Hideaway by Dean R. Koontz
Hideaway by Dean R. Koontz
Synopsis:
Hatchford harrison is pronounced dead after drowning in an automobile
accident. When he is resuscitated after eighty minutes of freezing
death, he finds himself psychically linked to a sociopathic killer.
Through the killer’s eyes, Hatch sees a grewsome world, including a
collection of cadavers hidden in an abandoned amusement park.
Gradually, Hatch comes to know something else. The killer is also aware
of him and he’s coming for Hatch’s wife and adopted daughter.
Publisher unknown
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Life is a gift that must be given back, and joy should arise from its
possession.
It is too damned short, and that is a fact.
Hard to accept, this earthly procession to final darkness is a journey
done, circle completed, work of art sublime, a sweet melodic rhyme, a
battle won.
An entire world hummed and bustled beyond the dark ramparts of the
mountains, yet to Lindsey Harrison the night seemed empty, as hollow as
the vacant chambers of a cold, dead heart. Shivering, she slumped
deeper in the passenger seat of the Honda.
Serried ranks of ancient evergreens receded up the slopes that flanked
the highway, parting occasionally to accommodate sparse stands of
winter-stripped maples and birches that poked at the sky with jagged
black branches. However, that vast forest and the formidable rock
formations to which it clung did not reduce the emptiness of the bitter
March night.
As the Honda descended the winding blacktop, the trees and stony
outcroppings seemed to float past as if they were only dream images
without real substance.
Harried by fierce wind, fine dry snow slanted through the headlight
beams. But the storm could not fill the void, either.
The emptiness that Lindsey perceived was internal, not external. The
night was brimming, as ever, with the chaos of creation. Her own soul
was the only hollow thing.
She glanced at Hatch. He was leaning forward, hunched slightly over the
steering wheel, peering ahead with an expression which might be flat and
inscrutable to anyone else but which, after twelve years of marriage,
Lindsey could easily read. An excellent driver, Hatch was not daunted
by poor road conditions. His thoughts, like hers, were no doubt on the
long weekend they had just spent at Big Bear Lake.
Yet again they had tried to recapture the easiness with each other that
they had once known. And again they had failed.
The chains of the past still bound them.
The death of a five-year-old son had incalculable emotional weight. It
pressed on the mind, quickly deflating every moment of buoyancy,
crushing each new blossom of joy. Jimmy had been dead for more than
four and a half years, nearly as long as he had lived, yet his death
weighed as heavily on them now as on the day they had lost him, like
some colossal moon looming in a low orbit overhead.
Squinting through the smeared windshield, past snow-caked wiper blades
that stuttered across the glass, Hatch sighed softly. He glanced at
Lindsey and smiled. It was a pale smile, just a ghost of the real
thing, barren of amusement, tired and melancholy. He seemed about to
say something, changed his mind, and returned his attention to the
highway.
The three lanes of black tone descending, two ascending-were
disappearing under a shifting shroud of snow. The road slipped to the
bottom of the slope and entered a short straightaway leading into a
wide, blind curve. In spite of that flat stretch of pavement, they were
not out of the San Bernardino Mountains yet. The state route eventually
would turn steeply downward once more.
As they followed the curve, the land changed around them: the slope to
their right angled upward more sharply than before, while on the far
side of the road, a black ravine yawned. White metal guardrails marked
that precipice, but they were barely visible in the sheeting snow.
A second or two before they came out of the curve, Lindsey had a
premonition of danger. She said, “Hatch..
Perhaps Hatch sensed trouble, too, for even as Lindsey spoke, he gently
applied the brakes, cutting their speed slightly.
A downgrade straightaway lay beyond the bend, and a beer distributor’s