Free Deeply Odd by Dean Koontz Page A

recording played at too slow a speed, was nonetheless far different from the silence imposed upon the deceased.
    He changed course abruptly, passed
through
me, and I shuddered as a chill marked the moment when we occupied the same space. As I turned, he stopped one step away, swung back to me, and we were face-to-face. He had abruptly ceased talking. He looked left, right, up, down, and I suspected that he’d felt a chill, as well, but he didn’t otherwise react to me. From my perspective, he was a see-through ghost, as in a movie, but I was invisible to him.
    For a moment I perceived—without quite seeing—that the roomhe occupied had the same dimensions as the chamber in which I stood, but that it was an empty and desolate space. Cold concrete and ashen light.
    The second man in that other basement now spoke again, stepping into view: the rhinestone cowboy. He was as semitransparent as the guy with whom he argued.
    Turning from me, the first man joined the would-be murderer of children, and they walked away, swiftly fading from sight as their voices slid into silence.
    I no longer sensed that alternate basement. But then came a sound like two metal fire doors falling shut, one a fraction of a second after the other, the former softer than the latter.
    When I turned to Mr. Hitchcock, I found that he was watching me. As though soliciting my reaction to what had just happened, he raised his eyebrows.
    Although I am not an important person by any definition, at that moment I almost felt like one. In spite of my paranormal ability, I am just a hapless out-of-work short-order cook who struggles to fry well when he has a job and, if possible, at all times to do the right thing. But now I suddenly thought of all those male leads in Mr. Hitchcock’s films, and I felt obligated to fulfill his directorial expectations, to answer his raised eyebrows with a remark witty enough to be delivered by Cary Grant.
    Instead, I said, “Uh … wow … see … you know … the thing is … I don’t understand. Where were those two men? Where are they now? Was their argument something that happened here earlier? Or something that’ll happen in the future?”
    He shook his head and then tapped the face of his wristwatch with one finger, perhaps to indicate that the time in both basements was the same, that what I’d seen had happened just now. Or maybehe had done a Rolex commercial during his life and felt a duty to sell the brand even after death.
    “Sir, I’m confused.”
    With fingers widely spread, hands framing his face, with an expression of amazement, Mr. Hitchcock mocked me, as if to say,
You? Confused? Who knew? Astonishing! Impossible! It beggars belief!
    If he’d been Quentin Tarantino or Oliver Stone, I might have been a bit offended—or even alarmed by the possibility of mindless violence—but in his day he’d been known for his unexpected clowning and practical jokes. His friend, the actor Gerald du Maurier, had been appearing in a play at St. James Theater, in London, when during a performance Mr. Hitchcock somehow had gotten a full-grown horse into the star’s dressing room without anyone seeing it happen. When du Maurier returned at the end of the play, he found the huge animal contentedly eating grain from a feed bag.
    Now the director turned from me and glided across the basement as if he wore ice skates and the floor were a frozen pond, and I had to hurry to keep up with him. He passed through a heavy fire door, which I yanked open in his wake, wondering if this might be the door that I had heard crash shut twice in quick succession when the see-through cowboy had departed the other basement or this basement, or both.
    With my confusion growing more profound, I rushed along a drab corridor to a pair of elevators—the smaller for people, the larger for freight—where Mr. Hitchcock stood. As I arrived, a bell sounded, the first set of doors slid open, he stepped into the waiting car, and I followed him.
    Even