by Dean Koontz
Colin began to notice the minutiae of the little world in which he cowered. The Cadillac was hard and warm against his back. The grass was dry and stiff and smelled like hay. Heat radiated upward as the earth gave off its stored sun to the cooler night. As the final light seeped out of the sky, the shadows on the land appeared to sway and shiver like dark masses of kelp at the bottom of the sea. There were noises, too: the shrill cry of a bird; the furtive scampering of a field mouse; the omnipresent toads; and the wind soughing through the eucalyptus trees that lined three sides of the property.
But Roy didn’t make a sound.
Was he still out there?
Had he gone home in a rage?
Too nervous to keep still for long, Colin rose up far enough to look through the Cadillac’s dirty windows, at the wreckage-strewn field beyond. There was not much to be seen. The cars were fading rapidly into the spreading stain of night.
Suddenly his attention was diverted as he sensed rather than heard movement behind him. He whirled, heart pounding. Roy loomed over him, grinning, demonic. He was holding a tire iron as if it were a baseball bat.
For a moment neither of them moved. They were totally immobilized by a web of memories, by pleasant recollections that were like countless strands of spider silk. They had been friends, but now they were enemies. The change had been too abrupt, the motivation too bizarre for either of them to puzzle out the meaning of it. At least that’s what Colin felt. And as they stared at each other, he began to hope Roy would see how crazy this was and would regain his senses.
“I’m your blood brother,” Colin said softly.
Roy swung the tire iron. Colin fell to avoid the blow, and the iron smashed through the side of the Cadillac.
In one swift graceful movement, screaming all the while like a banshee, Roy pulled the tire iron out of the window, raised it high, as if he were chopping wood, and brought it down with all his strength. Colin rolled away from the Cadillac, tumbled over and over, through the crackling grass, as the club descended. He heard it strike the earth with incredible force where he had been just a second ago, and he knew it would have shattered his skull if he had not gotten out from under it.
“Son-of-a-bitch!” Roy said.
Colin rolled five or six yards and scrambled to his feet. As he got up, Roy rushed him and struck with the tire iron again. It cut the air—whoosh!—and missed him by only a few inches. Gasping, Colin stumbled backward, trying to stay out of Roy’s reach, and he came up against another car.
“Trapped,” Roy said. “Got you trapped, you little bastard.”
Roy swung the club so fast that Colin almost didn’t see it coming. He ducked at the last possible instant, and the iron bar whistled over his head; it rang off the automobile behind him. The loud, sharp sound was like a rifle shot striking a huge unmelodious bell, and it echoed through the junkyard. The iron hit the car so hard that it leaped from Roy’s grasp, spun up into the night, and fell back to the grass a few yards from him.
Roy cried out in agony. The shock of the impact had been transmitted through the tire iron, into his flesh. He gripped one stinging hand with the other and swore at the top of his voice.
Colin took advantage of Roy’s brief incapacitation and got the hell out of there.
24
The interior of the Chevrolet stank. There were quite a few distinctly different, unpleasant odors, and Colin was able to imagine the source of some of them, although not all. Old grease alive with mold. Damp upholstery laced with mildew. Rotting carpet. But one of the smells that he could not identify was the strongest of them all: an odd fragrance like cooking ham, sweet one moment but rancid the next. It made him wonder if there was a dead animal in the car, a decaying squirrel or mouse or rat, festooned with writhing maggots, just inches away in the impenetrable dark. At times the image of an oozing corpse became so vivid in his mind that he gagged with revulsion, even though he knew the noise he made, small as it was, might draw Roy’s attention.
Colin was stretched out on the Chevrolet’s musty back seat, on his right side, facing front, knees drawn up a bit, arms against his chest, fetal, afraid, sweating yet shivering, seeking safety in the deep shadows but uncomfortably aware that there was no real security to be found in this place. The car’s rear window and two rear side windows were intact, but all the glass in front was gone. Now and again, a breeze eddied into the car, but it didn’t freshen the air; it only stirred the odors until they became thicker, even more pungent than they had been. He listened intently for any sound of Roy that the breeze might bring, but for a long time the junkyard was silent.
Night had come at last. On the western horizon, every trace of the sun had been blacked over. A fragment of the moon hung low in the east, but its light did not penetrate the interior of the automobile.
Lying in the darkness, Colin had nothing to do but think, and he could think of nothing but Roy. Colin could no longer resist the truth: This was not a game: Roy was really a killer. Roy would have pushed the truck down the hill. No doubt about it. He would have wrecked the train. He would have raped and killed Sarah Callahan if Colin hadn’t found holes in his plan. And, Colin thought, he would have cracked my head open with that tire iron if I hadn’t gotten away from him. There was not the slightest doubt about that either. The blood-brother oath no longer meant anything. Perhaps it never had. He supposed it was even possible that Roy had killed those two boys, just as he claimed he had: one pushed off the cliff at Sandman’s Cove, the other drenched with lighter fluid and set afire.
But why?
The truth was clear, but its origins were not. The truth made no sense to him, and that was frightening. The facts were all in plain sight; but the facts were the end product of a long manufacturing process, and the machinery that had made them could not be seen.
Questions tumbled through Colin’s mind. Why does Roy want to kill people? Does he get pleasure from it? What kind of pleasure, for God’s sake? Is he a lunatic? Why doesn’t he look like a lunatic if that’s what he is? Why does he look so normal? He asked himself those questions and a hundred others, but he had no answers.
Colin expected the world to be simple and straightforward. He liked to be able to divide it into two camps: forces for good and forces for evil. In that way every event and a problem and solution clearly had a black side and a white side, and you always knew exactly where you stood. He pretty much believed that the real world was like the land in The Lord of the Rings, with the blessed and the damned marshaled into two distinct armies. But no matter how hard he probed at it, regardless of the angle from which he considered it, Roy’s behavior over the past month could be labeled neither saintly nor entirely wicked. Roy had many qualities that Colin envied, admired, and wished to acquire; but Roy was also a cold-blooded murderer. Roy was not black. He was not white. He wasn’t even gray. He was a hundred, no, a thousandshades of gray, all whirling and blending and shifting together like a thousand columns of smoke. Colin could not reconcile his view of life with the sudden discovery of a creature like Roy. The endless ramifications of Roy’s quicksilver morality were frightening. It meant that Colin would have to reconsider everything in his cozy philosophy. All the people in his life would have to be taken out of the pigeonholes into which he had stuffed them. He would have to judge each of them again, more carefully than he had done before, and then he would have to put them... Put them where? If there was no black-and-white system, there were no pigeonholes either. If there was not always a clear division between right and wrong, people could not safely be labeled, slotted, and forgotten; and life would be unbearably difficult to manage.
Of course, Roy might be possessed.
As soon as that thought crossed Colin’s mind, he knew it was the answer, and he eagerly seized it. If Roy was possessed by an evil spirit, he was not responsible for the monstrous acts he committed. Roy himself was good, but the demon within him was evil. Yes! That was it! That explained the apparent contradiction. Possessed. Like the girl in The Ex
orcist. Or the little boy in The Omen. Or perhaps Roy was possessed by an alien, a thing from another planet, an entity that had traveled to earth from the far stars. Sure. That must be it. That was a better, more scientific, less superstitious explanation than the first. Not a demon, but an evil, alien being. Maybe it was similar to the villains in the old Don Siegel movie, Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Or even more likely, maybe the thing that had Roy under its power was a parasite from another galaxy like in that great Heinlein novel, The Puppet Masters. If that were the case, there were steps he must take at once, without a moment’s delay, while there was still a chance, however slim, to save the world. First of all, he had to find irrefutable proof of the invasion. Then he had to use that proof to convince other people that there was a clear and present danger. And finally he had to—
“Colin!”
He jerked, sat up, terrified, shaking. For a moment he was too shocked to get his breath.
“Hey, Colin!”
The sound of Roy calling his name snapped him back to reality.
“Colin, can you hear me?”
Roy was not close. At least a hundred yards away. Shouting.
Colin leaned toward the front seat, peered through the empty windshield frame, but he could not see anything. “Colin, I made a mistake.”
Colin waited.
“Do you hear me?” Roy said.
Colin didn’t respond.
“I did a very stupid thing,” Roy said.
Colin shook his head. He knew what was coming, and he was amazed that Roy would try anything so obvious.
“I carried the game too far,” Roy said.
It won’t work, Colin thought. You won’t convince me. Not now. Not any more.
“I guess I scared you more than I meant to,” Roy said “I’m sorry. I really am.”
“Jeez,” Colin said softly, to himself.
“I didn’t really want to wreck the train.”
Colin stretched out on the seat once more, on his side, knees drawn up, down in the shadows that smelled of decay.
For a few minutes, Roy went through other verses of his siren song, but eventually he realized that Colin was not going to be entranced by it. Roy was unable to conceal his frustration. With each patently insincere exhortation, his voice grew increasingly strained. Finally he exploded: “You rotten little creep! I’ll find you. I’ll get my hands on you. I’m going to beat your fuckin’ head in, you little son-of-a-bitch! You traitor!”
Then silence.
The wind, of course.
And crickets, toads.
But not a peep from Roy.
The quiet was unnerving. Colin would have preferred to hear Roy cursing, bellowing, and crashing about the junkyard in search of him, for then he would have known where the enemy was.
As he listened for Roy, the sometimes sweet and sometimes rancid hamlike odor grew stronger than ever, and he developed a macabre explanation for it. The Chevy had been in a terrible accident; the front end was squashed and twisted; the windshield was gone; both front doors were buckled-one in, one out; the steering wheel was broken in half, a semicircle that ended in jagged points. Perhaps (Colin theorized) the driver had lost a hand in the crash. Perhaps the severed hand had fallen to the floor. Perhaps it had somehow gotten under the seat, into a recess where it could not be reached or even seen. Perhaps the ambulance crew had looked for the amputated member but had been unable to find it. The car had been towed to Hermit Hobson’s place, and the hand had begun to wither and rot. And then... then... Oh God, and then it was just like that 0’Henry story in which a blood-spotted rag had fallen behind a radiator and, due to unique chemical and temperature conditions, had acquired a life of its own. Colin shuddered. That’s what had happened to the hand. He felt it. He knew it. The hand had started to decompose, but then a combination of intense summer heat and the chemical composition of the dirt under the seat had caused an incredible, evil change in the dead flesh. The process of decay had been arrested, though not reversed, and the hand had been infused with an eerie sort of life, a malevolent half life. And now, right this minute, he was in the car, in the dark, alone with the damned thing. It knew he was here. It could not see or hear or smell, but it knew. Mottled brown and green and black, slimy, riddled with weeping pustules, the hand must even now be dragging itself out from beneath the front seat and across the floorboards. If he reached down to the floor, he would find it, and it would seize him. Its cold fingers would grip like steel pincers, and it would—
No, no, no! I’ve got to stop this, Colin told himself. What the hell’s the matter with me?
Roy was out there, hunting him. He had to listen for Roy and be prepared. He had to concentrate. Roy was the real danger, not some imaginary disembodied hand.
As if to confirm the advice that Colin had given himself, Roy began to make noise again. A car door slammed not far away. A moment later there was the sound of another rusted door being wrenched open; it screeched as the seal that time had put upon it was broken. After a few seconds, that door, too, slammed shut.
Roy was searching the cars.
Colin sat up, cocked his head.
Another corroded door opened with noisy protest.
Colin could not see anything important through the missing windshield.
He felt caged.
Trapped.
The third door slammed.
Panicky, Colin slid to the left, got off the back seat, leaned over the front seat as far as he could, and stuck his head out the front driver’s side window. The fresh air that hit his face was cool and smelled of the sea even this far inland. His eyes had adjusted to the night, and the partial moon cast just enough light for him to see eighty or a hundred feet into the junkyard.
Roy was a shadow among shadows, barely visible, four cars in front of the Chevrolet in which Colin was hiding. Roy opened the door of another junker, leaned into it, came out a moment later, and threw the door shut. He moved toward the next car, closer to the Chevy.
Colin returned to the rear seat and slid quickly over to the door on the right. He had come in on the left side, but that’s where Roy was now.
Another door crashed shut: ka-chunk!
Roy was only two cars away.
Colin took hold of the handle, then realized that he didn’t know if the right-hand door worked. He had used only the one on the left. What if this one was jammed and made a lot of noise but wouldn’t open? Roy would come on the double and trap him in here.
Colin hesitated, licked his lips.
He felt as if he had to pee.
He clamped his legs together.
The sensation was still there, and in fact it was getting worse: a warm pain in his loins.
Please, God, he thought, don’t make me have to pee. Not here. Not now. It’s the wrong damned place for that!
Ka-chunk!
Roy was one car away.
There was no time to worry whether the right-hand door would work or not. He had no choice but to try it and take his chances. He tugged on the handle. It moved. He took a deep breath, nearly choked on the rank air, and pushed the door all the way open with one violent shove. He winced at the loud scraping sound it made but thanked God that it functioned at all.
Frantically, gracelessly, he clambered out of the Chevy, making no effort to be quiet now that the door had betrayed him. He took two steps, tripped over a muffler, dropped to his knees, popped up again as if he were on springs, and bolted into the darkness.
“Hey!” Roy said from the far side of the car. The sudden explosive movement had caught him by surprise. “Hey, wait a minute.”
25
Running at his top speed, Colin saw the tire a split second before it would have tripped him. He jumped over it, side-stepped a pile of fenders, and ran on through the high grass. He turned left and rounded a battered Dodge delivery van that was up on blocks. After a brief hesitation and a quick glance behind him, he sank to the ground and wriggled under the truck.
As Colin slipped o
ut of sight, Roy came around the front of the van and stopped, looked both ways. When he saw that that avenue of the maze was deserted, he spat on the ground. “Damn.”
The night was very dark, but from his hiding place beneath the Dodge, Colin could see Roy’s white sneakers. Colin was lying on his belly, his head turned to the left, right cheek pressed against the earth; and Roy was standing no more than a yard away. He could have grabbed the other boy’s ankle and toppled him. But then what?
After a moment of indecision, Roy opened the door on the driver’s side of the van. When he saw that no one was in there, he slammed the door and stalked to the rear of the Dodge.
Colin drew shallow breaths through his mouth and wished he could soften the pounding beat of his heart. If he made any sound at all that Roy could hear, he would die for it.
At the back of the delivery van, Roy opened one of the double doors. When he peered into the rear compartment, he apparently could not see every corner of it to his satisfaction, for he opened the second door as well, then climbed into the cargo hold.
Colin listened to him poking at the shadows in the metal box overhead. He considered squeezing out from under the truck and creeping swiftly to another shelter, but he didn’t think he would have sufficient time to get away undetected.
Even as Colin was assessing his chances, Roy came out of the truck and closed the doors. The opportunity, if there had ever been one, was lost.
Colin twisted around a bit and looked over his shoulder. He saw the white tennis shoes, and he prayed that Roy wouldn’t think to investigate the narrow space beneath the Dodge.
Incredibly, his prayers were answered. Roy stepped to the front of the truck, paused, seemed to be looking at the junkyard on all sides, and said, “Where the hell ... ?” He stood there for a while, drumming his fingers on the van, and then he walked northward until Colin could no longer see his shoes or hear his footsteps.
For a long time Colin lay motionless. He found the courage to breathe normally once more, but he still thought it wise to be as silent as possible.