The Voice of the Night

by Dean Koontz

  Conscious of the tape recorder, his heart exploding as Roy took a step toward Heather, Colin said, “If you want, some night we’ll go back out to the junkyard and push that old truck down on the tracks, in front of a train.”

  “Nah,” Roy said. “We can’t do that any more. Not now that you’ve told your old lady about it. We’ll figure something else.” He took another step toward Heather. “Come on. Let’s get that gag out of her mouth. I have something else I’m aching to put between her pretty lips.”

  Colin reached behind his back and pulled the pistol from his belt. “Don’t touch her.”

  Roy didn’t even look at him. He moved toward Heather.

  Colin shouted: “I’ll blow your head off, you son-of-a-bitch!”

  Roy was stunned. At first he didn’t comprehend, but then he saw Heather shrugging off the ropes that bound her wrists, and he realized that he had been tricked after all. The blood left his face, and he was white with rage.

  “All of this was recorded,” Colin said. “I’ve got it on tape. Now I’ll be able to make someone believe me.”

  Roy started toward him.

  “Don’t move!” Colin said, jabbing the pistol at him.

  Roy stopped.

  Heather removed her gag.

  “You all right?” Colin asked her.

  “I’ll be better when we’re out of here,” she said.

  To Colin, Roy said, “You creepy little bastard. You don’t have the guts to shoot anyone.”

  Brandishing the pistol, Colin said, “Take one more step, and you’ll find out you’re wrong.”

  Heather had frozen in the act of disentangling her legs from the ropes.

  Everyone was perfectly silent for a moment.

  Then Roy took the step.

  Colin pointed the gun at Roy’s feet and squeezed off a warning shot.

  Except the gun didn’t fire.

  He tried again.

  Nothing.

  “You told me your mother’s gun wasn’t loaded,” Roy said. “Remember?” His face was split by a rictuslike grin of fury.

  Frantically, desperately, Colin squeezed the trigger again. Again. Again!

  Still nothing.

  He knew it was loaded. He had checked. Damnit, he had seen the bullets!

  Then he remembered the safeties. He’d forgotten to switch them off.

  Roy rushed him, and Heather screamed.

  Before he could flip the two small switches on the gun, Colin went down under the bigger boy, and they rolled over and over again on the thick carpet of dust, and Colin’s head banged hard against the floor, and Roy backhanded him across the face, swung once, twice, three times with fists like blocks of marble, hitting Colin in the ribs and then in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him, and Colin tried to use the gun as a club, but Roy seized his wrist and wrenched the weapon out of his hand, used it as Colin had tried to use it, swung it, struck Colin alongside the head, twice, and blackness welled up, a welcoming, warm, velvety, immensely appealing blackness.

  Colin realized that one or two more blows would either render him unconscious or kill him, and then he would be no help whatsoever to Heather. There was only one thing he could do; he went limp and played dead. Roy stopped beating him and sat on him, gasping. Then, just for good measure, he slammed the gun into Colin’s skull once more.

  Pain exploded from Colin’s left ear, through his cheek, into the bridge of his nose, as if dozens of sharp needles had been pounded through his face. He passed out.

  43

  He was not unconscious a long time. Only a few seconds. A vision of Heather, obscenely pinned under Roy, flashed through the blackness in which Colin drifted, and that terrible image propelled him out of the darkness.

  Heather screamed, but her scream was cut short by the sound of a hand striking her face.

  Colin’s glasses were gone. Everything was blurred. He sat up, expecting Roy to leap on him, and felt the floor around him. He found his specs. The frames were twisted, but both lenses were intact. He put them on, bending them to make them fit.

  Heather was on the floor on the other side of the room, flat on her back, and Roy was straddling her, facing away from Colin. Her blouse was open, and her breasts were bare. Roy was trying to pull off her shorts. She struggled, and he hit her again. She began to weep.

  Groggy, hurting badly, but given strength by his own anger, Colin flung himself across the room, grabbed Roy by the hair, and pulled him off the girl. They staggered backward, then toppled sideways and rolled apart.

  Roy scrambled to his feet and seized Heather as she ran for the door. He turned her away from the exit and shoved her toward the wall. She tripped and fell on the hidden tape recorder.

  Colin was lying on something hard and sharp-edged, and, as dizzy as he was, he needed a moment to realize that it was the pistol beneath him. He pulled it from under him and rose to his knees and fumbled with the safeties as Roy started toward him again and as sparks of pain flashed behind his eyes.

  Roy laughed with vicious delight. “You think I’m scared of an unloaded gun? Jesus, you’re a wimp! I’m going to kick your head apart, you stupid little creep. Then I’m going to fuck your stupid girlfriend till she bleeds.”

  “You’re a filthy, rotten bastard!” Colin said, burning with rage, more furious than he’d ever imagined he could be. He staggered to his feet. “You stop. Stop right where you are. The safety catches were on. Now they’re off. You hear me? The gun’s loaded. And I’ll use it. I swear to God, I’ll blow your guts all over the wall!”

  Roy laughed again. “Colin Jacobs, the big tough killer.” He kept coming, grinning, confident.

  Colin cursed him and pulled the trigger. The shot was deafening in the shuttered room.

  Roy stumbled backward, but not because he had been hit. He was only surprised. The bullet had missed him.

  Colin pulled the trigger again.

  The second shot missed too, but Roy cried out and threw up his hands placatingly. “No! Wait! Wait a minute! Don‘t!” Colin advanced on him, and Roy backed into the wall and Colin pulled the trigger again. He couldn’t stop himself. He was hot, white hot, burning with anger, seething, boiling, so hot with rage that he felt as if he would start melting, flowing like lava, his heart thumping so hard that each beat was like the explosion of a volcano. He was not human any more, just animal, savage, barbarian, fighting a brutal territorial battle with another male, driven to attack until he drew blood, powered by a terrifying but irresistible primitive lust to dominate, to conquer, to destroy.

  The third shot grazed Roy’s right arm, and the fourth bullet took him squarely in the right leg. He collapsed as dark blood suddenly stained his sleeve and soaked through one leg of his jeans. And for the first time since Colin had known him, Roy looked—in the face, at least—like a child, like the child he actually was. His face was contorted by a look of helplessness, an expression of stark terror.

  Colin towered over him and lined the sight up with the bridge of Roy’s nose. He almost pulled the trigger one last time. But before he could take that final step into total savagery, he became aware that there was more than fear in Roy’s eyes. He saw despair, too. And a pitiful, lost look, a deep and abiding loneliness. Worst of all, he saw that part of Roy was beseeching him to squeeze off one more shot; a part of the poor bastard was begging to be killed.

  Slowly, Colin lowered the gun. “I’ll get help for you, Roy. They’ll fix the leg. And the other things, too. They’ll help you with the other things. Psychiatrists. Good doctors, Roy. They’ll help you get well. Belinda wasn’t your fault. It was an accident. They’ll help you understand that.”

  Roy began to cry. He gripped his shattered leg with both hands and wept uncontrollably, moaned, wailed, rocked back and forth—either because the shock had worn off and his wound was hurting him ... or because Colin had not put him out of his misery.

  Colin was unable to hold back his own tears. “Oh God, Roy, what they did to you. What they did to me. What al
l of us do to each other every day, all the time. It’s terrible. Why? For God’s sake, why?” He threw the gun across the room; it hit the wall with a crash, clattered to the floor. “Look, Roy, I’ll come visit you,” he said, through tears that wouldn’t stop. “In the hospital. Then wherever they take you. I’ll always come. I won’t forget, Roy. Not ever. I promise. I won’t forget that we’re blood brothers.”

  Roy didn’t seem to hear. He was lost in his own pain and anguish.

  Heather came to Colin and tentatively put one hand against his battered face.

  He saw that she was limping. “Are you hurt?” “It’s nothing serious,” she said. “I twisted my ankle when I fell. What about you?”

  “I’ll live.”

  “Your face looks awful. It’s swollen where he hit you with the gun, and it’s turning all dark.”

  “It hurts,” he admitted. “But right now we’ve got to get an ambulance for Roy. We don’t want him to bleed to death.” He reached into a pocket of his jeans and took out some coins. “Here. Take this. There’s a pay phone at the service station at the bottom of the hill. Call the hospital and the police.”

  “You better go,” she said. “I’ll take forever with this bad ankle.”

  “You don’t mind staying here with him?” Colin asked.

  “He’s harmless now,” she said.

  “Well ... okay.”

  “Just hurry back.”

  “I will. And Heather... I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  “I said he’d never get his hands on you. I failed you.”

  “He didn’t do anything to me,” she said. “You protected me. You did very well.”

  Tears shimmered in her eyes. They held each other for a moment.

  “You’re so pretty,” he said.

  “Am I?”

  “Don’t ever tell yourself you aren’t. Don’t ever again think you’re ugly in any way. Not ever. Tell them all to go to hell. You’re pretty. Remember that. Promise me you’ll remember that.”

  “Okay.”

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  He went to call the ambulance.

  Outside, the night was very dark.

  As he walked down the long hill, heading for the phone at the service station, he realized he could no longer hear the voice of the night. There were toads and crickets and the distant rumble of a train. But that low, sinister murmuring that he had always thought was there, that sound of supernatural machinery laboring at evil tasks, was gone. A few steps farther on, he realized that the voice of the night was now within him, and that, in fact, it always had been. It was within everyone, whispering maliciously, twenty-four hours a day, and the most important task in life was to ignore it, shut it out, refuse to listen.

  He called the ambulance, then the police.