Brother Odd

don't care."
        I watched the graceful lines emerge from the simple pencil gripped by the stubby fingers of the short broad hand.
        "Jacob, do you remember the face of the Neverwas?"
        "A long time ago." He shook his head. "A long time ago."
        Cataracts of falling snow made a blind eye of the window.
        In the doorway, Romanovich tapped one finger against the face of his watch and raised his eyebrows.
        We might have precious little time remaining, but I could think of nowhere better to spend it than here, where I had been sent by the medium of the once-dead Justine.
        Intuition raised a question that at once seemed important to me.
        "Jacob, you know my name, my full name."
        "The Odd Thomas."
        "Yes. My last name is Thomas. Do you know your last name?"
        "Her name."
        "That's right. It would be your mother's last name, too."
        "Jennifer."
        "That's a first name, like Jacob."
        The pencil stopped moving, as if the memory of his mother came so vividly to him that no part of his mind or heart remained free to guide his drawing.
        "Jenny," he said. "Jenny Calvino."
        "So you are Jacob Calvino."
        "Jacob Calvino," he confirmed.
        Intuition had told me that the name would be revealing, but it meant nothing to me.
        Again the pencil moved, and the boat took further form, the vessel from which Jenny Calvino's ashes had been dispersed.
        As during my previous visit, a second large drawing tablet lay closed on the table. The longer I tried and dismally failed to think of questions that might extract vital information from Jacob, the more my attention was compelled toward that tablet.
        If I inspected the second tablet without permission, Jacob might consider my curiosity a violation of his privacy. Offended, he might withdraw again, and give me nothing further.
        On the other hand, if I asked to see the tablet and he refused permission, that avenue of inquiry would be closed off.
        Jacob's last name was not revelatory, as I had thought it would be, but in this case, I did not think that intuition would fail me. The tablet seemed almost to glow, almost to be floating above the table, the most vivid thing in the room, hyper-real.
        I slid the tablet in front of me, and Jacob either did not notice or did not care.
        When I turned back the cover, I found a drawing of this room's only window. Pressed to the glass was a kaleidoscope of bones, which he had rendered in exquisite detail.
        Sensing that I had found something alarming, Romanovich took a step into the room.
        I raised one hand to warn him to stop, but then held up the drawing so he could see it.
        When I turned the page, I found another depiction of the beast at the same window, though in this one, the bones formed a pattern different from the first.
        Either the thing had clung to the window long enough for Jacob to draw it in great detail, which I doubted, or he had a photographic memory.
        The third drawing was of a robed figure wearing a necklace of human teeth and bones: Death as I had seen him in the bell tower, with pale hands and without a face.
        As I was about to show this drawing to Romanovich, three bodachs slunk into the room, and I closed the tablet.

CHAPTER 43
        
        EITHER NOT INTERESTED IN ME OR PRETENDING no interest, the three sinister shapes gathered around Jacob.
        Their hands were fingerless, as devoid of detail as were their faces and forms. Yet they were more suggestive of paws-or the webbed extremities of amphibians-than of hands.
        As Jacob worked, oblivious of his spirit visitors, they appeared to stroke his cheeks. Quivering with excitement, the specters traced the curve of his thick neck and kneaded his heavy shoulders.
        Bodachs appear to experience this world with some if not all of the usual five senses, perhaps also with a sixth sense of their own, but they have no effect on things here. If a hundred were to rush past in a pack, they would make no sound, create no slightest draft.
        They seemed to thrill to a radiance produced by Jacob that was invisible to me, perhaps his life force, knowing that soon it would be torn from him. When eventually the violence comes, the pending horror that has drawn them, they will shudder and spasm and swoon in ecstasy.
        Previously, I have