Strangers by Dean Koontz
Ernie Block shook his head. “Wait a minute. You’re losing me now. You started all this by suggesting that what turned the moon red was a scarlet cloud of some biological contaminant. Then you jumped way the hell to one side and started talking about how the thing that happened to us was responsible for Dom and Brendan developing these supposed powers. Where’s the connection? What does biological contamination have to do with all this psychic stuff, anyway?”
Ginger took a deep breath because they had come to the core of her theory, the wildest part of it. “What if ... what if we were contaminated by some virus or bacterium that, as a side-effect, causes profound chemical or genetic or hormonal changes in its host, changes in the host’s brain? And what if those changes leave the host with something very like psychic powers, even once the infection is gone?”
They stared at her with a variety of expressions, though not as if they thought her mad, and not as if she was too imaginative for her own good. Rather, they seemed impressed by the complex chain of logic which she had forged and by the inevitability of the final link.
“Good God,” Dom said, “I doubt that it’s the right answer, but it’s sure the prettiest, most neatly constructed theory I ever expect to hear. What a concept for a novel! A genetically engineered virus that, as a surprise side-effect, causes a sort of forced evolution of the human brain, resulting in psychic powers. For the first time in weeks, I have a terrific urge to rush to a typewriter. Ginger, if we get out of this alive, I’ll have to give you a piece of the royalties on the book that’s sure to grow out of that idea.”
Gently rocking her slumbering daughter, Jorja Monatella said, “But why couldn’t it be the right answer? Why does it just have to be a terrific concept for a novel?”
“For one thing,” Jack Twist said, “if it were true, if we’d been contaminated with a virus like that, we’d all have developed psychic powers. Right?”
“Well,” Ginger said, “maybe we weren’t all contaminated. Or maybe we were contaminated, but the virus didn’t get a foothold in all of us.”
Faye said, “Or maybe this special side-effect isn’t manifested in everyone who’s infected by the bug.”
“Good thought,” Ginger said. She began to pace again: this time, not because she was nervous but because she was excited.
Ned Sarver pushed one hand through his receding hair and said, “Are you saying the Army knew about this side-effect of the virus, knew that it might cause these changes in some of us?”
“I don’t know,” Ginger said. “Maybe they knew. Maybe not.”
“I think not,” Ernie said. “Definitely not. From what you found in the Sentinel, we know they closed the interstate shortly before the ‘accident’ happened, which means it was no accident. So ... first of all, I find it hard to believe our own military would intentionally subject us to contamination with a biological-warfare microorganism in a hare-brained scheme to test its effectiveness in the field. But even if such an atrocity were possible, they wouldn’t expose us to a virus that could transform us in the way Ginger has suggested. Because, my friends, people with strong psychic powers would be a new species, a superior breed of humanity. Formidable psychic power would translate directly into military, economic, and political power. So if the government knew it had a virus that conferred these powers, it would not expose a group of ordinary people like us. Not in a million years. That blessing would be reserved for those already in positions of high authority, for the elite. I agree with Dom: I find the red-cloud-of-virus theory quite fascinating ... though unlikely. However, if we were contaminated by such a thing, the side-effect was unknown to the government.”
In light of what Ernie had said, everyone was looking at Brendan and Dom with a new appreciation composed equally of awe, uneasiness, wonder, respect, and fear. Ginger saw both the priest and the writer squirm with the exhilarating yet frightening realization that they might have within them the potential for superhuman power, a potential that, if fulfilled, would forever separate them from the rest of mankind.
“No,” Dom said, starting to get up in protest, then sitting back down as if he did not think his legs would support him. “No, no. You’re not right, Ginger. I’m no superman, no wizard, no damn ... freak. If you were right, I’d feel it. I’d know it, Ginger.”
Brendan Cronin, equally shaken, said, “I’ve thought that somehow I’ve been the vehicle for the healing of Emmy and Winton. I’ve thought that something—not God, perhaps, but something—is working through me. I never thought of myself as the actual healer. Listen, I was under the impression we’d already decided the toxic-spill story was entirely a fake, a cover, that what happened to us wasn’t an accident of any kind, neither chemical nor biological, but something altogether different.”
Jack and Jorja and Faye and Ned started talking at the same time. The noise level rose so loud that little Marcie frowned in her sleep, and Ginger said, “Wait, wait, wait a minute. There’s no point discussing it because we can’t prove there was such a virus any more than we can prove there wasn’t one. Not yet. But maybe we can prove the other part.”
“What do you mean?” Sandy Sarver asked.
Ginger said, “Maybe we can prove Dom and Brendan have the power. Not how they got it, but just that they have it.”
Dom was incredulous. “How?”
“We’ll set up a test,” Ginger said.
Dom was absolutely certain that it would not work, that they were wasting time, that the whole idea was foolish.
Yet he was also scared that it would work, and that the proof of his power would condemn him to the condition of a freak or at least to a life forever closed to ordinary human relationships. If he possessed godlike power, no one would ever regard him without wonder and fear. In even the most relaxed or intimate moments with friends or lovers, their awareness of his extraordinary gifts would intrude, either overtly or in an unspoken subtext. Others, perhaps most, would envy or hate him.
The unfairness of his predicament grated on him. For most of his thirty-five years, he had been shy and ineffectual, condemned to a drab existence by his timidity. Then he had changed, and for fifteen months, until his sleepwalking began last October, he’d been outgoing. Now, that brief, wonderful season of normality might be passing. If the test that Ginger outlined were to prove Dom had somehow acquired psychic powers, he would be isolated again, not by his own sense of inferiority, as before, but by everyone else’s uneasy awareness of his superiority.
The test. Dom hoped to God he failed.
He and Brendan Cronin were sitting by themselves at the long table, one at each end. Jorja Monatella had put her slumbering daughter in a booth, and the girl had not awakened. The adults—all seven, including Jorja—stood in a semicircle around the table, back a couple of paces, giving Dom and Brendan space to concentrate free of distraction.
A salt shaker stood on the table in front of Dom. Ginger’s test required that he concentrate on moving the object without touching it. “Just an inch,” she had said. “If you can evoke just the slightest perceptible motion in the shaker, we’ll know you’ve got the power.”
At the far end of the three joined tables, a pepper shaker stood in front of Brendan Cronin. The priest was staring at the small glass cylinder as intently as Dom was staring at his own shaker, and his round freckled face was filled with a foreboding only marginally less grim than Dom’s. Although Brendan had denied that the hand of God lay behind the miraculous cures and apparitional lights, it was clear to Dom that the priest secretly and deeply hoped to discover that, in fact, a divine Presence was at work. He wanted to be drawn back into his faith, into the bosom of the Church. If the miracles proved to be his own work, accomplished by the exertion of heretofore unrecognized psychic powers, and if those powers proved to have been conferred by a mere germ, as Ginger’s crazy-but-canny theory would have it, Brendan’s yearning for spiritual elevation and holy guidance would be unfulfilled.
The salt shaker.
Dom fixed his ey
If the power existed, neither Ginger nor any of the others could suggest techniques for tapping it. “But,” Ginger had said, “if it can explode spontaneously and spectacularly in moments of stress, surely you can learn to call upon it and control it whenever and however you desire ... just as a musician can apply his musical talent any time he pleases. Or just as you apply your writing talent to the blank page.”
The salt shaker remained motionless, unaffected.
Dom strove to narrow his attention until that humble glass cylinder—with its perforated stainless-steel cap and grainy white contents—was the only thing in his universe. He brought all his mind to bear upon it, every speck of his will, and tried to push it along the table, strained until he realized he was gritting his teeth, fisting his hands.
Nothing.
He changed tack. Instead of mentally assaulting the shaker as if he were blasting away with a cannon at the mighty walls of a fortress, he relaxed and studied the object to get an intimate sense of its size, shape, and texture. Perhaps the key was to develop an empathy for the shaker. “Empathy” was the word that seemed right to him, though he was relating to an inanimate and inorganic object; instead of battling it, perhaps he could empathize and somehow ... induce it to cooperate in a short telekinetic journey. Only an inch. He leaned forward slightly to better examine the functional simplicity of its design: five beveled facets to make it easy to grip and hold; a thick glass bottom to provide balance and reduce the frequency of spills; a shiny metal cap....
Nothing. Standing unaffected on the table before him, the shaker seemed like the mythical immovable object, heavy beyond weighing, welded forever to this spot in space and time.
But of course, like all forms of matter in the universe, it was not immovable, and in some ways it was always moving, never still. After all, it was composed of billions of ceaselessly moving atoms, the outer parts of which orbited, planetlike, around the billions of sunlike nuclei. The salt shaker was engaged in uninterrupted motion on a subatomic level, frantically moving within its structure, so it should not be difficult to induce it to make one additional movement, one little jaunt on the macrocosmic level of human perception, just one little hop and skip, just one—
Dom felt a sudden buoyancy, almost as if he himself were going to be moved by some arcane force, but instead—and at last—the salt shaker moved. He had become so deeply involved with that homely object that he had actually forgotten Ginger and the others; he was reminded of their presence when, as one, they gasped and exclaimed softly. The shaker did not simply slide one inch along the table—or two or ten or twenty. It rose into the air instead, as if gravity had ceased to have a claim on it. Like a tiny glass balloon, it floated upward: one foot, two, three, and stopped four feet above the surface on which, only seconds ago, it had appeared immovable. It remained suspended several inches above the eye-level of those who were standing, and they stared up at it in awe.
At the far end of the table, Brendan’s pepper shaker rose, too. Mouth open, eyes wide, Brendan stared at the rising cylinder. When it stopped at precisely the same height as the salt shaker, Brendan finally dared to take his eyes from it. He looked at Dom, glanced nervously at the pepper shaker again, as if certain it would crash down the moment he shifted his gaze, then looked at Dom once more when he realized that eye-contact was not required to maintain levitation. Several sentiments were apparent in the priest’s eyes: wonder, amazement, puzzlement, fear, and an emotional acknowledgment of the profound brotherhood that existed between him and Dom by virtue of the strange power they shared.
Dom was intrigued that he did not need to strain to keep the salt shaker aloft. In fact, it seemed hard to believe that he was actually responsible for its magical performance. He was not conscious of either possessing or exerting control of the object. He felt no power surging in him. Evidently, his telekinetic ability functioned automatically, in a fashion similar to respiration and heartbeat.
Brendan raised his hands. The red rings had reappeared on them.
Dom looked at his own hands and saw the same inscrutable stigmata burning brightly.
What did they mean?
Looming overhead, the salt and pepper shakers generated a sense of expectancy in Dom even greater than he had felt at the beginning of this test. Apparently, the others felt it as well, for they began to urge Dom and Brendan to perform additional feats.
“Incredible,” Ginger said breathlessly. “You’ve shown us vertical movement, levitation. Can you also move them horizontally?”
“Can you lift something heavier?” Sandy Sarver asked.
“The light,” Ernie said. “Can you generate the red light?”
Seeking first to accomplish a more modest task than any they had proposed, Dom thought about giving the salt shaker a slight spin, and immediately it began to twirl in midair, eliciting another gasp from the onlookers. A moment later, Brendan’s pepper shaker began to spin, too. Reflections of the overhead lights glimmered liquidly across the shiny metal caps of the spinning dispensers, flashed off the facets of the glass, traveled scintillatingly along the edges where one facet met another, so the shakers looked like glittery Christmas-tree ornaments.
Simultaneously, the two small dispensers began drifting toward one another, the horizontal movement Ginger had requested, though Dom was not aware of consciously directing the salt shaker on this course. He supposed Ginger’s suggestion was accepted by his subconscious, which now employed psychic energy to accomplish the task, without waiting for him to make a conscious effort. It was eerie—the way he controlled the shaker yet was unaware of how that control was exerted.
Above the centermost point of the three joined tables, the salt and pepper shakers stopped moving horizontally when they were about ten inches apart. They hung side by side, spinning a bit faster than before, throwing off spangles of reflected light. Then they began to revolve around each other in perfectly circular synchronized orbits. But that lasted only a few seconds. Suddenly, the shakers were spinning faster than before, and swinging around each other much faster as well, and in much more complex, parabolic counterorbits.
Captivated and delighted, the onlookers laughed, applauded. Dom looked at Ginger. Her radiant face shone with an expression of pure, spiritual uplift that made her more beautiful than ever. She lowered her gaze from the salt and pepper shakers to Dom, grinning with wild excitement, and gave him a thumbs-up sign. Ernie Block and Jack Twist watched the aerobatics with open-mouthed wonder that made them look not like hard-bitten ex-soldiers but like two small boys seeing fireworks for the first time in their lives. Laughing, Faye stood with her hands raised toward the shakers, as if she were trying to feel the miraculous field of power in which they were suspended. Ned Sarver was laughing, too, but Sandy was crying, a sight that startled Dom until he realized she was also smiling and that the tears on her cheeks were tears of joy.
“Oh,” Sandy said, turning to Dom as if she had sensed that he was looking at her, “isn’t it wonderful? Whatever it means, isn’t it just wonderful? The freedom ... the freedom of it ... the breaking away of all the bonds ... the rising up and above and away ...”
Dom knew precisely what she was feeling and trying to say, because he felt it too. For the moment, he forgot that possession of these abilities would forever alienate him from people who were without the talent, and he was filled with a rapturous sense of transcendence, with an appreciation for what it might mean to take a giant leap up the ladder of evolution, breaking away from the chains of human limitations. In the Tranquility Grille tonight, there was a sense of history being made, a sense that nothing in the world would ever be the same again.
“Do something else,” Ginger said.
“Yes!” Sandy said. “Show us more. Show us
In other parts of the room, other salt shakers flew up from the tables on which they had been standing: six, eight, ten in all. They hung motionless for a moment, then began to spin like the first shaker.
Instantly, an equal number of pepper shakers took flight and began spinning as well.
Dom still did not know how he was doing these things; he made no effort to perform each new trick; the thought merely became fact, as if wishes could come true. He suspected that Brendan was equally baffled.
The jukebox had been silent. Now it began to play a Dolly Parton tune, though no one had punched the programming buttons.
Did I do that, Dom wondered, or was it Brendan?
Ginger said, “My God, I’m so excited I’m going to plotz!”
Laughing, Dom said, “Plotz? What’s that one mean?”
“Bust, explode,” Ginger said. “I’m so excited I’m going to bust!”
Every salt and pepper shaker spun, and the halves of every pair orbited each other, and now all eleven sets began moving around the room in a train, faster, faster, making a soft whoosh as they cut the air, casting off sparks of reflected light.
Abruptly, a dozen chairs rose off the floor, not in the controlled and playful manner in which the salt and pepper shakers had risen from the tables, but with such violence and momentum that they shot instantly to the ceiling, smashing against that barrier with a deafening clatter. One of the wagon-wheel lighting fixtures was struck by two chairs; its lightbulbs burst, and the room was only three-quarters as brightly illuminated as it had been. That wagon wheel broke loose of its anchor brackets and wires, crashing to the floor a few feet behind Dom. The chairs remained against the ceiling, vibrating as if they were a flock of enormous bats hovering on dark wings. Most of the salt and pepper shakers were still whirling maniacally around the room above everyone’s head, though a few had been brought down by the upflung chairs. Now, a few more stopped spinning, swung erratically out of their orbits, out of the train as well, wobbled, and shot to the floor. One of them struck Ernie’s shoulder, and he cried out in pain.
Dom and Brendan had lost control. And because they had never known exactly how they had established control in the first place, they did not know how to regain it.
In a blink, the celebratory mood changed to panic. The onlookers scrambled for shelter under the tables, acutely aware that the levitated chairs—rattling ominously against the ceiling—were potentially far more dangerous missiles than the salt and pepper shakers. The noise awakened Marcie. She sat up in the booth where she had been sleeping, crying now and calling for her mother. Jorja pulled the girl off the booth and scrambled under one of the tables with her, hugging her close, and everyone was out of the line of fire except Brendan and Dom.
Dom felt as if this psychic power was a live grenade that had been wired irremovably to his hand.
Overhead, three or four more shakers lost momentum and came down like bullets. The dozen levitated chairs began to bounce against the ceiling more aggressively, shedding small pieces of themselves.
Dom didn’t know if he should dive for cover or attempt to regain control. He looked at Brendan, who was equally paralyzed.
Overhead, the three remaining wagon-wheel lights swayed wildly on their chains, causing goblin shadows to leap across the room.
The battering chairs gouged out small chunks of the ceiling.
A salt shaker dropped in front of Dom, impacting like a tiny meteorite against the table. The glass was too thick to shatter, but the small jar cracked into three or four pieces, flinging up what salt it still contained, and Dom flinched from the white spray.
Remembering the spinning carousel of paper moons in Lomack’s house six days ago, Dom raised both hands toward the rattling chairs and whirling shakers. Clenching his hands into fists, shutting the red-ring stigmata out of sight, he said, “Stop it. Stop it now. Stop it!”
Overhead, the chairs ceased vibrating. The salt and pepper shakers halted in midwhirl and hung motionless in the air.
For a second or two, the diner was preternaturally silent.
Then the twelve chairs and the last of the shakers dropped straight down, bouncing off tables and other chairs that had never taken flight. When everything at last came to rest in tangled rubble, Dom and Brendan were as unscathed as those who had taken refuge under the tables. Dom blinked at the priest, and around them all was graveyard-still. This moment of silence was longer than the first. It seemed as if time had stopped, until Marcie’s thin whimpering and her mother’s murmured assurances started the engines of reality purring again, drawing the others from their places of shelter.
Ernie was still massaging his shoulder, where he had been hit by a salt shaker, but he was not seriously hurt. No one else was injured, though everyone was shaken.
Dom saw the way they were looking at him and Brendan. Warily. Just as he had figured they would look at him if he proved to have the power. Just the way he had dreaded being looked at. Damn.
Ginger seemed to be the only one who was not put off by his new status. She enthusiastically embraced Dom and said, “What matters is that you’ve got it. You’ve got it, and eventually you can learn to use it, and that’s wonderful.”
“I’m not so sure,” Dom said, looking at the broken chairs, fallen lighting fixtures. Jack Twist was brushing salt and dry-wall dust off his clothes. Jorja was still comforting her frightened child. Faye and Sandy were picking splinters and other bits of debris out of their hair, and Ned was pondering the danger of the live wires dangling from the ceiling where the chandelier had torn loose. Dom said, “Ginger, even when I was using the power, I didn’t know how I was doing it. And when it ran wild ... I didn’t know how to stop it.”
“But you did stop it,” she said. She kept one arm around his waist as if she knew—God bless her—that he needed the reassurance of human contact. “You did stop it, Dom.”
“Maybe next time I won’t be able.” He realized he was shivering. “Look at this mess. My God, Ginger, someone could’ve been badly hurt.”
“No one was.”
“Someone could have been killed. Next time—”
“It’ll be better,” she said.
Brendan Cronin came around the long table. “He’ll change his mind, Ginger. Give him time. I know I’m going to try again. Alone, next time. In a couple of days, when I’ve had time to think it through, I’ll go out somewhere in an open field, away from people, where no one can be hurt except me, and I’ll give it another try. I think it’s going to be difficult to control the ... energy. It’s going to take a lot of time, a lot of work, maybe years. But I’ll explore, practice. And so will Dom. He’ll realize as much when he’s had a couple of minutes to think about it.”
Dom shook his head. “I don’t want this. I don’t want to be so different from other people.”
“But now you are,” Brendan said. “We both are.”
“That’s damn fatalistic.”
Brendan smiled. “Though I’m having a crisis of faith, I’m still a priest, so I believe in predestination, fate. That’s an article of faith. But we priests are a clever bunch, so we can be fatalistic and believe in free will at the same time! Both are articles of faith.” For the priest, the psychological effects of these events were far different from the fear raised in Dom. As he talked, he repeatedly rose onto his toes as if he were nearly buoyant enough to float away.
At a loss to understand the priest’s good humor, Dom changed the subject.