Dean Koontz - Brother Odd

Color began to seep back into Brother Leopold's face, and he shuddered with relief.

Masterfully deflecting curiosity that might have been directed at him, Romanovich rose to his feet and, to reinforce the brothers' intuitive belief that I knew more about this situation than they did, he said, "Mr. Thomas, what was that thing out there?"

All the brothers were staring at me, and I realized that I-with my universal key and sometimes enigmatic behavior-had always been a more mysterious figure to them than was either the Russian or Brother Leopold.

"I don't know what it was," I said. "I wish I did."

Brother Quentin said, "No eye-twitch tell. Have you learned to suppress it or are you really not being evasive?"

Before I could respond, Abbot Bernard said, "Odd, I would like you to tell these brothers about your exceptional abilities."

Surveying the faces of the monks, each shining with curiosity, I said, "In all the world, sir, there aren't half this many people who know my secret. It feels like… going public."

"I am instructing them herewith," the abbot said, "to regard your revelations as a confession. As your confessors, your secrets are to them a sacred trust."

"Not to all of them," I said, not bothering to accuse Brother Leopold of being insincere in his postulancy and in the profession of his vows as a novice, but addressing myself solely to Romanovich.

"I am not leaving," the Russian said, returning the bearskin hat to his head as if to punctuate his declaration.

I had known that he would insist on hearing what I had to tell the others, but I said, "Don't you have a couple of poisoned cakes to decorate?"

"No, Mr. Thomas, I have finished all ten."

After once more surveying the earnest faces of the monks, I said, "I see the lingering dead."

"This guy," said Brother Knuckles, "maybe he evades a question when he's gotta, but he don't know how to lie any better than a two-year-old."

I said, "Thanks. I think."

"In my other life, before God called me," Knuckles continued, "I lived in a filthy sea of liars and lies, and I swam as good as any of those mugs. Odd-he ain't like them, ain't like I once was. Fact is, he ain't like nobody I ever known before."

After that sweet and heartfelt endorsement, I told my story as succinctly as possible, including that I had for years worked with the chief of police in Pico Mundo, who had vouched for me with Abbot Bernard.

The brothers listened, rapt, and expressed no doubts. Although ghosts and bodachs were not included in the doctrines of their faith, they were men who had given their lives to an absolute conviction that the universe was God-created and that it had a vertical sacred order. Having found a way to understand the existence of the monster in the storm-by defining it as a demon- they would not now be cast into spiritual or intellectual turmoil merely by being asked to believe that a nobody smart-ass fry cook was visited by the restless dead and tried to bring them justice as best he could.

They were emotional at the news that Brother Constantine had not committed suicide. But the faceless figure of Death in the bell tower intrigued more than frightened them, and they were in agreement that if a traditional exorcism would be effective with either of these two recent apparitions, it would be more likely to work on the tower phantom than on an uberskeleton that could overturn an SUV.

I couldn't tell whether Brother Leopold and Rodion Romanovich believed me, but I didn't owe those two any evidence beyond the sincerity of my story.

To Leopold, I said, "I don't believe that an exorcism will work in either case-do you?"

The novice lowered his gaze to the place on the floor where the cubes had been. He nervously licked his lips.

The Russian spared his comrade the need to answer: "Mr. Thomas, I am fully prepared to believe that you live on a ledge between this world and the next, that you see what we cannot. And now you have seen apparitions previously unknown to you."

"Are they previously unknown to you?" I asked.

"I am merely a librarian, Mr. Thomas, with no sixth sense. But I am a man of faith, whether you believe that or not, and now that I have heard your story, I am worried about the children as much as you are. How much time do we have? Whatever will happen, when will it happen?"

I shook my head. "I only saw seven bodachs this morning. There would be more if the violence was imminent."

"That was this morning. Do you think we should have a look now-past one-thirty in the afternoon?"

"Bring all your tools and the… weapons," Abbot Bernard advised his brothers.

The snow had melted off my boots. I wiped them on the mat at the door between the garage and the basement of the school, while the other men, who were all veterans of winter and all more considerate than I, shucked off their zippered rubber boots and left them behind.

With lunch finished, most of the kids were in the rehabilitation and recreation rooms, each of which I visited with the abbot, a few brothers, and Romanovich.

Sooty shadows, cast by nothing in this world, slid through these rooms and along the hallway, quivering with anticipation, wolfish and eager, seeming to thrill to the sight of so many innocent children who they somehow knew would in time be screaming in terror and agony. I counted seventy-two bodachs and knew that others would be prowling the corridors on the second floor.

"Soon," I told the abbot. "It's coming soon."

WHILE THE SIXTEEN WARRIOR MONKS AND the one duplicitous novice determined how to fortify the two stairwells that served the second floor of the school, Sister Angela was present to ensure that her nuns were prepared to offer any assistance that might be wanted.

As I headed toward the northwest nurses' station, she fell in beside me. "Oddie, I hear something happened on the trip back from the abbey."

"Yes, ma'am. Sure did. I don't have time to go into it now, but your insurance carrier is going to have a lot of questions."

"Do we have bodachs here?"

I looked left and right into the rooms we passed. "The place is crawling with them, Sister."

Rodion Romanovich followed us with the authoritarian air of one of those librarians who rules the stacks with an intimidating scowl, whispers quiet sharply enough to lacerate the tender inner tissues of the ear, and will pursue an overdue-book fine with the ferocity of a rabid ferret.

"How is Mr. Romanovich assisting here?" Sister Angela asked.

"He isn't assisting, ma'am."

"Then what's he doing?"

"Scheming, most likely."

"Shall I throw him out?" she asked.

Through my mind flickered a short film of the mother superior wrenching the Russian's arm up hard behind his back in some clever tae kwon do move, muscling him downstairs to the kitchen, and making him sit in a corner on a stool for the duration.

"Actually, ma'am, I'd rather have him hovering over me than have to wonder where he is and what he's up to."

At the nurses' station, Sister Miriam, with Thanks be to God forever on her lips, or at least forever on the lower one, was still behind the counter.

She said, "Dear, the dark clouds of mystery surrounding you are getting so thick I soon won't be able to see you. This sooty whirl of smog will go past, and people will say, 'There's Odd Thomas. Wonder what he looks like these days.'"

"Ma'am, I need your help. You know Justine in Room Thirty-two?"

"Dear, I not only know every child here, but I love them like they were my own."

"When she was four, her father drowned her in the bathtub but didn't finish the job the way he did with her mother. Is that correct, do I have it right?"

Her eyes narrowed. "I don't want to think in what sort of place his soul is festering now." She glanced at her mother superior and said, with an edge of guilt in her voice, "Actually, I not only sometimes think about it, I enjoy thinking about it."