Kate Wilhelm - Dark Door

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Dark Door

Kate Wilhelm

Prolog

The pursuit of knowledge was the only endeavor worthy of intelligence, the

master had taught, and the student Kri believed without question. As time

passed, the student Kri achieved high status, not yet a master, but already an

associate, and together he and the master developed and launched the first

probe for life among the stars.

The tiny cylinder passed through interspace and back as programmed, but in the

messages it now sent were streaks of clashing colors, way cry mud-gray

splotches, even a black spray that swelled and shrank, appeared and vanished.

With regret the master shadowed the self-destruct panel. The fountain of

multihued lights that recorded the probe existence dimmed and faded. The

messages ceased.

The second probe, much altered, did not send any messages after its passage

through interspace, but now a column of blackness marred the fountain of

lights. This black column did not waver, nor did it grow; however, it shifted,

first here, then there. It persisted despite all their efforts to remove it.

Again the master shadowed the self-destruct panel; the column of darkness

continued to lash within the fountain of lights. No messages were forthcoming.

Reviewers were appointed to examine the work, test the equations, study the

methods; they could find no flaw, yet the fountain of many colors remained

disfigured and hideous, marred by darkness that had become the darkness of

ignorance, and then the shadow of fear.

"We cannot find the probe," the master said at the review hearing. "Once it

passed through interspace, it was lost to us. We know it still exists

somewhere. We know it is seriously flawed, perhaps fatally flawed. It will

pass out of the galaxy eventually, and until it does, it poses a problem,

perhaps even a threat to any life form it locates. It is beyond our ability to

stop it or to correct it. We have tried to no avail."

The reviewers gazed at the marred fountain of light, a pale, sad flicker here

and there the only visible reaction among them. After the adjournment, the

master own lights dimmed and faded; before the associate could follow his

example, the reviewers intervened.

"Associate Kri," the master of reviewers said, "the pursuit of knowledge is to

the academy the highest order of intelligence, second only to love and respect

for intelligence itself. You and your master have brought dishonor to the

academy, and a threat to life. However, in doing so, you have also alerted us

to the dangers of unknown hazards that lie in interspace. We thought ourselves

ready to travel among the stars, and we find instead that we must be resigned

to roam no further than the reaches of our own star system until we have

solved the problems your probe has revealed. Because the good you have brought

to your own race is overshadowed by the evil that you may have brought to

other life forms, it is the decision of this review panel that you must

complete the project you have begun. Until the lights of the probe fade, you

will monitor them, for however long the probe continues to exist."

Krfs own lights dimmed and flickered. "May I," he asked in a low voice,

"continue to work on the probe in order to try to solve this mystery?"

"Yes, Associate Kri. That is the only task you will have for as long as it

exists."

The cylinder emerged from interspace in the star system of a primary with five

satellites. One by one it orbited the satellites until it found life. When it

completed its examination of the planet, it left behind a trail of

destruction---death and madness. Associate Kri prayed to the intelligence tlat

ruled all life to destroy it, but the fountain of many lights remained

undiminished; the blackness at its heart continued. It did not respond to

shadowing of the destruet panel; it did not send any messages.

On the planet Earth fur-clad hunters pursued shaggy mastodons across the ice

sheets to the steppes beyond, and some kept going south, always south. They

came in waves, seeking better hunting, more hospitable territory, and then the

ice crashed into the sea, and the retreat vanished.

In time, Kri people launched an interspace starship, then another, and

another. Some of them even searched for the tiny cylinder, but they could not

find it in the immensity of space. Kri continued to monitor the fountain of

lights with the blackness of evil at its core. He knew exactly when it emerged

from interspace, when it reentered. He could not know what it did in the

intervals. He no longer saw the multihued lights; all he could see was the

blackness, the dark door of evil.

Chapter

June 1979. Carson Danvers knew he was being overly cautious, getting insurance

quotes for all four places he was considering, but he had time, and it was

better to be cautious before the fact than have cause for regrets afterward.

Although River House was fourth on his list, he and Elinor had already decided

this was the one they really wanted. Half an hour out of Washington, D.C.,

through lush countryside with gentle hills and woods, a tiny village a few

miles past the inn, it was perfect. He would keep the name, he had already

decided. River House, a fine gourmet restaurant for the discriminating. He

glanced at Elinor's profile, caught the suggestion of a smile on her lips, and

felt his own grin broaden. In the back seat his son Gary chatted easily with

John Loesser. Gary was seventeen, ready for Yale in the fall; it was time to

make the change if they were ever to do it. He suppressed the urge to laugh

and sing; John Loesser would never understand. Carson pulled off the Virginia

state road onto a winding blacktop driveway and slowed down to navigate the

curves, several of them before the old inn came into sight. The grounds were

neglected, of course--rhododendrons thirty feet high, blackberry brambles,

sumac--and the building had the windows boarded up. But even so its air of

regal affluence was unmistakable. Three stories high, with a wide antebellum

porch and beautifully carved pillars that reached to the third level, it

bespoke the graciousness of the century past. "We'd keep the upper levels for

our own living quarters," he said over his shoulder to John Loesser. "A main

dining room downstairs, several smaller rooms for private dinners, a lounge,

that sort of thing. I'll have to do a lot ofremodeling of course, but cheaper

than trying to build at today's prices." "If it's structurally sound," John

Loesser said in his precise way. He did not have stars in his eyes, and that

was all to the good, Carson thought. One of them should stay practical, add up

the pennies, add in insurance costs. That was John Loesser's department,

assessing the insurability of the place. He stopped his Buick at the front

entrance. As soon as they left the air-conditioned car, the heat of late June

in Virginia assailed them. Carson pulled off his coat, and after a moment John

Loesser did also. Elinor was sensibly dressed in a cotton shift and sandals,

her legs bare, and Gary had on shorts and a tank top. Only the businessmen,

Carson thought with some amusement, went through the motions of suits and

ties. And after he bought River House, made it the restaurant he had long

dreamed of owning, he promised himself never to wear a necktie again in his

life, or a coat in the summer. "I have flashlights," he said, opening the

trunk of the Buick. "I loosened some of the boards on the windows last week,

but the basement's like a cave." He handed John Loesser a large flashlight,

took another for himself, and saw that the other man was staring at two rifles

also in the trunk.

"Gary's going to get in some practice while we're going over the building." He

closed the trunk and tossed the keys to his son. Elinor watched the three men

remove some of the window boards, then go on to the next bunch and take them

down. How alike they were, she thought, surprised, all three over six feet,

all blond. Of course, Gary was still somewhat frail-looking, having shot

upward over twelve inches in the past year; it might take him three or four

years to fill in the frame he was constructing for himself. Seventeen, she

found herself marveling. A sharp image superimposed itself before her eyes,

eclipsing for a second the three men: an image of herself walking with Carson,

with Gary in the middle swinging from their hands, laughing. Yesterday. Ten

years, twelve years ago. She shook her head and turned to the front door of

the inn, put the key in the padlock, and opened it. When she entered, she left

the door wide oper/to admit air and more light. On one side was a wide

sculpted staircase sweeping up in a graceful curve. They would have a women's

lounge up there; permit the customers to fantasize briefly of being the lady

of the house, making a grand entrance to a crowded, suddenly hushed ballroom,

glittering with the wealth of the Virginia aristocracy. Elinor smiled to

herself. That was her fantasy. The area to the right had held the registration

desk; nothing was there's now. A dosed door led to a narrow hallway and small

offices. To the left of the entrance stretched a very large room with a

centered fireplace built with meticulously matched river stones. She could

visualize the palm trees, the velvet-covered lounges and chairs, low, ornately

carved tables, brass lamps .... Only faded, rose-colored flocked wallpaper

remained. She moved through the large open space toward the back of the

building. Suddenly she stopped, blinded by a stabbing headache; she groped for

the doorway to steady herself. An overwhelming feeling of disorientation, of

dizziness, swept her, made her catch her breath and hold onto the door frame;

her eyes closed hard. The moment passed and she could feel a vein throbbing in

her temple, a knife blade of pain behind her right eye. Not now, she moaned to

herself, not a migraine now. She opened her eyes cautiously; when the pain did

not increase, she began to move again, through a corridor to the rear of the

inn. She unlocked another door and threw it wide open, went out to another

porch to lean against a railing. She took one very deep breath after another,

forcing relaxation on her neck muscles, which had become like iron. Gradually

the headache eased, and by the time Carson and John Loesser moved into sight,

it was a steady throb, no longer all-demanding. Carson saw her leaning on the

rail and felt a familiar twinge of pleasure. Standing like that, in profile,

as trim and as slender as she had been twenty years ago, she looked posed. She

looked lovely. "Are you married?" he asked John Loesser. "My wife died five

years ago," Loesser said without expression. "Oh, sorry." Loesser was already

moving on. Carson caught up again. "Here's the back entrance. We'll have a

terrace down there, and tables on the porch overlooking the river. The

property extends to the bank of the river. I want it to be like a garden,

invite strolling, relaxing." They went through the open back door, on to the

kitchen, which would need a complete remodeling, walls to come out, a dumb

waiter to go in. Carson was indicating his plans when John Loesser suddenly

grunted and seemed about to fall. He reached out and caught a cabinet,

steadied himself, stood swaying with his eyes shut. By the time Carson got to

him, he was pushing himself away from the cabinet. A film of perspiration

covered his face; he looked waxy and pale. Carson's first thought was heart

attack, and with that thought came the fear men his age, mid-forties, always

suffered. Loesser was that age, too, he knew. He took Loesser's arm. "Let's go

outside, get some air. Are you okay?" "I'm all right," John Loesser said,

pulling free. His voice was faint; he sounded puzzled, not afraid. "A dizzy

spell. Could there be some gas in here? Bad air?"

Carson looked at him doubtfully. "How? I've been all over this building three

times already Elinor, Gary, we've been in every room, and that was with the

boards on the windows, before we were allowed to open it up at all."

Loesser drew in a deep breath, his color back to normal, a look of irritation

the only expression Carson could read. "Whatever it was, it gone now. I have a

bit of a headache, maybe that's to blame. You understand any figure I come up

with is a ball park figure, contingent on many other reports. A termite

inspection, for example."

Carson nodded and they wandered slowly throughout the other rooms on the main

floor. Something was different, he thought suddenly It was true that he and

Elinor and Gary had prowled through the building three times, but now

something was changed. He felt almost as if sbmething or someone lurked just

out of sight, that if he could swivel his head fast enough, without warning,

he might catch a glimpse of an intruder. He had had a violent headache ever

since their arrival. Pain throbbed behind his eyes. It was the damn heat, he

decided; maybe a storm was building, the air pressure was low. Or high; it

felt as if the air was compacted, pressing against his head. He and Loesser

went up the wide, curving staircase to the second floor, where he began to

outline the plans for a women's lounge.

Suddenly he heard Elinor scream, a piercing shriek of terror, cut off by a

gunshot. He turned and raced through the upstairs hallway to the rear stairs,

John Loesser ran toward the stairs they had just ascended. Before Carson

reached the first floor there was another gunshot that sounded even louder

than the first. He tore out to the porch, pounded to the far end of it, and

saw Elinor crumpled on the floor.

One of her sandals was gone, he thought distantly. How could that have

happened? He touched her face. One eye was open, as blue as the dress twisted

about her thighs. The other side of her face was gone. He touched her cheek,

whispering her name. He started to gather her up, to lift her, carry her

inside, straighten out her dress From a long way away he heard a mank

anguished wail. Angered by the noise, he jerked up, snapped around, and saw

his son Gary leveling the rifle at him. He was still moving when the gun

fired, and fired again. He was flung backward by the momentum, stopped briefly

by the porch rail. Then he toppled over it to fall to the thick underbrush

below.

He came awake slowly and did not know where he was, why he was sleeping in the

shrubbery. He tried to rise and fell back to the ground. Someone sobbed; he

listened to hear if the other person would say something. An insect cho'us

crescendoed. He tried to roll to one side and prop himself up, but found that

one of his arms had turned to lead. There was no pain. Something was wrong

with his vision; he wiped his eyes with the hand that worked. Sticky. Suddenly

he really looked at his hand and saw blood; memory returned, and pain swamped

him. He heard the distant sob again and knew this time that he was making the

noise. Elinor! Gary! He began to work at pulling himself up, rising first to

his knees. Then, fighting dizziness and nausea, he got to his feet. He

staggered, fell, and rested before starting again.

Falling, crawling, staggering, pulling himself along with his good hand

grasping the brambles and scrub trees, he hauled himself to the building, then

up the stairs to the porch, where he collapsed again. After many minutes he

started to inch his way to Elinor. The entire end of the porch was awash in

blood. Elinor was not there.

A wave of pain took his breath away; he pitched forward and lay still. When he

could open his eyes again, he saw her footprints, one shod, one bare. She must

have gone for help, he thought clearly, and in his mind the vision of her

destroyed face and head swelled, dwindled, and swelled again like a pulse. He

forced himself to his feet.

For the next hour he followed the bloody footprints, sometimes on his knees,

sometimes staggering on his feet. At the bottom of the curved stairs there was

a bigger pool of blood, more prints. He picked up a wallet. Loesser must have

dropped it, he thought distantly, the way Elinor lost her sandal. He put the

wallet in his pocket and pulled himself up the stairs, resting more and more

often now; sometimes he slept a little, woke to hear his own groans. Slowly,

he moved on upwards. They were all around him, he realized during one of his

rests. The intruders he had sensed before were still here, everywhere,

watching him, surrounding him, pressing against his head, waiting. He came to

the rifle and rested by it, moved on. Then the prints stopped. He lay with his

cheek on the floor and knew one of the bloody trails was his own. Straight

ahead was a closet with an open door; the bloody path ended there. He sighed

tiredly and lifted his head, tried to see past a blackness that filled the

doorway from top to bottom. Inky blackness, nothing else. He rested. They were

here, everywhere, he thought again, from a great distance. Waiting. Suddenly

he jerked awake. Waiting for him to bleed to death. Waiting for him to die!

Slowly he began to retrace his trail. He rolled most of the way down the

stairs. He found himself at the Buick and fell onto the front seat and rested

a long time. It was getting dark. Key, he thought. He had tossed his keys to

Gary. Without any thought or plan, he found Elinor keys in her purse on the

passenger seat. He got the car started, and aimed at the state road. When he

reached it, he slumped forward and slept.

He heard a soothing voice, felt hands on him, tried to return to the drifting

state that was.not sleep, but pleasanter because it was dreamless oblivion.

The voice persisted. "Can you hear me? Come on, Mr. Loesser, wake up. You're

safe now. You'll be all right. Wake up, Mr. Loesser."

He was being pulled back in spite of himself. "A little more, Mr. Loesser,

then you can sleep again." The voice changed slightly. "He can hear you and

answer if he wants to." A different voice spoke. "Who shot you, Mr. Loesser?"

He opened his eyes, realized that only one seemed to work, and reached up to

feel a bandage that covered most of his face. He remembered being awake

earlier, remembered wanting, being denied, a sip of water, being allowed to

sleep again. "Who shot you, Mr. Loesser?" The speaker was out of focus,

thin-faced, sad-looking. "Gary," Carson said and heard it as a croak. "Did you

say Gary? You mean Gary Danvers?" "Gary," he said again and closed his eye.

"My wife ," "Yes. Your wife? What about your wife?" "Dead," he said in his

strange croaking voice. The other voice came back, the soothing one. "Go back

to sleep now, Mr. Loesser. Your wife died a long time ago. Remember? That was

a long time ago." "What that all about?" the sad man asked. "Heconfused.

Shock, trauma, loss of blood. His wife died in an airplane accident more than

five years ago. Let him rest now. You won't get much out of him until the

Demerol wears off, anyway" "Okay. Okay. I'll drop in tomorrow." Carson Danvers

drifted and thought that if he were John Loesser, he would have grieved for

his dead wife a long time ago. He slept.

Chapter

lIMr. Loesser," Dr. McChesney said, "go back home. Don't hang around here. I

can recommend a doctor to oversee your convalescence now. You need to be with

friends, relatives, people who know you and care for you. All this brooding

about what you might have done is pointless, Mr. Loesser. I've talked to the

detectives, and they all agree that there was nothing more. In fact, it was

very brave, perhaps even foolhardy, for you to try to help at all."

Carson Danvers sat on the side of his bed. His face was swathed in bandages. A

bullet had grazed his cheekbone, had torn away most of the flesh on one side.

He would need plastic surgery. His right arm was in a cast. A bullet had gone

through his shoulder. His torso was bandaged. They had gone in and removed

part of a rib shattered by the third bullet. The rib had deflected it, sent it

back outward through a second hole. Except for the plastic surgery, he was

repaired, healing, ready to be 'discharged from the hospital.

Dr. McChesney stood up. "If you decide to stay around here, I can recommend a

rooming house where they'll take care of you, and I'll have my nurse set up an

appointment in my office next week."

"That's what I'll do," Carson said. Talking hurt; he kept it at a minimum.

"Okay, I'll make the arrangements. Your company will pick up the bill, they

said. You're on sick leave for the next three months and we'll evaluate your

situation then. Nothing to worry about on that score." He regarded his patient

for a moment, then put his hand on Carson's shoulder. "I don't know how the

hell you dragged yourself up those stairs, either. God knows, John, you did

more than was human as it was. Don't torture yourself. I'll send in the nurse

for you."

Carson knew he had to tell them the truth about who he was, but not yet, he

thought. Not yet. Elly parents, her sister, his parents .... How could he tell

them Gary had gone crazy and killed his mother? Even trying to form the words

it would take to tell them brought a long shudder and made his eyes sting with

tears. Not yet.

The strange thing was the ease with which he was getting away with being John

Loesser. They had found a walletm Loesser's walletrain his pocket; Carson's

things were in his coat left in the Buick that day. Even the man the company

sent out had accepted him. Of course, he had not known Loesser personally, but

he had seen him a time or two. Carson had not been expected to talk then, and

the bandages had concealed his identity further, but even so, he mused, even

so. The few times he had started to explain, he had gone dumb, started to

shake, lost control. Twice they had given him an injection to put him to sleep

again, and the last time they had sent in a new doctor whose name had already

escaped him. A shrink, he had realized after a short time. Guilt, the shrink

had stated ponderously, was the most debilitating emotion of all. He had

talked on, but Carson had stopped listening. Guilt of the survivor, he

realized, was what the shrink assumed he was suffering from. And he was, he

was. Guilt over doing something so horrible to Gary that he had turned on his

own parents with a gun. Guilt over not being able to help his dead wife. Guilt

over not being able to help his child. Guilt, guilt, guilt. But as John

Loesser the guilt was abstract, distant. He would tell them later, he had

decided that day. Much later.

Two weeks after leaving the hospital he flew to Richmond and let himself into

Loesser's apartment. He still had bandages on his face, would have them until

plastic surgery did its magic. People he met averted their gaze, and that was

fine with him. The apartment was scrupulously neat almost obsessively so--with

good paintings, good books, good furniture, good stereo and television. Money,

he thought bleakly. Loesser had had money. He had not given it any

consideration until then. He went through the apartment carefully, getting to

know his host, not liking him, but reassured because it became more and more

apparent that Loesser had had no friends or relatives. Had he become a recluse

after his wife death, or had the trait always been there? There were names in

an address book; he recognized a few from cards he had received impersonal,

duty cards--while he was still hospitalized. He found the financial

statements. There was real money. Mrs. Loesser insurance had been half a

million dollars, a traveler policy that anticipated the worst scenarios, and

now and then paid handsomely. He found her picture, a pretty woman with a

small mouth, upturned nose, blue eyes. A forgettable face. The picture had

been put away in a closet in a box of mementos, along with her college

diploma, and medical records dating from childhood up to the time over five

years ago when they had ceased to matter.

He spent the weekend there, learning about Loesser, learning about money,

about stock holdings, bonds, certificates of deposit. No one challenged him.

The building superintendent knocked on the door, and when Carson opened it on

the chain, the man hardly glanced at him. He had heard, he said; what a hell

of a thing. If there was anything he could do .... He went away.

Carson sat in the darkening room on Sunday and suddenly was overwhelmed with

grief that shook his frame, made his cheek hurt with a stabbing pain, made his

chest tighten until he feared--and would have welcomed a heart attack. He had

to call her parents, he knew, but not yet. Not until they found her, found

Gary. No bodies had been recovered. Not yet.

He drove Loesser Malibu back to Washington, and collapsed into bed as soon as

he arrived at his rooming house. He could get an apartment, he thought,

staring at the ceiling, a good apartment with a view, and there he would wait

until they found her, found Gary, and then he would call her parents. The next

day he drove out to the inn.

Someone had come and boarded it all up again, exactly the same as it had been

the first time he had seen it. He walked around the building and stopped at

the back porch where he had found her. Although it had been scrubbed clean, in

his mind the blood was there, her body was there, one sandal missing. Where

had it gone? He almost went down the stairs to the tangle of briars to search

for it. He clutched the rail with his good hand and rubbed his eyes with the

other. He remembered rising, seeing his son with the rifle. Suddenly, cutting

through the memories, there was the other thing again, just as it had been the

last time. Something present but out of sight. Carson did not move, held his

breath listening. No sound. But something was there, he knew without doubt.

Something. Slowly he turned, and now he closed his eyes, concentrating on that

something. He felt as if he had moved into an electrical field vibrating on a

level that did not affect muscles and skin, but was active deep inside his

head, making it ache. For a moment he swayed, but the dizziness passed quickly

and all he felt now was a headache

14 15

that was growing in intensity. Like a hangover, he thought from a distance,

spacing himself away from it, the way he had learned twenty years ago in

college. Pretend it isn't there, think yourself away from it, and let the damn

thing ache all it wants. Cholly's advice. Cholly, his college roommate whom he

had not thought of in years. The headache became manageable and he opened his

eyes with caution, as if afraid of startling away that something that was

there with him. He could still feel it; he felt surrounded by it, pressed from

all sides. Moving very slowly he started to back away, backed down the steps

to the overgrown path, walked deliberately around the building to get inside

his car, Loesser car. It was still there with him. He turned on the ignition,

and then it

was gone. That night he stood naked before his mirror and regarded the long

ugly scar that started somewhere on his back out of sight, curved under his

arm and went up to just under his nipple. The scars on his shoulder were

uglier, bigger. The skin and bone grafts would blend in, the doctors had said,

but it would take time. His face was the worst of all. Hideously mutilated,

inflamed, monstrous. Plastic surgery would hide it all, they assured him. He

was an excellent candidate for the kind of reconstruction they were capable of

now. His gaze traveled down his body and he was mildly surprised to see how

thin he had become. He had lost nearly forty pounds. The doctors had been

amazed that he had lived through his attack, that his recovery was going along

so uneventfully, so quickly. He had been amazed at the same things, but now he

knew why he had been spared, knew what he had to do. He had been spared

because he had to kill the thing in the inn. He moved the next day to a

bright, airy apartment with a view of the Potomac that looked lovely,

inviting. He thought of the river below the inn; was that's where the bodies

had been hidden? He knew even as he wondered that that was wrong; they had

been taken behind that darkness of the doorway. This time no tears came. He

began to think of what he would need. Crowbar. Flashlight. Gasoline. He

already had decided he had to burn it out, let fire consume and purify the

house. Matches. How terrible it would be to have everything ready and no

matches. After a thunderstorm, he decided, when the woods would be wet. He did

not want a conflagration in the woods, did not want to hurt anyone, or chance

having the fire put out before its work was done. An interior fire that would

be out of control before it could be spotted from outside, at a time when no

one would be on the road to call a fire department. He made his plans and the

next day began to provision himself. There were thunderstorms almost every

afternoon; he was able to pick his night.

He felt it as soon as he stopped the car at the inn. It was three-thirty in

the morning, an inky black night, the air heavy with leaf mold and forest

humus, earthy smells of the cycle of life and death repeated endlessly. He

could smell the river, and the grass. He circled the inn to the back, where he

forced open the boards on several windows. He climbed in and opened the door,

then went back to the porch. Carefully, he poured gasoline where her body had

been, followed her invisible tracks through the house, one foot shod, one

bare, both bloody; no traces remained, but he knew. He covered the trail with

gasoline. Up the curving stairs, through the hallway, to the door where the

bloody prints had stopped, where the abyss still yawned. That was where Elinor

and Gary were, he knew. They had been taken into the abyss. He sprayed the

walls with gas, soaked the floor with it, then finished emptying the can as he

retraced his Own trail from that day, down the back stairs, to the porch. It

was done. A distant rumble of thunder shook the air. The things all around

him, pressing against him, vanished momentarily, then returned as the thunder

subsided. Now and then he found himself brushing his hand before his face, as

if to clear away

16 17

cobwebs; his hand passed through emptiness, and they were still there,

pressing against him. The dizziness did not come this time, but his head was

aching mildly. He struck a match and tossed it to the gleaming wet gasoline

where she had lain. The porch erupted into flames that raced through the

building, following the trail he had made, through rooms and halls, up the

stairs. There was a whoosh of flame from the upper floor. He had not closed

the back door; belatedly he wondered if he should have knocked boards off in

the front to admit a cross draft. He stood watching the flames blaze up the

kitchen wall, and he knew he had done enough. Slowly he turned and walked to

the car, taking the something with him, oblivious of the death he had planned

for it. He got in and turned on the ignition; as before, it fled. He drove

away without looking back.

Over the six months he had more surgery on his shoulder, plastic surgery on

his face. A scar gleamed along his cheekbone. They could fix that, they told

him. Give it a few months first. He did not go back. He learned to use his

right arm all over again; the bank, lawyers, no one questioned the changed

signature. They all knew the trauma he had suffered, the difficult recovery he

was making. He took from Carson Danvers very little. Carson had been a master

chef, and the new person emerging equipped his kitchen with the best cookware

available and bought good spices and herbs, but he used them very little. John

Loesser had been obsessively neat; the new man liked neatness more than he had

realized, but not to such an extreme. Carson had been outgoing, friendly,

talkative. He had liked people, liked to entertain people, kid around with

them. The new man knew no one; there was no one he wanted to talk to, no

jokes, no stories worth repeating any more. He spent many hours in his

darkened apartment in Washington watching the lights on the river, watching

the patterns of light in the city, thinking nothing. He spent many hours

reliving his past, going over scenes again and again until he knew he had

recaptured every detail, then going on to other scenes. At first the pain was

nearly intolerable, but over time it lessened and he could even smile at the

memories. Their first date, how awkward he had been, how afraid he would

offend her, bore her, even frighten her. He had loved her from the very first,

and had declared his love much too soon, long before she was ready to consider

him seriously. He had been so dumb, tongue-tied with her, and adoring. The

pain diminished, but the emptiness grew. The company sent someone out to see

him again, and for the first time he suggested that he might never return

work. He talked to the man--Tony Martinelliwin a shadowed living room, making

certain he was hidden by shadows.' Martinelli did not press him, was probably

relieved. They would wait, he had said; there was no rush, no quick decision

to be made. But no one had urged him to mend quickly and return. Loesser had

had no real friends in the company; no one would miss him. Intime they sent

papers; he hired a law firm to represent his interests, and paid no more

attention to any of that until one day when he received a letter asking

politely if he would mind sending back certain records, certain computer

information. He went to the study where he had John Loesser computer, records,

files, books--all boxed. He had not looked at any of it. That afternoon he

unloaded one box after another and examined the contents. He got out the

computer manual and connected parts to other parts as directed, but he did not

know what to do with it. There were books on the insurance industry, on

computers, on statistics and rates and liability schedules; there were

actuarial tables. At last he had something to do, something he could not ask

for help with; Loesser was supposed to know all this. It had been weeks since

he had called the police to enquire about the missing bodies, weeks since he

had thought about revealing

18 19

his own identity. That night he realized that Carson Danvers was as dead as

Elinor and Gary Danvers. He learned how to use the computer, learned how to

copy the disks, use the modem. He took a large folder to a Xerox machine and

copied everything in it, then reboxed the originals. He sent the company the

information and was finally done with them. He could not have said why he

wanted copies; there was no real reason other than it was something to do.

Without pondering further, he gradually learned the business through John

Loesser accumulation of records and notes and his modem connections. He had

been startled one day when, following John Loesser directions, written in the

man precise, minute handwriting, he had found himself accessing a mainframe

computer that apparently held data from the entire insurance industry.

Fascinated by the information available, he had scrolled through categories.

Liability claims: flood damage in Florida, starved cattle in Montana, wind

damage in Texas. · . Accidents in supermarkets, on city buses, in neighbors'

yards and houses .... Medical claims for hernias, broken bones,

hysterectomies, bypasses .... He was appalled by the automobile claims, then

bored by them. He learned how to ask for specific groupings: shark attacks,

bee stings, food poisonings .... His fingers were shaking when he keyed in the

request for hotel fires. There it was, his River House, followed by

Arson--unsolved. He was shaking too hard to continue. What i f they had a way

of tracing who looked up information like that? What if they came back to him?

The next day he registered as a public insurance adjuster, making his use of

the computer data appear more legitimate. Why? he asked himself, but he did

not pursue it. He looked for a list of closed hotels and marveled at the

number. Carson Danvers would have liked seeing what all was available, he

thought. Some days later it occurred to him to look up instances of sudden

madness and homicides, and again he was appalled.

He scrolled the list and went on to something else, then stopped. Camden, he

thought. He had seen something about Camden, Ohio, in the papers recently, and

there was one of the abandoned hotels in Camden. He went back to that list and

found it. Dwyer House, built 1897, closed 1936. Forty-two rooms. Used as an

office building from 1938 to 1944. In litigation from 1944 to 1954. Owned by

Gerstein and Winters Realty Company. Insured for forty thousand. It sounded

almost exactly like the inn that Carson Danvers had been looking for. Wrong

place, but right building. In his mindk eye he saw the wide back porch, Elly

body sprawled, the bloody prints that led up the handsome, curved staircase.'

And he felt again the unseen presence that had swarmed all around him. Saw

again the vacant, mad look on Gary face, the look of homicidal insanity.... He

turned off the computer and went out for a long walk in the city. The next day

he looked up Camden in the library newspaper files. He was no longer shaking,

but instead felt as cold and hard and brittle as an icicle. He found the story

that had caught his eye, the match his mind had made. Mildred Hewlitt had gone

mad and slaughtered several patients in a nursing home on Hanover Street,

where she worked. She had vanished, and so had one of the victims. The hotel,

Dwyer House, was also on Hanover Street. That was what had stopped him. He

walked home and looked up the computer listing for the claim that had first

sent the hairs rising on his arms and neck. Two weeks earlier, a college boy

had gone mad and run his car through a pedestrian mall; he had fled on foot

and vanished. One of the victims had filed a claim; the mainframe had recorded

it. That day Carson Danvers packed a suitcase and left for Camden. He stole an

Ohio license plate from a parked car in a shopping mall, and put it on his car

the morning he reached Camden. He checked into a motel outside town, read the

local paper from the past two days, walked downtown. He chatted with a waiter,

the motel desk clerk, several others. He

did not go to the real estate office. He went to the shopping mall where the

clerks were all ready to talk about the terrible accident. "He came in over

there," a woman said, standing outside a Hallmark shop, pointing to a stretch

of pavement that was barricaded now. A row of wooden planters had been

smashed, store windows were boarded up. "He revved up and came in doing maybe

fifty, sixty miles an hour, screaming like a banshee. My God, people were

flying this way and that! Everyone screaming! Blood everywhere! And he got out

and ran. No one tried to stop him. No one had time to do anything, what with

all the screaming and the blood. He got clean away." Carson shook his head in

disbelief and walked on to a Sears store, where he bought a crowbar and heard

the same story, embellished a little because this time lhe salesman relating

it had not actually seen what happened. He put the crowbar in his car and went

to a K-Mart, where he bought a gas can and flashlight. Then he found his way

to Hanover Street. It started in town, went straight through a subdivision,

and then became a country road very quickly. The nursing home where Mildred

Hewlitt had worked was a few blocks from the subdivision; after that there was

a small store and gas station combined, and then farmland and sparse woods. A

four-lane highway had been built three miles to the south; business had

followed, and Hanover Street was left to the truck farmers. The same as River

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DarkDoorKateWilhelmPrologThepursuitofknowledgewastheonlyendeavorworthyofintelligence,themasterhadtaught,andthestudentKribelievedwithoutquestion.Astimepassed,thestudentKriachievedhighstatus,notyetamaster,butalreadyanassociate,andtogetherheandthemasterdevelopedandlaunchedthefirstprobeforlifeamongthest...

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