Free The House of Thunder by Dean Koontz Page B

rotten bitch,” Harch said, and his smile became a broad grin. “You stinking, rotten, smug little bitch. How do you feel now? Huh? Are you sorry you testified against me? Hmmm? Yeah. I’ll bet you’re real sorry now.” He laughed softly, and for a moment the laughter became the low growling of a wolf, but then it turned into laughter again. “You know what I’m going to do to you?” he asked. His face began to blur. “Do you know what I’m going to do to you?” She was in a cavern. There were black flowers growing out of the stone floor. She was running from baying wolves. She turned a corner, and the cavern opened onto a shadowy city street. A wolf stood on the sidewalk, under a lamppost, and it said, “Do you know what I’m going to do to you?” Susan ran and kept on running through a long, frightening, amorphous night.
     
    Monday, shortly after dawn, she woke, groggy and damp with sweat. She remembered dreaming about wolves and about Ernest Harch. In the flat, hard, gray light of the cloudy morning, it seemed ridiculous for her to entertain the thought that Harch actually had been in her room last night. She was still alive, uninjured, utterly unmarked. It had all been a nightmare. All of it. Just a terrible nightmare.
     

5
     
    Not long after Susan woke, she took a sponge bath with the help of a nurse. Refreshed, she changed into her spare pajamas, a green pair with yellow piping. A nurse’s aide took the soiled blue silk pajamas into the bathroom, rinsed them in the sink, and hung them to dry on a hook behind the door.
     
    Breakfast was larger this morning than it had been yesterday. Susan ate every bite of it and was still hungry.
     
    A few minutes after Mrs. Baker came on duty with the morning shift, she came to Susan’s room with Dr. McGee, who was making his morning rounds before attending to his private practice at his offices in Willawauk. Together, McGee and Mrs. Baker removed the bandages from Susan’s forehead. There was no pain, just a prickle or two when the sutures were snipped and tugged loose.
     
    McGee cupped her chin in his hand and turned her head from side to side, studying the healed wound. “It’s a neat bit of tailoring, even if I do say so myself.”
     
    Mrs. Baker got the long-handled mirror from the nightstand and gave it to Susan.
     
    She was pleasantly surprised to find that the scar was not nearly as bad as she had feared it would be. It was four inches long, an unexpectedly narrow line of pink, shiny, somewhat swollen skin, bracketed by small red spots where the stitches had been.
     
    “The suture marks will fade away completely in ten days or so,” McGee assured her.
     
    “I thought it was a huge, bloody gash,” Susan said, raising one hand to touch the new, smooth skin.
     
    “Not huge,” McGee said. “But it bled like a faucet gushing water when you were first brought in here. And it resisted healing for a while, probably because you frowned a lot while you were comatose, and the frowning wrinkled your forehead. There wasn’t much we could do about that. Blue Cross wouldn’t pay for an around-the-clock comedian in your room.” He smiled. “Anyway, after the suture marks have faded, the scar itself will just about vanish, too. It won’t look as wide as it looks now, and, of course, it won’t be discolored. When it’s fully healed, if you think it’s still too prominent, a good plastic surgeon can use dermabrasion techniques to scour away some of the scar tissue.”
     
    “Oh, I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” Susan said. “I’m sure it’ll be almost invisible. I’m just relieved that I don’t look like Frankenstein’s monster.”
     
    Mrs. Baker laughed. “As if that were ever a possibility, what with your good looks. Goodness gracious, kid, it’s a crime the way you underrate yourself!”
     
    Susan blushed.
     
    McGee was amused.
     
    Shaking her head, Mrs. Baker picked up the scissors and the used bandages, and she left the