Saint Odd. Dean Koontz

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       Five

      MY PSYCHIC MAGNETISM WORKED BEST WHEN I was seeking someone whose face and name I knew, though one or the other would usually suffice. On a few occasions, I had conjured in my mind the image of an object for which I was searching, and eventually I was drawn to it, though not in as timely a fashion as when my quarry was a person.

      As the three hunters spread out in the department store, I pictured the pillowcase that contained a bolt cutter, a crowbar, and a hammer. I had left it just inside the door through which I’d broken into the mall.

      When I felt the urge to move, I set out once more, hunched and scuttling as silently as possible. I followed the display cases, all with glass fronts and tops but with solid backs that would shield me from the cultists—unless one of them stepped into the aisle along which I traveled. At an intersection with other rows of cabinets, I turned right, moving steadily away from what little illumination the distant flashlight beams provided when they ricocheted off the walls and columns and glass displays.

      Forward into darkness.

      I had never before counted on psychic magnetism to make my way through pitch-black rooms, but only to lead me eventually to that which I sought. Now I decided that having paranormal abilities wouldn’t mean much if, on the way to my goal, my wild talent could run me head-on into a wall, send me tumbling down a staircase, or drop me into an open shaft. Surely I could trust it now, had to trust it, just like Spider-Man trusted his web-spinning ability to swing from skyscraper to skyscraper even though the briefest interruption in his production of spider silk could drop him eighty stories to the street below.

      Of course, Spider-Man was a comic-book character. He couldn’t die unless the company that owned him was in the mood to flush away a multibillion-dollar property. I was a real person, and I wasn’t worth multiple billions to anyone.

      I ventured into lightless realms, although tentatively at first, sliding one hand along a display case. My other hand was extended in front of me, alternately anticipating a wall where empty air should be and feeling the floor to avoid a sudden drop-off or debris.

      At the rate I was going, I wouldn’t escape the three searchers, and even if I did elude them, I’d die of thirst or starvation before I got to the pillowcase of tools that I pictured in my mind’s eye.

      I had always assumed that my gift was just that, a gift, not the result of a rare gene or of some beneficial brain damage related to my mother’s consumption of martinis during her pregnancy. A gift like mine seemed to come from some higher power, and whatever the source—whether God or space aliens or wizards living in a parallel Earth where magic worked—it must be a benign higher power, because I was motivated to help the innocent and afflict the guilty. I had no desire to use my abilities to amass colossal wealth or to rule the planet with either a velvet glove or an iron fist.

      Taking a deep breath, all but totally blind, trusting in my psychic magnetism as Spidey trusted in his web spinning, as Wile E. Coyote trusted in products sold by Acme to snare or kill the Road Runner, I rose somewhat and, in the hunched posture of an ape, hurried forward. If trash of any kind littered the floor, I didn’t once set foot on it. If there were obstacles in my way, I didn’t collide with them. Intuitively, I turned this way, that way, this way, marveling at my ability to navigate successfully and with hardly a sound.

      I had always been in awe of Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles, blind men who sat at their pianos and never played a bad note, absolutely certain of where the keys were in relation to their fingers. I dared to feel a connection with them, though I had no more musical talent than a rock; standing taller, moving rapidly and successfully through total darkness, I thrilled to the experience as sometimes I had thrilled to Stevie’s and Ray’s piano work.

      The searchers fell far behind me. I couldn’t see even the most indirect glow of their lights. I couldn’t hear them, either, though perhaps because my heart was pounding so hard that the blood-rush roar in my ears was like my own private Niagara.

      With my right shoulder, I brushed against something, only the slightest contact, but it alarmed me, and I stopped. I turned, felt around me as if in a game of blind man’s bluff. I discovered a doorless doorway, the cold metal jamb slightly oily to the touch.

      I thought I knew where I was. This must be the stockroom that had once supplied the sporting-goods department, from which stairs led down to the employees-only level under the mall. On the day of the mass murder, when I’d passed through this place in the grip of psychic magnetism, desperately seeking the gunman, Simon Varner, before he could kill, I had encountered a pretty redhead busily pulling small boxes off packed storage shelves. She’d said Hey, in a friendly way, and I’d said Hey, and I had kept moving through the door and onto the sales floor, expecting the dreadful sound of gunfire at any moment—which had come only a few minutes later.

      Now I heard a voice. A woman. But not the redhead. One of the searchers. She was shouting, excited. I was too far away to hear exactly what she said, but I caught the word footprints.

      The mall had been abandoned for many months. Time might have laid a thin carpet of dust, probably not everywhere but here and there, revealing part of the route I had taken.

      Suddenly, out there beyond the stockroom, a flashlight flared, another, a third. They were closer than I expected.

      Picturing the pillowcase full of tools once more, I hurried across the stockroom, stopped, felt a door jamb where I expected it, and stepped blindly onto the first step of the two flights of stairs that led down to the mall’s underworld. Using the railing to steady myself, I descended as far as the mid-floor landing before I heard voices above, perhaps not in the stockroom yet but approaching it.

      I hustled down the last flight, eased open the fire door just far enough to slip through, closed it as quietly as possible, and switched on my flashlight. Here in the wide service corridor, dust hadn’t settled as it had in the high-ceilinged, cavernous sales floor above. I’d left no footprints on my way in; and I would leave none on my way out.

      From the stairwell behind me came an eager voice, footsteps descending.

      If I followed the route by which I had originally entered the mall, there was nowhere close to hide. The two freight elevators featured open-work steel gates instead of solid sliders. Farther away were the double doors to the loading dock, which I couldn’t possibly reach before the cultists arrived and saw me.

      I turned in the opposite direction, where there were rooms on the left side of the corridor. I hurried to the nearest door, СКАЧАТЬ