Brother Odd

Only the abbot, the mother superior, and I possess a universal key that allows admittance everywhere. No guest before me has been entrusted with such access.

I take no pride in their trust. It is a burden. In my pocket, the simple key sometimes feels like an iron fate drawn to a lodestone deep in the earth.

The key allows me quickly to seek Brother Constantine, the dead monk, when he manifests with a ringing of bells in one of the towers or with some other kind of cacophony elsewhere.

In Pico Mundo, the desert town in which I had lived for most of my time on earth, the spirits of many men and women linger. But here we have just Brother Constantine, who is no less disturbing than all of Pico Mundo’s dead combined, one ghost but one too many.

With a bodach on the prowl, Brother Constantine was the least of my worries.

Shivering, I used my key, and hinges squeaked, and I followed the dog into the school.

Two night-lights staved off total gloom in the reception lounge. Multiple arrangements of sofas and armchairs suggested a hotel lobby.

I hurried past the unmanned information desk and went through a swinging door into a corridor lighted by an emergency lamp and red EXIT signs.

On this ground floor were the classrooms, the rehabilitation clinic, the infirmary, the kitchen, and the communal dining room. Those sisters with a culinary gift were not yet preparing breakfast. Silence ruled these spaces, as it would for hours yet.

I climbed the south stairs and found Boo waiting for me on the second-floor landing. He remained in a solemn mood. His tail did not wag, and he did not grin in greeting.

Two long and two short hallways formed a rectangle, serving the student quarters. The residents roomed in pairs.

At the southeast and northwest junctions of the corridors were nurses’ stations, both of which I could see when I came out of the stairs in the southwest corner of the building.

At the northwest station, a nun sat at the counter, reading. From this distance, I could not identify her.

Besides, her face was half concealed by a wimple. These are not modern nuns who dress like meter maids. These sisters wear old-style habits that can make them seem as formidable as warriors in armor.

The southeast station was deserted. The nun on duty must have been making her rounds or tending to one of her charges.

When Boo padded away to the right, heading southeast, I followed without calling to the reading nun. By the time that I had taken three steps, she was out of my line of sight.

Many of the sisters have nursing degrees, but they strive to make the second floor feel more like a cozy dormitory than like a hospital. With Christmas twenty days away, the halls were hung with garlands of fake evergreen boughs and festooned with genuine tinsel.

In respect of the sleeping students, the lights had been dimmed. The tinsel glimmered only here and there, and mostly darkled into tremulous shadows.

The doors of some student rooms were closed, others ajar. They featured not just numbers but also names.

Halfway between the stairwell and the nurses’ station, Boo paused at Room 32, where the door was not fully closed. On block-lettered plaques were the names ANNAMARIE and JUSTINE.

This time I was close enough to Boo to see that indeed his hackles were raised.

The dog passed inside, but propriety made me hesitate. I ought to have asked a nun to accompany me into these students’ quarters.

But I wanted to avoid having to explain bodachs to her. More important, I didn’t want to risk being overheard by one of those malevolent spirits as I was talking about them.

Officially, only one person at the abbey and one at the convent know about my gift—if in fact it is a gift rather than a curse. Sister Angela, the mother superior, shares my secret, as does Father Bernard, the abbot.

Courtesy had required that they fully understand the troubled young man whom they would be welcoming as a long-term guest.

To assure Sister Angela and Abbot Bernard that I was neither a fraud nor a fool, Wyatt Porter, the chief of police in Pico Mundo, my hometown, shared with them the details of some murder cases with which I had assisted him.

Likewise, Father Sean Llewellyn vouched for me. He is the Catholic priest in Pico Mundo.

Father Llewellyn is also the uncle of Stormy Llewellyn, whom I had loved and lost. Whom I will forever cherish.

During the seven months I had lived in this mountain retreat, I’d shared the truth of my life with one other, Brother Knuckles, a monk. His real name is Salvatore, but we call him Knuckles more often than not.

Brother Knuckles would not have hesitated on the threshold of Room 32. He is a monk of action. In an instant he would have decided that the threat posed by the bodach trumped propriety. He would have rushed through the door as boldly as did the dog, although with less grace and with a lot more noise.

I pushed the door open wider, and went inside.

In the two hospital beds lay Annamarie, closest to the door, and Justine. Both were asleep.

On the wall behind each girl hung a lamp controlled by a switch at the end of a cord looped around the bed rail. It could provide various intensities of light.

Annamarie, who was ten years old but small for her age, had set her lamp low, as a night-light. She feared the dark.

Her wheelchair stood beside the bed. From one of the hand grips at the back of the chair hung a quilted, insulated jacket. From the other hand grip hung a woolen cap. On winter nights, she insisted that these garments be close at hand.

The girl slept with the top sheet clenched in her frail hands, as if ready to throw off the bedclothes. Her face was taut with an expression of concerned anticipation, less than anxiety, more than mere disquiet.

Although she slept soundly, she appeared to be prepared to flee at the slightest provocation.

One day each week, of her own accord, with eyes closed tight, Annamarie practiced piloting her battery-powered wheelchair to each of two elevators. One lay in the east wing, the other in the west.

In spite of her limitations and her suffering, she was a happy child. These preparations for flight were out of character.

Although she would not talk about it, she seemed to sense that a night of terror was coming, a hostile darkness through which she would need to find her way. She might be prescient.

The bodach, first glimpsed from my high window, had come here, but not alone. Three of them, silent wolflike shadows, were gathered around the second bed, in which Justine slept.

A single bodach signals impending violence that may be either near and probable or remote and less certain. If they appear in twos and threes, the danger is more immediate.

In my experience, when they appear in packs, the pending danger has become imminent peril, and the deaths of many people are days or hours away. Although the sight of three of them chilled me, I was grateful that they didn’t number thirty.

Trembling with evident excitement, the bodachs bent over Justine while she slept, as if studying her intently. As if feeding on her.

CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_d0662236-4992-5bf4-a8b2-aa997699b5fc)

The lamp above the second bed had been turned low, but Justine had not adjusted it herself. A nun had selected the dimmest setting, hoping that it might please the girl.

Justine did little for herself and asked for nothing. She was partially paralyzed and could not speak.

When Justine had been four years old, her father had strangled her mother to death. They say that after she had died, he put a rose between her teeth—but with the long thorny stem down her throat.

He drowned little Justine in the bathtub, or thought he did. He left her for dead, but she survived with brain damage from prolonged lack of oxygen.

For weeks, she lingered in a coma, though that was years ago. These days she slept and woke, but when awake, her capacity for engagement with her caregivers fluctuated.