Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers

by Strangers(Lit)

  badly frightened child?

  The thought of that impending humiliation made him grind his teeth with

  anger and drove him to the nearest window.

  He put one beefy hand on the tightly drawn drapes. Hesitated. His

  heart did an imitation of muffled machine-gun fire.

  He had always been strong for Faye, a rock on which she could depend.

  That was what a man was supposed to be: a rock. He must not let Faye

  down. He had to overcome this bizarre affliction before she returned

  from Wisconsin.

  His mouth went dry and a chill returned when he thought about what lay

  beyond the now-concealed glass, but he knew the only way to beat this

  thing was to confront it. That was the lesson life had taught him: be

  bold, confront the enemy, engage in battle. That philosophy of action

  had always worked for him. It would work again. This window looked out

  from the back of the motel, across the vast meadows and hills of the

  uninhabited uplands, and the only light out there was what fell from the

  stars. He must pull the drapes aside, come face to face with that

  tenebrous landscape, stand fast, endure it. Confrontation would be a

  purgative, flushing the poison from his system.

  Ernie pulled open the drapes. He peered out at the night and told

  himself that this perfect blackness was not so bad deep and pure, vast

  and cold, but not malevolent, and in no way a personal threat.

  However, as he watched, unmoving and unmovable, portions of the darkness

  seemed to ... well, to shift, to coalesce, forming into not quite

  visible but nonetheless solid shapes, lumps of pulsing and denser

  blackness within the greater blackness, lurking phantoms that at any

  moment might launch themselves toward the fragile window.

  He clenched his jaws, put his forehead against the ice-cold glass.

  The Nevada barrens, a huge emptiness to begin with, now seemed to expand

  even farther. He could not see the nightcloaked mountains, but he

  sensed that they were magically receding, that the plains between him

  and the mountains were growing larger, extending outward hundreds of

  miles, thousands, expanding swiftly toward infinity, until suddenly he

  was at the center of a void so immense that it defied description. On

  all sides of him, there was emptiness and lightlessness beyond man's

  ability to measure, beyond the limits of his own feeble imagination, a

  terrible emptiness, to the left and right, front and back, above and

  below, and suddenly he could not breathe.

  This was considerably worse than anything he had known before. A

  deeper-reaching fear. Profound. Shocking in its power. And it was in

  total control of him.

  Abruptly he was aware of all the weight of that enormous darkness, and

  it seemed to be sliding inexorably in upon him, sliding and sliding,

  incalculably high walls of heavy darkness, collapsing, pressing down,

  squeezing the breath out of himHe screamed and threw himself back from

  the window.

  He fell to his knees as the drapes dropped into place with a soft

  rustle. The window was hidden again. The darkness was concealed. All

  around him was light, blessed light. He hung his head, shuddered, and

  took great gulps of air.

  He crawled to the bed and hoisted himself onto the mattress, where he

  lay for a long time, listening to his heartbeat, which was like

  footfalls, sprinting then running then just walking fast inside him.

  Instead of solving his problem, bold confrontation had made it worse.

  "What's happening here?" he said aloud, staring at the ceiling. "What's

  wrong with me? Dear God, what's wrong with me?"

  It was November 22.

  4.

  Laguna Beach, California

  Saturday, in desperate reaction to yet another troubling episode of

  somnambulism, Dom Corvaisis thoroughly, methodically exhausted himself.

  By nightfall, he intended to be so wrung out that he'd sleep as still as

  a stone locked immemortally in the bosom of the earth. At seven o'clock

  in the morning, with the night's cool mist lingering in the canyons and

  bearding the trees, he performed half an hour of vigorous calisthenics

  on the patio overlooking the ocean, then put on his running shoes and

  did seven arduous miles on Laguna's sloped streets. He spent the next

  five hours doing heavy gardening. Then, because it was a warm day, he

  put on his swimsuit, put towels in his Firebird, and went to the beach.

  He sunbathed a little and swam a lot. After dinner at Picasso's, he

  walked for another hour along shop-lined streets sparsely populated by

  off-season tourists. At last he drove home.

  Undressing in his bedroom, Dom felt as if he were in the land of

  Lilliput, where a thousand tiny people were pulling him down with

  grappling lines. He rarely drank, but now he tossed back a shot of Rdmy

  Martin. In bed, he fell asleep even as he clicked off the lamp.

  The incidents of somnambulism were growing more frequent, and the

  problem was now the central issue of his life. It was interfering with

  his work. The new book, which had been going well-it contained the best

  writing he had ever done was stalled. In the past two weeks, he had

  awakened in a closet on nine occasions, four times in the last four

  nights. The affliction had ceased to be amusing and intriguing. He was

  afraid to go to sleep because, asleep, he was not in control of himself.

  Yesterday, Friday, he had finally gone to his physician, Dr. Paul

  Cobletz, in Newport Beach. Haltingly, he told Cobletz all about his

  sleepwalking, but he found himself unwilling and unable to express the

  true depth and seriousness of his concern. Dom had always been a very

  private person, made so by a childhood spent in a dozen foster homes and

  under the care of surrogate parents, some of whom were indifferent or

  even hostile, all of whom were dismayingly temporary presences in his

  life. He was reluctant to share his most important and personal

  thoughts except through the mouths of imaginary characters in his

  fiction.

  As a result, Cobletz was not unduly worried. After a full physical

  examination, he pronounced Dom exceptionally fit. He attributed the

  somnambulism to stress, to the upcoming publication of the novel.

  "You don't think we should do any tests?" Dom asked.

  Cobletz said, "You're a writer, so of course your imagination is running

  away with you. Brain tumor, you're thinking. Am I right?"

  "Well ... yes."

  "Any headaches? Dizziness? Blurred vision?"

  "No."

  "I've examined your eyes. There's no change in your retinas, no

  indication of intracrania) pressure. Any inexplicable vomiting?"

  "No. Nothing like that."

  "Giddy spells? Giggling or periods of euphoria without apparent reason?

  Anything of that nature?"

  "No."

  "Then I see no reason for tests at this stage."

  "Do you think I need ... psychotherapy?"

  "Good heavens, no! I'm sure this will pass soon."

  Finished dressing, Dom watched Cobletz close the file. He said, "I

  thought perhaps sleeping pills-"

  "No, no," Cobletz said. "Not yet. I don't believe in drugs as
a

  treatment of first resort. Here's what you do, Dom. Get away from the

  writing for a few weeks. Don't do anything cerebral. Get plenty of

  physical exercise. Go to bed tired every night, so tired that you can't

  even bother to think about the book you've been working on. A few days

  of that, and you'll be cured. I'm convinced of it."

  Saturday, Dom began the treatment Dr. Cobletz prescribed, devoting

  himself to physical activity, though with more singlemindedness and

  flagdllant persistence than the doctor had suggested. Consequently, he

  plummeted into a deep sleep the moment he put his head upon the pillow,

  and in the morning he did not wake in a closet.

  He did not wake in bed, either. This time, he was in the garage.

  He regained consciousness in a breathless state of terror, gasping, his

  heart hammering so hard it seemed capable of shattering his ribs with

  its furious blows. His mouth was dry, his hands curled into fists. He

  was cramped and sore, partly from Saturday's excess of exercise, but

  partly from the unnatural and uncomfortable position in which he had

  been sleeping. During the night he evidently had taken two folded

  canvas dropcloths from a shelf above the workbench, and had squirreled

  into a narrow service space behind the furnace. That was where he lay

  now, concealed beneath the tarps.

  "Concealed" was the right word. He had not dragged the tarpaulins over

  himself merely for warmth. He had taken refuge behind the furnace and

  beneath the canvas because he had been hiding from something.

  From what?

  Even now, as Dominick pushed the tarps aside and struggled to sit up, as

  sleep receded and as his bleary eyes adjusted to the shadow-filled

  garage, the intense anxiety that had accompanied him up from sleep still

  clung tenaciously. His pulse pounded.

  Fear of what?

  Dreaming. In his nightmare he must have been running and hiding from

  some monster. Yes. Of course. His peril in the nightmare caused him

  to sleepwalk, and when, in the dream, he sought a place to hide, he also

  hid in reality, creeping behind the furnace.

  His white Firebird loomed ghostlike in the light from the wall vents and

  the single window above the workbench. Shuffling across the garage, he

  felt as if he were a revenant himself.

  In the house, he went directly to his office. Morning light filled the

  room, making him squint. He sat at the desk in his filthy pajama

  bottoms, switched on the word processor, and studied the documents on

  the diskette that he had left in the machine. The diskette was as he

  had left it on Thursday; it contained no new material.

  Dom had hoped that, in his sleep, he might have left a message that

  would help him understand the source of his anxiety. That knowledge was

  obviously held by his subconscious but thus far denied to his conscious

  mind. When sleepwalking, his subconscious was in control, and possibly

  it would try to explain things to his conscious mind by way of the

  Displaywriter. But as yet, it had not.

  He switched off the machine. He sat for a long time, staring out the

  window, toward the ocean. Wondering ...

  Later, in the bedroom, as he was on his way to the master bath, he found

  something strange. Nails were scattered across the carpet, and he had

  to be careful where he walked. He stooped, picked up several of them.

  They were all alike: 1.5inch steel finishing nails. At the far side of

  the room, he saw two objects that drew him there. Beneath the window,

  from which the drapes had been drawn aside, a box of nails lay on the

  floor by the baseboard; it was only half full because part of its

  contents had spilled from it. Beside the box was a hammer.

  He lifted the hammer, hefted it, frowned.

  What had he been doing in those lonely hours of the night?

  He raised his eyes to the windowsill and saw three loose nails that he

  had laid there. They gleamed in the sunlight.

  Judging from the evidence, he'd been preparing to nail the windows shut.

  Jesus. Something had so frightened him that he had intended to nail the

  windows shut and make a fortress of his house, but before he could set

  himself to the task, he had been suddenly overwhelmed by fear and had

  fled to the garage, where he had hidden behind the furnace.

  He dropped the hammer, stood, looked out the window. Beyond lay only

  bloom-laden rose bushes, a small strip of lawn, and an ivy-covered slope

  that led up to another house. A lovely landscape. Peaceful. He could

  not believe that it had been any different last night, that something

  more threatening had been crouching out there in the darkness.

  And yet ...

  For a while Dom Corvaisis watched the day grow brighter,

  watched the bees visit the roses, then began to pick up the nails.

  It was November 24.

  5.

  Boston, Massachusetts

  After the incident of the black gloves, two weeks passed without another

  attack.

  For a few days following the embarrassing scene at Bernstein's

  Delicatessen, Ginger Weiss remained on edge, expecting another seizure.

  She was unusually self-aware, acutely conscious of her physiological and

  psychological conditions, searching for subtle symptoms of serious

  disorder, alert for the slightest sign of another impending fugue, but

  she noticed nothing worrisome. She had no headaches, no attacks of

  nausea, no joint or muscle pain. Gradually, her confidence rose to its

  usual high level. She became convinced that her wild flight had been

  entirely stress-related, a never-to-be-repeated aberration.

  Her days at Memorial were busier than ever. George Hannaby, chief of

  surgery-a tall burly bear of a man who talked slow, walked slow, and

  looked deceptively lazy-maintained a heavy schedule, and though Ginger

  was not the only resident working under him, she was the only one who

  currently worked exclusively with him. She assisted in many-perhaps in

  a majority-of his procedures: aortal grafts, amputations, popliteal

  bypasses, embolectomies, portocaval shunts, thoracotomies, arteriograms,

  the installation of temporary and permanent pacemakers, and more.

  George observed her every move, was quick to note the slightest flaw in

  her skill and techniques. Although he looked like a friendly bear, he

  was a tough taskmaster and had no patience for laziness, inaptitude, or

  carelessness. He could be scathing in his critiques, and he made all

  the young doctors sweat. His scorn was not merely withering; it was

  dehydrating, scaring, a nuclear heat.

  Some residents considered George tyrannical, but Ginger enjoyed

  assisting him precisely because his standards were so high. She knew

  that his criticisms, though sometimes blister ingly delivered, were

  motivated solely by his concern for the patient, and she never took them

  personally. When she finally earned Hannaby's unqualified blessing . .

  . well, that would be almost as good as God's own seal of approval.

  On the last Monday in November, thirteen days after her strange seizure,

  Ginger assisted in a triple-bypass heart operation on Johnny O'Day, a

&nb
sp; fifty-three-year-old Boston police officer who had been forced into

  early retirement by cardiovascular disease. Johnny was stocky,

  rubber-faced, touslehaired, with merry blue eyes, unassuming, quick to

  laugh in spite of his troubles. Ginger was especially drawn to him

  because, although he looked nothing whatsoever like the late Jacob

  Weiss, he nevertheless reminded her of her father.

  She was afraid Johnny O'Day was going to die-and that it was going to

  be, in part, her fault.

  She had no reason to believe that he was more vulnerable than other

  cardiac patients. In fact, Johnny was in comparatively little danger.

  He was ten years younger than the average recipient of bypass surgery,

  with greater resources for recuperation. His cardiac ailment was not

  complicated by any other debilitating condition, such as phlebitis or

  excessively high blood pressure. His prospects were encouraging.

  But Ginger could not twist free of the dread in which she found herself

  increasingly tangled. On Monday afternoon, as the hour of surgery drew

  near, she grew tense, and her stomach turned sour. For the first time

  since she had sat a lonely vigil beside her father's hospital bed and

  had helplessly watched him die, Ginger was filled with doubt.

  Perhaps her apprehension grew from the unjustified but inescapable

  notion that if she somehow failed this patient she would in a sense be

  failing Jacob yet again. Or perhaps her fear was utterly unwarranted