Odd Apocalypse (Odd Thomas 5)

At the top, as I turned east to drive around rather than through a grove of oaks, I looked back and saw that the freaks had not chased after me into the meadow. They were heading toward the main house.

I didn’t stop to leap out of the truck and do a victory lap around it, but instead angled east-southeast. I intended to circle the developed part of the estate and return to the guest tower, to see if Annamaria might be under siege.

On that rolling land, the big tires and apparently customized suspension provided a ride that was less like bounding over rough territory than like being on a boat as it slid up the face of a wave, down the back, and wallowed through a trough toward the next wall of water.

I weltered along a glen, searching for an easy way up the next slope, which was thick with brush in some places and rocky in others. Abruptly the landscape all around me rippled vertically, as if snakes of heat were rising from it again, though the air remained cool.

Paulie Sempiterno and Mrs. Tameed had spoken of eddies and a full tide. They hadn’t been talking about the sea, but about this phenomenon.

As I squinted at the way ahead, resisting a greasy nausea, the quality of the light changed, although not as dramatically as when morning had turned to night in a minute. The pale grass became a darker gold, the silver weeds tarnished. Racing shadows swelled and withered and swelled and slithered across the land.

I slowed, braked to a halt, and reluctantly looked up.

For a moment, I saw again the yellow sky that frightened me more than did the primate swine. These were not merely Earth’s heavens in the throes of Armageddon. An apocalypse is a revelation, and this was an apocalyptic sky, in the sense that it revealed what humankind, by its arrogance and reckless certitude, would bring down upon itself.

The quivering thermals that had brought the fearsome skyscape now shimmered it away. The heavens became mostly blue again, with an armada of ordinary storm clouds still threatening in the north, where they had been all morning, as if riding at anchor.

I hadn’t imagined those hostile yellow heavens any more than I had dreamed that I’d stepped through a doorway into a time prior to Roseland’s existence. Both moments had been as real as the warm saliva that Ms. Victoria Mors had spat in my face.

I sat in the landscaper’s truck, in the glen between two hills, letting my heart quiet itself. Usually I can knit clues into a theory while on my feet and dodging anything thrown at me, but in this case I needed a moment of stillness to make sure that I didn’t drop a stitch.

The massive wall around Roseland, perhaps housing fantastical machinery like that I had seen in the cellars of the mausoleum, not only physically isolated the estate but also set it apart in other ways. These acres were an island of the irrational in the sea of everyday reality.

Whatever the intention had been behind Roseland’s creation, the dire events of the moment were side effects that no one had expected. After the fact, they had taken steps to defend against those side effects: the bars on windows, the steel shutters, all the guns and stores of ammunition.

The freaks might be only an infrequent threat. Nevertheless, to live in this bedlam, the people here must have believed that whatever benefit they received from the system they created was worth the cost of nightly wariness and occasional full assaults by creatures that seemed to belong here less than to some other time or place.

I thought that I knew what the benefit might be, why they didn’t simply pull the master switch and eliminate the mortal threat of the freaks.

And I suspected that the benefit was simultaneously a curse. It led to their conviction that they were far superior to anyone not of Roseland. Not merely superior. They saw themselves as gods and the rest of us as animals.

Men and women who seek to become gods must first lose their humanity.

Noah Wolflaw’s homicides and the complicity of the others in his crimes seemed neither insane nor criminal to them, any more than I would consider myself mad or criminal for hooking a fish, gutting it, and cooking it for dinner. I satisfied a hunger. Wolflaw would say that he merely satisfied a more exotic appetite. To him, my fish was as far below me on the ladder of species as the women he killed were below him.

Wolflaw had not merely lost his humanity. He had thrown it away with all the force that he could muster.

My next step, after checking on Annamaria, would be to find out who the people of Roseland really were. They were either not who they claimed to be or not only who they claimed to be.

I am one megasuspicious pretty-boy, pathetic, stupid cocker.

The time-out had served me well. I drove farther along the glen, looking for a place where the hillside was navigable.

Suddenly he was standing forty feet in front of me. I could have driven straight through him, but I braked to a halt.

There in the wild grass, he wore a three-piece suit and a necktie. From five feet in front of the trucklet, he regarded me with that deadpan look that had once been famous.

He was portly, with a round face and full cheeks and two chins, but not immense like Chef Shilshom. Unlike the chef, he had come by his physique not by indulgence but because of genetics, having been stout as a small child. His lower lip protruded far past the upper, as if he were pondering how best to deal with a problematic person whom he wished to be rid of but did not wish to insult.

“This is not a good time,” I told him. “My plate is full. My cup runneth over. I’m sorry. I don’t usually speak in clichés. And those weren’t references to your weight. I’m just frazzled. I’m not able to deal with one more complication.”

Among some of the lingering dead who have come to me for help, a couple have been famous performers in their lifetimes. In spite of what you might think if you closely follow the entertainment-news programs on TV and the Internet, celebrities do have souls.

In the first three of my memoirs, I have written about my rather long relationship with Mr. Elvis Presley’s spirit. He appeared to me when I was in high school, and we hung around together for quite a few years. For reasons he was slow to make clear to me, the King of Rock ’n’ Roll was reluctant to move on to the Other Side, though he wanted to be there. The problem was not anything as simple as that he was worried there would be no deep-fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches in the next life. Eventually I helped him cross over.

Then came Mr. Frank Sinatra. His spirit was my companion only for a few weeks. They were memorable days. As a poltergeist, as in life, Mr. Sinatra could throw a heck of a hard punch when you needed backup.

I don’t know why I assumed that if the spirit of another famous person were to come to me, seeking assistance in moving on from this world, he or she would have been a renowned singer.

The gentleman in the suit walked around to the passenger side of the mini truck. He had an unusual aura of authority because it was in no way stern or superior and because it was twined with an air of congeniality.

“Sir, I am honored, I really am, that you would come to me for assistance. I’m an admirer. If I survive this, I’ll do what I can for you. But, see, there’s so much going on in Roseland that my head will explode if I have to think about one more thing.”

He put his hands to his head and then flung them away, fingers wide, as if depicting the consequences of a detonating skull.

“Yes, exactly. I’m sorry about this. Never say no to a spirit in need. That’s my motto. Well, it’s not my motto, but it’s a principle of mine. I don’t have a motto. Unless maybe ‘If it’s worth eating, it’s worth frying.’ I’m babbling, aren’t I? That’s because I’m such a fan. I really am. I guess you hear that all the time. Or did when you were alive. I guess you don’t hear it as often since you’re dead.”

The dire situation in Roseland was not so much the reason for my nervous babbling. And I was not rattled by the fact that I really was an admirer of his work. Those were both causes, but I was also intimidated by that deadpan expression, which suggested that he had the patience to outwait me until my resistance wilted, and because it reminded me of the wit and intelligence that were behind it. Elvis? Piece of cake. Sinatra? Mostly easy. But I was out of my league with this one, who was probably smarter than me by a factor of ten.

“You’ve waited a long time to cross over,” I said. “Must be thirty years. Give me another day. Then we’ll talk. Or I’ll talk, since you can’t. But just now, you know, there’s all these bad people. And dead bodies. The woman on the horse. The imprisoned boy. And a ticking clock. You know all about ticking clocks. Who knows more about ticking clocks than you? And I’ve got pigs to deal with! They’re big, mean, walkin’-tall pigs, sir. You never had to deal with primate swine. I’d be no good for you right now.”

He smiled and nodded. He waved me on.

As he turned away, before he dematerialized, I said, “Wait. Mr. Hitchcock.”

He faced me once more.

“You weren’t … you didn’t … I mean, you didn’t die here, did you?”

He grimaced and shook his head. No.

“Did you ever visit Roseland when you were alive?”

He shook his head again.

“Back in the day, did you ever do business with Constantine Cloyce’s movie studio?”

He nodded, and his expression was uncharacteristically fierce.