Dean Koontz - False Memory

Dusty braked to a stop in a backup at a red traffic light. “A little lame, huh?”

“A lot lame.”

They were on a bridge that spanned the channel between Newport Harbor and its back bay. Under the sunless sky, the broad expanse of water was dark gray-green, though not black, with hatching drawn on it by the breeze above and the currents below, so that it looked scaly, like the hide of a fearsome slumbering reptile out of the Jurassic Period.

“But there’s something that isn’t lame,” Martie said, “not in the least lame. Something that’s happening to Susan.”

A grimness in her voice drew Dusty’s attention from the harbor. “What about Susan?”

“She’s missing periods of time, too. Not little pieces, either. Big blocks of time. Whole nights.”

The Valium veil in her eyes had been gradually lifting, that welcome but artificial calm giving way to anxiety once more. At Dr.

Ahriman’s office, the unnatural paleness left her, replaced by peachy color, but now shadows were gathering in the tender skin under her eyes, as though her face were darkening in sympathy with the slowly waning winter afternoon.

Beyond the farther end of the bridge, the red signal changed to green. The traffic began to move.

Martie told him about Susan’s phantom rapist.

Dusty had been worried. He had been frightened. Now a feeling worse than worry or fear wrapped his heart.

Sometimes, when he woke in the abyss of night and lay listening to Martie’s sweet soft breathing, a mortal dread — more terrible than simple fear — crept into him. After one too many glasses of wine at dinner, too much cream sauce, and perhaps a bitter clove of garlic, his mind was as sour as his stomach, and he contemplated the silence of the predawn world without his usual appreciation for the beauty of stillness, hearing no peace in it, hearing instead the threat of the void. In spite of the faith that was his rock through most of his life, a worm of doubt chewed at his heart on these hushed nights, and he wondered if all that he and Martie had together was this one life, and nothing beyond it but a darkness that allowed no memory and was empty even of loneliness. He didn’t want until-death-do-you-part, didn’t want anything short of forever, and when a despairing inner voice suggested that forever was a fraud, he always reached out in the night to touch Martie in her sleep. His intention was not to wake her, only to feel in her what she invariably contained and what was detectable to even his lightest touch: her given grace, her immortality and the promise of his own.

Now, as he listened to Martie recount Susan’s story, Dusty was an apple to the worm of doubt again. Everything that was happening to all of them seemed unreal, meaningless, a glimpse into the chaos underlying life. He was overcome by a feeling that the end, when it arrived, would be only the end, not also a beginning, and he sensed that it was coming fast, too, a cruel and brutal death toward which they were hurtling blindly.

When Martie finished, Dusty handed his cell phone to her. “Try Susan again.”

She placed the call. The number rang and rang. And rang.

“Let’s go see if the retirees downstairs know where she’s gone,” Martie suggested. “It’s not far.”

Ned will be waiting for us. As soon as I pick up what he’s got for me, we’ll go to Susan’s. But for sure, it can’t be Eric creeping around there at night.”

“Because whoever is doing this to her, he’s one of them behind what’s happening to you, me, Skeet.”

“Yeah. And Eric, hell, he’s an investment adviser, a numbers cruncher, not a mind-control wizard.”

Martie keyed Susan’s number in again. She pressed the phone tightly to her ear. Her face was pinched by the strain of wishing fervently for an answer.

Ned Motherwell’s pride was an ‘82 Chevy Camaro: unpainted but with a periodically reapplied coat of flat-gray primer, chopped, fitted with frenched headlights, stripped of brightwork except for a pair of fat chrome tailpipes. Parked in the southeast corner of the shopping-center lot where they had arranged to meet, it looked like a getaway car. As Dusty parked two spaces away, Ned climbed out of the Camaro, and though it was by no definition a subcompact, there seemed to be a lot more of Ned than there was vehicle. He towered over the low, customized car as he closed the door. Although the day was cool and the afternoon fading, he wore only white khakis and a white T-shirt, as usual. If the Camaro ever broke down, he appeared to be capable of carrying it to the garage.

The trees along the periphery of the lot trembled in the wind, and little funnels of dust and litter spun across the pavement, but Ned appeared unaffected by — and even unaware of — the turbulence.

When Dusty lowered his window, Ned looked in past him, smiled, and said, “Hey, Martie.”

“Hey, Ned.”

“Sorry to hear you’re not feeling well.”

“I’ll live, they say.”

On the phone from Ahriman’s waiting room, Dusty had said that Martie was ill and didn’t feel well enough to go into a pharmacy or a bookstore, and that he didn’t want to leave her alone in the car.

“It’s hard enough working for this guy,” Ned told Martie, “so I imagine how sick you must get living with him. No offense, boss.”

“None taken.”

Ned passed a small bag from the pharmacy through the window. It contained the prescription for Valium that Dr. Closterman had phoned in earlier. He also had a larger bag from the bookstore.

“If you’d asked me this morning what haiku is,” Ned said, “I’d have told you it’s some kind of martial art like tae kwon do. But it’s all these chopped poems.”

“Chopped?” Dusty asked, peering into the bag.

“Like my car,” Ned said. “Cut down, streamlined. They’re kind of cool. Bought one book for myself.”

Dusty saw seven collections of haiku in the bag. “So many.”

“They’ve got this long shelf full of the stuff,” Ned said. “For such a little thing, haiku’s big.”

“I’ll cut you a check for all this tomorrow.”

“No hurry. Used my credit card. Won’t come due for a while.”

Dusty passed Martie’s house key through the window to Ned. “Are you sure you’ve got time to take care of Valet?”

“I’m on for it. But I don’t know dogs.”

“Not much to know.” Dusty told him where to find the kibble. “Give him two cups. Then he’ll expect a walk, but just let him into the backyard again for ten minutes, and he’ll do the right thing.”

“Then he’ll be okay in the house alone?”

“As long as he’s got a full water dish and the TV remote, he’ll be happy.”

“My mom is a cat woman,” Ned said. “Not the Catwoman, like in Batman, but she always has a kitty-cat.”

Hearing big Ned say kitty-cat was akin to seeing an NFL fullback break into ballet steps and execute a perfect entrechat.

“Once, a neighbor poisoned an orange tabby my mom really loved. Mrs. Jingles. That was the cat’s name, not the neighbor’s.”

“What kind of person would poison a cat?” Dusty commiserated.

“He was running a crystal-meth lab out of the rental next door,” Ned said. “Piece of human garbage. I broke both his legs, called 911, pretending I was him, said I fell down the stairs, needed help. They sent an ambulance, saw the meth lab, busted his operation.”

“You broke the legs of a drug thug?” Martie said. “Isn’t that risky?”

“Not really. Couple nights later, one of his pals takes a shot at me, but he’s so whacked on speed he misses. I broke both his arms, put him in his car, pushed it over an embankment. Called 911, said I was him, cried for help. They found dirty money and drugs in the car trunk, fixed his arms, and put him away for ten years.”