Dean Koontz - Odd Thomas

"So?"

"In my dream, the victims all wear tan slacks and green polo shirts."

Still in her seat but with one leg out of the Mustang, one foot on the blacktop, she said, "Then this isn't the place. There's some other reason you cruised here. It's safe to go inside, see if we can figure out why we're here."

"Over at Fiesta Bowl," I said, referring to the only other bowling center in Pico Mundo and surrounding environs, "they wear gray slacks and black shirts with their names stitched in white on the breast pockets."

"Then your dream must be about something that's going to happen outside Pico Mundo."

"That's never been the case before."

I have lived my entire life in the relative peace of Pico Mundo and the territory immediately encircling it. I have not even seen the farther reaches of Maravilla County, of which our town is the county seat.

If I were to live to be eighty, which is unlikely and which is a prospect that I view with despondency if not despair, I might one day venture into the open countryside and even as far as one of the smaller towns in the county. But perhaps not.

I don't desire a change of scenery or exotic experiences. My heart yearns for familiarity, stability, the comfort of home-and my sanity depends upon it,

In a city the size of Los Angeles, with so many people crammed atop one another, violence occurs daily, hourly. The number of bloody encounters in a single year might be greater than those in the entire history of Pico Mundo.

The aggressive whirl of Los Angeles traffic produces death as surely as a bakery produces muffins. Earthquakes, apartment-house fires, terrorist incidents…

I can only imagine how many lingering dead people haunt the streets of that metropolis or any other. In such a place, with so many of the deceased turning to me for justice or consolation, or just for silent companionship, I would no doubt quickly seek escape in autism or suicide.

Not yet either dead or autistic, however, I had to face the challenge of Green Moon Lanes.

“All right," I said, able to summon resignation if not bravado, "let's go in and have a look around."

With nightfall, the blacktop pavement returned the heat that it had borrowed from the sun during the day, and with the heat came a faint tarry smell.

So low and large that it seemed to be falling toward us, the moon had risen in the east: a dire yellow countenance, the vague cratered sockets of its timeless blind gaze.

Perhaps because Granny Sugars had been seriously superstitious about yellow moons and believed that they were an omen of bad cards in poker, I surrendered to an irrational urge to escape from the sight of that leprous and jaundiced celestial face. Taking Stormy's hand, I hurried her toward the front doors of the bowling center.

Bowling is one of the oldest sports in the world and in one form or another was played as early as 5,200 B.C.

In the United States alone, over 130,000 lanes await action in more than 7,000 bowling centers.

Total annual bowling revenues in America are approaching five billion dollars.

With the hope of clarifying my recurring dream and understanding the meaning of it, I had researched bowling. I knew a thousand facts about the subject, none of them particularly interesting.

I also rented shoes and played eight or ten games. I am no good at the sport.

Watching me play, Stormy had once said that if I were to become a regular bowler, I would spend far more time in the gutter than would the average alcoholic hobo.

Over sixty million people in the United States go bowling at least once each year. Nine million of them are diehards who belong to bowling leagues and regularly compete in amateur tournaments.

When Stormy and I entered Green Moon Lanes that Tuesday night, a significant percentage of those millions were rolling balls down polished lanes toward more spares than splits, but more splits than strikes. They were laughing, cheering one another, eating nachos, eating chili-cheese fries, drinking beer, and having such a good time that it was difficult to imagine Death choosing this place to harvest a sudden crop of souls.

Difficult but not impossible.

I must have been pale, because Stormy said, 'Are you all right?"

"Yeah. Okay I'm good."

The low thunder of rolling balls and the clatter of tenpins had never previously struck me as fearsome sounds; but this irregular series of rumbles and crashes strummed my nerves.

"What now?" Stormy asked.

"Good question. No answer."

"You want to just wander around, scope the scene, see if you get any bad vibes?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Scope the scene. Bad vibes."

We didn't wander far before I saw something that made my mouth go dry. "Oh, my God."

The guy behind the shoe-rental counter had not come to work in the usual black slacks and blue cotton shirt with white collar. He wore tan slacks and a green polo shirt, like the dead people in my bowling dream.

Stormy turned, surveying the long busy room, and pointed toward two additional employees. "They've all gotten new uniforms."

Like every nightmare, this one of mine was vivid and yet not rich in detail, more surreal than real, not specific as to place or time or circumstances. The faces of the murder victims were twisted in agony, distorted by terror and shadow and strange light, and when I woke, I could never describe them well.

Except for one young woman. She would be shot in the chest and throat, but her face would remain remarkably untouched by violence. She would have shaggy blond hair, green eyes, and a small beauty mark on her upper lip, near the left corner of her mouth.

As Stormy and I proceeded farther into Green Moon Lanes, I saw the blonde from the dream. She stood behind the bar, drawing draft beer from one of the taps.

STORMY AND I SAT AT A TABLE IN THE BAR ALCOVE, BUT we didn't order drinks. I was already half drunk with fear.

I wanted to get her out of the bowling alley. She didn't want to leave.

"We've got to deal with this situation," she insisted.

The only way that I could deal with it was to phone Chief Wyatt Porter and tell him, with little explanation, that when Bob Robertson had his coming-out party to celebrate his status as a full-fledged murderous psychopath, the site of his debutante ball was likely to be Green Moon Lanes.

For a man tired from a day of hard work, bloated with barbecue and beer, and ready for bed, the chief responded with admirable quickness and clarity of mind. "How late are they open?"

Phone to my right ear, finger in my left ear to block the alley noise, I said, "I think until midnight, sir."

"A little more than two hours. I'll dispatch an officer right now, have him stand security, be on the lookout for Robertson. But, son, you said this might go down August fifteenth-tomorrow, not today."

"That's the date on the calendar page in his file. I'm not sure what it means. I won't be certain it couldn't happen today until today is over and he hasn't shot anyone."

"Any of these things you call bodachs there?"

"No, sir. But they could show up when he does."

"He hasn't returned home to Camp's End yet," the chief said, "so he's out and about. How were the churros?"

"Delicious," I told him.

"After the barbecue, we had a difficult choice between mud pie and homemade peach pie. I thought it through carefully and had some of both."

"If ever I had a glimpse of Heaven, sir, it was a slice of Mrs. Porter's peach pie."

"I'd have married her for the peach pie alone, but fortunately she was smart and beautiful, too."

We said good-bye. I clipped the cell phone to my belt and told Stormy we needed to get out of there.

She shook her head. "Wait. If the blond bartender isn't here, the shooting won't happen." She kept her voice low, leaning dose to be heard over the clash and clatter of bowlers bowling. "So somehow we get her to leave."