Transcript
Dean Koontz is the author of more than a dozen New York
Times No.1 bestsellers. His books have sold over 450 million
copies worldwide, a figure that increases by more than
17 million copies per year, and his work is published in
38 languages.
He was born and raised in Pennsylvania and lives with
his wife Gerda and their dog Anna in southern California.
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 1
22/11/2012 08:43
Also by Dean Koontz
77 Shadow Street • What the Night Knows • Breathless
Relentless • Your Heart Belongs to Me
The Darkest Evening of the Year • The Good Guy
The Husband • Velocity • Life Expectancy • The Taking
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
ODD THOMAS
Odd Thomas • Forever Odd • Brother Odd
Odd Hours • Odd Interlude • Deeply Odd
FRANKENSTEIN
Prodigal Son
•
City of Night
Lost Souls
•
•
Dead and Alive
The Dead Town
A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog Named Trixie
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 2
22/11/2012 08:43
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 3
22/11/2012 08:43
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are
the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to
actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is
entirely coincidental.
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
77–85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
This paperback edition 2013
1
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012
Copyright © Dean Koontz 2012
Dean Koontz asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-00-732702-7
Typeset in Old Style 7 by Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives Plc
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the publishers.
™
™
FSC™ is a non-profit international organisation established to promote
FSC™ is a non-profit
organisation
established
the responsibleinternational
management of the world’s
forests. Products
carrying the to promote
FSC
label are independently
certified
to assure consumers
they come carrying the
the responsible management
of the
world’s
forests.thatProducts
from forests that are managed to meet the social, economic and
FSC label are independently
certified
to
assure
consumers
that they come
ecological needs of present and future generations,
from forests that are managed
to meet
the social, economic and
and other controlled
sources.
ecological needs of present and future generations,
Find out more about HarperCollins and the environment at
andwww.harpercollins.co.uk/green
other controlled sources.
Find out more about HarperCollins and the environment at
www.harpercollins.co.uk/green
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 4
22/11/2012 08:43
To Jeff Zaleski,
with gratitude for
his insight and integrity.
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 5
22/11/2012 08:43
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 6
22/11/2012 08:43
From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were – I have not seen
As others saw.
—Edgar Allan Poe, “Alone”
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 7
22/11/2012 08:43
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 8
22/11/2012 08:43
One
NEAR SUNSET OF MY SECOND FULL DAY AS A
guest in Roseland, crossing the immense lawn between
the main house and the eucalyptus grove, I halted and
pivoted, warned by instinct. Racing toward me, the great
black stallion was as mighty a horse as I had ever seen.
Earlier, in a book of breeds, I had identified it as a
Friesian. The blonde who rode him wore a white
nightgown.
As silent as any spirit, the woman urged the horse
forward, faster. On hooves that made no sound, the steed
ran through me with no effect.
I have certain talents. In addition to being a pretty good
short-order cook, I have an occasional prophetic dream.
And in the waking world, I sometimes see the spirits of
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 1
22/11/2012 08:43
2 De an Ko o n tz
the lingering dead who, for various reasons, are reluctant
to move on to the Other Side.
This long-dead horse and rider, now only spirits in our
world, knew that no one but I could see them. After
appearing to me twice the previous day and once this
morning, but at a distance, the woman seemed to have
decided to get my attention in an aggressive fashion.
Mount and mistress raced around me in a wide arc. I
turned to follow them, and they cantered toward me once
more but then halted. The stallion reared over me, silently
slashing the air with the hooves of its forelegs, nostrils
flared, eyes rolling, a creature of such immense power that
I stumbled backward even though I knew that it was as
immaterial as a dream.
Spirits are solid and warm to my touch, as real to me
in that way as is anyone alive. But I am not solid to them,
and they can neither ruffle my hair nor strike a death blow
at me.
Because my sixth sense complicates my existence, I try
otherwise to keep my life simple. I have fewer possessions
than a monk. I have no time or peace to build a career as
a fry cook or as anything else. I never plan for the future,
but wander into it with a smile on my face, hope in my
heart, and the hair up on the nape of my neck.
Bareback on the Friesian, the barefoot beauty wore
white silk and white lace and wild red ribbons of blood
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 2
22/11/2012 08:43
Odd Apocalypse 3
both on her gown and in her long blond hair, though I
could see no wound. Her nightgown was rucked up to her
thighs, and her knees pressed against the stallion’s heaving
sides. In her left hand, she twined a fistful of the horse’s
mane, as if even in death she must hold fast to her mount
to keep their spirits joined.
If spurning a gift weren’t ungrateful, I would at once
return my supernatural sight. I would be content to spend
my days whipping up omelets that make you groan with
pleasure and pancakes so fluffy that the slightest breeze
might float them off your plate.
Every talent is unearned, however, and with it comes a
solemn obligation to use it as fully and as wisely as possible.
If I didn’t believe in the miraculous nature of talent and
in the sacred duty of the recipient, by now I would have
gone so insane that I’d qualify for numerous high government positions.
As the stallion danced on its hind legs, the woman
reached out with her right arm and pointed down at me,
as if to say that she knew I saw her and that she had a
message to convey to me. Her lovely face was grim with
determination, and those cornflower-blue eyes that were
not bright with life were nonetheless bright with anguish.
When she dismounted, she didn’t drop to the ground
but instead floated off the horse and almost seemed to glide
across the grass to me. The blood faded from her hair and
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 3
22/11/2012 08:43
4 De an Ko o n tz
nightgown, and she manifested as she had looked in life
before her fatal wounds, as if she might be concerned that
the gore would repel me. I felt her touch when she put one
hand to my face, as though she, a ghost, had more difficulty
believing in me than I had believing in her.
Behind the woman, the sun melted into the distant sea,
and several distinctively shaped clouds glowed like a fleet
of ancient warships with their masts and sails ablaze.
As I saw her anguish relent to a tentative hope, I said,
“Yes, I can see you. And if you’ll let me, I can help you
cross over.”
She shook her head violently and took a step backward,
as if she feared that with some touch or spoken spell I might
release her from this world. But I have no such power.
I thought I understood the reason for her reaction. “You
were murdered, and before you go from this world, you
want to be sure that justice will be done.”
She nodded but then shook her head, as if to say, Yes,
but not only that.
Being more familiar with the deceased than I might
wish to be, I can tell you from considerable personal experi
ence that the spirits of the lingering dead don’t talk. I don’t
know why. Even when they have been brutally murdered
and are desperate to see their assailants brought to justice,
they are unable to convey essential information to me either
by phone or face-to-face. Neither do they send text
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 4
22/11/2012 08:43
Odd Apocalypse 5
messages. Maybe that’s because, given the opportunity,
they would reveal something about death and the world
beyond that we the living are not meant to know.
Anyway, the dead can be even more frustrating to deal
with than are many of the living, which is astonishing
when you consider that it’s the living who run the
Department of Motor Vehicles.
Shadowless in the last direct light of the drowning sun,
the Friesian stood with head high, as proud as any patriot
before the sight of a beloved flag. But his only flag was
the golden hair of his mistress. He grazed no more in this
place but reserved his appetite for Elysian fields.
Approaching me again, the blonde stared at me so
intensely that I could feel her desperation. She formed a
cradle with her arms and rocked it back and forth.
I said, “A baby?”
Yes.
“Your baby?”
She nodded but then shook her head.
Brow furrowed, biting her lower lip, the woman hesitated before holding out one hand, palm down, perhaps
four and a half feet above the ground.
Practiced as I am at spirit charades, I figured that she
must be indicating the current height of the baby whom
she’d once borne, not an infant now but perhaps nine or
ten years old. “Not your baby any longer. Your child.”
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 5
22/11/2012 08:43
6 De an Ko o n tz
She nodded vigorously.
“Your child still lives?”
Yes.
“Here in Roseland?”
Yes, yes, yes.
Ablaze in the western sky, those ancient warships built
of clouds were burning down from fiery orange to bloody
red as the heavens slowly darkened toward purple.
When I asked if her child was a girl or a boy, she indicated
the latter.
Although I knew of no children on this estate, I considered
the anguish that carved her face, and I asked the most
obvious question: “And your son is . . . what? In trouble
here?”
Yes, yes, yes.
Far to the east of the main house in Roseland, out of
sight beyond a hurst of live oaks, was a riding ring bristling
with weeds. A half-collapsed ranch fence encircled it.
The stables, however, looked as if they had been built
last week. Curiously, all the stalls were spotless; not one
piece of straw or a single cobweb could be found, no dust,
as though the place was thoroughly scrubbed on a regular
basis. Judging by that tidiness, and by a smell as crisp and
pure as that of a winter day after a snowfall, no horses
had been kept there in decades; evidently, the woman in
white had been dead a long time.
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 6
22/11/2012 08:43
Odd Apocalypse 7
How, then, could her child be only nine or ten?
Some spirits are exhausted or at least taxed by lengthy
contact, and they fade away for hours or days before they
renew their power to manifest. This woman seemed to
have a strong will that would maintain her apparition. But
suddenly, as the air shimmered and a strange sour-yellow
light flooded across the land, she and the stallion—which
perhaps had been killed in the same event that claimed
the life of his mistress—were gone. They didn’t fade or
wither from the edges toward the center, as some other
displaced souls occasionally did, but vanished in the instant
that the light changed.
Precisely when the red dusk became yellow, a wind
sprang out of the west, lashing the eucalyptus grove far
behind me, rustling through the California live oaks to the
south, and blustering my hair into my eyes.
I looked into a sky where the sun had not quite yet gone
down, as if some celestial timekeeper had wound the cosmic
clock backward a few minutes.
That impossibility was exceeded by another. Yellow
from horizon to horizon, without the grace of a single cloud,
the heavens were ribboned with what appeared to be highaltitude rivers of smoke or soot. Gray currents streaked
through with black. Moving at tremendous velocity. They
widened, narrowed, serpentined, sometimes merged, but
came apart again.
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 7
22/11/2012 08:43
8 De an Ko o n tz
I had no way of knowing what those rivers were, but
the sight strummed a dark chord of intuition. I suspected
that high above me raced torrents of ashes, soot, and fine
debris that had once been cities, metropolises pulverized
by explosions unprecedented in power and number, then
vomited high into the atmosphere, caught and held in
orbit by the jet stream, by the many jet streams of a wartransformed troposphere.
My waking visions are even rarer than my prophetic
dreams. When one afflicts me, I am aware that it’s an
internal event, occurring only in my mind. But this spectacle of wind and baleful light and horrific patterns in the
sky was no vision. It was as real as a kick in the groin.
Clenched like a fist, my heart pounded, pounded, as across
the yellow vault came a flock of creatures like nothing I had
seen in flight before. Their true nature was not easily
discerned. They were larger than eagles but seemed more
like bats, many hundreds of them, incoming from the northwest, descending as they approached. As my heart pounded
harder, it seemed that my reason must be knocking to be let
out so that the madness of this scene could fully invade me.
Be assured that I am not insane, neither as a serial killer
is insane nor in the sense that a man is insane who wears
a colander as a hat to prevent the CIA from controlling
his mind. I dislike hats of any kind, though I have nothing
against colanders properly used.
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 8
22/11/2012 08:43
Odd Apocalypse 9
I have killed more than once, but always in self-defense
or to protect the innocent. Such killing cannot be called
murder. If you think that it is murder, you’ve led a sheltered life, and I envy you.
Unarmed and greatly outnumbered by the incoming
swarm, not sure if they were intent upon destroying me or
oblivious of my existence, I had no illusions that self-defense
might be possible. I turned and ran down the long slope
toward the eucalyptus grove that sheltered the guesthouse
where I was staying.
The impossibility of my predicament didn’t inspire
the briefest hesitation. Now within two months of my
twenty-second birthday, I had been marinated for most
of my life in the impossible, and I knew that the true
nature of the world was weirder than any bizarre fabric
that anyone’s mind might weave from the warp and weft
of imagination’s loom.
As I raced eastward, breaking into a sweat as much
from fear as from exertion, behind and above me arose the
shrill cries of the flock and then the leathery flapping of
their wings. Daring to glance back, I saw them rocking
through the turbulent wind, their eyes as yellow as the
hideous sky. They funneled toward me as though some
master to which they answered had promised to work a
dark version of the miracle of loaves and fishes, making
of me an adequate meal for these multitudes.
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 9
22/11/2012 08:43
10 De an Ko o n tz
When the air shimmered and the yellow light was
replaced by red, I stumbled, fell, and rolled onto my back.
Raising my hands to ward off the ravenous horde, I found
the sky familiar and nothing winging through it except a
pair of shore birds in the distance.
I was back in the Roseland where the sun had set, where
the sky was largely purple, and where the once-blazing
galleons in the air had burned down to sullen red.
Gasping for breath, I got to my feet and watched for a
moment as the celestial sea turned black and the last embers
of the cloud ships sank into the rising stars.
Although I was not afraid of the night, prudence argued
that I would not be wise to linger in it. I continued toward
the eucalyptus grove.
The transformed sky and the winged menace, as well
as the spirits of the woman and her horse, had given me
something to think about. Considering the unusual nature
of my life, I need not worry that, when it comes to food
for thought, I will ever experience famine.
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 10
22/11/2012 08:43
Two
AFTER THE WOMAN, THE HORSE, AND THE yellow
sky, I didn’t think I would sleep that night. Lying awake in
low lamplight, I found my thoughts following morbid paths.
We are buried when we’re born. The world is a place
of graves occupied and graves potential. Life is what
happens while we wait for our appointment with the
mortician.
Although it is demonstrably true, you are no more likely
to see that sentiment on a Starbucks cup than you are the
words coffee kills.
Even before coming to Roseland, I had been in a mood.
I was sure I’d cheer up soon. I always do. Regardless of
what horror transpires, given a little time, I am as reliably
buoyant as a helium balloon.
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 11
22/11/2012 08:43
12 De an Ko o n tz
I don’t know the reason for that buoyancy. Understanding
it might be a key part of my life assignment. Perhaps when
I realize why I can find humor in the darkest of darknesses,
the mortician will call my number and the time will have
come to choose my casket.
Actually, I don’t expect to have a casket. The Celestial
Office of Life Themes—or whatever it might be called—
seems to have decided that my journey through this world
will be especially complicated by absurdity and violence
of the kind in which the human species takes such pride.
Consequently, I’ll probably be torn limb from limb by an
angry mob of antiwar protesters and thrown on a bonfire.
Or I’ll be struck down by a Rolls-Royce driven by an
advocate for the poor.
Certain that I wouldn’t sleep, I slept.
At four o’clock that February morning, I was deep in
disturbing dreams of Auschwitz.
My characteristic buoyancy would not occur just yet.
I woke to a familiar cry from beyond the half-open
window of my suite in Roseland’s guesthouse. As silvery
as the pipes in a Celtic song, the wail sewed threads of
sorrow and longing through the night and the woods. It
came again, nearer, and then a third time from a distance.
These lamentations were brief, but the previous two
days, when they woke me too near dawn, I could not sleep
anymore. The cry was like a wire in the blood, conducting
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 12
22/11/2012 08:43
Odd Apocalypse 13
a current through every artery and vein. I’d never heard a
lonelier sound, and it electrified me with a dread that I
could not explain.
In this instance, I awakened from the Nazi death camp.
I am not a Jew, but in the nightmare I was Jewish and
terrified of dying twice. Dying twice made perfect sense
in sleep, but not in the waking world, and the eerie call in
the night at once pricked the air out of the vivid dream,
which shriveled away from me.
According to the current master of Roseland and
everyone who worked for him, the source of the disturbing
cry was a loon. They were either ignorant or lying.
I didn’t mean to insult my host and his staff. After all,
I am ignorant of many things because I am required to
maintain a narrow focus. An ever-increasing number of
people seem determined to kill me, so that I need to concentrate on staying alive.
But even in the desert, where I was born and raised,
there are ponds and lakes, man-made yet adequate for
loons. Their cries were melancholy but never desolate like
this, curiously hopeful whereas these were despairing.
Roseland, a private estate, was a mile from the California
coast. But loons are loons wherever they nest; they don’t
alter their voices to conform to the landscape. They’re
birds, not politicians.
Besides, loons aren’t roosters with a timely duty. Yet
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 13
22/11/2012 08:43
14 De an Ko o n tz
this wailing came between midnight and dawn, not thus
far in sunlight. And it seemed to me that the earlier it came
in the new day, the more often it was repeated during the
remaining hours of darkness.
I threw back the covers, sat on the edge of the bed, and
said, “Spare me that I may serve,” which is a morning
prayer that my Granny Sugars taught me to say when I
was a little boy.
Pearl Sugars was a professional poker player who
frequently sat in private games against card sharks twice
her size, guys who didn’t lose with a smile. They didn’t
even smile when they won. My grandma was a hard
drinker. She ate a boatload of pork fat in various forms.
Only when sober, Granny Sugars drove so fast that police
in several Southwestern states knew her as Pedal-to-theMetal Pearl. Yet she lived long and died in her sleep.
I hoped her prayer worked as well for me as it did for
her; but recently I had taken to following that first request
with another. This morning, it was: “Please don’t let anyone
kill me by shoving an angry lizard down my throat.”
That might seem like a snarky request to make of God,
but a psychotic and enormous man once threatened to
force-feed me an exotic sharp-toothed lizard that was in a
frenzy after being dosed with methamphetamine. He would
have succeeded, too, if we hadn’t been on a construction
site and if I hadn’t found a way to use an insulation-foam
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 14
22/11/2012 08:43
Odd Apocalypse 15
sprayer as a weapon. He promised to track me down when
released from prison and finish the job with a different
lizard.
On other days recently, I had asked God to spare me
from death by a car-crushing machine in a salvage yard, from
death by a nail gun, from death by being chained to dead
men and dropped in a lake . . . These were ordeals that I
should not have survived in days past, and I figured that if
I ever faced one of those threats again, I wouldn’t be lucky
enough to escape the same fate twice.
My name isn’t Lucky Thomas. It’s Odd Thomas.
It really is. Odd.
My beautiful but psychotic mother claims the birth
certificate was supposed to read Todd. My father, who lusts
after teenage girls and peddles property on the moon—
though from a comfortable office here on Earth—sometimes says they meant to name me Odd.
I tend to believe my father in this matter. Although if
he isn’t lying, this might be the only entirely truthful thing
he’s ever said to me.
Having showered before retiring the previous evening,
I now dressed without delay, to be ready for . . .
whatever.
Day by day, Roseland felt more like a trap. I sensed
hidden deadfalls that might be triggered with a misstep,
bringing down a crushing weight upon me.
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 15
22/11/2012 08:43
16 De an Ko o n tz
Although I wanted to leave, I had an obligation to
remain, a duty to the Lady of the Bell. She had come with
me from Magic Beach, which lay farther north along the
coast, where I’d almost been killed in a variety of ways.
Duty doesn’t need to call; it only needs to whisper. And
if you heed the call, no matter what happens, you have no
need for regret.
Stormy Llewellyn, whom I loved and lost, believed that
this strife-torn world is boot camp, preparation for the
great adventure that comes between our first life and our
eternal life. She said that we go wrong only when we are
deaf to duty.
We are all the walking wounded in a world that is a war
zone. Everything we love will be taken from us, everything,
last of all life itself.
Yet everywhere I look, I find great beauty in this battlefield, and grace and the promise of joy.
The stone tower in the eucalyptus grove, where I
currently lived, was a thing of rough beauty, in part because
of the contrast between its solemn mass and the delicacy of
the silvery-green leaves that cascaded across the limbs
of the surrounding trees.
Square rather than columnar, thirty feet on a side, the
tower stood sixty feet high if you counted the bronze dome
but not the unusual finial that looked like the muchenlarged stem, crown, and case bow of an old pocket watch.
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 16
22/11/2012 08:43
Odd Apocalypse 17
They called the tower a guesthouse, but surely it had
not always been used for that purpose. The narrow casement windows opened inward to admit fresh air, because
vertical iron bars prevented them from opening outward.
Barred windows suggested a prison or a fortress. In
either case, an enemy was implied.
The door was ironbound timber that looked as though
it had been crafted to withstand a battering ram if not
even cannonballs. Beyond lay a stone-walled vestibule.
In the vestibule, to the left, stairs led to a higher apartment. Annamaria, the Lady of the Bell, was staying there.
The inner vestibule door, directly opposite the outer,
opened to the ground-floor unit, where the current owner
of Roseland, Noah Wolflaw, had invited me to stay.
My quarters consisted of a comfortable sitting room, a
smaller bedroom, both paneled in mahogany, and a richly
tiled bathroom that dated to the 1920s. The style was
Craftsman: heavy wood-and-cushion armchairs, trestle tables
with mortise joints and peg decoration.
I don’t know if the stained-glass lamps were genuine
Tiffany, but they might have been. Perhaps they were bought
back in the day when they weren’t yet museum pieces of
fantastic value, and they remained in this out-of-the-way
tower simply because they had always been here. One quality
of Roseland was a casual indifference to the wealth that it
represented.
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 17
22/11/2012 08:43
18 De an Ko o n tz
Each guest suite featured a kitchenette in which the
pantry and the refrigerator had been stocked with
the essentials. I could cook simple meals or have any
reasonable request filled by the estate’s chef, Mr. Shilshom,
who would send over a tray from the main house.
Breakfast more than an hour before dawn didn’t appeal
to me. I would feel like a condemned man trying to squeeze
in as many meals as possible on his last day, before submitting to a lethal injection.
Our host had warned me to remain indoors between
dusk and dawn. He claimed that one or more mountain
lions had recently been marauding through other estates
in the area, killing two dogs, a horse, and peacocks kept
as pets. The beast might be bold enough to chow down
on a wandering guest of Roseland if given a chance.
I was sufficiently informed about mountain lions to
know that they were as likely to hunt in daylight as in the
dark. I suspected that Noah Wolflaw’s warning was
intended to ensure that I would hesitate to investigate the
so-called loon and other peculiarities of Roseland by night.
Before dawn on that Monday in February, I left the
guest tower and locked the ironbound door behind me.
Both Annamaria and I had been given keys and had
been sternly instructed to keep the tower locked at all
times. When I noted that mountain lions could not turn a
knob and open a door, whether it was locked or not, Mr.
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 18
22/11/2012 08:43
Odd Apocalypse 19
Wolflaw declared that we were living in the early days of
a new dark age, that walled estates and the guarded
redoubts of the wealthy were not secure anymore, that
“bold thieves, rapists, journalists, murderous revolu
tionaries, and far worse” might turn up anywhere.
His eyes didn’t spin like pinwheels, neither did smoke curl
from his ears when he issued this warning, though his dour
expression and ominous tone struck me as cartoonish. I still
thought that he must be kidding, until I met his eyes long
enough to discern that he was as paranoid as a three-legged
cat encircled by wolves.
Whether his paranoia was justified or not, I suspected
that neither thieves nor rapists, nor journalists, nor revolutionaries were what worried him. His terror was reserved
for the undefined “far worse.”
Leaving the guest tower, I followed a flagstone footpath
through the fragrant eucalyptus grove to the brink of the
gentle slope that led up to the main house. The vast manicured
lawn before me was as smooth as carpet underfoot.
In the wild fields around the periphery of the estate,
through which I had rambled on other days, snowy woodrush
and ribbon grass and feathertop thrived among the majestic
California live oaks that seemed to have been planted in
cryptic but harmonious patterns.
No place of my experience had ever been more beautiful
than Roseland, and no place had ever felt more evil.
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 19
22/11/2012 08:43
20 De an Ko o n tz
Some people will say that a place is just a place, that
it can’t be good or evil. Others will say that evil as a real
power or entity is a hopelessly old-fashioned idea, that the
wicked acts of men and women can be explained by one
psychological theory or another.
Those are people to whom I never listen. If I listened
to them, I would already be dead.
Regardless of the weather, even under an ordinary sky,
daylight in Roseland seemed to be the product of a sun
different from the one that brightened the rest of the world.
Here, the familiar appeared strange, and even the most
solid, brightly illuminated object had the quality of a
mirage.
Afoot at night, as now, I had no sense of privacy. I felt
that I was followed, watched.
On other occasions, I had heard a rustle that the still
air could not explain, a muttered word or two not quite
comprehensible, hurried footsteps. My stalker, if I had one,
was always screened by shrubbery or by moonshadows,
or he monitored me from around a corner.
A suspicion of homicide motivated me to prowl Roseland
by night. The woman on horseback was a victim of
someone, haunting Roseland in search of justice for her
and her son.
Roseland encompassed fifty-two acres in Montecito, a
wealthy community adjacent to Santa Barbara, which itself
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 20
22/11/2012 08:43
Odd Apocalypse 21
was as far from being a shantytown as any Ritz-Carlton was
far from being mistaken for the Bates Motel in Psycho.
The original house and other buildings were constructed
in 1922 and ’23 by a newspaper mogul, Constantine Cloyce,
who was also the cofounder of one of the film industry’s
legendary studios. He had a mansion in Malibu, but
Roseland was his special retreat, an elaborate man cave
where he could engage in such masculine pursuits as horses,
skeet shooting, small-game hunting, all-night poker
sessions, and perhaps drunken head-butting contests.
Cloyce had also been an enthusiast of unusual—even
bizarre—theories ranging from those of the famous medium
and psychic Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky to those
of the world-renowned physicist and inventor Nikola Tesla.
Some believed that Cloyce, here at Roseland, had once
secretly financed research and development into such things
as death rays, contemporary approaches to alchemy, and
telephones that would allow you to talk to the dead. But
then some people also believe that Social Security is solvent.
From the edge of the eucalyptus grove, I gazed up the
long easy slope toward the main house, where Constantine
Cloyce had died in his sleep in 1948, at the age of seventy.
On the barrel-tile roof, patches of phosphorescent lichen
glowed in the moonlight.
Also in 1948, the sole heir to an immense South American
mining fortune bought Roseland completely furnished
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 21
22/11/2012 08:43
22 De an Ko o n tz
when he was just thirty and sold it, furnished, forty years
later. He was reclusive, and no one seems to have known
much about him.
At the moment, only a few second-floor windows were
warmed by light. They marked the bedroom suite of Noah
Wolflaw, who had made his considerable fortune as the
founder and manager of a hedge fund, whatever that might
be. I’m reasonably sure that it had something to do with
Wall Street and nothing whatsoever to do with boxwood
garden hedges.
Now retired at the age of fifty, Mr. Wolflaw claimed to
have sustained an injury to the sleep center in his brain.
He said that he hadn’t slept a wink in the previous nine
years.
I didn’t know whether this extreme insomnia was the
truth or a lie, or proof of some delusional condition.
He had bought the residence from the reclusive mining
heir. He restored and expanded the house, which was of
the Addison Mizner school of architecture, an eclectic mix
of Spanish, Moorish, Gothic, Greek, Roman, and
Renaissance influences. Broad, balustraded terraces of
limestone stepped down to lawns and gardens.
In this hour before dawn, as I crossed the manicured
grass toward the main house, the coyotes high in the hills
no longer howled, because they had gorged themselves on
wild rabbits and slunk away to sleep. After hours of singing,
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 22
22/11/2012 08:43
Odd Apocalypse 23
the frogs had exhausted their voices, and the crickets had
been devoured by the frogs. A peaceful though temporary
hush shrouded this fallen world.
My intention was to relax on a lounge chair on the south
terrace until lights appeared in the kitchen. Chef Shilshom
always began his workday before dawn.
I had started each of the past two mornings with the
chef not solely because he made fabulous breakfast
pastries, but also because I suspected that he might let
slip some clue to the hidden truth of Roseland. He fended
off my curiosity by pretending to be the culinary world’s
equivalent of an absentminded professor, but the effort of
maintaining that pretense was likely to trip him up sooner
or later.
As a guest, I was welcome throughout the ground floor
of the house: the kitchen, the dayroom, the library, the
billiards room, and elsewhere. Mr. Wolflaw and his live-in
staff were intent upon presenting themselves as ordinary
people with nothing to hide and Roseland as a charming
haven with no secrets.
I knew otherwise because of my special talent, my
intuition, and my excellent crap detector—and now also
because the previous twilight had for a minute shown me
a destination that must be a hundred stops beyond Oz on
the Tornado Line Express.
When I say that Roseland was an evil place, that doesn’t
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 23
22/11/2012 08:43
24 De an Ko o n tz
mean I assumed everyone there—or even just one of
them—was also evil. They were an entertainingly eccentric
crew; but eccentricity most often equates with virtue or at
least with an absence of profoundly evil intention.
The devil and all his demons are dull and predictable
because of their single-minded rebellion against truth. Crime
itself—as opposed to the solving of it—is boring to the complex
mind, though endlessly fascinating to the simpleminded. One
film about Hannibal Lecter is riveting, but a second is inevitably
stupefying. We love a series hero, but a series villain quickly
becomes silly as he strives so obviously to shock us. Virtue is
imaginative, evil repetitive.
They were keeping secrets at Roseland. The reasons for
keeping secrets are many, however, and only a fraction are
malevolent.
As I settled on the patio lounge chair to wait for Chef
Shilshom to switch on the kitchen lights, the night took
an intriguing turn. I do not say an unexpected turn, because
I’ve learned to expect just about anything.
South from this terrace, a wide arc of stairs rose to a
circular fountain flanked by six-foot Italian Renaissance
urns. Beyond the fountain, another arc of stairs led to a
slope of grass bracketed by hedges that were flanked by
gently stepped cascades of water, which were bordered
by tall cypresses. Everything led up a hundred yards to
another terrace at the top of the hill, on which stood a
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 24
22/11/2012 08:43
Odd Apocalypse 25
highly ornamented, windowless limestone mausoleum forty
feet on a side.
The mausoleum dated to 1922, a time when the law did
not yet forbid burial on residential property. No moldering
corpses inhabited this grandiose tomb. Urns filled with
ashes were kept in wall niches. Interred there were
Constantine Cloyce, his wife, Madra, and their only child,
who died young.
Suddenly the mausoleum began to glow, as if the structure were entirely glass, an immense oil lamp throbbing
with golden light. The Phoenix palms backdropping the
building reflected this radiance, their fronds pluming like
the feathery tails of certain fireworks.
A volley of crows exploded out of the palm trees, too
startled to shriek, the beaten air cracking off their wings.
They burrowed into the dark sky.
Alarmed, I got to my feet, as I always do when a building
begins to glow inexplicably.
I didn’t recall ascending the first arc of stairs or circling
the fountain, or climbing the second sweep of stairs. As if
I’d been briefly spellbound, I found myself on the long
slope of grass, halfway to the mausoleum.
I had previously visited that tomb. I knew it to be as
solid as a munitions bunker.
Now it looked like a blown-glass aviary in which lived
flocks of luminous fairies.
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 25
22/11/2012 08:43
26 De an Ko o n tz
Although no noise accompanied that eerie light, what
seemed to be pressure waves broke across me, through me,
as if I were having an attack of synesthesia, feeling the
sound of silence.
These concussions were the bewitching agent that had
spelled me off the lounge chair, up the stairs, onto the grass.
They seemed to swirl through me, a pulsing vortex pulling
me into a kind of trance. As I discovered that I was on the
move once more, walking uphill, I resisted the compulsion
to approach the mausoleum—and was able to deny the
power that drew me forward. I halted and held my ground.
Yet as the pressure waves washed through me, they
flooded me with a yearning for something that I could not
name, for some great prize that would be mine if only I
went to the mausoleum while the strange light shone
through its translucent walls. As I continued to resist, the
attracting force diminished and the luminosity began gradually to fade.
Close at my back, a man spoke in a deep voice, with
an accent that I could not identify: “I have seen you—”
Startled, I turned toward him—but no one stood on the
grassy slope between me and the burbling fountain.
Behind me, somewhat softer than before, as intimate as
if the mouth that formed the words were inches from my
left ear, the man continued: “—where you have not yet
been.”
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 26
22/11/2012 08:43
Odd Apocalypse 27
Turning again, I saw that I was still alone.
As the glow faded from the mausoleum at the crest of
the hill, the voice subsided to a whisper: “I depend on you.”
Each word was softer than the one before it. Silence
returned when the golden light retreated into the limestone
walls of the tomb.
I have seen you where you have not yet been. I depend
on you.
Whoever had spoken was not a ghost. I see the lingering
dead, but this man remained invisible. Besides, the dead
don’t talk.
Occasionally, the deceased attempt to communicate not
merely by nodding and gestures but through the art of
mime, which can be frustrating. Like any mentally healthy
citizen, I am overcome by the urge to strangle a mime when
I happen upon one in full performance, but a mime who’s
already dead is unmoved by that threat.
Turning in a full circle, in seeming solitude, I nevertheless
said, “Hello?”
The lone voice that answered was a cricket that had
escaped the predatory frogs.
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 27
22/11/2012 08:43
Three
THE KITCHEN IN THE MAIN HOUSE WAS NOT SO
enormous that you could play tennis there, but either of
the two center islands was large enough for a game
of Ping-Pong.
Some countertops were black granite, others stainless
steel. Mahogany cabinets. White tile floor.
Not a single corner was brightened by teddy-bear cookie
jars or ceramic fruit, or colorful tea towels.
The warm air was redolent of breakfast croissants and
our daily bread, while the face and form of Chef Shilshom
suggested that all of his trespasses involved food. In clean
white sneakers, his small feet were those of a ballerina
grafted onto the massive legs of a sumo wrestler. From the
monumental foundation of his torso, a flight of double
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 28
22/11/2012 08:43
Odd Apocalypse 29
chins led up to a merry face with a mouth like a bow, a
nose like a bell, and eyes as blue as Santa’s.
As I sat on a stool at one of the islands, the chef double
dead-bolted the door by which he had admitted me. During
the day, doors were unlocked, but from dusk until dawn,
Wolflaw and his staff lived behind locks, as he had insisted
Annamaria and I should.
With evident pride, Chef Shilshom put before me a small
plate holding the first plump croissant out of the oven. The
aromas of buttery pastry and warm marzipan rose like an
offering to the god of culinary excess.
Savoring the smell, indulging in a bit of delayed gratification, I said, “I’m just a grill-and-griddle jockey. I’m in
awe of this.”
“I’ve tasted your pancakes, your hash browns. You could
bake as well as you fry.”
“Not me, sir. If a spatula isn’t essential to the task, then
it’s not a dish within the range of my talent.”
In spite of his size, Chef Shilshom moved with the grace
of a dancer, his hands as nimble as those of a surgeon. In
that regard, he reminded me of my four-hundred-pound
friend and mentor, the mystery writer Ozzie Boone, who
lived a few hundred miles from this place, in my hometown,
Pico Mundo.
Otherwise, the rotund chef had little in common with
Ozzie. The singular Mr. Boone was loquacious, informed
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 29
22/11/2012 08:43
30 De an Ko o n tz
on most subjects, and interested in everything. To writing
fiction, to eating, and to every conversation, Ozzie brought
as much energy as David Beckham brought to soccer,
although he didn’t sweat as much as Beckham.
Chef Shilshom, on the other hand, seemed to have a
passion only for baking and cooking. When at work, he
maintained his side of our dialogue in a state of such
distraction—real or feigned—that often his replies didn’t
seem related to my comments and questions.
I came to the kitchen with the hope that he would spit
out a pearl of information, a valuable clue to the truth of
Roseland, without even realizing that I had pried open his
shell.
First, I ate half of the delicious croissant, but only half.
By this restraint, I proved to myself that in spite of the
pressures and the turmoils to which I am uniquely
subjected, I remain reliably disciplined. Then I ate the
other half.
With an uncommonly sharp knife, the chef was chopping dried apricots into morsels when at last I finished
licking my lips and said, “The windows here aren’t barred
like they are at the guest tower.”
“The main house has been remodeled.”
“So there once were bars here, too?”
“Maybe. Before my time.”
“When was the house remodeled?”
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 30
22/11/2012 08:43
Odd Apocalypse 31
“Back when.”
“When back when?”
“Mmmmm.”
“How long have you worked here?”
“Oh, ages.”
“You have quite a memory.”
“Mmmmm.”
That was as much as I was going to learn about the
history of barred windows at Roseland. The chef concentrated on chopping the apricots as if he were disarming a
bomb.
I said, “Mr. Wolflaw doesn’t keep horses, does he?”
Apricot obsessed, the chef said, “No horses.”
“The riding ring and the exercise yard are full of weeds.”
“Weeds,” the chef agreed.
“But, sir, the stables are immaculate.”
“Immaculate.”
“They’re almost as clean as a surgery.”
“Clean, very clean.”
“Yes, but who cleans the stables?”
“Someone.”
“Everything seems freshly painted and polished.”
“Polished.”
“But why—if there are no horses?”
“Why indeed?” the chef said.
“Maybe he intends to get some horses.”
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 31
22/11/2012 08:43
32 De an Ko o n tz
“There you go.”
“Does he intend to get some horses?”
“Mmmmm.”
He scooped up the chopped apricots, put them in a
mixing bowl.
From a bag, he poured pecan halves onto the cutting
board.
I asked, “How long since there were last horses at
Roseland?”
“Long, very long.”
“I guess perhaps the horse I sometimes see roaming the
grounds must belong to a neighbor.”
“Perhaps,” he said as he began to halve the pecan halves.
I asked, “Sir, have you seen the horse?”
“Long, very long.”
“It’s a great black stallion over sixteen hands high.”
“Mmmmm.”
“There are a lot of books about horses in the library
here.”
“Yes, the library.”
“I looked up this horse. I think it’s a Friesian.”
“There you go.”
His knife was so sharp that the pecan halves didn’t
crumble at all when he split them.
I said, “Sir, did you notice a strange light outside a short
while ago?”
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 32
22/11/2012 08:43
Odd Apocalypse 33
“Notice?”
“Up at the mausoleum.”
“Mmmmm.”
“A golden light.”
“Mmmmm.”
I said, “Mmmmm?”
He said, “Mmmmm.”
To be fair, the light that I had seen might be visible
only to someone with my sixth sense. My suspicion,
however, was that Chef Shilshom was a lying pile of suet.
The chef hunched over the cutting board, peering so
intently and closely at the pecans that he might have been
Mr. Magoo trying to read the fine print on a pill bottle.
To test him, I said, “Is that a mouse by the
refrigerator?”
“There you go.”
“No. Sorry. It’s a big old rat.”
“Mmmmm.”
If he wasn’t totally immersed in his work, he was a
good actor.
Getting off the stool, I said, “Well, I don’t know why,
but I think I’ll go set my hair on fire.”
“Why indeed?”
With my back to the chef, moving toward the door to
the terrace, I said, “Maybe it grows back thicker if you
burn it off once in a while.”
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 33
22/11/2012 08:43
34 De an Ko o n tz
“Mmmmm.”
The crisp sound of the knife splitting pecans had fallen
silent.
In one of the four glass panes in the upper half of
the kitchen door, I could see Chef Shilshom’s reflection.
He was watching me, his moon face as pale as his white
uniform.
Opening the door, I said, “Not dawn yet. Might still be
some mountain lion out there, trying doors.”
“Mmmmm,” the chef said, pretending to be so distracted
by his work that he was paying little attention to me.
I stepped outside, pulled the door shut behind me, and
crossed the terrace to the foot of the first arc of stairs. I
stood there, gazing up at the mausoleum, until I heard the
chef engage both of the deadbolts.
With dawn only minutes below the mountains to the
east, the not-loon cried out again, one last time, from a far
corner of the sprawling estate.
The mournful sound brought back to me an image that
had been part of the dream of Auschwitz, from which the
first cry of the night had earlier awakened me: I am
starving, frail, performing forced labor with a shovel, terrified of dying twice, whatever that means. I am not digging
fast enough to please the guard, who kicks the shovel out
of my grip. The steel toe of his boot cuts my right hand,
from which flows not blood but, to my terror, powdery gray
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 34
22/11/2012 08:43
Odd Apocalypse 35
ashes, not one ember, only cold gray ashes pouring out of
me, out and out . . .
As I walked back to the eucalyptus grove, the stars grew
dim in the east, and the sky blushed with the first faint
light of morning.
Annamaria, the Lady of the Bell, and I had been guests
of Roseland for three nights and two days, and I suspected
that our time here was soon drawing to a close, that our
third day would end in violence.
OddApocalypse_B_FinalFiles_20121122_775BB.indd 35
22/11/2012 08:43
Discover the best
in crime and thriller.
Sign up to our newsletter for your chance
to win a free book every month.
Find out more at
www.killerreads.com/newsletter
Want more? Get to know the team behind the books,
hear from our authors, find out about new crime and thriller
books and lots more by following us on social media:
/KillerReads
/KillerReads