02 Bruno by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Horror
Publisher: Fantasy & Science Fiction
Published: 1970-12-31T06:00:00+00:00

"Yes?" I opened it

and checked out the room. She was a stacked redhead in a leotard, doing

bal et steps in front of a mirror to the sounds - now - of Megadeth. Ten

chairs were lined up against the wal s around the room, and in each chair sat

a different ventriloquist dummy. Some held bananas in their wooden hands. I

didn't want to know any more about it. "Sorry," I said. "Wrong room." I closed the door and went to the one across the hal .

Graham Stone was

there. He stood by the desk, watching me with those cold eyes.

I stepped

inside, closed the door, and took the Smith & Wesson out of my pocket to be

certain that he understood the situation. "Stand real stil ," I said.

He

didn't move, and he didn't answer me. When I started toward him, however, he

sidestepped. I cocked the .38, but it didn't grab his attention like it should

have. He watched disinterestedly. I walked forward again, and he moved

again. I'd had the word from Bruno that a bring-him-back-alive clause was not

a condition of my employment contract. In fact, the bear had implied that any

display of mercy on my part would be met with al the savagery of a Hare

Krishna panhandler on a megadose of PCP. Wel , he hadn't put it quite that

way, but I got the message. So I shot Graham Stone in the chest, pointblank,

because I had no way of knowing what he might be able to do to me. The

bul et ripped through him, and he sagged, folded onto the desk, fel to the

floor, and deflated. Inside of six seconds, he was nothing more than a pile of

tissue paper painted to look like a man. A three-dimensional snakeskin that,

shed, was stil convincingly real. I examined the remains. No blood. No bones.

Just ashes. I looked at the Smith & Wesson. It was my familiar gun. Not a

Disney .780 Death Hose. Which meant that this hadn't been the real Graham

Stone but - something else, an amazing construct of some kind that was every

bit as convincing as it was flimsy. Before I had too much time to think about

that, I beat it back into the corridor. No one had heard the shot.

The

thrashmasters on the bandstand were doing a fair imitation of Megadeth - a

bitchin' number from Youthanasia - and providing perfect cover.

Now what?

I cautiously checked the other two rooms that opened off the hal way, and I

found Graham Stone in both. He crumpled between my fingers in the first room,

as solid in appearance as any face on Mount Rushmore but was, in actuality, as

insubstantial as any current politician's image. In the second room, I

shredded him with a wel -placed kick to the crotch. By the time I reached

the dance floor again, I was furious. When you blew a guy away, you expected

him to go down like bricks and stay down. That was how the game was played. I

didn't like this cheap trick. In the washroom, I rapped on Bruno's stal

door, and he came out with his hat stil pul ed way down and his col ar stil

turned up.

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