Dean Koontz: Brother Odd

I have some sympathy for her position. In those days, there were no nuclear weapons, either, no organized terrorists eager to blow up women and children, and you could buy Black Jack chewing gum anywhere, and for no more than a nickel a pack.

This bit of gum trivia comes from a novel. I have learned a great deal from novels. Some of it is even true.

Settling into the second chair, Sister Angela said, "Another restless night, Odd Thomas?"

From previous conversations, she knew that I don't sleep as well these days as I once did. Sleep is a kind of peace, and I have not yet earned peace.

"I couldn't go to bed until the snow began to fall," I told her. "I wanted to see the world turn white."

"The blizzard still hasn't broken. But a basement room is a most peculiar place to stand watch for it." Yes, ma'am.

She has a certain lovely smile that she can sustain for a long time in patient expectancy. If she held a sword over your head, it would not be as effective an instrument of interrogation as that forbearing smile.

After a silence that was a test of wills, I said, "Ma'am, you look as though you think I'm hiding something."

"Are you hiding something, Oddie?"

"No, ma'am." I indicated the computer. "I was just checking on the school's mechanical systems."

"I see. Then you're covering for Brother Timothy? Has he been committed to a clinic for Kit Kat addiction?"

"I just like to learn new things around here… to make myself useful," I said.

"Your breakfast pancakes every weekend are a greater grace than any guest of the abbey has ever brought to us."

"Nobody's cakes are fluffier than mine."

Her eyes are the same merry blue as the periwinkles on the Royal Doulton china that my mother owned, pieces of which Mom, from time to time, threw at the walls or at me. "You must have had quite a loyal following at the diner where you worked."

"I was a star with a spatula."

She smiled at me. Smiled and waited.

"I'll make hash browns this Sunday. You've never tasted my hash browns."

Smiling, she fingered the beaded chain on her pectoral cross.

I said, "The thing is, I had a bad dream about an exploding boiler."

"An exploding-boiler dream?"

"That's right."

"A real nightmare, was it?"

"It left me very anxious."

"Was it one of our boilers exploding?"

"It might have been. In the dream, the place wasn't clear. You know how dreams are."

A twinkle brightened her periwinkle eyes. "In this dream, did you see nuns on fire, screaming through a snowy night?"

"No, ma'am. Good heavens, no. Just the boiler exploding."

"Did you see disabled children flinging themselves from windows full of flame?"

I tried silence and a smile of my own.

She said, "Are your nightmares always so thinly plotted, Oddie?"

"Not always, ma'am."

She said, "Now and then I dream of Frankenstein because of a movie I saw when I was a little girl. In my dream, there's an ancient windmill hung with ragged rotting sails creaking 'round in a storm. A ferocity of rain, sky-splitting bolts of lightning, leaping shadows, stairwells of cold stone, hidden doors in bookcases, candlelit secret passageways, bizarre machines with gold-plated gyroscopes, crackling arcs of electricity, a demented hunchback with lantern eyes, always the lumbering monster close behind me, and a scientist in a white lab coat carrying his own severed head."

Finished, she smiled at me.

"Just an exploding boiler," I said.

"God has many reasons to love you, Oddie, but for certain He loves you because you're such an inexperienced and incompetent liar."

"I've told some whoppers in my time," I assured her.

"The claim that you have told whoppers is the biggest whopper you have told."

"At nun school, you must've been president of the debating team."

"Fess up, young man. You didn't dream about an exploding boiler. Something else has you worried."

I shrugged.

"You were checking on the children in their rooms."

She knew that I saw the lingering dead. But I had not told her or Abbot Bernard about bodachs.

Because these bloodthirsty spirits are drawn by events with high body counts, I hadn't expected to encounter them in a place as remote as this. Towns and cities are their natural hunting grounds.

Besides, those who accept my assertion that I see the lingering dead are less likely to believe me if too soon in our acquaintance I begin to talk, as well, about sinuous shadowy demons that delight in scenes of death and destruction.

A man who has one pet monkey might be viewed as charmingly eccentric. But a man who has made his home into a monkey house, with scores of chattering chimpanzees capering through the rooms, will have lost credibility with the mental-health authorities.

I decided to unburden myself, however, because Sister Angela is a good listener and has a reliable ear for insincerity. Two reliable ears. Perhaps the wimple around her face serves as a sound-focusing device that brings to her greater nuances in other people's speech than those of us without wimples are able to hear.

I'm not saying that nuns have the technical expertise of Q, the genius inventor who supplies James Bond with way-cool gadgets in the movies. It's a theory I won't dismiss out of hand, but I can't prove anything.

Trusting in her goodwill and in the crap-detecting capability made possible by her wimple, I told her about the bodachs.

She listened intently, her face impassive, giving no indication whether or not she thought I was psychotic.

With the power of her personality, Sister Angela can compel you to meet her eyes. Perhaps a few strong-willed people are able to look away from her stare after she has locked on to their eyes, but I'm not one of them. By the time I told her all about bodachs, I felt pickled in periwinkle.

When I finished, she studied me in silence, her expression unreadable, and just when I thought she had decided to pray for my sanity, she accepted the truth of everything I'd told her by saying simply, "What must be done?"

"I don't know."

"That's a most unsatisfactory answer."

"Most," I agreed. "The thing is, the bodachs showed up only half an hour ago. I haven't observed them long enough to be able to guess what's drawn them here."

Cowled by voluminous sleeves, her hands closed into pink, white-knuckled fists. "Something's going to happen to the children."

"Not necessarily all the children. Maybe some of them. And maybe not just to the children."

"How much time do we have until… whatever?"

"Usually they show up a day or two ahead of the event. To savor the sight of those who are…" I was reluctant to say more.

Sister Angela finished my sentence:"… soon to die."

"If there's a killer involved, a human agent instead of, say, an exploding propane-fired boiler, they're sometimes as fascinated with him as with the potential victims."

"We have no murderers here," said Sister Angela.

"What do we really know about Rodion Romanovich?"

"The Russian gentleman in the abbey guesthouse?"

"He glowers," I said.

"At times, so do I."

"Yes, ma'am, but it's a concerned sort of glower, and you're a nun."

"And he's a spiritual pilgrim."

"We have proof you're a nun, but we only have his word about what he is."

"Have you seen bodachs following him around?"

"Not yet."

Sister Angela frowned, short of a glower, and said, "He's been kind to us here at the school."

"I'm not accusing Mr. Romanovich of anything. I'm just curious about him."

"After Lauds, I'll speak to Abbot Bernard about the need for vigilance in general."

Lauds is morning prayer, the second of seven periods in the daily Divine Office that the monks observe.

At St. Bartholomew's Abbey, Lauds immediately follows Matins-the singing of psalms and readings from the saints- which begins at 5:45 in the morning. It concludes no later than 6:30.