The Voice of the Night by Dean Koontz Page A

microfilm,” Roy said.
    “You researched the case?”
    “Yeah. It’s exactly the kind of thing that interests me. Remember? Death. I’m fascinated by death. As soon as I heard the Kingman story, I wanted to know more. A whole lot more. I wanted to know every last bit and piece of it. You understand? I mean, wouldn’t it have been terrific to be in that house on that night, the night it happened, just sort of observing, just hiding in a corner, on that night, hiding and watching him do it, watching him do it to all of them and then to himself? Think of it! Blood everywhere. You’ve never seen so much goddamned blood in your life! Blood on the walls, soaked and clotted in the bedclothes, slick puddles of blood on the floor, blood on the stairs, and blood splashed over the furniture.... And those six heads on the mantel! Jesus, what a popper! What a terrific popper!”
    “You’re being weird again,” Colin said.
    “Would you like to have been there?”
    “No thanks. And neither would you.”
    “I sure as hell would!”
    “If you saw all that blood, you’d puke.”
    “Not me.”
    “You’re just trying to gross me out.”
    “Wrong again.”
    Roy started toward the house.
    “Wait a minute,” Colin said.
    Roy didn’t turn back this time. He climbed the sagging steps and walked onto the porch.
    Rather than stand alone, Colin joined him. “Tell me about the ghosts.”
    “Some nights there are strange lights in the house. And people who live farther down the hill say that sometimes they hear the Kingman children screaming in terror and crying for help.”
    “They hear the dead kids?”
    “Moaning and carrying on something fierce.”
    Colin suddenly realized he had his back to one of the broken first-floor windows. He shifted away from it.
    Roy continued somberly: “Some people say they’ve seen spirits that glow in the dark, crazy things, headless children who come out on this porch and run back and forth as if they’re being chased by someone ... or something.”
    “Wow!”
    Roy laughed. “What they’ve probably seen is a bunch of kids trying to hoax everybody.”
    “Maybe not.”
    “What else?”
    “Maybe they’ve seen just what they say they have.”
    “You really do believe in ghosts.”
    “I keep an open mind,” Colin said.
    “Yeah? Well, you better be more careful about what kind of junk falls into it, or you’ll wind up with an open sewer.”
    “Aren’t you clever.”
    “Everyone says so.”
    “And modest.”
    “Everyone says that, too.”
    “Jeez.”
    Roy went to the shattered window and peered inside.
    “What do you see?” Colin asked.
    “Come look.”
    Colin moved beside him and stared into the house.
    A stale, extremely unpleasant odor wafted through the broken window.
    “It’s the drawing room,” Roy said.
    “I can’t see anything.”
    “It’s the room where he lined up their heads on the mantel.”
    “What mantel? It’s pitch dark in there.”
    “In a couple of minutes our eyes will adjust.”
    In the drawing room something moved. There was a soft rustling, a sudden clatter, and the sound of something rushing toward the window.
    Colin leaped back. He stumbled over his own feet and fell with a crash.
    Roy looked at him and burst out laughing.
    “Roy, there’s something in there!”
    “Rats.”
    “Huh?”
    “Just rats.”
    “The house has rats?”
    “Of course it does, a rotten old place like this. Or maybe we heard a stray cat. Probably both—a cat chasing a rat. One thing I guarantee: It wasn’t any ghoul or ghost. Will you relax, for God’s sake?”
    Roy faced the window again, leaned into it, head cocked, listening, watching.
    Having sustained much greater injury to his pride than to his flesh, Colin got up quickly and nimbly, but he didn’t return to the window. He stood at the rickety railing and looked west toward town, then south along Hawk Drive.
    After a while he said, “Why haven’t they torn this place down? Why haven’t they built new