by Dean Koontz
Elliot pulled the jukebox from the wall so the old man could reach the cord.
In that instant Tina realized she had nothing to fear from the presence that lay behind this eerie manifestation. It meant her no harm. Quite the opposite, in fact. In a flash of understanding she saw through to the heart of the mystery. Her hands, which had been curled into tight fists, came open once more. The tension went out of her neck and shoulder muscles. Her heartbeat became less like the pounding of a jackhammer, but it still did not settle into a normal rhythm; now it was affected by excitement rather than terror. If she tried to scream now, she would be able to do so, but she no longer wanted to scream.
As the white-haired cashier grasped the plug in his arthritis-gnarled hands and wiggled it back and forth in the wall socket, trying to free it, Tina almost told him to stop. She wanted to see what would happen next if no one interfered with the presence that had taken control of the jukebox. But before she could think of a way to phrase her odd request, the old man succeeded in unplugging the machine.
Following the monotonous, earsplitting repetition of that two-word message, the silence was stunning.
After a second of surprised relief, everyone in the diner applauded the old fellow.
Jenny, the waitress, called to him from behind the counter. “Hey, Al, I didn’t touch the thermostat. It says the heat’s on and set at seventy. You better take a look at it.”
“You must have done something to it,” Al said. “It’s getting warm in here again.”
“I didn’t touch it,” Jenny insisted.
Al didn’t believe her, but Tina did.
Elliot turned away from the jukebox and looked at Tina with concern. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. God, yes! Better than I’ve been in a long time.”
He frowned, baffled by her smile.
“I know what it is. Elliot, I know exactly what it is! Come on,” she said excitedly. “Let’s go.”
He was confused by the change in her demeanor, but she didn’t want to explain things to him here in the diner. She opened the door and went outside.
22
THE WINDSTORM WAS STILL IN PROGRESS, BUT IT was not raging as fiercely as it had been when Elliot and Tina had watched it through the restaurant window. A brisk wind pushed across the city from the east. Laden with dust and with the powdery white sand that had been swept in from the desert, the air abraded their faces and had an unpleasant taste.
They put their heads down and scurried past the front of the diner, around the side, through the purple light under the single mercury-vapor lamp, and into the deep shadows behind the building.
In the Mercedes, in the darkness, with the doors locked, she said, “No wonder we haven’t been able to figure it out!”
“Why on earth are you so—”
“We’ve been looking at this all wrong—”
“—so bubbly when—”
“—approaching it ass-backwards. No wonder we haven’t been able to find a solution.”
“What are you talking about? Did you see what I saw in there? Did you hear the jukebox? I don’t see how that could have cheered you up. It made my blood run cold. It was weird.”
“Listen,” she said excitedly, “we thought someone was sending me messages about Danny being alive just to rub my face in the fact that he was actually dead—or to let me know, in a roundabout fashion, that the way he died wasn’t anything like what I’d been told. But those messages haven’t been coming from a sadist. And they haven’t been coming from someone who wants to expose the true story of the Sierra accident. They aren’t being sent by a total stranger or by Michael. They are exactly what they appear to be!”
Confused, he said, “And to your way of thinking, what do they appear to be?”
“They’re cries for help.”
“What?”
“They’re coming from Danny!”
Elliot stared at her with consternation and with pity, his dark eyes reflecting a distant light. “What’re you saying— that Danny reached out to you from the grave to cause that excitement in the restaurant? Tina, you really don’t think his ghost was haunting a jukebox?”
“No, no, no. I’m saying Danny isn’t dead.”
“Wait a minute. Wait a minute.”
“My Danny is alive! I’m sure of it.”
“We’ve already been through this argument, and we rejected it,” he reminded her.
“We were wrong. Jaborski, Lincoln, and all the other boys might have died in the Sierras, but Danny didn’t. I know it. I sense it. It’s like . . . a revelation . . . almost like a vision. Maybe there was an accident, but it wasn’t like anything we were told. It was something very different, something exceedingly strange.”
“That’s already obvious. But—”
“The government had to hide it, and so this organization that Kennebeck works for was given responsibility for the cover-up.”
“I’m with you that far,” Elliot said. “That’s logical. But how do you figure Danny’s alive? That doesn’t necessarily follow.”
“I’m only telling you what I know, what I feel,” she said. “A tremendous sense of peace, of reassurance, came over me in the diner, just before you finally managed to shut off the jukebox. It wasn’t just an inner feeling of peace. It came from outside of me. Like a wave. Oh, hell, I can’t really explain it. I only know what I felt. Danny was trying to reassure me, trying to tell me that he was still alive. I know it. Danny survived the accident, but they couldn’t let him come home because he’d tell everyone the government was responsible for the deaths of the others, and that would blow their secret military installation wide open.”
“You’re reaching, grasping for straws.”
“I’m not, I’m not,” she insisted.
“So where is Danny?”
“They’re keeping him somewhere. I don’t know why they didn’t kill him. I don’t know how long they think they can keep him bottled up like this. But that’s what they’re doing. That’s what’s going on. Those might not be the precise circumstances, but they’re pretty damn close to the truth.”
“Tina—”
She wouldn’t let him interrupt. “This secret police force, these people behind Kennebeck . . . they think someone involved with Project Pandora has turned on them and told me what really happened to Danny. They’re wrong, of course. It wasn’t one of them. It’s Danny. Somehow . . . I don’t know how . . . but he’s reaching out to me.” She struggled to explain the understanding that had come to her in the diner. “Somehow . . . some way . . . he’s reaching out . . . with his mind, I guess. Danny was the one who wrote those words on the chalkboard. With his mind.”
“The only proof of this is what you say you feel . . . this vision you’ve had.”
“Not a vision—”
“Whatever. Anyway, that’s no proof at all.”
“It’s proof enough for me,” she said. “And it would be proof enough for you, if you’d had the same experience back there in the diner, if you’d felt what I felt. It was Danny who reached out for me when I was at work . . . found me in the office . . . tried to use the hotel computer to send his message to me. And now the jukebox. He must be . . . psychic. That’s it! That’s what he is. He’s psychic. He has some power, and he’s reaching out, trying to tell me he’s alive, asking me to find him and save him. And the people who’re holding him don’t know he’s doing it! They’re blaming the leak on one of their own, on someone from Project Pandora.”
“Tina, this is a very imaginative theory, but—”
“It might be imaginative, but it’s not a theory. It’s true. It’s fact. I feel it deep in my bones. Can you shoot holes through it? Can you prove I’m wrong?”
“First of all,” Elliot said, “before he went into the mountains with Jaborski, in all the years you knew him and lived in the same house with him, did Danny ever show any signs of being psychic?”
She frowned. “No.”
“Then how come he suddenly
has all these amazing powers?”
“Wait. Yeah, I do remember some little things he did that were sort of odd.”
“Like what?”
“Like the time he wanted to know exactly what his daddy did for a living. He was eight or nine years old, and he was curious about the details of a dealer’s job. Michael sat at the kitchen table with him and dealt blackjack. Danny was barely old enough to understand the rules, but he’d never played before. He certainly wasn’t old enough to remember all the cards that were dealt and calculate his chances from that, like some of the very best players can do. Yet he won steadily. Michael used a jar full of peanuts to represent casino chips, and Danny won every nut in the jar.”
“The game must have been rigged,” Elliot said. “Michael was letting him win.”
“That’s what I thought at first. But Michael swore he wasn’t doing that. And he seemed genuinely astonished by Danny’s streak of luck. Besides, Michael isn’t a card mechanic. He can’t handle a deck well enough to stack it while he’s shuffling. And then there was Elmer.”
“Who’s Elmer?”
“He was our dog. A cute little mutt. One day, about two years ago, I was in the kitchen, making an apple pie, and Danny came in to tell me Elmer wasn’t anywhere to be found in the yard. Apparently, the pooch slipped out of the gate when the gardeners came around. Danny said he was sure Elmer wasn’t going to come back because he’d been hit and killed by a truck. I told him not to worry. I said we’d find Elmer safe and sound. But we never did. We never found him at all.”
“Just because you never found him—that’s not proof he was killed by a truck.”
“It was proof enough for Danny. He mourned for weeks.”
Elliot sighed. “Winning a few hands at blackjack—that’s luck, just like you said. And predicting that a runaway dog will be killed in traffic—that’s just a reasonable assumption to make under the circumstances. And even if those were examples of psychic ability, little tricks like that are light-years from what you’re attributing to Danny now.”
“I know. Somehow, his abilities have grown a lot stronger. Maybe because of the situation he’s in. The fear. The stress.”
“If fear and stress could increase the power of his psychic gifts, why didn’t he start trying to get in touch with you months ago?”
“Maybe it took a year of stress and fear to develop the ability. I don’t know.” A flood of unreasonable anger washed through her: “Christ, how could I know the answer to that?”
“Calm down,” he said. “You dared me to shoot holes in your theory. That’s what I’m doing.”
“No,” she said. “As far as I can see, you haven’t shot one hole in it yet. Danny’s alive, being held somewhere, and he’s trying to reach me with his mind. Telepathically. No. Not telepathy. He’s able to move objects just by thinking about them. What do you call that? Isn’t there a name for that ability?”
“Telekinesis,” Elliot said.
“Yes! That’s it. He’s telekinetic. Do you have a better explanation for what happened in the diner?”
“Well . . . no.”
“Are you going to tell me it was coincidence that the record stuck on those two words?”
“No,” Elliot said. “It wasn’t a coincidence. That would be even more unlikely than the possibility that Danny did it.”
“You admit I’m right.”
“No,” he said. “I can’t think of a better explanation, but I’m not ready to accept yours. I’ve never believed in that psychic crap.”
For a minute or two neither of them spoke. They stared out at the dark parking lot and at the fenced storage yard full of fifty-gallon drums that lay beyond the lot. Sheets, puffs, and spinning funnels of vaguely phosphorescent dust moved like specters through the night.
At last Tina said, “I’m right, Elliot. I know I am. My theory explains everything. Even the nightmares. That’s another way Danny’s been trying to reach me. He’s been sending me nightmares for the past few weeks. That’s why they’ve been so much different from any dreams I’ve had before, so much stronger and more vivid.”
He seemed to find this new statement more outrageous than what she’d said before. “Wait, wait, wait. Now you’re talking about another power besides telekinesis.”
“If he has one ability, why not the other?”
“Because pretty soon you’ll be saying he’s God.”
“Just telekinesis and the power to influence my dreams. That explains why I dreamed about the hideous figure of Death in this comic book. If Danny’s sending me messages in dreams, it’s only natural he’d use images he was familiar with—like a monster out of a favorite horror story.”
“But if he can send dreams to you,” Elliot said, “why wouldn’t he simply transmit a neat, clear message telling you what’s happened to him and where he is? Wouldn’t that get him the help he wants a lot faster? Why would he be so unclear and indirect? He should send a concise mental message, psychic E-mail from the Twilight Zone, make it a lot easier for you to understand.”
“Don’t get sarcastic,” she said.
“I’m not. I’m merely asking a tough question. It’s another hole in your theory.”
She would not be deterred. “It’s not a hole. There’s a good explanation. Obviously, like I told you, Danny isn’t telepathic exactly. He’s telekinetic, able to move objects with his mind. And he can influence dreams to some extent. But he’s not flat-out telepathic. He can’t transmit detailed thoughts. He can’t send ‘concise mental messages’ because he doesn’t have that much power or control. So he has to try to reach me as best he can.”
“Will you listen to us?”
“I’ve been listening,” she said.
“We sound like a couple of prime candidates for a padded cell.”
“No. I don’t think we do.”
“This talk of psychic power . . . it’s not exactly levelheaded stuff,” Elliot said.
“Then explain what happened in the diner.”
“I can’t. Damn it, I can’t,” he said, sounding like a priest whose faith had been deeply shaken. The faith that he was beginning to question was not religious, however, but scientific.
“Stop thinking like an attorney,” she said. “Stop trying to herd the facts into neat corrals of logic.”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been trained to do.”
“I know,” she said sympathetically. “But the world is full of illogical things that are nonetheless true. And this is one of them.”
The wind buffeted the sports car, moaned along the windows, seeking a way in.
Elliot said, “If Danny has this incredible power, why is he sending messages just to you? Why doesn’t he at least contact Michael too?”
“Maybe he doesn’t feel close enough to Michael to try reaching him. After all, the last couple of years we were married, Michael was running around with a lot of other women, spending most of his time away from home, and Danny felt even more abandoned than I did. I never talked against Michael. I even tried to justify some of his actions, because I didn’t want Danny to hate him. But Danny was hurt just the same. I suppose it’s natural for him to reach out to me rather than to his father.”
A wall of dust fell softly over the car.
“Still think you can shoot my theory full of holes?” she asked.
“No. You argued your case pretty well.”
“Thank you, judge.”
“I still can’t believe you’re right. I know some pretty damn intelligent people believe in ESP, but I don’t. I can’t bring myself to accept this psychic crap. Not yet, anyway. I’m going to keep looking for some less exotic explanation.”
“And if you come up with one,” Tina said, “I’ll give it very serious consideration.”
He put a hand on her shoulder. “The reason I’ve argued with you is . . . I’m worried about you, Tina.”
“About my sanity?”
“No, no. This psychic explanation bothers me mainly because it gives you
hope that Danny’s still alive. And that’s dangerous. It seems to me as if you’re just setting yourself up for a bad fall, a lot of pain.”
“No. Not at all. Because Danny really is alive.”
“But what if he isn’t?”
“He is.”
“If you discover he’s dead, it’ll be like losing him all over again.”
“But he’s not dead,” she insisted. “I feel it. I sense it. I know it, Elliot.”
“And if he is dead?” Elliot asked, every bit as insistent as she was.
She hesitated. Then: “I’ll be able to handle it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
In the dim light, where the brightest thing was mauve shadow, he found her eyes, held her with his intent gaze. She felt as if he were not merely looking at her but into her, through her. Finally he leaned over and kissed the corner of her mouth, then her cheek, her eyes.
He said, “I don’t want to see your heart broken.”
“It won’t be.”
“I’ll do what I can to see it isn’t.”
“I know.”
“But there isn’t much I can do. It’s out of my hands. We just have to flow with events.”
She slipped a hand behind his neck, holding his face close. The taste of his lips and his warmth made her inexpressibly happy.
He sighed, leaned back from her, and started the car. “We better get moving. We have some shopping to do. Winter coats. A couple of toothbrushes.”
Though Tina continued to be buoyed by the unshakable conviction that Danny was alive, fear crept into her again as they drove onto Charleston Boulevard. She was no longer afraid of facing the awful truth that might be waiting in Reno. What had happened to Danny might still prove to be terrible, shattering, but she didn’t think it would be as hard to accept as his “death” had been. The only thing that scared her now was the possibility that they might find Danny— and then be unable to rescue him. In the process of locating the boy, she and Elliot might be killed. If they found Danny and then perished trying to save him, that would be a nasty trick of fate, for sure. She knew from experience that fate had countless nasty tricks up its voluminous sleeve, and that was why she was scared shitless.
