The Other Emily
Dean Koontz
To Gerda, the love of my lives—this one
and the next.
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
—Dylan Thomas
| 1 |
She is lost, and he must find her, but she leaves no trail, no footprints or spoor of any kind, and the way is dark, for she has gone into the forest of the night, where the trees are black and leafless, where the moon and stars do not exist, where the sun will never rise, where the path is ever downward, yet he descends in a desperate search, for she does not belong here among the dead, not when she is so alive in his mind and heart, does not belong here, does not belong here, and although finding her is his only hope of joy, his only reason to exist, there are moments when he senses her within arm’s reach in the blinding darkness—and terror wakes him.
| 2 |
Crystal confetti showered on the city, a final celebration of a winter that, on this twenty-fourth day of March, lingered past its official expiration date.
Scarfed and booted, with his topcoat collar turned up, David Thorne walked the streets of Manhattan, ostensibly in search of inspiration. But his imagination was not stimulated.
The end-of-season storm lacked force. Snow spiraled through windless canyons, as gray as ashes until it fell below the hooded streetlamps and was bleached by the light.
If inspiration was not in fact his goal, if instead he was in need of company, he found none of that, either. The traffic in the streets might as well have been self-driven and without passengers, machines on errands of their own intention. Footprints patterned the inch of snow on the sidewalks. The bitter chill did not dissuade other pedestrians from being out and about, but to David they were as immaterial as ghosts.
By the time he returned to his apartment, he knew that he would soon be leaving for California.
That night he toured a cellar that he had never seen other than in dreams, a maze of half-lit chambers containing abominations from which he woke in a state of terror, his flesh and bones colder than the night beyond his windows.
In the morning, he called his literary agent, Charlie Placket, to say that he would be going to California for a month or two, until an idea for the next novel fully jelled.
“I have it on my calendar for April fifteenth,” Charlie said.
“Have what on your calendar?”
“You and California. It’s never been this early before.”
“I’m not that predictable, Charlie.”
“David, David, you’re thirty-seven, I’ve been representing you for eight years, and every ten months, you’re off to Newport Beach for a two-month retreat. Never anywhere else. It’s a damn good thing your novels aren’t as predictable as your travel schedule.”
“The place inspires me, that’s all. The sun, the sea. I always come back with an idea for a novel that I absolutely need to write.”
“So why ever leave there if it inspires you that much?”
Some things were not for sharing, even with a good friend like Charlie Placket. “I heard it said if I could make it here, I could make it anywhere.”
“I ask you the same question every time,” Charlie said, “and you always have a different bullshit answer.”
“I’m a writer. Bullshit is my business.”
| 3 |
Newport Beach luxuriated in spring warmth when David Thorne arrived late on the afternoon of March twenty-sixth. In an otherwise clear sky, a long filigree of white clouds ornamented the west, soon to be gilded by the declining sun.
A taxi brought him from John Wayne Airport to his home in that neighborhood of Newport known as Corona del Mar. His cottage-style single-story residence stood three blocks from the beach and lacked an ocean view, but the lot was of great value. He would not have sold the place for ten times what it was worth.
He had purchased the property with earnings from his first bestseller, when he’d been a twenty-five-year-old wunderkind. He still liked its cottage charm: pale-yellow stucco, windows flanked by white shutters with scalloped slats, a porch with a canary-yellow swing. The house was shaded by palm trees and skirted with hibiscus soon to be laden with huge yellow flowers.
A property-management firm maintained the place in immaculate condition and also looked after his SUV, a white Porsche Cayenne. They would have rented the house when David was in New York; but he didn’t allow it to be occupied by others. In spite of its humble style and dimensions, it was something of a shrine.