Saint Odd. Dean Koontz

on something beneath the upper concourse on which I stood. Bullet-pocked walls, perhaps. Or an interesting pattern in a spray of blood.

      Hoping that their faces might be at least half revealed in the backwash of light, I leaned against the railing and peered down at the group. But the angle was too severe for me to see much about them.

      I don’t know what gave me away. I’m sure that I didn’t make a sound. Perhaps I disturbed some small piece of litter that rolled between the balusters and fell past one of the men below, because abruptly he turned his flashlight toward me. The bright beam found my face and dazzled me so that I couldn’t clearly see him or any of them.

      Rob Norwich, my most recent friend among the dead, put a hand on my shoulder again, and I turned to him as, in the concourse below, Wolfgang shouted, “That’s him. Get him. Kill him!”

      Any remaining illusion I had that these people might be mere horror junkies, touring the mall because of its bloody history, evaporated. Although they hadn’t known that I was there, they had come because they were associated with the demonic cult that I had infiltrated in Nevada, and this place inspired them. They were in Pico Mundo to honor the mass murderers who had shot up Green Moon Mall back in the day, to honor them by committing some greater atrocity elsewhere in town.

      Because of the events in Nevada, they knew that I might be the only one who could foil them. This chance encounter—if anything in life occurred by chance—gave them an opportunity to waste me, thereby improving the odds that their specific intentions wouldn’t be known until it was too late for anyone to stop them.

      My ghostly companion, who served also as my guiding light, hurried toward the nearer of the two abandoned department stores that anchored the shopping mall, the one at the south end. He must have had an exit strategy in mind for me, but I didn’t follow him.

      Rob had been a good man in life, and I didn’t worry that his spirit might be malevolent. He was not intent on leading me into the arms of my enemies.

      The lingering dead, however, aren’t entirely reliable. After all, for whatever reasons, in spite of the certainty that they can’t undo their deaths and that there is no satisfying future in the haunting business, they’re either reluctant to leave the beauty and wonder of this world or afraid of stepping into the next one. They are not acting rationally regarding the most important issue before them; therefore, trusting in them without reservation was even less likely to work out well for me than trusting an IRS auditor to help me find beaucoup tax deductions that I might have overlooked.

      Now that Wolfgang and his two comrades knew where I was, they would most likely head to the south escalator, by far the nearest route to the second-floor promenade. I was unlikely to make it into that empty department store before they could cut me off.

      Instead, daring to hurry through the darkness, I went north and made considerable distance before stumbling over something and knocking it aside, whereupon I heard the woman shout, “He’s going that way!”

      I no longer had a reason to risk the darkness. I switched on my flashlight, cupping one hand around the lens to make it less visible from below.

      As I reached the end of the promenade, I heard booming footsteps and rattling metal: someone running up the north escalator, which evidently wasn’t in as good condition as the one at the south end that I had climbed so quietly. Suddenly a light speared upward, searching for me, as the person on those stairs reached the halfway point.

      The doors to the northern department store, pneumatic sliders, no longer operative, were frozen in the open position. I raced through them, into what had once been a temple to luxury goods, where the god of excess consumption held court. Many of the display cases had been left in place, and I ducked behind them, hunched and hustling, until I heard my hunters shouting to one another, and then I halted and switched off the flashlight.

      Now what?

       Five

      MY PSYCHIC MAGNETISM WORKED BEST WHEN I was seeking someone whose face and name I knew, though one or the other would usually suffice. On a few occasions, I had conjured in my mind the image of an object for which I was searching, and eventually I was drawn to it, though not in as timely a fashion as when my quarry was a person.

      As the three hunters spread out in the department store, I pictured the pillowcase that contained a bolt cutter, a crowbar, and a hammer. I had left it just inside the door through which I’d broken into the mall.

      When I felt the urge to move, I set out once more, hunched and scuttling as silently as possible. I followed the display cases, all with glass fronts and tops but with solid backs that would shield me from the cultists—unless one of them stepped into the aisle along which I traveled. At an intersection with other rows of cabinets, I turned right, moving steadily away from what little illumination the distant flashlight beams provided when they ricocheted off the walls and columns and glass displays.

      Forward into darkness.

      I had never before counted on psychic magnetism to make my way through pitch-black rooms, but only to lead me eventually to that which I sought. Now I decided that having paranormal abilities wouldn’t mean much if, on the way to my goal, my wild talent could run me head-on into a wall, send me tumbling down a staircase, or drop me into an open shaft. Surely I could trust it now, had to trust it, just like Spider-Man trusted his web-spinning ability to swing from skyscraper to skyscraper even though the briefest interruption in his production of spider silk could drop him eighty stories to the street below.

      Of course, Spider-Man was a comic-book character. He couldn’t die unless the company that owned him was in the mood to flush away a multibillion-dollar property. I was a real person, and I wasn’t worth multiple billions to anyone.

      I ventured into lightless realms, although tentatively at first, sliding one hand along a display case. My other hand was extended in front of me, alternately anticipating a wall where empty air should be and feeling the floor to avoid a sudden drop-off or debris.

      At the rate I was going, I wouldn’t escape the three searchers, and even if I did elude them, I’d die of thirst or starvation before I got to the pillowcase of tools that I pictured in my mind’s eye.

      I had always assumed that my gift was just that, a gift, not the result of a rare gene or of some beneficial brain damage related to my mother’s consumption of martinis during her pregnancy. A gift like mine seemed to come from some higher power, and whatever the source—whether God or space aliens or wizards living in a parallel Earth where magic worked—it must be a benign higher power, because I was motivated to help the innocent and afflict the guilty. I had no desire to use my abilities to amass colossal wealth or to rule the planet with either a velvet glove or an iron fist.

      Taking a deep breath, all but totally blind, trusting in my psychic magnetism as Spidey trusted in his web spinning, as Wile E. Coyote trusted in products sold by Acme to snare or kill the Road Runner, I rose somewhat and, in the hunched posture of an ape, hurried forward. If trash of any kind littered the floor, I didn’t once set foot on it. If there were obstacles in my way, I didn’t collide with them. Intuitively, I turned this way, that way, this way, marveling at my ability to navigate successfully and with hardly a sound.

      I had always been in awe of Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles, blind men who sat at their pianos and never played a bad note, absolutely certain of where the keys were in relation to their fingers. I dared to feel a connection with them, though I had no more musical talent than a rock; standing taller, moving rapidly and successfully through total darkness, I thrilled to the experience as sometimes I had thrilled to Stevie’s and Ray’s piano work.

      The searchers fell far behind me. I couldn’t see even the most indirect glow of their lights. I couldn’t hear them, either, though perhaps because my heart was pounding so hard that the blood-rush roar in my ears was like my own private Niagara.

      With my right shoulder, I brushed against something, only the