Part 1 (1/2)

The Bad Place.

by Dean R. Koontz.

Every eye sees its own special vision; every ear hears a most different song. In each man's troubled heart, an incision would reveal a unique, shameful wrong.

Stranger friends hide here in human guise than reside in the valleys of h.e.l.l. But goodness, kindness and love arise in the heart of the poor beast, as well.

-The Book of Counted Sorrows.

THE NIGHT was becalmed and curiously silent. A faint scent of smoke hung on the motionless air though no smoke was visible.

Sprawled face down on the cold pavement, Frank Pollard did not move when he regained consciousness; he waited in the hope that his confusion would dissipate. He blinked, trying to focus. Veils seemed to flutter within his eyes. He sucked deep breaths of the cool air, tasting the invisible smoke, grimacing at the acrid tang of it.

Shadows loomed like a convocation of robed figures, crowding around him.

Gradually his vision cleared, but in the yellowish light that came from far behind him, little was revealed. A large trash dumpster, six or eight feet from him, so dimly outlined that for a moment it seemed strange, as though it were an artifact of an alien civilization. Frank stared at it for a while before he realized what it was. He did not know where he was or how he had gotten there. He could not have been unconscious longer than a few seconds for his heart was pounding as if he had been running for his life only moments ago.

Fireflies in a windstorm....

That phrase took flight through his mind, but he had no idea what it meant. When he tried to concentrate on it and make sense of it, a dull headache developed above his right eye.

Fireflies in a windstorm....

He groaned softly.

Between him and the dumpster, a shadow among shadows moved, quick and sinuous. Small but radiant green eyes regarded him with icy interest.

Frightened, Frank pushed up onto his knees. A thin, involuntary cry issued from him, almost less like a human sound than like the muted wail of a reed instrument.

The green-eyed observer scampered away. A cat. Just an ordinary black cat.

Frank got to his feet, swayed dizzily, and nearly fell over an object that had been on the blacktop beside him. Gingerly he bent down and picked it up: a flight bag made of supple leather, packed full, surprisingly heavy. He supposed it was his. He could not remember.

Carrying the bag, he tottered to the dumpster and leaned against its rusted flank.

Looking back, he saw that he was between rows of what seemed to be two-story stucco apartment buildings. All of the windows were black. On both sides, the tenants' cars were pulled nose-first into covered parking stalls. The queer yellow glow, sour and sulfurous, almost more like the product of a gas flame than the luminescence of an incandescent electric bulb, came from a street lamp at the end of the block, too far away to reveal the details of the alleyway in which he stood.

As his rapid breathing slowed and as his heartbeat decelerated, he abruptly realized that he did not know who he was. He knew his name-Frank Pollard-but that was all. He did not know how old he was, what he did for a living, where he had come from, where he was going, or why. He was so startled by his predicament that for a moment his breath caught in his throat; then his heartbeat soared again, and he let his breath out in a rush.

Fireflies in a windstorm...

What the h.e.l.l did that mean?

The headache above his right eye corkscrewed across his forehead.

He looked frantically left and right, searching for an object or an aspect of the scene that he might recognize, anything, an anchor in a world that was suddenly too strange. When the night offered nothing to rea.s.sure him, he turned his quest inward, desperately seeking something familiar in himself, but his own memory was even darker than the pa.s.sageway around him.

Gradually he became aware that the scent of smoke had faded, replaced by a vague but nauseating smell of rotting garbage in the dumpster. The stench of decomposition filled him with thoughts of death, which seemed to trigger a vague recollection that he was on the run from someone-or something that wanted to kill him. When he tried to recall why he was fleeing, and from whom, he could not further illuminate any sc.r.a.p of memory; in fact, it seemed more an awareness on instinct than a genuine recollection.

A puff of wind swirled around him. Then calm returned as if the dead night was trying to come back to life but had aged just one shuddering breath. A single piece of waste paper, swept up by that suffocating air clicked along the cement and sc.r.a.ped to a stop against his right shoe.

Then another puff.

The paper whirled away.

Again the night was dead calm.

Something was happening. Frank sensed that these silent whiffs of wind had some malevolent source, or meaning.

Irrationally, he was sure that he was about to be crushed by a great weight. He looked up into the clear sky, at the empty blackness of s.p.a.ce and at the malignant brilliant of the distant stars. If something was descending toward Frank he could not see it.

The night exhaled once more. Harder this time. Its breath was sharp and dank.

He was wearing running shoes, white athletic socks, and a long-sleeved blue-plaid s.h.i.+rt. He had no jacket, an could have used one. The air was not frigid, just mildly cooling. But a coldness was in him, too, a staggering fear, and he s.h.i.+vered uncontrollably between the cool caress of the night and that inner chill.

The gust of wind died.

Stillness reclaimed the night.

Convinced that he had to get out of there-and fast, he pushed away from the dumpster. He staggered along the alley retreating from the end of the block where the street lamp glowed, into darker realms, with no destination in mind, directed only by the sense that this place was dangerous and that was if indeed safety could be found, lay elsewhere.

The wind rose again, and with it, this time, came a whistling, barely audible, like the distant music of a flute of some strange bone instrument.

Within a few steps, as Frank became surefooted and as his eyes adapted to the murky night, he arrived at a confluence of pa.s.sageways.

Wrought-iron gates in pale stucco arches lay to his left and right.

He tried the gate on the left. It was unlocked, secured only by a simple gravity latch. The hinges squeaked, eliciting a wince from Frank, who hoped the sound had not been heard by his pursuer.

By now, although no adversary was in sight, Frank had no doubt that he was the object of a chase. He knew it was surely as a hare knew when a fox was in the field.

The wind shuttered again at his back, and the flowerlike music, though barely audible and lacking a discernible melody, was haunting. It pierced him. It sharpened his fear.

Beyond the black iron gate, flanked by feathery ferns and bushes, a walkway led between a pair of two-story apartment buildings. Frank followed it into a rectangular courtyard somewhat revealed by low-wattage security lamps at each end. First-floor apartments opened onto a covered promenade; the doors of the second-floor units were under the tile roof of an iron-railed balcony. Lightless windows faced a swath of gra.s.s, beds of azaleas and a few palms.

A frieze of spiky palm-frond shadows lay across one palely illuminated wall, as motionless as if they were carved on a stone tablet. Then the mysterious flute warbled softly again, the reborn wind huffed harder than before, and the shadows danced, danced. Frank's own distorted, dark reflection whirled briefly over the stucco, among the silhouettes, as he hurried across the courtyard. He found another walkway, another gate, and ultimately the street on which the apartment complex faced.

It was a side street without lampposts. There, the reign of the night was undisputed.

The bl.u.s.tery wind lasted longer than before, churned harder. When the gust ended abruptly, with an equally abrupt cessation of the unmelodic flute, the night seemed to have been left in a vacuum, as though the departing turbulence had taken with it every wisp of breathable air.

Then Frank's ears popped as if from a sudden alt.i.tude change; as he rushed across the deserted street toward the cars parked along the far curb, air poured in around him again.

He tried four cars before finding one unlocked, a Ford. Slipping behind the wheel, he left the door open to provide some light.

He looked back the way he had come.

The apartment complex was dead-of-the-night and Wrapped in darkness. An ordinary building yet inexplicably sinister.