by Dean Koontz
The MYSTERY TRAIN sweatshirt had been lost to the sea. A similar thrift-shop purchase featured the word WYVERN across the chest, in gold letters on the dark-blue fabric.
I assumed Wyvern must be the name of a small college. Wearing it did not make me feel any smarter.
As I dressed, Frank Sinatra watched me from the bed. He lay atop the quilted spread, ankles crossed, head propped on pillows, hands behind his head.
The Chairman of the Board was smiling, amused by me. He had a winning smile, but his moods were mercurial.
He was dead, of course. He had died in 1998, at the age of eighty-two.
Lingering spirits look the age they were when death took them. Mr. Sinatra, however, appears whatever age he wishes to be, depending on his mood.
I have known only one other spirit with the power to manifest at any age he chose: the King of Rock ’n’ Roll.
Elvis had kept me company for years. He had been reluctant to move on, for reasons that took me a long while to ascertain.
Only days before Christmas, along a lonely California highway, he had finally found the courage to proceed to the next world. I’d been happy for him then, to see his sorrow lift and his face brighten with anticipation.
Moments after Elvis departed, as Boo and I walked the shoulder of the highway, drawn toward an unknown destination that proved to be Magic Beach, Mr. Sinatra fell in step beside me. He appeared to be in his early thirties that day, fifty years younger than when he died.
Now, lying on the bed, he looked forty or forty-one. He was dressed as he had been in some scenes in High Society, which he had made with Bing Crosby in 1956.
Of all the spirits I have seen, only Elvis and Mr. Sinatra are able to manifest in the garments of their choice. Others haunt me always in whatever they were wearing when they died.
This is one reason I will never attend a costume party dressed as the traditional symbol of the New Year, in nothing but a diaper and a top hat. Welcomed into either Hell or Heaven, I do not want to cross the threshold to the sound of demonic or angelic laughter.
When I had pulled on the Wyvern sweatshirt and was ready to leave, Mr. Sinatra came to me, shoulders forward, head half ducked, dukes raised, and threw a few playful punches at the air in front of my face.
Because he evidently hoped that I would help him move on from this world as I had helped Elvis, I had been reading biographies of him. I did not know as much about him as I knew about the King, but I knew the right thing for this moment.
“Robert Mitchum once said you were the only man he was afraid to fight, though he was half again as big as you.”
The Chairman looked embarrassed and shrugged.
As I picked up the cloth-wrapped bag of ice and held it against the lump on the side of my head, I continued: “Mitchum said he knew he could knock you down, probably more than once, but he also knew you would keep getting up and coming back until one of you was dead.”
Mr. Sinatra gestured as if to say that Mitchum had overestimated him.
“Sir, here’s the situation. You came to me for help, but you keep resisting it.”
Two weeks ago, he had gone poltergeist on me, with the result that my collection of books about him went twirling around my room.
Spirits cannot directly harm us, not even evil spirits. This is our world, and they have no power over us. Their blows pass through us. Their fingernails and teeth cannot draw blood.
Sufficiently malevolent, however, with bottomless depths of rage to draw upon, they can spin spiritual power into whips of force that lash inanimate objects into motion. Squashed by a refrigerator hurled by a poltergeist, you tend not to take solace in the fact that the blow was indirect, rather than from the ghostly hand itself.
Mr. Sinatra wasn’t evil. He was frustrated by his circumstances and, for whatever reason, fearful about leaving this world—though he would never admit to the fear. As one who had not found organized religion highly credible until later in life, he was now confused about his place in the vertical of sacred order.
The biographies had not ricocheted from wall to wall with violent force, but had instead circled the room like the horses on a carousel. Every time I tried to pluck one of those books from the air, it had eluded me.
“Mr. Mitchum said you’d keep getting up and coming back until one of you was dead,” I repeated. “But in this fight, sir, one of us is already dead.”
His sunny smile grew wintry for a moment, but then thawed away. As dark as his bad moods could be, they were always short seasons.
“There’s no point in you resisting me. No point. All I want to do is help you.”
As was often the case, I could not read those extraordinary blue eyes, but at least they were not bright with hostility.
After a moment, he affectionately pinched my cheek.
He went to the nearest window and turned his back to me, a genuine spirit watching the fog haunt the night with its legions of false ghosts.
I recalled “It Was a Very Good Year,” a song that could be read as the sentimental and boastful recollections of an irredeemable Casanova. The poignant melancholy of his interpretation had elevated those words and that music to art.
For him, the good and the bad years were gone, and what remained was merely forever. Maybe he resisted eternity out of fear based in remorse, though maybe not.
The next life promised to be without struggle, but everything I had learned about him suggested that he had thrived on struggle. Perhaps he could not imagine an interesting life without it.
I can imagine it easily enough. After death, whatever I might have to face, I will not linger on this side of the door. In fact, I might cross the threshold at a run.
CHAPTER 11
I did not want to leave the house by the front door. The way my luck was running, I would find the barbarian horde on the porch, about to pay a visit.
In my dictionary, three bad guys who between them have at least one chin beard, one set of rotten teeth, and three guns qualify as a horde.
Leaving by the back of the house meant I had to pass the parlor, where Hutch brooded about the wife and son he’d never had and about how lonely and vulnerable he was after losing them.
I did not mind if he called me an ungrateful little shit again; that was merely rehearsal for a possible visit from a representative of the horde. The quick shower, the change of clothes, and the chat in the kitchen with Hutch had cost me twenty minutes, however, and I was anxious to locate Annamaria.
“Odd,” he said as I tried to move past the open parlor doors with the stealth of a Special Forces op in camouflage and sound-suppressing footgear.
“Oh, hi.”
Roosting in his armchair with a chenille throw across his lap, as if keeping eggs warm in a bird’s nest, he said, “In the kitchen a little while ago, when we were talking about what a useful bit of wardrobe a cardigan can be …”
“A tattered cardigan,” I qualified.
“This may seem a peculiar question.…”
“Not to me, sir. Nothing seems peculiar to me anymore.”
“Were you wearing pants?”
“Pants?”
“Later, I had the strangest impression that you hadn’t been wearing any pants.”
“Well, sir, I never wear pants.”
“Of course you wear pants. You’re wearing them now.”
“No, these are jeans. I only have jeans—and one pair of chinos. I don’t consider them pants. Pants are dressier.”
“You were wearing jeans in the kitchen?”
As I stood in the parlor doorway, holding a bag of ice to the lump on the side of my head, I said, “Well, I wasn’t wearing chinos, sir.”
“How very peculiar.”
“That I wasn’t wearing chinos?”
“No. That I can’t remember them.”
“If I wasn’t wearing chinos, you wouldn’t remember them.”
He thought about what I had said. “That’s true enough.”
“Just enough, sir,
” I agreed, and changed the subject. “I’m going to leave you a note about the dinner casserole.”
Putting aside the novel he had been reading, he said, “Aren’t you cooking dinner?”
“I’ve already made it. Chicken enchiladas in tomatillo sauce.”
“I love your tomatillo enchiladas.”
“And a rice and green-bean salad.”
“Does the rice have green sauce, too?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, good. Do I heat them in the microwave?”
“That’s right. I’ll leave a note about time and power.”
“Could you put Post-its on the dishes?”
“Take the Post-its off before you put the dishes in the oven.”
“Of course. I wouldn’t make that mistake. Again. Going out?”
“Just for a little while.”
“You aren’t leaving for good, are you?”
“No, sir. And I didn’t steal Corrina’s jewelry, either.”
“I was a diamond merchant once,” Hutch said. “My wife conspired to have me killed.”
“Not Corrina.”
“Barbara Stanwyck. She was having an affair with Bogart, and they were going to run off to Rio with the diamonds. But, of course, something went very wrong for them.”
“Was it a tsunami?”
“You have a sly sense of humor, son.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“No, no. I like it. I believe my career would have been much bigger if I’d been able to get roles in a few comedies. I can be quite funny in my own way.”
“I’m well aware.”
“Barbara Stanwyck was consumed by flesh-eating bacteria, and Bogart was hit by an asteroid.”
“I’ll bet the audience didn’t see that coming.”
Picking up the book again, Hutch said, “Do you enjoy the fog so much that you want to take a second walk in it, or is there something else I should know?”
“There’s nothing else you should know, sir.”
“Then I will wait for the doorbell and denounce you as a fiend to anyone who asks.”
“Thank you.”
In the kitchen, I emptied the ice-filled OneZip bag into the sink and tossed it in the trash.
The lump on my head remained the size of half a plum, but it no longer throbbed.
On two yellow Post-its, with a blue pen, I wrote directions for heating the enchiladas and the rice salad. With a red pen, I printed REMOVE THIS TAG BEFORE PUTTING IN OVEN.
Standing at the kitchen island, I went through the contents of the wallet that I had taken off Flashlight Guy.
In his California driver’s-license photo, I recognized the man I had left lying on the beach, although he only slightly resembled something conjured out of a witch’s cauldron. His name was Samuel Oliver Whittle. Thirty years old, he had an address in Magic Beach.
In his Nevada driver’s-license photo, he smiled broadly at the camera, which was a mistake. His smile transformed his face, and not in a good way. He looked like a lunatic villain from a Batman movie.
Nevada, where he had an address in Las Vegas, knew him as Samuel Owen Bittel. In Vegas, he was two years older than he claimed to be in his California incarnation, but perhaps a Las Vegas lifestyle aged a person prematurely.
He had no credit cards. This made him suspicious in a country that not only looked to the future but lived on the earnings from it.
The wallet contained no insurance card, no Social Security card, nor any of the other ID you might have expected.
An employee-identification card revealed that he worked for the Magic Beach Harbor Department.
Suddenly a theme had developed. Perhaps the hulk with the chin beard had not taken the inflatable dinghy without permission; maybe he had the authority to use it because he, too, worked for the harbor department, which also had responsibility for the beaches and the town’s one pier.
I found it difficult to believe that the redheads were also on the municipal payroll. Thugs who worked for the government usually tried not to look like thugs.
After returning the cards to Sam Whittle’s wallet, I tucked it in my left hip pocket.
Whatever trouble I found in the coming hours, at least some of it would involve men with guns. I did not have a gun of my own and did not want one. On occasion I have used a bad guy’s firearm after taking it away from him, but only in desperation.
When I was a child, my mother spoiled guns for me, not because she disapproved of them, but because she had a psychotic attachment to a pistol. Guns spook me.
In a clutch or a corner, I tend to make a weapon out of what is near at hand. That can be anything from a crowbar to a cat, though if I had a choice, I would prefer an angry cat, which I have found to be more effective than a crowbar.
Although weaponless, I left the house by the back door, with two chocolate-pumpkin cookies. It’s a tough world out there, and a man has to armor himself against it however he can.
CHAPTER 12
Paw after paw silent on wet blacktop, the fog crept along the alleyway behind Hutch’s house, rubbing its furry flanks against the garages on both sides, slipping through fence pickets, climbing walls, licking into every niche and corner where mouse or lizard might have taken shelter.
These earthbound clouds swathed nearby things in mystery, made objects half a block away appear to be distant, dissolved the world entirely past the one-block mark, and raised in the mind a primitive conviction that the edge of the earth lay near at hand, a precipice from which I would fall forever into eternal emptiness.
Slowly turning in a circle, turning again, I ate one cookie and concentrated on Annamaria: on her long hair the color of molasses, on her face, on her too-pale skin. In my mind, I saw her delicate hand close around the ocean-polished orb of green bottle glass and retreat with it into the long sleeve of her sweater.…
My imperfect gift has one more imperfect aspect, which I have discussed before, though not in this fourth manuscript. My lost girl, Stormy Llewellyn, had called it psychic magnetism.
If I wish to find someone whose whereabouts I don’t know, I can surrender myself to impulse and intuition, drive or bicycle or walk around wherever my whims take me, concentrating on that person’s face and name … and usually within half an hour, I will find him. Psychic magnetism.
This handy talent is problematic because I cannot control or foresee when or where the desired encounter will occur. I might spot my target across a busy street—or turn a corner and collide with him.
If I am seeking a bad guy, psychic magnetism might put me on his trail—or drop me into his talons.
And if I am in pursuit of someone who is no threat, someone I need to question or to sweep out of harm’s way, I cannot be sure the search will be successful. I usually find the person I’m seeking, but not always. Once in a while, resorting to psychic magnetism in desperate circumstances can be a waste of precious minutes when I have not a second to spare.
I am a half-assed champion of the imperiled innocent: able to see the lingering dead, but unable to hear what of value they might wish to tell me; informed by predictive dreams that never provide me with sufficient detail to be certain of what they predict, of when the event will occur, or of where the horror will go down; without gun or sword, armored only with cookies.
All of this fearsome uncertainty ought to have made a hermit of me, ought to have sent me fleeing to a cave or to a remote cabin, in curmudgeonly rejection of the dead and the living. But my heart tells me that the gift was given to be used, imperfect or not, and that if I deny it, I will wither away in despair and will earn no life after this one, no reunion with my lost girl.
At least this time, standing in the alleyway behind Hutch’s house, I sought not someone who wanted me dead, but instead a young woman who might need me to keep her alive. I most likely would not blunder into the teeth of the tiger.
The thick muffling fog was a time machine that rolled the night back more than one hundred years, silencing all the sounds
of modern civilization—car engines, radios, the TV voices that often leaked from houses. The peaceful quiet of the nineteenth century coddled Magic Beach.
One cookie finished, concentrating on Annamaria, I suddenly set off north along the alley, as if I were a milk-wagon horse following a route so familiar that I did not need to think about my purpose or my destination.
Windows, usually electric-bright, glowed softly, as if the rooms beyond were candlelit. At the end of the alleyway, the sodium-yellow streetlight appeared to throb subtly, like gas flames, as a thousand slowly pulsing moth wings of fog pressed against the lenses of the lamp.
Nibbling my last cookie, I turned east where the alley met the street, and headed inland.
At only 6:45 on a Wednesday evening, the town appeared to have gone to bed for the night, snuggled down in Nature’s white blankets. The damp chill encouraged dog owners to take shorter walks than usual, and the blinding density of the fog dissuaded drivers from unnecessary trips.
By the time that I had gone three blocks east and one block north of Hutch’s place, I had seen only two ghostly cars in motion, each at least half a block distant. They looked like deep-sea submersibles in a Jules Verne tale, quietly motoring through a murky oceanic abyss.
In that quaint residential neighborhood known as the Brick District, which had no brick streets and only two brick houses, a large vehicle turned the corner at the farther end of the block. A soft kaleidoscope of fog formed shifting white-on-white patterns in the headlights.
Deep inside me, a still small voice said Hide.
I left the sidewalk, jumped a waist-high plum-thorn hedge, and knelt behind that greenery.
I smelled woodsmoke from fireplaces, wet foliage, and garden mulch.
In the hedge, something smelled me and bolted from cover. I almost startled to my feet before I realized I had spooked a rabbit, which was already gone across the lawn.
The truck approached with the throttled growl of a prowling beast, traveling even slower than the low visibility required.
Oppressed by a feeling that a deadly threat loomed behind me, I glanced toward the house in front of which I had taken refuge. The windowpanes were dark. Except for the lazily billowing fog, nothing moved, and as far as I could tell, no watcher waited in either the scud or the shadows.
