Dean Koontz - Your Heart Belongs To Me

He believed that Forry was a friend. But friendships failed all the time. Brother turned against brother, since the time of Cain and Abel, and even more frequently, more savagely, in this barbarous age.

Although his heart had reached the unshakable conclusion that Samantha was faithful to him and could never betray him, and though his mind was largely in agreement with his heart, he remembered well what she had said so recently at dinner.

If you knew me as completely as I know you, you might not love me.

He loved her as he had never loved another, and he trusted her as he had allowed himself to trust no one else. But by the nature of the world, those who loved and trusted were uniquely vulnerable.

Human beings are such knotted, desperate pieces of work-it’s a rare thing to know one completely, to the core, and still love him.

Perhaps that had been the most honest, the most self-revealing, and the most loving thing that anyone had ever said to him.

But in his present distress, which so easily could spiral into despair, he could not entirely dismiss the possibility that her words might have constituted a consummate act of manipulation.

He didn’t like himself much right now. He might not like himself much for a long time. But he liked himself enough to want to live.

Sitting on a stool at the smaller of the two kitchen islands, preferring to dine by only the light in the cooktop hood, he ate halloumi cheese on zaatar crackers, black olives, slices of soujouk, and cold asparagus. He finished with a fresh pear and a handful of shelled pistachios.

He suspected that in the weeks and months ahead, he would be taking more meals alone than he might wish.

After consulting the labels on each of the five bottles of drugs supplied by Dr. Hobb, he took the medications as prescribed.

Upstairs, in his bedroom, he inserted the medic-alert phone in the charger and stood the charger on his nightstand, so close to his bed that he should be able to reach it regardless of his condition. As he had done the past few nights, he would go to sleep comforted by the light of a lamp. Recently, waking in darkness had felt like coming awake in a sealed casket after being prematurely buried, with too little air to long sustain him.

Lying in bed, with the TV tuned to an old Western-John Wayne in The Searchers-Ryan reviewed the decisions he had made this day, and he felt good about them.

He had tremendous confidence in his new cardiologist, although even Hobb had been stumped by one thing. The doctor had not been able to explain adequately the soft insistent knocking that now and then rose within Ryan, although the physician firmly ruled out the notion that it could be some kind of blood-and-muscle problem related to the cardiomyopathy.

Hobb suggested that the sound instead might indicate a hearing problem, a malady of one ear or the other. Eventually, Ryan pretended to consider that possibility, but remained certain that the rapping had originated not in the nautilus turns of either ear, but within his chest.

Less than half his attention was with John Wayne in the post-Civil War West, because he lay waiting for the rap-rap-rapping to resume.

Eventually, as the movie drew toward an end, as wave after wave of weariness washed Ryan toward needed sleep, he thought that perhaps the knocking would not come again because he had already answered it, had opened the door.

He did not know what he meant by that. It was the kind of muddy thought that eddied through a mind half submerged in sleep’s river.

And so he slept.

During the night, a landscape materialized around him, and for the first time in months, a dream returned him to one of the places that had disturbed his sleep in September.

In the beginning there was only an impression of depth. Waste and void, bottomless and terrifying.

Then the void became water, invisible without light, silent without currents, neither warm nor cold, sensed rather than felt.

A wind blew across the water, a mystic wind murmuring without melody, and in the wind was light, the pale luminosity of the moon carried like dust, which silvered every ripple, although the body of the lake remained black.

The wind breathed once, then perished, and the earth formed around the perimeter of the lake, not fertile soil but bleak rocks, and out of the rocks grew trees as colorless as shadows.

He found himself standing on the rocks, as before, but one thing had changed. He was no longer the sole visitor to the lake.

On the farther shore stood a figure. Although dark, this Other could be discerned because the landscape behind it was so much darker that contrast was achieved.

As the Other began slowly to navigate the rocks, coming around the lake, Ryan knew that it must be Samantha, though he could see nothing of her face and little of her form.

She would have called to him, as he would have called to her. But this place had no air to carry their voices.

He began to move to meet her as she circled toward him, but he took only a few steps across the treacherous rocks before a hand on his shoulder halted him. Even in the gloom, he recognized William Holden at his side.

The long-dead actor-star of Sabrina and The Bridge on the River Kwai and so many more films, winner of the Oscar for his performance in Stalag 17 -said, “It isn’t her, pal.”

Ryan was not surprised that Holden could speak in this airless realm. The rules by which others lived never applied to movie stars.

Suffering lined the actor’s handsome face, as had been the case by the time that he starred in The Wild Bunch and Network.

“Listen, pal, I had a drinking problem. In Europe once, I was driving drunk, had an accident, killed a bystander.”

Even if there had been air to allow speech, Ryan would not have known how to reply to the actor’s non sequitur.

Still at a distance, the Other nevertheless steadily approached along the shore.

“Don’t be a dope, Dotcom. That isn’t her. You come with me.”

Ryan followed Holden away from the relentless Other. Through the long and exhausting night, they circled the black lake together, as in movies they might have sought to avoid Indian warriors or German soldiers, and Ryan thought he should compliment the actor on his performance in Sunset Boulevard or ask for an autograph, but he said nothing, and Holden never spoke again.

With the holidays approaching, and then with the holidays upon them, Ryan found reasons to minimize the number of evenings he spent with Samantha, passing just enough time in her company to avoid raising in her the suspicion that avoidance was his intention.

Loving her more passionately than he had once thought he could love anyone, he wanted to be with her. Because she could read him so well, however, he worried that she would infer accurately from his most innocent statement or expression that he had secretly changed physicians from Gupta to Hobb.

He did not want to argue with her, but the prospect of argument dismayed him less than did the certainty of her disappointment in him if she learned what he had done. He needed her approval as the rose needs the rain.

In light of his condition, Ryan could take refuge in not only the usual seasonal excuse of prior obligations but also in complaints about reactions to his medications-nausea, headaches, insomnia, mood swings-that were even occasionally real.

And when they were together, he tried to charm, to engage, to entertain, to be Winky less than Dotcom, always with no hint of the effort behind his performance. With her, he found this easier than he would have with anyone else, because by her nature she always drew from him the best of who he was and of what he had to offer. He had always wanted to please her even before he had anything to hide from her.