Eyes of Darkness

by Dean Koontz

  In the middle of the west wall—one of the two shorter walls—opposite the entrance to the room, was a six-foot-long, three-foot-high window that provided a view of another space, which was only half as large as this outer chamber. The window was constructed like a sandwich: Two one-inch-thick panes of shatterproof glass surrounded an inch-wide space filled with an inert gas. Two panes of ironlike glass. Stainless-steel frame. Four airtight rubber seals—one around the both faces of each pane. This viewport was designed to withstand everything from a gunshot to an earthquake; it was virtually inviolable.

  Because it was important for the men who worked in the large room to have an unobstructed view of the smaller inner chamber at all times, four angled ceiling vents in both rooms bathed the glass in a continuous flow of warm, dry air to prevent condensation and clouding. Currently the system wasn’t working, for three-quarters of the window was filmed with frost.

  Dr. Carlton Dombey, a curly-haired man with a bushy mustache, stood at the window, blotting his damp hands on his medical whites and peering anxiously through one of the few frost-free patches of glass. Although he was struggling to cast off the seizure of claustrophobia that had gripped him, was trying to pretend that the organic-looking ceiling wasn’t pressing low over his head and that only open sky hung above him instead of thousands of tons of concrete and steel rock, his own panic attack concerned him less than what was happening beyond the viewport.

  Dr. Aaron Zachariah, younger than Dombey, clean-shaven, with straight brown hair, leaned over one of the computers, reading the data that flowed across the screen. “The temperature’s dropped thirty-five degrees in there during the past minute and a half,” Zachariah said worriedly. “That can’t be good for the boy.”

  “Every time it’s happened, it’s never seemed to bother him,” Dombey said.

  “I know, but—”

  “Check out his vital signs.”

  Zachariah moved to another bank of computer screens, where Danny Evans’s heartbeat, blood pressure, body temperature, and brainwave activity were constantly displayed. “Heartbeat’s normal, maybe even slightly slower than before. Blood pressure’s all right. Body temp unchanged. But there’s something unusual about the EEG reading.”

  “As there always is during these cold snaps,” Dombey said. “Odd brainwave activity. But no other indication he’s in any discomfort.”

  “If it stays cold in there for long, we’ll have to suit up, go in, and move him to another chamber,” Zachariah said.

  “There isn’t one available,” Dombey said. “All the others are full of test animals in the middle of one experiment or another.”

  “Then we’ll have to move the animals. The kid’s a lot more important than they are. There’s more data to be gotten from him.”

  He’s more important because he’s a human being, not because he’s a source of data, Dombey thought angrily, but he didn’t voice the thought because it would have identified him as a dissident and as a potential security risk.

  Instead, Dombey said, “We won’t have to move him. The cold spell won’t last.” He squinted into the smaller room, where the boy lay motionless on a hospital bed, under a white sheet and yellow blanket, trailing monitor wires. Dombey’s concern for the kid was greater than his fear of being trapped underground and buried alive, and finally his attack of claustrophobia diminished. “At least it’s never lasted long. The temperature drops abruptly, stays down for two or three minutes, never longer than five, and then it rises to normal again.”

  “What the devil is wrong with the engineers? Why can’t they correct the problem?”

  Dombey said, “They insist the system checks out perfectly.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “There’s no malfunction. So they say.”

  “Like hell there isn’t!” Zachariah turned away from the video displays, went to the window, and found his own spot of clear glass. “When this started a month ago, it wasn’t that bad. A few degrees of change. Once a night. Never during the day. Never enough of a variation to threaten the boy’s health. But the last few days it’s gotten completely out of hand. Again and again, we’re getting these thirty- and forty-degree plunges in the air temperature in there. No malfunction, my ass!”

  “I hear they’re bringing in the original design team,” Dombey said. “Those guys’ll spot the problem in a minute.”

  “Bozos,” Zachariah said.

  “Anyway, I don’t see what you’re so riled up about. We’re supposed to be testing the boy to destruction, aren’t we? Then why fret about his health?”

  “Surely you can’t mean that,” Zachariah said. “When he finally dies, we’ll want to know for sure it was the injections that killed him. If he’s subjected to many more of these sudden temperature fluctuations, we’ll never be certain they didn’t contribute to his death. It won’t be clean research.”

  A thin, humorless laugh escaped Carlton Dombey, and he looked away from the window. Risky as it might be to express doubt to any colleague on the project, Dombey could not control himself: “Clean? This whole thing was never clean. It was a dirty piece of business right from the start.”

  Zachariah faced him. “You know I’m not talking about the morality of it.”

  “But I am.”

  “I’m talking about clinical standards.”

  “I really don’t think I want to hear your opinions on either subject,” Dombey said. “I’ve got a splitting headache.”

  “I’m just trying to be conscientious,” Zachariah said, almost pouting. “You can’t blame me because the work is dirty. I don’t have much to say about research policy around here.”

  “You don’t have anything to say about it,” Dombey told him bluntly. “And neither do I. We’re low men on the totem pole. That’s why we’re stuck with night-shift, baby-sitting duty like this.”

  “Even if I were in charge of making policy,” Zachariah said, “I’d take the same course Dr. Tamaguchi has. Hell, he had to pursue this research. He didn’t have any choice but to commit the installation to it once we found out the damn Chinese were deeply into it. And the Russians giving them a hand to earn some foreign currency. Our new friends the Russians. What a joke. Welcome to the new Cold War. It’s China’s nasty little project, remember. All we’re doing is just playing catch-up. If you have to blame someone because you’re feeling guilty about what we’re doing here, then blame the Chinese, not me.”

  “I know. I know,” Dombey said wearily, pushing one hand through his bush of curly hair. Zachariah would report their conversation in detail, and Dombey needed to assume a more balanced position for the record. “They scare me sure enough. If there’s any government on earth capable of using a weapon like this, it’s them—or the North Koreans or the Iraqis. Never a shortage of lunatic regimes. We don’t have any choice but to maintain a strong defense. I really believe that. But sometimes . . . I wonder. While we’re working so hard to keep ahead of our enemies, aren’t we perhaps becoming more like them? Aren’t we becoming a totalitarian state, the very thing we say we despise?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe,” Dombey said, though he was sure of it.

  “What choice do I have?”

  “None, I guess.”

  “Look,” Zachariah said.

  “What?”

  “The window’s clearing up. It must be getting warm in there already.”

  The two scientists turned to the glass again and peered into the isolation chamber.

  The emaciated boy stirred. He turned his head toward them and stared at them through the railed sides of the hospital bed in which he lay.

  Zachariah said, “Those damn eyes.”

  “Penetrating, aren’t they?”

  “The way he stares . . . he gives me the creeps sometimes. There’s something haunting about his eyes.”

  “You’re just feeling guilty,” Dombey said.

  “No. It’s more than that. His eyes are strange. They aren’t the same as they were when he first c
ame in here a year ago.”

  “There’s pain in them now,” Dombey said sadly. “A lot of pain and loneliness.”

  “More than that,” Zachariah said. “There’s something in those eyes . . . something there isn’t any word for.”

  Zachariah walked away from the window. He went back to the computers, with which he felt comfortable and safe.

  FRIDAY, JANUARY 2

  27

  FOR THE MOST PART, RENO’S STREETS WERE CLEAN and dry in spite of a recent snowfall, though occasional patches of black ice waited for the unwary motorist. Elliot Stryker drove cautiously and kept his eyes on the road.

  “We should almost be there,” Tina said.

  They traveled an additional quarter of a mile before Luciano Bellicosti’s home and place of business came into sight on the left, beyond a black-bordered sign that grandiosely stated the nature of the service that he provided: FUNERAL DIRECTOR AND GRIEF COUNSELOR. It was an immense, pseudo-Colonial house, perched prominently on top of a hill, on a three- or four-acre property, and conveniently next door to a large, nondenominational cemetery. The long driveway curved up and to the right, like a width of black funeral bunting draped across the rising, snow-shrouded lawn. Stone posts and softly glowing electric lamps marked the way to the front door, and warm light radiated from several first-floor windows.

  Elliot almost turned in at the entrance, but at the last moment he decided to drive by the place.

  “Hey,” Tina said, “that was it.”

  “I know.”

  “Why didn’t you stop?”

  “Storming right up to the front door, demanding answers from Bellicosti—that would be emotionally satisfying, brave, bold—and stupid.”

  “They can’t be waiting for us, can they? They don’t know we’re in Reno.”

  “Never underestimate your enemy. They underestimated me and you, which is why we’ve gotten this far. We’re not going to make the same mistake they did and wind up back in their hands.”

  Beyond the cemetery, he turned left, into a residential street. He parked at the curb, switched off the headlights, and cut the engine.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “I’m going to walk back to the funeral home. I’ll go through the cemetery, circle around, and approach the place from the rear.”

  “We will approach it from the rear,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll wait here,” he insisted.

  “No way.”

  Pale light from a street lamp pierced the windshield, revealing a hard-edged determination in her face, steely resolution in her blue eyes.

  Although he realized that he was going to lose the argument, Elliot said, “Be reasonable. If there’s any trouble, you might get in the way of it.”

  “Now really, Elliot, talk sense. Am I the kind of woman who gets in the way?”

  “There’s eight or ten inches of snow on the ground. You aren’t wearing boots.”

  “Neither are you.”

  “If they’ve anticipated us, set a trap at the funeral home—”

  “Then you might need my help,” she said. “And if they haven’t set a trap, I’ve got to be there when you question Bellicosti.”

  “Tina, we’re just wasting time sitting here—”

  “Wasting time. Exactly. I’m glad you see it my way.” She opened her door and climbed out of the car.

  He knew then, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that he loved her.

  Stuffing the silencer-equipped pistol into one of his deep coat pockets, he got out of the Chevy. He didn’t lock the doors, because it was possible that he and Tina would need to get into the car in a hurry when they returned.

  In the graveyard, the snow came up to the middle of Elliot’s calves. It soaked his trousers, caked in his socks, and melted into his shoes.

  Tina, wearing rubber-soled sneakers with canvas tops, was surely as miserable as he was. But she kept pace with him, and she didn’t complain.

  The raw, damp wind was stronger now than it had been a short while ago, when they’d landed at the airport. It swept through the graveyard, fluting between the headstones and the larger monuments, whispering a promise of more snow, much more than the meager flurries it now carried.

  A low stone wall and a line of house-high spruce separated the cemetery from Luciano Bellicosti’s property. Elliot and Tina climbed over the wall and stood in the tree shadows, studying the rear approach to the funeral home.

  Tina didn’t have to be told to remain silent. She waited beside him, arms folded, hands tucked into her armpits for warmth.

  Elliot was worried about her, afraid for her, but at the same time he was glad to have her company.

  The rear of Bellicosti’s house was almost a hundred yards away. Even in the dim light, Elliot could see the fringe of icicles hanging from the roof of the long back porch. A few evergreen shrubs were clustered near the house, but none was of sufficient size to conceal a man. The rear windows were blank, black; a sentry might be standing behind any of them, invisible in the darkness.

  Elliot strained his eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of movement beyond the rectangles of glass, but he saw nothing suspicious.

  There wasn’t much of a chance that a trap had been set for them so soon. And if assassins were waiting here, they would expect their prey to approach the funeral home boldly, confidently. Consequently, their attention would be focused largely on the front of the house.

  In any case, he couldn’t stand here all night brooding about it.

  He stepped from beneath the sheltering branches of the trees. Tina moved with him.

  The bitter wind was a lash. It skimmed crystals of snow off the ground and spun the stinging cold flecks at their reddened faces.

  Elliot felt naked as they crossed the luminescent snow field. He wished that they weren’t wearing such dark clothes. If anyone did glance out a back window, he would spot the two of them instantly.

  The crunching and squeaking of the snow under their feet seemed horrendously loud to him, though they actually were making little noise. He was just jumpy.

  They reached the funeral home without incident.

  For a few seconds they paused, touching each other briefly, gathering their courage.

  Elliot took the pistol out of his coat jacket and held it in his right hand. With his left hand, he fumbled for the two safety catches, released them. His fingers were stiff from the cold. He wondered if he’d be able to handle the weapon properly if the need arose.

  They slipped around the corner of the building and moved stealthily toward the front.

  At the first window with light behind it, Elliot stopped. He motioned for Tina to stay behind him, close to the house. Cautiously he leaned forward and peeked through a narrow gap in a partly closed venetian blind. He nearly cried out in shock and alarm at what he saw inside.

  A dead man. Naked. Sitting in a bathtub full of bloody water, staring at something fearsome beyond the veil between this world and the next. One arm trailed out of the tub; and on the floor, as if it had dropped out of his fingers, was a razor blade.

  Elliot stared into the flat dead gaze of the pasty-faced corpse, and he knew that he was looking at Luciano Bellicosti. He also knew that the funeral director had not killed himself. The poor man’s blue-lipped mouth hung in a permanent gape, as if he were trying to deny all of the accusations of suicide that were to come.

  Elliot wanted to take Tina by the arm and hustle her back to the car. But she sensed that he’d seen something important, and she wouldn’t go easily until she knew what it was. She pushed in front of him. He kept one hand on her back as she leaned toward the window, and he felt her go rigid when she glimpsed the dead man. When she turned to Elliot again, she was clearly ready to get the hell out of there, without questions, without argument, without the slightest delay.

  They had taken only two steps from the window when Elliot saw the snow move no more than twenty feet from them. It wasn’t the ga
uzy, insubstantial stirring of wind-blown flakes, but an unnatural and purposeful rising of an entire mound of white. Instinctively he whipped the pistol in front of him and squeezed off four rounds. The silencer was so effective that the shots could not be heard above the brittle, papery rustle of the wind.

  Crouching low, trying to make as small a target of himself as possible, Elliot ran to where he had seen the snow move. He found a man dressed in a white, insulated ski suit. The stranger had been lying in the snow, watching them, waiting; now he had a wet hole in his chest. And a chunk of his throat was gone. Even in the dim, illusory light from the surrounding snow, Elliot could see that the sentry’s eyes were fixed in the same unseeing gaze that Bellicosti was even now directing at the bathroom window.

  At least one killer would be in the house with Bellicosti’s corpse. Probably more than one.

  At least one man had been waiting out here in the snow.

  How many others?

  Where?

  Elliot scanned the night, his heart clutching up. He expected to see the entire white-shrouded lawn begin to move and rise in the forms of ten, fifteen, twenty other assassins.

  But all was still.

  He was briefly immobilized, dazed by his own ability to strike so fast and so violently. A warm, animal satisfaction rose in him, which was not an entirely welcome feeling, for he liked to think of himself as a civilized man. At the same time, he was hit by a wave of revulsion. His throat tightened, and a sour taste suddenly overwhelmed him. He turned his back on the man whom he had killed.

  Tina was a pale apparition in the snow. “They know we’re in Reno,” she whispered. “They even knew we were coming here.”

  “But they expected us through the front door.” He took her by the arm. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They hurriedly retraced their path, moving away from the funeral home. With every step he took, Elliot expected to hear a shot fired, a cry of alarm, and the sounds of men in pursuit of quarry.