by Dean Koontz
Inevitably, he wonders if they prefer their other father to him, the false to the real. This is a dreadful possibility to be forced to explore. If it is true, it means that those he loves the most are not victims, as he is, but are active participants in the Byzantine plot against him.
Their false father is probably lenient with them. Allows them to eat what they want. Lets them go to bed as late as they please.
All children are anarchists by nature. They need rules and standards of behavior, or they grow up to be wild and antisocial.
When he kills the hateful false father and retakes control of his family, he will establish rules for everything and will strictly enforce them. Misbehavior will be instantly punished. Pain is one of life’s greatest teachers, and he is an expert in the application of pain. Order will be restored within the Stillwater household, and his children will commit no act without first soberly reflecting upon the rules that govern them.
Initially, of course, they will hate him for being so stern and uncompromising. They will not understand that he is acting in their best interests.
However, each tear that his punishments wring from them will be sweet to him. Each cry of pain will be a gladdening music. He will be unrelenting with them because he knows that in time they will realize he imposes guidance upon them only because he cares so profoundly about them. They will love him for his stern fatherly concern. They will adore him for providing the discipline which they need—and secretly desire—but which it is their very nature to resist.
Paige also will need to be disciplined. He knows about women’s needs. He remembers a film with Kim Basinger in which sex and a craving for discipline were shown to be inextricably entwined. He anticipates Paige’s instructions with particular pleasure.
Since the day that his career, family, and memories were stolen from him—which might be a year or ten years ago, for all he knows—he has lived primarily through the movies. The adventures he has experienced and the poignant lessons he has learned in countless darkened theaters seem as real to him as the car seat on which he now lies and the chocolate dissolving on his tongue. He remembers making love to Sharon Stone, to Glenn Close, from both of whom he learned the potential for sexual mania and treachery inherent in all women. He remembers the exuberant fun of sex with Goldie Hawn, the rapture of Michelle Pfeiffer, the exciting sweaty urgency of Ellen Barkin when he incorrectly suspected her of being a murderess but pinned her to the wall of his apartment and penetrated her anyway. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Gregory Peck, and so many other men have taken him under their wings and have taught him courage and determination. He knows that death is a mystery of infinite complication because he has learned so many conflicting lessons about it: Tim Robbins has shown him that the afterlife is only an illusion, while Patrick Swayze has shown him that the afterlife is a joyous place as real as anywhere and that those you love (like Demi Moore) will see you there when they eventually pass from this world, yet Freddy Krueger has shown him that the afterlife is a gruesome nightmare from which you can return for gleeful vengeance. When Debra Winger died of cancer, leaving Shirley MacLaine bereft, he had been inconsolable, but only a few days later he had seen her, alive again, younger and more beautiful than ever, reincarnated in a new life where she enjoyed a new destiny with Richard Gere. Paul Newman has often shared with him bits of wisdom about death, life, pool, poker, love, and honor; therefore, he considers this man one of his most important mentors. Likewise, Wilford Brimley, Gene Hackman, burly old Edward Asner, Robert Redford, Jessica Tandy. Often he absorbs quite contradictory lessons from such friends, but he has heard some of these people say that all beliefs are of equal value and that there is no one truth, so he is comfortable with the contradictions by which he lives.
He learned the most secret of all truths not in a public theater or on a pay-per-view movie service in a hotel room. Instead, that moment of stunning insight had come in the private media chamber of one of the men it was his duty to kill.
His target had been a United States Senator. A requirement of the termination was that it be made to look like a suicide.
He had to enter the Senator’s residence on a night when the man was known to be alone. He was provided with a key so there would be no signs of forced entry.
After gaining access to the house, he found the Senator in the eight-seat home media room, which featured THX Sound and a theater-quality projection system capable of displaying television, videotape, or laserdisc images on a five-by-six-foot screen. It was a plush, windowless space. There was even an antique Coke machine which, he learned later, dispensed the soft drink in classic ten-ounce glass bottles, plus a candy-vending machine stocked with Milk Duds, Jujubes, Raisinettes, and other favorite movie-house snacks.
Because of the music in the film, he found it easy to creep up behind the Senator and overpower him with a chloroform-soaked rag, which he pulled out of a plastic bag a second before putting it to use. He carried the politician upstairs to the ornate master bath, undressed him, and gently conveyed him into a Roman tub filled with hot water, periodically employing the chloroform to assure continued unconsciousness. With a razor blade, he made a deep, clean incision across the Senator’s right wrist (since the politician was a southpaw and most likely to use his left hand to make his first cut), and let that arm drop into the water, which was quickly discolored by the arterial gush. Before dropping the razor blade in the water, he made a few feeble attempts to slash the left wrist, never scoring deeply, because the Senator wouldn’t have been able to grip the blade firmly in his right hand after cutting the tendons and ligaments along with the artery in that wrist.
Sitting on the edge of the tub, administering chloroform every time the politician groaned and seemed about to wake, he gratefully shared the sacred ceremony of death. When he was the only living man in the room, he thanked the departed for the precious opportunity to share that most intimate of experiences.
Ordinarily, he would have left the house then, but what he had witnessed on the movie screen drew him back to the media room on the first floor. He had seen pornography before, in adult theaters in many cities, and from those experiences he had learned all of the possible sexual positions and techniques. But the pornography on that home screen was different from everything he’d seen previously, for it involved chains, handcuffs, leather straps, metal-studded belts, as well as a wide variety of other instruments of punishment and restraint. Incredibly, the beautiful women on the screen seemed to be excited by brutality. The more cruelly they were treated, the more willingly they gave themselves to orgasmic pleasure; in fact, they frequently begged to be dealt with even more harshly, ravished more sadistically.
He settled into the seat from which he had removed the Senator. He stared with fascination at the screen, absorbing, learning.
When that videotape reached a conclusion, a quick search turned up an open walk-in vault—usually cleverly concealed behind the wall paneling—that contained a collection of similar material. There was an even more stunning trove of tapes depicting children involved in carnal acts with adults. Daughters with fathers. Mothers with sons. Sisters with brothers, sisters with sisters. He sat for hours, until almost dawn, transfixed.
Absorbing.
Learning, learning.
To have become a United States Senator, an exalted leader, the dead man in the bathtub must have been extremely wise. Therefore, his personal film library would, of course, contain diverse material of a transcendent nature, reflecting his singular intellectual and moral insights, embodying philosophies far too complex to be within the grasp of the average film-goer at a public theater. How very fortunate to have discovered the politician lounging in the media room rather than preparing a snack in the kitchen or reading a book in bed. Otherwise, this opportunity to share the wisdom in the great man’s hidden vault would never have arisen.
Now, curled fetally on the back seat of the Buick, he may be temporarily blinded in one eye, bullet-creased and bullet-pierced, weak and wea
ry, defeated for the moment, but he is not despairing. He has another advantage in addition to his magically resilient body, unparalleled stamina, and exhaustive knowledge of the killing arts. Equally important, he possesses what he perceives to be great wisdom, acquired from movie screens both public and private, and that wisdom will ensure his ultimate triumph. He knows what he believes to be the great secrets that the wisest people hide in concealed vaults: those things which women really need but which they may not know they subconsciously desire, those things which children want but of which they dare not speak. He understands that his wife and children will welcome and thrive upon utter domination, harsh discipline, physical abuse, sexual subjugation, even humiliation. At first opportunity, he intends to fulfill their deepest and most primitive longings, as the lenient false father apparently will never be able to do, and together they will be a family, living in harmony and love, sharing a destiny, held together forever by his singular wisdom, strength, and demanding heart.
He drifts toward healing sleep, confident of waking with full health and vigor in several hours.
A few feet from him, in the trunk of the car, lies the dead man who once owned the Buick—cold, stiff, and without any appealing prospects of his own.
How good it is to be special, to be needed, to have a destiny.
PART TWO
Story Hour in the Madhouse
At the point where hope and reason part, lies the spot where madness gets a start. Hope to make the world kinder and free— but flowers of hope root in reality.
No peaceful bed exists for lamb and lion, unless on some world out beyond Orion. Do not instruct the owls to spare the mice. Owls acting as owls must is not a vice.
Storms do not respond to heartfelt pleas. All the words of men can’t calm the seas. Nature—always beneficent and cruel— won’t change for a wise man or a fool.
Mankind shares all Nature’s imperfections, clearly visible to casual inspections. Resisting betterment is the human trait. The ideal of Utopia is our tragic fate.
—The Book of Counted Sorrows
We sense that life is a dark comedy and maybe we can live with that. However, because the whole thing is written for the entertainment of the gods, too many of the jokes go right over our heads.
—Two Vanished Victims, Martin Stillwater
Four
1
Immediately after leaving the roadside rest area where the dead retirees relaxed forever in the cozy dining nook of their motorhome, heading back along I-40 toward Oklahoma City with the inscrutable Karl Clocker behind the wheel, Drew Oslett used his state-of-the-art cellular phone to call the home office in New York City. He reported developments and requested instructions.
The telephone he used wasn’t yet for sale to the general public. To the average citizen, it would never be available with all of the features that Oslett’s model offered.
It plugged into the cigarette lighter like other cellulars; however, unlike others, it was operable virtually anywhere in the world, not solely within the state or service area in which it was issued. Like the SATU electronic map, the phone incorporated a direct satellite up-link. It could directly access at least ninety percent of the communications satellites currently in orbit, bypassing their land-based control stations, override security-exclusion programs, and connect with any telephone the user wished, leaving absolutely no record that the call had been made. The violated phone company would never issue a bill for Oslett’s call to New York because they would never know that it had been placed using their system.
He spoke freely to his New York contact about what he had found at the rest stop, with no fear that he would be overheard by anyone, because his phone also included a scrambling device that he activated with a simple switch. A matching scrambler on the home-office phone rendered his report intelligible again upon receipt, but to anyone who might intercept the signal between Oklahoma and the Big Apple, Oslett’s words would sound like gibberish.
New York was concerned about the murdered retirees only to the extent that there might be a way for the Oklahoma authorities to link their killing to Alfie or to the Network, which was the name they used among themselves to describe their organization. “You didn’t leave the shoes there?” New York asked.
“Of course not,” Oslett said, offended at the suggestion of incompetence.
“All of the electronics in the heel—”
“I have the shoes here.”
“That’s right-out-of-the-lab stuff. Any knowledgeable person who sees it, he’s going to go apeshit and maybe—”
“I have the shoes,” Oslett said tightly.
“Good. Okay, then let them find the bodies and bang their heads against the wall trying to solve it. None of our business. Somebody else can haul away the garbage.”
“Exactly.”
“I’ll be back to you soon.”
“I’m counting on it,” Oslett said.
After disconnecting, while he waited for a response from the home office, he was filled with uneasiness at the prospect of passing more than a hundred black and empty miles with no company but himself and Clocker. Fortunately, he was prepared with noisy and involving entertainment. From the floor behind the driver’s seat, he retrieved a Game Boy and slipped the headset over his ears. Soon he was happily distracted from the unnerving rural landscape by the challenges of a rapidly paced computer game.
Suburban lights speckled the night when Oslett next looked up from the miniature screen in response to a tap on the shoulder from Clocker. On the floor between his feet, the cellular phone was ringing.
The New York contact sounded as somber as if he had just come from his own mother’s funeral. “How soon can you get to the airport in Oklahoma City?”
Oslett relayed the question to Clocker.
Clocker’s impassive face didn’t change expressions as he said, “Half an hour, forty minutes—assuming the fabric of reality doesn’t warp between here and there.”
Oslett relayed to New York only the estimated traveling time and left out the science fiction.
“Get there quick as you can,” New York said. “You’re going to California.”
“Where in California?”
“John Wayne Airport, Orange County.”
“You have a lead on Alfie?”
“We don’t know what the fuck we’ve got.”
“Please don’t make your answers so darn technical,” Oslett said. “You’re losing me.”
“When you get to the airport in Oklahoma City, find a newsstand. Buy the latest issue of People magazine. Look on pages sixty-six, sixty-seven, sixty-eight. Then you’ll know as much as we do.”
“Is this a joke?”
“We just found out about it.”
“About what?” Oslett asked. “Look, I don’t care about the latest scandal in the British royal family or what diet Julia Roberts follows to keep her figure.”
“Pages sixty-six, sixty-seven, and sixty-eight. When you’ve seen it, call me. Looks as if we might be standing hip-deep in gasoline, and someone just struck a match.”
New York disconnected before Oslett could respond.
“We’re going to California,” he told Clocker.
“Why?”
“People magazine thinks we’ll like the place,” he said, deciding to give the big man a taste of his own cryptic dialogue.
“We probably will,” Clocker replied, as if what Oslett had said made perfect sense to him.
As they drove through the outskirts of Oklahoma City, Oslett was relieved to find himself surrounded by signs of civilization—though he would have blown his brains out rather than live there. Even at its busiest hour, Oklahoma City didn’t assault all five senses the way Manhattan did. He didn’t merely thrive on sensory overload; he found it almost as essential to life as food and water, and more important than sex.
Seattle had been better than Oklahoma City, although it still hadn’t measured up to Manhattan. Really, it had far too much sky for a city, too littl
e crowding. The streets were so comparatively quiet, and the people seemed so inexplicably . . . relaxed. You would think they didn’t know that they, like everyone else, would die sooner or later.
He and Clocker had been waiting at Seattle International at two o’clock yesterday afternoon, Sunday, when Alfie had been scheduled to arrive on a flight from Kansas City, Missouri. The 747 touched down eighteen minutes late, and Alfie wasn’t on it.
In the nearly fourteen months that Oslett had been handling Alfie, which was the entire time that Alfie had been in service, nothing like that had ever happened. Alfie faithfully showed up where he was supposed to, traveled wherever he was sent, performed whatever task was assigned to him, and was as punctual as a Japanese train conductor. Until yesterday.
They had not panicked right away. It was possible that a snafu—perhaps a traffic accident—had delayed Alfie on his way to the airport, causing him to miss his flight.
Of course, the moment he went off schedule, a “cellar command,” implanted in his deep subconscious, should have been activated, compelling him to call a number in Philadelphia to report his change of plans. But that was the trouble with a cellar command: sometimes it was so deeply buried in the subject’s mind that the trigger didn’t work and it stayed buried.
While Oslett and Clocker waited at the airport in Seattle to see if their boy would show up on a later flight, a Network contact in Kansas City drove to the motel where Alfie had been staying to check it out. The concern was that their boy might have dumped his entire conditioning and training, much the way that information could be lost when a computer hard disk crashed, in which case the poor geek would still be sitting in his room, in a catatonic condition.
But he hadn’t been at the motel.
He had not been on the next Kansas City/Seattle flight, either.
Aboard a private Learjet belonging to a Network affiliate, Oslett and Clocker flew out of Seattle. By the time they arrived in Kansas City on Sunday night, Alfie’s abandoned rental car had been found in a residential neighborhood in Topeka, an hour or so west. They could no longer avoid facing the truth. They had a bad boy on their hands. Alfie was renegade.
