Odd Apocalypse: An Odd Thomas Novel by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz [Koontz, Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Horror, Fiction, General, Thrillers, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780345533586
Amazon: B0064C3TWE
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 2012-07-30T05:00:00+00:00

Twenty-nine

Stepping through that end door, I seemed to be in a different building from Noah Wolflaw’s elegant mansion. The large rectangular room had a plasterboard ceiling and beadboard walls, all painted white. Set in two pairs in the farther wall, the four windows were covered by oilcloth shades hung on old-fashioned roller bars.

In one corner stood a wooden cabinet with a metal sink on top. On one side of the sink was a lever-action, cast-iron hand pump to draw water from a well.

A large oak desk backed up to each set of the windows, and on each desk was a work lamp with a green-glass shade. The office chairs were entirely of oak, with hard-rubber wheels on steel-shank castors. They were in fine condition but looked a hundred years old.

On each desk stood also a candlestick phone of brass painted matte black, with the mouthpiece at the top, the earpiece on a cord and hanging from a cradle, and an early rotary dial on the base.

Along the shorter walls were oak filing cabinets and what seemed to be a map chest with wide, shallow drawers. In the open part of the room, two draftsman tables stood back-to-back, with oak stools, and to the right of them was a large oak table high enough that you would have to stand at it to work.

On the tall table lay a four-inch-thick set of blueprints bound on the left. The cover page presented a pen-and-ink rendering of the main house as it would appear when viewed from the west. Under that superb drawing, the name ROSELAND was handsomely hand-lettered. And in the title block at the bottom, to the left, were the words CONSTANTINE CLOYCE RESIDENCE.

This appeared to be the room in which the original contractor and perhaps an on-site architect worked back in the day when Roseland was being built. It must have been the first thing constructed, and the meticulous preservation of the space suggested that Constantine Cloyce, the press baron and silent-movie mogul, intended to create an estate that would have the historic importance of someplace like the Hearst Castle.

The only things this space had in common with the rest of the house were the concrete floor, in which were embedded copper circles etched with elongated eights, and the dustless, ageless quality of a hermetically sealed exhibit in a museum.

As I toured the room, I was suddenly drawn to reconsider the oilcloth-covered windows because I realized there should be none in a basement room. Putting down the pillowcase containing the hacksaw, leaning across one of the desks, I pinched the ring pull and put up the shade.

The view beyond the window stunned me, and I stood paralyzed by disbelief. When I could think to move, I went to the other desk, reached across it, and put up the shade at the second window, as if I hoped to find a different scene or the blank basement wall that should have been there. The same vista greeted me.

In addition to the door by which I’d entered, another waited in what would be the west wall, flanked by the desks.

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