Dean Koontz - Brother Odd

As if a chorus line of frenzied skeletons were tapping out the final bars of the show's big number, the clickety-clack of my pursuer rose to a crescendo.

I turned, and it was right there.

As one, the regimented legs, different from but as hideous as those of a Jerusalem cricket, clattered to a halt. Although knuckled, knobbed, ribbed, and bristling, the forward half of the twelve-foot apparition rose off the floor with serpentine elegance.

We were face to face, or would have been if I hadn't been the only one of us with a face.

Across the whole of it, patterns of elaborately integrated bones blossomed, withered, were replaced by new forms and patterns, but in a tickless, clickless quicksilver hush.

This silent exhibition was intended to display its absolute and otherworldly control of its physiology, and to leave me terrified and abashed at my comparative weakness. As when I had watched it at the window, I sensed an overweening vanity in its display of itself, an arrogance that was eerily human, a pompous-ness and boastfulness that exceeded mere vanity and that might be called vainglory

I backed up a step, another. "Kiss my ass, you ugly bastard."

In a rending fury, it fell upon me, ice-cold and merciless. Uncountable maxillas and mandibles chewed, spurred heelbones ripped, stiletto-sharp phalanges gouged, a whiplike spine with hooked and razored vertebrae slashed me open from abdomen to throat, and my heart was found and torn apart, and thereafter what I could do for the children of St. Bartholomew's School was limited to what power I might have as one of the lingering dead.

Yes, it could have gone as badly as that, but in fact I just lied to you. The truth is stranger than the lie, though considerably less traumatic.

Everything in my account is true through the point at which I told the bag of bones to kiss my posterior. After issuing that heartfelt vulgarity, I did take one step backward, and then one more.

Because I believed that I had nothing to lose, that my life was already forfeited, I turned boldly from the apparition. I dropped to my hands and knees, and crawled through the four-foot-square aperture between the service passageway and the boiler room.

I expected the thing to snare my feet and to haul me back into its realm. When I reached the boiler room unharmed, I rolled onto my back and scooted away from the open service access, anticipating the intrusion of a questing, pincered, bony appendage.

No keening arose from beyond the wall, but no clitter-clatter of retreat, either, though the rumble of the boiler-room pumps might have masked all but the loudest of those noises.

I listened to my thundering heart, delighted to still have it. And all my fingers, and all my teeth, my precious little spleen, and both buttocks.

Considering the walking boneyard's ability to manifest in infinite iterations, I saw no reason why it wouldn't follow me into the boiler room. Even in its current configuration, it would have no trouble passing through the four-foot-square opening.

If the creature entered, I had no weapon with which to drive it back. But if I failed to make a stand, I'd be conceding it access to the school, where at this moment most of the children were at lunch in the ground-floor refectory, others in their rooms on the second floor.

Feeling foolish and inadequate, I erupted to my feet, snatched a fire extinguisher from its wall rack, and held it ready, as though I might be able to kill those bundled bones of contention with a fog of ammonium phosphate, as in bad early sci-fi movies where the heroes are apt to discover, in the penultimate scene, that the rampaging and apparently indestructible monster can be dissolved by something as mundane as salt or laundry bleach, or lavender-scented hairspray.

I could not even be sure that this thing was alive in the sense that people and animals and insects are alive, or even in the sense that plants are alive. I could not explain how a three-dimensional collage of bones, regardless of how astoundingly intricate it might appear, could be alive when it lacked flesh, blood, and visible sense organs. And if it wasn't alive, it couldn't be killed.

A supernatural explanation eluded me, too. Nothing in the theology of any major religion proposed the existence of an entity like this, nor anything in any body of folklore with which I was familiar.

Boo appeared from among the boilers. He studied me and my ammonium-phosphate-fog weapon. He sat, cocked his head, and grinned. He seemed to find me amusing.

Armed with the fire extinguisher and, if that failed, with only Black Jack chewing gum, I stood my ground for a minute, two minutes, three.

Nothing came from beyond the wall. Nothing waited at the threshold, tapping its fleshless toes impatiently.

I set aside the fire extinguisher.

Staying ten feet back from the low opening, I got on my hands and knees to peer into the passageway. I saw the lighted concrete corridor dwindling toward the cooling tower, but nothing that would make me want to call Ghostbusters.

Boo went closer to the service aperture than I dared, peered in, then glanced at me, perplexed.

"I don't know," I said. "I don't get it."

I replaced the stainless-steel panel. As I inserted the first bolt and tightened it with the special tool, I expected something to slam against the farther side, rip the panel away, and drag me out of the boiler room. Didn't happen.

Whatever had prevented the beast of bones from doing to me what it had done to Brother Timothy, I do not know, though I am certain it had wanted me and had intended to take me. I'm pretty sure that my insult-Kiss my ass, you ugly bastard-did not cause it to sulk away with hurt feelings.

RODION ROMANOVICH ARRIVED IN THE GARAGE wearing a handsome bearskin hat, a white silk neck scarf, a black three-quarter-length lined leather coat with fur collar and fur cuffs, and-no surprise-zippered rubber boots that rose to his knees. He looked as if he had dressed for a horse-drawn sleigh-ride with the czar.

After my experience with the galloping boneyard, I was lying on my back on the floor, staring at the ceiling, trying to calm myself, waiting for my legs to stop trembling and regain some strength.

Standing over me, peering down, he said, "You are a peculiar young man, Mr. Thomas."

"Yes, sir. I am aware."

"What are you doing down there?"

"Recovering from a bad scare."

"What scared you?"

"A sudden recognition of my mortality."

"Have you not previously realized you are mortal?"

"Yes, sir, I've been aware of it for a while. I was just, you know, overcome by a sense of the unknown."

"What unknown, Mr. Thomas?"

"The great unknown, sir. I'm not a particularly vulnerable person. Little unknowns don't disconcert me."

"How does lying on a garage floor console you?"

"The water stains on the ceiling are lovely. They relax me."

Looking at the concrete overhead, he said, "I find them ugly."

"No, no. All the soft shadings of gray and black and rust, just a hint of green, gently blending together, all free-form shapes, not anything that looks as defined and rigid as a bone."

"Bone, did you say?"

"Yes, sir, I did. Is that a bearskin hat, sir?"

"Yes. I know it is not politically correct to wear fur, but I refuse to apologize for it to anyone."

"Good for you, sir. I'll bet you killed the bear yourself."

"Are you an animal activist, Mr. Thomas?"

"I have nothing against animals, but I'm usually too busy to march on their behalf."

"Then I will tell you that I did, indeed, kill the bear from which this hat was fashioned and from which the fur came for the collar and cuffs of this coat."

"That isn't much to have gotten from a whole bear."