Dean Koontz - False Memory

Into Dusty’s silence, Clostennan cast a question: “Martie’s seen him already, hasn’t she?”

“This afternoon. But we think now… it goes back farther than that. Back months and months, when she was taking her friend to see him. Doctor, you’re going to think I’m crazy —”

“Not necessarily. But we shouldn’t talk about this any further on the phone. Can you come here?”

“Where’s here?”

“I live on Balboa Island.” Closterman gave him directions.

“We’ll be there soon. Can we bring a dog?”

“He can play with mine.”

When Dusty hung up the phone and turned to Martie, she said, “May be this isn’t the best thing to do.”

She was listening to an inner voice of her own.

“Maybe,” she said, “if we just call Dr. Ahriman and lay all this out for him… maybe he’ll be able to explain everything.”

The invisible walker of hallways in Dusty’s mind argued for the same course of action, almost word for word, as Martie suggested it.

She rose suddenly to her feet. “Oh, God, what the hell am I saying?”

Dusty’s face flushed, and he knew that if he looked in a mirror, he would see his cheeks ruddy. Shame burned in him, shame at his suspicion, at his failure to accord to Dr. Ahriman the well-earned trust and respect that the psychiatrist was due.

“Where we are here,” Dusty said shakily, “is in the middle of a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”

Valet had come out from under the table. He stood with his tail held low, his shoulders slumped, his head half bowed, in tune with their mood.

“Why are we taking the dog with us?” Martie asked.

“Because I don’t think we’ll be coming back here for a while. I don’t think we can risk it. Come on,” he said, crossing the kitchen toward the hallway. “Let’s throw some stuff in suitcases, clothes for a few days. And let’s do it fast.”

Minutes later, before closing his suitcase, Dusty took the compact, customized .45 Colt out of the nightstand drawer. He hesitated, decided not to put the weapon beyond easy reach, closed the suitcase without adding to its contents, and pulled from the closet a leather jacket with deep pockets.

He wondered if the gun could really provide protection.

If Mark Ahriman walked into the bedroom this very minute, the treacherous voice inside Dusty might delay him long enough for the psychiatrist to smile and say Viola Narvilly before the trigger could be squeezed.

Then would I suck on the pistol as if it were a Popsicle, and blow my brains out as obediently as Susan slashed her wrists?

Out of the bedroom, down the narrow stairs, with the retriever in the lead, with Martie lugging one suitcase, with Dusty carrying another, pausing to snare the books in the kitchen, and then to the Saturn in the driveway, they moved with a quickening sense that they must outrace the spreading shadow of a descending doom.

A low, arched bridge connected Balboa Island, in Newport Harbor, to the mainland. Marine Avenue, lined with restaurants and shops, was nearly deserted. Eucalyptus leaves and blades torn from palm fronds spiraled in man-size whirlwinds along the street, as though Martie’s dream of the mahogany woods were being re-created here.

Dr. Closterman didn’t live on one of the interior streets, but along the waterfront. They parked near the end of Marine Avenue and, with Valet, walked out to the paved promenade that surrounded the island and that was separated from the harbor by a low seawall.

Before they found Closterman’s house, one hour to the minute after her previous seizure, Martie was hit by a wave of autophobia. This was another endurable assault, as low-key as the previous three, but she couldn’t walk under the influence of it, couldn’t even stand.

They sat on the seawall, waiting for the attack to pass.

Valet was patient, neither cringing nor venturing forth to sniff out a potential friend when a man walked past with a Dalmatian.

The tide was coming in. Wind chopped the usually calm harbor, slapping wavelets against the concrete seawall, and the reflected lights of the harbor side houses wriggled across the rippled water.

Sailing yachts and motor vessels, moored at the private docks, wallowed in their berths, groaning and creaking. Halyardsandmetal fittings clinked against steel masts.

When Martie’s seizure passed quickly, she said, “I saw a dead priest with a railroad spike in his forehead. Briefly, thank God, not like earlier today when I couldn’t clear my head of crap like that. But where does this stuff come from?”

“Someone put it there.” Against the counsel of the insistent inner voice, Dusty said, “Abriman put it there.”

“But how?”

With her unanswered question blown out across the harbor, they set out again in search of Dr. Closterman.

None of the houses on the island was higher than three stories, and charming bungalows huddled next to huge showplaces. Closterman lived in a cozy-looking two-story with gables, decorative shutters, and window boxes filled with English primrose.

When he answered the door, the barefoot physician was wearing tan cotton pants, with his belly slung over the waistband, and a T-shirt advertising Hobie surfboards.

At his side was a black Labrador with big, inquisitive eyes.

“Charlotte,” Dr. Closterman said by way of introduction.

Valet was usually shy around other dogs, but let off his leash, he immediately went nose-to-nose with Charlotte, tail wagging. They circled each other, sniffing, where after the Labrador raced across the foyer and up the stairs, and Valet bounded wildly after her.

“It’s all right,” Roy Closterman said. “They can’t knock over anything that hasn’t been knocked over before.”

The physician offered to take their coats, but they held on to them because Dusty was carrying the Colt in one pocket.

In the kitchen, from a large pot of spaghetti sauce rose the mouthwatering fragrance of cooking meatballs and sausages.

Closterman offered a drink to Dusty, coffee to Martie — “unless you’ve taken no more Valium” — and poured coffees at their request.

They sat at the highly polished pine table while the physician seeded and sliced several plump yellow peppers.

“I was going to feel you out a little bit,” Closterman said, “before deciding how frank to be with you. But I’ve decided, what the hell, no reason to be coy. I admired your father immensely, Martie, and if you’re anything like him, which I believe you are, then I know I can rely on your discretion.”

“Thank you.”

“Ahriman,” Closterman said, “is a narcissistic asshole. That’s not opinion. It’s such a provable fact, they should be required by law to include it in the author’s bio on his book jackets.”

He glanced up from the peppers to see if he had shocked them — and smiled when he saw they were not recoiling. With his white hair, jowls, extra chins, dewlaps, and smile, he was a beardless Santa.

“Have you read any of his books?” he asked.

“No,” Dusty said. “Just glanced at the one you sent.”

“Worse than the usual pop-psych shit. Learn to Love Yourself Mark Ahriman never had to learn to love Mark Ahriman. He’s been infatuated with himself since birth. Read the book, you’ll see.”

“Do you think he’s capable of creating personality disorders in his patients?” Martie asked.

“Capable? It wouldn’t surprise me if half of what he cures are conditions he created in the first place.”

The implications of that response were, to Dusty, breathtaking. “We think Martie’s friend, the one we mentioned this morning —”