Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Thrillers, Horror, Suspense, Fiction
ISBN: 9780345533586
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 2011-12-31T17:00:00+00:00

Twenty-eight

I WASN’T PROUD OF MYSELF. I WASN’T EXACTLY ASHAMED of myself, either, but I admit to being grateful that the laundry room didn’t have a mirror.

Never before had I punched a woman. Not only was she a woman, but she was also smaller than I was. Not only was she a woman and smaller than I was, but she was also pretty in a cute, elfin way, and I felt as if I’d just beaten up Tinker Bell. Yes, I know, Tink was a fairy, not an elf, but I can’t help how I felt.

I took solace in the belief that she knew the darkest secrets of Roseland and therefore must be a bad girl. She couldn’t work here and be unaware of the grim collection of dead women in the mausoleum subcellar, which was easily accessible from the basement of the main house.

Worse, she seemed to be in love with Noah Wolflaw or at least admiring of him. What kind of person, laundress or not, could have tender feelings for a torturer and murderer of women?

I opened her mouth to be sure she hadn’t severely bitten her tongue when I delivered the uppercut, but there wasn’t any blood in there. She was going to have nasty bruising and a mean headache. I felt sorry about that, although probably not as sorry as I should have been.

In one corner of the laundry room was a seamstress station. I found a pair of scissors in a drawer.

Fishing among the clothes in one of the washing machines, which as yet contained no water, I found some garments—none of them unmentionables—that I could cut and rip to use as binding material.

Working quickly, worried that she would regain consciousness and berate me in a most unpleasant fashion, I securely tied her wrists in front of her and then bound her ankles. I connected those bindings with a hobble, which would prevent her from getting to her feet.

After opening the door and scoping the hallway, I cradled the maid in my arms and hurried with her to the furnace room next door. She was slender but she weighed substantially more than Tinker Bell.

I put her down in a corner, where she could not be seen from the door because of an intervening boiler as big as a space-shuttle booster rocket. She began to mutter like a sleeper in the midst of a disturbing dream as I hurried out of the room.

Once more in the laundry, I put away the scissors. Snatched up a few lengths of cut fabric that I still needed. Threw the mutilated garments in the trash. Retrieved the pillowcase sack with hacksaw.

When I returned to Victoria Mors, she was moaning but not yet conscious. I sat her up with her back against the wall, positioning her approximately as the thirty-four women were arranged in the mausoleum subcellar, though of course she was still clothed, hadn’t been tortured, was alive, and remained an admirer of Noah Wolflaw.

Using a yellow sash from a pair of cotton slacks in the laundry, I tied a noose around her neck.

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