Dean Koontz - Lost Souls

The boy wove through an obstacle course of vent pipes, cocking his head this way and that until he identified the source. He dropped onto his knees to listen.

The voices rose from such a distance, through fibrous filters and past the slowly rotating blades of exhaust fans, through so many turns of insulation-wrapped duct that they were thin and faltering. Yet the misery and terror they expressed were so affecting that Bryce shivered more because of those faraway cries than because of the cold air.

The boy said, “It’s not a TV.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“They’re real. They’re real people.”

“Don’t listen. Come on.”

“Are they being killed?” Travis asked.

“Don’t listen. You’ll never stop hearing them.”

“We’ve got to help them. Can’t we help them?”

“We don’t know where they are,” Bryce said, “except probably in the basement.”

“There must be a way down there, past the guards.”

“No, there’s not.”

“There’s got to be a way,” the boy insisted.

“I know that’s how it seems, that there’s got to be, but sometimes there’s just not.”

“It makes me sick to hear it.”

“If somehow we could get to them,” Bryce said, “then we’d be in the same trouble they’re in now. It would be our voices echoing up the pipe.”

“But it’s horrible, just to let it happen.”

“Yes. Come on now.”

“What is happening to them?”

“I don’t know. And we don’t want to find out firsthand. Come on, son. Time may be running out for us here.”

Reluctantly, Travis rose from the vent pipe and rejoined Bryce.

When Bryce put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, he could feel him shaking.

“I like your spirit, Travis. You’ve got a righteous instinct. We can’t save those people. They’re already dying. But if we can get help and learn what’s going on, maybe we can save others.”

“We’ve got to.”

“We’ll try.”

The roof of the main wing became the roof of the south wing. Bryce found the fire ladder curving up and over the parapet just where he thought it would be.

The sky was a field of vaguely phosphorescent ashes, darker in the east than in the west, but dark to one degree or another from horizon to horizon.

Leaning over the parapet with Travis, Bryce could see a paved fire lane that ran along the side of the building, illuminated by evenly spaced curb lamps. He could not see much of the grassy descent that receded beyond the curb, but he recalled the contours of it from his death-watch walks on this roof. The slope led to a copse of pines visible only as conical forms silhouetted by distant streetlamps and house lights.

“Windows to each side of the ladder. Don’t worry about them,” Bryce said. “Looks like about thirty feet to the bottom, maybe a little more. Are you okay with it?”

“Sure. I can do it.”

“That’s an emergency-only lane. It’s not used by staff or for deliveries. There’s not much chance anyone will come along and see us, so you don’t have to go down as if it’s a greased pole.”

“All right. I’m ready.”

“You go first,” Bryce said. “When you get to the bottom, cross the pavement, go about twenty feet into the grass and lie down, so the darkness and the slope will hide you.”

“You’ll be right behind me?”

“I’ll wait till you’re in the grass. No sense both of us being in the open at the same time. Then we’ll get help from a friend of mine.”

Monkey-quick and confident, the boy descended without incident and hurried across the fire lane. When he sprawled in the grass and looked back toward the hospital, his face was a small pale oval.

The horizontal members of the ladder were more like rungs than like steps. The thin, pliable soles of Bryce’s slippers tended to slip off the steel, but he reached the bottom safely.

In the field, the boy rose to his feet as Bryce arrived. “We have to get to my house first. Mom will go there after work, before coming here to see me. She might be on the way home right now. We’ve got to stop her before she leaves there for the hospital.”

“They might be watching the house.”

“But we’ve got to stop her. Those people screaming. It can’t happen to her. It just can’t.”

“All right. We’ll go to your house first. But even if I weren’t dressed like this,” Bryce said, “we’d be smart not to parade down any main streets.”

“I know those trees,” Travis said. “The other side of them is the Lowers.”

The Lowers was the shabby neighborhood of Rainbow Falls, at a lower elevation than the rest of the town, streets of drab cottages and old house trailers and unkempt lawns.

“Our place is in the Lowers,” Travis said. “We can get there mostly unseen.”

The boy headed downhill toward the pines, and Bryce followed.

The grass was halfway to his knees. No dew had yet formed. The cold teeth of the night bit his bare ankles.

Just before twilight, when Mr. Lyss climbed the porch steps and rang the bell at the spooky house at the end of the narrow lane, no one came to the door. He used his picks to open the lock.

Nummy said, “So now we been jailbreakers once, housebreakers twice, and thieves.”

As he opened the door, Mr. Lyss said, “We didn’t steal anything yet. And I’m the jailbreaker and the housebreaker, not you. You’re just my annoying entourage.”

“What’s that word?”

Stepping into the house, Mr. Lyss said, “Doesn’t matter. You’ll never need to use it.”

Following the old man, Nummy said, “We did too steal something. Mrs. Trudy LaPierre’s food.”

“You remember-she tried to hire her husband’s murder and pin it on you?”

“That don’t make her food our food for nothing. You want this door open?”

“Close it,” Mr. Lyss said. “And for your information, I intend to pay for the food.”

“That would be nice. When is it you’ll pay for it?”

Switching on the lights in the front hall, Mr. Lyss said, “When I win the lottery.”

“You’re gonna win the lottery?”

“I have the ticket in my wallet already. It’s just a matter of collecting the money after they announce the winning number.”

In the living room, Mr. Lyss clicked on a lamp. A lot of the furniture was flowery, and the wallpaper.

“When you win the lottery, is that when you’ll pay back the loan of three fives, ten ones, ten more ones, and three more ones?”

“That’s exactly when,” Mr. Lyss said as he turned in a circle to admire the room.

“What if somebody comes home?” Nummy worried.

“We won’t be here long. Nobody will come before we’re gone.” In the dining room, Mr. Lyss said, “Look at this.”

What caught his eye was a painting of Jesus riding a horse. Jesus was in white robes, as usual, but he wore cowboy boots instead of sandals, and his hat was a halo.

“What an amazing thing,” Mr. Lyss said.

Nummy didn’t see what was so amazing. Of course, Jesus could ride a horse if he wanted to. Jesus could do anything.

Nummy heard wood creaking, like a floorboard or something, in another part of the house.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“What’s what?”

“That creak.”

“Old houses creak. Nobody’s here.”

“You might be wrong about somebody coming home,” Nummy said.

“Peaches, you remember the mailbox out at the end of the lane, at the street, how it was painted so fancy?”

“I liked the pretty mailbox.”