Saint Odd

I felt there was something sacred about that breakfast; but at the time, I could not have explained what I meant. The air was dry and warm, with the faintest breeze to keep it fresh, and scattered through the oaken shade, across the ground and the table and the three of us, glimmered treasures minted by the sun, coins of golden light, and in the trees song sparrows and western meadowlarks trilled, but it wasn’t the place and its atmosphere that hallowed the moment. Neither was it the sumptuous meal nor the memories that we shared, nor the fact that we were at last in one another’s company again. All of those things contributed to the mood, but the heart of the moment, the truest reason that it felt so pure to me and seemed to have special meaning, remained elusive. Indeed, it would continue to elude me the entire time I spent in Pico Mundo.

When we got around to talking about why I had returned to town, the mood darkened.

The chief said, “We’ve been up against their kind before, this same madness, and we took losses, but we’re still here.”

Ozzie shook his head, and his extra chins trembled. “We can’t endure more losses like those at Green Moon Mall. This is a town with spirit, but if it takes too many hits to the heart, it’ll never be the same. Any town can die without actually drying up and blowing away. It can be as dead as a ghost town even with people still living in it.”

Gazing into his mug as if he were a Gypsy and as if coffee could be read like the remnants of tea, the chief said, “They won’t make a fool of me like the others did.”

“Wyatt Porter, you were never a fool,” Ozzie declared in a tone of voice that did not invite debate. “Every man is outfoxed sooner or later, about one thing or another. If criminals were never cunning enough to deceive the authorities, every cop’s job would be nothing but make-work, and nobody would want to read my crime novels.”

I said, “Whatever they’re planning, they intend it to be the biggest news of the year. And they’re not just wannabe satanists like those the summer before last. These fruitcakes who nearly put an end to me in Nevada are members of a cult first founded back in 1580 in Oxford, England.”

“Fanatics with a long heritage of lunacy,” Ozzie noted, “tend to be formidable. Their zeal is frenzied, but over generations they have learned to control and focus it.”

“They’re formidable,” I assured him. “They’re devoted to the demon Meridian, and though that sounds loopy, they’re serious. It’s not just fanboy stuff with them, not just freaky costumes, spooky altars with black candles, ritual sex and ritual murder. They don’t just celebrate evil, they work hard to bring more of it into the world, to bring upon the world a tidal wave of horror that’ll wash hope out of it forever.”

Evidently Chief Porter had lost his appetite, because he stared at the unfinished cinnamon roll on his plate as if it were a rotting fish. “Why can’t the bad guys be satisfied with just robbing a bank or sticking up a liquor store?”

“You have plenty of that kind of thing to deal with, sir. Think of this as just a little variety.”

He shook his head. “No, year by year, there’s less of the your-money-or-your-life kind of thing, less grab-the-purse-and-run, less normal crime. Guys who once broke the speed limit by ten or fifteen miles an hour—I’m talking ordinary Joes here, not drug runners or coyotes transporting illegal aliens—these days some of the idiots do ninety in a forty zone. When you try to pull them over, they make a run for it, though running makes no sense, ’cause we’ve got their license-plate number. They think they’re stunt drivers, masters of evasion, and then they take out a schoolgirl in a crosswalk or an entire family in a van.”

The direction of our conversation hadn’t affected Ozzie’s appetite. As he lavished butter on a cinnamon roll, he said, “Perhaps it’s the YouTube effect. These police chases rack up a lot of views. Everyone wants a taste of fame.”

“It’s not just that,” Chief Porter said. “A guy who once would have raped and killed a woman, now a lot of times he also has to cut off her lips and mail them to us or take her eyes for a souvenir and keep them in his freezer at home. There’s more flamboyant craziness these days.”

Giving the buttered cinnamon roll a reprieve, Ozzie said, “Maybe it’s all these superhero movies with all their supervillains. Some psychopath who used to be satisfied raping and murdering, these days he thinks that he should be in a Batman movie, he wants to be the Joker or the Penguin.”

“No real-life bad guy wants to be the Penguin,” I assured him.

“Norman Bates was happy just dressing up like his mother and stabbing people,” Chief Porter said, “but Hannibal Lecter has to cut off their faces and eat their livers with fava beans. The role models have become more intense.”

“I’m not sure it’s the role models,” Ozzie said. “Maybe it’s more related to the pace of change in recent years. Centuries-old ways of looking at the world, centuries-old rules, are jettisoned seemingly overnight. Traditions are mocked and banished. A man—or woman—with an unstable mind sees things falling apart. ‘The center cannot hold; / mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.’ To a psychopath, anarchy is exciting, the chaotic world reflects his chaotic interior life, confirms his conviction that anything should be allowed, that he can rightly do whatever he wants.”

Chief Porter finished the cold coffee in his mug and grimaced either at the bitterness of it or at the subject under discussion. “For those of us with our boots on the ground, it doesn’t matter what the causes. We’re too busy dealing with the effects.” He looked as weary as anyone I’d ever seen when he said, “Oddie, what should I be doing to stop whatever’s coming? What do you need from me?”

“I don’t know yet, sir. We just learned they’re planning this for May, possibly this week.”

“‘We’?” The chief looked puzzled. “You have a new posse?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“Other law enforcement?”

“Not exactly.”

“When do I meet them?”

“At the right time. You’ve got to trust me on this, Chief. I don’t like keeping anything from you, but that’s how it has to be right now.”

“This is my town to protect, son. I don’t tolerate vigilantes.”

“No, sir. That’s not what this is.”

We engaged in a staring contest, after which he sighed and said, “If I can’t trust you, I can’t trust myself. Forget your posse for now. What more do you know about the bad guys?”

“All I have is three names. Wolfgang, Jonathan, Selene. Those might not even be their real names. I never saw their faces. I’ll let you know the moment I have any kind of useful lead.”

Having presented his theories of societal collapse, Ozzie now addressed the buttered sweet roll rather than the chief or me—“Lovely”—and set about devouring it.

“Where are you staying?” Chief Porter asked.

“Not with any old friends in town. I won’t put them at risk.”

“Karla misses you, son. She’d love to see you.”

Karla was the chief’s wife, a kind and gracious lady who treated me far better than my real mother ever did.

“I’d love to see her, too, sir. We’ll get together soon. When this is over.”

My words drew Ozzie’s attention from the cinnamon roll. “So you didn’t come home to die.”

I could have said to them that the prospect of my death wasn’t what brought me home to Pico Mundo, but that were Death to find me in the course of this mission, I would have no regrets and, more to the point, would go through that dark door with more gratitude than fear. They might interpret those words as proof of a suicidal disposition. I was not suicidal, however, only full of longing for the girl whom I’d lost. No need to worry my closest friends.

And so I said, “No, sir. I came home because I’m needed here—and because she’s here.”

In spite of my assurances, Ozzie appeared no less worried. “Her ashes, you mean.”

“Yes. And in a way, her, too. All my memories of her are here.”

My surrogate fathers exchanged meaningful looks, but neither of them said anything. I figured they would be on their phones with each other by the time they left the park for the state highway.

We packed the chafing dishes and plates and utensils and leftover food in boxes and coolers, and we loaded them into the spacious trunk of Ozzie’s customized Cadillac.

“Not the remaining strawberries,” Ozzie said, taking possession of that bowl at the last minute. “A weary traveler needs a snack to see him through a tedious journey.”

“You’ll be home in fifteen minutes, sir.”

“By the most direct series of streets, yes. But I may choose to take the scenic route.”

“You didn’t have to do all this,” Chief Porter said to him. “A box of doughnuts would have been enough.”

Ozzie pursed his lips and frowned in disapproval. “Doughnuts for a police officer would be such a cliché. I make an effort to avoid clichés in my life every bit as much as I eschew them in my books.”

Although he was a warm-hearted man, Wyatt Porter had never been as much of a hugger as Ozzie Boone. He wanted a hug anyway.

I said, “Be sure to tell Karla I love her, and tell her not to worry about me.”

“It’s good to have you back, son. I hope your days of wandering are all behind you.”

I watched them drive away.

My attention was drawn to the lake by a sudden thrumming of wings and a chorus of low hoarse croaks. Eight or ten migrating egrets touched down where beach met water and spread out along the shore, each respecting the other’s hunting grounds. More than three feet tall, white but for their yellow bills and skinny black legs, moving slowly and with solemn deliberation, they stalked the shallows for their breakfast. They speared small wriggling fish from the water and tilted their heads to let the catch slide, still alive, down their long, sleek throats, and I wondered if even in the small brain of a little fish there might be a capacity for terror.

Eleven

THE NIGHT BEFORE MY RETURN TO PICO MUNDO. The seaside cottage where I and Annamaria and young Tim slept in separate rooms. Windows open for the sea air. Borne on that faintest of breezes came the lulling susurration of the gentle surf breaking on the shore.

In the still and ordered cottage, I endured a dream of chaos and cacophony. Shrill screams of terror, screams of glee. Through smears of light that blur my vision, faces leer, loom, but then swoon from me. Hands pulling, pushing, plucking, slapping. Through it all the eerie tortured wail and bleat and churr and howl that might have been what passed for music in an alien world without harmony.

Although I’d never been drunk in my life, I seemed to be drunk in the dream, reeling across ground that yawed like the deck of a storm-tossed ship. Wrapped in my arms, held to my chest: an urn, a mortuary urn. I heard myself calling Stormy’s name, but this was not the urn that held her ashes. Somehow, I knew this urn contained the remains of dead people beyond counting.

Ribbons of darkness suddenly wound through the whirl of blurring light, so that I feared that blindness would overcome me. The booming of my heart grew louder, louder, until it exceeded in volume the hundred other sources of dissonance combined.

Out of the seething crowd, out of the light and the darkness, came Blossom Rosedale, the one and only Happy Monster, which was a name that she had given herself, not because she loathed the way she looked but because she was truly happy in spite of all her suffering.

Without realizing that I had staggered to a genuflection, I was on one knee when her left hand—scarred by fire, lacking all digits other than the thumb and forefinger—cupped my chin and lifted my bowed head, bringing me face-to-face with her. She said with great emotion, “Oddie, no. Oh, no, no.”

I had met her in Magic Beach, back in January; we had quickly become fast friends, each of us a different kind of outsider. Forty-five years earlier, when she’d been only six, her drunken father had in a fit of rage dropped her headfirst into a barrel of trash that he had set afire with a little kerosene. She toppled the barrel and crawled out, but by then she was aflame. Surgeons saved one ear and somewhat rebuilt her nose, reconstructed her lips. She had no hair thereafter, and her face remained seamed and puckered by terrible keloid scars that no surgeon could smooth away.

Never before had I dreamed of Blossom, but emerging from the chaos of this nightmare, she helped me to my feet and said that I should lean on her. For reasons I didn’t understand, I warned her away, insisted that I would be the death of anyone near me. But she would not be dissuaded. Although she was but five feet tall and more than twice my age, she gave me the strength that I needed to lurch forward through the growing bedlam, through the blurred dream light and gyrating dream shadows, through the screaming multitude, toward what I could not guess, toward what proved to be the amaranth.

Twelve

THE OLD BUT WELL-KEPT HOUSE STOOD ON three or four acres beyond the city limits of Pico Mundo, a two-story Victorian structure with a deep front porch and lots of gingerbread, painted white with pale-blue trim. A long blacktop driveway led between colonnades of velvet ash trees, their spring growth dulled by dust, past the house, to a long horse stable that had been converted into a garage with five double-wide doors.

As I approached the stable, one of the electrically powered doors rose, and as I slowed almost to a stop, a man stepped out of the shadowy interior, into sunlight. Tall, lean, weathered, wearing boots and jeans and a checkered shirt and a cowboy hat, he would have fit right into any Western that John Ford ever directed. He waved me into the garage, and I parked the Big Dog where he indicated.

As I took off my helmet and goggles, the cowboy introduced himself. He appeared to be as trim and fit as a man in his forties, but a life outdoors had given him an older face, seamed and as tanned as saddle leather. “Name’s Deacon Bullock, born and raised a Texan, lately of Pico Mundo. It’s a five-star honor to meet you.”

“I’m just a fry cook, sir.” I put the helmet and goggles on the seat of the bike. I shook his hand. “There’s no great honor in it.”

Every one of the many lines in his face conspired to be part of his smile. “I know your selfsame history, son. Don’t be hidin’ your light under a bushel.”

“I don’t need a bushel,” I assured him. “A paper cup will do.”

“You wasn’t followed?”

“No, sir.”

“You’d bet an ear on that?”

“I’d bet them both.”

“This here’s a safe house where our folks can hide out, and we mean to keep it safe. You been given a phone we tinkered with?”

I produced my jacket from one of the saddlebags, took the smartphone from the jacket, and handed it to him.

When Mr. Bullock activated the phone, the first thing that appeared on the screen wasn’t the name of a service provider or phone manufacturer, but instead a single thick exclamation mark in gold against a black background. It remained there until he entered a five-number code, and then the exclamation point was replaced by a photograph of my smiling face. He nodded, satisfied. After switching the phone off, he returned it to me.

“You understand, son, it don’t transmit your location when you use it, like all them other dang phones do. And it don’t identify the owner. Any call you got to make or text message you got to send, or any web surfin’ you got to do while you’re on this here property—or off it, for that matter—you use only this one phone.”

“It’s the only one I have, sir. Mrs. Fischer gave it to me.”

“The head honcho herself. All right, then. I’m told you travel light as a mayfly, but you must have yourself some luggage.”

“Yes, sir.” From the compartment in which I’d stowed the jacket, I retrieved a zippered leather kit that contained my electric razor and toiletries, and from the other saddlebag on the Big Dog, I took a matching soft-sided overnight bag that contained a pair of jeans, a couple of T-shirts, spare underwear, socks. “Somehow they learned what I’d be riding. We had a little confrontation a few hours back. The bike is hot.”

“So then we’ll shred her and melt her down.”

When I realized he was serious, I said, “Isn’t that a little extreme?”

“Not when you’re dealin’ with them folks.”

I looked at the beautiful Big Dog. “Sad.”

“Let me help with that,” Mr. Bullock said, and took the bag from me. “Nothin’ I hate worse than bein’ useless.” As I closed the lid of the saddlebag, he said, “So I’m given to understand you don’t have yourself a suitable gun.”

“Neither suitable nor unsuitable, sir.”

His eyes were blue, and when he narrowed them, they seemed to grow brighter, as if his squint compressed the color in them. “How come you rode through all that dangerous habitat of schemin’ men and all that wasteland crawlin’ with snakes and beasts, and you with no dang gun?”

“I don’t like guns, Mr. Bullock.”

“You don’t need to like one to know you got to have it. I don’t like gettin’ a colonoscopy every five years, but I grit my teeth and drop my drawers and get it done just the same.”

“I’ve never had a colonoscopy, either.”

“Well, you’re not of an age to need one. That there’s a joyful experience you got to earn by livin’ to my age. Anyways, around this here safe house, everyone’s got to have themselves a firearm, not just to keep in a drawer, but to carry at all times. Once we get you settled in, I’ll fix you up with the very thing you need. You had yourself some breakfast yet?”

“More than some, sir. Just need a bed. I didn’t sleep last night.”

“Then bring yourself on in the house and meet Maybelle. She’s my missus. You’ll like her. Everybody does. She’s a peach. We haven’t enjoyed a bit of company since that astronaut had to hide out here while we worked up a convincin’ new identity for him. Maybelle’s starved for better company than me.”

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