by Dean Koontz
"What do you think?" he asked, obviously proud of the Rover.
"I'm no longer worried about reaching Owlsden," she said. The wind snatched her words from her mouth and carried them away, but not fast enough to keep him from hearing her. He smiled and nodded. "Does it have a heater?" she asked.
"All the luxuries," he said, taking her elbow and leading her across the slippery street. He put her in the passenger's side and went around to get behind the wheel.
The engine started the first time he tried it, a noisy, roaring behemoth of an engine.
"Not as quiet as a Cadillac, perhaps, but able to leap tall buildings in a single bound."
She laughed and settled back, relieved to be in Mike Harrison's hands.
He drove into the street, circled the park and started out of town in the direction of the narrow road that lead up to Owlsden, his hands tight on the wheel, his driving experienced and sure.
"Not even a little skid," she said.
"Wait until we start up the mountain!"
"Remember what Bertha said."
"Don't worry," he said. "I'm not going to give you a heart-stopping thrill ride. In this weather, I don't need to."
Then, for a moment, there was an awkward silence, since all the banal conversation about the weather and the Land Rover had already been exhausted and neither knew the other well enough to know what to talk about next. He broke the silence after a minute had passed. "I wouldn't think a young, attractive girl like yourself would choose to move into a place like Roxburgh."
"That's where the job is," she said, lightly.
"There are other jobs, surely, in places with more lights, more glamour and more things to do."
"Solitude appeals to me," she said. "At least I think it does."
"You'll have a great opportunity to learn whether or not it does if you live long in Roxburgh!"
"And the job sounds interesting," she said. "Everyone seems to like Lydia Boland."
Again, she saw a subtle reaction pass through his features: a tightening of the jawline, a squinting about the eyes. She wished she knew him well enough to solicit his obviously different opinion of the Bolands.
"Everyone does," he said. "Everyone likes them." But she was still certain that he did not like them very much at all.
"Your car?" he asked a moment later as they came within sight of the roadside picnic area where she had parked the Ford.
"Yes," she said.
He pulled the Land Rover up next to it. "If you'll give me your keys and tell me where the suitcases are, you won't have to get out of the Rover again."
"I'm putting you to a lot of trouble," she said.
"Nonsense."
"But I am."
He grinned. "Then I'll get even when we go up the mountain." He pointed ahead at the narrow, snow-laden roadway which looked, suddenly, twice as steep and harrowing as it had earlier when she'd attempted to climb it in the Ford.
He took her keys and got out, closed the door and clomped over to the Ford, opened the trunk and lifted out two cases which he brought back. A rear door of the Rover opened to admit the cases and, in a moment, the last two as well. He slammed it shut, locked it, got in behind the wheel again and gave her the keys.
He said, "It's a good thing you decided not to force your way up in that car of yours. Even if you'd been lucky and made it most of the way to the top, you'd have gone over the edge on the last turn. It's a menace for the Rover, let alone for something with worn winter tires and a high speed rear end, like the Ford."
Swallowing hard at the prospect of having pitched over the brink in the old car, she said, "How long will it take to get up there, in this?"
He looked ahead. "It's a mile and a quarter, but all steep and all icy. I'd say there's six to eight inches of snow..."
She waited while he thought it out.
"If I heed Bertha's warning and take it easy, we ought to be up there in fifteen or twenty minutes. All right?"
"Fine," she said.
He looked at Owlsden, what they could see of it from this angle. "I don't think I'll ever understand why anyone would want to build a house in such an unapproachable place-or, for that matter, found an entire town in the middle of nowhere."
He slammed the Rover into gear.
They jerked as the engine groaned and caught hold.
They moved forward toward the road and the ascent to the Roxburgh estate at the top of the valley wall.
Even the Rover wallowed a bit in the treacherous climb, though Mike Harrison did not seem to think the ascent was all that spectacular. While Katherine tried not to look out her window at the yawning pit that opened on her side of the road but found herself looking in fascination anyway, he talked amiably, as if they were out for a Sunday afternoon drive to admire the local scenery.
At last, because talking about anything would be better than staring into the ever-growing chasm beside them, Katherine joined in the conversation and brought up the dead cat she had found in the barn.
"Where was this barn?" he asked immediately, taking his eyes away from the road for a second.
She told him. "It was absolutely terrible," she said.
"I can imagine."
"It was all that I could do to touch the poor thing, let alone to dig its grave. But, I guess, someone had to do it."
"You buried the cat?" he asked incredulously.
Again, he took his eyes away from the road and looked at her. She wished he wouldn't do that.
"Yes," she said.
"You shouldn't have."
The Land Rover slipped sideways with a ratcheting noise, toward the brink, corrected smoothly as Harrison touched the gas and shifted down a gear.
"Whyever not?" she asked.
She tried not to think about how close they had been to loosing a wheel over the abrupt lip of the berm. This situation was trying her optimism as badly as the descent down the other side of the valley had. Perhaps this was another omen, a warning to turn back, go home, find another job in a more conventional atmosphere.
"The people who did that thing-the people who tortured and hung that cat are not sane, Katherine."
"I realize that," she said.
"Well, you should have gotten away from there as soon as you realized what had taken place."
"Someone had to bury the cat," she insisted.
"What if one of them-one of these Satanists had come back?"
"I thought, once they'd used a place, they wouldn't be too open about returning to it. I didn't think those kind of people would show themselves in public, in daylight. They can't be proud of it, after all."
He nodded, still handling the wheel expertly as the Land Rover crawled laboriously along the snowy track toward the dark, towering mass of Owlsden above. "Perhaps that's true," he said. "Especially considering the public outcry that goes up every time someone uncovers a trace of these Satanic goings on in Roxburgh."
"You mean that people around here find this sort of thing regularly?" she asked, her attention finally diverted from the road altogether, for the first time.
"Not every day, mind you."
"But often."
"Yes. Every month or so for the last year, year and a half. Sometimes the ceremonies are done in dilapidated buildings, sometimes in open forest clearings. I imagine more are performed and go unnoticed than those we find clue to."
"It's hard to believe," Katherine said.
Terrifying her by the gesture and drawing her attention back to the danger of the storm and the road, he raised a hand from the wheel and waved it to indicate the craggy mountains, the great forests, the thickly grown and yet somehow barren landscape. "Considering this place, this land, it wouldn't seem so strange to me."
"Please use both hands to drive," she said.
He laughed. "We're nearly three-fourths of the way up now, and you've not come close to death yet."
"Close enough," Katherine said.
The windshield wipers thumped faster as he turned them up, hollow an
d heavy like the rapid beat of a panicked animal's heart as it escapes the hunter's line of sight Ice had formed in the corners of the windshield shortly after they left the cafe and now began to send tentative crystal fingers toward the center. He also turned up the blast from the heater, melting the hazy barrier that had started to form on the glass.
To get her mind off the road again, and because she was curious, she asked, "Hasn't anything been done to find out who these-these devil worshipers are?"
"Oh, in a town as small as Roxburgh, there has been a lot of spying on each other, neighbor watching neighbor."
"Nothing more?"
"What would you do?" he asked.
"The police-"
"Have no jurisdiction. Aside from the fact that they kill someone's pet now and again-usually a cat- they don't break any laws. Christianity is the preferred religion in the area, but not codified by law."
"Well, then," she said, "even with neighbor spying on neighbor, someone ought to have aroused suspicion."
"Maybe, maybe not," he said. "Besides, it's equally likely that the Satanists are from another town. Within a thirty mile radius, there are a dozen villages ranging anywhere from five hundred to a thousand in population. It could be someone from one of those, leaving their hometown to perform the rituals and thus keep the heat off their own neck of the woods."
"I see."
"Are you frightened by the notion of devil worshipers?" Harrison asked, a touch of humor in his voice.
"Not really," she said.
"You should be."
"Oh?"
The Rover shuddered as it bumped over some obstruction in the road that was hidden by snow, sidled toward the ravine, came under his control again and ground relentlessly toward the final curve before they crested the top of the road.
"You don't believe in black magic and the power of evil, do you?" she asked, teasing him.
"Of course not," he said. "But you've got to be wary of people who do believe in things like that, because they aren't exactly right in the head."
"I suppose so."
He frowned, his mind clearly on more than his driving. After a moment, he said, "Everyone in Roxburgh is afraid of them; everyone is waiting for something to break because of them, something bad. Only the Boland family poohpoohs the notion that they're dangerous."
"They do?"
"Yes. The subject has been brought up at the town meeting a number of times. Lydia always attends- and Alex, her son, usually does. They always make light of the subject, joke about it. The other townspeople respect them so much that the subject is usually dropped."
"Maybe they've got the right idea-treat it lightly and let it evaporate eventually."
"Maybe. But I have the feeling that it is the same as finding yourself in a pit with a tiger and turning away from it hoping it will disappear."
"Aren't you being melodramatic?" Katherine asked.
"Perhaps I am. But I can't help but wonder if these Satanists will ever reach the point where they're tired of sacrificing things like cats and dogs and an occasional rabbit."
"I don't understand," Katherine said.
He did not look away from the road now, for they were entering the sharp turn at the top of the rise, where the right-of-way humped, creating a natural spillage toward either the rock wall on his side or the crevasse on hers. He drove on the wrong side, taking the risk of striking the wall rather than of toppling over the precipice. In a moment, they were up and over, striking directly along the driveway to the mammoth oak doors that fronted Owlsden.
He said, "What I mean is: suppose they get bold enough to try a human sacrifice?"
Relieved that the trip was behind her, Katherine's urge to be happy soared again. "Oh, for heaven's sake, Mr. Harrison, you really are into cheap movie plots now!"
"Mike," he said. "Don't call me Mr. Harrison; I'm not that much older than you." He wheeled around in front of the great doors and braked the Rover. "And its surprising how often old movie plots have parallels in real life."
The twelve-foot doors of the house swung open, spilling yellow light across the snowfield, making iced points on the giant pine needles gleam like jewels on the end of miniature spears.
"I'll get your things," he said, opening the door and stepping out.
She stood next to him as he placed the luggage in the snow and closed the rear door of the Land Rover, and she was aware that his attitude of jolly adventurism was gone. Instead, he seemed anxious to be away from Owlsden, as if he feared the place. He kept glancing up at the dark windows, at the slate roof, at the squat, dark figure that stood in the open doorway, watching them.
"I'd like to pay you," she said.
"Not necessary."
"I really think-"
"My father is a millionaire, and I'll be a millionaire one day too," he said. "Now, if you can tell me what earthly good it would do me to take cab fare from you, I might accept it." He smiled as he spoke, his face as incredibly handsome as it had seemed the first moment she'd seen him in the restaurant in town.
"Well, then I don't know how to thank you," Katherine said.
"Your company was thanks enough, the sight of a new face and someone with a fresh outlook."
"You flatter me," she said. "I really don't know what I'd have done without your help, and I don't think any amount of conversation and fresh viewpoint repays you for that horrendous drive or the one you have to make to go back down."
"The drive is second nature," he said. "And without me, you'd merely have spent a week in town before coming up here. Maybe that would have been better than-maybe that wouldn't have been so bad."
The man standing in the doorway came out to them. He was Katherine's height, five feet four, very broad across the shoulders, a beefy man packed with muscles like a weightlifter. His face was swarthy, his eyes dark and deep set. His mouth was wide, his lips thick and his voice European yet accentless when he spoke. "My name is Yuri, Miss Sellers. I am the general caretaker of Owlsden, and I hope you haven't had any serious trouble getting here in this abominable weather."
"Thanks to Mr. Harrison, very little," she said.
Yuri turned to the younger man now and smiled. From the coarse look of him, one expected the teeth to be broken and rotted. Instead, they were fine, white, pointed and even. "Mrs. Boland would like to invite you to remain for dinner."
"I wouldn't want to impose," Harrison said uneasily.
"No imposition," Yuri assured him. "We set an extra place and cooked for another, in the expectation that only your Land Rover would be able to ferry Miss Sellers up here." The gentle, cultured voice seemed odd coming from the brutal figure of Yuri.
"No thank you again," Harrison said. "Please give Lydia my thanks and regrets. But I must get back down the mountain before the snow gets too much worse." That was a lie, since everyone seemed aware that no degree of terrible weather could phase him as long as he had the Rover.
He went around to the driver's seat, closed his door after him and put the vehicle in gear. He drove jerkily away from them, kicking up clouds of snow behind.
"Come along," Yuri said, lifting two of her bags. "I'll get your last two cases in a minute."
He lead the way across the lawn toward the open house, oblivious to the bitter cold, the wind and the snow, though he was only wearing a light suit without benefit of even an overcoat, hat or scarf.
Katherine turned and looked back toward the edge of the mountain, not certain what she hoped to see. But, not seeing it, she suddenly knew: the Land Rover. It was completely out of sight now, even the glow of its powerful headlights swallowed in the white mouth of the storm. She felt terribly alone.
CHAPTER 3
The rooms of Owlsden matched the grandeur of the outside, with none of the brooding darkness that had bothered her about its mammoth walls. The entrance foyer was wallpapered in gold and white, carpeted in gold, with a bright, crystal chandelier filling half the ceiling with dancing strips of colored light. The corridor that lead from i
t to the main perpendicular hall that ran the great length of the mansion was also carpeted in gold, the walls paneled in rich, dark woods. Inset in the ceiling were flat plates of light, a strikingly modem touch in comparison with the antiquity of the house. The furniture that she saw-a writing desk, an umbrella stand, a few occasional chairs, a pedestal or two with busts and statues on them-was all heavy, dark and pleasantly modern, not chintzy Danish but modern furniture with a style, a feeling of artistic merit and value.
Yuri lead her down the south wing to the main drawing room through a wide, paneled arch into a bright room with a wine-colored carpet, cream walls, bold modern paintings and furniture of vinyls and plastics and polished, stainless steel.
"Miss Sellers," he announced.
There were two people in the room, an old woman and a man about as old as Mike Harrison, twenty-four or twenty-five. For the first time, seeing mother and son together, it occurred to Katherine that Alex Boland had been what is often called an "autumn baby" or "late blessing" having been born when his mother was forty.
Lydia Boland was a tall-a good five inches taller than Katherine-regal-looking woman. She wore her hair off her forehead and then suddenly swept down at each temple, covering her ears. Her complexion was milky and flawless, her eyes dark and bright, quickly taking in everything about her new employee whom she had only met on the telephone and by letter prior to this. She was wearing a lounging pajama set of dark blue with a conservative white trim on the cuffs and collar. She stood up from her plush black vinyl lounge chair and crossed to Katherine, unexpectedly embraced her and-holding her shoulders and standing at arm's length-looked at her in unashamed evaluation.
"You're even lovelier in person than in the photograph," she said.
Katherine blushed, felt her face redden, probably to a scarlet. She hoped they didn't notice. She said, "Thank you."
"I think we'll get along famously. I know it."
"I hope so, Mrs. Boland."
"Lydia," the woman corrected her.
When Katherine felt that the woman was waiting for her to repeat it, like a child learning a hard lesson, she said, "Lydia."
"That's better!" Lydia said. "I hate being addressed formally, because it makes me feel old."
