The House of Thunder

by Dean Koontz

  No, she hadn’t walked into this with her eyes open; she hadn’t come to this place willingly.

  McGee had scheduled Susan for a physical therapy session at ten o’clock Thursday morning.

  Murf and Phil came for her at a few minutes before ten. As usual, they kept up a steady line of amusing patter all the way downstairs to the PT Department. Susan wanted to tell them that, in her humble opinion, they were definitely Academy Award material, but she didn’t break her cover. She only smiled and laughed and responded when it seemed appropriate.

  During the first part of the therapy session, Susan did all of the exercises that Florence Atkinson suggested, but at the halfway point, she complained of painful muscle cramps in her legs. She winced and groaned convincingly, though she actually had no cramps. She just didn’t want to exhaust herself in a therapy session. She was saving her strength now, for she would have desperate need of it later.

  She intended to escape tonight.

  Mrs. Atkinson seemed genuinely concerned about the cramps. She cut short the exercise part of the session and gave Susan a longer massage than usual, plus ten extra minutes in the whirlpool. By the time Susan had taken a hot shower and had dried her hair, she felt much better than she had felt at any time since she had come out of her coma.

  On the way back to her room, in the care of Phil and Murf once more, Susan grew tense at the elevators, wondering if another “hallucination” was planned for this moment. But the elevator was empty; the ride upstairs was uneventful.

  She hadn’t decided exactly how she should handle the next apparition.

  She knew how she wanted to handle it. She wanted to respond with blind rage, with a furious assault that would drive them back in surprise. She wanted to claw their faces and draw their blood, lots of blood, which would be more proof that they weren’t ghosts or hallucinations, She wanted to hurt them, and then she wanted to defiantly accuse them.

  But she knew she couldn’t do what she wanted. As long as they weren’t aware that she was wise to their games, she had the advantage. But the moment she revealed her knowledge, she would lose what little freedom to maneuver that she now had. The charade would end abruptly. They would stop trying to drive her insane—which seemed to be their single-minded intention—and they would do something even worse than that to her. She was sure of it.

  She ate every bite of her lunch.

  When Millie came to take the tray away, Susan yawned and said, “Boy, am I ready for a nap.”

  “I’ll close the door so the hall noise won’t bother you,” the sharp-faced blonde said.

  As soon as the nurse had gone, pulling the door shut behind her, Susan got out of bed and went to the closet, slid the door open. Blankets and pillows for the room’s other bed were stored on the closet shelf. On the floor were Susan’s battered suitcases, which supposedly had been salvaged from her wrecked car.

  She dragged the suitcases into the room and opened them on the floor, praying that no one would walk in on her during the next few minutes. She rummaged quickly through the contents of the bags, putting together an outfit that was suitable for a jailbreak. A pair of jeans. A dark blue sweater. Thick, white athletic socks and a pair of Adidas running shoes. She shoved that bundle to the back of the shallow closet, then stood the suitcases in front to conceal it.

  She shut the closet door and hurried back to the bed, got in, put up the safety railing, lowered the mattress, put her head down on her pillow, and closed her eyes.

  She felt good. She felt as if she were in charge of her life again.

  Then she had another unsettling thought; lately, she seemed to have an endless supply of them, and this one was especially unsettling. She wondered if she was being watched by concealed, closed-circuit television cameras. After all, if they went to the trouble of hidden rooms and secret doors, wouldn’t they also put her under twenty-four-hour observation? And wouldn’t they now know that she had found the mezuzah and that she was preparing to escape?

  She opened her eyes and looked around the room, seeking places where cameras might be concealed. The heating vents in the walls, up near the ceiling, offered the only logical hiding places. There were two vents in two different walls. If cameras were placed in the heating ducts—a few inches behind the vent grilles in order to avoid detection from the glint of light on their lenses—and if they were properly positioned, fully motor-driven for the widest possible lateral view, aimed downward, and equipped with remote-control zoom lenses, then they would be able to cover most if not all of the hospital room.

  For a few minutes Susan was sick with despair. She hugged herself and shuddered.

  Gradually, however, her spirits rose somewhat, for she decided that there mustn’t be any cameras. If there were cameras, she would have been observed handling the mezuzah this morning. It wouldn’t have been necessary for Millie to question her about lost jewelry. If they had seen her with the mezuzah, they would have been afraid that she was aware of their charade, and they would have called a halt to it.

  Wouldn’t they?

  Probably. There didn’t seem to be any point to staging more “hallucinations” if she could no longer be fooled by them.

  Yet, although she was pretty sure they wouldn’t go on toying with her this way, she couldn’t be absolutely positive about it, for she didn’t know what motivated them.

  She would just have to wait and see.

  If she managed to get out of the hospital tonight, she would know that there hadn’t been any TV cameras in her room.

  On the other hand, if she started to sneak out of the place and got as far as the stairs and discovered the four dead men waiting for her there, smiling ...

  Although she now knew they weren’t dead men, she nevertheless shuddered again.

  She would just have to wait.

  And see.

  15

  Later Thursday afternoon, a fast-weaving loom of wind brought new gray cloth for the rents in the clouds, patching over every last glimpse of blue September sky. The hospital room darkened early again.

  A crash, a roll, and an echo of thunder preceded a violent fall of rain. For a while, fat droplets of water snapped bullet-hard against the window in great profusion and with the sound of a dozen submachine guns. The wind hummed, then moaned, then howled like a wild thing in pain, then roared. In time, the storm abated somewhat, but only temporarily ; it settled into a rhythmic pattern that alternated between fury and docility, between a torrential downpour and a pleasant drizzle. Cloudbursts were followed by the soothing pitter-patter of light autumn showers.

  Although the storm waxed and waned, the day grew steadily darker, not brightening for even a moment, and Susan looked forward to the coming nightfall with barely containable excitement—and with fear, too.

  For nearly an hour, she pretended to nap, her back turned to the closed door, while she watched the raging storm. She need not have continued with the ruse, for during that time no one came around to check on her.

  Later, she sat up in bed and switched on the television set, in front of which she passed the rest of the afternoon. She didn’t pay much attention to the programs that flickered across the screen. Her mind was elsewhere, preoccupied with plans and schemes and dreams of escape.

  At five o’clock sharp, Nurse Scolari, who had come on duty at four, brought another dose of methylphenidate and a fresh carafe of ice water. Susan faked the taking of the capsule, palmed it as she had done with the first dose that morning.

  At suppertime, McGee came in with two trays and announced that he was having dinner with her. “No candles. No champagne,” he said. “But there are some delicious-looking stuffed pork chops and apple-nut cake for dessert.”

  “Sounds terrific to me,” she said. “I never liked the taste of candles, anyway.”

  He also brought several magazines and two more paperback novels. “I thought maybe you might be running out of reading material.”

  He stayed for more than two hours, and they talked of many th
ings. Eventually, the strain of playing the innocent, the stress of pretending to love him when she actually despised him—it all became almost too much for Susan to bear. She had found that she was a pretty good actress, but she had also learned that deception exacted a high toll from her. She was relieved and exhausted when McGee finally kissed her good night and left.

  She was relieved, yes, but she was also curiously sorry to see him go. Until he was walking out of the door, she wouldn’t have believed that she could be sorry to see him go; but when he crossed that threshold and disappeared into the corridor, Susan felt a sudden and unexpected loss, an emptiness. She knew she might never see him again—except in a court of law, where he would stand trial for his part in her kidnapping and peculiar torture. In spite of the fact that she knew him to be a fraud, she still found him to be good company. He was as charming as he had ever been. He was still a good conversationalist. He still had an excellent sense of humor and an appealing, infectious laugh. Worst of all, he still seemed to glow with love for her. She had tried hard to see through him, to discern the duplicitous bastard beneath the surface saint, and she had tried with all her might to hear the lies in his love talk, but she had failed.

  If you know what’s good for you, forget him, she told herself angrily. Just put him out of your mind. All the way out. Think about getting out of here. That’s what’s important. Getting out.

  She looked at the bedside clock.

  8:03.

  Outside, lightning briefly drove back the darkness.

  Rain fell and fell.

  At nine o’clock, Tina Scolari brought the sedative that McGee had prescribed. Putting her cupped hand to her mouth, she pantomimed taking the sedative; she quickly washed down the nonexistent pill with a swallow of the water that the nurse offered her.

  “Have a good night,” Tina Scolari said.

  “I’m sure I will.”

  A few minutes after the nurse had gone, Susan switched off the bedside lamp. The night light cast its phosphoric luminescence across the room, leeching all color from the chamber, so that everything appeared to be either ash-gray or the ghost-white of moonglow. The night light was no threat to the crowd of shadows, but it was good enough for what Susan had to do.

  She waited another few minutes, lying in bed, staring at the dark ceiling, which flickered now and then with the reflected flash of lightning that bounced off the water-filmed window. She wanted to be certain that the nurse wasn’t going to come back with some forgotten medication or with a warning about an early wake-up call for new tests.

  At last she got up and went to the closet. She took two pillows and two blankets from the top shelf, carried them back to the bed. She arranged them under the covers in a series of lumps that she hoped would pass for a huddled, sleeping woman. The dummy was crude, but she didn’t waste any more time with it; there were no awards for art and craftsmanship.

  She returned to the closet. She reached behind the suitcases and located the bundle of clothes that she had put together earlier in the day. By the time she had pulled off her pajamas and had dressed in the jeans, sweater, heavy socks, and running shoes, and by the time she had retrieved her wallet from the nightstand, the bedside clock read 9:34.

  She tucked the mezuzah in a pocket of her jeans, even though it was proof of nothing to anyone except her.

  She went to the door and put her head against it, listening. She couldn’t hear anything from the other side.

  After a moment of nervous hesitation, after she wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans, she pushed the door open. Just a crack. Peered into the well-lighted hallway. Opened the door a few inches farther. Stuck her head out. Looked right. Looked left. There was no one in sight.

  The corridor was silent. It was so silent, in fact, that in spite of the highly polished tile floor and the spotless yellow walls and the dust-free fluorescent ceiling lights, it seemed as if the building had been abandoned and had not known the sound of human activity for ages.

  Susan left the room, easing the door shut behind her. She stood for a breathless moment with her back pressed flat against the door, afraid to step away from it, prepared to turn and scurry inside again, into her bed and under the covers, dispossessing the crudely formed dummy, at the slightest sound of an approaching nurse.

  To her left lay the junction of the corridors, where the two short wings connected with the long main hall. If there was going to be any trouble, it would most likely come from that direction, for the nurses’ station was around the corner and halfway down the longest corridor.

  The silence continued, however, disturbed only by the low, distant rumble of the storm.

  Convinced that further hesitation was more dangerous than any action she could take, Susan moved cautiously to the right, away from the confluence of corridors, directly toward the large fire door at the end of the short wing, where there was a red EXIT sign. She stayed close to the wall and kept glancing back toward the center of the building.

  She was acutely aware of the squeaking noise made by her rubber-soled shoes on the highly polished tile floor. It wasn’t really a loud sound, but it had the same nerve-grating quality as did the sound of fingernails scraped across a blackboard.

  She reached the metal fire door without incident and opened it. She winced as the push-bar handle rattled under her hand and as the big hinges rasped, creaked. Quickly, she stepped across the threshold, onto a stairwell landing, and shut the heavy door behind her as quietly as possible, which wasn’t nearly quietly enough to suit her.

  The stairs were bare concrete and were dimly lighted. There was only one small bulb on each landing. Here and there between the landings, the concrete walls were draped with shadows like webs of dust and soot.

  Susan stood perfectly still and listened. The stairwell was even more silent than the second-floor hallway had been. Of course she had made so much noise with the door that any guard who might have been stationed on the stairs would now be frozen, listening, just as she was.

  Nevertheless, she was sure that she was alone. They probably hadn’t posted guards because they didn’t expect her to try to escape; they didn’t know that she was aware of their trickery. And the hospital staff—or the staff of whatever kind of institution this was—most likely used only the public and the service elevators, leaving the stairs for emergencies when the power failed.

  She stepped to the black iron railing and leaned over it, looked up, then down. Four more flights of steps and four more landings lay above her. Two flights, one landing, and the bottom of the stairwell lay below.

  She went down to the bottom, where there were two fire doors, one set in the inner wall of the stairwell and apparently opening onto a first-floor corridor, the other set in the outer wall. Susan put her hands on the push-bar and cracked open the outer door two or three inches.

  Cold wind forced its way into the rough concrete vestibule and capered around Susan’s legs. It seemed to be sniffing at her as if it were a large, excited dog trying to make up its mind whether to wag its tail or bite.

  Beyond the door, a small rain-swept parking lot lay in the yellowish glow of a pair of tall sodium-vapor lamps, each of which bore two globes like luminescent fruit. It didn’t look nearly large enough to be the public parking area. But if it was the staff’s lot, where were all the cars? Now that visiting hours were over, the public lot would be virtually deserted, but there should still be quite a few cars in the staff’s parking area, even at night. There were only four vehicles: a Pontiac, a Ford, and two other makes with which she was not familiar.

  There was no one in the parking lot, so she stepped outside and let the fire door close behind her.

  The rain had nearly stopped falling now, as the storm entered one of its quieter moments. Only a thin mist floated down from the night sky.

  The wind, however, was fierce. It stood Susan’s shaggy blond hair on end, made her eyes water, and forced her to squint. When it gusted, howling banshee-like, Susan had to stand with her head tucked down
and her shoulders drawn up. It was surprisingly cold, too; it stung her exposed face and cut through the sweater she was wearing. She wished she had a jacket. She thought it seemed much too cold for September in Oregon. It was more like a late-November wind. Or even December.

  Had they lied to her about the date? Why on earth would they have lied about that, too? But then again—why not? It made no less sense than anything else they had done.

  She moved away from the emergency exit, into the shadows by a bristling evergreen shrub, where she crouched for a minute while she decided which way to go from here. She could head toward the front of the hospital and follow the road that led directly downhill into Willawauk. Or she could go overland and into town by a more cautious, circuitous route, to avoid being spotted by anyone at the hospital.

  Lightning pulsed softly, and thunder crashed like a train derailing in the darkness.

  No matter which way she went, she was going to get very wet. Already, the light mist had begun to paste her hair to her skull. Soon, the rain would be coming down hard again, and she would be soaked to the skin.

  Then a frighteningly bold course of action occurred to her, and she launched herself upon it before she had time to think about it and lose her nerve. She ran out into the parking lot, toward the nearest car, the green Pontiac.

  There were four cars in the lot, four chances that someone had left a set of keys in an ignition or under a seat or tucked up behind a sun visor. In rural towns like Willawauk, where almost everyone knew everyone else, people weren’t worried about car thieves nearly so much as were people in the cities and suburbs. Trust thy neighbor: That was still a rule that people lived by in a few favored places. Four cars; four chances. She probably wouldn’t have any luck, but it was worth taking a look.

  She reached the Pontiac and tried the door on the driver’s side. It was unlocked.

  When she pulled the door open, the ceiling light came on inside the car. It seemed as bright as a lighthouse beacon, and she was sure that she had given herself away and that alarms would begin ringing at any moment.