Strangers by Dean Koontz
Father Wycazik nodded.
Winton said, “The kind of people take in a nephew when he’s gone wrong, try to set him straight. But you can’t set a kid like that straight. You break your heart trying, Father. This Ernesto, he’s been in trouble since he was in fifth grade. Juvenile arrest record. Six offenses. Two of them pretty serious. We get here, he’s naked as a jaybird, screaming his head off, eyes bugged out like the pressure in his head’s going to blow his skull apart.”
Winton’s gaze unfocused, as if he were seeing back into time and had as clear a view of that scene as when he had first encountered it.
“Ernesto’s got Hector, the little boy you probably saw when you came in, he’s got him down on the sofa, holding him, and he’s got a goddamn six-inch switchblade at Hector’s throat. Mr. Mendoza ... well, he’s going crazy, wanting to rush Ernesto and take the knife, but scared Ernesto will slash Hector. Ernesto’s screaming, he was blissed on angel dust. He’s PCP-crazy, and you can’t talk sense to him. We drew our guns because you don’t just walk up to some doped-out freak with a knife and shake hands. But we didn’t want to try to shoot him because he had the knife at Hector’s throat, Hector was crying, and Ernesto could’ve killed the kid if we made the wrong move. So we tried to talk him down, talk him away from Hector, and we seemed to make headway, ’cause he started to take the knife off the boy. But then all of a sudden, Jesus, he slashed quick, cut Hector’s throat almost from ear to ear, deep”—Winton shuddered—“deep. Then he raised the knife over his head, so we shot him, I’m not sure how many times, blew him away, and he fell dead on top of Hector. We pulled him off, and there was little Hector, one hand trying to close up the hole in his throat, blood spurting between his fingers, eyes already glazing over....”
The cop took a deep breath and shuddered again. His eyes came back into focus, as if he needed to retreat from the horror of the past. He looked toward the window, beyond which the gray winter daylight sifted like soot over the gray Uptown street.
Stefan’s heart had begun to pound, not because of the bloody horror that Winton had described but because he could see where the cop’s story had to be leading, and he was eager to hear the miracle described.
Looking at the window, Winton continued. His voice grew shakier as he spoke: “There’s no first aid for that kind of wound, Father. Severed arteries, veins. Big arteries in the neck. Blood pumps out like water from a hose, and you can’t use a tourniquet, not on a neck, and direct pressure won’t seal up a carotid artery. Shit, no. I knelt on the floor beside the sofa, and I saw Hector was dying fast. He looked so little, Father, so little. That kind of wound, they’re gone in two minutes, sometimes a lot less, and he was so little. I knew it was useless, but I put my hands on Hector’s neck, like somehow I could hold the blood in him, hold the life in him. I was sick, angry, scared, and it just wasn’t right that a boy so little should die that way, that hard, not right he should die at all, not right, and then ... then....”
“And then he healed,” Father Wycazik said softly.
Winton Tolk finally looked away from the gray light at the window and met Stefan’s eyes. “Yes, Father. He healed. He was soaked in his own blood, seconds away from death, but he healed. I didn’t even know what was happening, didn’t feel it happening, nothing special in my hands. Wouldn’t you think I’d feel something special in my hands? But the first I realized that something incredible was happening was when the blood stopped spurting against my fingers, and the boy shut his eyes at the same time, which was when I thought he was dead for sure, and I just ... I shouted, ‘No! God, no!’ And I started to take my hands away from Hector’s throat, to look at it, and that’s when I saw the wound was ... the wound was closed up. It still had a raw, ugly look to it, an awful line where the knife cut deep, but the flesh was knit together into a bright red scar, a healing scar.”
The big man stopped speaking because shimmery lenses of tears had formed over his eyes. He was overcome once more. If he’d been racked by grief, he probably would have suppressed it, but this was something even more powerful: joy. Pure wild disbelieving joy. He could not contain several explosive, wrenching sobs.
With hot tears in his own eyes, Father Wycazik held out both hands.
Winton took them, squeezed them tight, and did not let go as he continued: “Paul, my partner, saw it happen. So did the Mendozas. And two other uniforms arrived just as we shot Ernesto: They saw it, too. And when I looked at that red line across his throat, somehow I knew what I had to do. I put my hands on the boy again, covered up the wound again, and I thought about him being alive, sort of wished him alive. My mind was in high gear, and I made the connection with Brendan and me, the sandwich shop. I thought about how the scars on my chest had been disappearing the last few days, and I knew somehow it’s connected. So I kept my hands on his throat, and in a minute or so he opened his eyes, he smiled at me, you should’ve seen that smile, Father, so I took my hands away again, and the scar was there but lighter. The boy sat up and asked for his mother, and that’s ... that’s when I went to pieces.” Winton paused and gulped some air. “Mrs. Mendoza took Hector into the bathroom, stripped him out of his bloody clothes, bathed him, and all the time more people from the department kept showing up. Word was getting around. Thank God, the reporters haven’t cottoned to it yet.”
For a while the two men sat facing each other in silence, gripping hands. Then Stefan said, “Did you try to bring Ernesto back?”
“Yes. In spite of what he’d done, I put my hands on his wounds. But it didn’t work with him, Father. Maybe because he was already dead. Hector was only dying, not yet gone, but Ernesto was dead.”
“Did you notice odd marks in your hands, on your palms? Red rings of swollen flesh?”
“Nothing like that. What would it’ve meant if there’d been rings?”
“I don’t know,” Father Wycazik said. “But they appear in Brendan’s hands when... when these things happen.”
They were silent again, and then Winton said, “Is Brendan ... is Father Cronin some kind of saint?”
Father Wycazik smiled. “He’s a good man. But he’s no saint.”
“Then how did he heal me?”
“I don’t know precisely. But surely it’s a manifestation of the power of God. Somehow. For some reason.”
“But how did Brendan pass along this power to heal?”
“I don’t know, Winton. If he did pass it along. Maybe the power isn’t yours. Maybe it’s just God acting through you, first through Brendan and then through you.”
At last Winton let go of Father Wycazik’s hands. He turned his palms up and stared at them. “No, the power’s still here, still in me. I know that. Somehow. I feel it. And not just... not just the power to heal. There’s more.”
Father Wycazik raised his eyebrows. “More? What else?”
Winton frowned. “I don’t know yet. It’s all so new. So strange. But I feel... more. It’ll take time for it to develop.” He looked up from the pale palms of his callused black hands, awe-stricken and fearful. “What is Father Cronin, and what has he made of me?”
“Winton, get rid of the notion there’s anything evil or dangerous about this. It’s entirely a wondrous thing. Think of Hector, the child you saved. Remember what it was like to feel life regaining its hold in his small body. We’re players in a divine mystery, Winton. We can’t understand the meaning of it until God allows us to understand.”
Father Wycazik said he wanted to have a look at the boy, Hector Mendoza, and Winton said, “I’m not ready to go out there and face that crowd, even though they’re mostly my people. I’ll stay here a while. You’ll come back?”
“I’ve got other rather urgent business this morning, Winton. I have to get on with it soon. But I’ll be in touch with you. Oh, you can be sure of that! And if you need me, just call St. Bette’s.”
When Stefan left the bedroom, the waiting crowd of policemen and lab technicians fell silent as before. They parted in his path as he crosse
The boy was small, even for a six-year-old, with delicate facial bones. His eyes were bright and full of intelligence, proof that he’d suffered no brain damage in spite of losing most of his blood. But even more astonishing was the fact that his lost blood had evidently been replaced, without need of transfusions, which made the boy’s recovery even more miraculous than Tolk’s. The power in Winton’s hands seemed greater than it had been in Brendan’s.
When Father Wycazik stooped down to be at eye-level with Hector, the child grinned at him. “How are you feeling, Hector?”
“Okay,” the boy said shyly.
“Do you remember what happened to you, Hector?”
The child licked chocolate from his lips and shook his head: no.
“Is that a good candy bar?”
The boy nodded and offered Father Wycazik a bite.
The priest smiled. “Thank you, Hector, but that’s all yours.”
“Mama might give you one,” Hector said. “But don’t drop any on the carpet. That’s big trouble.”
Stefan looked up at Mrs. Mendoza. “He really doesn’t remember... ?”
“No,” she said. “God lifted the memory from him, Father.”
“You’re Catholic, Mrs. Mendoza?”
“Yes, Father,” she said, crossing herself with her free hand.
“Do you attend Our Lady of Sorrow? Yes, well, that’s Father Nilo’s parish. Have you called him?”
“No, Father. I didn’t know if...”
Father Wycazik looked up at Mr. Mendoza, who stood on the other side of his wife’s chair. “Call Father Nilo. Tell him what’s happened, ask him to come. Explain that I’ll be gone when he gets here but that I’ll talk to him later. Explain that I’ve much to tell him, that what he sees here isn’t the whole story.”
Mr. Mendoza hurried to the telephone.
Looking up at one of the detectives who had come close, Stefan said, “Have you taken pictures of the boy’s throat wound?”
The detective nodded. “Yeah. Standard procedure.” He laughed nervously. “What am I saying? There’s nothing standard about this.”
“Just so you have photographs to prove this happened,” Father Wycazik said. “Because I think soon there will be little or no scar.”
He turned to the boy again. “Now, Hector, if it’s okay, I’d like to touch your throat. I’d like to feel that mark.”
The boy lowered the candy bar.
Father Wycazik’s fingers were trembling when they touched the fiery scar tissue and moved slowly around the boy’s neck from one end of the wound to the other. A strong pulse beat in the carotid arteries on each side of the slender young throat, and Stefan’s heart leapt when he felt the miracle of life. Death had been defeated here, and Stefan believed he had been privileged to witness a fulfillment of the promise which was at the root of the Church’s existence: “Death shall not last; unto you shall be given life everlasting.” Tears rose in the priest’s eyes.
When at last Stefan reluctantly took his hand away from the boy and stood, one of the policemen said, “What’s it mean, Father? I heard you tell Mr. Mendoza this wasn’t the whole story. What’s happening?”
Stefan turned to look upon the assembly, which now numbered twenty. In their faces, he saw a longing to believe, not particularly in the truths of Catholicism or Christianity, for not all were Catholics or Christians, but a deep-seated longing to believe in something greater and better and cleaner than humankind, an intense yearning for spiritual transcendence.
“What’s it mean, Father?” one of them asked again.
“Something’s happening,” he told them. “Here, elsewhere. A great and wonderful something. This child is part of it. I can’t tell you for sure what it means or that we’ve seen the hand of God here, though I believe we have. Look at Hector on his mother’s lap, eating candy, and remember God’s promise: ‘There shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.’ In my heart of hearts, I feel that the former things are about to pass away. Now I must go. I’ve urgent business.”
Somewhat to his surprise, even though his explanation had been vague, they parted to make way for him and did not detain him further, perhaps because the miracle of Hector Mendoza had not been vague—had in fact been emphatically specific—and had already given them more answers than they could handle. But as Stefan went, some reached out to touch him, to squeeze his hand or shoulder, not with religious fervor but with an emotional camaraderie. Stefan was overcome by the need to touch them as well, to share a profound sense of the community of humankind, which had filled everyone in the room, to share the conviction that they were being swept toward some great destiny.
In Boston, at ten o’clock, Alexander Christophson, former United States Senator and Ambassador to Great Britain, former Director of the CIA, now retired for a decade, was reading the morning newspaper when he received a telephone call from his brother, Philip, the antiques dealer in Greenwich, Connecticut. They spoke for five minutes about nothing important, just two brothers keeping in touch, but the conversation had a secret purpose. At the end Philip said, “Oh, by the way, I spoke with Diana just this morning. Do you remember her?”
“I certainly do,” Alex said. “How’s she doing?”
“Oh, she has her troubles,” Philip said. “Too boring to discuss. But she says hello.” Then he changed the subject, recommending two new books that Alex might enjoy, as if Diana were of no real importance.
Diana was the code word that meant Ginger Weiss had phoned Philip and needed to speak with Alex. The moment he had seen Ginger at Pablo’s funeral, her silver-blond hair a-shimmer as if with a light of its own, she had made him think of Diana, goddess of the moon.
After he said goodbye to Philip, he told his wife, Elena, that he intended to drive to the mall. “I want to stop at the bookstore and pick up a couple of novels that Philip recommended.”
He actually went to the mall, but before he bought the books, he found a public phone booth and, using his AT&T credit card, called Philip to get the number that Ginger Weiss had left.
“She says it’s a pay phone in Elko, Nevada,” Philip told him.
When Alex put the Nevada call through, Ginger Weiss did not answer until the fifth ring. “Sorry,” she said. “I was in the car, parked beside the booth. It was just too cold to stand here and wait.”
“What are you doing in Nevada?” Alex asked.
“If I understood you correctly at Pablo’s funeral, you really don’t want me to answer questions like that.”
“Right. Less I know, the better. What did you want to ask me?”
She explained, with a minimum of detail, that she had found others suffering from memory blocks similar to hers, some with different false memories covering the same time span. Since Alex was the expert on brainwashing, Ginger wanted to know if implanting fake memories that included threads of reality was more difficult than implanting entirely false recollections, and he was able to assure her that, indeed, it was.
“That’s what we figured,” Ginger said. “But it’s good to hear you confirm it. Shows we’re on the right track. Now, one more thing: I want you to get some information for us. We need to know whatever you can learn about a Colonel Leland Falkirk, an officer in one of the Army’s elite DERO companies. I also need—”
“Wait, wait,” Alex said, looking nervously through the glass door of the booth at shoppers walking past in the mall, as if he were already under observation or even targeted for removal. “At the cemetery, I said I’d provide advice or background on mind-control techniques. But I warned you I wouldn’t dig up information. I explained my position.”
“Well, even though you’ve been retired for years, you must still know people in many of the right places—”
“Didn’t you hear me, Doctor? I will not get actively
“Now, don’t worry about digging up anything exotic or highly classified. We don’t expect that,” she said, as if she had not heard him. “Just the bare details of Falkirk’s service record might help us understand him and form an idea of what to expect from him.”
“Please, I—”
But she was indefatigable: “I also need to know about the Thunder Hill Depository, an Army facility here in Elko County.”
“No.”
“It’s supposed to be an underground storage facility, and maybe that’s all it was for a long time, or maybe it’s always been something else, but I know it’s not just an underground warehouse these days.”
“Doctor, I won’t do this for you.”
“Colonel Leland Falkirk and Thunder Hill Depository. It’s not so much to ask: no deep snooping, just what details you can glean. Talk to your old friends who’re still in the game. Then report to either Dr. George Hannaby there in Boston or to Father Stefan Wycazik, a priest in Chicago.” She gave him phone numbers. “I can get in touch with them, and they won’t mention your name when they tell me what you’ve reported. That way you don’t have to call me direct, and you stay in the clear.”
He tried and failed to control the palsied shaking of his hands. “Doctor, I’m sorry I volunteered even limited assistance. I’m an old man who’s afraid to die.”
“You’re also worried about sins you might’ve committed in the name of duty,” she said, repeating what he’d told her at the cemetery. “And you’d probably like to do something to atone for some of those sins, real or imagined. This would be atonement of a sort, Mr. Christophson.” She repeated the telephone numbers for Hannaby and Wycazik.
“No. If you’re interrogated, remember I said no, emphatically no.”
With maddening good cheer, she said, “Oh, and it would help if you had something for me within the next six or eight hours. I know that’s a tall order. But then again, I’m only asking for basic information, whatever’s in the unclassified files.”
“Goodbye, Doctor,” he said pointedly.
“I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”
“You will not hear from me.”
“Toodle-oo,” she said, and hung up on him first.
“Christ!” he said, slamming the receiver down.
She was an attractive woman, personable, intelligent, appealing in so many ways. But her absolute conviction that she would always get what she wanted—this was a trait he sometimes admired in a man, seldom or never in a woman. Well, she’d be disappointed this time. This time, she’d not get what she wanted. Damned if she would.
Yet... with his Cross pen, he had made note of the telephone numbers for Hannaby and Wycazik, which she had given him.
Dom and Ernie set out early Tuesday morning to reconnoiter at least part of the perimeter of Thunder Hill Depository. They went in Jack Twist’s new Jeep Cherokee. Jack himself was sleeping back at the motel, having gone to bed only a few hours ago, after spending half the night driving around Elko, staying on the move with Brendan Cronin and Jorja Monatella. Both the Cherokee and the motel’s Dodge van had four-wheel drive, but the Jeep was tougher, more maneuverable. The foothill and mountain roads up toward Thunder Hill might be icy in spots, and as the day promised new snow, they wanted the most reliable transportation.
Dom did not like the look of the sky. Thick dark clouds hung low over the high plains, lower over the foothills, and obscured the tops of the mountains. The weather forecast called for the first big storm of the year (later than usual this season), as much as fourteen inches of snow in the higher elevations. Not a single flake had fallen yet.
The raised and threatening lash of winter did not induce a pensive mood in Dom or Ernie; they were in high spirits upon setting out from the motel. They were finally doing something, acting not just reacting. In addition, there was the pleasant fellowship that exists when men who like each other set out on an adventure together—a fishing trip or an expedition to a ballpark. Or a scouting trip to explore the perimeter defenses of a military installation.
In no little measure, their excellent mood grew from the unexpected peacefulness of the night just past. For the first time in weeks, Dom’s sleep hadn’t been disturbed by nightmares or sleepwalking. He’d dreamed only of an undetailed chamber filled with golden light, evidently the same place that featured in Brendan’s dreams. Likewise, instead of lying awake in fear of the shadows beyond the glow of the bedside lamp, Ernie had drifted off to sleep at once. The others also said it was the most restful night in recent memory. Ginger’s theory, put forth over a quick cup of coffee this morning, was that their worst dreams had been related not to the mysterious events they’d witnessed on the night of July 6, but to the subsequent brainwashing. Therefore, now that they had an idea of what they’d endured at the hands of the mind-control experts, the subconscious pressure related to those experiences was relieved, eliminating the source of those particular bad dreams.
And Dom had a reason of his own to feel good about the day. This morning, no one had looked warily at him or treated him with deference because of his telekinetic power. At first he was baffled by their quick adjustment to his new status. Then he realized what must be going through their minds: Since they had shared his experiences of the summer before last, it was logical that they would also share his strange power sooner or later. They must believe their own development of paranormal abilities was merely lagging behind his. Eventually, if they did not acquire the power, they might build the emotional, intellectual, and psychological walls between them and him that would isolate him, as he feared. But for the moment, anyway, they were acting as if no gulf separated them from him, and he was grateful.
Now, humming softly, Ernie drove north on the two-lane county road, leaving the motel and the interstate behind them. They climbed some of the same rugged hills down which Jack Twist had come last night when making his clandestine approach to the Tranquility (although Jack had traveled overland), and Dom studied the changing terrain with interest. The rising land seemed leaner the higher it rose, revealing less flesh and more rocky bones that poked up everywhere in clavicles and scapulae and sternums of limestone, in fibulae and femurs of crumbling shale, in occasional ribs and spines of formidable granite. As if in awareness of the colder air of higher altitudes, the land wore more clothes: thicker petticoats of grass; more lavish skirts of sage and other bushes; then trees, trees, more trees—mountain mahogany, tall pines, cedar, quaking-aspen, and on eastern slopes, an occasional spruce or fir.
They’d gone only three miles when they reached the snow line. A thin mantle flanked the road at first, but in the next two miles it deepened to eight inches. Although a winter drought had held sway from September until early December, and although no major storm had swept the area yet this season, a few light snows had put down a respectable ground-cover, also frosting the bristled boughs of the evergreens.
But for a few small scattered patches of ice, the county road was cleared for easy travel. “They always keep it clean as far as Thunder Hill, even in killing