Dean Koontz: Whispers

She didn't want to start for home yet, but there was nowhere else to go.

***

The house was dark.

The lawn looked more blue than green in the glow of the mercury-vapor streetlamp.

Hilary parked the car in the garage and walked to the front door. Her heels made an unnaturally loud tock-tock-tock sound on the stone footpath.

The night was mild. The heat of the vanished sun still rose from the earth, and the cooling sea wind that washed the basin city in all seasons had not yet brought the usual autumn chill to the air; later, toward midnight, it would be coat weather.

Crickets chirruped in the hedges.

She let herself into the house, found the entranceway light, closed and locked the door. She switched on the living room lights as well and was a few steps from the foyer when she heard movement behind her and turned.

A man came out of the foyer closet, knocking a coat off a hanger as he shouldered out of that confining space, throwing the door back against the wall with a loud bang! He was about forty years old, a tall man wearing dark slacks and a tight yellow pullover sweater--and leather gloves. He had the kind of big, hard muscles that could be gotten only from years of weightlifting; even his wrists, between the cuffs of the sweater and the gloves, were thick and sinewy. He stopped ten feet from her and grinned broadly, nodded, licked his thin lips.

She wasn't quite sure how to respond to his sudden appearance. He wasn't an ordinary intruder, not a total stranger, not some punk kid or some shabby degenerate with a drug-blur in his eyes. Although he didn't belong here, she knew him, and he was just about the last man she would expect to encounter in a situation of this sort. Seeing gentle little Wally Topelis come out of that closet was the only thing that could have shocked her more than this. She was less frightened than confused. She had met him three weeks ago, while doing research for a screenplay set in the wine country of Northern California, a project meant to take her mind off Wally's marketing of The Hour of the Wolf, which she had finished about that time. He was an important and successful man up there in the Napa Valley. But that didn't explain what the hell he was doing in her house, hiding in her closet.

"Mr. Frye," she said uneasily.

"Hello, Hilary." He had a deep, somewhat gravelly voice which seemed reassuring and fatherly when she had taken an extensive private tour of his winery near St. Helena, but which now sounded coarse, mean, threatening.

She cleared her throat nervously. "What are you doing here?"

"Come to see you."

"Why?"

"Just had to see you again."

"About what?"

He was still grinning. He had a tense, predatory look. His was the smile of the wolf just before it closed hungry jaws on the cornered rabbit.

"How did you get in?" she demanded.

"Pretty."

"What?"

"So pretty."

"Stop it."

"Been looking for one like you."

"You're scaring me."

"You're a real pretty one."

He took a step toward her.

She knew then, beyond doubt, what he wanted. But it was crazy, unthinkable. Why would a wealthy man of his high social position travel hundreds of miles to risk his fortune, reputation, and freedom for one brief violent moment of forced sex?

He took another step.

She backed away from him.

Rape. It made no sense. Unless.... If he intended to kill her afterwards, he would not be taking much of a risk at all. He was wearing gloves. He would leave no prints, no clues. And no one would believe that a prominent and highly-respected vintner from St. Helena would drive all the way to Los Angeles to rape and murder. Even if some would believe it, they'd have no reason to think of him in the first place. The homicide investigation would never move in his direction.

He kept coming. Slowly. Relentlessly. Heavy steps. Enjoying the suspense. Grinning more than ever as he saw comprehension enter her eyes.

She backed past the huge stone fireplace, briefly considered grabbing one of the heavy brass implements on the hearth, but realized that she would not be quick enough to defend herself with it. He was a powerful, athletic man in excellent physical condition; he would be all over her before she could seize the poker and swing it at his damned thick skull.

He flexed his big hands. The knuckles strained at the snug-fitting leather.

She backed past a grouping of furniture--two chairs, a coffee table, a long sofa. She started moving toward her right, trying to put the sofa between her and Frye.

"Such pretty hair," he said.

A part of her wondered if she were losing her mind. This could not be the Bruno Frye she had met in St. Helena. There had been not even the slightest hint of the madness that now contorted his broad, sweat-greased face. His eyes were blue-gray chips of ice, and the frigid passion that shone in them was surely too monstrous to have been concealed when she last saw him.

Then she saw the knife, and the sight of it was like a blast of furnace heat that turned her doubts to steam and blew them away. He meant to kill her. The knife was fixed to his belt, over his right hip. It was in an open sheath, and he could free it simply by popping the metal snap on a single narrow leather strap. In one second, the blade could be slipped from the holder and wrapped tightly in his fist; in two seconds, it could be jammed deep into her soft belly, slicing through warm meat and jelly organs, letting loose the precious store of blood.

"I've wanted you since I first saw you," Frye said. "Just wanted to get at you."

Time seemed to stop for her.

"You're going to be a good little piece," he said. "Real good."

Abruptly, the world was a slow-motion movie. Each second seemed like a minute. She watched him approach as if he were a creature in a nightmare, as if the atmosphere had suddenly become as thick as syrup.

The instant that she spotted the knife, Hilary froze. She stopped backing away from him, even though he continued to approach. A knife will do that. It chokes you up, freezes your heart, brings ah uncontrollable tremor to your guts. Surprisingly few people have the stomach to use a knife against another living thing. More than any other weapon, it makes you aware of the delicacy of flesh, the terrible fragility of human life; in the damage that he wreaks, the attacker can see all too clearly the nature of his own mortality. A gun, a draught of poison, a firebomb, a blunt instrument, a strangler's piece of rope--all can be used relatively cleanly, most of them at a distance. But the man with a knife must be prepared to get dirty, and he must get in close, so close that he can feel the heat escaping from the wounds as he makes them. It takes a special courage, or insanity, to slash at another person and not be repelled by the warm blood spurting over your hand.

Frye was upon her. He placed one large hand on her breasts, rubbed and squeezed them roughly through the silky fabric of her dress.

That rude contact snapped her out of the trance into which she'd fallen. She knocked his hand away, twisted out of his grasp, and ran behind the couch.

His laugh was hearty, disconcertingly pleasant, but his hard eyes glinted with a macabre amusement. It was a demon joke, the mad humor of hell. He wanted her to fight back, for he enjoyed the chase.

"Get out!" she said. "Get out!"

"Don't want to get out," Frye said, smiling, shaking his head. "I want to get in. Oh yeah. That's it. I want to get in you, little lady. I want to rip that dress off your back, get you naked, and get right up in there. All the way up, all the way inside where it's warm and wet and dark and soft."

For a moment, the fear that made her legs rubbery and turned her insides to water was supplanted by more powerful emotions: hate, anger, fury. Hers was not the reasoned anger of a woman toward an arrogant man's usurpation of her dignity and rights; not an intellectual anger based on the social and biological injustices of the situation; it was more fundamental than that. He had entered her private space uninvited, had pushed his way into her modern cave, and she was possessed by a primitive rage that blurred her vision and made her heart race. She bared her teeth at him, growled in the back of her throat; she was reduced to an almost unconscious animal response as she faced him and looked for a way out of the trap.