Dean Koontz: The Voice of the Night

Colin had read a great deal about many things but only a little about psychology. Nevertheless, as he continued to marvel at the miniatures, he realized that the uncompromising attention to detail was an expression of the same fanatical insistence on neatness and order that was so evident in Mrs. Borden’s endless battle to keep the house as clean as a hospital operating room.

He wondered if Roy’s parents really were nut cases. Of course, they weren’t a couple of raving lunatics; they weren’t certifiable. They weren’t so far gone that they sat in comers talking to themselves and eating flies. Maybe just a little bit crazy. Just a tiny bit nuts. Perhaps they’d get a lot worse as time went on, gradually crazier and crazier, until ten or fifteen years from now they would be eating flies. It sure was something to think about.

Colin decided that if he and Roy became lifelong friends, he would hang around Roy’s house only for another ten years. After that he’d maintain his friendship with Roy but avoid Mr. and Mrs. Borden, so that when they finally went completely insane they wouldn’t be able to get their hands on him and force him to eat flies or, worse yet, chop him up with an ax.

He knew all about lunatic killers. He’d seen the movies about them. Psycho. Straightjacket. Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? A couple dozen others, too. Maybe a hundred. One thing he learned from those films was that crazy people favored messy killing. They used knives and scythes and hatchets and axes. You’d never catch one of them resorting to something bloodless like poison or gas or a smothering pillow.

Roy sat on one of the stools in front of the control console. “Over here, Colin. You’ll be able to see more of it from here than anywhere else.”

“I don’t think we should mess around with this if your dad doesn’t want us to.”

“Will you relax, for Christ’s sake?”

With an odd mixture of reluctance and pleasant anticipation, Colin sat on the second stool.

Roy carefully turned a dial on the board in front of him. It was connected to a rheostat, and the overhead garage lights slowly dimmed.

“It’s like a theater,” Colin said.

“No,” Roy said. “It’s more like… I’m God.”

Colin laughed. “Yeah. Because you can make it day or night any time you want.”

“And a whole lot more than that.”

“Show me.”

“In a minute. I won’t make it completely dark. Not full night. Too hard to see. I’ll make it early evening. Twilight.”

Next, Roy flipped four switches, and all over the miniature world, lights came on. In every village, street lamps threw down opalescent pools on the pavement beneath them. In most of the houses, a yellow, warm, and welcoming glow brought life to the windows. Some houses even had porch lights and little lampposts at the ends of their walks, as if guests were expected. Churches cast colorful stained-glass patterns on the ground around them. At a few major intersections traffic lights changed gradually from red to green to amber to green again. In one hamlet a movie marquee pulsed with a score of tiny lights.

“Fantastic!” Colin said.

As he stared at the layout, Roy’s expression and posture were peculiar. His eyes were narrow slits; his lips were pressed tightly together. His shoulders were drawn up, and he was clearly tense.

“Eventually,” Roy said, “the old man’s going to put working headlights in the automobiles. And he’s designing a pump and drainage system that’ll let water flow through the rivers. There’ll even be a waterfall.”

“Your dad sounds like an interesting guy.”

Roy didn’t respond. He stared at the small world in front of him.

At the far left corner of the platform, four trains waited for orders on the sidings in the railroad yard. Two were freight trains, and two were for passengers only.

Roy threw another switch, and one of the trains came to life. It buzzed softly; lights flickered in the cars.

Colin leaned forward in anticipation.

Roy manipulated switches, and the train chugged out of the yard. As it moved toward the nearest town, red warning lights flashed where a street intersected the tracks; black-and-white-striped crossing barriers lowered over the roadway. The train gathered speed, whistled noisily as it passed through the village, climbed a slight incline, vanished into a tunnel, reappeared around the far side of the mountain, accelerated, crossed a trestle, picked up more speed, entered a straightaway, really moving now, rounded a wide curve with a violent clatter, wheels whizzing, took a sharper curve with a dangerous tilt, and moved faster, faster, faster.

“For God’s sake, don’t wreck it,” Colin said nervously.

“That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

“Then your dad will know we’ve been here.”

“Nah. Don’t worry about it.”

The train flashed through the Swiss station without slowing down, rocked wildly on the edge of disaster as it negotiated a switchback, roared through a tunnel, and entered a straightaway, picking up speed by the second.

“But if the train’s broken, your dad-”

“I won’t break it. Relax.”

A drawbridge began to go up directly in the path of the train.

Colin gritted his teeth.

The train reached the river, swept beneath the raised bridge, and plunged off the track. The miniature locomotive and two cars wound up in the channel, and all the other cars fell off the rails in a brief splash of sparks.

“Jeez,” Colin said.

Roy slid off his stool and went to the scene of the accident. He bent down and peered closely at the wreck.

Colin joined him. “Is it ruined?”

Roy didn’t answer. He squinted through the tiny windows in the train.

“What are you looking for?” Colin asked.

“Bodies.”

“What?”

“Dead people.”

Colin squinted into one of the fallen cars. There were no people in it-that is, there were no figurines. He looked at Roy. “I don’t understand.”

Roy didn’t look up from the train. “Understand what?”

“I don’t see any ‘dead people.”’

Moving slowly from car to car, staring into each of them, almost entranced, Roy said, “If this was a real train full of people that went off the tracks, the passengers would have been thrown out of their seats. They’d have cracked their heads against the windows and against the handrails. They’d have ended up in a big tangled pile on the floor. There’d be broken arms, broken legs, smashed teeth, slashed faces, eyes punched out, blood over everything…. You’d be able to hear them screaming a mile away. Some of them would be dead, too.”

“So?”

“So I’m trying to imagine what it would look like in there if this was real.”

“Why?”

“It interests me.”

“What does?”

“The idea.”

“The idea of a real train wreck?”

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t that kind of sick?”

Roy looked up at last. His eyes were flat and cold. “Did you say ‘sick’?”

“Well,” Colin said uneasily, “I mean … finding enjoyment in other people’s pain …”

“You think that’s unusual?”

Colin shrugged. He didn’t want to argue.

“In other parts of the world,” Roy said, “people go to bullfights, and deep down inside most of them hope they’ll see a matador get gored. They always get to see the bull in pain. They love it. And a hell of a lot of people go to the auto races just to see the bad crackups.”

“That’s different,” Colin said.

Roy grinned. “Oh, is it? How?”

Colin thought hard about it, trying to find words to express what he knew intuitively to be true. “Well … for one thing, the matador knows when he goes into the arena that he might get hurt. But people riding home on a train … not expecting anything … not asking for trouble … and then it happens…. That’s a tragedy.”