Odd Apocalypse. Dean Koontz

I understood that she was more than merely different. She was an enigma so complex that I would never know her secrets unless she chose to give me the key with which to unlock the truth of her.

      She was eighteen and appeared to be seven months pregnant. Until we joined forces, she had been for a while alone in the world, but she had none of the doubts or worries of other girls in her position.

      Although she had no possessions, she was never in need. She said that people gave her what she required—money, a place to live—though she never asked for anything. I had been witness to the truth of this claim.

      We had come from Magic Beach in a Mercedes on loan from Lawrence Hutchison, who had been a famous film actor fifty years earlier, and who was now a children’s book author at the age of eighty-eight. For a while, I worked for Hutch as cook and companion, before things in Magic Beach got too hot. I had arranged with Hutch to leave the car with his great-nephew, Grover, who was an attorney in Santa Barbara.

      At Grover’s office, in the reception lounge, we encountered Noah Wolflaw, a client of the attorney, as he was departing. Wolflaw was at once drawn to Annamaria, and after a brief chat as perplexing as conversations with her often were, he invited us to Roseland.

      Her powerful appeal was not sexual. She was neither beautiful nor ugly, but neither was she merely plain. Petite but not fragile, with a perfect but pale complexion, she was a compelling presence for reasons that I had been struggling to understand but that continued to elude me.

      Whatever there might be between us, romance was not part of it. The effect she had upon me—and upon others—was more profound than desire, and curiously humbling.

      A century earlier, the word charismatic might have applied to her. But in an age when shallow movie stars and the latest crop of reality-TV specimens were said to have charisma, the word meant nothing anymore.

      Anyway, Annamaria did not ask anyone to follow her as might some cult leader. Instead she inspired in people a desire to protect her.

      She said that she had no last name, and although I didn’t know how she could escape having one, I did not doubt her. She was often inscrutable; however, as one believes in anything that requires hard faith rather than easy proof, I believed that Annamaria never lied.

      “I think we should leave Roseland at once,” I declared.

      “May I not even finish my tea? Must I spring up this instant and race to the front gate?”

      “I’m serious. There’s something very wrong here.”

      “There will be something very wrong with any place we go.”

      “But not as wrong as this.”

      “And where would we go?” she asked.

      “Anywhere.”

      Her gentle voice never acquired a pedantic tone, although I felt that I was usually on the receiving end of Annamaria’s patient and affectionate instruction. “Anywhere includes everywhere. If it does not matter where we go, then surely there can be no point in going.”

      Her eyes were so dark that I could see no difference between the irises and the pupils.

      She said, “You can only be in one place at a time, odd one. So it’s imperative that you be in the right place for the right reason.”

      Only Stormy Llewellyn had called me “odd one,” until Annamaria.

      “Most of the time,” I said, “it seems you’re speaking to me in riddles.”

      Her gaze was as steady as her eyes were dark. “My mission and your sixth sense brought us here. Roseland was a magnet to us. We could have gone nowhere else.”

      “Your mission. What is your mission?”

      “In time you will know.”

      “In a day? A week? Twenty years?”

      “As it will be.”

      I inhaled the peachy fragrance of the tea, exhaled with a sigh, and said, “The day we met in Magic Beach, you said countless people want to kill you.”

      “They have been counted, but they are so many that you don’t need to know the figure any more than you need to know the number of hairs on your head in order to comb them.”

      She wore sneakers, khaki pants, and a baggy beige sweater with sleeves too long for her. The bulk of the sweater’s rolled cuffs emphasized the delicacy of her slender wrists.

      Having left Magic Beach with nothing but the clothes she wore, Annamaria was at Roseland just one day when the head housekeeper, Mrs. Tameed, purchased a suitcase, filled it with a few changes of clothes, and left it in the guesthouse, though she had not been asked to provide a wardrobe.

      I, too, had come with no clothes other than those I was wearing. No one bought me as much as a pair of socks. I’d had to leave the estate for a couple of hours, go into town, and purchase jeans, sweaters, underwear.

      I said, “Four days ago, you asked me if I would keep you alive. You’re making the job harder for me than it has to be.”

      “No one at Roseland wants to murder me.”

      “How can you be sure?”

      “They don’t realize what I am. If I am killed, my murderers will be those who know what I am.”

      “And what are you?” I asked.

      “In your heart, you know.”

      “When will my brain figure it out?”

      “You have always known since you first saw me on that pier.”

      “Maybe I’m not as smart as you think.”

      “You’re better than smart, Oddie. You’re wise. But also afraid of me.”

      Surprised, I said, “I’m afraid of a lot of things, but not of you.”

      Her amusement was tender, without condescension. “In time, young man, you’ll acknowledge your fear, and then you’ll know what I am.”

      Occasionally she called me “young man,” though she was eighteen and I was nearly twenty-two. It should have sounded strange, but it didn’t.

      She said, “I’m safe in Roseland for now, but there’s someone here who’s in great danger and desperately needs you.”

      “Who?”

      “Trust in your talent to lead you.”

      “You remember the woman on the horse that I told you about. Last evening, I had a close encounter of the spooky kind with her. She was able to tell me that her son is here. Nine or ten years old. And in danger, though I don’t know what or how, or why. Is it him that I’m meant to help?”

      She shrugged. “I don’t know all things.”

      I finished my tea. “I don’t believe you ever lie, but somehow you never answer me directly, either.”

      “Staring at the sun too long can blind you.”

      “Another riddle.”

      “It’s not a riddle. It’s a metaphor. I speak truth to you by indirection, because to speak it directly would pierce you as the brightness of the sun can burn the retina.”

      I pushed my chair back from the table. “I sure hope you don’t turn out to be some New Age bubblehead.”

      She laughed softly, as musical a sound as I had ever heard.

      Because the beauty of her laughter made my comment seem rude by comparison, I said, “No offense intended.”

      “None taken. You always speak from your heart, and there’s nothing wrong with that.”

      As I rose from my chair, the dogs began to thump their tails again, but neither moved to accompany me.

      Annamaria