Mr. Murder. By: Dean R. Koontz

crouch.

The walls swarm with glowing extraterrestrial hieroglyphics.

He is in the nest of the enemy.

Alien and strange. Hostile and inhuman.

His fear is great. But it only feeds his rage.

He hurries to the front of the room, through a gap in a railing, toward

the door beyond which they retreated.

Light as thin as fish broth seeped down from unseen windows above and

around the turns in the spiral staircase.

The buildings to which the church was attached were two stories high.

There might be a connecting passage between these stairs and another

structure, but Marty had no idea where they were headed.

For that reason he almost wished they had taken the door that led out

side.

However, the numbness in his arm hampered him severely, and the pain in

his shoulder, which grew worse by the minute, was a serious drain on his

energy. The building was unheated, as cold as the world outside, but at

least it offered shelter from the wind.

Between his wound and the storm, he didn’t think he would last long

beyond the walls of the church.

The girls climbed ahead of him.

Paige came last, worrying aloud because the door at the foot of the

stairs, like the sacristy door, did not have a lock. She edged up

backward, step by step, covering the territory behind them.

They soon reached a deep-set multifoil window in the outer wall, which

had been the source of the meager illumination below. Most of the clear

glass was intact. The light on the twisting stairs above was of an

equally dreary quality and most likely came from another window of the

same size and style.

Marty moved slower and his breathing grew more labored the higher they

ascended, as if they were reaching altitudes at which the oxygen content

of the air was drastically declining. The pain in his left shoulder

intensified, and his nausea thickened.

The stained plaster walls, gray wooden steps, and dishwater light

reminded him of depressing Swedish movies from the fifties and sixties,

films about hopelessness, despair, and grim fate.

Initially, the handrail along the outer wall was not essential to his

progress. However, it swiftly became a necessary crutch. In

dismayingly short order, he found that he could not rely entirely on the

strength of his increasingly shaky legs and also needed to pull himself

upward with his good right arm.

By the time they came to the second multifoil window, with still more

steps and gray luminosity ahead, he knew where they were. In a bell

tower.

The stairwell was not going to lead to a passageway that would connect

them to the second floor of another building, because they were already

higher than two floors. Each additional step upward was an irreversible

commitment to this single option.

Gripping the rail with his good right hand, beginning to feel

lightheaded and afraid of losing his balance, Marty stopped to warn

Paige that they better consider going back. Perhaps her reverse

perspective on the stairwell had prevented her from realizing the nature

of the trap.

Before he could speak, the door clattered open below, out of sight

beyond the first few turns.

His last clear thought is the sudden realization that he does not have

the .38 Chief’s Special any longer, must have lost it after being shot

at the front entrance to the church, dropped it in the snow, and has not

noticed the loss until this moment. He has no time to retrieve it, even

if he knew where to search. Now his primary weapon is his body, his

hands, his murderous skills, and his exceptional strength. His

ferocious hatred is a weapon, as well, because it motivates him to take

any risk, confront extreme danger, and endure cruel suffering that would

incapacitate an ordinary man. But he is not ordinary, he is a hero, he

is judgment and vengeance, he is the rending fury of justice, avenger of

his murdered family, nemesis of all creatures that are not of this earth

but would try to claim it as their own, savior of humanity.

That is his reason for existence. His life has meaning and purpose at

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