The Darkest Evening of the Year

by Dean Koontz

  Her elegant fingers move across the blades on the table, but she seems unable to decide upon a favorite.

  He says, “You want to do her tonight?”

  She nods. “Tonight.”

  “How?”

  “Hard, the little freak. Real hard.”

  She leaves the room without a scalpel.

  Chapter

  64

  Daylight had begun to fail; and the white mist silvered.

  After they had gone twenty yards north, staying pack-close in the fog, Amy and Brian followed Nickie downslope, sixty or eighty yards, out of the trees, onto open ground.

  At a distance stood a door in the fog, dimly defined by light in a room beyond.

  Out of pistol range, a woman came through the door, carrying something, turned west, and at once vanished in the murk.

  “Vanessa,” Brian whispered.

  As the sky tarnished and the silvering mist developed a darker patina, the automated-lighthouse program engaged. The lantern room high in the night brightened with a thousand watts of halogen glare. The rays were reflected by the prismatic rings of the Fresnel lens, amplified, concentrated, and beamed out into the Pacific.

  Apart of Amy was in the past, on another coast, where the sweep of such a light had been the sharp scythe of Death. And a vision of aftermath flashed through her mind, Nickie dead at her father’s hand.

  Her heart, so steady through so much, steady even through the killing of the shooter, slammed now, and her soaring blood pressure muffled her hearing until she stretched her jaw, cracked her ears.

  Brian said, “Wait,” but she ran toward the lighted door, which was already fading in a thicker current of fog.

  High overhead, the bright signal swept 360 degrees. It seemed to pulse as it passed out of each quadrant of its arc and into the next.

  The fog—an optical construct with a million lenses, a billion bevels, infinite prisms—stole a minute fraction of the beam and shattered it through the night. From the dark trough of each pulse the fog took shadows, which chased the phantasms of light, which in turn chased the shadows.

  She had never seen this phenomenon before and supposed it must be particular to this Fresnel lens, this landscape, and the unique nature of this fog.

  At the periphery of vision, figures leaped, flew, fell. They were shadows from the lantern room, the consequence of the arc pulse, not cast by anything at ground level, though something malevolent and real might be moving in their cover. They chased directly in front of her eyes, too, and frequently flew up from the ground, as if they were dark gulls.

  By the time she reached the building with the open door, the fast-waltzing dancers of shadow and light inspired dizziness that turned her in a half-circle with her last two steps. She found the wall with a soft thump.

  Nickie followed at her heels, Brian close behind, and the dog padded past her, along the wall to the doorway, into the light.

  Trusting the golden’s nose, Amy boldly followed, and found herself at the threshold of a garage. The place seemed deserted.

  “She might come back,” Brian whispered.

  “Then kill her.”

  Amy started west, in the direction the woman had gone, but Brian grabbed her arm. He wanted her to be less reckless, to keep in mind the danger of blundering into a murderous burst of gunfire.

  She didn’t want to waste time, but instead of pulling away from him, she turned, face close to his in the whirling harlequin parade, and whispered fiercely, “They’re killing Hope.”

  This was not a fear, but a presentiment, not merely the dread of failing another child, but a knowledge that came to her from wherever this new Nickie had come.

  Indeed, the dog was trotting west, receding into the fog, and now both Amy and Brian ran after her.

  Cautious in this treacherous weather, carrying an eight-battery flashlight with a five-inch lens, Harrow crosses the slippery rock formations to the oval yard, searching for the Expedition.

  He is accustomed to the disco dazzle that the great signal light generates in certain fog conditions. In fact, he is weary of it. He, too, is ready for the desert.

  The SUV hit the Montezuma pine, skinned significant bark off the south side of the trunk, and kept going. It sits on the rocks beyond the grass, its undercarriage hung up on a thrust of granite.

  Somehow, it got turned around, most likely after the collision with the tree, and now faces inland. The headlights are shattered, and one door is sprung open.

  The garage was not attached to the house, but the structures stood close together. When Amy rounded the corner, she saw lighted house windows flanked by dark shutters, lamplight behind curtains.

  The dog led the detail along the wall of the house, hesitating at a corner, peering around, then venturing forth.

  As the door stood open at the garage, so another stood wide at the house, billows of cold fog swarming into warm rooms beyond.

  On another coast, in another year, Amy had chased Michael out of the house, into the night. This was worse: out of the open into confinement, the short sight lines and the many corners and the closed doors of a house, a strange house, but not strange to him.

  When the dog crossed the threshold, they were committed as well, and followed her into a kitchen.

  Polished steel glittered on the table, a variety of blades so sharp they seemed to slice the fluorescent light that fell on them, not the usual cutlery of a kitchen, but the kind that, after being used, were placed in an autoclave instead of a dishwasher.

  Past an open door, back stairs led up to a landing and turned out of sight. Nickie appeared to be interested in them, but then not.

  One closed door, maybe to a pantry. They wouldn’t be hiding in a pantry. Too bold to hide, both of them.

  Incoming fog, cold on her neck, chilled Amy into a frightened turn, but nobody had followed them out of the night.

  An open door, a hallway beyond. Nickie liked that route.

  Brian motioned Amy ahead. He wanted to bring up the rear.

  Archway to the left. Living room. Archway to the right. A study.

  Every deserted room meant that the next one was more likely to be occupied.

  Gun in both hands, muzzle jumping. Amy needed to get control of herself. Hold the muzzle down. It would kick up on recoil. Shoot them in the head, not over their heads.

  Now a closed door on the right, two on the left. They could go through the doors like movie cops, low and fast, stepping away from the hinges after crossing the threshold. Although maybe that was just movie crap, and if you were a real cop, you laughed at it.

  Nickie showed no interest in these rooms, and though Amy was nervous about proceeding past those spaces without checking them, leaving closed doors at their back, she followed the dog’s lead.

  A vestibule ahead. The main stairs to the right. The front door flanked by French-pane sidelights, strobe-lit fog pressing against the glass.

  To the left, a final door was ajar. Beside the door stood a red utility can marked GASOLINE.

  Nickie sniffed at the gap between door and jamb. She pressed her head through the gap, pushed the door open wider with her body, and disappeared inside.

  Amy found a bed-sitting room brightened by a desk lamp and a nightstand lamp with a glass-bead shade.

  A girl in a gray sweatsuit knelt at an upholstered chair, half turned away from the door. Hope. It must be Hope.

  She was talking, her speech slightly slurred. She seemed to be in distress, speaking fast.

  Nickie stood at a distance, staring at the girl, as if not wanting to intrude.

  Amy motioned Brian ahead of her. Quietly she closed the door to the hall, stepped away from it. She stood where she could both see the girl and cover the only entrance.

  “You caught me, I don’t care, I don’t,” the girl said. “I have to say what’s in my heart, that’s the best you can do, say what’s in your heart. You can burn my feet again, I don’t care, I don’t. I’m gonna say what’s in my heart again.” />
  Brian went to his knees beside her.

  The girl looked up, surprised. Clearly, she hadn’t known they were here. She had been talking to someone else.

  Someone who had stepped out—and would be back.

  Chapter

  65

  Harrow quickly ascertains that his ex-wife and the architect are not in the SUV either dead or wounded.

  The back wheels of the Expedition overhang the edge of the cliff, forty feet above the beach, and the tailgate has sprung open.

  He must therefore assume that the bodies were in the cargo space and were pitched out of the back when the vehicle came violently to a halt. In that case, they have been cast down to the beach below.

  In this fog, in the last of the dying daylight, he will be wasting time and taking risks for nothing by trying to survey the terrain below from the slippery edge of the granite escarpment.

  A set of old concrete stairs with a rusted iron railing lead down to the beach. He can descend by those.

  He’s not keen on searching the strand, but if the bodies are down there, he needs to know. Before morning, the tide could carry them out to sea and move them farther along the coast.

  The police are clever about coastal currents and tide charts. Upon finding a corpse and, by forensics, determining the length of time that it has been in the water, they can calculate its point of origin with disturbing accuracy.

  The kneeling girl’s hands were folded, entwined by a silver chain, with perhaps a pendant hidden between her palms.

  She was beautiful, as she’d been beautiful as an infant. Beauty has more faces than beaches have grains of sand; and this was the beauty of innocence, humility, gentleness.

  Her eyes were blue, Brian’s shade of blue, and clear. They widened with wonder, but then a shyness came into them, and she looked away.

  Brian wanted to put a hand to her face, lift her chin, raise her eyes to him. He wanted to put his hand over her hands.

  That she might know who he was, that she might flinch at his touch, that she might ask where he had been all these years: The fear of rejection prevented him from touching her.

  “Let’s go, come on,” Amy whispered.

  “Honey,” he said softly, “do you know who I am?”

  Eyes still averted, the girl nodded.

  “Will you come with me?”

  “Mother has a knife.”

  “I’m not afraid of her.”

  “She kills you sometimes.”

  He trusted inspiration. “Not with our attack dog.”

  Following his gesture, she saw the golden for the first time. Her face brightened, and her eyes. “Doggie.”

  Considering this an invitation, Nickie went to the girl, plumed tail celebrating the making of a new friend, and Hope flung her arms around the dog in a display of instant and total trust.

  Brian glanced at Amy, and she motioned him to her.

  Amy worried that even if they could find keys for Michael’s vehicles, they couldn’t drive away. The engine would be heard. They would be shot down as they backed out of the garage.

  At any moment, they might encounter Michael or Vanessa. They had been in the house maybe three minutes. They were already overdue.

  “We can’t hunt them with Hope. The dog will keep her safe.”

  She saw the anguish in his eyes as he said, “That would make sense if you were right about…what Nickie is.”

  “My daughter will take your daughter to safety.” As Hope petted Nickie, the pendant on the chain hung visible. “Look.”

  The silver word stunned him.

  “Believe what you know,” Amy urged.

  She crouched to hug Hope, who was awkward about the affection, though she had been easy with the dog.

  “Honey, you’re going outside with Nickie. Hold her collar. Stay with her. She’ll keep you safe. Don’t be afraid.”

  Smiling at the dog, Hope said, “I’m not. She’s a Forever Shiny Thing.”

  With a glance at Brian, Amy said, “Yes, sweetie, she is.”

  The hall was deserted. They went to the nearby front door. Fog entered, and Hope left with Nickie.

  The dog hesitated on the stoop, testing the air, then led the girl quickly away into the fog.

  Harrow on the beach searches sand, fog, and surf foam for any sign of the bodies, when belatedly he realizes that he saw no blood in the Expedition.

  He feels deceived, not only by his quarry but also by his own expectations.

  Amy got lucky once, back in Connecticut, but she’s a submissive, not a transgressor, just like her architect, and it is an affront to Harrow’s deepest-held views to imagine that she could get the best of a killing machine like Billy.

  He hurries back to the steps and climbs two at a time, clutching at the rusty iron railing.

  He is not worried about Moongirl, only about missing something that she might do to them if she finds them in his absence.

  Vanessa catches the little freak doing it, mumbling over a HOPE pendant as though it’s a fragment of the Lord God Almighty’s toe-nail, hallelujah, smell that toe-jam residue!

  She always thought this would be long and slow when the time came. Thought she might like to take a couple of days breaking down the little freak before burning her.

  Now she just wants it over. Tonight. Right now.

  She has a gallon of gasoline for the third act.

  The second act is just going to be punching Piggy. Except for the burns on the bottoms of her feet, Vanessa never marked the little creep before. You have to be careful: all the meddlesome bastards who see one bruise and they’re on to child welfare. She really wants to hit her. She’s got a lot of years of hitting saved up.

  The first act is some little pretend-drowning in the big bathtub upstairs. Tie her up, do some dunking, see how long she can hold her breath. If it’s good enough to get some answers out of terrorists, it’s good enough for Piggy, who doesn’t even have any answers to give.

  Vanessa has just finished filling the tub with cold water, as cold as she could draw it. She’s selected and set out some scarves she doesn’t want anymore, to tie up the little freak.

  She has wasted ten years with this. Ten years. She has never gotten from it the level of satisfaction she expected.

  It’s very difficult for a pleasure in reality to be equal to what you work up first in your imagination. The world is always failing her. Pleasure is the only thing, everything, and yet it is never what it ought to be.

  Maybe she’ll find something better in the desert. She likes the heat of the desert, the barrenness, the emptiness.

  There’s too much nature here on the coast. She just wants sand and heat and white sky and silence.

  She bought a book, The World Without Us, she wants to read it in the desert, someplace isolated, where there’s just her and Harrow, and then maybe not him.

  Death is the only thing that satisfies. It’s the only thing that is complete, everything you expect it to be. The dead never fail you.

  She is descending the front stairs when, just as she’s about to turn onto the landing, she hears whispering in the vestibule. She stops, puts her back to the wall, and eases to the corner.

  She’s just in time to see Piggy going out the door with a dog. What the hell is that about?

  Amy Redwing looks after the girl for a moment, then closes the door and turns to Brian.

  Vanessa eases back from the corner, for fear they’ll glance up at the stairs. She hears fragments of their quick exchanges: search…kitchen…back stairs.

  She retreats to the second floor and races across it, as light-footed as always. She descends the back stairs.

  They have guns, and she just has the knife she was going to use to mess with Piggy’s mind a little, the old Bear knife. She doesn’t care if it’s a challenge. She doesn’t even care if she dies. But she won’t die, precisely because she doesn’t care. It’s when you care about dying that you hesitate, and when you hesitate, Vanessa cuts you down.

&nb
sp; Redwing and Bry want to live. They’ll hesitate, which makes a knife faster than a bullet every time.

  She is very excited. She has wanted him dead a long time.

  Off the back stairs, across the kitchen, where fog creeps through the open door, toward the pantry, but instead into a narrow broom closet. The closet contains only a mop, no broom, and Vanessa has just enough room to close the door. It’s like standing up in a coffin.

  Returning from the front of the house, Amy and Brian searched the rooms that they passed by earlier when Nickie led them through the place. As it turned out, the dog’s disinterest in those spaces proved to be wisdom at work, because they were all deserted.

  In the kitchen, the pantry seemed unlikely to yield either one of the charming couple, but Amy yanked open the door while Brian covered it with his pistol.

  The hinges creaked on the pantry door, and behind Amy other hinges creaked almost simultaneously, and she started to turn, but the knife took her in the back and went deep, and the air went out of her, and the strength.

  Amy made a small bird cry, and Brian turned to see Vanessa behind her, and Amy’s face as white as the whites of her eyes.