The Eyes of Darkness Read online

  At eight-thirty Friday morning Tina came awake, smiling and excited. She shook Elliot until she woke him.

  Blinking sleepily, he sat up. “What’s wrong?”

  “Danny just sent me another dream.”

  Taking in her broad smile, he said, “Obviously, it wasn’t the nightmare.”

  “Not at all. Danny wants us to come to him. He wants us just to walk into the place where they’re keeping him and take him out.”

  “We’d be killed before we could reach him. We can’t just charge in like the cavalry. We’ve got to use the media and the courts to free him.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “The two of us can’t fight the entire organization that’s behind Kennebeck plus the staff of some secret military research center.”

  “Danny’s going to make it safe for us,” she said confidently. “He’s going to use this power of his to help us get in there.”

  “That isn’t possible.”

  “You said you believed.”

  “I do,” Elliot said, yawning and stretching elaborately. “I do believe. But… how can he help us? How can he guarantee our safety?”

  “I don’t know. But that’s what he was telling me in the dream. I’m sure of it.”

  She recounted the dream in detail, and Elliot admitted that her interpretation wasn’t strained.

  “But even if Danny could somehow get us in,” he said, “we don’t know where they’re keeping him. This secret installation could be anywhere. And maybe it doesn’t even exist. And if it does exist, they might not be holding him there anyway.”

  “It exists, and that’s where he is,” she said, trying to sound more certain than she actually was.

  She was within reach of Danny. She felt almost as if she had him in her arms again, and she didn’t want anyone to tell her that he might be a hair’s breadth beyond her grasp.

  “Okay,” Elliot said, wiping at the corners of his sleep-matted eyes. “Let’s say this secret installation exists. That doesn’t help us a whole hell of a lot. It could be anywhere in those mountains.”

  “No,” she said. “It has to be within a few miles of where Jaborski intended to go with the scouts.”

  “Okay. That’s probably true. But that covers a hell of a lot of rugged terrain. We couldn’t begin to conduct a thorough search of it.”

  Tina’s confidence couldn’t be shaken. “Danny will pinpoint it for us.”

  “Danny’s going to tell us where he is?”

  “He’s going to try, I think. I sensed that in the dream.”

  “How’s he going to do it?”

  “I don’t know. But I have this feeling that if we just find some way… some means of focusing his energy, channeling it…”

  “Such as?”

  She stared at the tangled bedclothes as if she were searching for inspiration in the creases of the linens. Her expression would have been appropriate to the face of a gypsy fortune-teller peering with a clairvoyant frown at tea leaves.

  “Maps!” she said suddenly.

  “What?”

  “Don’t they publish terrain maps of the wilderness areas? Backpackers and other nature lovers would need them. Not minutely detailed things. Basically maps that show the lay of the land — hills, valleys, the courses of rivers and streams, footpaths, abandoned logging trails, that sort of thing. I’m sure Jaborski had maps. I know he did. I saw them at the parent-son scout meeting when he explained why the trip would be perfectly safe.”

  “I suppose any sporting-goods store in Reno ought to have maps of at least the nearest parts of the Sierras.”

  “Maybe if we can get a map and spread it out… well, maybe Danny will find a way to show us exactly where he is.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” She threw back the covers and got out of bed. “Let’s get the maps first. We’ll worry about the rest of it later. Come on. Let’s get showered and dressed. The stores will be open in an hour or so.”

  * * *

  Because of the foul-up at the Bellicosti place, George Alexander didn’t get to bed until five-thirty Friday morning. Still furious with his subordinates for letting Stryker and the woman escape again, he had difficulty getting to sleep. He finally nodded off around 7:00 A.M.

  At ten o’clock he was awakened by the telephone. The director was calling from Washington. They used an electronic scrambling device, so they could speak candidly, and the old man was furious and characteristically blunt.

  As Alexander endured the director’s accusations and demands, he realized that his own future with the Network was at stake. If he failed to stop Stryker and the Evans woman, his dream of assuming the director’s chair in a few years would never become a reality.

  After the old man hung up, Alexander called his own office, in no mood to be told that Elliot Stryker and Christina Evans were still at large. But that was exactly what he heard. He ordered men pulled off other jobs and assigned to the manhunt.

  “I want them found before another day passes,” Alexander said. “That bastard’s killed one of us now. He can’t get away with that. I want him eliminated. And the bitch with him. Both of them. Dead.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Two sporting-goods stores and two gun shops were within easy walking distance of the hotel. The first sporting-goods dealer did not carry the maps, and although the second usually had them, it was currently sold out. Elliot and Tina found what they needed in one of the gun shops: a set of twelve wilderness maps of the Sierras, designed with backpackers and hunters in mind. The set came in a leatherette-covered case and sold for a hundred dollars.

  Back in the hotel room, they opened one of the maps on the bed, and Elliot said, “Now what?”

  For a moment Tina considered the problem. Then she went to the desk, opened the center drawer, and withdrew a folder of hotel stationery. In the folder was a cheap plastic ballpoint pen with the hotel name on it. With the pen, she returned to the bed and sat beside the open map.

  She said, “People who believe in the occult have a thing they call ‘automatic writing.’ Ever hear of it?”

  “Sure. Spirit writing. A ghost supposedly guides your hand to deliver a message from beyond. Always sounded like the worst sort of bunkum to me.”

  “Well, bunkum or not, I’m going to try something like that. Except, I don’t need a ghost to guide my hand. I’m hoping Danny can do it.”

  “Don’t you have to be in a trance, like a medium at a seance?”

  “I’m just going to completely relax, make myself open and receptive. I’ll hold the pen against the map, and maybe Danny can draw the route for us.”

  Elliot pulled a chair beside the bed and sat. “I don’t believe for a minute it’s going to work. Totally nuts. But I’ll be as quiet as a mouse and give it a chance.”

  Tina stared at the map and tried to think of nothing but the appealing greens, blues, yellows, and pinks that the cartographers had used to indicate various types of terrain. She allowed her eyes to swim out of focus.

  A minute passed.

  Two minutes. Three.

  She tried closing her eyes.

  Another minute. Two.

  Nothing.

  She turned the map over and tried the other side of it.

  Still nothing.

  “Give me another map,” she said.

  Elliot withdrew another one from the leatherette case and handed it to her. He refolded the first map as she unfolded the second.

  Half an hour and five maps later, Tina’s hand suddenly skipped across the paper as if someone had bumped her arm.

  She felt a peculiar pulling sensation that seemed to come from within her hand, and she stiffened in surprise.

  Instantly the invasive power retreated from her.

  “What was that?” Elliot asked.

  “Danny. He tried.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. But he startled me, and I guess even the little bit of resistance I offered was enough to push hi
m away. At least we know this is the right map. Let me try again.”

  She put the pen at the edge of the map once more, and she let her eyes drift out of focus.

  The air temperature plummeted.

  She tried not to think about the chill. She tried to banish all thoughts.

  Her right hand, in which she held the pen, grew rapidly colder than any other part of her. She felt the unpleasant, inner pulling again. Her fingers ached with the cold. Abruptly her hand swung across the map, then back, then described a series of circles; the pen made meaningless scrawls on the paper. After half a minute, she felt the power leave her hand again.

  “No good,” she said.

  The map flew into the air, as if someone had tossed it in anger or frustration.

  Elliot got out of his chair and reached for the map — but it spun into the air again. It flapped noisily to the other end of the room and then back again, finally falling like a dead bird onto the floor at Elliot’s feet.

  “Jesus,” he said softly. “The next time I read a story in the newspaper about some guy who says he was picked up in a flying saucer and taken on a tour of the universe, I won’t be so quick to laugh. If I see many more inanimate objects dancing around, I’m going to start believing in everything, no matter how freaky.”

  Tina got up from the bed, massaging her cold right hand. “I guess I’m offering too much resistance. But it feels so weird when he takes control… I can’t help stiffening a little. I guess you were right about needing to be in a trance.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you with that. I’m a good cook, but I’m not a hypnotist.”

  She blinked. “Hypnosis! Of course! That’ll probably do the trick.”

  “Maybe it will. But where do you expect to find a hypnotist? The last time I looked, they weren’t setting up shops on street corners.”

  “Billy Sandstone,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “He’s a hypnotist. He lives right here in Reno. He has a stage act. It’s a brilliant act. I wanted to use him in Magyck!, but he was tied up in an exclusive contract with a chain of Reno-Tahoe hotels. If you can get hold of Billy, he can hypnotize me. Then maybe I’ll be relaxed enough to make this automatic writing work.”

  “Do you know his phone number?”

  “No. And it’s probably not listed. But I do know his agent’s number. I can get through to him that way.”

  She hurried to the telephone.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Billy Sandstone was in his late thirties, as small and lean as a jockey, and his watchword seemed to be “neatness.” His shoes shone like black mirrors. The creases in his slacks were as sharp as blades, and his blue sport shirt was starched, crisp. His hair was razor-cut, and he groomed his mustache so meticulously that it almost appeared to have been painted on his upper lip.

  Billy’s dining room was neat too. The table, the chairs, the credenza, and the hutch all glowed warmly because of the prodigious amount of furniture polish that had been buffed into the wood with even more vigor than he had employed when shining his dazzling shoes. Fresh roses were arranged in a cut-crystal vase in the center of the table, and clean lines of light gleamed in the exquisite glass. The draperies hung in perfectly measured folds. An entire battalion of nitpickers and fussbudgets would be hard-pressed to find a speck of dust in this room.

  Elliot and Tina spread the map on the table and sat down across from each other.

  Billy said, “Automatic writing is bunk, Christina. You must know that.”

  “I do, Billy. I know that.”

  “Well, then—”

  “But I want you to hypnotize me anyway.”

  “You’re a levelheaded person, Tina,” Billy said. “This really doesn’t seem like you.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “If you’d just tell me why. If you’d tell me what this is all about, maybe I could help you better.”

  “Billy,” she said, “if I tried to explain, we would be here all afternoon.”

  “Longer,” Elliot said.

  “And we don’t have much time,” Tina said. “A lot’s at stake here, Billy. More than you can imagine.”

  They hadn’t told him anything about Danny. Sandstone didn’t have the faintest idea why they were in Reno or what they were seeking in the mountains.

  Elliot said, “I’m sure this seems ridiculous, Billy. You’re probably wondering if I’m some sort of lunatic. You’re wondering if maybe I’ve messed with Tina’s mind.”

  “Which definitely isn’t the case,” Tina said.

  “Right,” Elliot said. “Her mind was messed up before I ever met her.”

  The joke seemed to relax Sandstone, as Elliot had hoped it would. Lunatics and just plain irrational people didn’t intentionally try to amuse.

  Elliot said, “I assure you, Billy, we haven’t lost our marbles. And this is a matter of life and death.”

  “It really is,” Tina said.

  “Okay,” Billy said. “You don’t have time to tell me about it now. I’ll accept that. But will you tell me one day when you aren’t in such a damn rush?”

  “Absolutely,” Tina said. “I’ll tell you everything. Just please, please, put me in a trance.”

  “All right,” Billy Sandstone said.

  He was wearing a gold signet ring. He turned it around, so the face of it was on the wrong side — the palm side — of his finger. He held his hand in front of Tina’s eyes.

  “Keep your eyes on the ring and listen only to my voice.”

  “Wait a second,” she said.

  She pulled the cap off the red felt-tip pen that Elliot had purchased at the hotel newsstand just before they’d caught a taxi to Sandstone’s house. Elliot had suggested a change in the color of ink, so they would be able to tell the difference between the meaningless scribbles that were already on the map and any new marks that might be made.

  Putting the point of the pen to the paper, Tina said, “Okay, Billy. Do your stuff.”

  Elliot was not sure when Tina slipped under the hypnotist’s spell, and he had no idea how this smooth mesmerism was accomplished. All Sandstone did was move one hand slowly back and forth in front of Tina’s face, simultaneously speaking to her in a quiet, rhythmic voice, frequently using her name.

  Elliot almost fell into a trance himself. He blinked his eyes and tuned out Sandstone’s melodious voice when he realized that he was succumbing to it.

  Tina stared vacantly into space.

  The hypnotist lowered his hand and turned his ring around as it belonged. “You’re in a deep sleep, Tina.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your eyes are open, but you are in a deep, deep sleep.”

  “Yes.”

  “You will stay in that deep sleep until I tell you to wake up. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “You will remain relaxed and receptive.”

  “Yes.”

  “Nothing will startle you.”

  “No.”

  “You aren’t really involved in this. You’re just the method of transmission — like a telephone.”

  “Telephone,” she said thickly.

  “You will remain totally passive until you feel the urge to use the pen in your hand.”

  “All right.”

  “When you feel the urge to use the pen, you will not resist it. You will flow with it. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “You will not be bothered by anything Elliot and I say to each other. You will respond to me only when I speak directly to you. Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now… open yourself to whoever wants to speak through you.”

  They waited.

  A minute passed, then another.

  Billy Sandstone watched Tina intently for a while, but at last he shifted impatiently in his chair. He looked at Elliot and said, “I don’t think this spirit writing stuff is—”

  The map rustled, drawing their attention. The corners curled and uncurled, cu
rled and uncurled, again and again, like the pulse of a living thing.

  The air was colder.

  The map stopped curling. The rustling ceased.

  Tina lowered her gaze from the empty air to the map, and her hand began to move. It didn’t swoop and dart uncontrollably this time; it crept carefully, hesitantly across the paper, leaving a thin red line of ink like a thread of blood.

  Sandstone was rubbing his hands up and down his arms to ward off the steadily deepening chill that had gripped the room. Frowning, glancing up at the heating vents, he started to get out of his chair.

  Elliot said, “Don’t bother checking the air-conditioning. It isn’t on. And the heat hasn’t failed either.”

  “What?”

  “The cold comes from the… spirit,” Elliot said, deciding to stick with the occult terminology, not wanting to get bogged down in the real story about Danny.

  “Spirit?”

  “Yes.”

  “Whose spirit?”

  “Could be anyone’s.”

  “Are you serious?”