The House of Thunder

by Dean Koontz

  “It wouldn’t be unusual if you never regained any memory of the accident itself,” McGee assured her. “In cases like this, even when the patient eventually recalls all the other details of his life, he seldom remembers the incident or the impact that was the cause of the amnesia. That’s the one blank spot that often remains.”

  “I suspected as much,” she said. “And I’m not really upset about that. But there’s one other thing I can’t recall, and that’s driving me nuts. My job. Dammit, I can’t remember even the most minor thing about it, not even one little detail. I mean, I know I’m a physicist. I remember getting the degrees at UCLA, and all that sophisticated, specialized knowledge is still intact. I could start to work today without having to take a refresher course. But who was I working for? And what was I doing—exactly? Who was my boss? Who were my co-workers? Did I have an office? a laboratory? I must have worked in a lab, don’t you think? But I can’t remember what it looked like, how it was equipped, or where on earth it was!”

  “You’re employed by the Milestone Corporation in Newport Beach, California,” McGee said.

  “That’s what Dr. Viteski told me. But the name doesn’t mean a thing to me.”

  “All the rest of it has come back to you. This will, too. Just give it time.”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “This is different somehow. The other blank spots were like mists... like banks of heavy fog. Even when I couldn’t remember something, I could at least sense that there were memories stirring in the mist. And eventually the mist evaporated; everything cleared up. But when I try to recall what my job was, it’s not like those misty blank spots. Instead, it’s dark... very dark... black, just a perfectly black and empty hole that goes down and down and down forever. There’s something... frightening about it.”

  McGee slid forward, sitting on the edge of his chair. His brow was knitted. “You were carrying a Milestone ID card in your wallet when you were brought into the emergency room,” he said. “Maybe that’ll refresh your memory.”

  “Maybe,” she said doubtfully. “I’d sure like to see it.”

  Her wallet was in the bottom drawer of the nightstand. He got it for her.

  She opened the wallet and found the card. It was laminated and bore a small photograph of her. At the top of the card, in blue letters against a white background, were three words: THE MILESTONE CORPORATION. Under that heading, her name was printed in bold black letters, and below her name was a physical description of her, including information about her age, height, weight, hair color, and eye color. At the bottom of the card, an employee identification number was printed in red ink. Nothing else.

  Dr. McGee stood beside the bed, looking down at her as she examined the card. “Does it help?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Not just a little bit?”

  “I can’t remember seeing this before.”

  She turned the card over and over in her hands, straining to make a connection, trying hard to switch on the current of memory. She couldn’t possibly have been more amazed by the card if it had been an artifact from a nonhuman civilization and had just that very minute been brought back from the planet Mars; it could not have been more alien.

  “It’s all so weird,” she said. “I’ve tried to remember back to when I last went to work, the day before I started my vacation. I can recall some of it. Parts of the day are crystal clear. I remember getting up that morning, having breakfast, glancing at the newspaper. That’s all as fresh in my mind as the memory of the lunch I just ate. I recall going into the garage that morning, getting in the car, starting the engine...” She let her voice trail off as she stared down at the card. She fingered that small rectangle as if she were a clairvoyant feeling for some sort of psychic residue on the plastic. “I remember backing the car out of my driveway that morning... and the next thing I remember is ... coming home again at the end of the day. In between, there’s nothing but blackness, emptiness. And that’s the way it is with all my memories of work, not just that day but every day. No matter how I try to sneak up on them, they elude me. They aren’t there in the mist. Those memories simply don’t exist any more.”

  Still standing beside the bed, McGee spoke to her in a soft, encouraging voice. “Of course they exist, Susan. Nudge your subconscious a little bit. Think about sitting behind the wheel of your car that morning.”

  “I have thought about it.”

  “Think about it again.”

  She closed her eyes.

  “It was probably a typical August day in Southern California,” he said, helping her set the scene in her mind. “Hot, blue, maybe a little smoggy.”

  “Hot and blue,” she said, “but there wasn’t any smog that day. Not even a single cloud, either.”

  “You got in the car and backed out of the driveway. Now think about the route you drove to work.”

  She was silent for almost a minute. Then she said, “It’s no use. I can’t remember.”

  He persisted gently. “What were the names of the streets you used?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Sure you do. Give me the name of just one street. Just one to start the ball rolling.”

  She tried hard to snatch at least a single meager scrap of memory out of the void—a face, a room, a voice, anything —but she failed.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I can’t come up with the name of even one street.”

  “You told me that you remembered backing down your driveway that morning. All right. If you remember that, then surely you remember which way you went when you pulled out of your driveway. Did you turn left, or did you turn right?”

  Her eyes still closed, Susan considered his question until her head began to ache. Finally she opened her eyes, looked up at McGee, and shrugged. “I just don’t know.”

  “Philip Gomez,” McGee said.

  “What?”

  “Philip Gomez.”

  “Who’s that? Somebody I should know?”

  “The name doesn’t mean anything to you?”

  “No.”

  “He’s your boss at Milestone.”

  “Really?” She tried to picture Philip Gomez. She couldn’t summon up an image of his face. She couldn’t recall anything whatsoever about the man. “My boss? Philip Gomez? Are you sure about that?”

  McGee put his hands in the pockets of his lab coat. “After you were admitted to the hospital, we tried to locate your family. Of course, we discovered you didn’t have a family, no close relatives at all. So we called your employer. I’ve talked to Phil Gomez myself. According to him, you’ve worked at Milestone for more than four years. He was extremely concerned about you. In fact he’s called here, asking about you, four or five times since the accident.”

  “Can we call him now?” Susan asked. “If I hear his voice, maybe something will click into place for me. It might help me remember.”

  “Well, I don’t have his home number,” McGee said, “and we can’t call him at work until tomorrow.”

  “Why not?”

  “Today’s Sunday.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  She hadn’t even known what day of the week it was, and that realization left her feeling somewhat disoriented again.

  “We’ll definitely call tomorrow,” McGee said.

  “What if I talk to him and still can’t remember anything about my work?”

  “You will.”

  “No, listen, please don’t be glib. Be straight with me. Okay? There’s a chance I’ll never remember anything about my job, isn’t there?”

  “That’s not likely.”

  “But possible?”

  “Well... anything’s possible.”

  She slumped back against her pillows, suddenly exhausted, depressed, and worried.

  “Listen,” McGee said, “even if you never remember anything about Milestone, that doesn’t mean you can’t go back to work there. After all, you haven’t forgotten what you know about physics; you’re still a competent scientist. You’
ve lost none of your education, none of your knowledge. Now, if you were suffering from global amnesia, which is the worst kind, you’d have forgotten nearly everything you ever learned, including how to read and write. But you don’t have global amnesia, and that’s something to be thankful for. Anyway, given time, you’ll remember all of it. I’m sure of that.”

  Susan hoped he was correct. Her carefully structured, orderly life was in temporary disarray, and she found her condition to be enormously distressing. If that disarray were to become a permanent feature of her existence, she would find life almost unbearable. She had always been in control of her life; she needed to be in control.

  McGee took his hands out of his pockets and looked at his watch. “I’ve got to be going. I’ll stop by again for a couple of minutes before I go home for the day. Meanwhile, you relax, eat more of your lunch if you can, and don’t worry. You’ll remember all about Milestone when the time is right.”

  Suddenly, as she listened to McGee, Susan sensed—without understanding why or how she sensed it—that she would be better off if she never remembered anything about Milestone. She was seized by an arctic-cold, iron-hard fear for which she could find no explanation.

  She slept for two hours. She didn’t dream this time—or if she did dream, she didn’t remember it.

  When she woke, she was slightly clammy. Her hair was tangled; she combed it, wincing as she pulled out the knots.

  Susan was just putting the comb back on the nightstand when Mrs. Baker entered the room, pushing a wheelchair ahead of her. “It’s time for you to do a bit of traveling, kid.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Oh, we’ll explore the hallways and byways of the exotic second floor of mysterious, romantic, colorful Willawauk County Hospital,” Mrs. Baker said. “The trip of a lifetime. It’ll be loads of fun. Besides, the doctor wants you to start getting some exercise.”

  “It’s not going to be much exercise if I’m sitting in a wheelchair.”

  “You’ll be surprised. Just sitting up, holding on, and gawking at the other patients will be enough to tire you out. You’re not exactly in the same physical condition as an Olympic track and field star, you know.”

  “But I’m sure I can walk,” Susan said. “I might need a little assistance, but if I could just lean on your arm at first, then I’m positive I could—”

  “Tomorrow, you can try walking a few steps,” Mrs. Baker said as she put down the side rail on the bed. “But today you’re going to ride, and I’m going to play chauffeur.”

  Susan frowned. “I hate being an invalid.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, you’re not an invalid. You’re just temporarily incapacitated.”

  “I hate that, too.”

  Mrs. Baker positioned the wheelchair beside the bed. “First, I want you to sit up on the edge of the bed and swing your legs back and forth for a minute or two.”

  “Why?”

  “It flexes the muscles.”

  Sitting up, without the bed raised to support her back, Susan felt woozy and weak. She clutched the edge of the mattress because she thought she was going to tumble off the bed.

  “Are you all right?” Mrs. Baker asked.

  “Perfect,” Susan lied, and forced a smile.

  “Swing your legs, kid.”

  Susan moved her legs back and forth from the knees down. They felt as if they were made of lead.

  Finally, Mrs. Baker said, “Okay. That’s enough.”

  Susan was dismayed to find that she was already perspiring. She was shaky, too.

  Nevertheless, she said, “I know I can walk.”

  “Tomorrow,” Mrs. Baker said.

  “Really, I feel fine.”

  Mrs. Baker went to the closet and got the robe that matched Susan’s blue pajamas. While Susan put on the robe, the nurse located a pair of slippers in one of the suitcases and put them on Susan’s dangling feet.

  “Okay, honey. Now, just slide off the bed nice and easy, lean your weight against me, and I’ll help lower you into the chair.”

  As she came off the bed, Susan intended to disobey the nurse, intended to stand up straight all by herself and prove that she wasn’t an invalid. However, as her feet touched the floor, she knew instantly that her legs would not support her if she dared to put all of her weight on them; a moment ago, they seemed to be made of lead, but now they were composed of knotted rags. Rather than collapse in a heap and be humiliated, she clutched Mrs. Baker and allowed herself to be settled into the wheelchair almost as if she were a baby being put into a stroller.

  Mrs. Baker winked at her. “Still think you can run the mile?”

  Susan was both amused and embarrassed by her own stubbornness. Smiling, blushing, she said, “Tomorrow. I’ll do so much walking tomorrow that I’ll wear big holes in my slippers. You just wait and see.”

  “Well, kid, I don’t know if you have a whole lot of common sense or not, but you’ve sure as the devil got more than your share of spunk, and I’ve always admired spunkiness.”

  Mrs. Baker stepped behind the wheelchair and pushed it out of the room. Initially, the rolling motion caused Susan’s stomach to flop and twist, but after several seconds she got control of herself.

  The hospital was T-shaped, and Susan’s room was at the end of the short, right-hand wing at the top of the T. Mrs. Baker took her out to the junction of the corridors and wheeled her into the longest wing, heading toward the bottom of the T.

  Just being out of bed and out of her room made Susan feel better, fresher. The halls had dark green vinyl-tile floors, and the walls were painted a matching shade up to the height of three feet, after which they were a pale yellow, as was the pebbly, acoustic-tile ceiling; the effect of this—darkness below, light above—was to lift one’s eyes upward, giving the hall a soaring, airy quality. The corridors were as spotlessly clean as Susan’s room. She remembered the big Philadelphia hospital in which her father had finally succumbed to cancer; that place had been ancient, dreary, in need of paint, with dust thick on the windowsills, with years of grime pressed deep into its cracked tile floors. She supposed she ought to be thankful that she had wound up in Willawauk County Hospital.

  The doctors, nurses, and orderlies here were also different from those in the hospital where her father had died. All of these people smiled at her. And they seemed genuinely concerned about the patients. As Susan was wheeled through the halls, many staff members paused in their tasks to have a word with her; every one of them expressed pleasure at seeing her awake, alert, and on the way to a full recovery.

  Mrs. Baker pushed her to the end of the long main hallway, then turned and started back. Although Susan was already beginning to tire, she was nevertheless in relatively high spirits. She felt better today than she had felt yesterday, better this afternoon than this morning. The future seemed sure to grow brighter almost by the hour.

  When the mood changed, it changed with the frightening abruptness of a shotgun blast.

  As they passed between the elevators and the nurses’ station—which faced each other midpoint in the corridor—one set of elevator doors opened, and a man stepped out directly in front of the wheelchair. He was a patient in blue- and white-striped pajamas, a dark brown robe, and brown slippers. Mrs. Baker stopped the wheelchair in order to let him pass. When Susan saw who he was, she nearly screamed. She wanted to scream but couldn’t. Chest-tightening, throat-constricting fear had stricken her dumb.

  His name was Ernest Harch. He was a squarely built man with a square face, squared-off features, and gray eyes the shade of dirty ice.

  When she had testified against him in court, he had fixed her with those chilling eyes and hadn’t glanced away from her for even the briefest moment. She had clearly read the message in his intimidating stare: You’re going to be sorry you ever took the witness stand.

  But that had been thirteen years ago. In the meantime, she had taken precautions to be sure he would not find her when he got out of prison. She had long ago stopped
looking over her shoulder.

  And now here he was.

  He looked down at her as she sat helpless in the wheelchair, and she saw recognition flicker in his wintry eyes. In spite of the years that had passed, in spite of the emaciation that had altered her appearance in the last three weeks, he knew who she was.

  She wanted to bolt out of the chair and run. She was rigid with fear; she couldn’t move.

  Only a second or two had passed since the elevator doors had opened, yet it seemed as if she had been confronting Harch for at least a quarter of an hour. The usual flow of time had slowed to a sludgelike crawl.

  Harch smiled at her. To anyone but Susan, that smile might have appeared innocent, even friendly. But she saw hatred and menace in it.

  Ernest Harch had been the pledge master in the fraternity that Jerry Stein had wanted to join. Ernest Harch had killed Jerry. Not by accident. Deliberately. In cold blood. In the House of Thunder.

  Now, still smiling, he winked at Susan.

  The fear-induced paralysis relaxed its tight grip on her, and somehow she found the strength to push up from the wheelchair, onto her feet. She took one step, trying to turn away from Harch, trying desperately to run, and she heard Mrs. Baker call out in surprise. She took a second step, feeling as if she were walking underwater, and then her legs buckled, and she started to fall, and someone caught her just in time.

  As everything began to spin and wobble and grow dark, she realized that Ernest Harch was the one who had caught her. She was in his arms. She looked up into his face, which was as big as the moon.

  Then for a while there was only darkness.

  4

  “In danger?” McGee said, looking puzzled.

  At the foot of the bed, Mrs. Baker frowned.

  Susan was trying hard to remain calm and convincing. She possessed sufficient presence of mind to know that a hysterical woman was never taken seriously—especially not a hysterical woman recuperating from a head injury. There was a very real danger that she would appear to be confused or suffering from delusions. It was vital that Jeffrey McGee believe what she was going to tell him.