Intensity (novel)

Intensity

First edition (UK)
Author	Dean Koontz
Cover artist	J. James
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Suspense novel, Horror novel, Psychological Horror
Publisher	Headline (UK) Knopf (US)
Publication date	Nov 1995 (UK) Jan 1996 (US)
Media type	Print
Pages	343
ISBN
OCLC	45340457

Intensity is a novel by the best-selling author Dean Koontz, released in 1995.

Chyna Shepard is a college student visiting the family of her friend, Laura Templeton, for a long weekend. Chyna, who was abused and neglected by her mother as a child, finds the Templeton house provides something she has yearned: acceptance. This comes to a violent end when Edgler Vess, a serial killer, breaks into the house in the night and methodically kills all of the occupants except Laura and Chyna.

Chyna hides from him under her bed and waits until he goes downstairs. She searches the house and finds Laura's father shot and tied to a toilet seat, and the mother stabbed to death in the shower. Chyna sees Vess on the stairs eating a spider before she sneaks into Laura's room. She finds Laura tied up and raped. Chyna leaves, promising to return. Before she can intervene, Vess kills Laura and takes her to his motor home. Chyna hears Laura screaming and runs upstairs intending to attack Vess with a knife. Unaware Laura is dead, Chyna sneaks aboard the motor home and finds her friend's corpse. Before she can escape, Vess drives away. Chyna hides in a back room, planning to escape at the earliest opportunity. When he stops at a gas station, she sneaks out of the motor home, and heads inside the gas station to find a phone. Chyna secretly watches Vess boast to the gas station clerks that he is holding a young girl, Ariel, prisoner in his basement, before he kills them and drives away. Chyna feels compelled to follow Vess and help free the girl. She takes an attendant's car, and follows Vess. Chyna passes Vess while traveling through a state park and intentionally crashes her car into a redwood tree. While Vess gets out to investigate, Chyna sneaks on board the motor home, but unbeknownst to Chyna, Vess glimpses her. Fascinated, he decides not to kill her immediately wanting to see what she will do. Eventually, they arrive at Vess's remotely located house. Vess goes inside, feigns taking a shower, and watches as Chyna leaves the motor home. She enters the house and goes into the basement to find Ariel locked in a room and catatonic. Before she can free Ariel, Vess attacks Chyna in the kitchen, punching her unconscious before binding her with a chain in the kitchen. He taunts her for a while, revealing details about his past and past crimes. Obsessed with the "intensity" of any particular experience, sensory and existential, Vess styles himself as a "homicidal adventurer", and has killed continually since childhood. He offers to allow Chyna to live if she aids him in mentally torturing Ariel out of her catatonia. Then, Vess leaves for work. Chyna escapes from her chains by breaking away from the table to which she is chained, and slamming her chair into a wall. She releases Ariel from her prison. Vess has trained a pack of deadly Dobermann pinschers to guard his property and kill anyone attempting to get in or out. Dressed in Vess's dog-training clothing Chyna sprays ammonia on the dogs and makes it to the motor home. She and Ariel exit the house, and take off in the motor home. Soon after, Chyna sees a police car on the road, so she pulls over to signal it, only to discover that the driver is Vess, the local "county sheriff". In the ensuing showdown, she rams his police car, but he rolls clear and uses a shotgun to disable the motor home, causing it to tip over. Chyna and Ariel escape the crippled wreck, but Vess catches up to them and knocks Chyna to the ground while Ariel continues on, distracting Vess long enough for Chyna to pull a lighter from her pocket. She uses it to ignite Vess's boot which is soaked in the gas leaking from the crashed vehicles. She rolls away to safety just before the pool of gas surrounding Vess ignites. After catching up to Ariel, she turns and watches as Vess meets his end in the flames. A passing motorist stops to help them. Some months later Chyna adopts Ariel who had been living in a psychiatric hospital. The story ends with Ariel making gradual progress toward normalcy, and Chyna meeting a nice man.