by Dean Koontz
“Thank you,” she said as he opened the door and ushered her out of the bakery.
Putting his hat on once more, following her onto the sidewalk, he said, “You must be new in town.”
“Not that new,” she said. “I’ve been here nearly two years.”
“Then I’ve been blind for a while and didn’t know it.”
She smiled, unsure of his purpose in saying such a thing. She decided against a reply as she crossed the sidewalk to the Explorer.
“I’m Addison Hawk. May I get the car door for you, Miss … ?”
“Erika,” she said, but offered no last name. “Thank you, Mr. Hawk.”
He opened the passenger door, and she put the box of cinnamon rolls on the seat.
As he closed the door, Addison Hawk said, “It takes twenty years at least for locals to think of a newcomer as one of them. If ever you need to know anything about the way things work around here, I’m in the phone book.”
“I take it you’re not a newcomer.”
“I’ve lived here since nine months before I was born. Been to Great Falls, Billings, Butte, Bozeman, been to Helena and Missoula, but I’ve never seen any reason to be anywhere but here.”
“I agree,” she said as she went around the front of the Explorer to the driver’s door. “It’s a wonderful town—the land, the big sky, all of it.”
As she drove away, Erika checked the rearview mirror and saw Addison Hawk staring after her.
Something had happened that she did not entirely understand, something more than an encounter with a friendly local. She thought about it all the way home, but the subtext of the conversation eluded her.
chapter 21
Running up the stairs behind Mr. Lyss, Nummy knew he was now a jailbreaker like in the movies. Things didn’t always—or even usually—turn out okay for a jailbreaker.
The door at the top of the stairs had a small window, the window glass had wire in it, and Mr. Lyss looked through the glass and the wire before he tried to open the door, but the door was locked. The old man said a bunch of words that should’ve gotten him cooked by lightning, but he was still uncooked when he set to work on the door with his lock picks.
The awful noises rose from below, the people being killed, and Nummy tried to tune them out. He tried to sing a happy song in his head to drown out the terrible cries, just in his head because Mr. Lyss would for sure bite his nose off if he sang for real. But he couldn’t think of any happy songs except “Happy Feet,” and you had to do a little dance when you sang “Happy Feet,” you just had to, and because he was a clumsy person, he shouldn’t try dancing on the stairs.
Mr. Lyss picked and picked at the lock. Suddenly he said the dirtiest word Nummy knew—he knew six—looked out the small window again, opened the door, and left the stairs.
Nummy followed the old man into the hallway, then right toward an exit sign. They passed closed doors, and there were voices behind some of the doors.
Grabbing at Mr. Lyss as they moved, to get his attention, Nummy whispered, “We should tell somebody.”
Slapping Nummy’s hand away, Mr. Lyss went through the door at the end of the hall, but they weren’t outside like Nummy expected to be. They were in a mud room.
“We should tell somebody,” Nummy insisted.
Looking over several quilted jackets hanging from wall pegs, Mr. Lyss said, “Tell them what?”
“People is being killed in the basement.”
“They know, you moron. They’re the ones doing the killing.”
Mr. Lyss took a jacket from the rack and slipped into it. On the arm was a police patch. The jacket was too big for the old man, but he zipped it up anyway and headed toward the outer door.
“You’re stealing,” Nummy said.
“And you’re a cheese-brain ninny,” said Mr. Lyss as he went out into the alleyway.
Nummy O’Bannon didn’t want to follow the old man with his bad smell, bad teeth, bad breath, bad words, and bad attitude, but he was still scared, and he didn’t know what else to do but follow him. So now he was a jailbreaker and he was keeping company with a coat thief.
Hurrying along the deserted alleyway at the coat thief’s side, Nummy said, “Where we going?”
“We aren’t going anywhere. I’m leaving town. Alone.”
“Not all in orange, you can’t.”
“I’m not all in orange. I have the jacket.”
“Orange pants. People know orange pants is jail pants.”
“Maybe I’m a golfer.”
“And your jacket’s so big it’s like your daddy’s jacket.”
Mr. Lyss halted, turned on Nummy, seized his left ear, twisted it, and pulled him—“Ow, ow, ow, ow”—out of the alley, into a walkway between two buildings. He let go of Nummy’s ear but pushed him hard against a wall, and the bricks were cold against his back. “Your grandma’s good and dead, is she?”
Trying hard to be polite, trying not to gag on Mr. Lyss’s stink, Nummy said, “Yes, sir. She was good and now she’s dead.”
“You have your own place?”
“I have my place. I know my place. I keep to it.”
“I’m asking do you live in a house, an apartment, an old oil drum, or where the hell?”
“I live in Grandmama’s house.”
Nervous, Mr. Lyss glanced left along the passageway toward the alley, right toward the street. His bird-that-eats-dead-things face now looked a little like a sneaky rat’s face. He grabbed a fistful of Nummy’s sweatshirt and said, “You live there alone?”
“Yes, sir. Me and Norman.”
“Isn’t your name Norman?”
“But people they call me Nummy.”
“So you live there alone?”
“Yes, sir. Just me and Norman.”
“Norman and Norman.”
“Yes, sir. But people they don’t call him Nummy.”
Mr. Lyss let go of the sweatshirt and pinched Nummy’s ear again. He didn’t twist it this time, but he seemed to be promising to twist it. “You’re getting on my nerves, moron. What relation is this Norman to you?”
“His relation is he’s my dog, sir.”
“You named your dog Norman. I guess that’s one step up from naming him Dog. Is he friendly?”
“Sir, Norman he’s the friendliest dog ever.”
“He better be.”
“Norman don’t bite. He don’t even bark, but Norman he can kind of talk.”
The old man let go of Nummy’s ear. “I don’t care if he sings and dances, as long as he doesn’t bite. How far is it to this house of yours?”
“Norman he don’t sing and dance. I never seen one that did. I’d like to see one. Do you know where I could?”
Now Mr. Lyss didn’t look like a bird that ate dead things or like a rat, or like a wild monkey, but more like a jungle snake with sharp eyes. If you spent enough time with him, Mr. Lyss was a whole zoo of faces.
He said, “If you don’t want me to reach up your nostrils with these lock picks and pull out your shriveled brain, you damn well better tell me how far to this house of yours.”
“Not far.”
“Can we get there mostly by alleyways, so we don’t run into a lot of people?”
“You don’t much like people, do you, Mr. Lyss?”
“I loathe and despise people—especially when I’m wearing orange jail pants.”
“Oh. I forgot about orange. Well, the shortest way is by the pipe, then we won’t hardly see no one.”
“Pipe? What pipe?”
“The big drain pipe for when it storms. You can’t go by the pipe in rain ’cause you’ll drown, and then you’ll just wish you’d gone the long way.”
chapter 22
When she learned Deucalion had stepped into the study without ringing the bell or using the front door, when she understood that Mary Margaret Dolan did not know he was present, Carson closed the door to the hallway. In spite of the Dolan daughter who had been ticketed for driving alone in a carpool lane, Car
son didn’t want to lose Mary Margaret. Although she suspected that the indomitable nanny would not be flustered even by Dr. Frankenstein’s first creation, she preferred to avoid risking the woman’s resignation.
Without hesitation, Michael had handed Scout to Deucalion, who stood now and cradled the baby in the crook of his right arm. He was holding one of her feet between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, marveling at how tiny it was and complimenting her on her pink booties.
Carson wondered that she worried not at all about this huge and formidable man—a self-admitted murderous creature in his earliest days—holding her precious daughter. In New Orleans, allied against Victor, they went through a kind of hell together, and he always proved steadfast. More to the point, Deucalion possessed a quality of otherworldliness, the aura of a man purified by suffering, who lived now in a hallowed condition.
For her part, Scout was neither awed by Deucalion’s size nor daunted by the ruined and tattooed half of his face. When he puckered his lips and made a sound like a motorboat—putt-putt-putt-putt-putt—she giggled. When he teased her chin with his finger, she seized it in one hand and tried to bring it to her mouth to test her new tooth on it.
Still sitting at the table, Arnie said, “I’ve got him on the run, Carson. He’s fussing over Scout just so he won’t have to go on with the game and lose it.”
Until the age of twelve, Arnie was autistic, so profoundly turned inward that Carson never had a normal conversation with him, only moments of connection that, while piercing, were inadequate and frustrating. After the defeat of Victor in New Orleans and the fiery destruction of his laboratories and body farms, Deucalion cured the boy by some means that Carson could not understand and that the healer could not—or would not—explain. These two years later, she still sometimes found herself surprised that Arnie was a normal boy, with boyish enthusiasms and ambitions.
As far as she could see, however, Arnie lacked those boyish illusions that tested other children, that made them potential victims, and that sometimes led them astray. He had a sense of his natural dignity but not an adolescent ego that allowed him to imagine himself as exceptional in either his abilities or his destiny. He seemed to know the world and the people in it for what they were, and had a quiet, unshakable confidence.
Carson found her brother’s assurance remarkable, considering that when he’d been in the grip of autism, he’d been able to tolerate only a narrow range of experience. He had lived by a daily routine from which the smallest deviation might plunge him into terror or into total withdrawal. Not anymore.
Accepting Arnie’s challenge, Deucalion sat at the table again, with Scout still cradled in his arm. With his free hand, he moved a game piece without appearing to consider the consequences.
Frowning, Arnie said, “You’ve done the wrong thing. Your knight was crying out for action.”
“Oh, yes, I heard him,” Deucalion said. “But the bishop gains me more. You’ll see it in a moment.”
Sitting in a third chair at the table, Michael said, “So how is life at the abbey?”
“Like life everywhere,” Deucalion replied. “Meaningful from top to bottom, but mysterious in every direction.”
Carson occupied the fourth chair. “Why am I suddenly … uneasy?”
“I have that effect on people.”
“No. It’s not you. It’s why you’re here.”
“Why am I here?”
“I can’t imagine. But I know it’s not an impulsive, casual visit. Nothing about you is impulsive or casual.”
Now through his eyes throbbed the subtle luminosity that from time to time appeared. He could not explain this glow, this fleeting tracery of light, though he said it might somehow be the residual radiance of the strange lightning that had brought him alive in a laboratory two hundred years earlier.
Staring at the chessboard, Arnie said, “I see it now. I thought I had it won maybe in five moves.”
“I think you still might, but not in five.”
“It looks lost to me,” Arnie said.
“There are always options—until there aren’t.”
Michael said, “Whatever brought you here … we’ve got more to lose now, and taking risks is getting harder.”
Looking down at the babbling baby in his arm, Deucalion said, “She’s got more to lose than any of us. She hasn’t even had a life yet, and if he gets his way, she never will. Victor is alive.”
chapter 23
Four miles from town, Erika turned off the highway onto an oil-and-gravel lane flanked by windrows of enormous pines. A sturdy gate made of steel pipe blocked entrance, but she opened it with a remote control.
The lay of the land hid their home from the highway. At the end of the long driveway, the two-story house was of beet-red brick with gray-granite coins at the main corners, granite window surrounds, and silvered-cedar porches front and back. Although not of a rigorous architectural style, the residence had considerable appeal. You might have thought a wise retired judge lived here, or a country doctor, someone who valued neatness, order, and harmony, though not at the expense of charm.
Three immense pyramidal hemlocks backdropped the house. They shielded it from north winds while leaving it exposed to daylong sun, a plus in the long Montana winters.
Erika parked in front of the attached garage and entered the house by the back door. At once she knew something was wrong, and as she put the bakery box on the kitchen table, she said, “Jocko?”
On every previous occasion when Erika returned home from doing errands, Jocko greeted her with excitement, eager to hear of her experiences at the supermarket and the dry cleaner, as if they were epic and magical adventures. Sometimes he read poems he had written or performed songs he had composed while she was out.
The silence alarmed her. She raised her voice and called out again: “Jocko?”
From nearby came his muffled reply: “Who are you?”
“Who do you think? It’s me, of course.”
“Me? Me who? Me who, who, WHO?” Jocko demanded.
Head cocked to the left, then to the right, Erika made her way around the kitchen, trying to pinpoint his location.
“Me, Erika. Where are you?”
“Erika went out. For an hour. One hour. She never came back. Something terrible happened. To Erika. Terrible. Terrible.”
He was in the pantry.
At that closed door, Erika said, “I’m back now.” She didn’t want to tell him about Victor just yet. He wouldn’t handle the news well. “Everything took longer than I thought.”
“Erika would call if she was late. Erika never called. You aren’t Erika.”
“Don’t I sound like Erika?”
“Your voice is strange.”
“My voice isn’t strange. I sound like I always do.”
“No. No, no, no. Jocko knows Erika’s voice. Jocko loves Erika’s voice. Your voice is muffled. Muffled and strange and muffled.”
“It’s muffled because I’m talking to you through a door.”
Jocko was silent, perhaps thinking about what she said.
She tried the door but it wouldn’t open. The pantry had no lock.
“Are you holding the door shut, Jocko?”
“Talk to Jocko through the keyhole. Then your voice won’t be muffled and strange and muffled. If you’re really Erika.”
She said, “That might be a good plan—”
“It’s an excellent plan!” Jocko declared.
“—if this door had a keyhole.”
“What happened? Where’s the keyhole? Where’d it go?”
“It’s a pantry. Doesn’t need a lock. It never had a keyhole.”
“It had a keyhole!” Jocko insisted.
“No, little one. It never did.”
“Without a keyhole Jocko would suffocate. Did Jocko suffocate?” His voice quivered. “Is Jocko dead? Is he dead? Is Jocko in Hell?”
“You have to listen to me, sweetie. Listen closely.”
“Jocko’s
in Hell,” he sobbed.
“Take a deep breath.”
“Jocko’s rotting in Hell.”
“Can you take a deep breath? A big deep breath. Do it for me, sweetie. Come on.”
Through the door, she heard him breathe deeply
“Very good. My good boy.”
“Jocko’s dead in Hell,” he said miserably but with less panic.
“Take another deep breath, sweetie.” After he had taken three, she said, “Now look around. Do you see boxes of macaroni? Spaghetti? Cookies?”
“Ummmm … macaroni … spaghetti … cookies. Yeah.”
“Do you think there’s macaroni, spaghetti, and cookies in Hell?”
“Maybe.”
She changed tactics. “I’m sorry, Jocko. I apologize. I should have called. I just didn’t realize how much time went by.”
“Three cans of lima beans,” Jocko said. “Three big cans.”
“That doesn’t prove you’re in Hell.”
“Yes, it does. It’s proof.”
“I like lima beans—remember? That’s why you see three cans. Not because it’s Hell in there. Know what else I like besides lima beans? Cinnamon rolls from Jim James Bakery. And I just put a dozen of them on the kitchen table.”
Jocko was silent. Then the door cracked open, and Erika stepped back, and the door swung wide, and the little guy peered out at her.
Because his butt was nearly flat, he wore blue jeans that Erika had altered to prevent them from sagging in the seat. On his T-shirt was a photo of one of World Wrestling Entertainment’s current stars, Buster Steelhammer. Because his arms were three inches longer than those of any child his size, because they were thin, and because they were creepier than a loving mother would openly acknowledge, Erika had added material to extend the sleeves to his hands.
He blinked at her. “It’s you.”
“Yes,” she said, “it’s me.”
“Jocko’s not really dead.”
“You’re really not.”
“I thought you were.”
