The Architecture of Fear (26 page)

OH, YES.

And there was nothing I could do.

But let Him in.

***

When I came to, some ten minutes later, the Mighty Asshole was gone. I knew that I'd have no more trouble from him that night, or ever after. In fact, I could come back as much as I wished. Again. And again.

I belonged now. Completely.

He had not let us fall, cunning fuck that He was. When I came to, we were in front of the sole surviving mirror, and He was splashing freezing water in our face.

He cleaned us up: meticulously washing away the blood, smoothing back the disheveled hair. Tomorrow we'd get it cut, He informed me. Nice and short, maybe a flattop. And we'd start working out, put some meat on these bones.

A real man,
He said,
always takes care of business.

When we were nice and clean, He turned and bought us a big-ribbed condom. For later. He smiled at our face in the grimy mirror. It was a cruel smile, and infinitely calculated. His smile. The mirror grinned coldly back.

And He smashed it.

With my fist.

When we finally came up the stairs, twenty minutes had passed. LeeAnn was waiting anxiously at the table. "David?" she demanded. "What happened to you? I was really getting worried."

He lifted one finger, and told her to shush.

She obeyed.

"You're a sweetheart," He said, moving close.

Then He kissed her.

Passionately.

With my lips.

***

There is a book on the history of photojournalism on the endtable beside me. It was one of LeeAnn's favorites, but that's not why He keeps it around. He likes the pretty pictures.

And He likes to torture me.

Right now, it's open to the page on the liberation of the concentration camps, at the end of World War II. One photo in particular stands out, flickering in the dim light of the TV's hissing screen like footage from some long-forgotten newsreel. It's a black-and-white picture of the gate to Auschwitz. Perhaps it's even one of Margaret Bourke-White's; that would be nice, but I guess it doesn't really matter. So what if I can't make out the credit? I can make out the inscription clear enough:
ARBEIT MACHT FREI,
in huge iron letters. That's what's important.

ARBEIT MACHT FREI.

Work Makes Freedom.

I've thought about that a lot. One of the many thoughts that help me in the night, long after He's passed out in His favorite easychair, drunken and still dressed. Tonight, He didn't even get the damned field jacket off.

I'm so glad.

I'm sure that LeeAnn would be, too.

It took her over a year to tear away: thirteen months of steadily escalating madness. Oh, He was great, for the first month or so: strong and sensitive and very, very sincere. He made all the right moves, said all the right things. And she welcomed my newfound assertiveness, with an ardor that both amazed and destroyed me.

He waited with the patience of the ages, until the hooks were planted nice and deep. Until she fell for Him. Until she trusted Him. Until He could destroy her. It was amazing, how much groundwork I'd already lain. It made it infinitely easier for Him. And infinitely worse, for me.

And then, when the moment was right, He showed her His true self. Repeatedly.

I'll never forget the look of betrayal on her face.

It took her over six months to escape; we were living together by then. He tried to break her, and she fought Him. Escape cost her dearly: emotionally, mentally.

Physically.

But escape she did, and I love her for it. I've thought of her often, God knows. I've wondered how she's doing, wondered where she is.

But I don't really want to know.

And, besides, I never will.

Because every night after that, He dragged me downtown and back to the bar. The guys were all there, of course. The guys were always there. We got along famously, round after round, while the Hooter Girl sadly presided.

And every night after that, we went out in search of fresh meat. There were always women out there, waiting to be punished for something. He was always eager to oblige. He wanted me to watch. He needed me to forget. His failure. Her victory.

But I didn't, damn it.

I remembered.

Within the month, he'd found a suitable distraction: Lisa. She wasn't as sharp as LeeAnn, or as strong. But her blue eyes were bright, and her curvature dazzled, and her smile could have sold you the moon. We've been married now, the three of us, going on four years. We have kids, to my unending sorrow: Patricia, little David, Jr., and another damned soul on the way. Lisa's eyes no longer sparkle, and she hardly ever smiles. Thirty pounds of purpled padding grace the skeleton of her beauty like a shroud.

But tonight, that's all behind her.

It's taken four years. Four years of practice: at night, while He slept drunkenly on. Cell by cell. Inch by inch. Four very long years. LeeAnn would be proud.

I can move my right arm, you see.

Only when He sleeps, true, and not very much. It's not very strong, either. Yes, life is a bitch.

But it was strong enough to open the book tonight. And with a little strength to spare...

It'll be enough to reach the knife.

And so what if it takes me all night,
ARBEIT MACHT FREI
, right?

Sometimes, that's just what it takes.

To be a man.

Dean Koontz has more bestsellers than many authors have published books and is one of the true gentlemen of publishing: honest, talented, and concerned. As he mentioned in an interview in the Dean R. Koontz Special Issue of
The Horror Show,
he writes emotional, not category, fiction. He never cheats his readers, always tells his story first and breathes rounded reality into his characters. Here, he writes in an older mode, in a new way...

Darkness dwells within even the best of us. In the worst of us, darkness not only dwells but reigns.

Although occasionally providing darkness with a habitat, I have never provided it with a kingdom. That's what I prefer to believe. I think of myself as a basically good man: a hard worker, a loving and faithful husband, a stern but doting father.

If I use the cellar again, however, I will no longer be able to pretend that I can suppress my own potential for evil. If I use the cellar again, I will exist in eternal moral eclipse and will never thereafter walk in the light.

But the temptation is great.

***

I first discovered the cellar door two hours after we had signed the final papers, had delivered the check to the escrow company to pay for the house, and had received the keys. It was in the kitchen, in the corner beyond the refrigerator: a raised-panel door, stained dark like all the others in the house, with a burnished-brass lever-action handle instead of a conventional knob. I stared in disbelief, for I was certain the door had not been there before.

Initially, I thought I had found a pantry. When I opened it, I was startled to see steps leading down through deepening shadows into pitch blackness. A windowless basement.

In Southern California, nearly all houses—everything from the cheaper tract crackerboxes to those in the multimillion-dollar range—are built on concrete slabs. They have no basements. This is prudent design. The land is frequently sandy, with little bedrock near the surface. And in country that is subject to earthquakes and mudslides, a basement with concrete-block walls is a point of structural weakness into which all the rooms above might collapse if the giants in the earth suddenly woke and stretched.

Our new home was neither crackerbox nor mansion, but it had a cellar. The real-estate agent never mentioned it. Until now, we had never noticed it.

Peering down the steps, I was at first curious—then uneasy.

A wall switch was set just inside the door. I clicked it up, down, up again. No light came on below.

Leaving the door open, I went looking for Carmen. She was in the master bedroom, hugging herself, grinning, admiring the handmade emerald-green ceramic tiles and the Sherle Wagner sinks with their gold-plated fixtures.

"Oh, Jess, isn't it beautiful? Isn't it grand? When I was a little girl, I never dreamed I'd live in a house like this. My best hope was for one of those cute bungalows from the forties. But this is a palace, and I'm not sure I know how to act like a queen."

"It's no palace," I said, putting an arm around her. "You've got to be a Rockefeller to afford a palace in Orange County. Anyway, you've always had the style and bearing of a queen."

She stopped hugging herself and hugged me. "We've come a long way, haven't we?"

"And we're going even further, kid."

"I'm a little scared, you know?"

"Don't be silly."

"Jess, honey, I'm just a cook, a dishwasher, a pot-scrubber, only one generation removed from a shack on the outskirts of Mexico City. We worked hard for this, sure, and lots of years... but now that we're here, it seems to have happened overnight."

"Trust me, kid—you could hold your own in any gathering of society ladies from Newport Beach. You have natural-born class."

I thought: God, I love her. Seventeen years of marriage, and she is still a girl to me, still fresh and surprising and sweet.

"Hey," I said, "almost forgot. You know we have a cellar?"

She blinked at me.

"It's true," I said.

Smiling, waiting for the punch line, she said, "Yeah? And what's down there? The royal vaults with all the jewels? A dungeon?"

"Come see," I said.

She followed me into the kitchen.

The door was gone.

Staring at the blank wall, I was for a moment icebound.

"Well?" she said. "What's the joke?"

I thawed enough to say, "No joke. There was... a door."

She pointed to the outline of a kitchen window that was etched on the wall by the sun streaming through the glass. "You probably saw that. The square of sunlight coming through the window, falling on the wall. It's more or less in the shape of a door."

"No. No... there was..." Shaking my head, I put one hand on the sun-warmed plaster and lightly traced its contours, as if the seams of the door would be more apparent to the touch than to the eye.

Carmen frowned. "Jess, what's wrong?"

I looked at her and realized what she was thinking. This lovely house seemed too good to be true, and she was superstitious enough to wonder if such a great blessing could be enjoyed for long without fate throwing us a weight of tragedy to balance the scales. An overworked husband, suffering from stress—or perhaps afflicted by a small brain tumor—beginning to see things that were not there, talking excitedly of nonexistent cellars... That was just the sort of nasty turn of events with which fate too frequently evened things out.

"You're right," I said. I forced a laugh but made it sound natural. "I saw the rectangle of light on the wall and thought it was a door. Didn't even look close. Just came running for you. Now, has this new house business got me crazy as a monkey or what?"

She looked at me somberly for a moment, then matched my smile. "Crazy as a monkey. But then... you always were."

"Is that so?"

"My monkey," she said.

I said, "Ook, ook," and scratched under one arm.

I was glad I had not told her that I had opened the door. Or that I had seen the steps beyond.

***

The house in Laguna Beach had five large bedrooms, four baths, and a family room with a massive stone fireplace. It also had what they call an "entertainer's kitchen," which did not mean that Wayne Newton or Liberace performed there between Vegas engagements, but referred instead to the quality and number of appliances: double ovens, two microwaves, a warming oven for muffins and rolls, a Jenn Air cooking center, two dishwashers, and a Sub Zero refrigerator of sufficient size to serve a restaurant. Lots of immense windows let in the warm California sun and framed views of the lush landscaping—bougainvillea in shades of yellow and coral, red azaleas, impatiens, palms, two imposing Indian laurels—and of the rolling hills beyond. In the distance, the sun-dappled water of the Pacific glimmered enticingly, like a great treasure of silver coins.

Though not a mansion, it was unquestionably a house that said, "The Gonzalez family has done well, has made a fine place for itself." My folks would have been very proud.

Maria and Ramon, my parents, had been Mexican immigrants who had scratched out a new life in
El Norte,
the promised land. They had given me, my brothers, and my sister everything that hard work and sacrifice could provide, and we four had earned university scholarships. Now, one of my brothers was an attorney, the other a doctor, and my sister was Chairperson of the Department of English at U.C.L.A.

I had chosen a career in business. Together, Carmen and I opened a restaurant, for which I provided the business expertise, for which she provided the exquisite and authentic Mexican recipes, and where we both worked twelve hours a day, seven days a week. As our three children reached adolescence, they came to work with us as waiters. It was a family affair, and every year we became more prosperous, but it was never easy. America does not promise easy wealth, only opportunity. We seized the machine of opportunity and lubricated it with oceans of perspiration, and by the time we bought the house in Laguna Beach, we were able to pay cash. Jokingly, we gave the house a name:
Casa Sudor—
House of Sweat.

It was a huge home. And beautiful.

It had everything. Even a basement with a disappearing door.

The previous owner was Mr. Nguyen Quang Phu. Our realtor—a sturdy, garrulous, middle-aged woman named Nancy Keefer—said Phu was a Vietnamese refugee, one of the courageous boat people who had fled months after the fall of Saigon. He was one of the fortunate who had survived storms, gunboats, and pirates.

"He arrived in the U.S. with only three thousand dollars in gold coins and the will to make something of himself," Nancy Keefer told us when we first toured the house. "A charming man and a fabulous success. Really fabulous. He's pyramided that small bankroll into so many business interests, you just wouldn't believe it, all in fourteen years! Fabulous story. He's built a new house, twelve thousand square feet on two acres in North Tustin, it's just fabulous, really, you should see it, you really should."