Odd Thomas: An Odd Thomas Novel by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz [Koontz, Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Horror, Fiction, General, Thrillers, Fantasy
ISBN: 0553840479
Amazon: B000T8F50S
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 2007-06-29T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 30

THE MOJAVE HAD STOPPED BREATHING. THE dead lungs of the desert no longer exhaled the lazy breeze that had accompanied Stormy and me on our walk to her apartment.

By streets and alleyways, along a footpath bisecting a vacant lot, through a drainage culvert dry for months, and then to streets again, I made my way home at a brisk pace.

Bodachs were abroad.

First I saw them at a distance, a dozen or more, racing on all fours. When they passed through dark places, they were discernible only as a tumult of shadows, but street-lights and gatepost lamps revealed them for what they were. Their lithe motion and menacing posture brought to mind panthers in pursuit of prey.

A two-story Georgian house on Hampton Way was a bodach magnet. As I passed, staying to the far side of the street, I saw twenty or thirty inky forms, some arriving and others departing by cracks in window frames and chinks in door jambs.

Under the porch light, one of them thrashed and writhed as if in the throes of madness. Then it funneled itself through the keyhole in the front door.

Two others, exiting the residence, strained themselves through the screen that covered an attic vent. As comfortable on vertical surfaces as any spider, they crawled down the wall of the house to the porch roof, crossed the roof, and sprang to the front lawn.

This was the home of the Takuda family, Ken and Micali, and their three children. No lights brightened any windows. The Takudas were asleep, unaware that a swarm of malevolent spirits, quieter than cockroaches, crawled through their rooms and observed them in their dreaming.

I could only assume that one of the Takudas—or all of them—were destined to die this very day, in whatever violent incident had drawn the bodachs to Pico Mundo in great numbers.

Experience had taught me that these spirits often gathered at the site of forthcoming horror, as at the Buena Vista Nursing Home before the earthquake. In this case, however, I didn’t believe that the Takudas would perish in their home any more than I expected that Viola and her daughters would die in their picturesque bungalow.

The bodachs were not concentrated in one place this time. They were all over town, and from their unusually wide disbursement and their behavior, I deduced that they were visiting the potential victims prior to gathering at the place where the bloodshed would occur. Call this the pregame show.

I hurried away from the Takuda house and didn’t glance back, concerned that the slightest attention I paid to these creatures would alert them to the fact that I could see them.

On Eucalyptus Way, other bodachs had invaded the home of Morris and Rachel Melman.

Since Morrie had retired as the superintendent of the Pico Mundo School District, he’d stopped resisting his circadian rhythms and had embraced the fact that he was a night lover by nature. He spent these quiet hours in the pursuit of various hobbies and interests. While Rachel slept in the dark upstairs, warm light brightened the lower floor.

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