Koontz, Dean R. - Strangers

by Strangers(Lit)

  really a doctor, yet she'd been uncommonly selfassured and competent.

  Deeply impressed by Ginger Weiss during that encounter, Jorja was later

  motivated by the doctor's example. She'd always thought of herself as a

  born cocktail waitress, incapable of anything more challenging, but when

  Alan walked out, she had remembered Dr. Weiss and decided to make more

  of herself than she had previously thought possible.

  During the past eleven months, Jorja had taken business management

  courses at UNLV, squeezing them into an already hectic schedule. When

  she finished paying the bills that Alan had left her, she would build a

  nest egg so she could eventually open her own business, a dress shop.

  She had worked out a very detailed plan, revising and honing it until it

  was realistic, and she knew she would stick with it.

  It was a shame that she would never have a chance to thank Ginger Weiss.

  Of course, it was not any favor that Dr. Weiss had performed that so

  deeply affected Jorja; it was not so much what the doctor had done as

  what she was. Anyway, at twenty-seven Jorja's prospects were more

  exciting than they had been previously.

  Now, she turned off Desert Inn Road onto Pawnee Drive, a street of

  comfortable homes behind the Boulevard Mall. She stopped in front of

  Kara Persaghian's house and got out of the car. The front door opened

  before she reached it, and Marcie rushed out, into her arms, shouting

  happily. "Mommy!

  Mommy!" And Jorja was at last able to forget about her job, the Texan,

  the argument with the pit boss, and the dilapidated condition of the

  Chevette. She squatted down and hugged her daughter. When all else

  failed to cheer her, she could count on Marcie for a lift.

  "Mommy," the girl said, "did you have a great day?"

  "Yes, honey, I did. You smell like peanut butter."

  "Cookies! Aunt Kara made peanut butter cookies! I had a great day,

  too. Mommy, do you know why elephants came ... ummm, why they came all

  the way from Africa to live in this country?" Marcie giggled. " 'Cause

  we got orchestras here, and elephants just love to dance!" She giggled

  again. "Isn't that silly."

  Even allowing for maternal prejudice, Jorja knew that Marcie was an

  adorable child. The girl had her mother's hair, so dark brown that it

  was virtually black, and her mother's dusky complexion. Her eyes were a

  striking contrast to the rest of her, not brown like Jorja's but blue

  like her father's. She had an immensely appealing gamine quality.

  Marcie's huge eyes opened wide. "Hey, know what day it is?"

  "I sure do. Almost Christmas Eve."

  "Will be soon as it's dark. Aunt Kara's giving us cookies to take home.

  You know, Santa's already left the North Pole, and he's started going

  down chimleys already, but in other parts of the world, of course, where

  it's dark, not chimleys here. Aunt Kara says I been so bad all year

  I'll only get a necklace made out of coal, but she's just teasing. Isn't

  she just teasing, Mommy?"

  "Just teasing," Jorja confirmed.

  "Oh, no, I'm not!" Kara Persaghian said. She came through the doorway,

  onto the front walk, a grandmotherly woman in a housedress and apron. "A

  coal necklace . . . and maybe a set of matching coal earrings."

  Marcie giggled again.

  Kara was not Marcie's aunt, merely her after-school babysitter. Marcie

  called her "Aunt Kara" from the second week she knew her, and the sitter

  was obviously delighted by that affectionately bestowed honorary title.

  Kara was carrying Marcie's jacket, a big coloring-book picture of Santa

  that they had been working on for a few days, and a plate of cookies.

  Jorja gave the picture and jacket to Marcie, accepted the cookies with

  expressions of gratitude and with some chatter about diets, and then

  Kara said, "Jorja, could I speak with you a moment-just the two of us?"

  "Sure." Jorja sent Marcie to the car with the cookies and turned

  inquisitively to Kara. "It's about . . . Marcie. What's she done?"

  "Oh, nothing bad. She's an angel, that one. Couldn't misbehave if she

  tried. But today ... well, she was talking about how the thing she

  wants most for Christmas is that Little Ms. Doctor play kit-"

  "It's the first time she's ever really nagged me about a toy," Jorja

  said. "I don't know why she's obsessed with it."

  "She talks about it every day. You are getting it for her?"

  Jorja glanced at the Chevette, confirming that Marcie was out of

  earshot, then smiled. "Yes, Santa definitely has it in his bag."

  "Good. She'd be heartbroken if you didn't. But the oddest thing

  happened today, and it made me wonder if she'd ever been seriously ill."

  'Serious illness? No. She's an exceptionally healthy kid."

  'Never been in the hospital?"

  "No. Why?"

  Kara frowned. "Well, today she started talking about the Little Ms.

  Doctor kit, and she told me she wanted to be a doctor when she grew up

  because then she could treat herself when she got sick. She said she

  never wanted a doctor to touch her again because she was once hurt real

  bad by doctors. I asked her what she meant, and she got quiet for a

  while, and I thought she wasn't going to answer me. Then finally, in

  this very somber voice, she said some doctors had once strapped her down

  in a hospital bed so she couldn't get out, and then they stuck her full

  of needles and flashed lights in her face and did all sorts of horrible

  things to her. She said they hurt her real bad, so she was going to

  become her own doctor and treat herself from now on."

  " Really? Well, it's not true," Jorja said. "I don't know why she'd

  make up such a story. That is odd."

  "Oh, that's not the odd part. When she told me all this, I was

  concerned. I was surprised you'd never told me. I mean, if she'd been

  seriously ill, I ought to've been told in case there was a possibility

  of a recurrence. So I questioned her about it-just casually, the way

  you coax things out of a childand suddenly the poor little thing just

  burst into tears. We were in the kitchen, making cookies, and she

  started to cry . . . and shake. Just shaking like a leaf. I tried

  to calm her, but that only made her cry harder. Then she pulled away

  from me and ran. I found her in the living room, in the corner behind

  the big green Lay-Z-Boy, huddled down as if she were hiding from

  someone."

  "Good heavens," Jorja said.

  Kara said, "Took me at least five minutes to get her to stop crying and

  another ten to coax her out of her hidey-hole behind that chair. She

  made me promise, if those doctors ever came for her again, that I'd let

  her hide behind the chair and not tell them where she was. I mean,

  Jorja, she was in a real state."

  On the way home, Jorja said, "That was some story you told Kara."

  "What story?" Marcie asked, looking straight ahead, barely able to see

  over the dashboard.

  "That story about the doctors."

  "Oh."

  "Being strapped in bed. Why'd you make up a thing like that?"

  "It's true," Marcie said.

  "But it isn't."

  "Yes, it is." The girl's voi
ce was little more than a whisper.

  "The only hospital you were ever in was the one where you were born, and

  I'm sure you don't remember that." Jorja sighed. "A few months ago we

  had a little talk about fibbing. Remember what happened to Danny Duck

  when he fibbed?"

  "The Truth Fairy wouldn't let him go to the woodchuck's party."

  "That's right."

  "Fibbing's bad," Marcie said softly. "Nobody likes fibbers-'specially

  not woodchucks and squirrels."

  Disarmed, Jorja had to bite back a laugh and struggle to keep a stern

  tone in her voice. "Nobody likes fibbers."

  They stopped at a red traffic light, but Marcie still looked straight

  ahead, refusing to meet Jorja's eyes. The girl said, "It's 'specially

  bad to fib to your mommy or your daddy."

  "Or to anyone who cares about you. And making up stories to scare

  Kara-that's the same as fibbing."

  "Wasn't tryin' to scare her," Marcie said.

  "Trying to get sympathy, then. You were never in a hospital."

  "Was."

  "Oh, yeah?" Marcie nodded vigorously, and Jorja said, "When?"

  "Don't 'member when."

  "You don't remember, huh?"

  "Almost."

  "Almost isn't good enough. Where was this hospital?"

  "I'm not sure. Sometimes ... I 'member it better than other times.

  Sometimes I can hardly 'member it at all, and sometimes I 'member it

  real good, and then I ... I get scared."

  "Right now you don't remember too well, huh?"

  "Nope. But today I 'membered real good ... and scared myself."

  The traffic light changed, and Jorja drove in silence, wondering how

  best to handle the situation. She had no notion what to make of it. It

  was foolish ever to believe that you understood your child. Marcie had

  always been able to surprise Jorja with actions, statements, big ideas,

  musings, and questions that seemed not to have come from within herself

  but which it seemed she had carefully selected from some secret book of

  startling behavior that was known to all kids but not to adults, some

  cosmic volume perhaps titled Keeping Mom and Dad Off-Balance.

  As if she had just dipped into that book again, Marcie said, "Why were

  all Santa Claus's kids deformed?"

  "What?"

  "Well, see, Santa and Mrs. Claus had a whole bunch of kids, but all of

  them was elves."

  "The elves aren't their children. They work for Santa."

  "Really? How much does he pay 'em?"

  "He doesn't pay them anything, honey."

  "How do they buy food, then?"

  "They don't have to buy anything. Santa gives them all they need." This

  was certainly the last Christmas that Marcie would believe in Santa;

  nearly all of her classmates were already doubters. Recently, she had

  been asking these probing questions. Jorja would be sorry to see the

  fantasy disproved, the magic lost. "The elves are part of his family,

  honey, and they work with him simply for the love of it."

  "You mean the elves are adopted? So Santa doesn't have real kids of his

  own? That's sad."

  "No, 'cause he's got all the elves to love."

  God, I love this kid, Jorja thought. Thank you, God. Thank you for

  this kid, even if I did have to get tied up with Alan Rykoff to get her.

  Dark clouds and silver linings.

  She turned into the two-lane driveway that encircled Las Huevos

  Apartments and parked the Chevette in the fourth carport. Las Huevos.

  The Eggs. After five years in the place, she still couldn't understand

  why anyone would name an apartment complex The Eggs.

  The instant the car stopped, Marcie was out of it with the poster from

  the coloring book and the plate of cookies, dashing up the walkway to

  their entrance. The girl had deftly changed the subject just long

  enough to finish the ride and escape from the confines of the car.

  Jorja wondered if she should press the issue farther. It was Christmas

  Eve, and she had no desire to spoil the holiday. Marcie was a good kid,

  better than most, and this business about being hurt by doctors was an

  extremely rare instance of fabrication. Jorja had made the point that

  fibbing was not acceptable, and Marcie had understood (even if she had

  persisted a bit with her medical fantasy), and her sudden change of

  subject had probably been an admission of wrongdoing. So it was an

  aberration. Nothing would be gained by harping on it, especially not at

  the risk of ruining Christmas.

  Jorja was confident she would hear no more about it.

  5.

  Laguna Beach , California

  During the afternoon, Dominick Corvaisis must have read the unsigned

  typewritten note a hundred times:

  The sleepwalker would be well-advised to search the past for the source

  of his problem. That is where the secret is buried.

  In addition to the letter's lack of signature and return address, the

  postmark on the plain white envelope was doublestruck and badly smeared,

  so he could not determine whether it had been mailed in Laguna Beach or

  from another city.

  After he paid for his breakfast and left The Cottage, he sat in his car,

  the copy of Twilight in Babylon forgotten on the seat beside him, and

  read the note half a dozen times. It made him so nervous that he

  withdrew a pair of Valiums from his jacket pocket and almost took one

  without water. But as he put the tablet to his lips, he hesitated. To

  explore all the ramifications of the note, he would need a clear mind.

  For the first time in weeks, he denied himself chemical escape from his

  anxieties; he returned the Valium to his pocket.

  He drove to South Coast Plaza, a huge shopping mall in Costa Mesa, to

  buy some last-minute Christmas gifts. In each store he visited, while

  he waited for the clerks to gift-wrap his purchases, he took the curious

  message from his pocket and read it again and again.

  For a while Dom had wondered if the note had come from Parker, if

  perhaps the artist had sent it to jolt him and intrigue him and propel

  him out of his drug-induced haze. Parker might be capable of such

  highly theatrical, amateur psychotherapy. But finally Dom dismissed

  that idea. Machiavellian maneuvers were simply not aspects of the

  painter's personality. He was, in fact, almost excessively forthright.

  Parker was not the author of the note, but he was certain to have some

  original speculations about who might be behind it. Together, they

  might be able to decide just how the arrival of this letter changed

  things and how they ought to proceed.

  Later, back in Laguna, when Dom was within a block of Parker's house, he

  was suddenly shaken by a previously unconsidered, profoundly troubling

  possibility. This new idea was so disconcerting that he pulled the

  Firebird to the curb and stopped. He got the note from his pocket, read

  it again, fingered the paper. He felt cold inside. He looked into the

  reflection of his own eyes in the rearview mirror, and he did not like

  what he saw.

  Could he have written the note himself?

  He could have composed it on the Displaywriter while asleep. But it was

  outlandish to suppose he'd dressed, gone to the mailbo
x, deposited the

  note, returned home, and changed into pajamas again without waking up.

  Impossible. Wasn't it? If he had done such a thing, his mental

  imbalance was worse than he had thought.

  His hands were clammy. He blotted them on his trousers.

  Only three people in the world were aware of his sleepwalking: himself,

  Parker Faine, and Dr. Cobletz. He had already eliminated Parker. Dr.

  Cobletz had certainly not sent the note. So if Dom himself had not sent

  it-who had?

  When he pulled away from the curb at last, he did not continue to

  Parker's house but headed home instead.

  Ten minutes later, in his study, he took the by-now rumpled note from

  his pocket. He typed those two sentences, which appeared on the

  Displaywriter's dark screen in glowing green letters. Then he switched

  on the printer and instructed the computer to produce a hard copy of the

  document. He watched as it hammered out those twenty-three words.

  The Displaywriter came with two printwheels in two typefaces. He had

  bought two more to provide options for different tasks. Now, Dom used

  the three additional printwheels to produce a total of four copies of

  the note, and with a pencil he labeled each according to the style of