Brother Odd Read Free Page A

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 Justine, her beauty stirred neither envy nor desire, but inspired a surprising reverence and, inexplicably, something like hope.
        I suspect that the three menacing figures, hunched over her with keen interest, were not drawn by her beauty. Her enduring innocence attracted them, as did their expectation-their certain knowledge?-that she would soon be dead by violence and, at last, ugly These purposeful shadows, as black as scraps of starless night sky, have no eyes, yet I could sense them leering; no mouths, though I could almost hear the greedy sounds of them feasting on the promise of this girl's death.
        I once saw them gathered at a nursing home in the hours before an earthquake leveled it. At a service station prior to an explosion and tragic fire. Following a teenager named Gary Tolliver in the days before he tortured and murdered his entire family.
        A single death does not draw them, or two deaths, or even three. They prefer operatic violence, and for them the performance is not over when the fat lady sings, but only when she is torn to pieces.
        They seem incapable of affecting our world, as though they are not fully present in this place and this time, but are in some way virtual presences. They are travelers, observers, aficionados of our pain.
        Yet I fear them, and not solely because their presence signals oncoming horror. While they seem unable to affect this world in any significant way, I suspect that I am an exception to the rules that limit them, that I am vulnerable to them, as vulnerable as an ant in the shadow of a descending shoe.
        Seeming whiter than usual in the company of inky bodachs, Boo did not growl, but watched these spirits with suspicion and disgust.
        I pretended to have come here to assure myself that the thermostat had been properly set, to raise the pleated shades and confirm that the window had been firmly closed against all drafts, to dredge some wax from my right ear and to pry a shred of lettuce from between two teeth, though not with the same finger.
        The bodachs ignored me-or pretended to ignore me.
        Sleeping Justine had their complete attention. Their hands or paws hovered a few inches over the girl, and their fingers or talons described circles in the air above her, as if they were novelty-act musicians playing an instrument composed of drinking glasses, rubbing eerie music from the wet crystal rims.
        Perhaps, like an insistent rhythm, her innocence excited them. Perhaps her humble circumstances, her lamblike grace, her complete vulnerability were the movements of a symphony to them.
        I can only theorize about bodachs. I know nothing for certain about their nature or about their origins.
        This is true not only of bodachs. The file labeled things about which odd Thomas knows nothing is no less immense than the universe.
        The only thing I know for sure is how much I do not know. Maybe there is wisdom in that recognition. Unfortunately, I have found no comfort in