Koontz, Dean- (2003) - Odd Thomas

by Odd Thomas(Lit)

  These were the two most important women in the world to me; I loved each of them in a different way, and declining to do what they wanted, even in the interest of doing the right thing, was difficult.

  The candlelight burnished their faces to the same golden glow, and they regarded me with an identical anxiety, as though by virtue of their female intuition they knew things that I could not perceive even with my sixth sense.

  From the CD player, Elvis crooned, "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" I consulted my wristwatch. "It's August fifteenth." When I tried to get to my feet, Stormy didn't restrain me as she had done previously. She, too, rose from her chair.

  I said, "Terri, I guess you'll have to cover for me on the first shift - or get Poke to come in if he's willing."

  "What - you can't cook and save the world at the same time?" "Not unless you want the bacon burnt. Sorry to give you such short notice."

  Terri accompanied us to the door. She hugged Stormy, then me. She boxed one of my ears. "You be here day after tomorrow, on time, at the griddle, flippin' those cakes, or I'm going to demote you to fountain jockey."

  TWENTY-NINE

  ACCORDING TO THE BIG DIGITAL SIGN AT THE BANK OF America, the temperature had fallen to a comparatively chilly ninety degrees here on the side of midnight when broomsticks are licensed to fly.

  A lazy breeze stirred through town, repeatedly dying and rising again, as though rust inhibited the mechanisms of the wind gods. Hot and dry, it traveled in crisp and fitful whispers among ficuses, palms, and jacarandas.

  The streets of Pico Mundo were quiet. When the breeze held its breath, I could hear the click of the switches in the traffic-signal con­trol boxes as the lights changed from green to yellow to red at the in­tersections.

  As we walked to Stormy's apartment, we remained alert, half ex­pecting Bob Robertson to pop like a jack-in-the-box from behind a parked car, out of a doorway.

  Other than the wind-licked leaves, the only movement was the dart-and-swoop of a swarm of bats pursuing a flurry of moths through the glow of a streetlamp, to the moon, and then out past Cassiopeia.

  Stormy lives three blocks from the Pico Mundo Grille. We held hands and walked in silence.

  My course was set irrevocably. In spite of her objections, she knew as well as I did that I had no choice but to do whatever I could to help Chief Porter stop Robertson before he committed the slaughter that had drenched my dreams for three years.

  Anything that could be said on the subject now would be useless repetition. And here on the dark side of a threatening dawn, small talk had no charm.

  The old, two-story Victorian house had been divided into four apartments. Stormy lives in the ground-floor unit on the right.

  We didn't expect Robertson to be waiting there for us. Though he had somehow learned who I was, it didn't follow that he would easily discover Stormy's address.

  If he was lying in wait for me, my apartment over Rosalia Sanchez's garage was a better bet than Stormy's place.

  Prudence, however, made us cautious as we entered the foyer and then her apartment. Inside, the cool air had a faint peach scent. We left the Mojave far behind us when we closed the door.

  She has three rooms, a bath, and a kitchen. Switching on lights, we went directly to her bedroom, where she keeps her 9-mm pistol.

  She ejected the magazine, checked it to be sure that it was fully loaded, and snapped it back into the weapon.

  I am wary of any gun, anywhere, anytime - except when it's in Stormy's hand. She could sit with her finger on the detonation button of a nuclear weapon, and I would feel safe enough to nap.

  A quick check of the windows revealed that they were locked, as she had left them.

  No boogeyman had taken up residence in any of the closets.

  While Stormy brushed her teeth and changed for bed, I called Green Moon Lanes and listened to a recorded message regarding their hours,

  services, and prices. They opened for business at 11:00 A.M. Thursday through Sunday, and at 1:00 P.M. Monday through Wednesday.

  The earliest that Robertson could walk into the bowling center with murder in mind was when they unlocked the doors at one o'clock.

  Two multiplex cinemas with a total of twenty screens serve the greater Pico Mundo area. By phone, I learned that the movie to which Viola had intended to take her daughters was playing at two theaters in only one multiplex. I made a mental note of the show times, the earliest of which was 1:10P.M.

  In the bedroom, I turned down the bedclothes, took off my shoes, and stretched out atop the thin blanket, waiting for Stormy

  She has furnished her humble home with items from thrift shops run by Goodwill and the Salvation Army; however, the look is neither shabby nor without character. She has a talent for eclectic design and for discerning the magic in objects that others might see as merely old or peculiar, or even grotesque.

  Floor lamps featuring silk shades with beaded fringes, chairs in the Stickley style paired with plump Victorian footstools upholstered in tapestries, Maxfield Parrish prints, colorful carnival-glass vases and bibelots: The mix should not work, but it does. Her rooms are the most welcoming that I have ever seen.

  Time seems suspended in this place.

  In these rooms I am at peace. I forget my worries. The problems of pancakes and poltergeists are lifted from me.

  Here I cannot be harmed.

  Here I know my destiny and am content with it.

  Here Stormy lives, and where she lives, I flourish.

  Above her bed, behind glass, in a frame, is the card from the fortune-telling machine: YOU ARE DESTINED TO BE TOGETHER FOREVER.

  Four years ago, on the midway of the county fair, a gaudy

  contrivance called Gypsy Mummy had waited in a shadowy back corner of an arcade tent filled with unusual games and macabre attractions.

  The machine had resembled an old-fashioned phone booth and had stood seven feet high. The lower three feet were entirely enclosed. The upper four feet featured glass on three sides.

  In the glass portion sat a dwarfish female figure attired in a Gypsy costume complete with garish jewelry and colorful headscarf. Her gnarled, bony, withered hands rested on her thighs, and the green of her fingernails looked less like polish than like mold.

  A plaque at her feet claimed that this was the mummified corpse of a Gypsy dwarf. In eighteenth-century Europe, she had been renowned for the accuracy of her prognostications and foretellings.

  The mottled skin of her face stretched tight over the skull. The eye­lids were stitched shut with black thread, as were her lips.

  Most likely this was not the art of Death working in the medium of flesh, as claimed, but instead the product of an artist who had been clever with plaster, paper, and latex.

  As Stormy and I arrived at Gypsy Mummy, another couple fed a quarter to the machine. The woman leaned toward a round grill in the glass and asked her question aloud: "Gypsy Mummy tell us, will Johnny and I have a long and happy marriage?"

  The man, evidently Johnny, pushed the ANSWER button, and a card slid into a brass tray. He read it aloud: "A cold wind blows, and each night seems to last a thousand years."

  Neither Johnny nor his bride-to-be regarded this as an answer to their question, so they tried again. He read the second card: "The fool leaps from the cliff, but the winter lake below is frozen."

  The woman, believing that Gypsy Mummy had misheard the question, repeated it: "Will Johnny and I have a long and happy mar­riage?"

  Johnny read the third card: "The orchard of blighted trees produces poisonous fruit."

  And the fourth: "A stone can provide no nourishment nor will sand slake your thirst."

  With irrational persistence, the couple spent four more quarters in pursuit of an answer. They began bickering on receipt of the fifth card. By the time Johnny read number eight, the cold wind predicted by the first fortune was blowing at gale-force between them.

  After Johnny and his love departed, Stormy and I took our turn with Gypsy
Mummy. A single coin produced for us the assurance that we were destined to be together forever.

  When Stormy tells this story, she claims that after granting to us what the other couple had wanted, the mummified dwarf winked.

  I didn't see this wink. I don't understand how a sewn-shut eye could perform such a trick and yet fail to pop a single stitch. The image of a winking mummy resonates with me nonetheless.

  Now, as I waited under the Gypsy Mummy's framed card, Stormy came to bed. She wore plain white cotton panties and a SpongeBob SquarePants T-shirt.

  All the models in the Victoria's Secret catalogue, in thongs and skimpy teddies and peekaboo bras, collectively possess a fraction of the erotic allure of Stormy in schoolgirl briefs and SpongeBob top.

  Lying on her side, cuddling against me, she put her head upon my chest to listen to my heart. She got an earful.

  She often likes to be held in this way until she falls asleep. I am the boatman she trusts to row her into restful dreams.

  After a silence, she said, "If you want me... I'm ready now."

  I am no saint. I have used my driver's license to trespass in homes to which I've not been invited. I answer violence with violence and never turn the other cheek. I have had enough impure thoughts to destroy the ozone layer. I have often spoken ill of my mother.

  Yet when Stormy offered herself to me, I thought of the orphaned girl, then known to the world as Bronwen, alone and afraid at the age of seven, adopted and given safe harbor, only to discover that her new father wanted not a daughter but a sex toy. Her confusion, her fear, her humiliation, her shame were too easy for me to imagine.

  I thought also of Penny Kallisto and the seashell that she had handed to me. From the glossy pink throat of that shell had come the voice of a monster speaking the language of demented lust.

  Though I didn't confuse my clean passion with Harlo Landerson's sick desire and savage selfishness, I could not purge from memory his rough breathing and bestial grunts. "Saturday is almost here," I told Stormy. "You've taught me the beauty of anticipation."

  "What if Saturday never comes?"

  "We'll have this Saturday and thousands more," I assured her.

  "I need you," she said.

  "Is that something new?"

  "God, no."

  "It's not new for me, either."

  I held her. She listened to my heart. Her hair feathered like a raven's wing against her face, and my spirits soared.

  Soon she murmured to someone she seemed pleased to see in her sleep. The boatman had done his job, and Stormy drifted on dreams.

  I eased off the bed without waking her, drew the top sheet and thin blanket over her shoulders, and switched the bedside lamp to its low­est setting. She doesn't like to wake in darkness.

  After slipping into my shoes, I kissed her forehead and left her with the 9-mm pistol on her nightstand.

  I turned out the lights elsewhere in the apartment, stepped into the public hall, and locked her door with a key she'd given to me.

  The front door of the apartment house featured a large oval of

  leaded glass. The beveled edges of the mosaic pieces presented a frag­mented and distorted view of the porch.

  I put one eye to a flat piece of glass to see things more clearly. An unmarked police van stood at the curb across the street.

  Law enforcement in Pico Mundo involves few clandestine opera­tions. The police department owns only two unmarked units.

  The average citizen wouldn't recognize either vehicle. Because of the assistance that I've provided to the chief on numerous cases, I have ridden in and am familiar with both.

  Of the white van's identifying features, the stubby shortwave an­tenna spiking from the roof at the back was the clincher.

  I had not asked the chief to grant protection to Stormy; she would have been angry at the implication that she couldn't take care of her­self. She has her pistol, her certificate of graduation from a self-defense course, and her pride.

  The danger to her, if any, would seem to exist only when I was with her. Bob Robertson had no beef with anyone but me.

  This chain of logic brought me to the realization that Chief Porter might be providing protection not to Stormy but to me.

  More likely, it wasn't protection but surveillance. Robertson had tracked me to Little Ozzie's place and had found me again later at St. Bart's. The chief might be keeping a watch on me in the hope that Robertson would sniff out my trail once more, whereupon he could be taken into custody for questioning about the vandalism at the church.

  I understood his thinking, but I resented being used as bait without first being asked politely if I minded having a hook in my ass.

  Besides, in the course of meeting the responsibilities of my super­natural gift, I sometimes resort to tactics frowned upon by the police. The chief knows this. Being subjected to police surveillance and

  protection would inhibit me and, if I acted in my usual impulsive fashion, would make Chief Porter's position even more difficult.

  Instead of leaving by the main entrance, I walked to the end of the public hall and departed by the back door. A small moonlit yard led to a four-car garage, and a gate beside the garage opened into an alleyway

  The officer in the van thought that he was running surveillance on me, but now he served as Stormy's guardian. And she couldn't get an­gry with me because I had never asked that she be provided with pro­tection.

  I was tired but not ready to sleep. I went home anyway

  Maybe Robertson would be waiting for me and would try to kill me. Maybe I would survive, subdue him, call the chief, and thereby put an end to this.

  I had high hopes of a violent encounter with a satisfactory con­clusion.

  THIRTY

  THE MOJAVE HAD STOPPED BREATHING. THE DEAD LUNGS of the desert no longer exhaled the lazy breeze that had accompanied Stormy and me on our walk to her apartment.

  By streets and alleyways, along a footpath bisecting a vacant lot, through a drainage culvert dry for months, and then to streets again, I made my way home at a brisk pace.

  Bodachs were abroad.

  First I saw them at a distance, a dozen or more, racing on all fours. When they passed through dark places, they were discernible only as a tumult of shadows, but streetlights and gatepost lamps revealed them for what they were. Their lithe motion and menacing posture brought to mind panthers in pursuit of prey.

  A two-story Georgian house on Hampton Way was a bodach mag­net. As I passed, staying to the far side of the street, I saw twenty or thirty inky forms, some arriving and others departing by cracks in window frames and chinks in door jambs.

  Under the porch light, one of them thrashed and writhed as if in

  the throes of madness. Then it funneled itself through the keyhole in the front door.

  Two others, exiting the residence, strained themselves through the screen that covered an attic vent. As comfortable on vertical surfaces as any spider, they crawled down the wall of the house to the porch roof, crossed the roof, and sprang to the front lawn.

  This was the home of the Takuda family, Ken and Micali, and their three children. No lights brightened any windows. The Takudas were asleep, unaware that a swarm of malevolent spirits, quieter than cock­roaches, crawled through their rooms and observed them in their dreaming.

  I could only assume that one of the Takudas - or all of them - were destined to die this very day, in whatever violent incident had drawn the bodachs to Pico Mundo in great numbers.

  Experience had taught me that these spirits often gathered at the site of forthcoming horror, as at the Buena Vista Nursing Home be­fore the earthquake. In this case, however, I didn't believe that the Takudas would perish in their home any more than I expected that Viola and her daughters would die in their picturesque bungalow.

  The bodachs were not concentrated in one place this time. They were all over town, and from their unusually wide disbursement and their behavior, I deduced that they were visiting the potent
ial victims prior to gathering at the place where the bloodshed would occur. Call this the pregame show.

  I hurried away from the Takuda house and didn't glance back, con­cerned that the slightest attention I paid to these creatures would alert them to the fact that I could see them.

  On Eucalyptus Way, other bodachs had invaded the home of Morris and Rachel Melman.

  Since Morrie had retired as the superintendent of the Pico Mundo School District, he'd stopped resisting his circadian rhythms and had

  embraced the fact that he was a night lover by nature. He spent these quiet hours in the pursuit of various hobbies and interests. While Rachel slept in the dark upstairs, warm light brightened the lower floor.

  The distinctive shadowy shapes of bodachs in their erect but hunch-shouldered posture were visible at every ground-floor window. They appeared to be in ceaseless, agitated movement through those rooms, as though the scent of impending death stirred in them a vio­lent and delirious excitement.

  To one degree or another, this silent frenzy marked their behavior wherever I had seen them since walking to work less than twenty-four hours ago. The intensity of their malignant ecstasy fueled my dread.

  In this infested night, I found myself glancing warily at the sky, half expecting to see bodachs swarming across the stars, The moon wasn't veiled by spirit wings, however, and the stars blazed unobstructed from Andromeda to Vulpecula.

  Because they have no apparent mass, the bodachs should not be af­fected by gravity. Yet I have never seen them fly. Although supernatu­ral, they seem to be bound by many, though not all, of the laws of physics.

  When I reached Marigold Lane, I was relieved that the street on which I lived appeared to be free of these beasts.

  I passed the spot where I had stopped Harlo Landerson in his Pontiac Firebird 400. How easily, by comparison, the day had begun.

  With her killer named and prevented from assaulting other girls, Penny Kallisto had made her peace with this world and moved on, This success gave me hope that I might prevent or minimize the pend­ing carnage that had drawn legions of bodachs to our town.