Dean Koontz - Odd Hours

When I peered under the table, I noted an eight-inch-diameter drain with a slotted grille. Considering that Magic Beach had no history of floods, I supposed that this design feature facilitated the hosing-out of the room after unfortunate accidents.

This was one of those sobering circumstances in which my overheated imagination, if I were not careful, could cause a portion of my cerebellum to melt down, and set my hair on fire. I counseled myself that I remained in the United States, which was not Cuba or Venezuela, or even Mordor.

I consulted my watch-8:56. I still had a few minutes more than three hours to save the world or a significant portion thereof. No problem.

Because I had firm control of myself, I did not care when nothing happened by 8:57 or by 8:58, although I was within seconds of shouting strident demands for justice when the door finally opened at 8:59.

One man entered the room, but he was enough. At the church, I had thought of him as Brush Cut, but I had since learned that his name was Hoss Shackett and that he was the chief of police.

Hoss must have been the short form of a longer name, but I didn’t know what that might be. I had asked the younger officers in the car but they had twice refused to answer me; and the third time that I asked, they had advised me to perform an act of reproduction with myself.

After closing the blastproof door-of which Norman must have several in his Cold War missile silo in Nebraska-the chief came to the table and stood staring down at me. He didn’t say anything. He just stared.

I smiled and nodded. He didn’t.

After I had busied myself for a while staring at my hands and wondering what they would look like after being smashed with a tire iron, the chief pulled out the other chair and sat down across the table from me.

When I looked up, ready to parry his questions, he still did not speak. He continued to stare at me.

He had ugly green eyes colder than those of a snake, although I would not have made this observation to his face or, for that matter, within one hundred miles of his jurisdiction.

I am not a stickler for etiquette, but I did not feel that it was my place to initiate our conversation.

After a while, I could not bear to stare into his venomous eyes any longer. Either I had to look away from him, which he would take as a sign of weakness, or I had to say something that would force him to speak.

“I imagine,” I said with a relaxed affability that surprised me, “you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

He neither replied nor broke eye contact.

“I have never been in trouble with the law,” I told him.

He remained fixated on me and was so still that I could not be sure that he breathed-or needed to.

If there was a Mrs. Hoss, she was either psychological wreckage or one tough mama.

“Well,” I said, and could think of nothing to add.

At last he blinked. It was a slow blink, as if he were an iguana dazed by desert sun.

He held out his right hand and said, “Take my hand.”

I knew what this was about, and I wanted no part of it.

His hand remained above the table, palm up. He had hands big enough to play professional basketball, although the most sporting thing he had probably ever done with them was bash suspects’ heads together.

Over the years, I had read thrillers in which the authors wrote things like “the air was full of violence” and “the pending violence hung over the scene like black thunderheads.” I had always judged this to be clumsy writing, but maybe they should have won Nobels and Pulitzers.

“Take my hand,” Hoss Shackett repeated.

I said, “I’m already dating someone.”

“What’s the point of dating if your pecker’s broken off?”

“It’s a platonic relationship, anyway.”

My hands were folded on the table. Viper-quick, he struck, seizing my left hand, folding it tight enough in his to make me wish I’d had my knuckles surgically removed.

The grim concrete cell vanished, and I stood once more on Armageddon Beach, in a tempest of crimson light.

Chief Hoss Shackett was not a man who lightly revealed what he was feeling or thinking. But when he dropped my hand, returning me to reality, and leaned back in his chair, I could tell from a slight widening of his pupils that he had shared my nightmare vision.

“So,” I said, “what was that about?”

He did not reply.

“Because,” I said, “that has only happened to me once before, and it freaks me out.”

He had a hard strong face that Stalin would have envied. His jaw muscles were so knotted at the hinges that he appeared able to crack walnuts in his teeth.

“Nothing like this-sharing a dream-has ever happened to me before,” I assured him. “It’s every bit as awkward for me as it is for you.”

“Sharing a dream.”

“I had this dream, and now people touch me and I’m thrown back into it. What is this-the Twilight Zone?”

He leaned forward, a small move, but it was like being in a Jurassic meadow when the T. rex that has its back to you casually looks over its shoulder.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I have no idea.”

“I won’t keep asking nice like this.”

“Sir, I appreciate how nice you’ve been. I really do. But I’m serious. I have amnesia.”

“Amnesia.”

“Yes.”

“That’s pathetic.”

“It really is. Not knowing my past, my name, where I’m from, where I’m going. It’s totally pathetic.”

“You told Reverend Moran your name was Todd.”

“Sir, I swear, it was just a name to tell him. I could have said Larry or Vernon, or Rupert, or Ringo. I could be anybody. I just do not know.”

He did the staring thing again. It was as effective as it had been previously. Second by second, I became increasingly convinced that if I didn’t spill everything about myself, he would bite off my nose. For starters.

Although he would infer weakness if I looked away from him, I had to break the stare before his eyes sucked out my soul. I examined my left hand to confirm that he had returned it with all my fingers.

With the solemnity of Darth Vader, the chief said, “You aren’t carrying any identification.”

“Yes, sir. That’s right. If I had some identification, I’d know who I was.”

“I don’t like people in my town not carrying ID.”

“No, sir, you wouldn’t like that, you being a man of the law. I wouldn’t like it if I were in your shoes, even if there’s nothing in the Constitution that requires a person to carry ID.”

“You’re a constitutional scholar, are you?”

“No. Well, I guess I could be. I won’t know until I recover my memory. What I think happened was somebody mugged me.”

Gingerly I felt the lump on the side of my head, which Whittle had raised with his flashlight earlier in the night.

The chief watched me rub the lump, but he said nothing.

“Whoever mugged me and gave me amnesia, he must have taken my wallet.”

“When were you mugged? Tonight on the beach?”

“On the beach? Tonight?” I frowned. “No, sir. I think it must have been a lot earlier in the day.”

“People don’t get mugged in my town in broad daylight.”

I shrugged.

Clearly, he did not like the shrug. I couldn’t take it back.

“So you’re saying you were mugged before you jumped off the pier this afternoon?”

“Yes, sir. In fact the first thing I remember is walking along the boardwalk toward the pier, wondering who I am and where I am and whether I had lunch or not.”

“Why did you jump off the pier?”

“Since being mugged unconscious, sir, my behavior hasn’t been entirely rational.”

“Why did you tell Utgard that a thirty-foot tsunami was coming?”