Dean Koontz - The Voice of the Night

When Colin had been sitting on the bench, waiting for her to show up, he had expected to have trouble getting her to talk. But he had pushed the right button. She wouldn’t shut up. She droned on and on, as if she were an Ancient Mariner robot, a machine with a tale to tell. And it looked to him as if she were also a machine with very little time left; beneath the cool veneer of businesslike efficiency, serious instabilities were generating a lot of inner heat. As he listened to what she said, he also listened for the sound of gears stripping and mainsprings breaking and vacuum tubes popping.

“We’d had Roy two and a half years,” she said, “when I discovered that I was going to have a baby. The doctors were wrong about me. I almost died in labor, and there was no doubt afterward that she would be my first and last, but I did have her. They were wrong. In spite of all their complicated tests and consultations and sky-high fees, every one of them was wrong. She was a miracle child. God meant all along for us to have the impossible, the miracle child, that special blessing, and I was too impatient to wait. I didn’t have faith enough. Not nearly enough. I hate myself for that. I talked Alex into the adoption. Then along came Belinda, the one we were meant to have. I had no faith. So after just five years, she was taken away from us. Roy took her away from us. The child we were never meant to have took away the one that God sent us. You see?”

Colin’s fascination was changing to embarrassment. He didn’t need or want to hear every sordid detail. He looked around self-consciously to see if anyone could overhear, but there was no one near the bench.

She turned away from the sea and stared into his eyes. “Why did you come here, young man? Why did you tell me Roy’s secret?”

He shrugged. “I thought you ought to know.”

“Did you expect me to do something to him?”

“Aren’t you going to?”

“I wish I could,” she said with genuine malice. “But I can‘t, If I start telling them that he killed my little girl, it’ll be like before. They’ll send me away to the county hospital again.”

“Oh.” That was what he had figured even before he spoke to her.

“Nobody will ever believe me when it comes to Roy,” she said. “And who’s going to believe you? I understand from your mother that there’s some problem with drugs.”

“No. That’s not true.”

“Who’s going to believe either of us?”

“No one,” he said.

“What we need is proof.”

“Yeah.”

“Irrefutable proof.”

“Right.”

“Something tangible,” she said. “Maybe … if you could get him to tell you all about it again… about how he killed her on purpose … and maybe have a tape recorder hidden someplace…”

Colin winced at the mention of a recorder. “That’s a thought.”

“There must be a way,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“We’ll both think about it.”

“All right.”

“Think about a way to trap him.”

“Okay.”

“And we’ll meet again.”

“We will?”

“Here,” she said. “Tomorrow.”

“But-”

“It’s always been just me against him,” she said, leaning close to Colin. He could feel her breath against his face. And he could smell it, too: spearmint. “But now there’s you,” she said. “Two people know about him now. Together we ought to be able to think of a way to get him. I want to get him. I want everyone to know how he planned to kill my little girl. When they know the truth, how can they expect me to keep him in my house? We’ll send him back where he came from. The neighbors won’t talk. How can they, after they know what he did? I’ll be free of him. I want that more than anything.” Her voice fell to a conspiratorial whisper. “You’ll be my ally, won’t you?”

He had the insane thought that she was going to go through the blood-brother ritual with him.

“Won’t you?” she asked.

“Okay.” But he didn’t intend to meet with her again; she was almost as scary as Roy.

She put her hand on his cheek, and he started to pull away before he realized that she was only being affectionate. Her fingers were cold.

“You’re a good boy,” she said. “You did a good thing-coming to me like this.”

He wished she would take her hand away.

“I’ve always known the truth,” she said, “but what a relief it is to have someone else who knows. You be here tomorrow. Same time.”

Just to get rid of her, he said, “Sure.”

She got up abruptly and walked away, toward Treasured Things.

As Colin watched her go, he thought that she was far more terrifying than any of the monsters he’d feared throughout his childhood and adolescence. Christopher Lee, Peter Gushing, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi-none of them had ever portrayed a character quite as chilling as Helen Borden. She was worse than a ghoul or a vampire, doubly dangerous because she was so well disguised. She looked rather ordinary, even drab, unremarkable in every respect, but inside she was an awful creature. He could still feel where her icy fingers had pressed against his face.

He took the recorder out of the windbreaker and switched it off.

Incredibly, he was ashamed of himself for some of the things he had said about Roy, and for the way he had so eagerly played to her hatred of her son. It was true that Roy was sick; it was also true that he was a killer; but it was not true that he had always been that way. He wasn‘t, as Colin had said, “born evil.” Fundamentally, he was not less of a human being than anyone else. He had not murdered his sister in cold blood, Judging from all the evidence that Colin had seen, Belinda Jane’s death had been an accident. Roy’s sickness had developed in the aftermath of that tragedy.

Depressed, Colin got off the bench and went out to the parking lot. He unchained his bike from the security rack.

He no longer wanted revenge against Roy. He just wanted to put a stop to the violence. He wanted to get the evidence so the proper authorities would believe and act. He was weary.

Although it was pointless to tell them, although they would never understand, Mr. and Mrs. Borden were killers, too. They had turned Roy into one of the living dead.

Colin called Heather.

“Did you talk to Roy’s mother?” she asked.

“Yeah. And I got more than I bargained for.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s too complicated over the phone. You’ve got to hear the tape.”

“Why don’t you bring it here? My parents are gone for the day.”

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“Don’t come by the front way,” she said. “Roy just might happen to be at the cemetery across the street; you never can tell. Take the alley and come through the backyard.”

He made certain he wasn’t followed, and she was waiting for him on the patio behind the house. They went into the cheery yellow-and-white kitchen, sat at the table, and listened to the taped conversation between him and Mrs. Borden.

When Colin finally switched off the machine, Heather said, “It’s awful.”

“I know.”

“Poor Roy.”

“I know what you mean,” Colin said morosely.

“I’m kind of sorry I said those mean things about him. He can’t help what he is, can he?”

“It affected me the same way. But we can’t let ourselves feel too sorry for him. Not yet. We don’t dare. We’ve got to remember that he’s dangerous. We’ve got to keep in mind that he’d happily kill me-and rape and kill you-if he thought he could get away with it.”

The kitchen clock ticked hollowly.

Heather said, “If we played this tape for the police, it might convince them.”