Odd Interlude. Dean Koontz
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most kids these days don’t know Lassie. The media dog that they know best is Marley, who is less likely to save children from a well or from a burning barn than he is to barf on them and accidentally start the barn fire in the first place.
The oppressive mood infecting me since recent events in Magic Beach seems to have lifted. Curiously, nothing restores my common sense and puts me back on the firm ground of reason like a creepy encounter with something apparently supernatural.
In the lighted branches of the trees, the weak breath of the night makes the leaves quiver as if in anticipation of an approaching evil. On the ground around me, trembling patterns of light and shadow create the illusion that the land is unstable underfoot.
In the arc of cottages, no lamps brighten any windows except those in my unit and Annamaria’s, although five other vehicles are parked here. If those guests of the Harmony Corner motor court are sleeping, perhaps a secret reader pages through their memories and seeks … Seeks what? Merely to know them?
The reader—whoever or whatever it might be wants something more than to know me. As surely as the antelope in the documentary is a few days’ worth of meals to the panther, I am prey, perhaps not to be eaten but in some way to be used.
I look at Boo.
Boo looks at me. Then he looks at Annamaria’s lighted windows.
At Cottage 6, as I rap lightly on the door, it swings open as though the latch must not have been engaged. I step inside and find her sitting in a chair at a small table.
She has taken an apple from the hamper, peeled and sectioned it. She is sharing the fruit with Raphael. Sitting at attention beside her chair, the golden retriever crunches one of the slices and licks his chops.
Raphael looks at Boo and twitches his tail, happy that there’s no need to share his portion with a ghost dog. All dogs see lingering spirits; they aren’t as self-deluded about the true nature of the world as most people are.
“Has anything unusual happened?” I ask Annamaria.
“Isn’t something unusual always happening?”
“You’ve had no … no visitor of any kind?”
“Just you. Would you like some apple, Oddie?”
“No, ma’am. I think you’re in danger here.”
“Of the many people who want to kill me, none is in Harmony Corner.”
“How can you be sure?”
She shrugs. “No one here knows who I am.”
“I don’t even know who you are.”
“You see?” She gives another slice of apple to Raphael.
“I won’t be next door for a while.”
“All right.”
“In case you scream for me.”
She appears amused. “Whyever would I scream? I never have.”
“Never in your whole life?”
“One screams when one is startled or frightened.”
“You said people want to kill you.”
“But I’m not afraid of them. You do what you need to do. I’ll be fine.”
“Maybe you should come with me.”
“Where are you going?” she asks.
“Here and there.”
“I’m already here, and I’ve been there.”
I look at Raphael. Raphael looks at Boo. Boo looks at me.
“Ma’am, you asked if I would die for you, and I said yes.”
“That was very sweet of you. But you’re not going to have to die for me tonight. Don’t be in such a hurry.”
I once thought Pico Mundo had more than its share of eccentric folks. Having traveled some, I now know eccentricity is the universal trait of humanity.
“Ma’am, it might be dangerous to sleep.”
“Then I won’t sleep.”
“Should I get you some black coffee from the diner?”
“Why?”
“To help you stay awake.”
“I suppose you sleep when you need to. But you see, young man, I only sleep when I want to.”
“How does that work?”
“Splendidly.”
“Don’t you want to know why it could be dangerous to sleep?”
“Because I might fall out of bed? Oddie, I trust your admonition isn’t frivolous, and I will remain awake. Now go do whatever you have to do.”
“I’m going to snoop around.”
“Then snoop, snoop,” she says, making a shooing motion.
I retreat from her cottage and close the door behind me.
Already Boo is walking toward the diner. I follow him.
He fades away like fog evaporating.
I don’t know where he goes when he dematerializes. Maybe a ghost dog can travel to and from the Other Side as he pleases. I have never studied theology.
For the last day of January along the central coast, the night is mild. And quiet. The air smells faintly, pleasantly, of the sea. Nevertheless, my sense of impending peril is so great that I won’t be surprised if the ground opens under my feet and swallows me.
Big moths caper around the sign on the roof of the diner. Their natural color must be white, because they become entirely blue or red depending on which neon is closer to them. Bats, dark and changeless, circle ceaselessly, feeding on the bright swarm.
I don’t see signs and portents in everything. The voracious yet silent flying rodents chill me, however, and I decide not to stop first at the diner, as had been my intention.
Past the three eighteen-wheelers, at the service station, the Jaguar is gone. The mechanic is sweeping the floor of the garage.
At the open bay door, I say, “Good morning, sir,” as cheerfully as if a gorgeous pink dawn has already painted the sky and choirs of songbirds are celebrating the gift of life.
When he looks up from his work with the push broom, it’s a Phantom of the Opera moment. A grisly scar extends from his left ear, across his upper lip, through his lower lip, to the right side of his chin. Whatever the cause of the wound, it appears as if it might have been sewn up not by a doctor but instead by a fisherman using a hook and a length of leader wire.
With no apparent self-consciousness about his appearance, he says, “Hello there, son,” and favors me with a grin that would make Dracula back off. “You’re up even before Wally and Wanda have thought about goin’ to bed.”
“Wally and Wanda?”
“Oh, sorry. Our possums. Some say them two is just big ugly red-eyed rats. But a marsupial isn’t no rat. And ugly is like they say about beauty—it’s in the eye of the beholder. How you feel about possums?”
“Live and let live.”
“I make sure Wally and Wanda get the throw-away food from the diner each and every night. It makes ’em fat. But their life is hard, what with mountain lions and bobcats and packs of coyotes with a taste for possum. Don’t you think possums they have a hard life?”
“Well, sir, at least Wally has Wanda and she has Wally.”
Abruptly his blue eyes glimmer with unshed tears and his scarred lips tremble, as if he is nearly undone by the thought of possum love.
He