Dean Koontz - Odd Hours

After letting myself through the gate beside the garage, I had to carry the satchel with both hands. By then it felt as though it contained the grand piano that Laurel and Hardy had never been able to get up those narrow stairs.

I put it down on the brick patio, next to the wrought-iron chair on which earlier I had draped my sand-caked jeans and socks. I had to roll my shoulders and stretch my arms to relieve the strain that had knotted my muscles.

I stepped back from the house, to a corner of the garage, where I flipped open the cell phone given to me by Birdie Hopkins. I called the Cottage of the Happy Monster. Annamaria answered on the third ring.

“It’s me,” I said. “Where’s Blossom?”

“Making popcorn. She’s the dearest person.”

“I knew you’d like her.”

“She will be with me always,” Annamaria said, which seemed to me an odd way to say that she would never forget Blossom Rosedale.

“I’ll be coming for you soon,” I said. “Within the hour. We’ll have to leave town, if that’s all right with you.”

“What will be will be.”

“Here we go again.”

“You’re my protector, and I’m your charge. We do as you think best.”

I did not know why I felt now a greater weight upon me than when in my sole possession, aboard the death boat, had been four nuclear bombs and their triggers.

When I found myself with no reply, she said, “You’re always free to retract your pledge, Odd Thomas.”

In memory, I saw her in the light of the oil lamp: Will you die for me?

I had said yes, and had taken the offered bell.

“No,” I said. “I’m with you. Wherever this is leading. Until the end of it. We’re leaving town. I’ll be there within the hour.”

I closed the phone and slipped it in a pocket of my jeans.

Although Ozzie Boone’s tutelage and the writing of these four manuscripts have given me some facility with language, I don’t have the words to describe the strange feeling that overcame me then.

Of all the things I am, a killer is one of them. Not a murderer, but still a killer. And a fool. The only child of a mad mother and a narcissistic father. A failed hero. A confused boy. A troubled man. A guy who makes his life up as he goes along. A seeker who cannot find his way.

No one should entrust someone like me with a treasure. Whether Annamaria herself was the treasure, or her child, or neither of them, but instead some mysterious thing yet to be revealed, I knew that she believed she had a treasure that required protection. Her judgment in the matter had a conviction that convinced me.

In spite of an acute awareness of my inadequacies, I intuited that, for all my faults, this was my duty and my honor. What I felt then, by Hutch’s garage, that I cannot describe is a nameless emotion below humility, a deference immeasurably greater than what the meek feel in the shadow of the mighty, what a sparrow might feel if Nature charged him with carrying on his small wings all the living things of a dying Earth to a new world.

And I did not know why I felt all this, because I did not know to what I had committed. Or perhaps I knew in my heart, but kept the knowledge from myself, preferring to proceed in ignorance, for fear the truth would paralyze me, petrify me as solidly as eons of time can petrify living wood into hardest stone.

IN CASE THE REDHEADED GUNMEN HAD COME visiting Hutch, had not been convinced by his performance, and had settled down to wait for me, I examined the compact pistol. The ten-round magazine held nine. I switched off the safety.

Most likely because I had recently spent too much time at sea, I muttered, “Okay, fish or cut bait.”

The Ziploc pill bag in the terra-cotta bowl of cyclamens. The key in the bag.

Ease open the door. Quiet. The fading cinnamon aroma of homemade cookies. The golden glow of the string lights hidden in the recessed toe kick of the cabinets.

All as it should be. Never a good sign.

This time wearing pants, I crossed the cozy kitchen and warily entered the downstairs hall.

When I peered cautiously through the open parlor door, I saw Hutch in the armchair where I had left him. The chenille throw lay across his lap and draped his knees; but he had put the book aside. He snored softly.

I engaged the safety on the little pistol, and pocketed the weapon.

Hutch must have had dinner while I’d been gone, and had returned to the parlor to watch television. On the TV played an old movie in which he had starred. He had muted the sound.

I stood watching the silent screen.

His co-star in this one had been the wondrous Deborah Kerr, as beautiful as she had been in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, as haunting as in An Affair to Remember, as elegant as in Bonjour Tristesse, as fresh-faced and innocent as in Black Narcissus .

Hutch had not been storklike in those days. With his height and his mane of hair, he had been a lion on the screen. Time had not yet carved his noble profile into a caricature, brow and beak and blunted chin.

Whatever he was currently saying to Deborah Kerr and she to him, the conversation was intense. He held her tenderly by her shoulders, and she gazed up at him, and the moment was building to a kiss as surely as lightning leads to thunder.

“She was magnificent,” Hutch said, having awakened as I stood entranced by the images on the TV.

“Were you in love with her, sir?”

“Oh, yes. Very much so. From a distance. She was untouchable, however. A true lady. There are none like her now.”

And here came the kiss. A few more words. And a second kiss. Dissolve to a European battlefield.

Hutch sighed. “Half a century goes by in what seems like a year. Don’t waste an hour in boredom, son, or wishing for tomorrow.”

“I do my best to keep myself occupied,” I assured him.

Sitting up straighter in the chair, he said, “I’m sorry to say no one has come looking for you.”

“I’m delighted to hear it.”

“I would have given a stirring performance, one for the ages. Acting is a marvelous profession, son. If you can spend enough time playing other people, you don’t have to think too much about your own character and motivations.”

“To save my skin, I had to be someone else tonight. I called myself Harry Lime.”

“That takes chutzpah. You’re no Orson Welles, young man.”

“I wouldn’t disagree, sir.”

“I almost landed the lead in The Third Man . But I can’t begrudge Joseph Cotten getting it. He was superb.”

I sat on the footstool. “Mr. Hutchison-”

“Call me Hutch. Everyone does.”

“Yes, sir. Well, as you know, I didn’t arrive on this job with many clothes-”

Leaning forward in his armchair, eyes alight, he interrupted: “We’ll go to a thrift shop tomorrow! I’ve been afire with the idea since we talked about it earlier.”

“Well, gee, what I was about to say is…I’m going upstairs to change into a clean sweatshirt. And I’m in such a hurry, I was kind of hoping it wouldn’t be too much of an inconvenience if I asked you to dispose of my clothing.”

He understood but didn’t want to understand. “What a peculiar request.”

“I have to leave tonight, sir.”

“But why?” He held up one hand that, in the day, held Deborah Kerr. “Yes, I see. Big guy with a chin beard, then a redheaded guy who does or does not have bad teeth. So am I to assume that your differences with them could not be resolved?”

“Not entirely, sir.”

“Now you’re going on the lam.”

“Exactly.”

“Once, I was on the lam myself.”

I said, “With Henry Fonda in relentless pursuit.”