by Dean Koontz
His father reaches out, puts a hand on his knee. Dad is troubled but not in a way that he should be. He isn’t visibly angry that some alien entity has stolen his son’s life, isn’t as frightened as he ought to be by the news that an inhuman presence now walks the earth, passing for human. Rather, he seems merely worried and . . . sad. There is an unmistakable and inappropriate sadness in his face and voice. “You’re not alone, son. We’re always here for you. Surely you know that.”
“We’ll stand beside you,” Mom says. “We’ll get you whatever help you need.”
“If Paige is coming, like you say,” his father adds, “we’ll sit down together when she gets here, talk this out, try to understand what’s happening.”
Their voices are vaguely patronizing, as if they are talking to an intelligent and perceptive child but a child nonetheless.
“Shut up! Just shut up!” He pulls his hand free of his mother’s grasp and leaps up from the sofa, shaking with frustration.
The window. Falling snow. The street. No BMW. But soon.
He turns away from the window, faces his parents.
His mother sits on the edge of the sofa, her face buried in her hands, shoulders hunched, in a posture of grief or despair.
He needs to make them understand. He is consumed by that need and frustrated by his inability to get even the fundamentals of the situation across to them.
His father rises from the chair. Stands indecisively. Arms at his sides. “Marty, you came to us for help, and we want to help, God knows we do, but we can’t help if you won’t let us.”
Lowering her hands from her face, with tears on her cheeks now, his mother says, “Please, Marty. Please.”
“Everyone makes mistakes now and then,” his father says.
“If it’s drugs,” his mother says, through tears, speaking as much to his father as to him, “we can cope with that, honey, we can handle that, we can find treatment for that.”
His glass-encased world—beautiful, peaceful, time-less—in which he’s been living during the precious minutes since his mother opened her arms to him at the front door, now abruptly fractures. An ugly, jagged crack scars the smooth curve of crystal. The sweet, clean atmosphere of that brief paradise escapes with a whoosh, admitting the poisonous air of the hateful world in which existence requires an unending struggle against hopelessness, loneliness, rejection.
“Don’t do this to me,” he pleads. “Don’t betray me. How can you do this to me? How can you turn against me? I am your child.” Frustration turns to anger. “Your only child.” Anger turns to hatred. “I need. I need. Can’t you see?” He is trembling with rage. “Don’t you care? Are you heartless? How can you be so awful to me, so cruel? How could you let it come to this?”
12
At a service station in Bishop, they stopped long enough to buy snow chains and to pay extra to have them buckled to the wheels of the BMW. The California Highway Patrol was recommending but not yet requiring that all vehicles heading into the Sierra Nevadas be equipped with chains.
Route 395 became a divided highway west of Bishop, and in spite of the dramatically rising elevation, they made good time past Rovanna and Crowley Lake, past McGee Creek and Convict Lake, exiting 395 onto Route 203 slightly south of Casa Diablo Hot Springs.
Casa Diablo. House of the Devil.
The meaning of the name had never impinged upon Marty before.
Now everything was an omen.
Snow began falling before they reached Mammoth Lakes.
The fat flakes were almost as loosely woven as cheap lace. They fell in such plenitude that it seemed more than half the volume of the air between land and sky was occupied by snow. It immediately began to stick, trimming the landscape in faux ermine.
Paige drove through Mammoth Lakes without stopping and turned south toward Lake Mary. In the back seat, Charlotte and Emily were so entranced by the snowfall that, for the time being, they did not need to be entertained.
East of the mountains, the sky had been gray-black and churning. Here, in the wintry heart of the Sierras, it was like a Cyclopean eye sheathed in a milky cataract.
The turn-off from Route 203 was marked by a copse of pines in which the tallest specimen bore scars from a decade-old lightning strike. The bolt had not merely damaged the pine but had encouraged it into mutant patterns of growth, until it had become a gnarled and malignant tower.
The snowflakes were smaller than before, falling harder, driven by the northwest wind. After a playful debut, the storm was turning serious.
Cutting through mountain meadows and forests—increasingly more of the latter and fewer of the former—the upsloping road eventually passed a chain-link encircled property of over a hundred acres on the right. This plot had been purchased eleven years ago by the Prophetic Church of the Rapture, a cult that had followed the teachings of the Reverend Jonathan Caine and had believed that the faithful would soon be levitated from the earth, leaving only the unbaptized and truly wicked to endure a thousand years of grueling war and hell on earth before final Judgment came to pass.
As it turned out, Caine had been a child molester who videotaped his abuse of cult members’ children. He had gone to prison, his two thousand followers had dispersed on the winds of disillusionment and betrayal, and the property with all its buildings had been tied up by litigation for almost five years.
Some fantasies were destructive.
The chain-link fence, topped with coils of dangerous razor wire, was broken down in places. In the distance the spire of their church soared high above the trees. Beneath it were the sloped roofs of a warren of buildings in which the faithful had slept, taken their meals, and waited to be lifted heavenward by the right hand of the Lord Almighty. The spire stood untouched. But the buildings under it were missing many doors and windows, home to rats and possums and raccoons, shorn of glory and hairy with decay. Sometimes the vandals had been human. But wind and ice and snow had done the better part of the damage, as if God, through weather warped to His whim, had passed a judgment on the Church of the Rapture that He had not yet been ready to pass on the rest of humankind.
The cabin was also to the right of the narrow county road, the next property after the huge tract owned by the defunct cult. Set back three hundred yards from the pavement, at the end of a dirt lane, it was one of many similar retreats spread through the surrounding hills, most of them on an acre of land or more.
It was a one-story structure with weather-silvered cedar siding, slate roof, screened front porch, and river-rock foundation. Over the years his father and mother had expanded the original building until it contained two bedrooms, kitchen, living room, and two baths.
They parked in front of the cabin and got out of the BMW. The surrounding firs, sugar pines, and ponderosa pines were ancient and huge, and the crisp air was sweet with the scent of them. Drifts of dead needles and scores of pinecones littered the property. Snow reached the ground only between the trees and through the occasional interstices of their thatched boughs.
Marty went to the woodshed behind the cabin. The door was held shut with a hasp and peg. Inside, to the right of the entrance, against the wall, a spare key was wrapped tightly in plastic and buried half an inch under the dirt floor.
When Marty returned to the front of the cabin, Emily was circling one of the larger trees in a crouch, closely examining the cones that had fallen from it. Charlotte was performing a wildly exaggerated ballet in an open space between trees, where a wide shaft of snow fell like a spotlight on a stage.
“I am the Snow Queen!” Charlotte announced breathlessly as she twirled and leaped. “I have dominion over winter! I can command the snow to fall! I can make the world shiny and white and beautiful!”
As Emily began to gather up an armload of cones, Paige said, “Honey, you’re not bringing those in the house.”
“I’m going to make some art.”
“They’re dirty.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“They
’re beautiful and dirty,” Paige said.
“I’ll make art out here.”
“Snow fall! Snow blow! Snow swirl and whirl and caper!” commanded the dancing Snow Queen as Marty climbed the wooden steps and opened the screen door on the porch.
That morning the girls had dressed in jeans and wool sweaters, to be ready for the Sierras, and they were wearing heavily insulated nylon jackets as well as cloth gloves.
They wanted to stay outside and play. Even if they’d had boots, however, the outdoors would have been off limits. This time, the cabin was not simply a vacation getaway but a cloistered retreat which they might have to transform into a fortress, and the surrounding woods might eventually harbor something far more dangerous than wolves.
Inside, the place had a faint musty smell. It actually seemed colder than the snowy day beyond its walls.
Logs were stacked in the fireplace, and additional wood was piled high on one side of the broad, deep hearth. Later they would light a fire. To warm the cabin quickly, Paige went room to room, switching on the electric space heaters set in the walls.
Standing by one of the front windows, looking through the screened porch and down the dirt lane toward the county road, Marty used the cellular phone, which he’d brought in from the car, to try yet again to reach his folks back in Mammoth Lakes.
“Daddy,” Charlotte said as he punched in the number, “I just thought—who’s going to feed Sheldon and Bob and Fred and the other guys back home while we’re not there?”
“I already arranged with Mrs. Sanchez to take care of that,” he lied, for he hadn’t yet found the courage to tell her that all of her pets had been killed.
“Oh, okay. Then it’s a good thing it wasn’t Mrs. Sanchez who went totally berserk.”
“Who you calling, Daddy?” Emily asked as the first ring sounded at the far end of the line.
“Grandma and Grandpa.”
“Tell them I’m gonna make a cone sculpture for them.”
“Boy,” Charlotte said, “that’ll thrill the puke out of ’em.”
The phone rang a third time.
“They like my art,” Emily insisted.
Charlotte said, “They have to—they’re your grand-parents. ”
Four rings.
“Yeah, well, you’re not the Snow Queen, either,” Emily said.
“I am too.”
Five.
“No, you’re the Snow Troll.”
“You’re the Snow Toad,” Charlotte countered.
Six.
“Snow Worm.”
“Snow Maggot.”
“Snow Snot.”
“Snow Puke.”
Marty gave them a warning look, which put a stop to the name-calling competition, though they stuck their tongues out at each other.
After the seventh ring, he put his finger on the END button. Before he could push it, however, the connection was made.
Whoever picked up the receiver didn’t say anything.
“Hello?” Marty said. “Mom? Dad?”
Managing to sound both angry and sad, the man on the other end of the line said, “How did you win them over?”
Marty felt as if ice had formed in his veins and marrow, not because of the penetrating cold in the cabin but because the voice that responded to him was a perfect imitation of his own.
“Why would they love you more than me?” The Other demanded, his voice tremulous with emotion.
A mantle of dread settled on Marty, and a sense of unreality as disorienting as any nightmare. He seemed to be dreaming while awake.
He said, “Don’t touch them, you son of a bitch. Don’t you lay one finger on them.”
“They betrayed me.”
“I want to talk to my mother and father,” Marty demanded.
“My mother and father,” The Other said.
“Put them on the phone.”
“So you can tell them more lies?”
“Put them on the phone now,” Marty said between clenched teeth.
“They can’t listen to any more of your lies.”
“What have you done?”
“They’re finished listening to you.”
“What have you done?”
“They wouldn’t give me what I needed.”
With understanding, dread became grief. For a moment Marty could not find his voice.
The Other said, “All I needed was to be loved.”
“What have you done?” He was shouting. “Who are you, what are you, damn it, what are you, what have you done?”
Ignoring the questions, answering them with questions of its own, The Other said, “Have you turned Paige against me? My Paige, my Charlotte, my sweet little Emily? Do I have any hope of getting them back or will I have to kill them too?” The voice cracked with emotion. “Oh God, is there even blood in their veins any more, are they human any more, or have you made them into something else?”
Marty realized they could not conduct a conversation. It was madness to try. However much they might look and sound alike, they were without any common ground. In fundamental ways, they were as unlike each other as if they had been members of different species.
Marty pushed the END button.
His hands were shaking so badly that he dropped the phone.
When he turned from the window, he saw the girls were standing together, holding hands. They were staring, pale and frightened.
His shouting into the telephone had brought Paige out of one of the bedrooms where she had been adjusting the electric heater.
Images of his parents’ faces and treasured memories of a life of love crowded into his mind, but he resolutely repressed them. If he gave in to grief now, wasted precious time in tears, he would be condemning Paige and the girls to certain death.
“He’s here,” Marty said, “he’s coming, and we don’t have much time.”
PART THREE
New Maps of Hell
Those who would banish the sin of greed embrace the sin of envy as their creed. Those who seek to banish envy as well, only draw elaborate new maps of hell.
Those with passion to change the world, look on themselves as saints, as pearls, and by the launching of noble endeavor, flee dreaded introspection forever.
—The Book of Counted Sorrows
Laugh at tyrants and the tragedy they inflict. Such men welcome our tears as evidence of subservience, but our laughter condemns them to ignominy.
—Endless River, Laura Shane
Six
1
He stands in his parents’ kitchen, watching the falling snow through the window above the sink, shaking with hunger, and wolfing down leftover meatloaf.
This is one of those decisive moments that separate real heroes from pretenders. When all is darkest, when tragedy piles on tragedy, when hope seems to be a game only for idiots and fools, does Harrison Ford or Kevin Costner or Tom Cruise or Wesley Snipes or Kurt Russell quit? No. Never. Unthinkable. They are heroes. They persevere. Rise to the occasion. They not only deal with adversity but thrive on it. From sharing the worst moments of those great men’s lives, he knows how to cope with emotional devastation, mental depression, physical abuse in enormous quantities, and even the threat of alien domination of the earth.
Move, move, confront, challenge, grapple, and prevail.
He must not dwell on the tragedy of his parents’ deaths. The creatures he destroyed were surely not his mother and father, anyway, but mimics like the one that has stolen his own life. He might never learn when his real parents were murdered and replaced, and in any event he must delay grieving for them.
Thinking too much about his parents—or about anything—is not merely a waste of precious time but anti-heroic. Heroes don’t think. Heroes act.
Move, move, confront, challenge, grapple, and prevail.
Finished eating, he goes to the garage by way of a laundry room off the kitchen. Switching on fluorescent lights as he crosses the threshold, he discovers two vehicles are available for his use—an
old blue Dodge and an apparently new Jeep Wagoneer. He will use the Jeep because of its four-wheel drive.
The keys to the vehicle hang on a pegboard in the laundry room. In a cabinet, he also finds a large box of detergent. He reads the list of chemicals on the box, satisfied with what he discovers.
He returns to the kitchen.
The end of one row of lower cabinets is finished with a wine rack. After locating a corkscrew in a drawer, he opens four bottles and empties the wine into the sink.
In another kitchen drawer he finds a plastic funnel among other odds and ends of cooking implements. A third drawer is filled with clean white dish towels, and a fourth is the source for a pair of scissors and a book of matches.
He carries the bottles and the other items into the laundry room and puts them on the tiled counter beside the deep sink.
In the garage again, he takes a red five-gallon gasoline can from a shelf to the left of the workbench. When he unscrews the cap, high-octane fumes waft out of the container. Spring through autumn, Dad probably keeps gasoline in the can to use in the lawn mower, but it is empty now.
Rummaging through the drawers and cabinets around the workbench, he finds a coil of flexible plastic tubing in a box of repair parts for the drinking-water filtration system in the kitchen. With this he siphons gasoline out of the Dodge into the five-gallon can.
At the sink in the laundry room, he uses the funnel to pour an inch of detergent into the bottom of each empty wine bottle. He adds gasoline. He cuts the dishcloths into useable strips.
Although he has two revolvers and twenty rounds of ammunition, he wants to add gasoline bombs to his arsenal. His experiences of the past twenty-four hours, since first confronting the false father, have taught him not to underestimate his adversary.
He still hopes to save Paige, Charlotte, and little Emily. He continues to desire reunion and the renewal of their life together.
However, he must face reality and prepare for the possibility that his wife and children are no longer who they once were. They may simply have been mentally enslaved. On the other hand, they might also have been infected by parasites not of this world, their brains now hollow and filled with writhing monstrosities. Or they might not be themselves at all, merely replicants of the real Paige, Charlotte, and Emily, just as the false father is a replicant of him, arising out of a seed pod from some distant star.
