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Ordinary instinct, rather than any sixth sense, told me not to proceed to the black room. In fact, I felt an urgent need to retreat from the nearby hallway arch. I returned to the kitchen and hid behind the swinging door, holding it open two inches to see from whom, if anyone, I had fled.
Only seconds after I had reached concealment, bodachs swarmed out of the hallway into the living room.
CHAPT...
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Still they swarmed out of the hallway: fifty, sixty, seventy, and more. I had never before encountered so many bodachs at one time.
They had arrived in the house by way of the black room.
They seemed eager to leave this place behind them and to explore Pico Mundo—until one of them separated from the churning swarm. It abruptly halted in the center of the living room.
As others of its kind continued to roil and ripple past it, my nemesis rose from its crouch. The shoulders straightened. The head lifted, turned slowly left, then right.
The creature appeared to focus on the door to the kitchen. As eyeless as Samson in Gaza, it nevertheless detected me.
Standing very erect now, taller than me, the bodach was an imposing figure in spite of its insubstantiality. Its bold poise and a quality of arrogance in the lift of its head suggested that I was to it as the mouse is to the panther, that it had the power to strike me dead in an instant.
Grim expectation made seconds seem like minutes—and then to my surprise, the phantom slumped into a crouch once more and loped away with the others. With the suppleness of black silk ribbon, it slipped between window sash and sill, into sunlight.
At least a hundred of them had passed through this room. More likely, there had been half again that many.
As far as I could determine, none of the recently departed pack lingered in the neighborhood.
The black room was gone.
CHAPTER 13
The mysterious power that had transformed and controlled this room—casting me minutes back, and then forward, in time—was no longer in evidence.
The file cabinets proved to contain meticulously kept folders filled with articles clipped from publications and downloaded from the Internet. Drawer after drawer contained dossiers on serial killers and mass murderers.
A particularly thick file had been assembled for Ed Gein, who had been the inspiration for both Norman Bates in Psycho and Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. Gein had enjoyed eating soup from a human skull and had fashioned a fancy belt from the nipples of his victims.
The unknown dangers of the black room had not daunted me, but here was a known evil, entirely comprehensible. Cabinet by cabinet, my chest tightened with dread and my hands trembled, until I slammed shut a file drawer and resolved to open no more of them.
This room was less of a study than it was a shrine.
I saw no reason to search the study for a hidden switch that might convert it again into the black room. Logic suggested that the formidable power needed to open that mysterious doorway had been projected not from here but from the other side, wherever that might be.
Most likely Fungus Man was unaware that his sanctum served not merely as a catalogued repository for his homicidal fantasies but also as a terminal admitting bodachs to a holiday of blood. Without my sixth sense, perhaps he could sit here, happily working on one of his grisly files, and not be conscious of the ominous transformation of the room or of the arriving hordes of demonic entities.
In addition to pencils, pens, paper clips, a stapler, scissors, and other mundane items, I found two recent bank statements and a checkbook. All three were addressed to Robert Thomas Robertson at this house in Camp’s End. Good-bye, Fungus Man; hello, Bob.
The combined value of all Robertson’s assets at Bank of America amounted to $786,542.10.
The four-page statement from Wells Fargo Bank, accounting for investments in its care, showed a combined value of $463,125.43.
Robertson’s handwriting was sloppy, but he faithfully kept a running balance in his checkbook. The current available resources in this account totaled $198,648.21.
During the past month alone, he had withdrawn a total of $32,000 in $2,000 and $4,000 increments. For the past two months, the total reached $58,000.
Evidently he had expensive tastes, after all. And whatever indulgence he allowed himself, it was one that he couldn’t purchase openly with checks or credit cards.
I returned to the current date—Tuesday, August 14—and then flipped forward, into the future. The page for August 15 was missing. Nothing had been written in the calendar after that date for as far as I cared to look.
In the drawer labeled R, I checked to see if, among these dossiers of butchers and lunatics, Fungus Man kept a file on himself. I found one. The tab declared: ROBERTSON, ROBERT THOMAS.
The file, however, contained but a single item: the page that was missing from the desk calendar. Wednesday, August 15. Robertson had written nothing on the note lines. Apparently, in his mind, the date itself was significant enough to include as the first item in the file. I consulted my wristwatch. In six hours and four minutes, August 14 and August 15 would meet at the midnight divide. And after that, what would happen? Something. Something…not good.
CHAPTER 14
In the backyard, she turned me over to Wyatt, who was wearing an apron bearing the words BURNT AND GREASY GOES BETTER WITH BEER. “Odd,” Chief Porter said, “I hope you’ve not come here to ruin my evening.” “That’s not my intention, sir.” The chief was tending to two grills—the first fired by gas for vegetables and ears of corn, the second by charcoal for the steaks.
After I declined a bottle of Corona, the chief and I sat in lawn chairs, and he said, “You been communing with the dead again?” “Yes, sir, off and on all day. But this isn’t so much about who’s dead as who might be soon.” I told him about Fungus Man at the restaurant and later at Green Moon Mall. “I saw him at the Grille,” the chief said, “but he didn’t strike me as suspicious, just…unfortunate.” “Yes, sir, but you didn’t have the advantage of being able to see his fan club.” I described the disturbing size of Fungus Man’s bodach entourage. When I recounted my visit to the small house in
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“Elvis Presley is here? Now? At my house?” “He’s walking on the water, back and forth, and gesticulating.” “Gesticulating?” “Not rudely, sir, and not at us. He looks like he’s arguing with himself. Sometimes I worry about him.”
Lysette and I chatted for a while, and Elvis sobbed without making a sound, and eventually four more guests showed up.
He said, “Robertson moved into town five months ago. Paid in full for that house in Camp’s End, no mortgage.” “Where’s he get his money?” “Inherited. Bonnie Chan says he moved here from San Diego after his mother’s death. He was still living with his mother at thirty-four.” Bonnie Chan, a Realtor famous in Pico Mundo for her flamboyant hats, had evidently sold the residence to Robertson. “As far as I can see at this point,” the chief said, “he’s got a clean record. He’s never even had a speeding ticket.” “You might look into how the mother died.” “I’ve already put out some inquiries about
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I said, “This one’s really bad, sir. This guy, when I picture his face in my mind…I get spiders down the spine.” “We’re watching him, son. Can’t do more than that. Can’t just go to Camp’s End and shoot him.” The chief gave me a peculiar look and added, “Neither can you.”
“Are you sure you can’t stay for dinner?” “Thank you, sir, but I’ve got a date.” “With Stormy, I’m sure.” “Yes, sir. My destiny.” “You’re a smooth operator, Odd. She must love to hear you say that—‘my destiny.’” “I love to hear me say it.”
He lifted the latch and opened the gate for me. “Don’t you worry about this Bob Robertson. We’ll dog him, but so he doesn’t suspect we’re watching. He tries to make a wrong move, we’ll be all over him.” “I’ll worry just the same, sir. He’s a very bad man.”
CHAPTER 15
IN DOWNTOWN PICO MUNDO, AS WE WERE PASSING a church, Elvis indicated that he wanted me to pull to the curb.
He appeared to be worried about me. He gently squeezed my hand, staring intensely at me with evident concern, and then squeezed my hand again.
Cruising away from the church, I phoned P. Oswald Boone, he of the four hundred pounds and the six-fingered left hand. Little Ozzie answered on the second ring. “Odd, my beautiful cow exploded.” “Exploded?” “Boom,” said Little Ozzie. “One minute all is right with the world, and the next minute your fabulous cow is blown to bits.” “When did this happen? I haven’t heard anything about it.” “Exactly two hours and twenty-six minutes ago. The police have been here and gone, and I believe that even they, with all their experience of criminal savagery, were shocked by this.” “I just saw Chief Porter,
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Little Ozzie purchased a one-acre parcel on which had stood a long-out-of-business restaurant. There he built his dream home.
When I parked in front of the now cowless house, I was more shocked by the carnage than I had expected to be.
The four legs, chunks of the blasted head, and slabs of the body were scattered across the front lawn, shrubbery, and walkway. In a particularly macabre touch, the inverted udder had landed on one of the gateposts in the picket fence, and the teats pointed skyward.
This black-and-white Holstein cow, approximately the size of an SUV, had previously stood atop two twenty-foot-tall steel poles, neither of which had been damaged in the explosion. The only thing left on that high perch was the cow’s butt, which had shifted position until it faced the street, as if mooning passersby.
Under the plastic Holstein had once hung a sign for the steakhouse restaurant that had previously occupied the property. When he built his home, Little Ozzie had not pre...
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As the Flats became more upscale, some of his neighbors—not most, but a highly vocal minority—objected to the giant cow on aesthetic grounds. Perhaps one of them had resorted to violence.
“I’ll clean this up for you, sir.” “You will not!” Ozzie declared. “Let them look at the ruin for a week, a month, these ‘venomous serpents who delight in hissing.’”
