Brother Odd Read Free

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
    T HE 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.
    Photographs of Justine at four reveal a child of exceptional beauty. In those snapshots, she looks impish and full of delight.
    Eight years after the tub, at twelve, she was more beautiful than ever. Brain damage had not resulted in facial paralysis or distorted expressions. Curiously, a life spent largely indoors had not left her pale and drawn. Her face had color, and not a blemish.
    Her beauty was chaste, like that of a Botticelli madonna, and ethereal. For everyone who knew