Intensity

by Dean Koontz

  Chyna never finished her master’s degree in psychology, which she had been so close to earning. She continued her studies at the University of California at San Francisco, but she changed her major to literature. She had always liked to read, and though she didn’t believe she possessed any writing talent, she thought she might enjoy being a book editor one day, working with writers. There was more truth in fiction than in science. She could also see herself as a teacher. If she spent the rest of her life waiting tables, that was all right as well, because she was good at it and found dignity in the labor.

  The following summer, while Chyna was working the dinner shift, she and Ariel began spending many mornings and early afternoons at the beach. The girl liked to stare out at the bay from behind dark sunglasses, and sometimes she could be induced to stand at water’s edge with the surf breaking around her ankles.

  One day in June, not realizing quite what she was doing, Chyna used her index finger to write a word in the sand: PEACE. She stared at it for a minute, and to her surprise, she said to Ariel, “That’s a word that can be made from the letters of my name.”

  On the first of July, while Ariel sat on their blanket, gazing out at the sun-spangled water, Chyna tried to read a newspaper, but every story distressed her. War, rape, murder, robbery, politicians spewing hatred from all ends of the political spectrum. She read a movie review full of vicious ipse dixit criticism of the director and screenwriter, questioning their very right to create, and then turned to a woman columnist’s equally vitriolic attack on a novelist, none of it genuine criticism, merely venom, and she threw the paper in a trash can. Any more, such little hatreds and indirect assaults seemed to her uncomfortably clear reflections of stronger homicidal impulses that infected the human spirit; symbolic killings were different only in degree, not in kind, from genuine murder, and the sickness in the assailants’ hearts was the same.

  There are no explanations for human evil. Only excuses.

  Also in early July, she noticed a man of about thirty who came to the beach a few mornings a week with his eight-year-old son and a laptop computer on which he worked in the deep shade of an umbrella. Eventually, they struck up a conversation. The father’s name was Ned Barnes, and his boy was Jamie. Ned was a widower and, of all things, a freelance writer with several modestly successful novels to his credit. Jamie developed a crush on Ariel and brought her things that he found special—a handful of wildflowers, an interesting seashell, a picture of a comical-looking dog torn from a magazine—and put them beside her on the blanket without asking that she be mindful of them.

  On August twelfth, Chyna cooked a spaghetti-and-meatball dinner for the four of them, at the apartment. Later she and Ned played Go Fish and other games with Jamie while Ariel sat staring placidly at her hands. Since the night in the motor home, that terrible anguished expression and silent scream had not crossed the girl’s face. She had also stopped hugging herself and rocking anxiously.

  Later in August, the four of them went to a movie together, and they continued to see one another at the beach, where they took up tenancy side by side. Their relationship was very relaxed, with no pressure or expectations. None of them wanted anything more than to be less alone.

  In September, just after Labor Day, when there would not be many more days warm enough to recommend the beach, Ned looked up from his laptop next door and said, “Chyna.”

  She was reading a novel and only replied, “Hmmm,” without taking her eyes off the page.

  He insisted, “Look. Look at Ariel.”

  The girl wore cut-off blue jeans and a long-sleeve blouse, because the day was already a touch cool for sunbathing. She was barefoot at the edge of the water, surf breaking around her ankles, but she was not standing zombie-like and staring bayward, as usual. Instead, her arms were stretched over her head, and she was waving her hands in the air while quietly dancing in place.

  “She loves the bay so,” Ned said.

  Chyna was unable to speak.

  “She loves life,” he said.

  Choking on emotion, Chyna prayed that it was true.

  The girl didn’t dance long, and when later she returned to the blanket, her gaze was as faraway as ever.

  By December of that year, more than twenty months after fleeing the house of Edgler Vess, Ariel was eighteen years old, no longer a girl but a lovely young woman. Frequently, however, she called for her mother and father in her sleep, for her brother, and her voice—the only time it was heard—was young, frail, and lost.

  Then, on Christmas morning, among the gifts for Ariel, Ned, and Jamie that were stacked under the tree in the apartment living room, Chyna was surprised to find a small package for herself. It had been wrapped with great care, though as if by a child with more enthusiasm than skill. Her name was printed in uneven block letters on a snowman gift tag. When she opened the box, a slip of blue paper lay within. On the paper were four words that appeared to have been set down with considerable effort, much hesitation, and lots of stops and starts: I want to live.

  Heart pounding, tongue thick, she took both of the girl’s hands. For a while she didn’t know what to say, and she couldn’t have said it if she had known.

  Finally words came haltingly: “This…this is the best…the best gift I’ve ever had, honey. This is the best there could ever be. This is all I want…for you to try.”

  She read the four words again, through tears.

  I want to live.

  Chyna said, “But you don’t know how to get back, do you?”

  The girl was very still. Then she blinked. Both of her hands tightened on Chyna’s hands.

  “There’s a way,” Chyna assured her.

  The girl’s hands gripped Chyna’s even tighter.

  “There’s hope, baby. There’s always hope. There’s a way, and no one can ever find it alone, but we can find it together. We can find it together. You just have to believe.”

  The girl could not make eye contact, but her hands continued to grip Chyna’s.

  “I want to tell you a story about a redwood forest and something I saw there one night, and something I saw later, too, when I needed to see it. Maybe it won’t mean as much to you, and maybe it wouldn’t mean anything at all to other people, but it means the world to me, even if I don’t fully understand it.”

  I want to live.

  Over the next few years, the road back from the Wild Wood to the beauties and wonders of this world was not an easy one for Ariel. There were times of despair when she seemed to make no progress at all, or even slid backward.

  Eventually, however, a day came when they traveled with Ned and Jamie to that redwood grove.

  They walked through the ferns and the rhododendrons in the solemn shadows under the massive trees, and Ariel said, “Show me where.”

  Chyna led her by the hand to the very place, and said, “Here.”

  How scared Chyna had been that night, risking so much for a girl she had never seen. Scared less of Vess than of this new thing that she had found in herself. This reckless caring. And now she knows it is nothing that should have frightened her. It is the purpose for which we exist. This reckless caring.

  THE HUSBAND

  by

  Dean Koontz

  #1 New York Times Bestselling Author

  Available Now

  What would you do for love?

  Would you die?

  Would you kill?

  THE HUSBAND

  Available Now

  chapter 1

  A MAN BEGINS DYING AT THE MOMENT OF HIS birth. Most people live in denial of Death’s patient courtship until, late in life and deep in sickness, they become aware of him sitting bedside.

  Eventually, Mitchell Rafferty would be able to cite the minute that he began to recognize the inevitability of his death: Monday, May 14, 11:43 in the morning—three weeks short of his twenty-eighth birthday.

  Until then, he had rarely thought of dying. A born optimist, charmed by nature’s beauty and amused by humani
ty, he had no cause or inclination to wonder when and how his mortality would be proven.

  When the call came, he was on his knees.

  Thirty flats of red and purple impatiens remained to be planted. The flowers produced no fragrance, but the fertile smell of the soil pleased him.

  His clients, these particular homeowners, liked saturated colors: red, purple, deep yellow, hot pink. They would not accept white blooms or pastels.

  Mitch understood them. Raised poor, they had built a successful business by working hard and taking risks. To them, life was intense, and saturated colors reflected the truth of nature’s vehemence.

  This apparently ordinary but in fact momentous morning, the California sun was a buttery ball. The sky had a basted sheen.

  Pleasantly warm, not searing, the day nevertheless left a greasy sweat on Ignatius Barnes. His brow glistened. His chin dripped.

  At work in the same bed of flowers, ten feet from Mitch, Iggy looked boiled. From May until July, his skin responded to the sun not with melanin but with a fierce blush. For one sixth of the year, before he finally tanned, he appeared to be perpetually embarrassed.

  Iggy did not possess an understanding of symmetry and harmony in landscape design, and he couldn’t be trusted to trim roses properly. He was a hard worker, however, and good if not intellectually bracing company.

  “You hear what happened to Ralph Gandhi?” Iggy asked.

  “Who’s Ralph Gandhi?”

  “Mickey’s brother.”

  “Mickey Gandhi? I don’t know him, either.”

  “Sure you do,” Iggy said. “Mickey, he hangs out sometimes at Rolling Thunder.”

  Rolling Thunder was a surfer’s bar.

  “I haven’t been there in years,” Mitch said.

  “Years? Are you serious?”

  “Entirely.”

  “I thought you still dropped in sometimes.”

  “So I’ve really been missed, huh?”

  “I’ll admit, nobody’s named a bar stool after you. What—did you find some place better than Rolling Thunder?”

  “Remember coming to my wedding three years ago?” Mitch asked.

  “Sure. You had great seafood tacos, but the band was woofy.”

  “They weren’t woofy.”

  “Man, they had tambourines.”

  “We were on a budget. At least they didn’t have an accordion.”

  “Because playing an accordion exceeded their skill level.”

  Mitch trowled a cavity in the loose soil. “They didn’t have finger bells, either.”

  Wiping his brow with one forearm, Iggy complained: “I must have Eskimo genes. I break a sweat at fifty degrees.”

  Mitch said, “I don’t do bars anymore. I do marriage.”

  “Yeah, but can’t you do marriage and Rolling Thunder?”

  “I’d just rather be home than anywhere else.”

  “Oh, boss, that’s sad,” said Iggy.

  “It’s not sad. It’s the best.”

  “If you put a lion in a zoo three years, six years, he never forgets what freedom was like.”

  Planting purple impatiens, Mitch said, “How would you know? You ever asked a lion?”

  “I don’t have to ask one. I am a lion.”

  “You’re a hopeless boardhead.”

  “And proud of it. I’m glad you found Holly. She’s a great lady. But I’ve got my freedom.”

  “Good for you, Iggy. And what do you do with it?”

  “Do with what?”

  “Your freedom. What do you do with your freedom?”

  “Anything I want.”

  “Like, for example?”

  “Anything. Like, if I want sausage pizza for dinner, I don’t have to ask anyone what she wants.”

  “Radical.”

  “If I want to go to Rolling Thunder for a few beers, there’s nobody to bitch at me.”

  “Holly doesn’t bitch.”

  “I can get beer-slammed every night if I want, and nobody’s gonna be calling to ask when am I coming home.”

  Mitch began to whistle “Born Free.”

  “Some wahine comes on to me,” Iggy said, “I’m free to rock and roll.”

  “They’re coming on to you all the time—are they?—those sexy wahines?”

  “Women are bold these days, boss. They see what they want, they just take it.”

  Mitch said, “Iggy, the last time you got laid, John Kerry thought he was going to be president.”

  “That’s not so long ago.”

  “So what happened to Ralph?”

  “Ralph who?”

  “Mickey Gandhi’s brother.”

  “Oh, yeah. An iguana bit off his nose.”

  “Nasty.”

  “Some fully macking ten-footers were breaking, so Ralph and some guys went night-riding at the Wedge.”

  The Wedge was a famous surfing spot at the end of the Balboa Peninsula, in Newport Beach.

  Iggy said, “They packed coolers full of submarine sandwiches and beer, and one of them brought Ming.”

  “Ming?”

  “That’s the iguana.”

  “So it was a pet?”

  “Ming, he’d always been sweet before.”

  “I’d expect iguanas to be moody.”

  “No, they’re affectionate. What happened was some wanker, not even a surfer, just a wannabe tag-along, slipped Ming a quarter-dose of meth in a piece of salami.”

  “Reptiles on speed,” Mitch said, “is a bad idea.”

  “Meth Ming was a whole different animal from clean-and-sober Ming,” Iggy confirmed.

  Putting down his trowel, sitting back on the heels of his work shoes, Mitch said, “So now Ralph Gandhi is noseless?”

  “Ming didn’t eat the nose. He just bit it off and spit it out.”

  “Maybe he didn’t like Indian food.”

  “They had a big cooler full of ice water and beer. They put the nose in the cooler and rushed it to the hospital.”

  “Did they take Ralph, too?”

  “They had to take Ralph. It was his nose.”

  “Well,” Mitch said, “we are talking about board-heads.”

  “They said it was kinda blue when they fished it out of the ice water, but a plastic surgeon sewed it back on, and now it’s not blue anymore.”

  “What happened to Ming?”

  “He crashed. He was totally amped-out for a day. Now he’s his old self.”

  “That’s good. It’s probably hard to find a clinic that’ll do iguana rehab.”

  Mitch got to his feet and retrieved three dozen empty plastic plant pots. He carried them to his extended-bed pickup.

  The truck stood at the curb, in the shade of an Indian laurel. Although the neighborhood had been built out only five years earlier, the big tree had already lifted the sidewalk. Eventually the insistent roots would block lawn drains and invade the sewer system.

  The developer’s decision to save one hundred dollars by not installing a root barrier would produce tens of thousands in repair work for plumbers, landscapers, and concrete contractors.

  When Mitch planted an Indian laurel, he always used a root barrier. He didn’t need to make future work for himself. Green growing nature would keep him busy.

  The street lay silent, without traffic. Not the barest breath of a breeze stirred the trees.

  From a block away, on the farthest side of the street, a man and a dog approached. The dog, a retriever, spent less time walking than it did sniffing messages left by others of its kind.

  The stillness pooled so deep that Mitch almost believed he could hear the panting of the distant canine.

  Golden: the sun and the dog, the air and the promise of the day, the beautiful houses behind deep lawns.

  Mitch Rafferty could not afford a home in this neighborhood. He was satisfied just to be able to work here.

  You could love great art but have no desire to live in a museum.

  He noticed a damaged sprinkler head where lawn met sidewalk. He got his
tools from the truck and knelt on the grass, taking a break from the impatiens.

  His cell phone rang. He unclipped it from his belt, flipped it open. The time was displayed—11:43—but no caller’s number showed on the screen. He took the call anyway.

  “Big Green,” he said, which was the name he’d given his two-man business nine years ago, though he no longer remembered why.

  “Mitch, I love you,” Holly said.

  “Hey, sweetie.”

  “Whatever happens, I love you.”

  She cried out in pain. A clatter and crash suggested a struggle.

  Alarmed, Mitch rose to his feet. “Holly?”

  Some guy said something, some guy who now had the phone. Mitch didn’t hear the words because he was focused on the background noise.

  Holly squealed. He’d never heard such a sound from her, such fear.

  “Sonofabitch,” she said, and was silenced by a sharp crack, as though she’d been slapped.

  The stranger on the phone said, “You hear me, Rafferty?”

  “Holly? Where’s Holly?”

  Now the guy was talking away from the phone, not to Mitch: “Don’t be stupid. Stay on the floor.”

  Another man spoke in the background, his words unclear.