Odd Thomas (Odd Thomas, #1)

by Dean Koontz

Off the railing, up the stairs, I reached the second-floor hall as Harlo began to break down the kid’s bedroom door. Aware that I was coming, he kicked harder. Wood splintered with a dry crack, and the door flew inward. Harlo flew with it, as if he’d been sucked out of the hall by an energy vortex. Rushing across the threshold, pushing aside the rebounding door, I saw the boy trying to wriggle under the bed. Harlo had seized him by the left foot. I snatched a smiling panda-bear lamp off the red nightstand and smashed it over Harlo’s head. A ceramic carnage of perky black ears, fractured white face, black paws, and chunks of white belly exploded across the room.

Sirens arose in the distance just as Stevie’s mom appeared at the open door, butcher knife glinting and ready: two cavalries, one in pajamas, the other in the blue-and-black uniform of the Pico Mundo Police Department.

As the sirens swelled louder, nearer, Harlo backed into a corner where he stood gasping, shuddering. Wringing his hands, his face gray with anguish, he looked at the floor, the walls, the ceiling, not in the manner of a trapped man assessing the dimensions of his cage, but with bewilderment, as though he could not recall how he had come to be in this place and predicament.

The day had dawned less than an hour ago, and I had spent every minute of the morning living up to my name.

CHAPTER 3

My clothes had nearly dried, but they were badly wrinkled. I checked my watch. “I better get moving. I’m going to have to change before I can go to the Grille.” We both rose to our feet. The Barney chair collapsed. Looking at the purple ruins, Chief Porter said, “That could have happened when you were fighting Harlo.” “Could have,” I said. “Insurance will cover it with the rest.” “There’s always insurance,” I agreed.

CHAPTER 4

I knocked, and she said, “Can you hear me?” “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I hear you just fine.” “Who do you hear?” “You. Rosalia Sanchez.” “Come in then, Odd Thomas,” she said.

“You’re late this morning, Odd Thomas.” Invariably she uses both names. I sometimes suspect she thinks Odd is not a name but a royal title, like Prince or Duke, and that protocol absolutely requires that it be used by commoners when they address me. Perhaps she thinks that I am the son of a deposed king, reduced to tattered circumstances but nonetheless deserving of respect. I said, “Late, yes, I’m sorry. It’s been a strange morning.” She doesn’t know about my special relationship with the deceased. She’s got enough problems without having to worry about dead people making pilgrimages to her garage.

“When you didn’t come at the usual time,” she said, “I thought you’d been here but couldn’t see me. And I thought I couldn’t see you anymore, either, that when I became invisible to you, you also became invisible to me.” “Just late,” I assured her. “It would be terrible to be invisible.”

“When I’ve worried about becoming invisible, I’ve always thought I’d be able to see other people, they just wouldn’t be able to see or hear me.”

“But if other people become invisible to me when I’m invisible to them,” she continued, “then it’s like I’m the last person in the world, all of it empty except for me wandering around alone.”

When Mrs. Sanchez talks about invisibility, she’s talking about death, but I’m not sure she realizes this.

For Herman, death had come as gently as it ever does, in sleep, but for Rosalia, the shock of waking with the dead had been traumatic.

Later that year, still mourning her husband, she had not gone with her three sisters and their families on a long-planned vacation to New England. On the morning of September 11, she awakened to the news that their return flight out of Boston had been hijacked and used as a guided missile in one of the most infamous acts in history.

Herman, her sisters, her nieces, her nephews had been the center of her life. She los...

In her gentle madness, she would not acknowledge that they were dead. They had merely become invisible to her.

Rosalia’s biggest fear is that on the same day when her loved ones are made visible again, she herself will vanish. Though she longs for their return, she dreads the consequences.

She accompanied me to the door and gave me a good-bye hug. “You are a good boy, Odd Thomas.” “You remind me of my Granny Sugars,” I said, “except you don’t play poker, drink whiskey, or drive fast cars.” “That’s sweet,” she said. “You know, I thought the world and all of Pearl Sugars. She was so feminine but also…” “Kick-ass,” I suggested. “Exactly. At the church’s strawberry festival one year, there was this rowdy man, mean on drugs or drink. Pearl put him down with just two punches.”

In this wilted stillness, between Mrs. Sanchez’s house and the Grille, I saw three shadows moving. All were independent of a source, for they were not ordinary shadows. When I was much younger, I called these entities shades. But that is just another word for ghosts, and they are not ghosts like Penny Kallisto. I don’t believe they ever passed through this world in human form or knew this life as we know it. I suspect they don’t belong here, that a realm of eternal darkness is their intended home. Their shape is liquid. Their substance is no greater than that of shadows. Their movement is soundless. Their intentions, though mysterious, are not benign. Often they slink like cats, though cats as big as men. At times they run semi-erect like dream creatures that are half man, half dog. I do not see them often. When they appear, their presence always signifies oncoming trouble of a greater than usual intensity and a darker than usual dimension. They are not shades to me now. I call them bodachs. Bodach is a word that I heard a visiting six-year-old English boy use to describe these creatures when, in my company, he glimpsed a pack of them roaming a Pico Mundo twilight. A bodach is a small, vile, and supposedly mythical beast of the British Isles, who comes down chimneys to carry off naughty children. I don’t believe these spirits that I see are actually bodachs. I don’t think the English boy believed so, either. The word popped into his mind only because he had no better name ...

He was the only person I have ever known who shared my special sight. Minutes after he spoke the word bodach in my presence, he was crushed to death between a runaway truck and a concrete-block wall.

CHAPTER 5

I like being busy. The short-order station is the center stage of the restaurant, in full view, and I draw fans as surely as does any actor on the Broadway boards.

I was not born with the artistry of a gifted hash-slinger. I learned by study and practice, under the tutelage of Terri Stambaugh, who owns the Pico Mundo Grille.

She isn’t merely my employer but also my culinary mentor, my surrogate mother, and my friend.

I saw only the living in the Pico Mundo Grille during that Tuesday shift. You can always spot the dead in a diner because the dead don’t eat.

Half the booths and all but two of the counter stools had been vacated by the time a bodach came into the diner. Their kind don’t appear to be able to walk through walls as do the dead like Penny Kallisto. Instead they slip through any crevice or crack, or keyhole. This one seeped through the thread-thin gap between the glass door and the metal jamb. Like an undulant ribbon of smoke, as insubstantial as fumes but not translucent, ink-black, the bodach entered. Standing rather than slinking on all fours, fluid in shape and without discernible features, yet suggestive of something half man and half canine, this unwanted customer slouched silently from the front to the back of the diner, unseen by all but me. It seemed to turn its head toward each of our patrons as it glided along the aisle between the counter stools and the booths, hesitating in a few instances, as though certain people were of greater interest to it than were others. Although it possessed no discernible facial features, a portion of its silhouette appeared headlike, with a suggestion of a dog’s muzzle. Eventually this creature returned from the back of the diner and stood on the public side of the counter, eyeless but surely watching me as I worked at the short-order station. Pretending to be unaware of my observer, I focused more intently on the grill and griddle than was necessary now that the breakfast rush had largely passed. From time to time, when I looked up, I never glanced at the bodach but at the ...

Having lost interest in me, the bodach crowded the new arrival and focused intently on him. If this inky entity’s head was in fact a head, then its head cocked left, cocked right, as though it were puzzling over the smiley man. If the snout-shaped portion was in fact a snout, then the shade sniffed with wolfish interest.

Busy with his mess of eggs, Chief Porter appeared to be no more aware of Fungus Man than he was of the observing bodach. Evidently, his intuition did not tell him that this new customer warranted special attention or concern. I, however, found Fungus Man worrisome—in part but not entirely because the bodach remained fascinated by him.

My wariness of this man came from suspicion based not on reason, either, but on crude instinct. Anyone who smiled this relentlessly was a simpleton—or a deceiver with something to hide.

By the time I followed the muffins with the hash and sausages, a second bodach had appeared. This one and the first moved through the diner with an air of agitation, back and forth, here and there, always returning to the smiley gourmand, who remained oblivious of them.

Three bodachs had gathered at the front window, persistent shadows that remained impervious to the wilting power of the desert sun, peering in at us as though we were on exhibit.

Bodachs are associated with death much the way that bees seek the nectar of flowers. They seem to sip of it. Ordinary death, however, does not draw a single bodach, let alone a swarm of them. I’ve never seen one of these beasts hovering at the bedside of a terminal cancer patient or in the vicinity of someone about to suffer a fatal heart attack. Violence attracts them. And terror. They seem to know when it’s coming. They gather like tourists waiting for the predictable eruption of a reliable geyser in Yellowstone Park. I never saw one of them shadowing Harlo Landerson in the days before he murdered Penny Kallisto. I doubt that any bodachs were in attendance when he raped and throttled the girl. For Penny, death had come with terrible pain and intolerable fear; surely each of us prays—or merely hopes, depending on his certainty of God—that his death will not be as brutal as hers. To bodachs, however, a quiet strangulation apparently isn’t sufficiently exciting to bestir them from whatever lairs they inhabit in whatever strange realm is their true home. Their appetite is for operatic terror. The violence they crave is of the most extreme variety: multiple untimely deaths spiced with protracted horror, served with cruelty as thick as bad gravy.

Nature’s wrath draws them as well. They were seething over the ruins of the Buena Vista Nursing Home after the earthquake eighteen months ago, and did not leave until the last injured survivor had been extracted from the rubble.

I’ve come to believe that bodachs don’t foster terror, after all, but take sustenance from it in some fashion. I think of them as psychic vampires, similar to but even scarier than the hosts of daytime-TV talk shows that feature emotionally disturbed and self-destructive guests who are encouraged to bare their damaged souls.

Attended now by four bodachs inside the Pico Mundo Grille and also watched by others at the windows, Fungus Man washed down the final bites of his burgers and fries with the last of his milkshake and vanilla Coke. He left a generous tip for Bertie, paid his check at the cashier’s station, and departed the diner with his slinking entourage of slithery shadows.

The bodachs at his sides and in his wake were difficult to count as they swarmed over one another, but I would have bet a week’s wages that they numbered no fewer than twenty.

CHAPTER 6

ALTHOUGH HER EYES ARE NEITHER GOLDEN NOR heavenly blue, Terri Stambaugh has the vision of an angel, for she sees through you and knows your truest heart, but loves you anyway, in spite of all the ways that you are fallen from a state of grace. She’s forty-one, therefore old enough to be my mother. She is not, however, eccentric enough to be my mother. Not by half. Terri inherited the Grille from her folks and runs it to the high standard that they establis...

I suspect that Terri is obsessed with Elvis partly because, on an unconscious level, she has been aware that he has moved among us here in Pico Mundo at least since my childhood, perhaps ever since his death, a truth that I revealed to her only a year ago. I suspect she is a latent medium, that she may sense his spiritual presence, and that as a consequence she is powerfully drawn to the study of his life and career.

“In my dream,” Viola said, “I saw myself, and my face was…broken, dead. I had a hole in my forehead.” “Maybe it was a dream about why you married Rafael.” “Not funny,” Terri admonished me. “I think maybe I’d been shot,” Viola said. “Honey,” Terri comforted her, “when’s the last time you had a dream come true?” “I guess never,” Viola said. “Then I wouldn’t worry about this one.” “Best I can remember,” Viola said, “I’ve never before seen myself face-on in a dream.” Even in my nightmares, which sometimes do come true, I’ve never glimpsed my face, either. “I had a hole in my forehead,” she repeated, “and my face was…spooky, all out of kilter.”

“My right eye,” Viola added, “was bloodshot and seemed to…to swell half out of the socket.”

Viola’s face, sweet as milk chocolate, was now distorted by a beseeching expression. “Tell me the truth, Odd. Do you see death in me?” I didn’t say to her that death lies dormant in each of us and will bloom in time.

“If somebody in Pico Mundo is going to start shooting people, it’ll be Fungus Man.” “Who’s he?” “Sat at the counter a while ago. Ordered enough food for three people. Ate like a ravenous swine.” “That’s my kind of customer. But I didn’t see him.” “You were in the kitchen. He was pale, soft, with all rounded edges, like something that would grow in Hannibal Lecter’s cellar.” “He put off bad vibes?” “By the time he left, Fungus Man had an entourage of bodachs.” Terri stiffened and looked warily around the restaurant. “Any of them here now?” “Nope. The worst thing on the premises at the moment is Bob Sphincter.”

Terri said, “Maybe this Fungus Man was just passing through town, and he hit the highway as soon as he cleaned his plate.” “Got a hunch he’s still hanging around.” “You gonna check him out?” “If I can find him.” “You need to borrow my car?” she asked. “Maybe for a couple hours.”

So many things are beyond my control: the endless dead with all their requests, the bodachs, the prophetic dreams. I’d probably long ago have gone seven kinds of crazy, one for each day of the week, if I didn’t simplify my life in every area where I do have some control. These are my defensive strategies: no car, no life insurance, no more clothes than I absolutely need—mostly T-shirts, chinos, and jeans—no vacations to exotic places, no grand ambitions.

CHAPTER 7

That Tuesday, I had no intention of resigning my spatula at the Pico Mundo Grille anytime soon, although short-order cooking can be stressful when the tables are full, tickets are backed up on the order rail, and your head is buzzing with diner lingo. On those days that also feature an unusual number of encounters with the dead, in addition to a bustling breakfast and lunch trade, my stomach sours and I know that I am courting not merely burnout but also early-onset gastrointestinal reflux disease. At times like that, the tire life seems to be a refuge almost as serene as a monastery.

Tom Jedd, a well-regarded local stonemason, had died eight months previous. His car careened off Panorama Road after midnight, broke through rotted guardrails, tumbled down a rocky hundred-foot embankment, and sank in Malo Suerte Lake.

Since then, the poor guy had been moping around Tire World. I didn’t know why. His accident had not been caused by a defective tire. He’d been drinking at a roadhouse called Country Cousin. The autopsy cited a blood-alcohol level of .18, well over the legal limit. He either lost control of the vehicle due to inebriation or he fell asleep at the wheel.