The Odd Thomas Series 4-Book Bundle

by Dean Koontz

  He said, “It hurts.”

  “What hurts, Jake?”

  “All of it, so clear.”

  “I’ll bet it does. I know it does. My girl has been gone sixteen months, and I see her clearer every day.”

  He drew, and I waited.

  Then I said, “Do you know how old you were that time in the hospital?”

  “Seven. I was seven.”

  “So will you draw me the face of the Neverwas, from that time in the hospital when you were seven?”

  “Can’t. My eyes was funny then. Like a window with the rain and nothing looks right through it.”

  “Your vision was blurred that day?”

  “Blurred.”

  “From the sickness, you mean.” My hope deflated. “I guess it might have been blurred.”

  I turned back one tablet page to the second drawing of the bone kaleidoscope at the window.

  “How often have you seen this thing, Jake?”

  “More than one thing. Different ones.”

  “How often have they been at the window?”

  “Three times.”

  “Just three? When?”

  “Two times yesterday. Then when I woke from the sleep.”

  “When you woke up this morning?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve seen them, too,” I told him. “I can’t figure out what they are. What do you think they are, Jake?”

  “The dogs of the Neverwas,” he said without hesitation. “I’m not scared of them.”

  “Dogs, huh? I don’t see dogs.”

  “Not dogs but like dogs,” he explained. “Like really bad dogs, he teaches to kill, and he sends them, and they kill.”

  “Attack dogs,” I said.

  “I’m not scared, and I won’t be.”

  “You’re a very brave young man, Jacob Calvino.”

  “She said … she said don’t be scared, we wasn’t born to be all the time scared, we was born happy, babies laugh at everything, we was born happy and to make a better world.”

  “I wish I’d known your mother.”

  “She said everyone … everyone, if he’s rich or he’s poor, if he’s somebody big or nobody at all—everyone has a grace.” A look of peace came over his embattled face when he said the word grace. “You know what a grace is?”

  “Yes.”

  “A grace is a thing you get from God, you use it to make a better world, or not use it, you have to choose.”

  “Like your art,” I said. “Like your beautiful drawings.”

  He said, “Like your pancakes.”

  “Ah, you know I made those pancakes, huh?”

  “Those pancakes, that’s a grace.”

  “Thank you, Jake. That’s very kind of you.” I closed the second tablet and got up from my chair. “I have to go now, but I’d like to come back, if that’s all right.”

  “All right.”

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  “All right, okay,” he assured me.

  I went to his side of the table, put a hand on his shoulder, and studied the drawing from his perspective.

  He was a superb renderer, but he wasn’t just that. He understood the qualities of light, the fact of light even in shadow, the beauty of light and the need for it.

  At the window, though the winter twilight lay a few hours away, most of the light had been choked out of the blizzard-throttled sky. Already the day had come to dusk.

  Earlier, Jacob had warned me that the dark would come with the dark. Maybe we couldn’t expect that death would wait for full night. Maybe the gloom of this false dusk was dark enough.

  CHAPTER 44

  Outside room 14, after I left Jacob with the promise to return, Rodion Romanovich said, “Mr. Thomas, your questioning of that young man—it was not done as I would have done it.”

  “Yes, sir, but the nuns have an absolute rule against ripping out fingernails with pliers.”

  “Well, even nuns are not right about everything. What I was about to say, however, is that you drew him out as well as anyone could have done. I am impressed.”

  “I don’t know, sir. I’m circling close to it, but I’m not there yet. He has the key. I was sent to him earlier in the day because he has the key.”

  “Sent to him by whom?”

  “By someone dead who tried to help me through Justine.”

  “Through the drowned girl you mentioned earlier, the one who was dead and then revived.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I was right about you,” Romanovich said. “Complex, complicated, even intricate.”

  “But innocuous,” I assured him.

  Unaware that she walked through a cluster of bodachs, scattering them, Sister Angela came to us.

  She started to speak, and I zipped my lips again. Her periwinkle blues narrowed, for although she understood about bodachs, she wasn’t used to being told to shut up.

  When the malign spirits had vanished into various rooms, I said, “Ma’am, I’m hoping you can help me. Jacob here—what do you know about his father?”

  “His father? Nothing.”

  “I thought you had backgrounds on all the kids.”

  “We do. But Jacob’s mother was never married.”

  “Jenny Calvino. So that’s a maiden—not a married—name.”

  “Yes. Before she died of cancer, she arranged for Jacob to be admitted to another church home.”

  “Twelve years ago.”

  “Yes. She had no family to take him, and on the forms, where the father’s name was requested, I’m sad to say, she wrote unknown.”

  I said, “I never met the lady, but from even what little I know about her, I can’t believe she was so promiscuous that she wouldn’t know.”

  “It’s a world of sorrow, Oddie, because we make it so.”

  “I’ve learned some things from Jacob. He was very ill when he was seven, wasn’t he?”

  She nodded. “It’s in his medical records. I’m not sure exactly, but I think … some kind of blood infection. He almost died.”

  “From things Jacob has said, I believe Jenny called his father to the hospital. It wasn’t a warm and fuzzy family reunion. But this name—it may be the key to everything.”

  “Jacob doesn’t know the name?”

  “I don’t think his mother ever told him. However, I believe Mr. Romanovich knows it.”

  Surprised, Sister Angela said, “Do you know it, Mr. Romanovich?”

  “If he knows it,” I said, “he won’t tell you.”

  She frowned. “Why won’t you tell me, Mr. Romanovich?”

  “Because,” I explained, “he’s not in the business of giving out information. Just the opposite.”

  “But, Mr. Romanovich,” said Sister Angela, “surely dispensing information is a fundamental part of a librarian’s job.”

  “He is not,” I said, “a librarian. He will claim to be, but if you press the point, all you’ll get out of him is a lot more about Indianapolis than you need to know.”

  “There is no harm,” Romanovich said, “in acquiring exhaustive knowledge about my beloved Indianapolis. And the truth is, you also know the name.”

  Again surprised, Sister Angela turned to me. “Do you know the name of Jacob’s father, Oddie?”

  “He suspects it,” said Romanovich, “but is reluctant to believe what he suspects.”

  “Is that true, Oddie? Why are you reluctant to believe?”

  “Because Mr. Thomas admires the man he suspects. And because if his suspicions are correct, he may be up against a power with which he cannot reckon.”

  Sister Angela said, “Oddie, is there any power with which you cannot reckon?”

  “Oh, it’s a long list, ma’am. The thing is—I need to be sure I’m right about the name. And I have to understand his motivation, which I don’t yet, not fully. It might be dangerous to approach him without full understanding.”

  Turning to the Russian, Sister Angela said, “Surely, sir, if you can share with Oddie the
name and motivation of this man, you will do so to protect the children.”

  “I wouldn’t necessarily believe anything he told me,” I said. “Our fur-hatted friend has his own agenda. And I suspect he’ll be ruthless about fulfilling it.”

  Her voice heavy with disapproval, the mother superior said, “Mr. Romanovich, sir, you presented yourself to this community as a simple librarian seeking to enrich his faith.”

  “Sister,” he disagreed, “I never said that I was simple. But it is true that I am a man of faith. And whose faith is so secure that it never needs to be further enriched?”

  She stared at him for a moment, and then turned to me again. “He is a real piece of work.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’d turn him out in the snow if it wasn’t such an unchristian thing to do—and if I believed for a minute we could manhandle him through the door.”

  “I don’t believe we could, Sister.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “If you can find me a child who was once dead but can speak,” I reminded her, “I might learn what I need to know by other means than Mr. Romanovich.”

  Her wimpled face brightened. “That’s what I came to tell you before we got into all this talk about Jacob’s father. There’s a girl named Flossie Bodenblatt—”

  “Surely not,” said Romanovich.

  “Flossie,” Sister Angela continued, “has been through very much, too much, so much—but she is a girl with spirit, and she has worked hard in speech therapy. Her voice is so clear now. She was down in rehab, but we’ve brought her to her room. Come with me.”

  CHAPTER 45

  Nine-year-old Flossie had been at St. Bartholomew’s for one year. According to Sister Angela, the girl was one of the minority who would be able to leave someday and live on her own.

  The names on the door plaques were FLOSSIE and PAULETTE. Flossie waited alone.

  Frills, flounce, and dolls characterized Paulette’s half of the room. Pink pillows and a small green-and-pink vanity table.

  Flossie’s area was by contrast simple, clean, all white and blue, decorated only with posters of dogs.

  The name Bodenblatt suggested to me a German or Scandinavian background, but Flossie had a Mediterranean complexion, black hair, and large dark eyes.

  I had not encountered the girl before, or had seen her only at a distance. My chest grew tight, and I knew at once that this might be more difficult than I had expected.

  When we arrived, Flossie was sitting on a rug on the floor, paging through a book of dog photographs.

  “Dear,” said Sister Angela, “this is Mr. Thomas, the man who would like to talk to you.”

  Her smile was not the smile that I remembered from another place and time, but it was close enough, a wounded smile and lovely.

  “Hello, Mr. Thomas.”

  Sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of her, I said, “I’m so pleased to meet you, Flossie.”

  Sister Angela perched on the edge of Flossie’s bed, and Rodion Romanovich stood among Paulette’s dolls and frills, like a bear that had turned the tables on Goldilocks.

  The girl wore red pants and a white sweater with an appliquéd image of Santa Claus. Her features were fine, nose upturned, chin delicate. She could have passed for an elf.

  The left corner of her mouth pulled down, and the left eyelid drooped slightly.

  Her left hand was cramped into a claw, and she braced the book on her lap with that arm, as if she had little other use for it than bracing things. She had been turning pages with her right hand.

  Now her attention focused on me. Her stare was direct and unwavering, full of confidence earned from painful experience—a quality I had also seen before, in eyes this very shade.

  “So you like dogs, Flossie?”

  “Yes, but I don’t like my name.” If she had once had a speech impediment caused by brain damage, she had overcome it.

  “You don’t like Flossie? It’s a pretty name.”

  “It’s a cow’s name,” she declared.

  “Well, yes, I have heard of cows named Flossie.”

  “And it sounds like what you do with your teeth.”

  “Maybe it does, now that you mention it. What would you prefer to be called?”

  “Christmas,” she said.

  “You want to change your name to Christmas?”

  “Sure. Everyone loves Christmas.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Nothing bad ever happens on Christmas. So then nothing bad could happen to someone named Christmas, could it?”

  “So, let me begin again,” I said. “I’m so pleased to meet you, Christmas Bodenblatt.”

  “I’m gonna change the last p-p-part, too.”

  “And what would you prefer to Bodenblatt?”

  “Almost anything. I haven’t made up my mind yet. It’s gotta be a good name for working with dogs.”

  “You want to be a veterinarian when you grow up?”

  She nodded. “Can’t be, though.” She pointed to her head and said with awful directness, “I lost some smarts in the car that day.”

  Lamely, I said, “You seem plenty smart to me.”

  “Nope. Not dumb but not smart enough for a vet. If I work hard on my arm, though, and my leg, and they get b-b-better, I can work with a vet, you know, like help him with dogs. Give b-baths to dogs. Trim them and stuff. I could do a lot with dogs.”

  “You like dogs, I guess.”

  “Oh, I love dogs.”

  A radiance arose in her as she talked about dogs, and joy made her eyes appear less wounded than they had been.

  “I had a dog,” she said. “He was a good dog.”

  Intuition warned me that questions I might ask about her dog would take us places I could not bear to go.

  “Did you come to talk about dogs, Mr. Thomas?”

  “No, Christmas. I came to ask a favor.”

  “What favor?”

  “You know, the funny thing is, I don’t remember. Can you wait here for me, Christmas?”

  “Sure. I got a dog book.”

  I rose to my feet and said, “Sister, can we talk?”

  The mother superior and I moved to the farther end of the room, and confident that we could not manhandle him, the Russian joined us.

  In a voice almost a whisper, I said, “Ma’am … what happened to this girl … what did she have to endure?”

  She said, “We don’t discuss the children’s histories with just anyone,” and fried the Russian with a meaningful look.

  “I am many things,” said Romanovich, “but not a gossip.”

  “Or a librarian,” said Sister Angela.

  “Ma’am, there’s a chance maybe this girl can help me learn what is coming—and save all of us. But I’m … afraid.”

  “Of what, Oddie?”

  “Of what this girl might have endured.”

  Sister Angela brooded for a moment, and then said, “She lived with her parents and grandparents, all in one house. Her cousin came around one night. Nineteen. A problem boy, and high on something.”

  I knew she was not a naïf, but I didn’t want to see her saying what surely she would say. I closed my eyes.

  “Her cousin shot them all. Grandparents and parents. Then he spent some time … sodomizing the girl. She was seven.”

  They are something, these nuns. All in white, they go down into the dirt of the world, and they pull out of it what is precious, and they shine it up again as best they can. Clear-eyed, over and over again, they go down into the dirt of the world, and they have hope always, and if ever they are afraid, they do not show it.

  “When the drugs wore off,” she said, “he knew he’d be caught, so he took the coward’s way. In the garage, he fixed a hose to the exhaust pipe, opened a window just wide enough to slip the hose into the car. And he took the girl into the car with him. He would not leave her only as damaged as she was. He had to take her with him.”

  There is no end to the wailing of senseless rebell
ion, to the elevation of self above all, the narcissism that sees the face of any authority only in the mirror.

  “Then he chickened out,” Sister Angela continued. “He left her alone in the car and went in the house to call nine-one-one. He told them he had attempted suicide and his lungs burned. He was short of breath and wanted help. Then he sat down to wait for the paramedics.”

  I opened my eyes to take strength from hers. “Ma’am, once last night and once today, someone on the Other Side, someone I know, tried to reach me through Justine. I think to warn me what’s coming.”

  “I see. I think I see. No, all right. God help me, I accept it. Go on.”

  “There’s this thing I can do with a coin or a locket on a chain, or with most anything bright. I learned it from a magician friend. I can induce a mild hypnosis.”

  “To what purpose?”

  “A child who’s been dead and revived is maybe like a bridge between this world and the next. Relaxed, in a light hypnosis, she might be a voice for that person on the Other Side who wasn’t able to speak to me through Justine.”

  Sister Angela’s face clouded. “But the Church discourages an interest in the occult. And how traumatic would this be for the child?”

  I took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m not going to do it, Sister. I just want you to understand that maybe, doing this, I could learn what’s coming, and so maybe I should do it. But I’m too weak. I’m scared, and I’m weak.”

  “You’re not weak, Oddie. I know you better than that.”

  “No, ma’am. I’m failing you here. I can’t handle this … with Christmas over there and her heart so full of dogs. It’s too much.”

  “There’s something I don’t understand about this,” she said. “What don’t I know?”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t think how to explain the situation.

  After retrieving his fur-trimmed coat from Paulette’s bed, Romanovich said in a rough whisper, “Sister, you know that Mr. Thomas lost one who was most dear to him.”

  “Yes, Mr. Romanovich, I am aware of that,” she said.

  “Mr. Thomas saved many people that day but was not able to save her. She was a girl with black hair and dark eyes, and skin like this girl here.”

  He was making connections that could only be made if he knew much more about my loss than was in the press.