The Vision Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Monday, December 21

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Tuesday, December 22

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Wednesday, December 23

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Thursday, December 24

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Friday, December 25

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  After...

  THE EYES OF DARKNESS

  “Koontz puts his readers through the emotional wringer!” -The Associated Press

  THE KEY TO MIDNIGHT

  “A master storyteller... always riveting.”

  -San Diego Union-Tribune

  MR. MURDER

  “A truly harrowing tale... superb work by a master at the top of his form.”

  -The Washington Post Book World

  THE FUNHOUSE

  “Koontz is a terrific what-if storyteller.” -People

  DRAGON TEARS

  “A razor-sharp, nonstop, suspenseful story... a first-rate literary experience.”

  -San Diego Union-Tribune

  SHADOWFIRES

  “His prose mesmerizes... Koontz consistently hits the bull’s-eye.” -Arkansas Democrat

  HIDEAWAY

  “Not just a thriller but a mediation on the nature of good and evil.” -Lexington Herald-Leader

  COLD FIRE

  “An extraordinary piece of fiction.... It will be a classic.” -UP!

  THE HOUSE OF THUNDER

  “Koontz is brilliant.” -Chicago Sun-Times

  THE VOICE OF THE NIGHT

  “A fearsome tour of an adolescent’s psyche. Terrifying, knee-knocking suspense.”

  -Chicago Sun-Times

  THE BAD PLACE

  “A new experience in breathless terror.” -UPI

  THE SERVANTS OF TWILIGHT

  “A great storyteller.” -New York Daily News

  MIDNIGHT

  “A triumph.” -The New York Times

  LIGHTNING

  “Brilliant ... a spine-tingling tale ... both challenging and entertaining.” -The Associated Press

  THE MASK

  “Koontz hones his fearful yarns to a gleaming edge.” -People

  WATCHERS

  “A breakthrough for Koontz... his best ever.”

  -Kirkus Reviews

  TWILIGHT EYES

  “A spine-chilling adventure... will keep you turning pages to the very end.” -Rave Reviews

  STRANGERS

  “A unique spellbinder that captures the reader on the first page. Exciting, enjoyable, and an intensely satisfying read.” -Mary Higgins Clark

  PHANTOMS

  “First-rate suspense, scary and stylish.”

  -Los Angeles Times

  WHISPERS

  “Pulls out all the stops... an incredible, terrifying tale.” -Publishers Weekly

  NIGHT CHILLS

  “Will send chills down your back.”

  -The New York Times

  DARKFALL

  “A fast-paced tale... one of the scariest chase scenes ever.” -Houston Post

  SHATTERED

  “A chilling tale ... sleek as a bullet.”

  -Publishers Weekly

  THE VISION

  “Spine-tingling—it gives you an almost lethal shock.” -San Franciso Chronicle

  THE FACE OF FEAR

  “Real suspense ... tension upon tension.”

  -The New York Times

  Berkley titles by Dean Koontz

  THE EYES OF DARKNESS

  THE KEY TO MIDNIGHT

  MR. MURDER

  THE FUNHOUSE

  DRAGON TEARS

  SHADOWFIRES

  HIDEAWAY

  COLD FIRE

  THE HOUSE OF THUNDER

  THE VOICE OF THE NIGHT

  THE BAD PLACE

  THE SERVANTS OF TWILIGHT

  MIDNIGHT

  LIGHTNING

  THE MASK

  WATCHERS

  TWILIGHT EYES

  STRANGERS

  DEMON SEED

  PHANTOMS

  WHISPERS

  NIGHT CHILLS

  DARKFALL

  SHATTERED

  THE VISION

  THE FACE OF FEAR

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  THE VISION

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons

  PRINTING HISTORY

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons edition / November 1977

  Berkley edition / March 1986

  Copyright © 1977 by Dean Koontz.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any

  printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate

  in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the

  author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  For information address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  Visit our website at

  www.penguin.com

  eISBN : 978-1-4406-2096-6

  BERKLEY®

  Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY and the “B” design

  are trademarks belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  This book is for Claire M. Smith

  with love and gratitude

  Monday, December 21

  1

  “GLOVES OF BLOOD.”

  The woman raised her hands and stared at them, stared through them.

  Her voice was soft but tense. “Blood on his hands.” Her own hands were clean and pale.

  Her husband leaned forward from the back seat of the patrol car. “Mary?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Mary, can you hear me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Whose blood do you see?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “The victim’s blood?”

  “No. In fact... it’s his own.”

  “The killer’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “He has his own blood on his hands?”

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “He’s hurt himself?”

  “But not badly.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Try to get inside of him.”

  “I am already.”

  “Get deeper.”

  “I’m not a mind reader.”

  “I know that, darling. But you’re the next best thing.”

  The perspiration on Mary Bergen’s face was like the ceramic glaze on the plaster countenance of an altar saint. Her smooth skin gleamed in the green lig
ht from the instrument panel. Her dark eyes also shone, but they were unfocused, blank.

  Suddenly she leaned forward and shuddered.

  In the driver’s seat Chief of Police Harley Barnes shifted uneasily. He flexed his big hands on the steering wheel.

  “He’s sucking the wound,” she said. “Sucking his own blood.”

  After thirty years of police work, Barnes didn’t expect to be surprised or frightened. Now, in a single evening, he had been surprised more than once and had felt his heartbeat accelerate with fear.

  The tree-shrouded streets were as familiar to him as the contours of his own face. However, tonight, cloaked in a rainstorm, they seemed menacing. The tires hissed on the slick pavement. The windshield wipers thumped, an eerie metronome.

  The woman beside Barnes was distraught, but her appearance was less disturbing than the changes she had wrought inside the patrol car. The humid air became clearer when she entered her trance. He was certain he was not imagining that. The ordinary sounds of the storm and the car were overlaid with the soft humming of ghost frequencies. He sensed an indescribable power radiating from her. He was a practical man, not at all superstitious. But he could not deny what he felt so strongly.

  She bent as far toward the dashboard as her seat belt would allow. She hugged herself and groaned as if she were having labor pains.

  Max Bergen reached out from the rear seat, touched her.

  She murmured and relaxed slightly.

  His hand looked enormous on her slender shoulder. He was tall, angular, hard-muscled, hard-faced, forty years old, ten years older than his wife. His eyes were his most arresting feature; they were gray, cold, humorless.

  Chief Barnes had never seen him smile. Clearly, Bergen harbored powerful and complex feelings for Mary, but he gave no indication that he felt anything but contempt for the rest of the world.

  The woman said, “Turn at the next corner.”

  Barnes braked gently. “Left or right?”

  “Right,” she said.

  Well-kept, thirty-year-old stucco houses and bungalows, most of them California-Spanish in style, lay on both sides of the street. Yellow lights glowed vaguely behind drapes that had been drawn against the chill of the damp December night. The road was much darker than the one they had left. Sodium vapor lamps stood only at the corners, and purple-black, rain-pooled shadows filled the long blocks between them.

  After he made the turn, Barnes drove no faster than ten miles an hour. From the woman’s attitude, he gathered that the chase would end nearby.

  Mary sat up straight. Her voice was louder and clearer than it had been since she began to use her strange talent, her clairvoyance. “I get an impression ... of a ... a fence. Yes... I see it now... he’s cut his hand... on a fence.”

  Max stroked her hair. “And it’s not a serious wound?”

  “No... just a cut... his thumb... deep... but not disabling.” She raised one thin hand, forgot what she meant to do with it, let it flutter back into her lap.

  “But if he’s bleeding from a deep cut, won’t he give up tonight?” Max asked.

  “No,” she said.

  “You’re sure?”

  “He’ll go on.”

  “The bastard’s killed five women so far,” Barnes said. “Some of them fought like hell, scratched him and cut him and even tore out his hair. He doesn’t give up easily.”

  Ignoring the policeman, Max soothed his wife, caressed her face with one hand and prompted her with another question. “What kind of fence do you see?”

  “Chain-link,” she said. “Sharp and unfinished at the top.”

  “Is it high?”

  “Five feet.”

  “What does it surround?”

  “A yard.”

  “Storage yard?”

  “No. Behind a house.”

  “Can you see the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “It’s a two-story.”

  “Stucco?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about the roof?”

  “Spanish tile.”

  “Any unique features?”

  “I can’t quite see ... ”

  “A veranda?”

  “No.”

  “A courtyard maybe?”

  “No. But I see... a winding tile walkway.”

  “Front or back?”

  “Out front of the house.”

  “Any trees?”

  “Matched magnolias... on either side of the walk.”

  “Anything else?”

  “A few small palms... farther back.”

  Harley Barnes squinted through the rain-dappled windshield. He was searching for a pair of magnolias.

  Initially he had been skeptical. In fact, he’d been certain the Bergens were frauds. He played his role in the charade because the mayor was a believer. The mayor brought them to town and insisted the police cooperate with them.

  Barnes had read about psychic detectives, of course, and most especially about that famous Dutch clairvoyant, Peter Hurkos. But using ESP to track down a psychopathic killer, to catch him in the act? He didn’t put much faith in that.

  Or do I? he wondered. This woman was so lovely, charming, earnest, so convincing that perhaps she’d made a believer of him. If she hasn’t, he thought, why am I looking for magnolia trees?

  She made a sound like an animal caught in a saw-toothed trap for a long time. Not a screech of agony, but a nearly inaudible mewl.

  When an animal made that noise, it meant, “This still hurts, but I’m resigned to it now.”

  Many years ago, as a boy in Minnesota, Barnes had hunted and trapped. It was that same pitiful, stifled moan of the wounded prey that caused him to give up his sport.

  Until tonight, he had never heard precisely the same sound issue from a human being. Apparently, as she used her talent to zero in on the killer, she suffered from contact with his deranged mind.

  Barnes shivered.

  “Mary,” her husband said. “What’s the matter?”

  “I see him... at the back door of the house. His hand on the door... and blood... his blood on a white door frame. He’s talking to himself.”

  “What’s he saying?”

  “I don’t...”

  “Mary?”

  “He’s saying filthy things about the woman.”

  “The woman in the house—the one he’s after tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “He knows her?”

  “No. She’s a stranger... random target. But he’s been... watching her... watching her for several days... knows her habits and routines.”

  With those last few words she slumped against the door. She took several deep breaths. She was forced to relax periodically to regroup her energies if she were to maintain the psychic thread. For some clairvoyants, Barnes knew, the visions came without strain, virtually without effort; but apparently not for this one.

  Phantom voices whispered and crackled, came and went in staccato bursts on the police radio.

  The wind carried fine sheets of rain across the roadway.

  The wettest rainy season in years, Barnes thought. Twenty years ago it would have seemed normal. But California had steadily become a drought state. This much rain was unnatural now. Like everything else that’s happening tonight, he thought.

  Waiting for Mary to speak, he slowed to less than five miles an hour.

  Matched magnolia trees flanking a winding tile walk ...

  He found it taxing to see what lay in the headlights directly in front of him, and extremely difficult to discern the landscaping on either side. They might already have passed the magnolias.

  Brief as it was, Mary Bergen’s hesitation elicited Dan Goldman’s first words in more than an hour. “We haven’t much time left, Mrs. Bergen.”

  Goldman was a reliable young officer, the chief’s most trusted subordinate. He was sitting beside Max Bergen, behind Barnes, his eyes fixed on the woman.

  Goldman
believed in psychic powers. He was impressionable. And as Barnes could see in the rearview mirror, the events of the evening had left a haunted look on his broad, plain face.

  “We don’t have much time,” Goldman said again. “If this madman’s already at the woman’s back door—”

  Abruptly, Mary turned to him. Her voice was freighted with concern. “Don’t get out of this car tonight—not until the man is caught.”

  “What do you mean?” Goldman asked.

  “If you try to help capture him, you’ll be hurt.”

  “He’ll kill me?”

  She shuddered convulsively. New beads of sweat popped out at her hairline.

  Barnes felt perspiration trickle down his face, too.

  She said to Goldman, “He’ll stab you... with the same knife he’s used on all the women... hurt you badly... but not kill you.” Closing her eyes, speaking between clenched teeth, she said, “Stay in the car!”

  “Harley?” Goldman asked worriedly.

  “It’ll be all right,” Barnes assured him.

  “You’d better listen to her,” Max told Goldman. “Don’t leave the car.”

  “If I need you,” Barnes told Goldman, “you’ll come with me. No one will be hurt.” He was concerned that the woman was undermining his authority. He glanced at her. “We need a number for the house you’ve described, a street address.”

  “Don’t press,” her husband said sharply. With everyone but Mary he had a voice like two rough steel bars scraped against each other. “It won’t do any good whatsoever to press her. It’ll only interfere.”

  “It’s okay, Max,” she said.

  “But I’ve told them before,” he said.

  She faced front once more. “I see... the rear door of the house. It’s open.”

  “Where’s the man, the killer?” Max asked.

  “He’s standing in a dark room... small... the laundry room... that’s what it is ... the laundry room behind the kitchen.”