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CHAPTER 1

EMBRACED BY STONE, STEEPED IN SILENCE, I SAT at the highas the third day of the week surrendered to the fourth The river of night rolled on, indifferent to the calendar

I hoped to witness that an to fall in earnest Earlier the sky had shed a few flakes, then nothingstorm would not be rushed

The roolass on the corner desk Each tiht buttered the limestone walls and waves of fluid shadows oiled the corners

Most nights, I find lalow is the coray text on a navy-blue field

Without a silvering of light, thedid not reflect ht beyond the panes

Living in a uest rather than as a ht have elsewhere to see the world as it is, instead of through the shadow that you cast upon it

St Bartholomew’s Abbey was surrounded by the vastness of the Sierra Nevada, on the California side of the border The pri slopes were themselves cloaked in darkness

From this third-floor , I could see only part of the deep front yard and the blacktop lane that cleaved it Four low laht in round pale pools

The guesthouse is in the northing of the abbey The ground floor features parlors Private roohest floors

As I watched in anticipation of the storm, a whiteness that was not snow drifted across the yard, out of darkness, into laht

The abbey has one dog, a 110-pound German-shepherd mix, perhaps part Labrador retriever He is entirely white andHis name is Boo

My name is Odd Thomas My dysfunctional parents claim a mistake was made on the birth certificate, that Todd was the wanted name Yet they have never called me Todd

In twenty-one years, I have not considered changing to Todd The bizarre course of ests that Odd is more suited to me, whether it was conferred by my parents with intention or by fate

Below, Boo stopped in thethe lane as it dwindled and descended into darkness

Mountains are not entirely slopes So land takes a rest The abbey stands on a highnorth

Judging by his pricked ears and lifted head, Boo perceived a visitor approaching He held his tail low

I could not discern the state of his hackles, but his tense posture suggested that they were raised

From dusk the driveway lamps burn until dawn ascends The ht visitors, no ht

The dog stood motionless for a while, then shifted his attention toward the lawn to the right of the blacktop His head lowered His ears flattened against his skull

For a moment, I could not see the cause of Boo’s alarht shadow floating across black water The figure passed near enough to one of the lampposts to be briefly revealed

Even in daylight, this was a visitor of who and I could have been aware

I see dead people, spirits of the departed who, each for his own reason, will not move on from this world Some are drawn to me for justice, if they were murdered, or for comfort, or for companionship; others seek me out for motives that I cannot always understand

This complicates my life

I a for your sympathy We all have our problems, and yours seem as important to you as mine seem to me

Perhaps you have a ninety-ed with traffic, your progress hampered by iry speciine, however, how er seat was a young hastly ax wound in his head and if in the backseat an elderly woled by her husband, sat pop-eyed and purple-faced

The dead don’t talk I don’t knohy And an ax-chopped spirit will not bleed on your upholstery

Nevertheless, an entourage of the recently dead is disconcerting and generally not conducive to an upbeat mood

The visitor on the laas not an ordinary ghost,spirits of the dead, I see one other kind of supernatural entity I call them bodachs

They are ink-black, fluid in shape, with no e round

The one on the abbey lawn estive of so half man, half wolf Sleek, sinuous, and sinister

The grass was not disturbed by its passage Had it been crossing water, it would not have left a single ripple in its wake

In the folklore of the British Isles, a bodach is a vile beast that slithers down chiht and carries off children who ents

What I see are neither bodachs nor tax collectors They carry away neitherchildren nor adult miscreants But I have seen them enter houses by chimneys—by keyholes, chinks inframes, as protean as smoke—and I have no better name for them

Their infrequent appearance is always reason for

alare of the future They are drawn to places where violence or fiery catastrophe is destined to erupt, as if they feed on hu

Although he was a brave dog, with good reason to be brave, Boo shrank fro apparition His black lips peeled back fros

The phanto Bodachs seem to know that some animals can see them

I don’t think they know that I can see them, too If they did know, I believe that they would show me less mercy than mad mullahs show their victims when in a mood to behead and dismember

At the sight of this one, my first impulse was to shrink from theand seek communion with the dust bunnies under my bed My second impulse was to pee

Resisting both cowardice and the call of the bladder, I raced frouesthouse offers two small suites The other currently had no occupant

On the second floor, the glowering Russian was no doubt scowling in his sleep The solid construction of the abbey would not translate my footfalls into his dreams

The guesthouse has an enclosed spiral staircase, stone walls encircling granite steps The treads alternate between black and white,me think of harlequins and piano keys, and of a treacly old song by Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder

Although stone stairs are unforgiving and the black-and-white pattern can be disorienting, I plunged toward the ground floor, risking daranite if I fell and struck it with my head

Sixteen o, I lost as most precious to me and found my world in ruins; nevertheless, I am not usually reckless I have less to live for than I once did, butin the days

Leaving the stairs in the condition that I found theht lah a heavy oak door with a stained-glass , and saw ht

The guesthouse cloister surrounds a courtyard with a reflecting pool and a white uably the least known of the twelve apostles

Here depicted, a soleht hand over his heart, left arm extended In his upturned palht be a related variety of squash

The sy of the squash eludes me

At this time of year, the pool was drained, and no scent of wet limestone rose from it, as in warmer days I detected, instead, the faintest s rain, and wondered about it, but kept

I followed the colonnade to the door of the guesthouse receiving room, went inside, crossed that shadowy chah the front door of the abbey