by Dean Koontz
Ooodelee-ooodelee-oo.
Maybe Mr. Truman had slipped and fallen and hit his head, and maybe he lay unconscious, oblivious of the ringing. Or maybe he had been carried off into a land beyond a mirror. Or maybe he had just forgotten to modify the system to receive Fric’s private calls.
The caller would not give up. After twenty-one repetitions of the stupid child-pleasing tones, Fric decided that if he didn’t pick up the phone, he would have to listen to it ringing all night.
The slight tremor in his voice dismayed him, but he persevered: “Vinnie’s Soda Parlor and Vomitorium, home of the nine-pound ice-cream sundae, where you splurge and then purge.”
“Hello, Aelfric,” said Mysterious Caller.
“I can’t make up my mind whether you’re a pervert or a friend like you say. I’m leaning toward pervert.”
“You’re leaning wrong. Look around you for the truth, Aelfric.”
“Look around me at what?”
“At what’s there with you in the library.”
“I’m in the kitchen.”
“By now you ought to realize that you can’t lie to me.”
“My deep and secret hiding place is going to be one of the bigger ovens. I’ll crawl inside and pull the door shut behind me.”
“You better baste yourself in butter, because Moloch will just turn on the gas.”
“Moloch has already been here,” Fric said.
“That wasn’t Moloch. That was me.”
Receiving this revelation, Fric almost slammed down the phone.
Mysterious Caller said, “I paid you a visit because I wanted you to understand, Aelfric, that you really are at risk, and that time really is running out. If I’d been Moloch, you’d be toast.”
“You came out of a mirror,” said Fric, his curiosity and sense of wonder for the moment outweighing his fear.
“And I went back into one.”
“How can you come out of a mirror?”
“For the answer, look around you, son.”
Fric surveyed the library.
“What do you see?” asked Mysterious Caller.
“Books.”
“Oh? You have a lot of books there in the kitchen?”
“I’m in the library.”
“Ah, truth. There’s hope that you’ll avoid at least some misery, after all. What else do you see besides books?”
“A writing desk. Chairs. A sofa.”
“Keep looking.”
“A Christmas tree.”
“There you go.”
“There I go where?” asked Fric.
“What dingles and what dangles?”
“Huh?”
“And is spelled almost like angles.”
“Angels,” Fric said, surveying the radiant white flock that gathered with trumpets and harps upon the tree.
“I travel by mirrors, by mist, by smoke, by doorways in water, by stairways made of shadows, on roads of moonlight, by wish and hope and simple expectation. I’ve given up my car.”
Amazed, Fric clenched the phone so hard that his hand ached, as if he might squeeze a few more revealing words from the mirror man.
Mysterious Caller met silence with silence, waited.
Of all the kinds of weirdness Fric had been expecting, this had not been on the list.
Finally, with a tremor of a different quality in his voice, he said, “Are you telling me you’re an angel?”
“Do you believe I could be?”
“My…guardian angel?”
Instead of answering directly, the mirror man said, “Believing is important in all this, Aelfric. In many ways, the world is what we make it, and our future is ours to shape.”
“My father says that our future is in the stars, our fate set when we’re born.”
“There’s much in your old man to admire, son, but as far as his thoughts on fate are concerned, he’s full of shit.”
“Wow,” said Fric, “can angels say ‘shit’?”
“I just did. But then I’m new at this, and I’m quite capable of making a mistake now and then.”
“You’re still wearing your training wings.”
“You could say that. Anyway, I don’t want to see any harm come to you, Aelfric. But I alone can’t guarantee your safety. You’ve got to help save yourself from Moloch when he comes.”
Beetles, snails, foreskins…
On Ethan’s desk with the other items stood the cookie-jar kitten filled with two hundred seventy tiles, ninety each of O, W, and E.
Owe. Woe. Wee woo. Ewe woo.
Beside the cookie jar lay Paws for Reflection, the hardcover book by Donald Gainsworth, who had trained guide dogs for the blind and service dogs for people in wheelchairs.
Beetles, snails, foreskins, cookie jar with tiles, book…
Next to the book stood the sutured apple opened to reveal the doll’s eye. THE EYE IN THE APPLE? THE WATCHFUL WORM? THE WORM OF ORIGINAL SIN? DO WORDS HAVE ANY PURPOSE OTHER THAN CONFUSION?
Ethan had a headache. He probably ought to be grateful that a headache was all he had, after dying twice.
Leaving the six gifts from Reynerd on the desk, he went into the bathroom. He took a bottle of aspirin from the medicine cabinet and shook a pair of tablets into his hand.
He intended to draw a glass of water from the bathroom sink and take the aspirin. When he glanced in the mirror, however, he found himself looking at his reflection only briefly, then searching for a shadowy form that shouldn’t be there, that might slide away from his eyes as he tried to pin it with his stare, as in the bathroom at Dunny’s penthouse apartment.
For the glass of water, he went into the kitchen, where no mirrors hung.
Curiously, his attention was drawn to the wall-mounted telephone near the refrigerator. None of the lines was in use. Not Line 24. Not Fric’s line.
He thought about the heavy breather. Even if the boy was the type to invent little dramas to focus attention on himself, which he was not, this seemed a pale invention, not worth the effort of a lie. When kids made up stuff, they tended toward flamboyant details.
After taking the aspirin, Ethan went to the phone and picked up the handset. A light appeared at the first of his two private lines.
The house phones doubled as an intercom system. If he pressed the button marked INTERCOM and then the button for Fric’s line, he would be able to speak directly to the boy in his room.
He didn’t know what he would say or why he felt that he ought to seek out Fric at this late hour rather than in the morning. He stared at the boy’s line. He put one finger on the button, but hesitated to press it.
The kid was most likely asleep by now. If not asleep, he ought to be.
Ethan racked the handset.
He went to the refrigerator. Earlier, he had not been able to eat. The events of the day had left him with a stomach clenched as tight as a fist. For a while, all he’d wanted was good Scotch. Now, unexpectedly, the thought of a ham sandwich made his mouth water.
You got up every day, hoping for the best, but life threw crap at you, and you were shot in the gut and died, then you got up and went on, and life threw more crap at you, and you were run down in traffic and died again, and when you just tried, for God’s sake, to get on with it, life threw still more crap at you, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that eventually all this strenuous activity gave you the appetite of an Olympic power lifter.
Looking at frosted-glass angels, plastic angels, carved-wood angels, painted-tin angels, while at the same time talking to a maybe-for-real angel on the telephone, Fric said, “How can I ever find a safe place if Moloch can travel by mirrors and moonlight?”
“He can’t,” said Mysterious Caller. “He doesn’t have my powers, Aelfric. He’s mortal. But don’t think being mortal makes him less dangerous. A demon would be no worse than him.”
“Why don’t you come here and wait with me till he shows up, and then beat the crap out of him with your holy cudgel?”
“I don’t have a holy cud
gel, Aelfric.”
“You must have something. Cudgel, staff, truncheon, a sanctified broadsword glowing with divine energy. I’ve read about angels in this fantasy novel. They’re not airy-fairy types as fragile as fart gas. They’re warriors. They fought Satan’s legions and drove them out of Heaven, into Hell. That was a cool scene in the book.”
“This isn’t Heaven, son. This is Earth. Here, I’m authorized to work only by indirection.”
Quoting Mysterious Caller from their previous conversation, when they had spoken on the wine-cellar phone, Fric said, “‘Encourage, inspire, terrify, cajole, advise.’”
“You’ve a good memory. I know what’s coming, but I may influence events only by means that are sly—”
“—slippery, and seductive,” Fric finished.
“I may not interfere directly with Moloch’s pursuit of his own damnation. Just as I may not interfere with any heroic policeman who is about to sacrifice his life to save another, and therefore raise himself forever high.”
“I guess I understand that. You’re like a director who doesn’t get final cut of the film.”
“I’m not even a director. Think of me as just another studio executive who gives notes for suggested revisions of the script.”
“The kind of notes that always make screenwriters so pissy and turn them into drunks. They’ll bore your butt off talking about that, like a ten-year-old kid could care, like anyone could care.”
“The difference,” said the maybe-angel, “is that my notes are always well intended—and based on a vision of the future that may be too true.”
Fric thought about all this for a moment as he pulled the chair out from the kneehole of the desk. Sitting down, he said, “Wow. Being a guardian angel must be frustrating.”
“You can’t begin to know. You control the final cut of your life, Aelfric. It’s called free will. You’ve got it. Everyone here has it. And in the end, I can’t act for you. That’s what you’re here to do…to make choices, right or wrong, to be wise or not, to be courageous or not.”
“I guess I can try.”
“I guess you better. What’ve you done with the photo I gave you?”
“The pretty lady with the nice smile? She’s folded in my back pocket.”
“It won’t be any good to you there.”
“What do you expect me to do with it?”
“Think. Use your brain, Aelfric. Even in your family, that’s possible. Think. Be wise.”
“I’m too drag-ass tired to think right now. Who is she—the lady in the picture?”
“Why don’t you play detective? Make inquiries.”
“I did make an inquiry. Who is she?”
“Ask around. That’s not a question for me to answer.”
“Why isn’t it?”
“Because I have to abide by the sly-slippery-seductive rule, which sometimes makes any guardian angel a pain in the ass.”
“Okay. Forget it. Am I safe tonight? Can I wait till morning to find that deep and special secret place to hide?”
“First thing in the morning will be all right,” the guardian said. “But don’t waste any more time. Prepare, Aelfric. Prepare.”
“Okay. And, hey, I’m sorry for what I called you.”
“You mean earlier—an attorney?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“Really?”
“Much worse.”
“And I’m sorry for trying to track you back.”
“What do you mean?”
“It seems like a sneaky thing to do to an angel. I’m sorry for star sixty-nining you.”
Mysterious Caller fell silent.
An indefinable quality of the silence made it different from any hush that Fric had ever heard.
This was a perfect silence, for one thing, and it sucked away not only all the noise on the open line but also every whisper of sound in the library, until he seemed to have gone deafer than deaf.
The silence felt deep, too, as though the guardian were calling from the bottom of an oceanic trench. Deep and so cold.
Fric shuddered. He could not hear his teeth chatter or his body quake. He could not hear his exhalation, either, although he felt the breath rush from him, hot enough to dry his teeth.
Perfect, deep, cold silence, yes, but more and stranger than simply perfect, deep, and cold.
Fric imagined that such a silence might be cast like a spell by any angel with supernatural powers, but that it might be a trick most characteristic of the Angel of Death.
The Mysterious Caller drew a breath, inhaling the very silence and letting sound into the world once more, beginning with his voice, which resonated with an ominous note of concern: “When did you use star sixty-nine, Aelfric?”
“Well, after you called me in the train room.”
“And also after I called you in the wine cellar?”
“Yeah. Don’t you know all this…being who you are?”
“Angels don’t know everything, Aelfric. Now and then, some things are…slipped by us.”
“The first time, your phone just rang and rang—”
“That’s because I used the telephone in my old apartment, where I lived before I died. I didn’t enter your number, just thought of you, but I did pick up the phone. I was still learning…learning what I can do now. I’m getting smoother at this by the hour.”
Fric wondered if he was more tired even than he realized. The conversation wasn’t always making sense. “Your old apartment?”
“I’m a relatively new angel, son. Died this morning. I’m using the body I used to live in, though it’s…more flexible now, with my new powers. What happened the second time you used star sixty-nine?”
“You really don’t know?”
“I’m afraid I might. But tell me.”
“I got this pervert.”
“What did it say to you?”
“Didn’t say anything. He just breathed heavy…and then made these like animal sounds.”
The Mysterious Caller was quiet, but this proved to be a far different silence from the death-deep stillness of a moment ago. This hush had in it a host of half-heard twitches, the moth-wing vibration of fluttering nerves, the so-soft tensing of muscles.
“At first, I thought he was you,” Fric explained. “So I told him I’d looked up Moloch in the dictionary. The name excited him.”
“Don’t ever use star sixty-nine after I call, Aelfric. Not ever, ever again.”
“Why?”
With hard insistence, revealing a degree of alarm that seemed to be too mortal in character for an immortal guardian angel, the caller said, “Not ever again. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Do you promise me you’ll never again try to call me back with star sixty-nine?”
“All right. But why?”
“When I called you in the wine cellar, I didn’t use a phone, the way I did the first time. I don’t require a phone to ring you up any more than I need a car to travel. I need only the idea of a phone.”
“The idea of a phone? How’s that work?”
“My current position comes with certain supernatural abilities.”
“Being a guardian angel, you mean.”
“But when I use only the idea of a phone, star sixty-nine might connect you with a place you must not go.”
“What place?”
The guardian hesitated. Then he said, “The dark eternity.”
“Doesn’t sound good,” Fric agreed, and uneasily surveyed the library.
In the labyrinth of shelves, monsters both human and not abided between the covers of so many books. Perhaps one beast prowled not in those paper worlds but in this one, breathing not ink fumes but air, waiting for a small boy to find it along one turning or another of those quiet aisles.
“The dark eternity. The bottomless abyss, the darkness visible, and all that dwells there,” the guardian elaborated. “You were lucky, son. It didn’t talk to you.”
&nb
sp; “It?”
“What you called ‘the pervert.’ If they talk to you, they can wheedle, persuade, charm, sometimes even command.”
Fric glanced at the tree again. The angels seemed to be watching him, every one.
“When you press star sixty-nine,” the guardian said, “you open a door to them.”
“Who?”
“Do we need to speak their sulfurous name? We both know who I mean, do we not?”
Being a boy with a taste for fantasy in his reading, with a home theater in which he could watch everything from kid flicks to R-rated monster fests, with an imagination stropped sharp by solitude, Fric was pretty sure he knew who was meant.
The caller said, “You open a door to them, and then, with one wrong word, you might unintentionally…invite them in.”
“In here, to Palazzo Rospo?”
“You might invite one of them into you, Aelfric. When invited, they can travel by the telephone connection, by that fragile link of spirit to spirit, much the way that I can travel through one mirror to another.”
“No lie?”
“No lie. Don’t you dare use star sixty-nine after I hang up.”
“All right.”
“Or ever again when I call you.”
“Never.”
“I’m deadly serious about this, Aelfric.”
“I wouldn’t expect a guardian angel to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Scare the crap out of me.”
“Encourage, inspire, terrify,” the caller reminded him. “Now sleep in peace tonight, while you can. And in the morning, waste no time. Prepare. Prepare to survive, Aelfric, prepare, because when I look forward right now to see how things will most likely unfold…I see you dead.”
CHAPTER 47
FRIC IN A QUANDARY, LYING FACEDOWN ON THE sofa, looked at the telephone on the library floor. He had moved it from the writing desk to the maximum length of its cord.
He’d relocated it for extra security, in the event that he needed to make a quick call for help.
While that was true, it represented only part of the truth. He also toyed with the idea of keying in *69.
Fric didn’t embrace self-destruction. He wasn’t one of those Hollywood brats who were eager to grow up and become a rich heroin junkie. He had no intention of killing himself with a sports car, a handgun, a shotgun, diet pills, hard liquor, marijuana-induced lung cancer, or women.
