by Dean Koontz
libertarian crusade.”
Albert Uhlander still stood with his back to the French window, attentive but unreadable, a silent silhouette that moved only to raise the black outline of a whiskey glass to unseen lips.
“So you supported Hoffritz and McCaffrey and Koliknikov and Tolbeck and God knows how many other twisted ‘geniuses,’” Dan said. “And now, while searching so diligently for a way to control the masses, you’ve lost control. One of these experiments has run wild, and it’s rapidly destroying everyone involved in it. Soon it’s going to destroy you as well.”
“I’m sure you find this ironic turn of events to be enormously satisfying,” Boothe said. “But I don’t believe you know as much as you think you do, and when you hear the entire story, when you know what’s happening, I think you’ll be as eager as we are to stop the killing, to put an end to the terror that came out of that gray room. You’re sworn to protect and preserve lives, and I am familiar enough with your record to know that you take your oath seriously, even solemnly. Though the lives you’ll have to protect are mine and Albert’s, and though you despise us, you’ll do what’s necessary to help us, once you know the whole story.”
Dan shook his head. “You have nothing but disdain for the honor and integrity of common people like me, yet you’re relying on that honor to save your ass.”
“That . . . and certain inducements,” Uhlander said from his place at the window.
“What inducements?” Dan asked.
Boothe studied him intently. Bright miniature patterns of Tiffany stained glass reflected in his icy eyes. Finally he said, “Yes, I suppose it won’t hurt to explain the inducements first. Albert, would you bring it here, please?”
Uhlander returned to the chair where he had been sitting, put his whiskey glass on a nearby table, and picked up a suitcase which had been standing beside the chair but which Dan hadn’t noticed until now. He brought the piece of luggage to Boothe’s desk, put it down, and opened it. The suitcase was filled with fifty- and hundred-dollar bills in neatly banded stacks.
“Half a million dollars, cash,” Boothe said softly. “But that’s only part of what I’m offering you. There’s also a position available with the Journal. Head of security. It pays more than twice your current salary.”
Ignoring the cash, Dan said, “You pretend to be so cool, but this makes it clear just how desperate you are. This is out of panic. You say you know me, so you know an offer like this would almost surely have the opposite effect intended.”
“Yes,” Boothe said, “if we wanted you to do something that was wrong in order to earn the money. But I hope to show you that what we want you to do is the right thing, the best thing, the only thing that a man of conscience could possibly do under the circumstances. I believe that, once you know what’s happening, you’ll do the right thing. Which is all that we want. Really. You’ll see that the money isn’t being offered to alleviate your guilt, but . . . well, as a bonus for good deeds well done.” He smiled.
“You want the girl,” Dan said.
“No,” Uhlander said, his eyes glittering, his face more hawklike than ever in the queer mix of shadows and colored light. “We want her dead.”
“And quickly,” Boothe said.
“Did you offer Ross Mondale this much money? Wexlersh and Manuello?” Dan asked.
“Good heavens, no!” Boothe said. “But now you’re the only one who knows where to find Melanie McCaffrey.”
Uhlander said, “You’re the only game in town.”
From their side of the desk, they watched Dan with carnivorous anticipation.
He said, “Apparently, you’re even more depraved than I thought. You think killing an innocent child could in any way be construed as the right thing, a good deed?”
“The operative word is ‘innocent,’ ” Boothe said. “When you understand what happened in that gray room, when you realize what’s been killing all these people—”
“I think maybe I already know what’s been killing them,” Dan said. “It’s Melanie, isn’t it?”
They stared at him, surprised by his perception.
“I read some of your book, the one about astral projection,” he told Uhlander. “With that and other things, I’ve begun to piece it together.”
He had hoped that he was wrong, had dreaded finding out that his worst suspicions were correct. But there was no escaping the truth. A cold despair, as real and almost as tangible as the drizzling rain outside, poured over him.
“She’s killed all of them,” Uhlander said. “Six men so far. And she’ll kill the rest of us if she has the chance.”
“Not six,” Dan said. “Eight.”
The Spielberg film had ended. Earl had bought tickets for the next showing of another PG film in the same multiplex. He and Laura had settled into seats in the new theater, with Melanie ensconced between them once more.
Laura had watched her daughter closely through the first movie, but the child had shown no sign of going to sleep or crawling deeper into her sheltering catatonia. Her eyes had continued to follow the action on the screen through the end of the story, and once a smile had flickered so very briefly at the corners of her mouth. She had not spoken or even made a wordless sound in response to the celluloid fantasy, and she had moved only once or twice, no more than slightly shifting in the theater seat, but even the minimal attention that she had paid to the movie constituted an improvement in her condition. Laura was more hopeful than she had been at any time in the past two days, although she was far from sanguine about the girl’s prospects for total recovery.
Besides, It was still out there.
She checked her watch. Two minutes until showtime.
Earl scanned the crowd, which was half the size of that for the previous movie. He appeared to be merely people watching, neither suspicious nor tense. He was less concerned than he had been before the other show had begun; this time, he reached inside his coat to check for his gun only once before the house lights dimmed and the big screen lit up.
Melanie was slumped in her seat more than she had been before, and she looked wearier. But her eyes were open wide, and she seemed to be focused on the screen as previews of coming attractions began.
Laura sighed.
They had gotten through most of the afternoon without incident. Maybe everything would be all right now.
“Eight?” Uhlander was aghast. “You say she’s killed eight?”
“Six,” Boothe insisted. “Only six so far.”
“You know about Koliknikov in Vegas?” Dan said.
“Yes,” Boothe said. “He was the sixth.”
“You know about Renseveer and Tolbeck up in Mammoth?”
“When?” Uhlander asked. “My God, when did she get them?”
“Last night,” Dan said.
The two men looked at each other, and Dan could feel a surge in the current of fear that passed between them.
Uhlander said, “She’s been disposing of people in a certain order, according to how much time they spent in that gray room and according to how much discomfort they caused her. Palmer and I were there far less often than any of the others.”
Dan was tempted to crack sarcastic about Uhlander’s choice of the word “discomfort” instead of the more accurate “pain.”
He saw why they had been so low-key when he had first arrived, so confident that they had time to enjoy a drink and to proceed cautiously; they had expected to be the last of the ten conspirators to be killed, and as long as they had thought Howard Renseveer and Sheldon Tolbeck were still alive, they had been frightened but not yet panicked.
Beyond the huge French windows, even the dim gray sunlight was fading.
Within the library, shadows were growing and shifting as though they were living creatures.
The glow from the Tiffany lamp seemed to grow brighter as the daylight dimmed. The multicolored, luminescent spots, when combined with the encroaching shadows, made the large room seem smaller, and somehow brought to
the decreasing space the feeling of a Gypsy wagon or tent or other fantastic carnivalesque setting.
“But if Howard and Shelby are dead,” Boothe said, “then we’re next and . . . she . . . she could come at any time.”
“Any time,” Dan confirmed. “So we don’t have the leisure for drinks or bribery. I want to know exactly what went on in that gray room—and why.”
Boothe said, “But there’s no time to tell it all. You’ve got to stop her! You evidently know we were encouraging OOBE—out-of-body experiences—in the girl, and that she—”
“I know some of it, and I suspect more, but most of it I don’t yet understand,” Dan said. “And I want to know it all, every detail, before I decide what to do.”
A tremor shook Boothe’s voice: “I need another drink.” He got up and went unsteadily to the bar, which was tucked in one corner of the room.
Uhlander collapsed into the chair that Boothe had vacated. He looked up at Dan. “I’ll tell you about it.”
Dan pulled up another chair.
At the bar, Boothe was so nervous that he dropped a couple ice cubes. When he poured more bourbon for himself, the neck of the Wild Turkey bottle chattered against the rim of his glass before he could steady his shaky hand.
Laura kept leaning over to look in Melanie’s face.
The girl had slumped even farther in her chair.
This film, only ten minutes old, obviously wasn’t going to be as engaging as the Spielberg movie. Thus far, Melanie’s eyes were open and seemed to follow the action, but Laura wondered how long the girl would remain involved.
Palmer Boothe paced and drank bourbon with an uncharacteristic lack of self-control.
Albert Uhlander sat with his head low on his sharp shoulders, birdlike in every aspect of his face and body, explaining the project in the gray room.
Though he had been a doctor of psychology, Dylan McCaffrey had nurtured a lifelong fascination with various aspects of the occult. He’d read Uhlander’s first few books and conducted a correspondence with him, which eventually had centered on the subject of OOBE, out-of-body experiences, or what was also known as astral projection. The phenomenon of astral projection was based on the theory that two entities existed in each human being: a physical body of flesh, and an astral or etheric body—sometimes called a psychogeist. In other words, each person has a dual nature, including a double that can function separately of the physical body, making it possible to be in two places at one time. Usually the double, the astral body (or as Uhlander called it, “the body of feeling and sensation”), resided in the physical body and animated it. But under extremely special circumstances (and routinely upon death) the astral body left the physical body.
“Some mediums,” Uhlander said, “claim to be able to instigate out-of-body experiences at will, though they are very likely lying. There are, however, many fascinating stories told by reputable people who report having dreamed about rising out of their bodies while sleeping; they tell stories about traveling in an invisible state, often to places where loved ones are dying or are in risk of death. Ten years ago, for example, a woman in Oregon had such an experience while sleeping: She rose out of her body, sailed over the rooftops of houses, went out into the countryside, and came to a place where her brother’s car was overturned on a lonely stretch of a little-traveled back road. He was pinned in the wreckage and bleeding to death. She couldn’t help him while she was in her astral state, for the astral body frequently has no strength, only sensation, no power of any kind other than the ability to observe. But she returned to her sleeping body, woke, called the police, reported the location of her brother’s accident, and saved his life.”
“Usually,” Boothe said, “the astral body isn’t visible. It’s entirely spiritual.”
“Although visibility and even physical solidity aren’t entirely unheard of,” Uhlander said. “In 1810, while Lord Byron, the poet, was in Patras, Turkey, unconscious with a high fever, several of his friends saw him in London. They said he passed them on the street without speaking and was seen to write down his name on a register of people inquiring about the king’s health. Byron thought this was odd but he never realized he’d experienced an OOBE of rare intensity—and then had forgotten it after recovering from his fever. Anyway, every serious occultist has consciously attempted to initiate an OOBE at some time or other . . . usually without success.”
Boothe had already returned to the bar to pour more bourbon into his glass.
Dan said, “Don’t get drunk. There’s sure as hell no safety in being unconscious. It’ll just complicate things.”
“I’ve never been drunk in my life,” Boothe said icily. “I don’t run from problems, Lieutenant. I solve them.” He paced again, but he didn’t suck at the bourbon as greedily as he had done previously.
Uhlander said, “Dylan not only believed in astral projection, but he thought he knew why it was so hard to achieve an OOBE.”
Dylan, Uhlander explained, had been certain that people were born with the ability to step in and out of their bodies whenever they wished—all people, everyone. But he was equally sure that the confining, limiting nature of all human society and teaching—with its long list of dos and don’ts, its overly restrictive definitions of what was possible and impossible—effectively brainwashed children so early that the development of their astral-projection potential was, like many other psychic powers, never realized. Dylan believed that a child could discover and develop that potential if raised in cultural isolation, if permitted to learn only those things that sharpened awareness of the psychic universe—and if subjected to long and frequent sessions in a sensory-deprivation chamber from a young age, in order to direct the mind inward upon its own hidden talents.
“Isolation,” Boothe interrupted, “was a way of purifying the child’s concentration, a way of sealing out all the distractions of day-to-day life in order to focus her mind more intensely upon psychic matters.”
Uhlander said, “When Mrs. McCaffrey decided to divorce Dylan, he saw an opportunity to raise Melanie according to his own theories, so he abducted her with that intention.”
“And you supported him,” Dan said to Boothe. “Accessory to a kidnapping, a conspirator in child abuse.”
The white-haired publisher approached Dan’s chair, loomed over him, stared down with undisguised disdain. He had a haughty disregard for the pain that he’d caused. “It was necessary. An opportunity that could not be missed. Think of it! If astral projection could be proved possible, if the child could be taught to leave her body at will, then perhaps a system could be developed for teaching adults as well . . . selected adults. Imagine what it would mean if a select group, an intellectual elite, possessed the ability to enter undetected into any room in the world, no matter how heavily guarded, could listen in on any conversation no matter how secret. No government, no business competitor, no one in the world, could hide their plans or intentions from us. Without anyone knowing what we were doing or how, we could at last orchestrate the evolution of one worldwide government without effective opposition or, indeed, without any opposition at all. How could opposition exist if we could sit in on their strategy sessions, know their names, intentions, and secret organizations?”
Boothe was breathing hard, partly because of the effect of the whiskey, but largely due to the dark dreams of power that filled him with a megalomaniacal excitement. The Tiffany lamp cast amber circles of light on his cheeks, smaller spots of blue on his chin, stained his lips yellow, and painted his nose and forehead green, so he again reminded Dan of someone from a carnival, a malevolent roadshow like that in Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. He was a bizarre and demented clown in whose eyes one could see the crimson flickering fires of Hell, a soul in damnation.
“The world would be ours,” Boothe said.
Both the publisher and Uhlander smiled, and they seemed to have forgotten how badly their scheme had worked out and how deep was the trouble in which they now found themselves.
“You’re both insane,” Dan said thinly.
“Farsighted,” Uhlander said.
“Insane.”
“Visionaries,” Boothe said. He turned away from Dan and began to pace once more.
Uhlander’s smile gradually bled away as he remembered why they were there, and he continued the explanation that Dan had demanded. Dylan McCaffrey had lived in that Studio City house twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, year after year, staying close to Melanie, making himself nearly as much a prisoner as she was, seeing only a handful of sympathizers from his small circle of friends who bridged the scientific and occult communities and shared his interests—and who were all on the Palmer Boothe dole, one way or another. Dylan became increasingly obsessed with his project, and the regimen he designed for Melanie became ever more harsh, more demanding, less forgiving of her human failings, weaknesses, and limitations. The gray room, which was painted and soundproofed and furnished in such a way as to reduce all distraction to a minimum, became Melanie’s entire universe and also the center of her father’s world. Those privileged few who knew of the experiment all thought that they were involved in a noble attempt to transform the human race, and they held the secret of Melanie’s torture as though they were protecting something magnificent and holy.
“Then,” Uhlander said, “two nights ago, Melanie finally broke through. During her longest session ever in the sensory-deprivation tank, in her cocoon, she achieved what Dylan had always believed she could achieve.”
From the purple-gray twilight by the windows, Boothe said, “The girl seized her full psychic potential. She separated her astral body from her physical body and rose out of that tank.”
“But what happened after that was something none of us had anticipated,” Uhlander said. “In a rage, she killed her father, Willy Hoffritz, and Ernie Cooper, who happened to be there at the time.”
“But how?” Dan asked, although he had already decided that it must be true. “You said the astral body usually has the power to observe but can perform no physical act. And even if that wasn’t the case this time . . . well, she’s only a frail little girl. Those people were beaten to death. Savagely beaten.”
Palmer Boothe had moved to the deepening shadows along one wall of books and had vanished within them. His disembodied voice rose from the gloom: “Her talent for astral projection wasn’t the only psychic ability the little bitch learned how to use that night. She’s apparently discovered how to teleport her astral body great distances—”
“To Las Vegas, to the mountains above Mammoth,” Albert Uhlander elaborated.
“—and how to move objects without touching them. Telekinesis,” Boothe said. He paused. In the darkness where he stood, his whiskey glass clicked against his teeth. The swallowing sound he made was preternaturally loud. “Her strength is psychic, the strength of the mind, which is virtually beyond limit. She’s stronger than ten men, a hundred, a thousand. She easily disposed of her father, Hoffritz, and Cooper . . . and now she’s been coming after the rest of us, one by one, and she seems to be able to sense where we are, regardless of how hard we try to hide.”
Melanie sighed.
Laura leaned over and looked at her in the dim backwash of light from the movie screen.
The girl’s eyes were getting heavy.
Worried, Laura put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder and shook gently, then harder.
Melanie blinked.
“Watch the movie, honey. Watch the movie.”
The child’s eyes swam back into focus and reconnected with the action on the screen.
Boothe had moved out of the shadows.
Uhlander was leaning forward in his chair.
They both seemed to be waiting for Dan to say something, to assure them that he would kill the girl and stop the slaughter.
Instead, he said nothing because he wanted them to sweat for a while. Besides, his emotions were in such turmoil that he didn’t trust himself to speak yet.
Murder, Dan knew, was a human potential as universal as love. It existed in the kind and the meek, in the gentle and the innocent, though perhaps it lay more deeply buried in them than in others. He was no more surprised to discover it in Melanie McCaffrey than he had been surprised by the murderous impulses of the scores of killers that he’d put in prison over the years—though this discovery left him distraught, sick, and profoundly depressed.
Indeed, Melanie’s homicidal urges were more understandable than most. Imprisoned, physically and psychologically tortured, denied love and comfort and understanding, treated more like a laboratory monkey than like a human being, forced to endure long years of mental and emotional and physical pain, she had developed a superhuman rage and hatred, diamond-hard and gas-flame-bright, that could have been relieved only by violent, brutal, bloody revenge. Perhaps her rage and hatred—and the need to relieve those inner pressures—were as much responsible for her psychic breakthrough as any of the exercises and conditions that her father had imposed upon her.
Now she stalked her tormentors, a frail nine-year-old girl, yet as deadly and dangerous and efficient a killer as Jack the Ripper or as any member of the Manson Family. But she wasn’t entirely depraved. That was a thought to cling to. Evidently a part of her was shocked and repelled by what she had done. After all, horrified by her own thirst for blood, she’d sought refuge in a catatonic state, crawling down into that dark place where she could hide the terrible truth of the murders from the world . . . and even from herself. As long as she had a conscience, she hadn’t descended all the way into savagery, and maybe her sanity was retrievable.