Koontz, Dean- (2003) - Odd Thomas

by Odd Thomas(Lit)

  Although I had no person - no name, no description - as a focus for my psychic magnetism, I drove at random through Pico Mundo, hoping to be brought to a place of enlightenment.

  The brilliant Mojave day burned at white-hot ferocity. The air itself seemed to be on fire, as if the sun - -by speed of light, less than eight and a half minutes from Earth - had gone nova eight minutes ago, giving us nothing more than this dazzling glare as a short warning of our impending bright death.

  Each flare and flicker of light flashing off the windshield seemed to score my eyes. I hadn't brought my sunglasses. The searing glare soon spawned a headache that made a fork in the brow seem like a tickle by comparison.

  Turning aimlessly from street to street, trusting intuition to guide me, [ found myself in Shady Ranch, one of the newer residential de­velopments on the Pico Mundo hills that a decade ago were home to nothing more dangerous than rattlesnakes. Now people lived here, and perhaps one of them was a sociopathic monster plotting mass murder in upper-middle-class suburban comfort.

  Shady Ranch had never been a ranch of any kind; it wasn't one now, unless you counted houses as a crop. As for shade, these hills en­joyed less of it than most neighborhoods in the heart of town because the trees were far from maturity.

  I parked in my father's driveway but didn't at once switch off the engine. I needed time to gather my nerve for this encounter.

  Like those who lived in it, this Mediterranean-style house had little character. Below the red-tile roof, ornament-free planes of beige stucco and glass met at unsurprising angles arrived at less by architec­tural genius than by the dictates of lot size and shape.

  Leaning closer to a dashboard vent, I closed my eyes against the rush of chilled air. Ghost lights drifted across the backs of my eyelids, retinal

  memories of the desert glare, strangely soothing for a moment - until the wound in Robertson's chest rose from deeper memory.

  I switched off the engine, got out of the car, went to the house, and rang my father's doorbell.

  At this hour in the morning, he was likely to be home. He had never worked a day in his life and seldom rose before nine or ten o'clock.

  My father answered, surprised to see me. "Odd, you didn't call to say you were coming."

  "No," I agreed. "Didn't call."

  My father is forty-five, a handsome man with thick hair still more black than silver. He has a lean athletic body of which he is proud to the point of vanity.

  Barefoot, he wore only khaki shorts slung low across his hips. His tan had been assiduously cultivated with oils, enhanced with toners, preserved with lotions.

  "Why have you come?" he asked.

  "I don't know."

  "You don't look well."

  He retreated one step from the door. He fears illness.

  "I'm not sick," I assured him. "Just bone tired. No sleep. May I come in?"

  "We weren't doing much, just finishing breakfast, getting ready to catch some rays."

  Whether that was an invitation or not, I interpreted it as one, and I crossed the threshold, pulling the door shut behind me.

  "Britney's in the kitchen," he said, and led me to the back of the house.

  The blinds were drawn, the rooms layered with sumptuous shadows.

  I've seen the place in better light. It's beautifully furnished. My fa­ther has style and loves comfort.

  He inherited a substantial trust fund. A generous monthly check supports a lifestyle that many would envy.

  Although he has much, he yearns for more. He desires to live far better than he does, and he chafes at terms of the trust that require him to live on its earnings and forbid him access to the principal.

  His parents had been wise to settle their estate on him under those terms. If he had been able to get his hands on the principal, he would long ago have been destitute and homeless.

  He is full of get-rich-quick schemes, the latest being the sale of land on the moon. Were he able to manage his own fortune, he would be impatient with a ten- or fifteen-percent return on investment and would plunge great sums on unlikely ventures in hopes of doubling and tripling his money overnight.

  The kitchen is big, with restaurant-quality equipment and every imaginable culinary tool and gadget, though he eats out six or seven nights a week. Maple floor, ship's-style maple cabinets with rounded corners, granite counters, and stainless-steel appliances contribute to a sleek and yet inviting ambience.

  Britney is sleek, as well, and inviting in a way that makes your skin crawl. When we entered the kitchen, she was standing hipshot at a window, sipping a morning champagne and staring out at sun ser­pents sinuously flexing across the surface of the swimming pool.

  Her thong bikini was small enough to excite the jaded editors of Hustler, but she wore it well enough to make the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

  She was eighteen but looked younger. This is my father's basic cri­terion in women. They are never older than twenty, and they always look younger than they are.

  Some years ago, he got in trouble for cohabiting with a sixteen-

  year-old. He claimed to be unaware of her true age. An expensive at­torney plus payoffs to the girl and her parents spared him the indignity of a prison pallor and jail haircuts.

  Instead of a greeting, Britney gave me a sullen, dismissive look. She returned her attention to the sun-dappled swimming pool.

  She resents me because she thinks my father might give me money that would otherwise be spent on her. This concern has no validity. He would never offer me a buck, and I would never take it.

  She would be better advised to worry about two facts: first, that she has been with my father for five months; second, that the average du­ration of one of his affairs is six to nine months. With a nineteenth birthday looming, she would soon seem old to him.

  Fresh coffee had been brewed. I asked for a cup, poured it myself, and sat on a bar stool at the kitchen island.

  Always restless in my company, my father moved around the room, rinsing out Britney's champagne glass when she finished with it, wip­ing a counter that didn't need to be wiped, straightening the chairs at the breakfast table.

  "I'm getting married on Saturday," I said.

  This surprised him. He'd been married to my mother only briefly and regretted it within hours of exchanging vows. Marriage doesn't suit him.

  "To that Llewellyn girl?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  "Is that a good idea?"

  "It's the best idea I've ever had."

  Britney turned away from the window to study me with beady-eyed speculation. To her, a wedding meant a gift, a parental boon, and she was prepared to defend her interests.

  She didn't stir in me the slightest anger. She saddened me, for I could see her deeply unhappy future without need of any sixth sense.

  Admittedly, she scared me a little, too, because she was moody and quick to anger. Worse, the purity and the intensity of her self-esteem ensured that she would never doubt herself, that she could not con­ceive of suffering unpleasant consequences for any act that she might commit.

  My father likes moody women in whom a perpetually simmering anger lies just beneath the surface. The more dearly that their moodi­ness indicates genuine psychological disorder, the more they excite him. Sex without danger does not appeal to him.

  All of his lovers have fit this profile. He doesn't appear to spend much effort seeking them; as if sensing his need, drawn by vibes or pheromones, they find him with dependable regularity

  He once told me that the moodier a woman is, the hotter she will prove to be in bed. This was fatherly advice that I could have lived without.

  Now, as I poured coffee into a gutful of Pepsi, he said, "Is this Llewellyn girl knocked up?"

  "No."

  "You're too young for marriage," he said. "My age - -that's when it's time to settle down."

  He said this for Britney's benefit. He would never marry her. Later, she would remember this as a promise. When
he ditched her, the fight would be more epic than Godzilla vs. Mothra.

  Sooner or later, one of his hotties, during a bad mood swing, will maim or kill him. I believe that on some deep level, even if subcon­sciously, he knows this.

  "What's that on your forehead?" Britney asked.

  "Band-Aid."

  "You fall down drunk or something?"

  "Something."

  "You in a fight?"

  "No. It's an employment-related fork wound."

  "A what?"

  "A flipped fork flicked my forehead."

  Alliteration seems to offend people. Her expression soured. "What kind of shit are you on?"

  "I'm fully amped on caffeine," I admitted.

  "Caffeine, my ass."

  "Pepsi and coffee and No-Doz. And chocolate. Chocolate contains caffeine. I had some chocolate-chip cookies. Chocolate doughnuts."

  My father said, "Saturday's not good. We can't make Saturday. We've got other plans we can't cancel."

  "That's all right," I said. "I understand."

  "I wish you'd have told us earlier."

  "No problem. I didn't expect you'd be able to make it."

  "What kind of dork," Britney wondered, "announces his wedding just three days before the ceremony?"

  "Go easy," my father advised her.

  Her psychological engine didn't have a go-easy gear. "Well, damn it, he's such a freak."

  "That's really not helpful," my father admonished her, but in a honeyed tone.

  "Well, it's true," she insisted. "Like we haven't talked about it maybe three dozen times. He doesn't have a car, he lives in a garage - "

  "Above a garage," I corrected.

  " - he wears the same thing every day, he's friends with every loser geek in town, he's a wannabe cop like a water boy hanging around a football team, and he's just a major freak - "

  "You won't get an argument from me," I said.

  " - such a major freak, the way he comes in here on some shit or other, talking about weddings and 'employment-related fork wounds.' Give me a break."

  "I'm a freak," I said sincerely. "I acknowledge it, accept it. There's no reason to argue. Peace."

  My father couldn't quite fake a convincing note of sincerity when he said, "Don't say that. You're not a freak."

  He doesn't know about my supernatural gift. At the age of seven, when my previously weak and inconstant sixth sense grew in power and reliability, I didn't go to him for counsel.

  I hid my difference from him in part because I expected him to ha­rass me into picking winning lottery numbers, which I can't do. I fig­ured he'd parade me before the media, parlay my gift into a TV show, or even sell shares in me to speculators willing to finance an infomer­cial and a psychic-by-the-minute 900 number.

  Getting off the stool, I said, "I think now maybe I know why I came here."

  As I started toward the kitchen door, my father followed me. "I really wish you'd picked another Saturday."

  Turning to face him, I said, "I think I came here because I was afraid to go to my mother."

  Britney stepped behind my father, pressing her nearly naked body against him. She put her arms around him, hands flat on his chest. He made no attempt to pull away from her.

  "There's something I'm blocking on," I said, more to myself than to either of them. "Something I desperately need to know... or need to do. And somehow, some way, it's related to Mother. Somehow she has the answer."

  "Answers?" he said incredulously. "You know perfectly well that your mother's about the last place to find answers."

  Smiling wickedly at me over my father's left shoulder, Britney slid her hands slowly up and down his muscled chest and drum-flat belly.

  "Sit down," my father said. "I'll pour you another coffee. If you have a problem you need to talk about, then let's talk."

  Britney's right hand moved low on his belly, fingertips teasing un­der the waistband of his hip-slung shorts.

  He wanted me to see the desire that he inspired in this lush young woman. He had a weak man's pride in his status as a stud, and this pride was so fierce that it filled his mind, leaving him quite incapable of recognizing his son's humiliation.

  '"Yesterday was the anniversary of Gladys Presley's death," I said. "Her son wept uncontrollably for days after losing her, and he grieved openly for a year."

  A faint frown made the shallowest of furrows in my father's Botoxed forehead, but Britney was too engrossed in her game to be listening to me with full attention. Her eyes glittered with what might have been mockery or triumph as her right hand slowly slipped deeper in his khaki shorts.

  "He loved his dad, too. Tomorrow is the anniversary of Elvis's own death. I think I'll try to look him up and tell him how lucky he was from the very day he was born."

  I walked out of the kitchen, out of the house.

  He didn't come after me. I hadn't expected that he would.

  FIFTY-TWO

  MY MOTHER LIVES IN A LOVELY VICTORIAN HOUSE IN the historical district of Pico Mundo. My father had inherited it from his parents.

  In the divorce, she received this gracious residence, its contents, and substantial alimony with a cost-of-living adjustment. Because she has never remarried and most likely never will, her alimony will be a lifetime benefit.

  Generosity is not my father's first or second - or last - impulse. He settled a comfortable lifestyle on her solely because he feared her. Although he resented having to share his monthly income from the trust, he didn't have the courage even to negotiate with her through attorneys. She received pretty much everything that she de­manded.

  He paid for his safety and for a new chance at happiness (as he de­fines it). And he left me behind when I was one year old.

  Before I rang the doorbell, I brushed my hand across the porch swing to confirm that it was clean. She could sit on the swing, and I would sit on the porch railing while we talked.

  We meet always in the open air. I had promised myself that I would never enter that house again, even if I should outlive her.

  After I'd rung the bell twice without a response, I went around the house to the backyard.

  The property is deep. A pair of immense California live oaks stand immediately behind the house, together casting shade that is all but complete. Farther toward the back of the lot, sun falls unfiltered, al­lowing a rose garden.

  My mother was at work among the roses. Like a lady of another era, she wore a yellow sundress and a matching sunbonnet.

  Although the wide brim of the hat shaded her face, I could see that her exceptional beauty had not been tarnished during the four months since I last visited her.

  She had married my father when she was nineteen and he was twenty-four. She is forty now, but she might pass for thirty.

  Photographs taken on her wedding day reveal a nineteen-year-old who looked sixteen, breathtakingly lovely, shockingly tender to be a bride. None of my father's subsequent conquests have matched her beauty.

  Even now, when she is forty, if she were in a room with Britney she in her sundress and Britney in that thong bikini, most men would be drawn to her first. And if she were in a mood to rule the moment, she would enchant them such that they would think she was the only woman among them.

  I drew near to her before she realized that she was no longer alone. She raised her attention from the flowers, stood taller, and for a mo­ment blinked at me as though I were a heat mirage.

  Then: "Odd, you sweet boy, you must have been a cat in another life, to sneak across all that yard."

  I could summon only the ghost of a smile. "Hello, Mom. You look wonderful."

  She requires compliments; but in fact she never looks less than wonderful.

  If she had been a stranger, I might have found her to be even love­lier. For me, our shared history diminishes her radiance.

  "Come here, sweetie, look at these fabulous blooms."

  I entered the gallery of roses, where a carpet of decomposed gran­ite held down the dust and crunched un
derfoot.

  Some flowers offered sun-pricked petals of blood in bursting sprays. Others were bowls of orange fire, bright cups of yellow onyx brimming with summer sunshine. Pink, purple, peach - the garden was perpetually decorated for a party.

  My mother kissed me on the cheek. Her lips were not cold, as I al­ways expect them to be.

  Naming the variety, she said, "This is the John F. Kennedy rose. Isn't it exquisite?"

  With one hand, she gently lifted a mature bloom so heavy that its head was bowed on its bent stem.

  As Mojave-white as sun-bleached bone, with a faint undertone of green, these large petals weren't delicate but remarkably thick and smooth.

  "They look as if they're molded from wax," I said.

  "Exactly. They're perfection, aren't they, dear? I love all my roses, but these more than any other."

  Not merely because this rose was her favorite, I liked it less than the others. Its perfection struck me as artificial. The sensuous folds of its labial petals promised mystery and satisfaction in its hidden center, but this seemed to be a false promise, for its wintry whiteness and waxy rigidity - and lack of fragrance - suggested neither purity nor passion, but death.

  "This one's for you," she said, withdrawing a small pair of rose snips from a pocket of her sundress.

  "No, don't cut it. Let it grow. It'll be wasted on me."

  "Nonsense. You must give it to that girl of yours. If properly pre­sented, a single rose can express a suitor's feelings more clearly than a bouquet."

  She snipped off eight inches of stem with the bloom.

  I held the flower not far below its receptacle, pinching the stem with thumb and forefinger, between the highest pair of thorns.

  Glancing at my wristwatch, I saw that the lulling sun and the per­fumed flowers only made time seem to pass lazily, when in fact it raced away. Robertson's kill buddy might even now be driving to his ren­dezvous with infamy

  Moving along the rosarium with a queenly grace and a smile of royal beneficence, admiring the nodding heads of her colorful sub­jects, my mother said, "I'm so glad you came to visit, dear. What is the occasion?"

  At her side yet half a step behind her, I said, "I don't know exactly. I've got this problem - "