Dean R. Koontz - The Bad Place

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The Bad Place
by Dean R. Koontz
Every eye sees its own special vision; every ear hears a most different
song. In each man's troubled heart, an incision would reveal a unique,
shameful wrong.
Stranger friends hide here in human guise than reside in the valleys of
Hell. But goodness, kindness and love arise in the heart of the poor
beast, as well.
-The Book of Counted Sorrows
THE NIGHT was becalmed and curiously silent. A faint scent of smoke
hung on the motionless air though no smoke was visible.
Sprawled face down on the cold pavement, Frank Pollard did not move when
he regained consciousness; he waited in the hope that his confusion
would dissipate. He blinked, trying to focus. Veils seemed to flutter
within his eyes. He sucked deep breaths of the cool air, tasting the
invisible smoke, grimacing at the acrid tang of it.
Shadows loomed like a convocation of robed figures, crowding around him.
Gradually his vision cleared, but in the yellowish light that came from
far behind him, little was revealed. A large trash dumpster, six or
eight feet from him, so dimly outlined that for a moment it seemed
strange, as though it were an artifact of an alien civilization. Frank
stared at it for a while before he realized what it was. He did not
know where he was or how he had gotten there. He could not have been
unconscious longer than a few seconds for his heart was pounding as if
he had been running for his life only moments ago.
Fireflies in a windstorm....
That phrase took flight through his mind, but he had no idea what it
meant. When he tried to concentrate on it and make sense of it, a dull
headache developed above his right eye.
Fireflies in a windstorm....
He groaned softly.
Between him and the dumpster, a shadow among shadows moved, quick and
sinuous. Small but radiant green eyes regarded him with icy interest.
Frightened, Frank pushed up onto his knees. A thin, involuntary cry
issued from him, almost less like a human sound than like the muted wail
of a reed instrument.
The green-eyed observer scampered away. A cat. Just an ordinary black
cat.
Frank got to his feet, swayed dizzily, and nearly fell over an object
that had been on the blacktop beside him. Gingerly he bent down and
picked it up: a flight bag made of supple leather, packed full,
surprisingly heavy. He supposed it was his. He could not remember.
Carrying the bag, he tottered to the dumpster and leaned against its
rusted flank.
Looking back, he saw that he was between rows of what seemed to be
two-story stucco apartment buildings. All of the windows were black. On
both sides, the tenants' cars were pulled nose-first into covered
parking stalls. The queer yellow glow, sour and sulfurous, almost more
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like the product of a gas flame than the luminescence of an incandescent
electric bulb, came from a street lamp at the end of the block, too far
away to reveal the details of the alleyway in which he stood.
As his rapid breathing slowed and as his heartbeat decelerated, he
abruptly realized that he did not know who he was. He knew his
name-Frank Pollard-but that was all. He did not know how old he was,
what he did for a living, where he had come from, where he was going, or
why. He was so startled by his predicament that for a moment his breath
caught in his throat; then his heartbeat soared again, and he let his
breath out in a rush.
Fireflies in a windstorm...
What the hell did that mean?
The headache above his right eye corkscrewed across his forehead.
He looked frantically left and right, searching for an object or an
aspect of the scene that he might recognize, anything, an anchor in a
world that was suddenly too strange. When the night offered nothing to
reassure him, he turned his quest inward, desperately seeking something
familiar in himself, but his own memory was even darker than the
passageway around him.
Gradually he became aware that the scent of smoke had faded, replaced by
a vague but nauseating smell of rotting garbage in the dumpster. The
stench of decomposition filled him with thoughts of death, which seemed
to trigger a vague recollection that he was on the run from someone-or
something that wanted to kill him. When he tried to recall why he was
fleeing, and from whom, he could not further illuminate any scrap of
memory; in fact, it seemed more an awareness on instinct than a genuine
recollection.
A puff of wind swirled around him. Then calm returned as if the dead
night was trying to come back to life but had aged just one shuddering
breath. A single piece of waste paper, swept up by that suffocating air
clicked along the cement and scraped to a stop against his right shoe.
Then another puff.
The paper whirled away.
Again the night was dead calm.
Something was happening. Frank sensed that these silent whiffs of wind
had some malevolent source, or meaning.
Irrationally, he was sure that he was about to be crushed by a great
weight. He looked up into the clear sky, at the empty blackness of
space and at the malignant brilliant of the distant stars. If something
was descending toward Frank he could not see it.
The night exhaled once more. Harder this time. Its breath was sharp
and dank.
He was wearing running shoes, white athletic socks, and a long-sleeved
blue-plaid shirt. He had no jacket, an could have used one. The air
was not frigid, just mildly cooling. But a coldness was in him, too, a
staggering fear, and he shivered uncontrollably between the cool caress
of the night and that inner chill.
The gust of wind died.
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Stillness reclaimed the night.
Convinced that he had to get out of there-and fast, he pushed away from
the dumpster. He staggered along the alley retreating from the end of
the block where the street lamp glowed, into darker realms, with no
destination in mind, directed only by the sense that this place was
dangerous and that was if indeed safety could be found, lay elsewhere.
The wind rose again, and with it, this time, came a whistling, barely
audible, like the distant music of a flute of some strange bone
instrument.
Within a few steps, as Frank became surefooted and as his eyes adapted
to the murky night, he arrived at a confluence of passageways.
Wrought-iron gates in pale stucco arches lay to his left and right.
He tried the gate on the left. It was unlocked, secured only by a
simple gravity latch. The hinges squeaked, eliciting a wince from
Frank, who hoped the sound had not been heard by his pursuer.
By now, although no adversary was in sight, Frank had no doubt that he
was the object of a chase. He knew it was surely as a hare knew when a
fox was in the field.
The wind shuttered again at his back, and the flowerlike music, though
barely audible and lacking a discernible melody, was haunting. It
pierced him. It sharpened his fear.
Beyond the black iron gate, flanked by feathery ferns and bushes, a
walkway led between a pair of two-story apartment buildings. Frank
followed it into a rectangular courtyard somewhat revealed by
low-wattage security lamps at each end. First-floor apartments opened
onto a covered promenade; the doors of the second-floor units were under
the tile roof of an iron-railed balcony. Lightless windows faced a
swath of grass, beds of azaleas and a few palms.
A frieze of spiky palm-frond shadows lay across one palely illuminated
wall, as motionless as if they were carved on a stone tablet. Then the
mysterious flute warbled softly again, the reborn wind huffed harder
than before, and the shadows danced, danced. Frank's own distorted,
dark reflection whirled briefly over the stucco, among the silhouettes,
as he hurried across the courtyard. He found another walkway, another
gate, and ultimately the street on which the apartment complex faced.
It was a side street without lampposts. There, the reign of the night
was undisputed.
The blustery wind lasted longer than before, churned harder. When the
gust ended abruptly, with an equally abrupt cessation of the unmelodic
flute, the night seemed to have been left in a vacuum, as though the
departing turbulence had taken with it every wisp of breathable air.
Then Frank's ears popped as if from a sudden altitude change; as he
rushed across the deserted street toward the cars parked along the far
curb, air poured in around him again.
He tried four cars before finding one unlocked, a Ford. Slipping behind
the wheel, he left the door open to provide some light.
He looked back the way he had come.
The apartment complex was dead-of-the-night and Wrapped in darkness. An
ordinary building yet inexplicably sinister.
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No one was in sight.
Nevertheless, Frank knew someone was closing in on him. He reached
under the dashboard, pulled out a tangle of wires, and hastily
jump-started the engine before realizing such a larcenous skill
suggested a life outside of the law.
he didn't feel like a thief. He had no sense of guilt and no apathy
for-or fear of-the police. In fact, at the moment, would have welcomed
a cop to help him deal with whoever or whatever was on his tail. He
felt not like a criminal, like a man who had been on the run for an
exhaustingly long time, from an implacable and relentless enemy.
As he reached for the handle of the open door, a brief pale blue light
washed over him, and the driver's-side window of the Ford exploded.
Tempered glass showered into the rear seat, gummy and minutely
fragmented. Since the front door was not closed, that window didn't
spray over him; instead, most of it fell out of the frame, onto the
pavement Yanking the door shut, he glanced through the gap where the
glass had been, toward the gloom-enfolded apartment and saw no one.
Frank threw the Ford in gear, popped the brake, tramped hard on the
accelerator. Swinging away from the curb, he clipped the rear bumper of
the car parked in front of him. A brief peal of tortured metal rang
sharply across the night.
But he was still under attack: A scintillant blue light, at one second
in duration, lit up the car; over its entire interior. The windshield
cracked with thousands of jagged lines, though it had been struck by
nothing he could see. Frank averted his face and squeezed his eyes shut
just in time to avoid being blinded by flying fragments. For a moment
he could not remember where he was going, but he didn't let up on the
accelerator preferring the danger of collision to the greater risk of
breaking and giving his unseen enemy time to reach him. Glass rained
over him, spattered across the top of his bent head; luckily, it was
safety glass, and none of the fragments cut him.
He opened his eyes, squinting into the gale that rushed through the now
empty windshield frame. He saw that he'd gone half a block and had
reached the intersection. He whipped the wheel to the right, tapping
the brake pedal only lightly, and turned onto a more brightly lighted
thoroughfare.
Like Saint Elm's fire, sapphire-blue light glimmered on the chrome, and
when the Ford was halfway around the corner, one of the rear tires blew.
He had heard no gunfire. A fraction of a second later, the other rear
tire blew.
The car rocked, slewed to the left, began to fishtail.
Frank fought the steering wheel.
Both front tires ruptured simultaneously.
The car rocked again, even as it glided sideways, and the sudden
collapse of the front tires compensated for the leftward slide of the
rear end, giving Frank a chance to grapple the spinning steering wheel
into submission.
Again, he had heard no gunfire. He didn't know why all of,this was
happening-yet he did.
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That was the truly frightening part: On some deep subconscious level he
did know what was happening, what strange force was swiftly destroying
the car around him, and he also knew that his chances of escaping were
poor.
A flicker of twilight blue...
The rear window imploded. Gummy yet prickly wads of safety glass flew
past him. Some smacked the back of his head, stuck in his hair.
Frank made the corner and kept going on four flats. The sound of
flapping rubber, already shredded, and the grinding of metal wheel rims
could be heard even above the roar of the wind that buffeted his face.
He glanced at the rear view mirror. The night was a great black ocean
behind him, relieved only by widely spaced street lamps that dwindled
into the gloom like the lights of a double convoy of ships.
According to the speedometer, he was doing thirty miles an hour just
after coming out of the turn. He tried to push it up to forty in spite
of the ruined tires, but something clanged and clinked under the hood,
rattled and whined, and the engine coughed, and he could not coax any
more speed out of it.
When he was halfway to the next intersection, the street lamp either
burst or winked out. Frank couldn't tell which one it was because the
street lamps were widely spaced, he could see enough to drive.
The engine coughed, then again, and the Ford began to gain speed. He
didn't brake for the stop sign at the next intersection Instead he
pumped the accelerator but to no avail.
Finally the steering failed too. The wheel spun uselessly in his sweaty
hands.
Evidently the tires had been completely torn apart. The contact of the
steel wheel rims with the pavement flung up turquoise sparks.
Fireflies in a windstorm....
He still didn't know what that meant.
Now moving about twenty miles an hour, the car headed straight toward
the right-hand curb. Frank tramped the brakes, but they no longer
functioned.
The car hit the curb, jumped it, grazed a lamppost with a sound of sheet
metal kissing steel, and thudded against the bark of an immense date
palm in front of a white bungalow. Lights came on in the house even as
the final crash was echoing in the cool night air.
Frank threw the door open, grabbed the leather flight bag from the seat
beside him, and got out, shedding fragments of gummy yet splintery
safety glass.
Though only mildly cool, the air chilled his face because sweat trickled
down from his forehead. He could taste it when he licked his lips.
A man had opened the front door of the bungalow as he stepped onto the
porch. Lights flicked on at the house door.
Frank looked back the way he had come. A thin cloud of luminous
sapphire dust seemed to blow through the street.
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As though shattered by a tremendous surge of current, the bulbs in
street lamps exploded along the two blocks behind him, the shards of
glass, glinting like ice, rained on the blacktop. In resultant gloom,
he thought he saw a tall, shadowy figure more than a block away, coming
after him, but he couldn't be sure.
To Frank's left, the guy from the bungalow was hurrying down the walk
toward the palm tree where the Ford had come to rest. He was talking,
but Frank wasn't listening to him.
Clutching the leather satchel, Frank turned and ran. He was not sure
what he was running from, or why he was so afraid, or where he might
hope to find a haven, but he ran nonetheless because he knew that if he
stood there only a few seconds longer, he would be killed.
THE WINDOWLEss rear compartment of the Dodge van was illuminated by tiny
red, blue, green, white, and amber indicator bulbs on banks of
electronic surveillance equipment but primarily by the soft green glow
from the computer screens, which made that claustrophobic space seem
like a chamber in a deep-sea submersible.
Dressed in a pair of Rockport walking shoes, beige coat and a maroon
sweater, Robert Dakota sat on a swivel chair in front of the twin video
display terminals. He tapped his toes against the floorboards, keeping
time, and with his right hand he happily conducted an unseen orchestra.
Bobby was wearing a headset with stereo ear phones and with a small
microphone suspended an inch or so in front of his lips. At the moment
he was listening to Benny Goodman's "One O'Clock Jump," the primo
version of Count Basie's swing composition, six and a half minutes of
heaven. Just as he took up another piano chorus and as Harry James
launched into the brilliant trumpet stint that led to the infamous swing
history of that era.
Bobby was deep into music. But he was also acutely aware of the
activity on the display terminals. The one on the right was linked, via
microwave with the computer system at the Decodyne Corporation, in front
of which his van was parked. It revealed what Tom Rasmussen was up to
in those offices at 1:10 Thursday morning, no good.
One by one, Rasmussen was accessing and copying the files of the
software-design team that had recently completed Decodyne's new and
revolutionary word-processing program "Wizard."
The Wizard files carried out instructions of electronic draw bridges,
moats, and other parts. Tom Rasmussen was an expert in computer
security, however, and there was no fortress that he could not
penetrate, given enough time. Indeed, if Wizard had not been developed
on a secure in-house computer system with no links to the outside world,
Rasmussen would have slipped into the files from beyond the walls of
Decodyne, via a modern and telephone line.
Ironically, he had been working as the night security guard at Decodyne
for five weeks, having been hired on the basis of elaborate-and nearly
convincing-false papers. Tonight he had breached Wizard's final
defenses. In a while he would walk out of Decodyne with a packet of
floppy diskettes worth a fortune to the company's competitors.
"One O'Clock Jump" ended.
Into the microphone Bobby said, "Music stop."
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That vocal command cued his computerized compact-disc system to switch
off, opening the headset for communication with Julie, his wife and
business partner.
"You there, babe?"
From her surveillance position in a car at the farthest end of the
parking lot behind Decodyne, she had been listening to the same music
through her own headset. She sighed. "Did Vernon Brown ever play
better trombone than the night of the Carnegie concert?"
"What about Krupa on the drums?"
"Auditory ambrosia. And an aphrodisiac. The music makes me want to go
to bed with you."
"Can't. Not sleepy. Besides, we're being private detectives,
remember?"
"I like being lovers better."
"We don't earn our daily bread by making love."
"I'd pay you," she said.
"Yeah? How much?"
"Oh, in daily-bread terms... half a loaf."
"I'm worth a whole loaf."
Julie said, "Actually, you're worth a whole loaf, two croissants, and a
bran muffin."
She had a pleasing, throaty, and altogether sexy voice that he loved to
listen to, especially through headphones, when she sounded like an angel
whispering in his ears.
She would have been a marvelous big-band singer if she had been around
in the 1930s and '40s-and if she had been able to carry a tune. She was
a great swing dancer, but she couldn't croon worth a damn; when she was
in the mood to sing along with old recordings by Margaret Whiting or the
Andrews Sisters or Rose mary Clooney or Marion Hutton, Bobby had to
leave the room out of respect for the music.
She said, "What's Rasmussen doing?"
Bobby checked the second video display, to his left, which was linked to
Decodyne's interior security cameras. Rasmussen thought he had
over-ridden the cameras and was uncertain; but they had been watching
him for the last few weeks, night after night, and recording his every
treachery on video tape.
"Old Tom's still in George Ackroyd's office, at the computer there."
Ackroyd was project director for Wizard.
Bob glanced at the other display, which duplicated what Rasmussen was
seeing on Ackroyd's computer screen. "He just copied the last Wizard
file onto diskette."
Rasmussen switched off the computer in Ackroyd's office. Simultaneously
the linked VDT in front of Bobby went blank.
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Bobby said, "He's finished. He's got it all now."
Julie said, "The worm. He must be feeling smug."
Bobby turned to the display on his left, leaned forward, and watched the
black-and-white image of Rasmussen at Ackroyd's terminal.
"I think he's grinning."
"We'll wipe that grin off his face."
"Let's see what he does next. Want to make a bet? On whether he'll
stay in there, finish his shift, and waltz out in the morning or leave
right now?"
"Now," Julie said.
"Or soon. He won't risk getting caught with the floppies. He'll leave
while no one else is there."
"No bet. I think you're right."
The transmitted image on the monitor flickered, rolled, but Rasmussen
did not get out of Ackroyd's chair. In fact he slumped back, as if
exhausted. He yawned and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.
"He seems to be resting, gathering his energy," Bobby said
"Let's have another tune while we wait for him to move."
"Good idea." He gave the CD player the start-up cue "Begin music"-and
was rewarded with Glenn Miller's "In the Mood."
On the monitor, Rasmussen rose from the chair in Ackroyd's dimly lighted
office. He yawned again, stretched, and crossed the room to the big
windows that looked down on Michaelson Drive, the street on which Bobby
was parked.
If Bobby had slipped forward, out of the rear of the van and into the
driver's compartment, he probably would have been able to see Rasmussen
standing up there at the second-floor window, silhouetted by the glow of
Ackroyd's desk lamp, staring out at the night.
He stayed where he was, however, satisfied with the view on the screen.
Miller's band was playing the famous "In the Mood" riff, again and
again, gradually fading away, almost disappearing entirely but... now
blasting back at full power to repeat the entire cycle.
In Ackroyd's office, Rasmussen finally turned from the window and looked
up at the security camera that was mounted on the wall near the ceiling.
He seemed to be staring straight at Bobby, as if aware of being watched.
He moved a few steps closer to the camera, smiling.
Bobby said, "Music stop," and the Miller band instantly fell silent.
To Julie, he said, "Something strange here
"Trouble?"
Rasmussen stopped just under the security camera, still grinning up at
it. From the pocket of his uniform shirt, he withdrew a folded sheet of
typing paper, which he opened and held toward the lens. A message had
been printed in bold black letters: GOODBYE, ASS HOLE.
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"Trouble for sure," Bobby said.
"How bad?"
"I don't know."
An instant later he did know: Automatic weapons fire shattered the
night-he could hear the clatter even with his earphones on-and
armor-piercing slugs tore through the walls of the van.
Julie evidently picked up the gunfire through her headset.
"Bobby, no!"
"Get the hell out of there, babe! Run!"
Even as he spoke, Bobby tore free of the headset and dived off his
chair, lying as flat against the floorboards as he could.
FRANK Pollard sprinted from street to street from alley to alley,
sometimes cutting across the lawns of the dark houses. In one back yard
a large black dog with yellow eyes barked and snapped at him all the way
to the board fence briefly snaring one leg of his pants as he clambered
over the barrier. His heart was pounding painfully, and his throat was
hot and raw because he was sucking in great drafts of the cold dry air
through his open mouth. His legs ached. The flight bag pulled on his
right arm, and with the lunging step that he took, pain throbbed in his
wrist and shoulder socket. But he did not pause and did not glance
back, because he felt as if something monstrous was at his heels, a
creature that never required rest and that would turn him into stone
with its gaze if he dared set eyes upon it.
In time he crossed an avenue, devoid of traffic at that late hour, and
hurried along the entrance walk to another apartment complex. He went
through a gate into another court yard this one centered by an empty
swimming pool with a crack and canted apron.
The place was lightless, but Frank's vision had adapted to the night,
and he could see well enough to avoid falling in the drained pool. He
was searching for shelter. Perhaps there was a communal laundry room
where he could hide.
He had discovered something else about himself as he fled his unknown
pursuer: He was thirty or forty pounds over weight and out of shape. He
desperately needed to catch his breath-and think.
As he was hurrying past the doors of the ground-floor unit he realized
that a couple of them were standing open, sagging on ruined hinges. Then
he saw that cracks webbed some windows, holes pocked a few, and other
panes were missing altogether. The grass was dead, too, as crisp as
ancient paper, and the shrubbery was withered; a seared palm tree leaned
at a precarious angle. The apartment complex was abandoned, awaiting a
wrecking crew.
He came to a set of crumbling concrete stairs at the north end of the
courtyard, glanced back. Whoever... whatever was following him was
still not in sight. Gasping, he climbed to the second-floor balcony and
moved from one apartment to another until he found a door ajar. It was
warped: the hinges were stiff, but they worked without much noise. He
slipped inside, pushing the door shut behind him.
The apartment was a well of shadows, oil-black and pooled deep. Faint
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ash-gray light outlined the windows but provided no illumination to the
room.
He listened intently.
The silence and darkness were equal in depth.
Cautiously, Frank inched toward the nearest window, which faced the
balcony and courtyard. Only a few shards of glass remained in the
frame, but lots of fragments crunched and clinked under his feet. He
trod carefully, both to avoid cutting a foot and to make as little noise
as possible.
At the window he halted, listened again.
Stillness.
As if it was the gelded ectoplasm of a slothful ghost, a sluggish
current of cold air slid inward across the few jagged points of the
glass that had not already fallen from the frame.
Frank's breath steamed in front of his face, pale ribbons of vapor in
the gloom.
The silence remained unbroken for ten seconds, twenty, thirty, a full
minute.
Perhaps he had escaped.
He was just about to turn away from the window when he heard footsteps
outside. At the far end of the courtyard. On the walkway that led in
from the street. Hard-soled shoes rang against the concrete, and each
footfall echoed hollowly off the stucco walls of the surrounding
buildings.
Frank stood motionless and breathed through his mouth, as if the stalker
could be counted on to have the hearing of a jungle cat.
When he entered the courtyard from the entrance walkway, the stranger
halted. After a long pause he began to move again though the
overlapping echoes made sounds deceptive, seemed to be heading slowly
north along the apron of the porch toward the same stairs by which
Frank, himself, had climb to the second floor of the apartment complex.
Each deliberate, metronomic footfall was like the heavy thud of a
headsman's clock mounted on a guillotine railing, counting off the
seconds until the appointed hour of the blade's descent.
As IF alive, the Dodge van shrieked with every bullet that tore through
its sheet-metal walls, and the wounds were inflicted not one at a time
but by the score, with such relentless fury, the assault had to involve
at least two machine guns. While Bobby Dakota lay flat on the floor,
trying to catch God's attention with fervent heaven-directed prayers,
fragments of metal rained down on him. One of the computer screens
imploded, then the other terminal, too, and all the indicator lights
went out, but the interior of the van was not entirely dark; showers of
amber and green and crimson and silver sparks erupted from the damaged
electronic units as one steel jacketed round after another pierced
equipment housings and shattered circuit boards. Glass fell on him,
too, and splinters of plastic, bits of wood, scraps of paper; the air
was filled with a virtual blizzard of debris. But the noise was the
worst of it; in his mind he saw himself sealed inside a great iron drum,
while half a dozen big bikers, stoned on PCP, pounded on the outside of
file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R.%20Koontz%20-%20The%20Bad%20Place.txt (10 of 281) [2/9/2004 10:16:53 PM]
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file:///G|/rah/Dean%20R.%20Koontz/Dean%20R.%20Koontz%20-%20The%20Bad%20P\lace.txtTheBadPlacebyDeanR.KoontzEveryeyeseesitsownspecialvision;everyearhearsamostdifferentsong.Ineachman'stroubledheart,anincisionwouldrevealaunique,shamefulwrong.StrangerfriendshidehereinhumanguisethanresideinthevalleysofHel...

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