The Face of fear
by Dean R.. Koontz
1977
part one
FRIDAY 12:01 A.M. 8:00 P.M.
Wary, not actually expecting trouble but prepared for it, he parked his
car across the street from the four-story brownstone apartment house.
When he switched off the engine, he heard a siren wail in the street
behind him.
They're coming for me, he thought. Somehow they've found out I'm the
one.
He smiled. He wouldn't let them put the handcuffs on him. He wouldn't
go easily. That wasn't his style.
Frank Bollinger was not easily frightened. In fact, he couldn't
remember ever having been frightened. He knew how to take care of
himself. He had reached six feet when he was thirteen years old, and he
hadn't quit growing until he was six-four. He had a thick neck, broad
shoulders and the biceps of a young weightlifter. At thirty-seven he
was in virtually the same good condition, at least outwardly, as he had
been when he was twenty-seven-or even seventeen.
Curiously enough, he never exercised. He had neither the time nor the
temperament for endless series of push-ups and sit-ups and running in
place. His size and his hard-packed muscles were nature's gifts, simply
a matter of genetics. Although he had a voracious appetite and never
dieted, he was not girdled with rings of extra weight in the hips and
stomach, as were most men his age. His doctor had explained to him
that, because he suffered constantly from extreme nervous tension and
because he refused to take the drugs that would bring his condition
under control, he would most likely die young of hypertension. Strain,
anxiety, nervous tension-these were what kept the weight off him, said
the doctor. Wound tight, roaring inside like a perpetually accelerating
engine, he burned away the fat, regardless of how much he ate.
But Bollinger found that he could agree with only half of that
diagnosis. Nervous: no. Tension: yes. He was never nervous; that word
had no meaning for him. However, he was always tense. He strove for
tension, worked at building it, for he thought of it as a survival
factor. He was always watchful. Always aware. Always tense. Always
ready. Ready for anything. That was why there was nothing that he
feared: nothing on earth could surprise him.
As the siren grew louder, he glanced at the rear-view mirror. A bit
more than a block away, a revolving red light pulsed in the night.
He took the .38 revolver out of his shoulder holster. He put one hand
on the door and waited for the right moment to throw it open.
The squad car bore down on him-then swept past. It turned the corner
two blocks away.
They weren't on his trail after all.
He felt slightly disappointed.
He put the gun away and studied the street. Six mercury vapor street
lamps-two at each end of the block and two in the middle-drenched the
pavement and the automobiles and the buildings in an eerie purple-white
light. The street was lined with three- and four-story townhouses, some
of them brownstones and some brick, most of them in good repair. There
didn't seem to be anyone at any of the lighted windows. That was good;
he did not want to be seen. A few trees struggled for life at the edges
of the sidewalks, the scrawny plane trees and maples and birches that
were all that New York City could boast beyond the boundaries of its
public parks, all of them stunted trees, skeletal, their branches like
charred bones reaching for the midnight sky. A gentle but chilly
January wind pushed scraps of paper along the gutters; and when the wind
gusted, the branches of the trees rattled like children's sticks on a
rail fence. The other parked cars looked like animals huddling against
the cold air; they were empty.
Both sidewalks were deserted for the length of the block.
He got out of the car, quickly crossed the street and went up the front
steps of the apartment house.
The foyer was clean and brightly lighted. The complex mosaic floor-a
garland of faded roses on a beige background-was highly polished, and
there were no pieces of tile missing from it. The inner foyer door was
locked and could only be opened by key or with a lock release button in
one of the apartments.
There were three apartments on the top floor, three on the second floor
and two on the ground level. Apartment 1A belonged to Mr. and Mrs.
Harold Nagly, the owners of the building, who were on their annual
pilgrimage to Miami Beach. The small apartment at the rear of the first
floor was occupied by Edna Mowry, and he supposed that right now Edna
would be having a midnight snack or a well-deserved martini to help her
relax after a long night's work.
He had come to see Edna. He knew she would be home. He had followed
her for six nights now, and he knew that she lived by strict routine,
much too strict for such a young and attractive woman. She always
arrived home from work at twelve, seldom more than five minutes later.
Pretty little Edna, he thought. You've got such long and lovely legs.
He smiled.
He pressed the call button for Mr. and Mrs. Yardley on the third
floor.
A man's voice echoed tinnily from the speaker at the top of the mailbox.
"Who is it?"
"Is this the Hutchinson apartment?" Bollinger asked, knowing full well
that it was not.
"You pressed the wrong button, mister. The Hutchinsons are on the
second floor. Their mailbox is next to ours."
"Sorry," Bollinger said as Yardley broke the connection.
He rang the Hutchinson apartment.
The Hutchinsons, apparently expecting visitors and less cautious than
the Yardleys, buzzed him through the inner door without asking who he
was.
The downstairs hall was pleasantly warm. The brown tile floor and tan
walls were spotless. Halfway along the corridor, a marble bench stood
on the left, and a large beveled mirror hung above it. Both apartment
doors, dark wood with brassy fixtures, were on the right.
He stopped in front of the second door and flexed his gloved fingers. He
pulled his wallet from an inside coat pocket and took a knife from an
overcoat pocket. When he touched the button on the burnished handle,
the springhinged blade popped into sight; it was seven inches long, thin
and nearly as sharp as a razor.
The gleaming blade transfixed Bollinger and caused bright images to
flicker behind his eyes.
He was an admirer of William Blake's poetry; indeed, he fancied himself
an intimate spiritual student of Blake's. It was not surprising, then,
that a passage from Blake's work should come to him at that moment,
flowing through his mind like blood running down the troughs in an
autopsy table.
Then the inhabitants of those cities Felt their nerves change into
marrow, And the hardening bones began In swift diseases and torments, in
shootings and throbbings and grindings through all the coasts, till,
weakened, The senses inward rushed, shrinking Beneath the dark net of
infection.
I'll change their bones to marrow, sure as hell, Bollinger thought. I'll
have the inhabitants of this city hiding behind their doors at night.
Except that I'm not the infection; I'm the cure. I'm the cure for all
that's wrong with this world.
He rang the bell. After a moment he heard her on the other side of the
door, and he rang the bell again.
"Who is it?" she asked. She had a pleasant, almost musical voice,
marked now with a thin note of apprehension.
"Miss Mowry?" he asked.
"Yes? "
" Police."
She didn't reply.
"Miss Mowry? Are you there?"
"What's it about?"