Dean Koontz - Odd Hours

Lonely, almost desperately so at times, he drifted to the homes of other family members and friends. People said he was the quietest kid they knew, content to sit in a corner and listen to the adults.

“In your teens, your mother was in your life more. Always she was demanding. She set high standards, had a dominant personality.”

She belittled his hope of a singing career, and was not entirely convinced even after he became the most famous singer in the world.

“But, sir, you’re not like Elvis. You aren’t lingering here because you’re reluctant to face your mother in the next world.”

A combative expression hardened his features, as if, ghost or not, he would punch me for ever thinking that his beloved mother might have been the reason he lingered in this world.

“Your mom could be exasperating, contentious, opinionated-but loving. Eventually you realized that your ability to stand up for yourself arose from the need to hold your own in arguments with her.”

Mr. Sinatra glanced at the door and made a hurry-up gesture.

“Sir, if I’m going to die here tonight, at least I’m going to help you move on from this world before I leave it myself.”

That was indeed my motive for this short session of straight talk. But I also had another.

Although Dolly’s steel will led to contention between them, Mr. Sinatra honored her without fail and took good care of her. Unlike Elvis’s mother, Dolly lived a long life. The Chairman was sixty-one when she died, and he had no reason to regret anything between them.

He had adored his gentle father, Marty, who died eight years before Dolly passed. If anything, his deep love for his dad should have made him rush away into the next life.

“No disrespect, sir, but you could sometimes be a bastard, hot-headed and even mean. But I’ve read enough about you to know those faults were more than balanced by loyalty and generosity.”

In sickness and in hard times, friends received his devotion, not just significant money sent unsolicited but also daily calls for weeks, to give emotional support. He was capable of reaching out to a deserving stranger and changing a life with a generous gift.

He never mentioned these kindnesses and was embarrassed when his friends spoke of what he had done. Many of these stories surfaced after his death; the number of them is both inspiring and humbling.

“Whatever waits beyond this world, sir, is nothing you need to fear. But you fear it, and I think I know why.”

The suggestion that he feared anything whatsoever annoyed him.

Acutely aware of how little time remained before Shackett would return, I said, “Almost died at birth. Lived in a bad neighborhood, they called you a wop. Walking home from grade school, you had to fight. Always had to struggle for what you got. But, sir, you got it all-fortune, fame, acclaim, more than any entertainer in history before you. And now what keeps you in this world is pride .”

My statement compounded Mr. Sinatra’s annoyance. With one cocked eyebrow and a gesture, he seemed to say So what’s wrong with pride?

“Nothing is wrong with pride based on accomplishment, and your life was packed full of accomplishments. But justifiable pride can sometimes mutate into arrogance.”

Mouth tight, he stared at me. But then he nodded. He knew that in life he had sometimes been guilty of arrogance.

“I’m not talking about then. I mean now. You don’t want to move on to the next world because you’re afraid you won’t be special over there, that you’ll just be equal to everyone else.”

Although he resisted moving on, he wanted to make the journey, as do all of the lingering dead. He seriously considered my words.

I needed to channel him from polite consideration to a strong emotional response. I regretted what I was about to do, but his soul and my neck were on the line. Extreme measures were required.

“But it’s worse than that. You’re afraid to move on because you think maybe you’ll be starting over from nothing, with nothing, just a nobody, and all the struggle will begin again. You’re as scared as a little boy.”

His face knotted with offense.

“Your first breath was a struggle. Will it be again? To win any respect, you had to fight. You can’t stand the idea of being a nobody again, but you don’t want to fight your way to the top like you had to do the last time.”

He put up his fists.

“Sure, threaten to fight me. You know I can’t hurt a ghost, what courage does it take to threaten me?”

He rose from the chair and glared down at me.

“You want all the respect you won in this world, but you don’t have the guts to earn it again, if that’s the way it is over there.”

Never would I have believed that those warm blue eyes could have produced such an icy stare as the one with which he skewered me.

“You know what you’ve become in death? You’re a scared little punk like you never were in life.”

In anger, hands fisted at his sides, he turned away from me.

“Can’t handle the truth, huh?”

Treating him with such disrespect, when in fact I respected him, was difficult, and I was particularly afraid of revealing the falsity of my contempt by using the word sir .

I believed that I had in fact arrived at the reason that he lingered in this world, but I did not despise him for it. In other circumstances, I would have led him gently to accept the truth and to see that his fears were ungrounded.

Certain that Hoss Shackett would come through the door at any moment, I said witheringly, “Chairman of the Board, Old Blue Eyes, the Voice, famous big-shot singer, big cheese of the Rat Pack-and now all you are is another gutless punk from Hoboken.”

He turned toward me once more.

His mottled face, his dead-cold stare, his lips skinned back from clenched teeth, his head lowered like that of a bull that sees not one red cape but a hundred: As lingering spirits go, this one was as pissed off as any I had ever seen.

The steel door opened.

Chief Hoss Shackett entered. Utgard Rolf followed him, rolling a cart on which was mounted the polygraph.

IN MY ROOM AT HUTCH’S HOUSE, WHEN MR. Sinatra had levitated all the biographies of him and had spun them slowly around the room, out of my reach, he had shown poltergeist potential.

In my experience, only deeply malevolent spirits had been able to conjure the dark energy necessary to cause havoc. Mr. Sinatra had his moods, but he harbored no true malevolence.

Judging by the evidence of his life, however, his was a powerful spirit that might be able to bend the rules as I knew them.

The thing most certain to light a short fuse with Mr. Sinatra was unfairness. From his early years as an unknown singer, he had been angered by bigotry and had taken risks with his career to open doors and gain opportunities for black musicians in a era when many white performers were cool with the status quo.

The attack I had launched on him-calling him a gutless punk-qualified as grossly unfair. My first hope was that he would seethe as hotly when he was the target of unfairness as he did when he saw it being directed against others.

My second hope was that I had not cranked him so hard, so fast that he would blow like Vesuvius while I remained locked to the table.

As Utgard Rolf closed the steel door behind him and wheeled the polygraph, Mr. Sinatra turned his furious glare from me to the chin-bearded hulk.

“Spoke to the man,” Chief Shackett told me. “The money’s yours, as long as the machine says you’re the real deal.”

Because being shackled to the table would raise my stress levels and affect the reading, the chief kept his promise to free me. The cuff fell away from my ankle.