Dean R. Koontz
Hideaway
Liner Notes
In his most profoundly felt — and terrifying — novel yet, Dean Koontz compels us to explore the meaning of death, the nature of sociopathic evil, and the transcendent power of love.
“An extraordinary piece of fiction, with unforgettable characters… unique, spellbinding, with depth, sensitivity and personality. It will be a classic,” United Press International said about Cold Fire, the author's most recent New York Times number-one best-seller. Hideaway has the breathless pace, suspense, lyrical prose, deeply drawn characters, and surprises that readers have come to expect in a Koontz novel — yet it is entirely fresh, breaking new ground for the author and taking the reader into the beating heart of darkness.
Although accident victim Hatch Harrison dies en route to the hospital, a brilliant physician miraculously resuscitates him. Given this second chance, Hatch and his wife, Lindsey, approach each day with a new appreciation for the beauty of life — until a series of mysterious and frightening events brings them face to face with the unknown. Although Hatch was given no glimpse of an Afterlife during the period when his heart was stopped, he has reason to fear that he has brought a terrible Presence back with him from the land of the dead.
When people who have wronged the Harrisons begin to die violently, Hatch comes to doubt his own innocence — and must confront the possibility that this life is just a prelude to another, darker place. He and Lindsey are forced to fight not only for their own survival but for that of Regina, the delightful and exceptional disabled child who has given meaning and purpose to their lives. With growing desperation, Lindsey and Hatch seek the truth along a twisted trail that leads eventually to an abandoned amusement park — and a confrontation with purest evil.
Emotionally affecting and powerfully suspenseful, Hideaway may be Dean Koontz's finest work to date.
Dean R. Koontz—the author of many best-sellers — won an Atlantic Monthly fiction competition when he was twenty and has been writing ever since. He lives in southern California.
Dedication
TO GERDA.
FOREVER.
Epigraph
O, WHAT MAY MAN WITHIN HIM HIDE,
THOUGH ANGEL ON THE OUTWARD SIDE!
Part I
JUST SECONDS FROM A CLEAN GETAWAY
Life is a gift that must be given back,
and joy should arise from its possession.
It's too damned short, and that's a fact.
Hard to accept, this earthly procession
to final darkness is a journey done,
circle completed, work of art sublime,
a sweet melodic rhyme, a battle won.
ONE
1
An entire world hummed and bustled beyond the dark ramparts of the mountains, yet to Lindsey Harrison the night seemed empty, as hollow as the vacant chambers of a cold, dead heart. Shivering, she slumped deeper in the passenger seat of the Honda.
Serried ranks of ancient evergreens receded up the slopes that flanked the highway, parting occasionally to accommodate sparse stands of winter-stripped maples and birches that poked at the sky with jagged black branches. However, that vast forest and the formidable rock formations to which it clung did not reduce the emptiness of the bitter March night. As the Honda descended the winding blacktop, the trees and stony outcrop-pings seemed to float past as if they were only dream images without real substance.
Harried by fierce wind, fine dry snow slanted through the headlight beams. But the storm could not fill the void, either.
The emptiness that Lindsey perceived was internal, not external. The night was brimming, as ever, with the chaos of creation. Her own soul was the only hollow thing.
She glanced at Hatch. He was leaning forward, hunched slightly over the steering wheel, peering ahead with an expression which might be flat and inscrutable to anyone else but which, after twelve years of marriage, Lindsey could easily read. An excellent driver, Hatch was not daunted by poor road conditions. His thoughts, like hers, were no doubt on the long weekend they had just spent at Big Bear Lake.
Yet again they had tried to recapture the easiness with each other that they had once known. And again they had failed.
The chains of the past still bound them.
The death of a five-year-old son had incalculable emotional weight. It pressed on the mind, quickly deflating every moment of buoyancy, crushing each new blossom of joy. Jimmy had been dead for more than four and a half years, nearly as long as he had lived, yet his death weighed as heavily on them now as on the day they had lost him, like some colossal moon looming in a low orbit overhead.
Squinting through the smeared windshield, past snow-caked wiper blades that stuttered across the glass, Hatch sighed softly. He glanced at Lindsey and smiled. It was a pale smile, just a ghost of the real thing, barren of amusement, tired and melancholy. He seemed about to say something, changed his mind, and returned his attention to the highway.
The three lanes of blacktop — one descending, two ascending — were disappearing under a shifting shroud of snow. The road slipped to the bottom of the slope and entered a short straightaway leading into a wide, blind curve. In spite of that flat stretch of pavement, they were not out of the San Bernardino Mountains yet. The state route eventually would turn steeply downward once more.
As they followed the curve, the land changed around them: the slope to their right angled upward more sharply than before, while on the far side of the road, a black ravine yawned. White metal guardrails marked that precipice, but they were barely visible in the sheeting snow.
A second or two before they came out of the curve, Lindsey had a premonition of danger. She said, “Hatch …”
Perhaps Hatch sensed trouble, too, for even as Lindsey spoke, he gently applied the brakes, cutting their speed slightly.
A downgrade straightaway lay beyond the bend, and a beer distributor's large truck was halted at an angle across two lanes, just fifty or sixty feet in front of them.
Lindsey tried to say, oh God, but her voice was locked within her.
While making a delivery to one of the area ski resorts, the trucker evidently had been surprised by the blizzard, which had set in only a short while ago but half a day ahead of the forecasters' predictions. Without benefit of snow chains, the big truck tires churned ineffectively on the icy pavement as the driver struggled desperately to bring his rig around and get it moving again.
Cursing under his breath but otherwise as controlled as ever, Hatch eased his foot down on the brake pedal. He dared not jam it to the floor and risk sending the Honda into a deadly spin.
In response to the glare of the car headlights, the trucker looked through his side window. Across the rapidly closing gap of night and snow, Lindsey saw nothing of the man's face but a pallid oval and twin charry holes where the eyes should have been, a ghostly countenance, as if some malign spirit was at the wheel of that vehicle. Or Death himself.
Hatch was heading for the outermost of the two ascending lanes, the only part of the highway not blocked.