Odd Thomas (Odd Thomas, #1)

by Dean Koontz

Bantam hardcover edition published December 2003 Bantam international mass market edition / August 2004

Copyright © 2003 by Dean Koontz

Lilbrary of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2003057901

Hope requires the contender Who sees no virtue in surrender. From the cradle to the bier, The heart must persevere. —The Book of Counted Joys

CHAPTER 1

MY NAME IS ODD THOMAS, THOUGH IN THIS AGE when fame is the altar at which most people worship, I am not sure why you should care who I am or that I exist.

I am twenty years old.

I lead an unusual life.

Peculiar things happen to me that don’t happen to other people with regularity, if ever.

For reasons that will become obvious, this manuscript cannot be published during my lifetime, and my effort will not be repaid with royalties while I’m alive. Little Ozzie suggests that I should leave my literary estate to the loving maintenance of Terrible Chester, who, according to him, will outlive all of us. I will choose another charity. One that has not peed on me.

Don’t worry: These ramblings will not be insufferably gloomy. P. Oswald Boone has sternly instructed me to keep the tone light. “If you don’t keep it light,” Ozzie said, “I’ll sit my four-hundred-pound ass on you, and that’s not the way you want to die.” Ozzie is bragging. His ass, while grand enough, probably weighs no more than a hundred and fifty pounds. The other two hundred fifty are distributed across the rest of his suffering skeleton.

This story began on a Tuesday.

Without the help of an alarm clock, I woke that Tuesday morning at five, from a dream about dead bowling-alley employees.

The dream about the dead bowling-alley employees has troubled my sleep once or twice a month for three years. The details are not yet specific enough to act upon. I will have to wait and hope that clarification doesn’t come to me too late.

Pleased to be alive that Tuesday morning, on the dark side of the dawn, I switched on my nightstand lamp and surveyed the chamber that served as my bedroom, living room, kitchen, and dining room. I never get out of bed until I know who, if anyone, is waiting for me.

Only Elvis was there, wearing the lei of orchids, smiling, and pointing one finger at me as if it were a cocked gun.

The life-size cardboard figure of Elvis, part of a theater-lobby display promoting Blue Hawaii, was where I’d left it. Occasionally, it moves—or is moved—during the night.

I showered with peach-scented soap and peach shampoo, which were given to me by Stormy Llewellyn. Her real first name is Bronwen, but she thinks that makes her sound like an elf.

Stormy Llewellyn and I are more than friends. We believe that we are soul mates. For one thing, we have a card from a carnival fortune-telling machine that says we’re destined to be together forever. We also have matching birthmarks. Cards and birthmarks aside, I love her intensely. I would throw myself off a high cliff for her if she asked me to jump. I would, of course, need to understand the reasoning behind her request.

I set off for work at the Pico Mundo Grille.

The town of Pico Mundo is in that part of southern California where you can never forget that in spite of all the water imported by the state aqueduct system, the true condition of the territory is desert.

At the foot of the exterior steps that led down from my small apartment, in the early sun, Penny Kallisto waited like a shell on a shore. She wore red sneakers, white shorts, and a sleeveless white blouse. Ordinarily, Penny had none of that preadolescent despair to which some kids prove so susceptible these days. She was an ebullient twelve-year-old, outgoing and quick to laugh.

Without a word, Penny turned away from the stairs. She walked toward the front of the property.

Afraid of losing her, I hurried down the last of the steps and followed the girl.

Penny led me past the house, off the driveway, to a birdbath on the front lawn.

Penny stooped, selected a specimen about the size of an orange, stood once more, and held it out to me.

The architecture resembled that of a conch. The rough exterior was brown and white, the polished interior shone pearly pink. Cupping her right hand as though she still held the shell, Penny brought it to her ear. She cocked her head to listen, thus indicating what she wanted me to do.

When I put the shell to my ear, I did not hear the sea. Neither did I hear the melancholy desert wind that I mentioned previously. Instead, from the shell came the rough breathing of a beast. The u...

She stood at the curb, gazing toward the west end of Marigold Lane.

Evil was coming. I wondered whose face it would be wearing.

Penny Kallisto must have sensed my fear. She took my right hand in her left.

This 1968 Pontiac Firebird 400 had been restored with loving care. The two-door, midnight-blue convertible appeared to glide toward us with all tires a fraction of an inch off the pavement, shimmering like a mirage in the morning heat.

Harlo Landerson and I had been in the same high-school class. During his junior and senior years, Harlo rebuilt this car from the axles up, until it looked as cherry as it had in the autumn of ’67, when it had first stood on a showroom floor.

With a 335-horsepower V-8 engine, the Firebird could sprint from zero to sixty miles per hour in under eight seconds. Yet Harlo wasn’t a street racer; he took no special pride in having wheels of fury.

He devoted much time, labor, and money to the Firebird because the beauty of its design and function enchanted him. This was a labor of the heart, a passion almost spiritual in its purity and intensity.

With Penny Kallisto still at my side, I raised my left hand and waved at Harlo.

When he reached the house opposite me, he braked the coasting Pontiac to a stop. Penny and I crossed to the car, and Harlo said, “Good mornin’, Odd. How’re you this fine day?” “Bleak,” I replied. “Sad. Confused.” He frowned with concern. “What’s wrong? Anything I can do?” “Something you’ve already done,” I said. Letting go of Penny’s hand, I leaned into the Firebird from the passenger’s side, switched off the engine, and plucked the key from the ignition.

“You have her blood in your pocket.” An innocent man would have been baffled by my statement. Harlo stared at me, his eyes suddenly owlish not with wisdom but with fear. “On that night,” I said, “you took with you three small squares of white felt.” One hand still on the wheel, Harlo looked away from me, through the windshield, as if willing the Pontiac to move. “After using the girl, you collected some of her virgin blood with the squares of felt.” Harlo shivered. His face flushed red, perhaps with shame. Anguish thickened my voice. “They dried stiff and dark, brittle like crackers.” His shivers swelled into violent tremors. “You carry one of them with you at all times.” My voice shook with emotion. “You like to smell it. Oh, God, Harlo. Sometimes you put it between your teeth. And bite on it.” He threw open the driver’s door and fled.

As Harlo burst from the Pontiac, I looked down at Penny Kallisto and saw the ligature marks on her throat, which had not been visible when she had first appeared to me. The depth to which the garroting cloth had scored her flesh revealed the singular fury with which he had strangled her to death.

Pity tore at me, and I went after Harlo Landerson, for whom I had no pity whatsoever.

CHAP...

I closed on him, snared his shirt, hooked him off his feet. The two of us plunged into the deep end of the pool.

I was in the middle of the pool, and Harlo was at the edge. He grabbed the coping and jacked himself onto the concrete deck.

Having arrived at the sliding door, Harlo Landerson found it locked. The pajamaed woman had disappeared. As I scrambled to my feet and started to move, Harlo backed away from the door far enough to get momentum. Then he ran at it, leading with his left shoulder, his head tucked down.

The woman had chosen to make a stand in the kitchen. She gripped a telephone in one hand and a butcher knife in the other. Harlo stood at the threshold between rooms, trying to decide if a twentysomething housewife in too-cute, sailor-suit pajamas would really have the nerve to gut him alive.

Past her, on a far counter, smoke poured from a toaster. Some kind of pop-up pastry had failed to pop. It smelled like strawberries and smoldering rubber. The lady was having a bad morning.

Ducking the stool, I said, “Ma’am, I’m sorry about the mess,” and I went looking for Penny’s killer.

“Stevie, lock your door!” Dropping the blue bear, the kid bolted for his room. Harlo charged up the second flight of stairs.

Overhead, a door slammed hard. Stevie had done as his mother instructed.