Eyes of Darkness

by Dean Koontz

  Billy’s dining room was neat too. The table, the chairs, the credenza, and the hutch all glowed warmly because of the prodigious amount of furniture polish that had been buffed into the wood with even more vigor than he had employed when shining his dazzling shoes. Fresh roses were arranged in a cut-crystal vase in the center of the table, and clean lines of light gleamed in the exquisite glass. The draperies hung in perfectly measured folds. An entire battalion of nitpickers and fussbudgets would be hard-pressed to find a speck of dust in this room.

  Elliot and Tina spread the map on the table and sat down across from each other.

  Billy said, “Automatic writing is bunk, Christina. You must know that.”

  “I do, Billy. I know that.”

  “Well, then—”

  “But I want you to hypnotize me anyway.”

  “You’re a levelheaded person, Tina,” Billy said. “This really doesn’t seem like you.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “If you’d just tell me why. If you’d tell me what this is all about, maybe I could help you better.”

  “Billy,” she said, “if I tried to explain, we would be here all afternoon.”

  “Longer,” Elliot said.

  “And we don’t have much time,” Tina said. “A lot’s at stake here, Billy. More than you can imagine.”

  They hadn’t told him anything about Danny. Sandstone didn’t have the faintest idea why they were in Reno or what they were seeking in the mountains.

  Elliot said, “I’m sure this seems ridiculous, Billy. You’re probably wondering if I’m some sort of lunatic. You’re wondering if maybe I’ve messed with Tina’s mind.”

  “Which definitely isn’t the case,” Tina said.

  “Right,” Elliot said. “Her mind was messed up before I ever met her.”

  The joke seemed to relax Sandstone, as Elliot had hoped it would. Lunatics and just plain irrational people didn’t intentionally try to amuse.

  Elliot said, “I assure you, Billy, we haven’t lost our marbles. And this is a matter of life and death.”

  “It really is,” Tina said.

  “Okay,” Billy said. “You don’t have time to tell me about it now. I’ll accept that. But will you tell me one day when you aren’t in such a damn rush?”

  “Absolutely,” Tina said. “I’ll tell you everything. Just please, please, put me in a trance.”

  “All right,” Billy Sandstone said.

  He was wearing a gold signet ring. He turned it around, so the face of it was on the wrong side—the palm side—of his finger. He held his hand in front of Tina’s eyes.

  “Keep your eyes on the ring and listen only to my voice.”

  “Wait a second,” she said.

  She pulled the cap off the red felt-tip pen that Elliot had purchased at the hotel newsstand just before they’d caught a taxi to Sandstone’s house. Elliot had suggested a change in the color of ink, so they would be able to tell the difference between the meaningless scribbles that were already on the map and any new marks that might be made.

  Putting the point of the pen to the paper, Tina said, “Okay, Billy. Do your stuff.”

  Elliot was not sure when Tina slipped under the hypnotist’s spell, and he had no idea how this smooth mesmerism was accomplished. All Sandstone did was move one hand slowly back and forth in front of Tina’s face, simultaneously speaking to her in a quiet, rhythmic voice, frequently using her name.

  Elliot almost fell into a trance himself. He blinked his eyes and tuned out Sandstone’s melodious voice when he realized that he was succumbing to it.

  Tina stared vacantly into space.

  The hypnotist lowered his hand and turned his ring around as it belonged. “You’re in a deep sleep, Tina.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your eyes are open, but you are in a deep, deep sleep.”

  “Yes.”

  “You will stay in that deep sleep until I tell you to wake up. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “You will remain relaxed and receptive.”

  “Yes.”

  “Nothing will startle you.”

  “No.”

  “You aren’t really involved in this. You’re just the method of transmission—like a telephone.”

  “Telephone,” she said thickly.

  “You will remain totally passive until you feel the urge to use the pen in your hand.”

  “All right.”

  “When you feel the urge to use the pen, you will not resist it. You will flow with it. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “You will not be bothered by anything Elliot and I say to each other. You will respond to me only when I speak directly to you. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now . . . open yourself to whoever wants to speak through you.”

  They waited.

  A minute passed, then another.

  Billy Sandstone watched Tina intently for a while, but at last he shifted impatiently in his chair. He looked at Elliot and said, “I don’t think this spirit writing stuff is—”

  The map rustled, drawing their attention. The corners curled and uncurled, curled and uncurled, again and again, like the pulse of a living thing.

  The air was colder.

  The map stopped curling. The rustling ceased.

  Tina lowered her gaze from the empty air to the map, and her hand began to move. It didn’t swoop and dart uncontrollably this time; it crept carefully, hesitantly across the paper, leaving a thin red line of ink like a thread of blood.

  Sandstone was rubbing his hands up and down his arms to ward off the steadily deepening chill that had gripped the room. Frowning, glancing up at the heating vents, he started to get out of his chair.

  Elliot said, “Don’t bother checking the air-conditioning. It isn’t on. And the heat hasn’t failed either.”

  “What?”

  “The cold comes from the . . . spirit,” Elliot said, deciding to stick with the occult terminology, not wanting to get bogged down in the real story about Danny.

  “Spirit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Whose spirit?”

  “Could be anyone’s.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Pretty much.”

  Sandstone stared at him as if to say, You’re nuts, but are you dangerous?

  Elliot pointed to the map. “See?”

  As Tina’s hand moved slowly over the paper, the corners of the map began to curl and uncurl again.

  “How is she doing that?” Sandstone asked.

  “She isn’t.”

  “The ghost, I suppose.”

  “That’s right.”

  An expression of pain settled over Billy’s face, as if he were suffering genuine physical discomfort because of Elliot’s belief in ghosts. Apparently Billy liked his view of the world to be as neat and uncluttered as everything else about him; if he started believing in ghosts, he’d have to reconsider his opinions about a lot of other things too, and then life would become intolerably messy.

  Elliot sympathized with the hypnotist. Right now he longed for the rigidly structured routine of the law office, the neatly ordered paragraphs of legal casebooks, and the timeless rules of the courtroom.

  Tina let the pen drop from her fingers. She lifted her gaze from the map. Her eyes remained unfocused.

  “Are you finished?” Billy asked her.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  With a few simple sentences and a sharp clap of his hands, the hypnotist brought her out of the trance.

  She blinked in confusion, then glanced down at the route that she had marked on the map. She smiled at Elliot. “It worked. By God, it worked!”

  “Apparently it did.”

  She pointed to the terminus of the red line. “That’s where he is, Elliot. That’s where they’re keeping him.”

  “It’s not going to be easy getting into country like that,” Elliot said. />
  “We can do it. We’ll need good, insulated outdoor clothes. Boots. Snowshoes in case we have to walk very far in open country. Do you know how to use snowshoes? It can’t be that hard.”

  “Hold on,” Elliot said. “I’m still not convinced your dream meant what you think it did. Based on what you said happened in it, I don’t see how you reach the conclusion that Danny’s going to help us get into the installation. We might get to this place and find we can’t slip around its defenses.”

  Billy Sandstone looked from Tina to Elliot, baffled. “Danny? Your Danny, Tina? But isn’t he—”

  Tina said, “Elliot, it wasn’t only what happened in the dream that led me to this conclusion. What I felt in it was far more important. I can’t explain that part of it. The only way you could understand is if you had the dream yourself. I’m sure he was telling me that he could help us get to him.”

  Elliot turned the map to be able to study it more closely.

  From the head of the table, Billy said, “But isn’t Danny—”

  Tina said, “Elliot, listen, I told you he would show us where he’s being kept, and he drew that route for us. So far I’m batting a thousand. I also feel he’s going to help us get into the place, and I don’t see any reason why I should strike out on that one.”

  “It’s just ... we’d be walking into their arms,” Elliot said.

  “Whose arms?” Billy Sandstone asked.

  Tina said, “Elliot, what happens if we stay here, hiding out until we can think of an alternative? How much time do we have? Not much. They’re going to find us sooner or later, and when they get their hands on us, they’ll kill us.”

  “Kill?” Billy Sandstone asked. “There’s a word I don’t like. It’s right up there on the bad-word list beside broccoli.”

  “We’ve gotten this far because we’ve kept moving and we’ve been aggressive,” Tina said. “If we change our approach, if we suddenly get too cautious, that’ll be our downfall, not our salvation.”

  “You two sound like you’re in a war,” Billy Sandstone said uneasily.

  “You’re probably right,” Elliot told Tina. “One thing I learned in the military was you have to stop and regroup your forces once in a while, but if you stop too long, the tide will turn and wash right over you.”

  “Should I maybe go listen to the news?” Billy Sandstone asked. “Is there a war on? Have we invaded France?”

  To Tina, Elliot said, “What else will we need besides thermal clothing, boots, and snowshoes?”

  “A Jeep,” she said.

  “That’s a tall order.”

  “What about a tank?” Billy Sandstone asked. “Going to war, you might prefer a tank.”

  Tina said, “Don’t be silly, Billy. A Jeep is all we need.”

  “Just trying to be helpful, love. And thanks for remembering I exist.”

  “A Jeep or an Explorer—anything with four-wheel drive,” Tina told Elliot. “We don’t want to walk farther than necessary. We don’t want to walk at all if we can help it. There must be some sort of road into the place, even if it’s well concealed. If we’re lucky, we’ll have Danny when we come out, and he probably won’t be in any condition to trek through the Sierras in the dead of winter.”

  “I have an Explorer,” Billy said.

  “I guess I could have some money transferred from my Vegas bank,” Elliot said. “But what if they’re watching my accounts down there? That would lead them to us fast. And since the banks are closed for the holiday, we couldn’t do anything until next week. They might find us by then.”

  “What about your American Express card?” she asked.

  “You mean, charge a Jeep?”

  “There’s no limit on the card, is there?”

  “No. But—”

  “I read a newspaper story once about a guy who bought a Rolls-Royce with his card. You can do that sort of thing as long as they know for sure you’re capable of paying the entire bill when it comes due a month later.”

  “It sounds crazy,” Elliot said. “But I guess we can try.”

  “I have an Explorer,” Billy Sandstone said.

  “Let’s get the address of the local dealership,” Tina said. “We’ll see if they’ll accept the card.”

  “I have an Explorer!” Billy said.

  They turned to him, startled.

  “I take my act to Lake Tahoe a few weeks every winter,” Billy said. “You know what it’s like down there this time of year. Snow up to your ass. I hate flying the Tahoe-Reno shuttle. The plane’s so damn small. And you know what a ticky-tacky airport they have at Tahoe. So I usually just drive down the day before I open. An Explorer’s the only thing I’d want to take through the mountains on a bad day.”

  “Are you going to Tahoe soon?” Tina asked.

  “No. I don’t open until the end of the month.”

  “Will you be needing the Explorer in the next couple of days?” Elliot asked.

  “No.”

  “Can we borrow it?”

  “Well . . . I guess so.”

  Tina leaned across the corner of the table, grabbed Billy’s head in her hands, pulled his face to hers, and kissed him. “You’re a lifesaver, Billy. And I mean that literally.”

  “I’m a small circlet of hard candy?”

  “Maybe things are breaking right for us,” Elliot said. “Maybe we’ll get Danny out of there after all.”

  “We will,” Tina said. “I know it.”

  The roses in the crystal vase twirled around like a group of spinning, redheaded ballerinas.

  Startled, Billy Sandstone jumped up, knocking over his chair.

  The drapes drew open, slid shut, drew open, slid shut, even though no one was near the draw cords.

  The chandelier began to swing in a lazy circle, and the dangling crystals cast prismatic patterns of light on the walls.

  Billy stared, open-mouthed.

  Elliot knew how disoriented Billy was feeling, and he felt sorry for the man.

  After half a minute all of the unnatural movement stopped, and the room rapidly grew warm again.

  “How did you do that?” Billy demanded.

  “We didn’t,” Tina said.

  “Not a ghost,” Billy said adamantly.

  “Not a ghost either,” Elliot said.

  Billy said, “You can borrow the Explorer. But first you’ve got to tell me what in hell’s going on. I don’t care how much of a hurry you’re in. You can at least tell me a little of it. Otherwise, I’m going to shrivel up and die of curiosity.”

  Tina consulted Elliot. “Well?”

  Elliot said, “Billy, you might be better off not knowing.”

  “Impossible.”

  “We’re up against some damn dangerous people. If they thought you knew about them—”

  “Look,” Billy said, “I’m not just a hypnotist. I’m something of a magician. That’s really what I most wanted to be, but I didn’t really have the skill for it. So I worked up this act built around hypnotism. But magic—that’s my one great love. I just have to know how you did that trick with the drapes, the roses. And the corners of the map! I just have to know.”

  Earlier this morning it had occurred to Elliot that he and Tina were the only people who knew that the official story of the Sierras accident was a lie. If they were killed, the truth would die with them, and the cover-up would continue. Considering the high price that they had paid for the pathetically insufficient information they had obtained, he couldn’t tolerate the prospect of all their pain and fear and anxiety having been for naught.

  Elliot said, “Billy, do you have a tape recorder?”

  “Sure. It’s nothing fancy. It’s a little one I carry with me. I do some comedy lines in the act, and I use the recorder to develop new material, correct problems with my timing.”

  “It doesn’t have to be fancy,” Elliot said. “Just so it works. We’ll give you a condensed version of the story behind all of this, and we’ll record it as we go. Then I’ll mail the tape to on
e of my law partners.” He shrugged. “Not much insurance, but better than nothing.”

  “I’ll get the recorder,” Billy said, hurrying out of the dining room.

  Tina folded the map.

  “It’s nice to see you smiling again,” Elliot said.

  “I must be crazy,” she said. “We still have dangerous work ahead of us. We’re still up against this bunch of cutthroats. We don’t know what we’ll walk into in those mountains. So why do I feel terrific all of a sudden?”

  “You feel good,” Elliot said, “because we’re not running anymore. We’re going on the offensive. And foolhardy as that might be, it does a lot for a person’s self-respect.”

  “Can a couple of people like us really have a chance of winning when we’re up against something as big as the government itself?”

  “Well,” Elliot said, “I happen to believe that individuals are more apt to act responsibly and morally than institutions ever do, which at least puts us on the side of justice. And I also believe individuals are always smarter and better adapted to survival, at least in the long run, than any institution. Let’s just hope my philosophy doesn’t turn out to be half-baked.”

  At one-thirty Kurt Hensen came into George Alexander’s office in downtown Reno. “They found the car that Stryker rented. It’s in a public lot about three blocks from here.”

  “Used recently?” Alexander asked.

  “No. The engine’s cold. There’s thick frost on the windows. It’s been parked there overnight.”

  “He’s not stupid,” Alexander said. “He’s probably abandoned the damn thing.”

  “You want to put a watch on it anyway?”

  “Better do that,” Alexander said. “Sooner or later they’ll make a mistake. Coming back to the car might be it. I don’t think so. But it might.”

  Hensen left the room.

  Alexander took a Valium out of a tin that he carried in his jacket pocket, and he washed it down with a swallow of hot coffee, which he poured from the silver pot on his desk. This was his second pill since he’d gotten out of bed just three and a half hours ago, but he still felt edgy.

  Stryker and the woman were proving to be worthy opponents.

  Alexander never liked to have worthy opponents. He preferred them to be soft and easy.