by Dean Koontz
On April 19, the unmanned Surveyor 3, after landing on the lunar surface, began transmitting photos to Earth, and when Junior stepped out of his morning shower, he again heard the eerie singing, which seemed to arise from a place more distant, more alien, than the moon.
Naked, dripping, he roamed the apartment. As on the night of December 13, the voice seemed to arise from thin air: ahead of him, then behind him, to the right, but now to the left.
This time, however, the singing lasted longer than before, long enough for him to become suspicious of the heating ducts. These rooms had ten-foot ceilings, and the ducts opened high in the walls.
Using a three-step folding stool, he was able to get near enough to one of the vent plates in the living room to determine whether it might be the source of the song. Just then the singing stopped.
Later in the month, from Sparky Vox, Junior learned the building had a four-pipe, fan-coil heating system serving discrete ductwork for each apartment. Voices couldn’t carry from residence to residence in the heating-cooling system, because no apartments shared ducting.
Throughout the spring, summer, and autumn of 1967, Junior met new women, bedded a few, and had no doubt that each of his conquests experienced with him something she had never known before. Yet he still suffered from an emptiness in the heart.
He chased after none of these lovelies beyond a few dates, and none of them pursued him when he was done with them, although surely they were distressed if not bereft at losing him.
The spectral singer didn’t exhibit her blood-and-bone sisters’ reluctance to pursue her man.
On a morning in July, Junior was visiting the public library, poring through the stacks in search of exotic volumes on the occult, when the phantom voice rose nearby. Here, the singing sounded softer than in his apartment, little more than a murmur, and also threadier.
Two staff members were at the front desk, when last he’d seen them, out of sight now and too far away to hear the crooning. Junior had been waiting at the doors when the library opened, and thus far he’d encountered no other patrons.
He couldn’t see into the next aisle through the gaps between rows of books, because the shelves had solid backs.
The tomes made maze walls, a webwork of words.
He first eased from aisle to aisle, but soon moved more quickly, convinced that the singer would be found beyond the next turn, and then the next. Was that her trailing shadow he had glimpsed, slipping around the corner ahead of him? Her womanly scent lingering in the air after her passage?
Into new avenues of the labyrinth he moved, but then back again, back upon his own trail, twisting, turning, from the occult to modern literature, from history to popular science, and here the occult once more, always the shadow glimpsed so fleetingly and so peripherally that it might have been imagination, the scent of a woman no sooner detected than lost again in the perfumes of aging paper and bindery glue, twisting, turning, until abruptly he stopped, breathing hard, halted by the realization that he hadn’t heard the singing in some time.
Into the autumn of 1967, Junior reviewed hundreds of thousands of phone listings, and occasionally he located a rare Bartholomew. In San Rafael or Marinwood. In Greenbrae or San Anselmo. Located and investigated and cleared them of any connection with Seraphim White’s bastard baby.
Between new women and needlepoint pillows, he participated in séances, attended lectures given by ghost hunters, visited haunted houses, and read more strange books. He even sat for the camera of a famous medium whose photographs sometimes revealed the auras of benign or malevolent presences hovering in the vicinity of her subject, though in his case she could discern no telltale sign of a spirit.
On October 15, Junior acquired a third Sklent painting: The Heart Is Home to Worms and Beetles, Ever Squirming, Ever Swarming, Version 3.
To celebrate, upon leaving the gallery, he went to the coffee shop in the Fairmont Hotel, atop Nob Hill, determined to have a beer and a cheeseburger.
Although he ate more meals in restaurants than not, he hadn’t ordered a burger in twenty-two months, since finding the quarter embedded in the half-melted slice of cheddar, in December of ’65. Indeed, since then, he’d never risked a sandwich of any kind in a restaurant, limiting his selections to foods that were served open on the plate.
In the Fairmont coffee shop, Junior ordered french fries, a cheeseburger, and cole slaw. He requested that the burger be served cooked but unassembled: the halves of the bun turned faceup, the meat pattie positioned separately on the plate, one slice each of tomato and onion arranged beside the pattie, and the slice of unmelted cheese on a separate dish.
Puzzled but accommodating, the waiter delivered lunch precisely as requested.
Junior lifted the pattie with a fork, found no quarter under it, and put the meat on one half of the bun. He constructed the sandwich from these fixings, added ketchup and mustard, and took a great, delicious, satisfying bite.
When he noticed a blonde staring at him from a nearby booth, he smiled and winked at her. Although she was not attractive enough to meet his standards, there was no reason to be impolite.
She must have sensed his assessment of her and realized that she had little chance of charming him, for she turned at once away and never looked in his direction again.
With the successful consumption of the burger and with the addition of the third Sklent to his collection, Junior felt more upbeat than he’d been in quite a while. Contributing to his better mood was the fact that he hadn’t heard the phantom singer in longer than three months, since the library in July.
Two nights later, from a dream of worms and beetles, he woke to her singing.
He surprised himself by sitting up in bed and shouting, “Shut up, shut up, shut up!”
Faintly, “Someone to Watch over Me” continued unabated.
Junior must have shouted shut up more than he realized, because the neighbors began to pound on the wall to silence him.
Nothing he had learned about the supernatural had led him closer to a belief in ghosts and in all that ghosts implied. His faith still reposed entirely in Enoch Cain Jr., and he refused to make room on his altar for anyone or anything other than himself.
He squirmed deep under the covers, clamped a plump pillow over his head to muffle the singing, and chanted, “Find the father, kill the son,” until at last he fell exhausted into sleep.
In the morning, at breakfast, from this calmer perspective, he looked back at his tantrum in the middle of the night and wondered if he might be in psychological trouble. He decided not.
In November and December, Junior studied arcane texts on the supernatural, went through new women at a pace prodigious even for him, found three Bartholomews, and finished ten needlepoint pillows.
Nothing in his reading offered a satisfactory explanation for what had been happening to him. None of the women filled the hole in his heart, and all of the Bartholomews were harmless. Only the needlepoint offered any satisfaction, but though Junior was proud of his craftsmanship, he knew that a grown man couldn’t find fulfillment in stitchery alone.
On December 18, as the Beatles’ “Hello Goodbye” rocketed up the charts, Junior boiled over with frustration at his inability to find either love or Seraphim’s baby, so he drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, to Marin County and all the way to the town of Terra Linda, where he killed Bartholomew Prosser.
Prosser—fifty-six, a widower, an accountant—had a thirty-year-old daughter, Zelda, who was an attorney in San Francisco. Junior had driven to Terra Linda previously, to research the accountant; he already knew Prosser had no connection to Seraphim’s fateful child.
Of the three Bartholomews that he’d turned up recently, he chose Prosser because, burdened by the name Enoch, Junior felt sympathy for any girl whose parents had cursed her with Zelda.
The accountant lived in a white Georgian house on a street lined with huge old evergreens.
At eight o’clock in the evening, Junior parked two blocks
past the target house. He walked back to the Prosser residence, gloved hands in the pockets of his raincoat, collar turned up.
Dense, white, slowly billowing masses of fog rolled through the neighborhood, scented with woodsmoke from numerous fireplaces, as though everything north to the Canadian border were ablaze.
Junior’s breath smoked from him as if he contained a seething fire of his own. He felt a sheen of condensation arise on his face, cold and invigorating.
At many houses, strings of Christmas lights painted patterns of color at the eaves, around the window frames, and along the porch railings—all so blurred by fog that Junior seemed to be moving through a dreamscape with Japanese lanterns.
The night was hushed but for the barking of a dog in the great distance. Hollow, far softer than the ghostly singing that had recently haunted Junior, the rough voice of this hound nevertheless stirred him, spoke to an essential aspect of his heart.
At the Prosser house, he rang the bell and waited.
As punctilious as you might expect any good accountant to be, Bartholomew Prosser didn’t delay long enough to make it necessary for Junior to ring the bell twice. The porch light came on.
In the faraway, at the limits of night and fog, the dog bit off his bark in expectation.
Less cautious than the typical accountant, perhaps mellow in this season of peace, Prosser opened the door without hesitation.
“This is for Zelda,” Junior said, ramming forward across the threshold with the knife.
Wild exhilaration burst through him like pyrotechnics blazing in a night sky, reminiscent of the rush of excitement that followed his bold action on the fire tower. Happily, Junior had no emotional connection to Prosser, as he’d had to beloved Naomi; therefore, the purity of his experience wasn’t diluted by regret or empathy.
So quick, this violence, over even as it began. Because he had no interest in aftermath, however, Junior suffered no disappointment at the briefness of the thrill. The past was past, and as he closed the front door and stepped around the body, he focused on the future.
He’d acted boldly, recklessly, without scoping the territory to be sure Prosser was alone. The accountant lived by himself, but a visitor might be present.
Prepared for any contingency, Junior listened to the house until he was certain that he needed the knife for no one else.
He went directly to the kitchen and drew a glass of water at the sink faucet. He swallowed two antiemetic tablets that he had brought with him, to guard against vomiting.
Earlier, before leaving home, he had taken a preventive dose of paregoric. For now, at least, his bowels were quiet.
As always, curious about how others lived—or, in this case, had lived—Junior explored the house, poking in drawers and closets. For a widower, Bartholomew Prosser was neat and well-organized.
As home tours went, this one was notably less interesting than most. The accountant appeared to have no secret life, no perverse interests that he hid from the world.
The most shameful thing Junior found was the “art” on the walls. Tasteless, sentimentalized realism. Bright landscapes. Still lifes of fruit and flowers. Even an idealized group portrait of Prosser, his late wife, and Zelda. Not one painting spoke to the bleakness and terror of the human condition: mere decoration, not art.
In the living room stood a Christmas tree, and under the tree lay prettily wrapped presents. Junior enjoyed opening all of them, but he didn’t find anything he wanted to keep.
He left by the back door, to avoid the aftermath seeping across the foyer floor. Fog enveloped him, cool and refreshing.
On the drive home, Junior dropped the knife down a storm drain in Larkspur. He tossed the gloves in a Dumpster in Corte Madera.
In the city again, he stopped long enough to donate the raincoat to a homeless man who didn’t notice the few odd stains. This pathetic hobo happily accepted the fine coat, donned it—and then cursed his benefactor, spat at him, and threatened him with a claw hammer.
Junior was too much of a realist to have expected gratitude.
In his apartment once more, enjoying a cognac and a handful of pistachios as Monday changed to Tuesday, he decided that he should make preparations for the possibility that he might one day leave incriminating evidence in spite of his precautions. He ought to convert a portion of his assets into easily portable and anonymous wealth, like gold coins and diamonds. Establishing two or three alternate identities, with documentation, also would be wise.
During the past few hours, he had changed his life again, as dramatically as he had changed it on that fire tower almost three years ago.
When he pushed Naomi, profit was the motive. He killed Victoria and Vanadium in self-defense. Those three deaths were necessary.
He stabbed Prosser, however, merely to relieve his frustration and to enliven the dull routine of a life made dreary by the tedious Bartholomew hunt and by loveless sex. In return for more excitement, he’d assumed greater risk; to mitigate risk, he must have insurance.
In bed, lights out, Junior marveled at his daredevil spirit. He never stopped surprising himself.
Neither guilt nor remorse plagued him. Good and bad, right and wrong, were not issues to him. Actions were either effective or ineffective, wise or stupid, but they were all value neutral.
He didn’t wonder about his sanity, either, as a less self-improved man might have done. No madman strives to enhance his vocabulary or to deepen his appreciation for culture.
He did wonder why he had chosen this night of all nights to become even a more fearless adventurer, rather than a month ago or a month hence. Instinct told him that he’d felt the need to test himself, that a crisis was fast approaching, and that to be ready for it, he must be confident that he could do what had to be done when the crunch came. Slipping into sleep, Junior suspected that Prosser might have been less lark than preparation.
Further preparation—the purchase of gold coins and diamonds, the establishment of false identities—had to be delayed due to the hives. An hour short of dawn, Junior was awakened by a fierce itching not limited to his phantom toe. His entire body, over every plane and into every crevice, prickled and tingled and burned as with fever—and itched.
Shuddering, rubbing furiously at himself, he stumbled into the bathroom. In the mirror, he confronted a face he hardly recognized: swollen, lumpy, peppered with red hives.
For forty-eight hours, he pumped himself full of prescription antihistamines, immersed himself in bathtubs brimming with numbingly cold water, and lathered himself with soothing lotions. In misery, gripped by self-pity, he dared not think about the 9-mm pistol that he had stolen from Frieda Bliss.
By Thursday, the eruption passed from him. Because he’d had the self-control not to claw his face or hands, he was presentable enough to venture out into the city; although if people in the streets could have seen the weeping scabs and inflamed scratches that tattooed his body and limbs, they would have fled with the grim certainty that the black plague or worse was loose among them.
During the following ten days, he withdrew money from several accounts. He converted selected paper assets into cash, as well.
He also sought a supplier of high-quality counterfeit ID. This proved easier than he anticipated.
A surprising number of the women who had been his lovers were recreational drug users, and over the past couple years, he had met several dealers who supplied them. From the least savory of these, he purchased five thousand dollars’ worth of cocaine and LSD to establish his credibility, after which he inquired about forged documents.
For a finder’s fee, Junior was put in touch with a papermaker named Google. This was not his real name, but with his crossed eyes, large rubbery lips, and massively prominent Adam’s apple, he was as perfect a Google as ever there had been.
Because drugs foil all efforts at self-improvement, Junior had no use for the cocaine and acid. He didn’t dare sell them to recover his money; even five thousand dollars wasn’t worth risk
ing arrest. Instead, he gave the pharmaceuticals to a group of young boys playing basketball in a schoolyard, and wished them a Merry Christmas.
The twenty-fourth of December began with rain, but the storm moved south soon after dawn. Sunshine tinseled the city, and the streets filled with last-minute holiday shoppers.
Junior joined the throngs, although he had no gift list or feeling for the season. He just needed to get out of his apartment, because he was convinced that the phantom singer would soon serenade him again.
She hadn’t sung since the early-morning hours of October 18, and no other paranormal event had occurred since then. The waiting between manifestations scraped at Junior’s nerves worse than the manifestations themselves.
Something was due to happen in this peculiar, extended, almost casual haunting under which he had suffered for more than two years, since finding the quarter in his cheeseburger. While all around him in the streets, people bustled in good cheer, Junior slouched along in a sour mood, temporarily having forgotten to look for the bright side.
Inevitably, man of the arts that he was, his slouching brought him to several galleries. In the window of the fourth, not one of his favorite establishments, he saw an eight-by-ten photograph of Seraphim White.
The girl smiled, as stunningly beautiful as he remembered her, but she was no longer fifteen, as she had been when last he’d seen her. Since her death in childbirth nearly three years ago, she’d matured and grown lovelier than ever.
If Junior had not been such a rational man, schooled in logic and reason by the books of Caesar Zedd, he might have snapped there in the street, before the photograph of Seraphim, might have begun to shake and sob and babble until he wound up in a psychiatric ward. But although his trembling knees felt no more supportive than aspic, they didn’t dissolve under him. He couldn’t breathe for a minute, and his vision darkened at the periphery, and the noise of passing traffic suddenly sounded like the agonized shrieks of people tortured beyond endurance, but he held fast to his wits long enough to realize that the name under the photo, which served as the centerpiece of a poster, read Celestina White in four-inch letters, not Seraphim.
The poster announced an upcoming show, titled “This Momentous Day,” by the young artist calling herself Celestina White. Dates for the exhibition were Friday, January 12, through Saturday, January 27.
Warily, Junior ventured into the gallery to make inquiries. He expected the staff to express utter bafflement at the name Celestina White, expected the poster to have vanished when he returned to the display window.
Instead, he was given a small color brochure featuring samples of the artist’s work. It also contained the same photograph of her smiling face that graced the window.
According to the brief biographic note with the picture, Celestina White was a graduate of San Francisco’s Academy of Art College. She had been born and raised in Spruce Hills, Oregon, the daughter of a minister.
Chapter 58
AGNES ALWAYS ENJOYED Christmas Eve dinner with Edom and Jacob, because even they tempered their pessimism on this night of nights. Whether the season touched their hearts or they wanted even more than usual to please their sister, she didn’t know. If gentle Edom spoke of killer tornadoes or if dear Jacob was reminded of massive explosions, each dwelt not on horrible death, as usual, but on feats of courage in the midst of dire catastrophe, recounting astonishing rescues and miraculous escapes.
With Barty’s presence, Christmas Eve dinners had become even more agreeable, especially this year when he was almost-three-going-on-twenty. He talked about the visits to friends that he and his mother and Edom had made earlier in the day, about Father Brown, as if that cleric-detective were real, about the puddle-jumping toads that had been singing in the backyard when he and his mother had arrived home from the cemetery, and his chatter was engaging because it was full of a child’s charm yet peppered with enough precocious observations to make it of interest to adults.
From the corn soup to the baked ham to the plum pudding, he did not speak of his dry walk in wet weather.
Agnes hadn’t asked him to keep his strange feat a secret from his uncles. In truth, she had come home in such a curious state of mind that even as she’d worked with Jacob to prepare dinner and even as she’d overseen Edom’s setting of the table, she hesitated to tell them what had happened on the run from Joey’s grave to the station wagon. She fluctuated between guarded euphoria and fear bordering on panic, and she didn’t trust herself to recount the experience until she had taken more time to absorb it.
That night, in Barty’s room, after Agnes had listened to his prayers and then had tucked him in for the night, she sat on the edge of his bed. “Honey, I was wondering…. Now that you’ve had more time to think, could you explain to me what happened?”
He rolled his head back and forth on the pillow. “Nope. It’s still just something you gotta feel.”
“All the ways things are.”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll need to talk about this a lot in the days to come, as we both have more time to think about it.”
“I figured.”