Dean Koontz - (1984)

by The Servants Of Twilight(Lit)

  Although the rain had subsided to little more than a light mist, and although they were all wearing raincoats, they were wet and cold again by the time Charlie began looking for transportation .

  Automobiles were parked along the street, and he moved down the block, under the dripping coral trees and palms, stealthily trying doors, hoping no one was watching from any of the houses. The first three cars were locked up tight, but the driver's door on the fourth, a two-year-old yellow Cadillac, opened when he tried it.

  He motioned Christine and Joey into the car ." Hurry."

  She said, "Are the keys in it?"

  "No."

  "Are you stealing it or what?"

  "Yes. Get in."

  "I don't want you breaking the law and winding up in prison because of me and-"

  "Get in! " he said urgently .

  The velour-covered bench seat in front accommodated the

  three of them, so Christine put Joey in the middle, apparently afraid to let him get even as far away as the rear seat. The dog got in back, shaking the rain off his coat and spraying everyone in the process.

  The glove compartment contained a small, detachable flashlight that came with the car and that was kept, except when needed, in a specially designed niche where its batteries were constantly recharged. Charlie used it to look under the dashboard, below the steering wheel, where he located the ignition wires. He hot-wired the Cadillac, and the engine turned over without hesitation.

  No more than two minutes after he had opened the car door, they pulled away from the curb. For the first block, he drove without headlights. Then, confident they had gotten away unnoticed, he snapped on the lights and headed up toward Sunset Boulevard.

  Christine said, "What if the cops stop us?"

  "They won't. The owner probably won't report it stolen until morning. And even if he discovers it's gone ten minutes from now, it won't make the police hot sheets for a while."

  " But they might stop us for speeding-"

  "I don't intend to speed."

  - or some other traffic violation-"

  "What do you think I am-a stunt driver?"

  "Are you?" Joey asked.

  "Oh, sure, better than Evel Knievel," Charlie said.

  "Who?" the boy asked.

  "God, I'm getting old," Charlie said.

  "Are we gonna get in a car chase like on TV?" Joey asked.

  "I hope not," Charlie said.

  " Oh, I'd like that," the boy said.

  Charlie checked the rearview mirror. There were two cars behind him. He couldn't tell what make they were or anything about them. They were just pairs of headlights in the darkness.

  Christine said, "But sooner or later, the car will end up on the hot sheets-"

  "We'll have parked it somewhere and taken another car by then," Charlie said.

  "Steal another one?"

  "I'm sure not going to Hertz or Avis," he said ." A rental car can be traced. They might find us that way."

  Jesus, listen to me, he thought. Pretty soon I'm going to be like Ray Milland in Lost Weekend, imagining a threat in every corner, seeing giant bugs crawling out of the walls .

  He turned left at the next corner.

  So did both of the cars behind him.

  "How did they find us?" Christine asked.

  "Must've planted a transmitter on my Mercedes."

  "When would they've done that?"

  "I don't know. Maybe when I was at their church this morning ."

  "But you said you left a man in your car while you went in there, someone who could call for help if you didn't come back out when you were supposed to."

  "Yeah. Carter Rilbeck ."

  "So he'd have seen them trying to plant a transmitter."

  "Unless, of course, he's one of them," Charlie said.

  "Do you think he could be?"

  "Probably not. But maybe they planted the bug before that .

  As soon as they knew you'd hired me."

  At Hilgarde, he turned right.

  So did both of the cars behind him.

  To Christine, he said, "Or maybe Henry Rankin is a TWilighter, and when I called him from the restaurant awhile ago, maybe he got a trace on the line and found out where I was."

  "You said he's like a brother."

  "He is. But Cain was like a brother to Abel, huh?"

  He turned left on Sunset Boulevard, with UCLA on the left now and Bel Air on the hills to the right.

  Only one of the cars followed him.

  She said, "You sound as if you've become as paranoid as I am."

  "Grace Spivey gives me no choice."

  "Where are we going?" she asked.

  "Farther away."

  "Where?"

  "I'm not sure yet."

  "We spent all that time buying clothes and things, and now a lot of it's one," she said.

  "We can outfit ourselves again tomorrow."

  "I can't go home; I can't go to work; I can't take shelter with any of my friends-"

  "I'm your friend," Charlie said.

  "We don't even have a car now," she said.

  "Sure we do."

  "A stolen car."

  "It's got four wheels," he said ." It runs. That's good enough."

  "I feel like we're the cowboys in one of those old movies where the Indians trap them in a box canyon and keep pushing them farther and farther toward the wall."

  "Remember who always won in those movies," Charlie said.

  "The cowboys," Joey said.

  "Exactly."

  He had to stop for a red traffic light because, as luck would have it, a police cruiser was stopped on the other side of the intersection. He didn't like sitting there, vulnerable. He used the rearview mirror and the side mirror to keep a watch on the car that had followed them, afraid that someone would get out of it while they were immobilized here-someone with a shotgun.

  In a weary voice that dismayed Charlie, Christine said, "I wish I had your confidence."

  So do I, he thought wryly.

  The light changed. He crossed the intersection. Behind him, the unknown car fell back a bit.

  He said, "Everything'll seem better in the morning."

  "And where will we be in the morning?" she asked .

  They had come to an intersection where Wilshire Boulevard lay in front of them. He turned right, toward the freeway entrance, and said, "How about Santa Barbara?"

  "Are you serious?"

  "It's not that far. A couple hours. We could be there by nine-thirty, get a hotel room."

  The unknown car had turned right at Wilshire, too, and was still on his tail.

  "L.A."s a big city," she said ." Don't you think we'd be just as safe hiding out here?"

  "We probably would," he said ." But I wouldn't feel as safe, and I've got to settle us down somewhere that feels right to me, so I can relax and think about the case from a calmer perspective. I can't function well in a constant panic. They won't expect us to go as far away from my operations as Santa Barbara. They'll expect me to hang around, at least as close as L.A., so I know we'll be safe up there."

  He drove onto the entrance ramp of the San Diego Freeway, heading north. Checked the rearview mirror. Didn't see the other car yet. Realized he was holding his breath.

  She protested ." You didn't bargain for this much trouble, this much inconvenience."

  "Sure I did," he said ." I thrive on it."

  "Of course you do."

  "Ask Joey. He knows all about us private detectives. He knows we just love danger."

  "They do, Mom," the boy said ." They love danger."

  Cha rlie looked at the rearview mirror again. No other car had come onto the freeway behind him. They weren't being followed.

  They drove north into the night, and after a while the rain began to fall heavily again, and there was fog. At times, because of the mist and rain that obscured the landscape and the road ahead, it seemed as if they weren't driving through the real world at all but through some haunted and
insubstantial realm of spirits and dreams.

  Kyle Barlowe's Santa Ana apartment was furnished to suit his dimensions. There were roomy Lay-Z-Boy recliners, a big sectional sofa with a deep seat, sturdy end tables, and a solidly built coffee table on which a man could prop his feet without fear of the thing collapsing. He had searched a long time, in

  countless used furniture stores, before he'd found the round table in the dining alcove; it was plain and somewhat battered, maybe not too attractive, but it was a little higher than most dining tables and gave him the kind of leg room he required. In the bathroom stood a very old, very large claw-foot tub, and in the bedroom he had one big dresser that he'd picked up for fortysix bucks and a king-size bed with an extra-long custom mattress that accommodated him, though with not an inch to spare. This was the one place in the world in which he could be truly comfortable.

  But not tonight.

  He could not be comfortable when the Antichrist was still alive. He could not relax, knowing that two assassination attempts had failed within the past twelve hours.

  He paced from the small kitchen to the living room, into the bedroom, back to the living room again, pausing to look out windows. Main Street was eerily lit by sickly yellow streetlamps, as well as by red and blue and pink and purple neon, all bleeding together, disguising the true colors of every object, giving the shadows fuzzy electric edges. Passing cars spewed up phosphorescent plumes of water that splashed back to the pavement, like rhinestone sequins. The failing rain looked silvery and molten, though the night was far from hot.

  He tried watching television. Couldn't get interested in it.

  He couldn't keep still. He sat down, got up right away, sat in another chair, got up, went into the bedroom, stretched out on the bed, heard an odd noise at the window, got up to investigate, realized it was only rainwater falling through the downspout, returned to bed, decided he didn't want to lie down, returned to the living room.

  The Antichrist was still alive.

  But that wasn't the only thing that was making him nervous .

  He tried to believe nothing else was bothering him, tried to pretend he was only worried about the Scavello boy, but finally he had to admit to himself that another thing was chewing at him.

  The old need. Such a fierce need. The NEED. He wanted No!

  It didn't matter what he wanted. He couldn't have it. He couldn't surrender to the NEED. He didn't dare.

  He dropped to his knees in the middle of the living room and prayed to God to help him resist the weakness in him. He prayed hard, prayed with all his might, with all his attention and devotion, prayed with such teeth-grinding intensity that he began to sweat.

  He still felt the old, despicable terrifying urge to mangle someone, to pummel and twist and claw, to hurt somebody, to kill.

  In desperation, he got up and went into the kitchen, to the sink, and turned on the cold water. He put the stopper in the drain. He got ice cubes from the refrigerator and added them to the growing pool. When the sink was almost full, he turned the spigot off and lowered his head into the freezing water, forced himself to stay there, holding his breath, face submerged, skin stinging, until he finally had to come up, gasping for air. He was shivering, and his teeth were chattering, but he still felt the violence building in him, so he put his head under again, waiting until his lungs were bursting, came up sputtering and spitting, and now he was frigid, quaking uncontrollably, but still the urge to do violence swelled unchecked.

  Satan was here now. Must be. Satan was here and dredging up the old feelings, pushing Kyle's face in them, tempting him, trying to get him to toss away his last chance at salvation.

  I won't!

  He stormed through the apartment, trying to detect exactly where Satan was. He looked in closets, opened cabinets, pulled aside the draperies to check behind them. He didn't actually expect to see Satan, but he was sure he would at least sense the devil's presence somewhere, invisible though the demon might be. But there was nothing to be found. Which only meant the devil was clever at concealing himself.

  When he finally gave up searching for Satan, he was in the bathroom, and he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror: eyes wild, nostrils dilated, jaw muscles popping, lips bloodless and skinned back over his crooked yellow teeth. He thought of the Phantom of the Opera. He thought of Frankenstein's monster

  and a hundred other tortured, unhuman faces from a hundred other films he had seen on "Chiller Theater."

  The world hated him, and he hated the world, all of them, the ones who laughed, who pointed, the women who found him repulsive, all the No. God. Please. Don't let me think about these things. Get my mind off this subject. Help me. Please.

  He couldn't look away from his Boris Karloff-Lon ChaneyRhondo Hatten face, which filled the age-spotted mirror.

  He never missed those old horror movies when they were on TV. Many nights he sat alone in front of his black-and-white set, riveted by the ghastly images, and when each picture ended, he went into the bathroom, to this very mirror, and looked at himself and told himself that he wasn't that ugly, wasn't that frightening, not as bad as the creatures that crept out of primeval swamps or came from beyond the stars or escaped from mad scientists' laboratories. By comparison, he was almost ordinary .

  At worst, pathetic. But he could never believe himself. The mirror didn't lie. The mirror showed him a face made for nightmares.

  He smiled at himself in the mirror, tried to look amiable. The result was awful. The smile was a leer.

  No woman would ever have him unless he paid, and even some whores turned him down. Bitches. All of them. Rotten, stinking, heartless bitches. He wanted to make one of them hurt .

  He wanted to bring his pain to one of them, hammer his pain into some woman and leave it in her, so that for a short while, at least, there would be no pain in him.

  No. That was bad thinking. Evil thinking.

  Remember Mother Grace.

  Remember the Twilight and salvation and life everlasting.

  But he wanted. He needed.

  He found himself at the door of his apartment without being able to recall how he'd gotten there. He had the door half open .

  He was on his way out to find a prostitute. Or someone to beat up. Or both.

  No!

  He slammed the door, locked it, put his back to it, and looked frantically around his living room.

  He had to act quickly to save himself.

  He was losing his battle against temptation. He was whimpering now, shuddering and mewling. He knew that in a second or two he would open the door again, and this time he would leave, go hunting ...

  In panic, he rushed to a small bookshelf, pulled out one of the inspirational volumes from his collection of a hundred such titles, tore out a fistful of pages and threw them onto the floor, tore out more pages, and more, until only the covers of the book remained, and then he ripped those apart, too. It felt good to mutilate something. He was gasping and shuddering like a horse in distress, and he seized another book, tore it to pieces, pitched the fragments behind him, grabbed another book, demolished it, then another, another . . .

  When he regained his senses, he was on the floor, weeping softly. Twenty ruined books, thousands of ripped pages, were heaped around him. He sat up, pulled out his handkerchief, wiped his eyes. Got to his knees, stood. He wasn't shaking any more. The NEED was gone.

  Satan had lost.

  Kyle had not surrendered to temptation, and now he knew why God wanted men like him to fight the battle of the Twilight .

  If God built His army strictly of men who had never sinned, how could He know that they would be able to resist the devil's entreaties? But by choosing men like me, Kyle thought, men with no resistance to sin, by giving us a second chance at salvation, by making us prove ourselves, God has acquired an army of tempered soldiers.

  He looked up at the ceiling but didn't see it. Instead he saw the sky beyond, saw into the heart of the universe. He said, "I'm worthy. I've climbed out
of the sewer of sin, and I've proved I'll never sink back down. If what You want is for me to handle the boy for You, I'm worthy now. Give me the boy. Let me have the boy. Let me."

  He felt the NEED surging in him again, the desire to choke and rend and crush, but this time it was a purer emotion, the clean white holy desire to be God's gladiator.

  It occurred to him that God was asking him to do the very thing he most wanted to avoid. He didn't want to kill again. He

  didn't want to harm people any more. He was finally gaining a small measure of respect for himself, finally saw the dim but real possibility that he might one day live in peace with the rest of the world-and now God wanted him to kill, wanted him to use his rage against selected targets.

  Why? he asked in sudden, silent misery. Why do I have to be the one? I used to thrive on the NEED, but now it scares me, and it should scare me. Why must I be used this way; why not in some other way?

  That was what Mother Grace called "wrong-thought," and he tried to wipe it out of his mind. You never challenged God like that. You just accepted what He wanted. God was mysterious. Sometimes He was harsh, and you couldn't understand why He demanded so much of you. Like why He wanted you to kill . . . or why He'd made you a freak in the first place when He could just as easily have made you handsome.

  No. That was more wrong-thought.

  Kyle cleaned up the ravaged books. He poured a glass of milk .

  He sat down by his telephone. He waited for Grace to call and say that it was time for him to be the hammer of God.

  "

  "'I'ChE; chase

  FOUR

  Everything that deceives also enchants.

  -Plato

  There's no escape From death's embrace, though you lead it on a merry chase.

  The dogs of death enjoy the chase.

  Just see the smile on each hound's face.

  The chase can't last; the dogs must feed .

  It will come to pass with terrifying speed.

  -The Book of Counted Sorrows

  In Ventura, they abandoned the yellow Cadillac. They searched along another residential street until Charlie found a dark blue Ford LTD whose owner had been unwise enough to leave the keys in the ignition. He drove the LTD only two miles before stopping again, in a poorly lit parking lot behind a movie theater, where he removed the license plates and tossed them in the trunk. He took the plates off a Toyota parked nearby and put those on the LTD.