The Eyes of Darkness by Dean Koontz

Posted by admin_akashic on Aug 7th, 2022 in Prophecy, Stories

“He could be afraid. Probably has good reason to be.”

“Maybe,” Elliot said again. “But I think it’s more complicated than that. Just a hunch.” They read quickly through the remaining material, but none of it was enlightening. Most of the questions were concerned with how much Tina knew about the true nature of the Sierra accident, how much she had told Elliot, how much she had told Michael, and with how many people she had discussed it. There were no more intriguing tidbits like Project Pandora, no more clues or leads.

Elvira brought two frosted glasses and icy bottles of Coors. The jukebox began to play a mournful Alan Jackson song.

Elliot sipped his beer and paged through the horror-comics magazine that had belonged to Danny. “Amazing,” he said when he finished skimming The Boy Who Was Not Dead. “You’d think it was even more amazing if you’d suffered those nightmares,” she said. “So now what do we do?”

“Danny’s was a closed-coffin funeral. Was it the same with the other thirteen scouts?” “About half the others were buried without viewings,” Tina said.

“Their parents never saw the bodies?”

“Oh, yes. All the other parents were asked to identify their kids, even though some of the corpses were in such a horrible state they couldn’t be cosmetically restored for viewing at a funeral. Michael and I were the only ones who were strongly advised not to look at the remains. Danny was the only one who was too badly . . . mangled.”

Even after all this time, when she thought about Danny’s last moments on earth—the terror he must have known, the excruciating pain he must have endured, even if it was of brief duration—she began to choke with sorrow and pity. She blinked back tears and took a swallow of beer.

“Damn,” Elliot said. “What?”

“I thought we might make some quick allies out of those other parents. If they hadn’t seen their kids’ bodies, they might have just gone through a year of doubt like you did, might be easily persuaded to join us in a call for the reopening of all the graves. If that many voices were raised, then Vince’s bosses couldn’t risk silencing all of them, and we’d be safe. But if the other people had a chance to view the bodies, if none of them has had any reason to entertain doubts like yours, then they’re all just finally learning to cope with the tragedy. If we go to them now with a wild story about a mysterious conspiracy, they aren’t going to be anxious to listen.”

“So we’re still alone.” “Yeah.”

“You said we could go to a reporter, try to get media interest brewing. Do you have anyone in mind?”

“I know a couple of local guys,” Elliot said. “But maybe it’s not wise to go to the local press. That might be just what Vince’s bosses are expecting us to do. If they’re waiting, watching—we’ll be dead before we can tell a reporter more than a sentence or two. I think we’ll have to take the story out of town, and before we do that, I’d like to have a few more facts.”

“I thought you said we had enough to interest a good newsman. The pistol you took off that man . . . my house being blown up . . .”

“That might be enough. Certainly, for the Las Vegas paper, it ought to be sufficient. This city still remembers the Jaborski group, the Sierra accident. It was a local tragedy. But if we go to the press in Los Angeles or New York or some other city, the reporters there aren’t going to have a whole lot of interest in it unless they see an aspect of the story that lifts it out of the local-interest category. Maybe we’ve already got enough to convince them it’s big news. I’m not sure. And I want to be damn sure before we try to go public with it. Ideally, I’d even like to be able to hand the reporter a neat theory about what really happened to those scouts, something sensational that he can hook his story onto.” “Such as?”

He shook his head. “I don’t have anything worked out yet. But it seems to me the most obvious thing we have to consider is that the scouts and their leaders saw something they weren’t supposed to see.”

“Project Pandora?”

He sipped his beer and used one finger to wipe a trace of foam from his upper lip. “A military secret. I can’t see what else would have brought an organization like Vince’s so deeply into this. An intelligence outfit of that size and sophistication doesn’t waste its time on Mickey Mouse stuff.”

“But military secrets . . . that seems so far out.”

“In case you didn’t know it, since the Cold War ended and California took such a big hit in the defense downsizing, Nevada has more Pentagon-supported industries and instal- lations than any state in the union. And I’m not just talking about the obvious ones like Nellis Air Force Base and the Nuclear Test Site. This state’s ideally suited for secret or quasi-secret, high-security weapons research centers. Nevada has thousands of square miles of remote unpopulated land. The deserts. The deeper reaches of the mountains. And most of those remote areas are owned by the federal government. If you put a secret installation in the middle of all that lonely land, you have a pretty easy job maintaining security.”

Arms on the table, both hands clasped around her glass of beer, Tina leaned toward Elliot. “You’re saying that Mr. Jaborski, Mr. Lincoln, and the boys stumbled across a place like that in the Sierras?”

“It’s possible.”

“And saw something they weren’t supposed to see.” “Maybe.”

“And then what? You mean . . . because of what they saw, they were killed!”

“It’s a theory that ought to excite a good reporter.”

She shook her head. “I just can’t believe the government would murder a group of little children just because they accidentally got a glimpse of a new weapon or something.” “Wouldn’t it? Think of Waco—all those dead children. Ruby Ridge—a fourteen-year-old boy shot in the back by the FBI. Vince Foster found dead in a Washington park and officially declared a suicide even though most of the forensic evidence points to murder. Even a primarily good government, when it’s big enough, has some pretty mean sharks swimming in the darker currents. We’re living in strange times, Tina.”

The rising night wind thrummed against the large pane of glass beside their booth. Beyond the window, out on Charleston Boulevard, traffic sailed murkily through a sudden churning river of dust and paper scraps.