The Face. Dean Koontz

the clouds in a summer sky. Imagination. Of course.

      But then this man, this dragon, whatever—it moved in the mirror. Not much: a little, enough to make Ethan’s sledgehammer heart stutter between blows.

      Maybe the movement also was imaginary.

      Hesitantly he approached the mirror. He didn’t step directly in front of the phantom form, for in spite of the strong rush of blood that ought to have clarified his thinking, Ethan suffered from the superstitious conviction that something terrible would happen to him if his reflection were to overlay the ghostly shape.

      Surely the movement of the misted apparition had been imaginary, but if it had been, then he imagined it again. The figure seemed to be motioning for him to come forward, closer.

      Ethan would not have admitted to Hazard Yancy or to any other cop from the old days, perhaps not even to Hannah if she were alive, that when he put his hand to the mirror, he half expected to feel not wet glass, but the hand of another, making contact from a cold and forbidding Elsewhere.

      He swabbed away an arc of mist, leaving a glimmering smear of water.

      Even as Ethan’s hand moved, so did the phantom in the mirror, sliding away from the cleansing swipe. Cunningly elusive, it remained behind the shielding condensation—and moved directly in front of him.

      With the exception of his face, Ethan’s vague reflection in the misted glass had been dark because his clothes were dark, his hair. The steam-frosted shape now before him rose as pale as moonlight and moth wings, impossibly supplanting his own image.

      Fear knocked on his heart, but he wouldn’t let it in, as when he’d been a cop under fire and dared not panic.

      Anyway, he felt as though he were half in a trance, accepting the impossible here as he might easily accept it in a dream.

      The apparition leaned toward him, as if trying to discern his nature from the far side of the silvered glass, in much the same way that he himself leaned forward to study it.

      Raising his hand once more, Ethan tentatively wiped away a narrow swath of mist, fully expecting that when he came eye to eye with his reflection, the eyes would not be his, but gray like Dunny Whistler’s eyes.

      Again the mystery in the mirror moved, quicker than Ethan’s hand, remaining blurred behind the frosting of condensation.

      Only when breath exploded from Ethan did he realize that he had been holding it.

      On the inhale, he heard a crash in a far room of the apartment, the brittle music of shattering glass.

       CHAPTER 15

      ETHAN HAD TOLD PALOMAR LAB-oratories to analyze his blood for traces of illicit chemicals, in case he’d been drugged without his knowledge. During the events at Reynerd’s apartment house, he had almost seemed to be in an altered state of consciousness.

      Now, leaving the steamy bathroom, he felt no less disoriented than when, after being gut shot, he had found himself behind the wheel of the Expedition once more, unharmed.

      Whatever had happened—or had only seemed to happen—at the mirror, he no longer entirely trusted his senses. As a consequence, he proceeded with greater caution than before, assuming that yet again things might not be as they appeared to be.

      He passed through rooms he’d already searched and then into new territory, arriving at last in the kitchen. Shattered glass sparkled on the breakfast table and littered the floor.

      Also on the floor lay the silver picture frame missing from the desk in the study. The photo of Hannah had been stripped out of it.

      Whoever had taken the picture had been in too great a hurry to release the four fasteners on the back of the frame, and had instead smashed the glass.

      The rear door of the apartment stood open.

      Beyond lay a wide hall that served the back of both penthouse units. At the nearer end, an exit sign marked a stairwell. Toward the farther end was a freight elevator big enough to carry refrigerators and large pieces of furniture.

      If someone had taken the freight route down, he had already completed his descent. No sound issued from the elevator machinery.

      Ethan hurried to the stairs. Opened the fire door. Paused on the threshold, listening.

      Groan or moan, or melancholy sigh, or clank of chains: Even a ghost ought to make a sound, but only a cold hollow silence rose out of the stairwell.

      He went down quickly, ten flights to the ground floor, then another two flights to the garage. He encountered neither a flesh-and-blood resident nor a spirit.

      The scent of sickness and fever sweats, first detected in the elevator, didn’t linger here. Instead, he smelled a faint soapy odor, as if someone fresh from a bath had passed this way. And a trace of spicy aftershave.

      Pushing open the steel fire door, stepping into the garage, he heard an engine, smelled exhaust fumes. Of the forty parking stalls, many were empty at this hour on a work day.

      Toward the front of the garage, a car backed out of a stall. Ethan recognized Dunny’s midnight-blue Mercedes sedan.

      Triggered by remote control, the garage gate was already rising with a steely clack and clatter.

      Pistol still in hand, Ethan ran toward the car as it pulled away from him. The gate rose slowly, and the Mercedes had to stop for it. Through the rear window, he could see the silhouette of a man behind the steering wheel, but not clearly enough to make an identification.

      Drawing near to the Mercedes, he swung wide of it. He intended to go directly to the driver’s door.

      The car shot forward while the barrier continued to rise, before it was fully out of the way. The roof of the Mercedes came within a fraction of an inch of leaving a generous paint sample on the bottom rail of the ascending gate, and raced up the steep exit ramp to the street.

      The driver thumbed close on his remote even as he passed under the gate, which was clattering down again when Ethan reached it. Already the Mercedes had turned out of sight into the street above.

      He stood there for a moment, peering through the gate into the gray storm light.

      Rainwater streamed down the driveway ramp. Foaming, it vanished through the slots of a drain in the pavement immediately outside the garage.

      On that concrete incline, a small lizard, back broken by a car tire, but still alive, struggled gamely against the sluicing water. So persistently did it twitch upward inch by inch that it seemed to believe all its needs could be satisfied and all its injuries healed by some power at the summit.

      Not wanting to see the little creature inevitably defeated and washed down to die upon the drain grate, Ethan turned away from the sight of it.

      He returned the pistol to his shoulder holster.

      He studied his hands. They were trembling.

      On the back stairs once more, climbing to the fifth floor, he encountered the lingering soapy smell, the trace of aftershave. This time, he also detected another odor less clean than the first two, elusive but disturbing.

      Whatever else he might be, Dunny Whistler was surely a living man, not an animated corpse. Why would one of the walking dead come home to shower, shave, and dress in clean clothes? Absurd.

      In the apartment kitchen, Ethan used a DustBuster to vacuum up the fragments of picture-frame glass.

      He found a spoon and an open half-gallon container of ice cream in the sink. Apparently, those who were recently resurrected enjoyed chocolate caramel swirl.

      He put the ice cream in the freezer and returned the empty picture frame to the study.

      In the master bedroom, he stopped short of the bathroom doorway. He had intended to check the mirror once more, to see if it