do that.”
“Maybe you should.”
“But even if this Steve Rose did fall off the cliff at Sandman’s Cove, and even if Phil Pacino burned to death in his own home—it wouldn’t prove anything. Not a thing. Both of them could have been accidents.”
“Then why would I try to take credit for them?”
“To make your story about being a killer seem more realistic. To make me believe it. To set me up for some kind of joke.”
“You sure can be stubborn,” Roy said.
“So can you.”
“What will it take to make you face the truth?”
“I already know the truth,” Colin said. He finished the dishes and dried his hands on a red-and-white-checked dish towel.
Roy got up and went to the window. He stared at the sun-dappled swimming pool. “I guess the only way I’m ever going to convince you is to kill someone.”
“Yeah,” Colin said. “Why don’t you do that?”
“You think I won’t.”
“I know you won’t.”
Roy turned to him. Sunlight streamed through the window, painted one side of Roy’s face, left one side in shadow, and made one of his eyes even more fiercely blue than the other. “Are you daring me to kill someone?”
“Yeah.”
“Then if I do it,” Roy said, “half the responsibility will be yours.”
“Okay.”
“Just like that?”
“just like that.”
“Doesn’t it bother you that you might wind up in jail?” Roy asked.
“No. Because you won’t do it.”
“Is there anyone special you’d like me to take care of, anyone you’d like to see dead?”
Colin grinned because he was now certain that it was just a game. “Nobody particular. Anyone you want. Why don’t you pick a name out of the phone book?”
Roy turned to the window again.
Colin leaned against the counter and waited. After a while Roy looked at his watch and said, “I’ve got to be getting home. My parents are going to dinner at my Uncle Marlon’s place. He’s a genuine asshole. But I have to go with them.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute!” Colin said. “You can’t change the subject that easily. You can’t slip out of it. We were talking about who you’re going to kill.”
“I wasn’t trying to slip out of it.”
“Well?”
“I’ve got to think about it for a while.”
“Yeah,” Colin said. “Like for fifty years.”
“No. By tomorrow I’ll tell you who it’ll be.”
“I won’t let you forget.”
Roy nodded somberly. “And once I’m rolling, I won’t let you stop me.”
18
Weezy Jacobs had an important dinner engagement Sunday evening. She gave Colin money to eat at Charlie’s Cafe, and she also gave him a short lecture about the importance of ordering something more nutritious than a greasy cheeseburger and french fries.
On his way to dinner, Colin stopped at Rhine-hart‘s, a big drugstore one block from the cafe. Rhine-hart’s had a large paperback-book section. Colin browsed through the titles in the wire pockets, searching for interesting science fiction and novels about the supernatural.
After a while he realized that a pretty girl, about his own age, had walked up to the racks a few feet away. There were two shelves of books above the wire pockets,
and those titles were shelved sideways instead of with their covers showing; she was looking at these, her head tilted to one side so that she could read the spines. She was wearing shorts, and for a moment he stared at her lovely slender legs. She had a graceful neck. Her hair was golden.
She became aware that he was staring at her, and she looked up, smiled. “Hi.”
He smiled, too. “Hi.”
“You’re a friend of Roy Borden‘s, aren’t you?”
“How’d you know that?”
She cocked her head to one side again, as if he were another book on the shelf and she were reading his title. She said, “The two of you are almost like Siamese twins. I hardly ever see one without the other.”
“You see me now,” he said.
“You’re new in town.”
“Yeah. Since the first of June.”
“What’s your name?”
“Colin Jacobs. What’s yours?”
“Heather.”
“That’s pretty.”
“Thank you.”
“Heather what?”
“Promise you won’t laugh.”
“Huh?”
“Promise you won’t laugh at my name.”
“Why would I laugh at your name?”
“It’s Heather Lipshitz.”
“No,” he said.
“Yes. It would be bad enough if it were Zelda Lipshitz. Or Sadie Lipshitz. But Heather Lipshitz is worse because the two don’t go together, and the first name just calls attention to the last. You didn’t laugh.”
“Of course not.”
“Most kids do.”
“Most kids are stupid.”
“You like to read?” Heather asked.
“Yeah.”
“What do you read?”
“Science fiction. You?”
“I’ll read almost anything. I’ve read some science fiction. Stranger in a Strange Land.”
“That’s a great book.”
“You see Star Wars?” she asked.
“Four times. And Close Encounters six times.”
“Have you seen Alien?”
“Yeah. You enjoy stuff like that?”
“Sure. When there’s an old Christopher Lee movie on TV, you can’t pull me away from the set,” she said.
He was amazed. “You actually like horror movies?”
“The scarier the better.” She looked at her wristwatch. “Well, I’ve got to get home for dinner. It’s been real nice talking to you, Colin.”
As she started to turn away, he said, “Uh ... wait a sec.” She looked back at him, and he shifted awkwardly from one foot to the other. “Uh... there’s a new horror flick coming to the Baronet this week.”
“I saw the previews.”
“Did it look good to you?”
“Might be,” she said.
“Would you ... well ... I mean ... do you think ...”
She smiled. “I’d like to.”
“You would?”
“Sure.”
“Well ... should I call you or what?”
“Call me.”
“What’s your number?”
“It’s in the book. Believe it or not, we’re the only Lipshitz family in town.”
He grinned. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Okay.”
“If that’s all right.”
“That’s fine.”
“Bye.”
“Good-bye, Colin.”
He watched her walk out of the store. His heart was racing.
Jeez.
Something strange was happening to him. For sure, for sure. He never before had been able to talk like that with a girl—or with a girl like that. He usually got tongue-tied right at the start, and the whole conversation went into the toilet. But not this time. He’d been smooth. For God’s sake, he’d even made a date with her! His first date. Something sure was happening to him.
But what?
And why?
Several hours later, as he lay in bed, listening to a Los Angeles radio station, unable to sleep, Colin thought about all of the wonderful new developments in his life. With a terrific friend like Roy, with an important position like team manager, and with a girl as pretty and nice as Heather—what more could he possibly ask?
He had never been so content.
Roy was the most important part of his new life, of course. Without Roy, he would never have been brought to the attention of Coach Molinoff and would never have gotten the job as junior-varsity team manager. And without Roy’s liberating influence, he would very likely never have had the nerve to ask Heather for a date. More than that—she probably wouldn’t even have said hello to him if he hadn’t been Roy’s friend. Wasn’t that the first thing she had said to him? You’re a friend of Roy Borden‘s, aren’t you? If he hadn’t been a friend of Roy’s, she probably wouldn’t even have looked at him twice.
But she had looked twice.
And she had agreed to date him.
Life was good.
He thought about Roy’s strange stories. The cat in the birdcage. The boy burned with lighter fluid. He knew those were just tall tales. Tests. Roy was testing him for something. He put the cat and the burned boy out of his mind. He wasn’t going to let those silly stories destroy his lovely mood.
He closed his eyes and pictured himself dancing with Heather in a magnificent ballroom. He was wearing a tuxedo. She was in a red gown. There was a crystal chandelier. They danced so well together that they seemed to be floating.
19
Early Monday afternoon, Colin was at the worktable in his bedroom, putting together a plastic model of Lon Chaney as the Phantom of the Opera. When the telephone rang, he had to run into his mother’s room to answer it, for he had no extension of his own.
It was Roy. “Colin, you’ve got to come right away.”
“Come where?”
“My house.”
Colin looked at the digital read-out clock on the nightstand: 1:05. He said, “We were supposed to meet at two o‘clock.”
“I know. But you’ve got to come now.”
“Why?”
“My folks aren’t home, and there’s something here that you absolutely have to see. I can’t talk about it on the phone. You’ve got to come now, right away, just as quick as you can. Hurry!”
Roy hung up.
The game continues, Colin thought.
Ten minutes later, Colin rang the bell at the Borden house.
Roy answered the door. He was flushed and excited.
“What’s up?” Colin asked.
Roy pulled him inside and slammed the door. They stood in the foyer. The immaculate living room lay beyond; the emerald-green drapes filtered the sun and fllled the place with cold light that gave Colin the feeling they were deep beneath the sea.
“I want you to get a good look at Sarah,” Roy said.
“Who?”
“I told you about her Friday night, when we were at the beach steps on the palisades, just before we split up. She’s the girl, the one who looks good enough to be in a pom movie, the one I think we can find a way to screw.”
Colin blinked. “You’ve got her here?”
“Not exactly. Come on upstairs. You’ll see.”
Colin had never been in Roy’s bedroom before, and it surprised him. It didn’t look like a kid’s room; in fact, it didn’t look like a place where anyone, either child or adult, really lived. The nap on the carpet stood up as if it had been vacuumed only minutes ago. The dark pine furniture was highly polished; Colin couldn’t see a nick or a scratch in it, but he could see his reflection. No dust. No grime. No fingerprints around the light switch. The bed was neatly made, the lines as straight and the comers as tightly tucked as those on a bunk in an Army barracks. In addition to the furniture, there was a big red dictionary and the uniform volumes of an encyclopedia. But nothing else. Nothing else at all. There were no knickknacks, no model airplanes, no comic books, no sports equipment, nothing to show that Roy had any hobbies or even a
ny normal human interests. Quite clearly, the room was a mirror of Mrs. Borden’s personality and not her son’s.
To Colin’s eyes, the oddest thing about the place was the total absence of decoration on the walls. No paintings. No photographs. No posters. In the downstairs foyer, in the living room, and on the wall along the stairs, there were a couple of oils, a watercolor, and a few inexpensive prints, but here the walls were bare and white. Colin felt as if he were in a monk’s cell.
Roy led him to a window.
Not more than fifty feet away, in the backyard of the house next door, a woman was sunbathing. She was wearing a white bikini and was lying on a red beach towel that was draped across a cot. Small cotton pads shielded her eyes from the sun.
“She’s really a terrific piece of ass,” Roy said.
Her arms were at her sides, palms turned up as if in supplication. She was tan and lean and shapely.
“That’s Sarah?” Colin asked.
“Sarah Callahan. She lives next door.” Roy picked up a pair of binoculars that had been on the floor beneath the window. “Here. Take a closer look.”
“What if she sees me?”
“She won’t.”
He put the glasses to his eyes, focused them, and found the woman. If she actually had been as close as she suddenly appeared to be, she would have felt his breath on her skin.
Sarah was beautiful. Even in repose, her features held great sensual promise. Her lips were full, ripe; she licked them once while he watched.
A peculiar sense of power overcame Colin. In his mind he touched and caressed Sarah Callahan, but in reality she was unaware of it. The binoculars were his lips and tongue and fingers, feeling and tasting her, exploring her, surreptitiously violating the sanctity of her body. He experienced mild synesthesia: Magically, his eyes seemed to possess senses other than sight. With his eyes he smelled her fresh, thick, yellow hair. With his eyes he felt the texture of her skin, the pliancy of her flesh, the soft roundness of her breasts, and the moist warmth in the musky junction of her thighs. With his eyes he kissed her concave belly and tasted the salty beads of perspiration that ringed her like a jeweled belt. For a moment Colin felt that he could do anything to her that he wished; he had complete immunity. He was the invisible man.
“How’d you like to get in her pants?” Roy asked.