Deeply Odd

Twelve

The door at the head of the stairs opened not into an attic but instead into a ten-foot-square room as featureless and somehow artificial as all those before it, which soon proved to be a kind of shed on the roof. Directly opposite the entrance door waited an exit, through which I stepped onto the flat and parapeted top of the building, closing that last door behind me.

Without a window between me and this absolute-black sky, the effect of such undetailed heavens was profound, frightening not just because of the uncanny darkness but also for a reason that eluded me. Or perhaps the reason was not elusive. Maybe I dreaded acknowledging and considering it, for fear that contemplation would soon sweep me out of the main currents of sanity, into a tributary of madness.

Indeed, the roof was a lunatic place, disorienting under a moonless and starless vault that seemed at first to be an eternal void, but the next moment might have been the low ceiling of a cavern deep in Earth’s crust, and then again a void. In spite of the distant lakes of fire, if they were truly fire, the land around this isolated structure lay nearly as dark as the sky above, providing so little ambient light that I could not see as far as any edge of the roof, which in my reality had been guarded by an Art Deco parapet. Even in the remote reaches of the Mojave, even on a night when two thousand feet of dense ecliptical clouds separated the desert from the glowing wonders of the universe, the land gave off at least a dim light, the product of natural radiation, of minerals in the soil, and of certain vaguely luminous plants. Not here. This outer darkness, so complete, seemed to be capable of a kind of osmosis, gradually penetrating me to blacken my thoughts and eventually extinguish my hope.

I could barely see the pale forms of my hands — one fisted, the other clenching the pistol. As I took a two-hand grip on the weapon, it remained all but invisible, and I almost squeezed off a shot just to see the muzzle flash and know that I wasn’t going blind.

Although I wanted to put more distance between me and the door of the shed, wanted to find something behind which I could hide — chimney stacks, air-conditioner housings, anything — my feet seemed to be embedded ankle-deep in long-settled roof tar. But my inability to move was entirely psychological, the blackness above pressing down like deep strata of soil and rock, squeezing upon me from all sides, until it seemed that Fate, in league with Nature, intended that I should become nothing more than a brittle fossil in a thick vein of anthracite.

With effort, I shuffled backward a step, another and another, but then halted as a dizziness overcame me and as I began to think that I must be turning as I retreated, gradually arcing away from the roof shed, where the man from the wasteland might at any moment appear. I needed to keep the pistol trained upon that door, because if the stranger came through it with the obvious intent to attack, he would be backlighted only briefly. I would have but a second to discern his intent and another second to squeeze off a shot before the door fell shut.

When he was no longer silhouetted by the lighted shed, I might discover that he could see in the lightlessness of this wretched reality as well as I was able to see in the full sun of the day. He could then stalk me at his leisure, while in a growing panic I shot at phantoms until I expended all ten rounds in the pistol’s magazine.

Although I am an optimist, my imagination can conjure countless deadly hands from any shuffled deck before the cards are dealt. I am, therefore, perplexed by so many people who, whether they’re optimists or pessimists, trust any dealer as long as he claims to share their vision of how all things ought to be, who trust their own vision to the extent that they never question it, and who believe that four of a kind and royal flushes always fall by chance in a world without meaning. To such folks, Hitler was a distant and half-comic figure — until he wasn’t; and mad mullahs promising to use nuclear weapons as soon as they obtain them are likewise harmless — until they aren’t. I, on the other hand, believe life has profound meaning and that the meaning of Creation itself is benign, but I also know that there are such things as card mechanics who can manipulate any deck to their great advantage. In life, little happens by chance, and most bad hands we’re dealt are the consequence of our actions, which are shaped by our wisdom and our ignorance. In my experience, survival depends on hoping for the best while recognizing that disaster is more likely and that it can’t be averted if it can’t be imagined.

The roof-shed door opened. The man out of the wasteland appeared with the jaundice-yellow light behind him, a silhouette of which I could see no details whatsoever.

Standing five-ten or five-eleven, he seemed to have an athletic physique, though he wasn’t the hulking terminator or the sinuous shape-shifter that I might have feared. As far as I could tell, he held no weapon.

No light from the stairs managed to leak out onto the roof, as if some magical barrier contained it, and I couldn’t know whether or not he saw me. But he didn’t slip quickly out of the shed and dodge to one side; he paused in the doorway instead, blocking the door with his body, giving me plenty of time to kill him. His confidence seemed to suggest that he didn’t bear me any ill will and therefore assumed I would not harm him, that he was merely curious about me and anticipated nothing more than curiosity in return.

The longer he dared to stand there, however, the more his confidence seemed to be a troubling boldness, even effrontery. His continued silence made little sense if his sole reason for pursuing me was mere curiosity. Moment by moment, I found his attitude more arrogant and threatening.

Unless his vision was cat-clear in the dark, he could not know that I held a pistol. He might be convinced to explain himself if he was made aware that, at a distance of perhaps fifteen feet, I could blow him out of this hostile world into another.

Intuition told me not to speak a word. His stillness might be a taunt, inviting me to ask who he was and what he intended. If he wanted me to speak first, then my doing so would in some way surely disadvantage me.

As much as it is anything else, my life is a series of pursuits and confrontations. Suddenly I realized that when this man appeared and came after me, I fell into my usual habits and routines, allowing the strangeness of this dark world to recede from my awareness, as if I were grateful to escape into the familiar game of cat and mouse. As a result, giving myself to action, I’d failed to consider that the issues and ideas and needs motivating this man might be as different from my desires and motives as his world was different from mine.

Whatever his hesitation in the doorway might imply, whatever his silence was meant to convey, my interpretation of his behavior would most likely be wrong. I was in new territory in every sense of the word, standing waist-deep in the surging waters of the unknown, which is the worst place to find oneself, for that riverbed is treacherous underfoot and those currents are as unpredictable as they are deadly.

Intuition and reason told me to remain mute and to be prepared that when he spoke, if he spoke, what little I thought I knew about this place and this man would be washed away. And then events would rush forward in waves, in drowning cataracts.

My expectation was fulfilled a moment later, when the silhouette declared, “My name is Odd Thomas. I see the spirits of the lingering dead.” His voice was mine.

He stepped forward, and the door swung shut behind him, sweeping away the dirty-yellow light in the stairwell.