Vision by Dean Koontz Page B

onionskin papers. The figurines clattered against the venetian blinds without shattering, rose up again, zigzagged crazily from one end of the chamber to the other, then pelted Cauvel’s shoulders and back, rained fragments over Mary’s bowed head.
    Yet another squadron of dogs took flight. They danced in the air, swarmed ominously, fluttered against Mary, flew away, came back with greater determination, struck her with incredible force, stung, bruised, hung over her like locusts.
    As suddenly as the macabre assault began, it ended. Almost a hundred glass miniatures remained on the display shelves, but they did not move.
    Mary and Cauvel huddled together, not trusting the calm, waiting for another attack.
    Silence prevailed.
    Eventually he let go of her and stepped back.
    She was unable to control the tremors that broke like waves within her.
    “Are you all right?” he asked, oblivious to the blood on his own face.
    “I wasn’t meant to see him,” she said.
    Cauvel was dazed. He stared, uncomprehendingly.
    “His face,” she said. “I wasn’t meant to see it.” “What are you talking about?” “When I tried to see the killer in the vision,” she said, “I was stopped. What stopped me?”
    Cauvel gazed at the shards of glass on all sides of them. He began to pick splinters of glass from the shoulders and sleeves of his suit jacket. “Did you do this? Did you make the dogs fly?”
    “Me?”
    “Who else?”
    “Oh, no. How could I?”
    “Someone did.”
    “Something. ”
    He stared at her.
    “It was a ... spirit,” she said.
    “I don’t believe in life after death.”
    “I wasn’t sure about that myself. Until now.”
    “So we’re haunted?”
    “What else?”
    “Many possibilities.” He looked concerned about her.
    “I’m not crazy,” she said.
    “Did I say you were?”
    “We’ve seen a poltergeist in action.”
    “I don’t believe in them either,” he said.
    “I do. I’ve seen them work before. I was never sure if they were spirits or not. But now I am.”
    “Mary—”
    “A poltergeist. It came to stop me from seeing the killer’s face.”
    Behind them the display shelves toppled and struck the floor with a thunderous crash.

9
    MAX WAS NOT at home.
    Without him Mary felt that the house was a mausoleum. Her footsteps on the hardwood floor seemed louder than usual, the echoes full of sinister voices.
    “He called earlier,” Anna Churchill said, as she wiped her hands on her apron. “He asked me to delay dinner half an hour.”
    “Why?”
    “He said to tell you he wouldn’t be back until eight o’clock because Woolworth’s is open late for Christmas shopping.”
    She knew that Max had meant to make her laugh with that message, but she couldn’t even smile. The only thing that would lift her spirits was the sight of him. She didn’t want to be alone.
    As she went through the parlor on her way to the mahogany staircase, she felt dwarfed by the heavy European furniture. With the memory of the poltergeist fresh in her mind, she expected each piece of furniture to come to life, and she didn’t know how she would survive if the chairs and sofas and corner cabinets began to rush at her with murderous intent.
    The furniture did not move.
    Upstairs, in her bathroom, she took a bottle of valium from the medicine cabinet. She had been able to conceal her nervousness when she was with Emmet and Anna ; but now her hands shook so badly that she needed almost a minute to get the safety cap off the container. She poured a glass of cold water, swallowed one of the capsules. One didn’t seem like much. She felt she could use two. Maybe three. “God, no,” she said, and she quickly replaced the cap before temptation got the better of good judgment.
    As she was leaving the bathroom, the empty water glass fell to the floor, shattered. Startled, she whirled around. She was sure she hadn’t set the tumbler on the edge of the sink. It had not fallen: something had knocked it off.
    “Max,