Children of the Storm

by Dean Koontz

  She went to the entrance of the hallway and looked toward the stairs, was disappointed not to see Bill, Saine and the children. What if Blenwell were in the house? And what if, despite what he'd told Bill, he had a gun? Would she have heard two gunshots-one for Rudolph, one for Bill-above the roar of the wind and rain? She doubted it.

  A fourth minute passed.

  Molasses...

  Five minutes since Bill had gone up there, eight or nine minutes since the bodyguard had taken the children to their room to get their stuffed animals and games. It seemed, to Sonya, that that was plenty of time to complete a simple errand.

  She walked the length of the main hall, constantly hoping to hear the four of them tramping down the steps, but by the time she had reached the bottom of the staircase, she knew her hope was going to remain nothing more than an insubstantial wish.

  "Hey!" she called from the first step.

  The wind overwhelmed her call.

  She looked back toward the kitchen, the storm cellar entrance she could no longer see, thought of the safety there and, unaccountably, all alone, went quickly up the steps to see what was detaining the others.

  The second floor corridor was especially dark now that all the windows were shuttered, the drapes drawn, and no lights left on. It was so gloomy, in fact, that she almost tripped over the body before she saw it. It was lying in the middle of the corridor, outside of the children's room, still, deathly still.

  She stooped and touched it.

  It was quite bloody.

  "Rudolph?" she asked.

  He didn't answer, couldn't answer, would never speak again.

  She stood up, gagging, but she did not pass out. Later, she would wonder what kept her moving, what special strength she had never known she had.

  Stepping carefully, as if she thought the rest of the corridor might be littered with countless other shadow-hidden dead men, she walked the rest of the way to the door of the children's room, which was closed and sinister-looking.

  She put her hand on the knob.

  She twisted it as far as it would go.

  The door wasn't locked.

  She looked back at Rudolph Saine, as if she thought he might have gotten up from his puddle of blood and become a living man once more, as if she suspected his death had been a very elaborate practical joke-no, a very elaborate impractical joke. But it was not any prank; it was much too real for comfort, for sanity, for hope. He had not moved, and he would never move again.

  She pushed open the door, part way.

  The room was well-lighted, but she saw nothing to disturb her thus far.

  She pushed the door open further and stepped into the room, her hand still tight on the knob.

  The children were lying on the bed, tied with what appeared to be lengths of wire.

  "Sonya, look out!" Alex cried.

  She started to back step, had the door ripped out of her hand, and staggered forward, off balance, into the bedroom.

  "Welcome aboard," Bill Peterson said, smiling at her, holding the long, deadly knife up where she could plainly see it.

  Tina was crying, and Alex was trying to shush her.

  In a voice that sounded nothing like her own, Sonya said, "Bill, it can't be you, not you of all people."

  "Madam," he said, "I'm afraid you're mistaken. My name is Jeremy, not Bill."

  * * *

  TWENTY-TWO

  Though she was only twenty-three years old, and though she had been raised in one of the most civilized countries and eras in the whole span of recorded history, Sonya Carter did not find death to be a stranger. Not a friend, surely, but not a stranger either; more like a well-known enemy that she still feared, passionately feared, but whom she had found she could talk with. She had seen death many times, beginning at the age of ten, when, having claimed her parents, he was a faceless entity, never fully glimpsed, hovering in the background, a force that she could not readily identify but which she understood had changed the entire course of her future, her life to be. She had seen him again, during her nurse's training, and there she had gotten a closer look at him, had seen him take people away while they slumbered- or while they kicked and screamed and cursed him every inch of the way. She had seen him do his work suddenly, without warning, and she had seen him dawdle, as if he enjoyed the agony of his victims the way a cruel child would enjoy cutting a leg from a frog and watching it try to hop away from him. She had seen death on the beach, shrouding a rotting corpse, feeding the crabs, silent and sandy, particularly loathsome, and she had seen death in the corridor of Seawatch, seen it in the form of an old friend, Rudolph Saine, ghastly and familiar both. But in all of these encounters, she had never seen a more terrifying death, a more horrifying glimpse of him than the one she saw in Bill Peterson's eyes, lurking behind Bill Peterson's twisted face.

  "Why?" she asked.

  He said, "Everyone has to suffer sometime in their lives, sooner or later, because that's only fair."

  His voice was different, not at all the voice of Bill Peterson. If she had not known him well, she would have thought that this actually was some twin brother of his, some maniacal relation. But he was too much like Bill, and he wore Bill's clothes. As impossible as it seemed, he was Bill. His voice was nasal, too reedy, filled with a self-righteous sneer that made her blood run cold and her hands grow as clammy as two dead fish.

  "That's no answer," she said.

  "I held a trial."

  "For what crime?"

  "For the crime of not having suffered."

  "That makes no sense."

  "Yes, it does," he assured her. "I held a trial, being my own judge and jury, and I passed sentence."

  "On little children?"

  He glanced quickly at Alex and Tina, momentarily confused.

  "You're talking nonsense, Bill."

  "Jeremy."

  "You're talking nonsense, Jeremy."

  He sneered at her again, regaining his composure, only momentarily ruffled. "I passed judgment on their parents. Their parents have been sentenced to suffer."

  "By having their children taken from them?"

  "That's it, yes."

  He waved the knife to indicate the kids.

  She was surprised at how calm she was. All the tension that had been building and building since that first day she had come to the island, all her nasty apprehensions and the long pressure of anticipation drained rapidly away from her, leaving her pure, unsullied, refreshed and feeling remarkably capable even in such a dangerous situation as this.

  Perhaps she was also partially buoyed by her training as a nurse, for she had been taught how to talk to mental cases, how to reason with them as much as they could be reasoned with, how to force them to do what she wanted them to do.

  Perhaps, too, her calmness was based on such an intense fear that, had she not gotten calm, she would have been utterly immobilized, terrified into a trancelike state that would not have done her or the children any good. But if that was the case, she didn't want to think about it.

  "Give me the knife," she said, holding out her hand.

  He just stared at her.

  "You'll get hurt very badly, when they catch you, if you go through with this, Bill. Now you don't want hurt, do you?"

  "I'm not Bill."

  "Yes, you are."

  "My name's Jeremy."

  She sighed. "Jeremy, then. Do you want to be hurt, badly hurt, when they catch you?"

  The sneer returned.

  He said, "They won't catch me."

  "How can you run away?"

  "In a boat."

  "You destroyed the boats."

  "I've got my own."

  "The Lady Jane?"

  "Not the Lady Jane, another boat, my own special boat. I've got it hidden where no one will find

  it."

  A particularly harsh gale struck Seawatch, moaned beneath the eaves like a creature out of a nightmare, throaty, seeking.

  He held the knife more tightly than ever.
<
br />   She said, "It's not really your boat, is it?"

  "Sure."

  "It's really John Hayes' boat, isn't it?"

  He jerked as if she'd struck him.

  "Isn't it?"

  "No."

  "That's a lie, Jeremy. It's Hayes' boat."

  "How do you know about Hayes?"

  "You killed him, didn't you?"

  The point of the knife dropped and was correspondingly less wicked looking. She had impressed him, stunned him.

  "I killed him," he admitted.

  "Why?"

  "He was a fool."

  "Why was he a fool, Bill?"

  "My name is Jeremy."

  She sighed. "Why was he a fool, Jeremy?"

  "He thought what I told him, at the start, was the truth. He thought we were doing all this just to blackmail Joe Dougherty." He laughed bitterly. "You see, a complete fool."

  "What was Hayes' part in it?" she asked. She was genuinely curious about this, but she asked the question chiefly to keep him talking, the longer he talked, the less likely he was to act; at least, that was what the psychology textbooks had said, if she remembered them right. Besides, if she could keep him talking long enough, someone from the storm cellar would come to see what was holding her and Saine and the kids up.

  "He made the telephone calls," Peterson said.

  "In New Jersey?"

  "Yes."

  "Was he also the one who broke into the house there and left the notes?" she asked.

  "No. I did that. I got keys to the New Jersey house from Bill."

  "Bill Peterson?"

  "That's right," Jeremy said.

  She thought she saw a weakness in his fantasy, here, and she tried to drive a wedge in that chink. "Then Bill is involved in whatever you do. Maybe they won't catch you, Jeremy, but they'll catch Bill. They'll make him pay."

  "They can't do a thing to him," he said. "Bill didn't know why I wanted the keys."

  "He must have suspected, eventually."

  "Not Bill. He's too level-headed a guy. He'd never be able to understand something like this- about the trial and being judge and jury, about the need for everyone to suffer." He paused, licked his lips. "No, no, Sonya. Bill is too naive ever to understand."

  She abandoned that track and went back to the subject of John Hayes, the dead man she and Saine had found on the beach. She said, "Why didn't you make all the telephone calls yourself? Why use Hayes?"

  "No one would recognize his voice," he said.

  "But they wouldn't recognize your voice, either."

  "Of course they would."

  "Why?"

  "They know me, of course."

  "They know Bill, not you!" she said.

  The conversation had gotten to be something like a scene from Alice In Wonderland, nearly nonsensical, but she felt that through the nonsense she was reaching him, just barely, just a little, but reaching him beneath the layers of insanity.

  He had been shaken by her statement, and he had no answer for it.

  She started in on him again, quick, before he could regain his composure. She said, "Why did you ever conceive of hurting Alex and Tina?"

  He looked at the children, back at her, lifted the point of the knife until it was angled straight toward her slim throat, only a couple of short feet away from a clean, quick, deadly slice.

  He said, "The Doughertys have always had things so good, too good, better than they deserve. They've never suffered, and someone had to show them that suffering was necessary."

  "You're talking nonsense," she said, sternly.

  "No-"

  "Yes you are. What are your real reasons behind this whole affair, Jeremy? Your real reasons."

  He floundered for a moment, then said, "Bill could have such a much better job than he does."

  "How?"

  "With the Blenwells."

  "They offered him a job?" she asked.

  "Yes."

  "When?"

  "About a year ago."

  "Why would they offer Bill a job, when they know he works for Mr. Dougherty and when they don't care at all for the Doughertys or their people?"

  "It was a deal," Jeremy said. "A special deal. They offered Bill this job, same job at their place that he now has at Seawatch. All he had to do, to get it, was talk to Mr. Dougherty about selling Seawatch, maybe snoop around a little and see if Dougherty had special reasons for holding on to his part of the island."

  "What do you mean-'special reasons'?" she asked.

  "They thought he might intend to build a resort hotel, or something like that, if he could get all of the island for himself. They wanted to know if that was true."

  "Was it?"

  "No. And poor Bill," Jeremy said, "was too nice a guy to figure out any way of driving the Doughertys off Distingue. Here were the Blenwells, willing to double or triple his salary. Here was a chance for him to have something nice for the first time in his life, maybe a boat of his own, a real nice cargo sailboat, and he was too nice a guy to figure out how to drive the Doughertys off Distingue."

  "But you solved that problem for him," Sonya said.

  "Yes, I did," Jeremy said. "I figured if I could make the family run to Distingue, I could kill the children here, just like I threatened, cut them all up. Then Joe Dougherty would fall all over himself to unload his share of the island. He'd never want to live here again."

  To keep him off balance, Sonya said, "I still don't see why you had to kill Hayes."

  "He wanted to go through with the kidnapping, what I told him we'd do in the beginning. A month ago, I told him it was off, that I'd decided we couldn't get away with it. But he wouldn't let up on me. Sunday, when he found out the Doughertys were gone, he rented a boat and came over here to Distingue. He was getting in my way. I had to kill him."

  She thought she heard something in the corridor, outside, but she could not be sure if it was someone who had come up from the storm cellar, or whether it was only a noise that the storm had made.

  Sadly as she could, as if she sympathized with him, she said, "But Jeremy, you won't help Bill at all, if you kill Alex and Tina. The Blenwells never meant for you to go this far to get the Doughertys off Distingue. When they realize what you've done to help Bill get that job, they'll never hire him."

  "They don't have to know it was done for Bill," Jeremy said, smiling slyly. "They never have to know."

  She thought fast, still listening for a repeat of that noise from the corridor, and she said, "If you do escape, do you realize who they're going to blame for Rudolph's death-for the children and for me?"

  He looked blank.

  "Bill," she said. "Bill's the only man that's not in the cellar. Nobody on Distingue even knows about you. So Bill will become your fall guy. They'll send Bill to prison in your place."

  He grinned.

  He said, "I thought of that."

  A trace of fear lay beneath her calm again, but she tried to keep it small, to keep it from burgeoning and taking over. She was beginning to see that his madness was too entrenched, and that she could never really shake him up badly, crack him open.

  He said, "I'll cut Bill a few times, not seriously, but deep and with a good bit of blood running. Then I'll dispose of the knife. He can give them a description of me, tell them that I cut him and that he fell and passed out. He can convince them that I spared him because I probably saw him bleeding and thought he was dead. No one will suspect him for long, if at all. He's too nice a guy. Everyone knows that he is."

  By now, she had realized that the noise in the hall must have been made by the storm, for she had heard nothing like it again, and no one had appeared to help her. She could think of nothing further to say to this madman, nothing to delay him any longer; and if she could not keep him engaged in conversation, he would step forward in a moment and put that knife under her chin, very deep under her chin. Her only hope now was to distract him, to turn and try for the door. If he gave chase, she ought to be able to lead him downstairs, where a cr
y for help would be heard.

  She turned, without warning, struck the edge of the open door, and spun clumsily through into the hall.

  He grabbed her almost at once.

  The knife came up.

  Remembering the fight in the bougainvillea arbor, she stamped down on the same foot she had injured then, harder than she had before, grinding hard to the right.

  Though he had been able to conceal his injury to this point, had not needed to limp, that portion of his foot had been particularly tender, and now it erupted into white hot pain.

  She jerked loose of him.

  He swung the knife.

  It sliced along the upper part of her left arm, drawing blood but not digging too deeply.

  She stepped back into the kids' room and, in one fluid series of movements, slammed and bolted the door, making them temporarily safe from the man who was now calling himself Jeremy but had once been a new and special friend.

  * * *

  TWENTY-THREE

  Sonya had not, for a moment, believed they would be indefinitely safe in that second floor bedroom, even though the door was bolted. Bill Peterson was a strong, vital, young man who would be able to kick in even one of these sturdy old doors if he were given a few minutes for the job. She did not think that they could afford to sit by and hope that, before he had smashed the latch, someone would have come up from the storm cellar to see what was delaying them. She was sure that, already, someone had most likely decided to come looking for them. But what chance did men like Henry Dalton and Leroy Mills have against a man like Peterson, when Peterson had so easily dispatched with someone like Rudolph Saine. A madman, with his system pumping extra adrenalin, could often have the strength of three or four men his size and weight; and even without this advantage, men like Mills and Dalton would have been no match for him. They might make it up the stairs, against his wishes, but they'd never get close to this room or to rescuing her and the children.

  As soon as she'd locked the door, she ran to the bed and twisted the wire loose of Alex's wrists, told him to get the other length off his feet, then freed Tina.

  "What are we going to do?" Alex asked.