Dean Koontz - Brother Odd

Brother Odd

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The Husband Forever Odd Velocity Life Expectancy

The Taking Odd Thomas The Face By the Light of the Moon

One Door Away From Heaven From the Corner of His Eye

False Memory Seize the Night Fear Nothing Mr. Murder

Dragon Tears Hideaway Cold Fire The Bad Place

Midnight Lightning Watchers Strangers Twilight Eyes

Darkfall Phantoms Whispers The Mask

The Vision The Face of Fear Night Chills Shattered

The Voice of the Night The Servants of Twilight

The House of Thunder The Key to Midnight

The Eyes of Darkness Shadowfires Winter Moon

The Door to December Dark Rivers of the Heart Icebound

Strange Highways Intensity Sole Survivor

Ticktock The Funhouse Demon Seed

DEAN KOONTZ'S FRANKENSTEIN

Book One: Prodigal Son with Kevin J. Anderson

Book Two: City of Night with Ed Gorman

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Brother Odd

Bantam Books

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BROTHER ODD A Bantam Book / December 2006

Published by Bantam Dell

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are

the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any

resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely

coincidental.

Title page art from an original photograph by Cristian Saracco

Half-title page art from an original photograph by Anssi Ruuska

Book design by Virginia Norey

A signed, limited edition has been privately printed by Charnel House.

Charnelhouse.com

Bantam Books is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon

is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Koontz, Dean R. (Dean Ray), 1945-

Brother Odd / Dean Koontz

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-0-553-80480-5

1. Mediums-Fiction. 2. Missing persons-Fiction. I. Title.

PS3561.O55 F66 2006c 2006032253

813/.54 22

Printed in the United States of America Published simultaneously in Canada

www.bantamdell.com

BVG ro 987654321

iv

To some folks I've known a long time and admire because they do good work and

are good people: Peter Styles, Richard Boukes, Bill Anderson (Hello,

Danielle), Dave Gaulke, and Tom Fenner (Hello, Gabriella, Katia, and Troy).

We'll have a fine party on the Other Side, but let's not be in a hurry.

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Teach us ...

To give and not to count the cost;

To fight and not to heed the wounds;

To toil and not to seek for rest...

St. Ignatius Loyola

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Brother Odd

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1

CHAPTER 1

EMBRACED BY STONE, STEEPED IN SILENCE, I SAT at the high window as the third

day of the week surrendered to the fourth. The river of night rolled on,

indifferent to the calendar.

I hoped to witness that magical moment when the snow began to fall in earnest.

Earlier the sky had shed a few flakes, then nothing more. The pending storm

would not be rushed.

The room was illuminated only by a fat candle in an amber glass on the corner

desk. Each time a draft found the flame, melting light buttered the limestone

walls and waves of fluid shadows oiled the corners.

Most nights, I find lamplight too bright. And when I'm writing, the only glow

is the computer screen, dialed down to gray text on a navy-blue field.

Without a silvering of light, the window did not reflect my face. I had a

clear view of the night beyond the panes.

Living in a monastery, even as a guest rather than as a monk, you have more

opportunities than you might have elsewhere to

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see the world as it is, instead of through the shadow that you cast upon it.

St. Bartholomew's Abbey was surrounded by the vastness of the Sierra Nevada,

on the California side of the border. The primeval forests that clothed the

rising slopes were themselves cloaked in darkness.

From this third-floor window, I could see only part of the deep front yard and

the blacktop lane that cleaved it. Four low lampposts with bell-shaped caps

focused light in round pale pools.

The guesthouse is in the northwest wing of the abbey. The ground floor

features parlors. Private rooms occupy the higher and the highest floors.

As I watched in anticipation of the storm, a whiteness that was not snow

drifted across the yard, out of darkness, into lamplight.

The abbey has one dog, a no-pound German-shepherd mix, perhaps part Labrador

retriever. He is entirely white and moves with the grace of fog. His name is

Boo.

My name is Odd Thomas. My dysfunctional parents claim a mistake was made on

the birth certificate, that Todd was the wanted name. Yet they have never

called me Todd.

In twenty-one years, I have not considered changing to Todd. The bizarre

course of my life suggests that Odd is more suited to me, whether it was

conferred by my parents with intention or by fate.

Below, Boo stopped in the middle of the pavement and gazed along the lane as

it dwindled and descended into darkness.

Mountains are not entirely slopes. Sometimes the rising land takes a rest. The

abbey stands on a high meadow, facing north.

fudging by his pricked ears and lifted head, Boo perceived a visitor

approaching. He held his tail low.

3

I could not discern the state of his hackles, but his tense posture suggested

that they were raised.

From dusk the driveway lamps burn until dawn ascends. The monks of St. Bart's

believe that night visitors, no matter how seldom they come, must be welcomed

with light.

The dog stood motionless for a while, then shifted his attention toward the

lawn to the right of the blacktop. His head lowered. His ears flattened

against his skull.

For a moment, I could not see the cause of Boo's alarm. Then ... into view

came a shape as elusive as a night shadow floating across black water. The

figure passed near enough to one of the lampposts to be briefly revealed.

Even in daylight, this was a visitor of whom only the dog and I could have

been aware.

I see dead people, spirits of the departed who, each for his own reason, will

not move on from this world. Some are drawn to me for justice, if they were

murdered, or for comfort, or for companionship; others seek me out for motives

that I cannot always understand.

This complicates my life.

I am not asking for your sympathy. We all have our problems, and yours seem as

important to you as mine seem to me.

Perhaps you have a ninety-minute commute every morning, on freeways clogged

with traffic, your progress hampered by impatient and incompetent motorists,

some of them angry specimens with middle fingers muscular from frequent use.

Imagine, however, how much more stressful your morning might be if in the

passenger seat was a young man with a ghastly ax wound in his head and if in

the backseat an elderly woman, strangled by her husband, sat pop-eyed and

purple-faced.

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The dead don't talk. I don't know why. And an ax-chopped spirit will not bleed

on your upholstery.

Nevertheless, an entourage of the recently dead is disconcerting and generally

not conducive to an upbeat mood.

The visitor on the lawn was not an ordinary ghost, maybe not a ghost at all.

In addition to the lingering spirits of the dead, I see one other kind of

supernatural entity. I call them bodachs.

They are ink-black, fluid in shape, with no more substance than shadows.

Soundless, as big as an average man, they frequently slink like cats, low to

the ground.

The one on the abbey lawn moved upright: black and featureless, yet suggestive

of something half man, half wolf. Sleek, sinuous, and sinister.

The grass was not disturbed by its passage. Had it been crossing water, it

would not have left a single ripple in its wake.

In the folklore of the British Isles, a bodach is a vile beast that slithers

down chimneys at night and carries off children who misbehave. Rather like

Inland Revenue agents.

What I see are neither bodachs nor tax collectors. They carry away neither

misbehaving children nor adult miscreants. But I have seen them enter houses

by chimneys-by keyholes, chinks in window frames, as protean as smoke-and I

have no better name for them.

Their infrequent appearance is always reason for alarm. These creatures seem

to be spiritual vampires with knowledge of the future. They are drawn to

places where violence or fiery catastrophe is destined to erupt, as if they

feed on human suffering.

Although he was a brave dog, with good reason to be brave, Boo shrank from the

passing apparition. His black lips peeled back from his white fangs.

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The phantom paused as if to taunt the dog. Bodachs seem to know that some

animals can see them.

I don't think they know that I can see them, too. If they did know, I believe

that they would show me less mercy than mad mullahs show their victims when in

a mood to behead and dismember.

At the sight of this one, my first impulse was to shrink from the window and

seek communion with the dust bunnies under my bed. My second impulse was to

pee.

Resisting both cowardice and the call of the bladder, I raced from my quarters

into the hallway. The third floor of the guesthouse offers two small suites.

The other currently had no occupant.

On the second floor, the glowering Russian was no doubt scowling in his sleep.

The solid construction of the abbey would not translate my footfalls into his

dreams.

The guesthouse has an enclosed spiral staircase, stone walls encircling

granite steps. The treads alternate between black and white, making me think

of harlequins and piano keys, and of a treacly old song by Paul McCartney and

Stevie Wonder.

Although stone stairs are unforgiving and the black-and-white pattern can be

disorienting, I plunged toward the ground floor, risking damage to the granite

if I fell and struck it with my head.

Sixteen months ago, I lost what was most precious to me and found my world in

ruins; nevertheless, I am not usually reckless. I have less to live for than I

once did, but my life still has purpose, and I struggle to find meaning in the

days.

Leaving the stairs in the condition that I found them, I hurried across the

main parlor, where only a night lamp with a beaded shade relieved the gloom. I

pushed through a heavy oak door

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with a stained-glass window, and saw my breath plume before me in the winter

night.

The guesthouse cloister surrounds a courtyard with a reflecting pool and a

white marble statue of St. Bartholomew. He is arguably the least known of the

twelve apostles.

Here depicted, a solemn St. Bartholomew stands with his right hand over his

heart, left arm extended. In his upturned palm is what appears to be a pumpkin

but might be a related variety of squash.

The symbolic meaning of the squash eludes me.

At this time of year, the pool was drained, and no scent of wet limestone rose

from it, as in warmer days. I detected, instead, the faintest smell of ozone,

as after lightning in a spring rain, and wondered about it, but kept moving.

I followed the colonnade to the door of the guesthouse receiving room, went

inside, crossed that shadowy chamber, and returned to the December night

through the front door of the abbey.

Our white shepherd mix, Boo, standing on the driveway, as I had last seen him

from my third-floor window, turned his head to look at me as I descended the

broad front steps. His stare was clear and blue, with none of the eerie

eyeshine common to animals at night.

Without benefit of stars or moon, most of the expansive yard receded into

murk. If a bodach lurked out there, I could not see it.

"Boo, where's it gone?" I whispered.

He didn't answer. My life is strange but not so strange that it includes

talking canines.

With wary purpose, however, the dog moved off the driveway,

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onto the yard. He headed east, past the formidable abbey, which appears almost

to have been carved from a single great mass of rock, so tight are the mortar

joints between its stones.

No wind ruffled the night, and darkness hung with folded wings.

Seared brown by winter, the trampled grass crunched underfoot. Boo moved with

far greater stealth than I could manage.

Feeling watched, I looked up at the windows, but I didn't see anyone, no light

other than the faint flicker of the candle in my quarters, no pale face

peering through a dark pane.

I had rushed out of the guest wing wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt. December

stropped its teeth on my bare arms.

We proceeded eastward alongside the church, which is part of the abbey, not a

separate building.

A sanctuary lamp glows perpetually, but it isn't sufficient to fire the

colorful stained glass. Through window after window, that dim light seemed to

watch us as though it were the single sullen eye of something in a bloody

mood.

Having led me to the northeast corner of the building, Boo turned south, past

the back of the church. We continued to the wing of the abbey that, on the

first floor, contains the novitiate.

Not yet having taken their vows, the novices slept here. Of the five who were

currently taking instruction, I liked and trusted four.

Suddenly Boo abandoned his cautious pace. He ran due east, away from the

abbey, and I pursued him.

As the yard relented to the untamed meadow, grass lashed my knees. Soon the

first heavy snow would compact these tall dry blades.

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For a few hundred feet, the land sloped gently before leveling off, whereupon

the knee-high grass became a mown lawn again. Before us in the gloom rose St.

Bartholomew's School.

In part the word school is a euphemism. These students are unwanted elsewhere,

and the school is also their home, perhaps the only one that some of them will

ever have.

This is the original abbey, internally remodeled but still an impressive pile

of stone. The structure also houses the convent in which reside the nuns who

teach the students and care for them.

Behind the former abbey, the forest bristled against the storm-ready sky,

black boughs sheltering blind pathways that led far into the lonely dark.

Evidently tracking the bodach, the dog went up the broad steps to the front

door of the school, and through.

Few doors in the abbey are ever locked. But for the protection of the

students, the school is routinely secured.

Only the abbot, the mother superior, and I possess a universal key that allows

admittance everywhere. No guest before me has been entrusted with such access.

I take no pride in their trust. It is a burden. In my pocket, the simple key

sometimes feels like an iron fate drawn to a lodestone deep in the earth.

The key allows me quickly to seek Brother Constantine, the dead monk, when he

manifests with a ringing of bells in one of the towers or with some other kind

of cacophony elsewhere.

In Pico Mundo, the desert town in which I had lived for most of my time on

earth, the spirits of many men and women linger. But here we have just Brother

Constantine, who is no less disturbing than all of Pico Mundo's dead combined,

one ghost but one too many.

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With a bodach on the prowl, Brother Constantine was the least of my worries.

Shivering, I used my key, and hinges squeaked, and I followed the dog into the

school.

Two night-lights staved off total gloom in the reception lounge. Multiple

arrangements of sofas and armchairs suggested a hotel lobby.

I hurried past the unmanned information desk and went through a swinging door

into a corridor lighted by an emergency lamp and red exit signs.

On this ground floor were the classrooms, the rehabilitation clinic, the

infirmary, the kitchen, and the communal dining room. Those sisters with a

culinary gift were not yet preparing breakfast. Silence ruled these spaces, as

it would for hours yet.

I climbed the south stairs and found Boo waiting for me on the second-floor

landing. He remained in a solemn mood. His tail did not wag, and he did not

grin in greeting.

Two long and two short hallways formed a rectangle, serving the student

quarters. The residents roomed in pairs.

At the southeast and northwest junctions of the corridors were nurses'

stations, both of which I could see when I came out of the stairs in the

southwest corner of the building.

At the northwest station, a nun sat at the counter, reading. From this

distance, I could not identify her.

Besides, her face was half concealed by a wimple. These are not modern nuns

who dress like meter maids. These sisters wear old-style habits that can make

them seem as formidable as warriors in armor.

The southeast station was deserted. The nun on duty must have been making her

rounds or tending to one of her charges.

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When Boo padded away to the right, heading southeast, I followed without

calling to the reading nun. By the time that I had taken three steps, she was

out of my line of sight.

Many of the sisters have nursing degrees, but they strive to make the second

floor feel more like a cozy dormitory than like a hospital. With Christmas

twenty days away, the halls were hung with garlands of fake evergreen boughs

and festooned with genuine tinsel.

In respect of the sleeping students, the lights had been dimmed. The tinsel

glimmered only here and there, and mostly darkled into tremulous shadows.

The doors of some student rooms were closed, others ajar. They featured not

just numbers but also names.

Halfway between the stairwell and the nurses' station, Boo paused at Room 32,

where the door was not fully closed. On block-lettered plaques were the names

annamarie and Justine.

This time I was close enough to Boo to see that indeed his hackles were

raised.

The dog passed inside, but propriety made me hesitate. I ought to have asked a

nun to accompany me into these students' quarters.

But I wanted to avoid having to explain bodachs to her. More important, I

didn't want to risk being overheard by one of those malevolent spirits as I

was talking about them.

Officially, only one person at the abbey and one at the convent know about my

gift-if in fact it is a gift rather than a curse. Sister Angela, the mother

superior, shares my secret, as does Father Bernard, the abbot.

Courtesy had required that they fully understand the troubled young man whom

they would be welcoming as a long-term guest.

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To assure Sister Angela and Abbot Bernard that I was neither a fraud nor a

fool, Wyatt Porter, the chief of police in Pico Mundo, my hometown, shared

with them the details of some murder cases with which I had assisted him.

Likewise, Father Sean Llewellyn vouched for me. He is the Catholic priest in

Pico Mundo.

Father Llewellyn is also the uncle of Stormy Llewellyn, whom I had loved and

lost. Whom I will forever cherish.

During the seven months I had lived in this mountain retreat, I'd shared the

truth of my life with one other, Brother Knuckles, a monk. His real name is

Salvatore, but we call him Knuckles more often than not.

Brother Knuckles would not have hesitated on the threshold of Room 32. He is a

monk of action. In an instant he would have decided that the threat posed by

the bodach trumped propriety. He would have rushed through the door as boldly

as did the dog, although with less grace and with a lot more noise.

I pushed the door open wider, and went inside.

In the two hospital beds lay Annamarie, closest to the door, and Justine. Both

were asleep.

On the wall behind each girl hung a lamp controlled by a switch at the end of

a cord looped around the bed rail. It could provide various intensities of

light.

Annamarie, who was ten years old but small for her age, had set her lamp low,

as a night-light. She feared the dark.

Her wheelchair stood beside the bed. From one of the hand grips at the back of

the chair hung a quilted, insulated jacket. From the other hand grip hung a

woolen cap. On winter nights, she insisted that these garments be close at

hand.

The girl slept with the top sheet clenched in her frail hands, as

12

if ready to throw off the bedclothes. Her face was taut with an expression of

concerned anticipation, less than anxiety, more than mere disquiet.

Although she slept soundly, she appeared to be prepared to flee at the

slightest provocation.

One day each week, of her own accord, with eyes closed tight, Annamarie

practiced piloting her battery-powered wheelchair to each of two elevators.

One lay in the east wing, the other in the west.

In spite of her limitations and her suffering, she was a happy child. These

preparations for flight were out of character.

Although she would not talk about it, she seemed to sense that a night of

terror was coming, a hostile darkness through which she would need to find her

way. She might be prescient.

The bodach, first glimpsed from my high window, had come here, but not alone.

Three of them, silent wolflike shadows, were gathered around the second bed,

in which Justine slept.

A single bodach signals impending violence that may be either near and

probable or remote and less certain. If they appear in twos and threes, the

danger is more immediate.

In my experience, when they appear in packs, the pending danger has become

imminent peril, and the deaths of many people are days or hours away. Although

the sight of three of them chilled me, I was grateful that they didn't number

thirty.

Trembling with evident excitement, the bodachs bent over Justine while she

slept, as if studying her intently. As if feeding on her.

13

CHAPTER 2

THE LAMP ABOVE THE SECOND BED HAD BEEN turned low, but Justine had not

adjusted it herself. A nun had selected the dimmest setting, hoping that it

might please the girl.

Justine did little for herself and asked for nothing. She was partially

paralyzed and could not speak.

When Justine had been four years old, her father had strangled her mother to

death. They say that after she had died, he put a rose between her teeth-but

with the long thorny stem down her throat.

He drowned little Justine in the bathtub, or thought he did. He left her for

dead, but she survived with brain damage from prolonged lack of oxygen.

For weeks, she lingered in a coma, though that was years ago. These days she

slept and woke, but when awake, her capacity for engagement with her

caregivers fluctuated.

Photographs of Justine at four reveal a child of exceptional beauty. In those

snapshots, she looks impish and full of delight.

14

Dean Koontz - Brother Odd

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