Strangers

by Dean Koontz

  dark stain spreading from the crotch down both legs of Marcie’s jeans. “Marcie!”

  The girl was trying to scream, but could not.

  “What’s happening?” Mary asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” Jorja said. “God help me, I don’t know.”

  With her eyes still focused on some figure or object that remained visible only to her, Marcie began a wordless keening.

  New York, New York.

  The tape deck still played Christmas music, and Jenny Twist lay immobile and insensate, but Jack no longer engaged in the frustrating one-way communication with which he had filled the first few hours of his visit. Now he sat in silence, and inevitably his thoughts drifted back through the years to his homecoming from Central America....

  Upon returning to the States, he had discovered that the rescue of the prisoners at the Institute of Brotherhood had been misrepresented, in some quarters, as a terrorist act, a mass kidnapping, a provocation meant to spark a war. He and every Ranger involved were painted as criminals in uniform, and those taken prisoner were for some reason the special focus of the opposition’s anger.

  In a political panic, Congress had banned all covert activities in Central America, including a pending plan to rescue the four Rangers. Their release was to be arranged strictly through diplomatic channels.

  That was why they had waited in vain for rescue. Their country had abandoned them. At first Jack had trouble believing it. When at last he believed, it was the second worst shock of his life.

  Having won his freedom, home again, Jack was relentlessly pursued by hostile journalists and subpoenaed to appear before a Congressional committee to testify about his involvement in the raid. He expected to have a chance to set the record straight, but he quickly discovered that they weren’t interested in his viewpoint, and that the televised hearing was merely an opportunity for politicians to do some grandstanding in the infamous tradition of Joe McCarthy.

  In a few months, most people had forgotten him, and when he regained the pounds he had lost in prison, they ceased to recognize him as the alleged war criminal they had seen on television. But the pain and the sense of betrayal continued to burn fiercely in him.

  If being abandoned by his country was the second worst shock of his life, the worst was what had happened to Jenny while he had been stuck in that Central American prison. A thug had accosted her in the hallway of her own apartment building as she was coming home from work. He put a gun to her head, hustled her into her apartment, sodomized and raped her, clubbed her brutally with his pistol, and left her for dead.

  When Jack came home at last, he found Jenny in a state institution, comatose. The level of care she had been getting was abominable.

  Norman Hazzurt, the rapist who attacked Jenny, had been tracked down through fingerprints and witnesses, but a clever defense attorney had managed to delay the trial. Undertaking an investigation of his own, Jack satisfied himself that Hazzurt, with a history of violent sex offenses, was the guilty man. He also became convinced that Hazzurt would be acquitted on a technicality.

  Throughout his ordeal with the press and politicians, Jack made plans for the future. There were two primary tasks ahead of him: First, he would kill Norman Hazzurt in such a way as to avoid any suspicion falling upon himself; second, he would get enough money to move Jenny to a private sanitarium, though the only way to obtain so much cash in a hurry was to steal it. As an elite Ranger, he was trained in most weapons, explosives, martial arts, and survival techniques. His society had failed him, but it had also provided him with the knowledge and the means by which he could extract his revenge, and it had taught him how to break whatever laws stood in his way without punishment.

  Norman Hazzurt died in an “accidental” gas explosion two months after Jack returned to the States. And two weeks later, Jenny’s transference to a private sanitarium was financed by the proceeds from an ingenious bank robbery executed with military precision.

  The murder of Hazzurt did not satisfy Jack. In fact, it depressed him. Killing in a war was different from killing in civilian life. He did not have the detachment to kill except in self-defense.

  Robbery, however, was enormously appealing. After the successful bank job, he’d been excited, exalted, exhilarated. Daring robbery had a medicinal quality. Crime gave him a reason to live. Until recently.

  Now, sitting at Jenny’s bedside, Jack Twist wondered what would keep him going, day after day, if not grand larceny. The only other thing he had was Jenny. However, he no longer needed to provide for her; he had already piled up more than enough money for that. So his only reason for living was to come here several times a week, look upon her serene face, hold her hand—and pray for a miracle.

  It was ironic that a man like him—a hard-headed, self-reliant individualist—should have no hope but mysticism.

  As he brooded on that, he heard Jenny make a soft gurgling sound. She took two quick, deep breaths and produced a long, rattling sigh. For one crazy moment as he rose from his chair, Jack half-expected to find her eyes open, filled with awareness for the first time in more than eight years, the miracle having come to pass even as he had been day-dreaming of it. But her eyes were closed, and her face was slack. He put a hand against her face, then moved it to her throat. He felt for her pulse. What had happened was not, in fact, miraculous but anti-miraculous, mundane, and inevitable: Jenny Twist had died.

  Chicago, Illinois.

  Few physicians were on duty at St. Joseph’s that Christmas, but a resident named Jarvil and an intern named Klinet were eager to talk to Father Wycazik about Emmeline Halbourg’s amazing recovery.

  Klinet, an intense wiry-haired young man, escorted Stefan to a consultation room to review Emmy’s file and X rays. “Five weeks ago, she was started on namiloxiprine—a new drug, just approved by the FDA.”

  Dr. Jarvil, the resident, was soft-spoken, with heavy-lidded eyes, but when he joined them in the consultation room, he too was visibly excited by Emmeline Halbourg’s dramatic turn for the better.

  “Namiloxiprine has several effects in bone diseases like Emmy‘s,” Jarvil said. “In many instances it puts a stop to the destruction of the periosteum, promotes the growth of healthy osteocytes, and somewhat induces the accumulation of intercellular calcium. And in a case like Emmy’s, where the bone marrow is the primary target of the disease, namiloxiprine creates an unusual chemical environment in the marrow cavity and in the haversian canals, an environment that’s extremely hostile to microorganisms but actually encourages the growth of marrow cells, the production of blood cells, and hemoglobin formation.”

  “But it’s not supposed to work this fast,” Klinet said.

  “And it’s basically a stop-loss drug,” Jarvil said. “It can arrest the progress of a disease, put a stop to bone deterioration. But it doesn’t make regeneration possible. Sure, it’s supposed to promote some reconstruction, but not the kind of rebuilding we’re seeing in Emmy.”

  “Fast rebuilding,” Klinet said, smacking his forehead with the heel of his hand, as if to knock this amazing fact into his unwilling brain.

  They showed Stefan a series of X rays taken over the past six weeks, in which the changes in Emmy’s bones and joints were obvious.

  Klinet said, “She’d been on namiloxiprine for three weeks without noticeable effect, and then suddenly, two weeks ago, her body not only went into a state of remission but began rebuilding damaged tissues.”

  The timing of the girl’s turnaround coincided perfectly with the first appearance of the strange rings on Brendan Cronin’s hands. However, Stefan Wycazik made no mention of that coincidence.

  Jarvil produced more X rays and tests that showed a remarkable improvement in the child’s haversian canals, the elaborate network that carried small blood vessels and lymphatics throughout the bone for the purpose of maintenance and repair. Many of these had been clogged with a plaquelike substance that pinched off the vessels passing through them. In the past two we
eks, however, the plaque almost disappeared, allowing the full circulation required for healing and regeneration.

  “No one even knew that namiloxiprine could clean out the canals this way,” Jarvil said. “No record of it. Oh, yes, minor unclogging, but only as a consequence of getting the disease itself under control. Nothing like this. Amazing.”

  “If regeneration continues at this rate,” Klinet said, “Emmy could be a normal, healthy girl in three months. Really phenomenal.”

  Jarvil said, “She could be well again.”

  They grinned at Father Wycazik, and he did not have the heart to suggest that neither their hard work nor the wonder drug was responsible for Emmeline Halbourg’s cure. They were euphoric, so Stefan kept to himself the possibility that Emmy’s cure had been effected by some power far more mysterious than modem medicine.

  Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

  Christmas Day with Lucy, Frank, and the grandchildren was fun and therapeutic for Ernie and Faye Block. By the time they went out for a walk (just the two of them) toward the end of the afternoon, they were feeling better than they had in months.

  The weather was perfect for walking: cold, crisp, but without wind. The most recent snowfall was four days old, so the sidewalks were clear. As twilight approached, the air shimmered with a purple radiance.

  Bundled in heavy coats and scarves, Faye and Ernie strolled arm in arm, talking animatedly about the day’s events, enjoying the Christmas displays that Lucy’s and Frank’s neighbors had erected on their front lawns. The years slipped away, and Faye felt as if she and Ernie were still newlyweds, young and full of dreams.

  From the moment they had arrived in Milwaukee on December 15, ten days ago, Faye had reason to hope that everything was going to work out all right. Ernie had seemed better—a new bounciness in his step, more genuine good humor in his smile. Evidently, just basking in the love of his daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren was sufficient to burn away some of the crippling fear that had become the central fact of his life.

  The therapy sessions with Dr. Fontelaine, six so far, had also been remarkably beneficial. Ernie was still afraid of the dark but far less terrified than when they left Nevada. Phobias, according to the doctor, were easy to treat compared to many other psychiatric disorders. In recent years therapists had discovered that, in most cases, the symptoms were the disease rather than merely shadows cast by unresolved conflicts in the patient’s subconscious. It was no longer considered necessary—or even possible or desirable—to seek the psychological causes of the condition in order to treat it. Long courses of therapy had been abandoned in favor of teaching the patient desensitization techniques that could eradicate the symptoms in months or even weeks.

  Approximately a third of all phobics could not be helped by these methods and, instead, required long-term treatment and even panic-blocking drugs like alprazolam. But Ernie had improved at a pace that even Dr. Fontelaine, an optimist by nature, found astonishing.

  Faye had been reading extensively about phobias and had discovered she could help Ernie by digging up amusing, curious facts that allowed him to view his condition from a different—less fearsome—perspective. He was especially fond of hearing about bizarre phobias that made his terror of the dark seem reasonable by comparison. For example, knowing there were pteronophobics out there, people who lived in constant and unreasonable fear of feathers, made his abhorrence of nightfall seem not only bearable but almost ordinary and logical, as well. Ichthyophobes were horrified by the prospect of encountering a fish, and pediophobes ran screaming at the sight of a doll. And Ernie’s nyctophobia was certainly preferable to coitophobia (the fear of sexual intercourse), and not a fraction as debilitating as autophobia (the fear of oneself).

  Now, walking through the twilight, Faye tried to keep Ernie’s mind off the descending darkness by telling him about the late author, John Cheever, winner of the National Book Award, who’d been gephyrophobic. Cheever had suffered from a crippling fear of crossing high bridges.

  Ernie listened with fascination, but he was no less aware of the onset of nightfall. As the shadows lengthened across the snow, his hand steadily tightened on her arm until it would have been painful if she had not been wearing a thick sweater and heavy coat.

  By the time they had gone seven blocks, they were too far from the house to have any hope of returning to it before full darkness settled on the land. Two-thirds of the sky was black already, and the other third was deep purple. The shadows had spread like spilt ink.

  The streetlamps had come on. Faye halted Ernie in a cone of light, giving him a brief reprieve. His eyes had a wild look, and his steaming exhalations rushed from him at a rate that indicated incipient panic.

  “Remember to control your breathing,” Faye said.

  He nodded and began at once to take deeper, slower breaths.

  When all the light in the sky had been extinguished, she said, “Ready to go back?”

  “Ready,” he said hollowly.

  They stepped out of the glow of the streetlamp, into darkness, heading back toward the house, and Ernie hissed between clenched teeth.

  What they were engaged upon, for the third time, was a dramatic therapeutic technique called “flooding,” in which the phobic was encouraged to confront the thing he feared and to endure it long enough to break its hold on him. Flooding is based on the fact that panic attacks are self-limiting. The human body cannot sustain a very high level of panic indefinitely, cannot produce endless adrenaline, so the mind must adapt to, and make peace—or at least a truce—with what it fears. Unmodified flooding can be a cruel, barbaric method of cracking a phobia, for it puts the patient at risk of a breakdown. Dr. Fontelaine preferred a modified version of the technique involving three stages of confrontation with the source of fear.

  The first stage, in Ernie’s case, was to put himself in darkness for fifteen minutes, but with Faye at his side for support and with lighted areas easily accessible. Now, each time they arrived at the lighted sidewalk beneath a streetlamp, they paused to let him gather his courage, then went on into the next patch of darkness.

  The second stage, which they would try in another week or two, after more sessions with the doctor, would involve driving to a place where there were no streetlamps, no easily reached lighted areas. There, they would walk together arm in arm across an unrelieved vista of darkness until Ernie could tolerate no more, at which time Faye would switch on a flashlight and give him a moment’s respite.

  In the third stage of treatment, Ernie would go for a stroll alone in a completely dark area. After a few outings like that, he would almost certainly be cured.

  But he was not cured yet, and by the time they covered six blocks of the seven-block return journey to the house, Ernie was breathing like a well-run racehorse, and he bolted for the safety of the light inside. Not bad, though—six blocks. Better than before. At this rate, he would be cured in no time.

  As Faye followed him into the house, where Lucy was already helping him out of his coat, she tried to feel good about his progress to date. If this pace held, he would complete the third and final stage weeks—maybe even a couple of months—ahead of schedule. That was what worried Faye. His rapid improvement was amazing; it seemed too rapid and too amazing to be real. She wanted to believe the nightmare would be put behind them quickly, but the pace of his recuperation made her wonder if it was lasting. Striving always to think positive, Faye Block was nevertheless plagued by the instinctive and unnerving feeling that something was wrong. Very wrong.

  Boston, Massachusetts.

  Inevitably, given his exotic background as a godson of Picasso and a once-famous European stage performer, Pablo Jackson was a star in Boston social circles. Furthermore, during World War II, he had been a liaison between British Intelligence and the French Resistance forces, and his recent work as a hypnotist with police agencies had only added to his mystique. He never lacked invitations.

  On the evening of Christmas Day, Pablo attended a black-tie dinne
r party for twenty-two at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Ira Hergensheimer in Brookline. The house was a splendid brick Georgian Colonial, as elegant and warmly welcoming as the Hergensheimers themselves, who had made their money in real estate during the 1950s. A bartender was on duty in the library, and white-jacketed waiters circulated through the enormous drawing room with champagne and canapes, and in the foyer a string quartet played just loudly enough to provide pleasant background music.

  Among that engaging company, the man of most interest to Pablo was Alexander Christophson, former Ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, one-term United States Senator from Massachusetts, later Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, now retired almost a decade, whom Pablo had known half a century. Now seventy-six, Christophson was the second eldest guest, but old age had been nearly as kind to him as to Pablo. He was tall, distinguished, with remarkably few lines in his classic Bostonian face. His mind was as sharp as ever. The true length of his journey on the earth was betrayed only by a mild trace of Parkinson’s disease which, in spite of medication, left him with a tremor in his right hand.

  Half an hour before dinner, Pablo eased Alex away from the other guests and led him to Ira Hergensheimer’s oak-paneled study, adjacent to the library, for a private conversation. The old magician closed the door behind them, and they carried their glasses of champagne to a pair of leather wingback chairs by the window. “Alex, I need your advice.”

  “Well, as you know,” Alex said, “men our age find it especially satisfying to give advice. It compensates for no longer being able to set a bad example ourselves. But I can’t imagine what advice I could give on any problem that you wouldn’t already have thought of yourself.”

  “Yesterday,” Pablo said, “a young woman came to see me. She’s an exceedingly lovely, charming, and intelligent woman who’s accustomed to solving her own problems, but now she’s bumped up against something very strange. She desperately needs help.”

  Alex raised his eyebrows. “Beautiful young women still come to you for help at eighty-one? I am impressed, humbled, and envious, Pablo.”

  “This is not a coup de foudre, you filthy-minded old lizard. Passion isn’t involved.” Without mentioning Ginger Weiss’s name or occupation, Pablo discussed her problem—the bizarre and inexplicable fugues—and recounted the session of hypnotic regression that had ended with her frightening withdrawal. “She actually seemed about to retreat into a deep self-induced coma, perhaps even into death, to avoid my questions. Naturally, I refused to put her in a trance again and risk another withdrawal of that severity. But I promised to do some research to see if any similar case was on record. I found myself poring through books most of last evening and this morning, searching for references to memory blocks with self-destruction built into them. At last I found it ... in one of your books. Of course, you were writing about an imposed psychological condition as a result of brainwashing, and this woman’s block is of her own creation; but the similarity is there.”

  Drawing on his experiences in the intelligence services during World War II and the subsequent cold war, Alex Christophson had written several books, including two that dealt with brainwashing. In one, Alex had described a technique he called the Azrael Block (naming it for one of the angels of death) that seemed uncannily like the barrier that surrounded Ginger Weiss’s memory of some traumatic event in her past.

  As distant string music came to them muffled by the closed study door, Alex put down his champagne glass because his hands trembled too violently. He said, “I don’t suppose you’d drop this matter and forget all about it? Because I’m telling you that’s the wisest course.”

  “Well,” Pablo said, a bit surprised by the ominous tone of his friend’s voice, “I’ve promised her I’ll try to help.”

  “I’ve been retired eight years, and my instincts aren’t what they once were. But I have a very bad feeling about this. Drop it, Pablo. Don’t see her again. Don’t try to help her any more.”

  “But, Alex, I’ve promised her.”

  “I was afraid that’d be your position.” Alex folded his tremulous hands. “Okay. The Azrael Block ... It’s not something that Western intelligence services use often, but the Soviets find it invaluable. For example, let’s imagine a topnotch Russian agent named Ivan, an operative with thirty years’ service in the KGB. In Ivan’s memory there’ll be an incredible amount of highly sensitive information that, were it to fall into Western hands, would devastate Russian espionage networks. Ivan’s superiors constantly worry that, on some foreign assignment, he’ll be identified and interrogated.”

  “As I understand it, with current drugs and hypnotic techniques, no one can withhold information from a determined interrogator.”

  “Exactly. No matter how tough he is, Ivan will spill all he knows without being tortured. For that reason, his superiors would prefer to send younger agents who, if caught, would have less valuable information to reveal. But many situations require a seasoned man like Ivan, so the possibility of all his knowledge falling into enemy hands is a nightmare with which his superiors must live, whether they like it or not.”

  “The risk of doing business.”

  “Exactly. However, let’s imagine that, among all the sensitive knowledge in his head, Ivan knows two or three things that’re especially sensitive, so explosive that their revelation could destroy his country. These particular memories, less than one percent of his knowledge about KGB operations, could be suppressed without affecting his performance in the field. We’re talking here about the suppression of a very tiny portion of his memories. Then, if he fell into enemy hands, he’d still give up a great deal of valuable stuff during interrogation—but at least he would not be able to reveal those few most crucial memories.”

  “And this is where the Azrael Block comes in,” Pablo said. “Ivan’s own people use drugs and hypnosis to seal off certain parts of his past before sending him overseas on his next assignment.”

  Alex nodded. “For example ... say that years ago Ivan was one of the agents involved in the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. With a memory block in place, his awareness of that involvement could be locked in his subconscious, beyond the reach of potential interrogators, without affecting his work on new assignments. But not just any block will do. If Ivan’s interrogators discover a standard memory block, they’ll work diligently to unlock it, because they’ll know