Dean R. Koontz - The Eyes of Darkness

DEAN

KOONTZ

Originally published under the pseudonym Leigh Nichols

BERKLEY BOOKS. NEW YORK

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as

"unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this

"stripped book."

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are

either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously,

and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business

establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Originally published under the

pseudonym Leigh Nichols.

THE EYES OF DARKNESS

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with

Nkui, Inc.

PRINTING HISTORY

Pocket Books edition / February 1981

Berkley edition /July 1996

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part,

by mimeograph or any other means, without permission.

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a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

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BERKLEY®

Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,

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are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

15 14 13

This better version is for Gerda,

with love.

After five years of work,

now that I'm nearly finished improving

these early novels first published under pen names,

I intend to start improving myself.

Considering all that needs to he done,

this new project will henceforth he known

as the hundred-year plan.

Tuesday,

DECEMBER 30

1

AT SIX MINUTES PAST MIDNIGHT, TUESDAY MORNing, on the way home from a late

rehearsal of her new stage show, Tina Evans saw her son, Danny, in a stranger's car. But Danny had

been dead more than a year.

Two blocks from her house, intending to buy a quart of milk and a loaf of whole-wheat bread, Tina

stopped at a twenty-four-hour market and parked in the dry yellow drizzle of a sodium-vapor light,

beside a gleaming, cream-colored Chevrolet station wagon. The boy was in the front passenger seat of

the wagon, waiting for someone in the store. Tina could see only the side of his face, but she gasped in

painful recognition.

Danny.

The boy was about twelve, Danny's age. He had thick dark hair like Danny's, a nose that resembled

Danny's, and a rather delicate jawline like Danny's too.

She whispered her son's name, as if she would frighten off this beloved apparition if she spoke any

louder.

Unaware that she was staring at him, the boy put one hand to his mouth and bit gently on his bent

thumb knuckle, which Danny had begun to do a year or so before he died. Without success, Tina had

tried to break him of that bad habit.

Now, as she watched this boy, his resemblance to Danny seemed to be more than mere coincidence.

Suddenly Tina's mouth went dry and sour, and her heart thudded. She still had not adjusted to the loss of

her only child, because she'd never wanted—or tried—to adjust to it. Seizing on this boy's resemblance

to her Danny, she was too easily able to fantasize that there had been no loss in the first place.

Maybe . . . maybe this boy actually was Danny. Why not? The more that she considered it, the less

crazy it seemed. After all, she'd never seen Danny's corpse. The police and the morticians had advised

her that Danny was so badly torn up, so horribly mangled, that she was better off not looking at him.

Sickened, grief-stricken, she had taken their advice, and Danny's funeral had been a closed-coffin

service. But perhaps they'd been mistaken when they identified the body. Maybe Danny hadn't been

killed in the accident, after all. Maybe he'd only suffered a mild head injury, just severe enough to give

him . . . amnesia. Yes. Amnesia. Perhaps he had wandered away from the wrecked bus and had been

found miles from the scene of the accident, without identification, unable to tell anyone who he was or

where he came from. That was possible, wasn't it? She had seen similar stories in the movies. Sure.

Amnesia. And if that were the case, then he might have ended up in a foster home, in a new life. And

now here he was sitting in the cream-colored Chevrolet wagon, brought to her by fate and by—

The boy became conscious of her gaze and turned toward her. She held her breath as his face came

slowly around. As they stared at each other through two windows and through the strange sulphurous

light, she had the feeling that they were making contact across an immense gulf of space and time and

destiny. But then, inevitably, her fantasy burst, for he wasn't Danny.

Pulling her gaze away from his, she studied her hands, which were gripping the steering wheel so

fiercely that they ached.

"Damn."

She was angry with herself. She thought of herself as a tough, competent, levelheaded woman who

was able to deal with anything life threw at her, and she was disturbed by her continuing inability to

accept Danny's death.

After the initial shock, after the funeral, she had begun to cope with the trauma. Gradually, day by

day, week by week, she had put Danny behind her, with sorrow, with guilt, with tears and much

bitterness, but also with firmness and determination. She had taken several steps up in her career during

the past year, and she had relied on hard work as a sort of morphine, using it to dull her pain until the

wound fully healed.

But then, a few weeks ago, she had begun to slip back into the dreadful condition in which she'd

wallowed imme-diately after she'd received news of the accident. Her denial was as resolute as it was

irrational. Again, she was pos-sessed by the haunting feeling that her child was alive. Time should have

put even more distance between her and the anguish, but instead the passing days were bringing her

around full circle in her grief. This boy in the station wagon was not the first that she had imagined was

Danny; in recent weeks, she had seen her lost son in other cars, in school-yards past which she had been

driving, on public streets, in a movie theater.

Also, she'd recently been plagued by a repeating dream in which Danny was alive. Each time, for a

few hours after she woke, she could not face reality. She half convinced herself that the dream was a

premonition of Danny's eventual return to her, that somehow he had survived and would be coming back

into her arms one day soon.

This was a warm and wonderful fantasy, but she could not sustain it for long. Though she always

resisted the grim truth, it gradually exerted itself every time, and she was repeatedly brought down hard,

forced to accept that the dream was not a premonition. Nevertheless, she knew that when she had the

dream again, she would find new hope in it as she had so many times before.

And that was not good.

Sick, she berated herself.

She glanced at the station wagon and saw that the boy was still staring at her. She glared at her tightly

clenched hands again and found the strength to break her grip on the steering wheel.

Grief could drive a person crazy. She'd heard that said, and she believed it. But she wasn't going to

allow such a thing to happen to her. She would be sufficiently tough on herself to stay in touch with

reality—as unpleasant as reality might be. She couldn't allow herself to hope.

She had loved Danny with all her heart, but he was gone. Torn and crushed in a bus accident with

fourteen other little boys, just one victim of a larger tragedy. Battered beyond recognition. Dead.

Cold.

Decaying.

In a coffin.

Under the ground.

Forever.

Her lower lip trembled. She wanted to cry, needed to cry, but she didn't.

The boy in the Chevy had lost interest in her. He was staring at the front of the grocery store again,

waiting.

Tina got out of her Honda. The night was pleasantly cool and desert-dry. She took a deep breath

and went into the market, where the air was so cold that it pierced her bones, and where the harsh

fluorescent lighting was too bright and too bleak to encourage fantasies.

She bought a quart of nonfat milk and a loaf of whole-wheat bread that was cut thin for dieters, so

each serving contained only half the calories of an ordinary slice of bread. She wasn't a dancer anymore;

now she worked behind the curtain, in the production end of the show, but she still felt physically and

psychologically best when she weighed no more than she had weighed when she'd been a performer.

Five minutes later she was home. Hers was a modest ranch house in a quiet neighborhood. The olive

trees and lacy melaleucas stirred lazily in a faint Mojave breeze.

In the kitchen, she toasted two pieces of bread. She spread a thin skin of peanut butter on them,

poured a glass of nonfat milk, and sat at the table.

Peanut-butter toast had been one of Danny's favorite foods, even when he was a toddler and was

especially picky about what he would eat. When he was very young, he had called it "neenut putter."

Closing her eyes now, chewing the toast, Tina could still see him—three years old, peanut butter

smeared all over his lips and chin—as he grinned and said, More neenut putter toast, please.

She opened her eyes with a start because her mental image of him was too vivid, less like a memory

than like a vision. Right now she didn't want to remember so clearly.

But it was too late. Her heart knotted in her chest, and her lower lip began to quiver again, and she

put her head down on the table. She wept.

• • •

That night Tina dreamed that Danny was alive again. Somehow. Somewhere. Alive. And he needed her.

In the dream, Danny was standing at the edge of a bottomless gorge, and Tina was on the far side,

opposite him, looking across the immense gulf. Danny was calling her name. He was lonely and afraid.

She was miserable because she couldn't think of a way to reach him. Mean-while, the sky grew darker

by the second; massive storm clouds, like the clenched fists of celestial giants, squeezed the last light out

of the day. Danny's cries and her response became increasingly shrill and desperate, for they knew that

they must reach each other before nightfall or be lost forever; in the oncoming night, something waited for

Danny, something fearsome that would seize him if he was alone after dark. Suddenly the sky was

shattered by light-ning, then by a hard clap of thunder, and the night imploded into a deeper darkness,

into infinite and perfect blackness.

Tina Evans sat straight up in bed, certain that she had heard a noise in the house. It hadn't been

merely the thunder from the dream. The sound she'd heard had come as she was waking, a real noise,

not an imagined one.

She listened intently, prepared to throw off the covers and slip out of bed. Silence reigned.

Gradually doubt crept over her. She had been jumpy lately. This wasn't the first night she'd been

wrongly convinced that an intruder was prowling the house. On four or five occasions during the past two

weeks, she had taken the pistol from the nightstand and searched the place, room by room, but she

hadn't found anyone. Recently she'd been under a lot of pressure, both personally and professionally.

Maybe what she'd heard tonight had been the thunder from the dream.

She remained on guard for a few minutes, but the night was so peaceful that at last she had to admit

she was alone. As her heartbeat slowed, she eased back onto her pillow.

At times like this she wished that she and Michael were still together. She closed her eyes and

imagined herself lying beside him, reaching for him in the dark, touching, touch-ing, moving against him,

into the shelter of his arms. He would comfort and reassure her, and in time she would sleep again.

Of course, if she and Michael were in bed right this minute, it wouldn't be like that at all. They

wouldn't make love. They would argue. He'd resist her affection, turn her away by picking a fight. He

would begin the battle over a triviality and goad her until the bickering escalated into marital warfare. That

was how it had been during the last months of their life together. He had been seething with hostility,

always seeking an excuse to vent his anger on her.

Because Tina had loved Michael to the end, she'd been hurt and saddened by the dissolution of their

relationship. Admittedly, she had also been relieved when it was finally over.

She had lost her child and her husband in the same year, the man first, and then the boy, the son to

the grave and the husband to the winds of change. During the twelve years of their marriage, Tina had

become a different and more complex person than she'd been on their wedding day, but Michael hadn't

changed at all—and didn't like the woman that she had become. They began as lovers, sharing every

detail of their daily lives—triumphs and failures, joys and frustrations—but by the time the divorce was

final, they were strangers. Although Michael was still living in town, less than a mile from her, he was, in

some respects, as far away and as unreachable as Danny.

She sighed with resignation and opened her eyes.

She wasn't sleepy now, but she knew she had to get more rest. She would need to be fresh and alert

in the morning.

Tomorrow was one of the most important days of her life: December 30. In other years that date had

meant nothing special. But for better or worse, this December 30 was the hinge upon which her entire

future would swing.

For fifteen years, ever since she turned eighteen, two years before she married Michael, Tina Evans

had lived and worked in Las Vegas. She began her career as a dancer—not a showgirl but an actual

dancer—in the Lido de Paris, a gigantic stage show at the Stardust Hotel. The Lido was one of those

incredibly lavish productions that could be seen nowhere in the world but Vegas, for it was only in Las

Vegas that a multimillion-dollar show could be staged year after year with little concern for profit; such

vast sums were spent on the elaborate sets and costumes, and on the enormous cast and crew, that the

hotel was usually happy if the production merely broke even from ticket and drink sales. After all, as

fantastic as it was, the show was only a come-on, a draw, with the sole purpose of putting a few

thousand people into the hotel every night. Going to and from the showroom, the crowd had to pass all

the craps tables and blackjack tables and roulette wheels and glitter-ing ranks of slot machines, and that

was where the profit was made. Tina enjoyed dancing in the Lido, and she stayed there for two and a

half years, until she learned that she was pregnant. She took time off to carry and give birth to Danny,

then to spend uninterrupted days with him during his first few months of life. When Danny was six months

old, Tina went into training to get back in shape, and after three arduous months of exercise, she won a

place in the chorus line of a new Vegas spectacle. She managed to be both a fine dancer and a good

mother, although that was not always easy; she loved Danny, and she enjoyed her work and she thrived

on double duty.

Five years ago, however, on her twenty-eighth birthday, she began to realize that she had, if she was

lucky, ten years left as a show dancer, and she decided to establish herself in the business in another

capacity, to avoid being washed up at thirty-eight. She landed a position as choreographer for a two-bit

lounge revue, a dismally cheap imitation of the multimillion-dollar Lido, and eventually she took over the

costumer's job as well. From that she moved up through a series of similar positions in larger lounges,

then in small showrooms that seated four or five hundred in second-rate hotels with limited show budgets.

In time she directed a revue, then directed and produced another. She was steadily becoming a

respected name in the closely knit Vegas entertainment world, and she believed that she was on the verge

of great success.

Almost a year ago, shortly after Danny had died, Tina had been offered a directing and co-producing

job on a huge ten-million-dollar extravaganza to be staged in the two-thousand-seat main showroom of

the Golden Pyramid, one of the largest and plushest hotels on the Strip. At first it had seemed terribly

wrong that such a wonderful opportunity should come her way before she'd even had time to mourn her

boy, as if the Fates were so shallow and insensitive as to think that they could balance the scales and

offset Danny's death merely by presenting her with a chance at her dream job. Although she was bitter

and depressed, although—or maybe because—she felt utterly empty and useless, she took the job.

The new show was titled Magyck! because the variety acts between the big dance numbers were all

magicians and because the production numbers themselves featured elabo-rate special effects and were

built around supernatural themes. The tricky spelling of the title was not Tina's idea, but most of the rest

of the program was her creation, and she remained pleased with what she had wrought. Exhausted too.

This year had passed in a blur of twelve- and fourteen-hour days, with no vacations and rarely a

weekend off.

Nevertheless, even as preoccupied with Magyck! as she was, she had adjusted to Danny's death

only with great difficulty. A month ago, for the first time, she'd thought that at last she had begun to

overcome her grief. She was able to think about the boy without crying, to visit his grave without being

overcome by grief. All things considered, she felt reasonably good, even cheerful to a degree. She would

never forget him, that sweet child who had been such a large part of her, but she would no longer have to

live her life around the gaping hole that he had left in it. The wound was achingly tender but healed.

That's what she had thought a month ago. For a week or two she had continued to make progress

toward acceptance. Then the new dreams began, and they were far worse than the dream that she'd had

immediately after Danny had been killed.

Perhaps her anxiety about the public's reaction to Magyck! was causing her to recall the greater

anxiety she had felt about Danny. In less than seventeen hours—at 8:00 P.M., December 30—the

Golden Pyramid Hotel would present a special, invitational, VIP premiere of Magyck!, and the following

night, New Year's Eve, the show would open to the general public. If audience reaction was as strong

and as positive as Tina hoped, her financial future was assured, for her contract gave her two and

one-half percent of the gross receipts, minus liquor sales, after the first five million. If Magyck! was a hit

and packed the showroom for four or five years, as sometimes happened with successful Vegas shows,

she'd be a multimillionaire by the end of the run. Of course, if the production was a flop, if it failed to

please the audience, she might be back working the small lounges again, on her way down. Show

business, in any form, was a merciless enterprise.

She had good reason to be suffering from anxiety attacks. Her obsessive fear of intruders in the

house, her disquieting dreams about Danny, her renewed grief—all of those things might grow from her

concern about Magyck! If that were the case, then those symptoms would disappear as soon as the fate

of the show was evident. She needed only to ride out the next few days, and in the relative calm that

would follow, she might be able to get on with healing herself.

In the meantime she absolutely had to get some sleep. At ten o'clock in the morning, she was

scheduled to meet with two tour-booking agents who were considering reserving eight thousand tickets

to Magyck! during the first three months of its run. Then at one o'clock the entire cast and the crew

would assemble for the final dress rehearsal.

She fluffed her pillows, rearranged the covers, and tugged at the short nightgown in which she slept.

She tried to relax by closing her eyes and envisioning a gentle night tide lapping at a silvery beach.

Thump!

She sat straight up in bed.

Something had fallen over in another part of the house. It must have been a large object because,

though muffled by the intervening walls, the sound was loud enough to rouse her.

Whatever it had been . . . it hadn't simply fallen. It had been knocked over. Heavy objects didn't just

fall of their own accord in deserted rooms.

She cocked her head, listening closely. Another and softer sound followed the first. It didn't last long

enough for Tina to identify the source, but there was a stealthiness about it. This time she hadn't been

imagining a threat. Someone actually was in the house.

As she sat up in bed, she switched on the lamp. She pulled open the nightstand drawer. The pistol

was loaded. She flicked off the two safety catches.

For a while she listened.

In the brittle silence of the desert night, she imagined that she could sense an intruder listening too,

listening for her.

She got out of bed and stepped into her slippers. Holding the gun in her right hand, she went quietly

to the bedroom door.

She considered calling the police, but she was afraid of making a fool of herself. What if they came,

lights flashing and sirens screaming—and found no one? If she had summoned the police every time that

she imagined hearing a prowler in the house during the past two weeks, they would have decided long

ago that she was scramble-brained. She was proud, unable to bear the thought of appearing to be

hysterical to a couple of macho cops who would grin at her and, later over doughnuts and coffee, make

jokes about her. She would search the house herself, alone.

Pointing the pistol at the ceiling, she jacked a bullet into the chamber.

Taking a deep breath, she unlocked the bedroom door and eased into the hall.

2

TINA SEARCHED THE ENTIRE HOUSE, EXCEPT FOR Danny's old room, but she didn't find

an intruder. She almost would have preferred to discover someone lurking in the kitchen or crouching in a

closet rather than be forced to look, at last, in that final space where sadness seemed to dwell like a

tenant. Now she had no choice.

A little more than a year before he had died, Danny had begun sleeping at the opposite end of the

small house from the master bedroom, in what had once been the den. Not long after his tenth birthday,

the boy had asked for more space and privacy than was provided by his original, tiny quarters. Michael

and Tina had helped him move his belongings to the den, then had shifted the couch, armchair, coffee

table, and television from the den into the quarters the boy had previously occupied.

At the time, Tina was certain that Danny was aware of the nightly arguments she and Michael were

having in their own bedroom, which was next to his, and that he wanted to move into the den so he

wouldn't be able to hear them bickering. She and Michael hadn't yet begun to raise their voices to each

other; their disagreements had been con-ducted in normal tones, sometimes even in whispers, yet Danny

probably had heard enough to know they were having problems.

She had been sorry that he'd had to know, but she hadn't said a word to him; she'd offered no

explanations, no reassurances. For one thing, she hadn't known what she could say. She certainly

couldn't share with him her appraisal of the situation: Danny, sweetheart, don't worry about anything

you might have heard through the wall. Your father is only suffering an identity crisis. He's been

acting like an ass lately, but he'll get over it. And that was another reason she didn't attempt to

explain her and Michael's problems to Danny—she thought that their estrangement was only temporary.

She loved her husband, and she was sure that the sheer power of her love would restore the luster to

their marriage. Six months later she and Michael sepa-rated, and less than five months after the

separation, they were divorced.

Now, anxious to complete her search for the burglar— who was beginning to look as imaginary as all

the other burglars she had stalked on other nights—she opened the door to Danny's bedroom. She

switched on the lights and stepped inside.

No one.

Holding the pistol in front of her, she approached the closet, hesitated, then slid the door back. No

one was hiding there, either. In spite of what she had heard, she was alone in the house.

As she stared at the contents of the musky closet—the boy's shoes, his jeans, dress slacks, shirts,

sweaters, his blue Dodgers' baseball cap, the small blue suit he had worn on special occasions—a lump

rose in her throat. She quickly slid the door shut and put her back against it.

Although the funeral had been more than a year ago, she had not yet been able to dispose of Danny's

belongings. Somehow, the act of giving away his clothes would be even sadder and more final than

watching his casket being lowered into the ground.

His clothes weren't the only things that she had kept: His entire room was exactly as he had left it.

The bed was properly made, and several science-fiction-movie action figures were posed on the deep

headboard. More than a hundred paperbacks were ranked alphabetically on a five-shelf bookcase. His

desk occupied one corner; tubes of glue, miniature bottles of enamel in every color, and a variety of

model-crafting tools stood in soldierly ranks on one half of the desk, and the other half was bare, waiting

for him to begin work. Nine model airplanes filled a display case, and three others hung on wires from the

ceiling. The walls were decorated with evenly spaced posters—three baseball stars, five hideous

monsters from horror movies—that Danny had carefully arranged.

Unlike many boys his age, he'd been concerned about orderliness and cleanliness. Respecting his

preference for neatness, Tina had instructed Mrs. Neddler, the cleaning lady who came in twice a week,

to vacuum and dust his unused bedroom as if nothing had happened to him. The place was as spotless as

ever.

Gazing at the dead boy's toys and pathetic treasures, Tina realized, not for the first time, that it wasn't

healthy for her to maintain this place as if it were a museum. Or a shrine. As long as she left his things

undisturbed, she could continue to entertain the hope that Danny was not dead, that he was just away

somewhere for a while, and that he would shortly pick up his life where he had left off. Her inability to

clean out his room suddenly frightened her; for the first time it seemed like more than just a weakness of

spirit but an indication of serious mental illness. She had to let the dead rest in peace. If she was ever to

stop dreaming about the boy, if she were to get control of her grief, she must begin her recovery here, in

this room, by conquering her irrational need to preserve his possessions in situ.

She resolved to clean this place out on Thursday, New Year's Day. Both the VIP premiere and the

opening night of Magyck! would be behind her by then. She'd be able to relax and take a few days off.

She would start by spending Thursday afternoon here, boxing the clothes and toys and posters.

As soon as she made that decision, most of her nervous energy dissipated. She sagged, limp and

weary and ready to return to bed.

As she started toward the door, she caught sight of the easel, stopped, and turned. Danny had liked

to draw, and the easel, complete with a box of pencils and pens and paints, had been a birthday gift

when he was nine. It was an easel on one side and a chalkboard on the other. Danny had left it at the far

end of the room, beyond the bed, against the wall, and that was where it had stood the last time that Tina

had been here. But now it lay at an angle, the base against the wall, the easel itself slanted,

chalkboard-down, across a game table. An Electronic Battleship game had stood on that table, as Danny

had left it, ready for play, but the easel had toppled into it and knocked it to the floor.

Apparently, that was the noise she had heard. But she couldn't imagine what had knocked the easel

over. It couldn't have fallen by itself.

She put her gun down, went around the foot of the bed, and stood the easel on its legs, as it

belonged. She stooped, retrieved the pieces of the Electronic Battleship game, and returned them to the

table.

When she picked up the scattered sticks of chalk and the felt eraser, turning again to the chalkboard,

she realized that two words were crudely printed on the black surface:

NOT DEAD

She scowled at the message.

She was positive that nothing had been written on the board when Danny had gone away on that

scouting trip. And it had been blank the last time she'd been in this room.

Belatedly, as she pressed her fingertips to the words on the chalkboard, the possible meaning of them

struck her. As a sponge soaked up water, she took a chill from the surface of the slate. Not dead. It was

a denial of Danny's death. An angry refusal to accept the awful truth. A challenge to reality.

In one of her terrible seizures of grief, in a moment of crazy dark despair, had she come into this

room and unknowingly printed those words on Danny's chalkboard?

She didn't remember doing it. If she had left this message, she must be having blackouts, temporary

amnesia of which she was totally unaware. Or she was walking in her sleep. Either possibility was

unacceptable.

Dear God, unthinkable.

Therefore, the words must have been here all along. Danny must have left them before he died. His

printing was neat, like everything else about him, not sloppy like this scrawled message. Nevertheless, he

must have done it. Must have.

And the obvious reference that those two words made to the bus accident in which he had perished?

Dean R. Koontz - The Eyes of Darkness

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