Dean Koontz - The Door To December

For a moment Ross couldn't speak. His brown face had flushed. He was breathing hard.

Dan more closely examined the items that Mondale had taken from the drawers and piled on the blotter: the address book, a ledger-size checkbook for an account in the name of the Sign of the Pentagram, an appointments calendar, and a thick sheaf of invoices. He picked up the address book.

'Put that down and listen to me,' Mondale said sharply, finally recovering his voice.

Dan favored him with a sweet smile of innocence and said, 'But it might contain a clue, Captain. I'm investigating this case, and I wouldn't be doing my job well if I didn't pursue every possible clue.'

Mondale came toward the desk, furious. His hands had finally tightened into twin hammers of flesh and bone.

Ah, at last, Dan thought, the showdown we've both been wanting for years.

* * *

Laura stood in front of the Sony, staring at it, afraid to touch it, shivering in the chilly air. The cold seemed to be radiating from the radio, carried on the pale-green light that shone forth from the AM-FM dial.

That was a crazy thought.

It was a radio, not an air conditioner. Not a… Not anything. Just a radio. An ordinary radio.

An ordinary radio that had turned itself on without help from anyone.

Bonnie Tyler's song had faded into a new tune. It was a golden oldie: Procul Harum singing 'A Whiter Shade of Pale.' That was at top volume too. The radio vibrated against the tile counter on which it stood. The thunderous song reverberated in the windows, hurting Laura's ears.

Earl had moved up behind her.

If Pepper was still squealing in another part of the house, the cat's voice was lost in the explosively loud music. Hesitantly, Laura put her fingers on the volume knob. Freezing. Shuddering, she nearly snatched her hand away, not simply because the plastic was impossibly cold but because it was a different kind of coldness from any she'd felt before, a strangeness that chilled not only the flesh but the mind and soul as well. Nevertheless, she held on to it and tried to reduce the volume, but the knob wouldn't budge. She couldn't turn Procul Harum down, and since the volume control was also the ON-OFF switch, she couldn't shut the music off either. She strained hard, felt the muscles bunching in her arm, but still the knob would not respond.

She was shaking.

She let go of the knob.

Although 'Whiter Shade of Pale' was a melodic and appealing song, it sounded harsh and even curiously ominous at that volume. Each thump of the drums was like the approaching footsteps of some threatening creature, and the wailing of the horns was the same beast's hostile cries. She grabbed the cord of the radio, jerked on it. The plug popped out of the wall socket.

The music died instantly.

She had been half afraid that it would go on playing, even without power.

* * *

When Dan didn't put down Joseph Scaldone's address book — a pocket-size booklet, actually — Mondale reached across the desk, clamped his right hand over Dan's right hand, and squeezed hard, trying to make him drop the thing.

Mondale was not a tall man, but he was thick in the shoulders and chest. He had powerful arms out of proportion to the rest of him, thick wrists, big hands. He was strong.

Dan was stronger. He didn't let go of the address book. His eyes fixed unwaveringly on Mondale's eyes, and he put his left hand on Mondale's hand and tried to pry the bastard's fingers loose.

The situation was ludicrous. They were like a couple of idiot teenagers determined to prove that they were macho: Mondale trying to crush Dan's right hand, and Dan refusing to flinch or in any way reveal his pain while he struggled to free himself.

He got a grip on one of Mondale's fingers and began to bend it backward.

Mondale's jaw clenched. The muscles popped up, quivering.

The finger bent back and back. Mondale resisted that effort even as he attempted to apply a stronger grip to Dan's right hand, but Dan wouldn't relent, and the finger bent back farther, farther.

Sweat had appeared on Mondale's brow.

My dog's better than your dog, my mom's prettier than your mom, Dan thought. Jesus! How old are we, anyway? Fourteen? Twelve?

But he kept his eyes on Mondale's eyes, and he refused to let the captain see that he was hurting. He bent that goddamned finger back farther, until he was sure that it would snap, then farther, and abruptly Mondale gasped and let go. Dan remained in possession of the address book.

He kept a grip on Mondale's finger for a second or two, long enough so there could be no mistake about who had relented first. The contest had been silly and juvenile, but that was no reason to believe Ross Mondale didn't take it seriously. He was dead serious. And if the captain thought he could teach Dan a lesson with physical force, then perhaps — just perhaps — he could learn a lesson himself by the same method of instruction.

* * *

They stood in the silent kitchen, staring at the radio. Then Earl said, 'How could it—'

'I don't know,' Laura said.

'Has it ever—'

'Never.'

The radio had ceased to be a harmless appliance. Now it was a brooding, menacing presence.

Earl said, 'Plug it in again.'

Laura was irrationally afraid that if they brought the radio back to life, it would sprout crablike legs of plastic and begin to crawl across the counter. That was an uncharacteristically bizarre thought, and she was surprised at herself, startled by the sudden rush of superstitious dread, for she thought of herself as a woman of science, always logical and reasonable. Yet she couldn't shake the feeling that some malignant force was still within the radio, and that it waited eagerly for the plug to be reinserted in the wall socket.

Nonsense.

Nevertheless, stalling, she said, 'Plug it in? Why?'

'Well,' Earl said, 'I want to see what it does. We can't just leave it like this. It's too damned weird. We've got to figure it out.'

Laura knew he was right. Hesitantly, she reached for the cord. She half expected it to wriggle in her hand and feel slimy-cold like an eel. But it was only a power cord: lifeless, nothing unusual about it.

She touched the volume control on the radio, and she found that it could be moved now. She twisted it all the way down, clicked it to the OFF position.

With considerable apprehension, she put the plug in the socket again.

Nothing.

Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen.

Earl said, 'Well, whatever it was—'

The radio snapped on.

The dial lit up.

The air was arctic again.

Laura stepped away from the counter, backed toward the table, afraid that the radio would fling itself at her. She stopped beside Melanie and put one hand on the girl's shoulder, to reassure her, but Melanie appeared to be as oblivious of these strange events as she was of everything else.

The volume dial moved. This time, the dial didn't peg out at the top, but stopped halfway. The latest piece of gangsta-rap crap thumped from the radio. The beat-heavy music was loud, although not unbearable.

Another knob spun as if an invisible hand were adjusting it. This one was the frequency selector. The red indicator dot glided fast across the luminous green dial, leaving the rap song behind, flitting rapidly to the right end of the scale, bringing them only flashes of songs, commercials, news reports, and deejay voices on a score of other stations. It reached the end of the radio band and moved back to the left, all the way, then swept to the right again, faster, so that the snatches of various broadcasts blended together in an eerie electronic ululation.

Earl moved closer to the Sony.

'Careful,' Laura said.

She realized it was ridiculous to be warning him about a mere radio. It was an inanimate object, for God's sake, not a living creature. She'd owned it for three or four years. It had brought her music and kept her company. It was only a radio.