Forever Odd

white-brick Georgian with elegant ornamentation. It is flanked by a delightful American Victorian with so many decorative moldings that it resembles a wedding cake, and by a house that is baroque in all the wrong ways.
        None of these architectural styles seems right for the desert, shaded by palm trees, brightened by climbing bougainvillea. Our town was founded in 1900 by newcomers from the East Coast, who fled the harsh winters but brought with them cold-climate architecture and attitude.
        Terri Stambaugh, my friend and employer, owner of the Pico Mundo Grille, tells me that this displaced architecture is better than the dreary acres of stucco and graveled roofs in many California desert towns.
        I assume that she is right. I have seldom crossed the city line of Pico Mundo and have never been beyond the boundaries of Maravilla County.
        My life is too full to allow either a jaunt or a journey. I don’t even watch the Travel Channel.
        The joys of life can be found anywhere. Far places only offer exotic ways to suffer.
        Besides, the world beyond Pico Mundo is haunted by strangers, and I find it difficult enough to cope with the dead who, in life, were known to me.
        Upstairs and down, soft lamplight shone at some windows of the Jessup residence. Most panes were dark.
        By the time I reached the foot of the front-porch steps, Dr. Wilbur Jessup waited there.
        The wind stirred his hair and ruffled his pajamas, although why he should be subject to the wind, I do not know. The moonlight found him, too, and shadow.
        The grieving radiologist needed comforting before he could summon sufficient strength to lead me into his house, where he himself no doubt lay dead, and perhaps another.
        I embraced him. Only a spirit, he was invisible to everyone but me, yet he felt warm and solid.
        Perhaps I see the dead affected by the weather of this world, and see them touched by light and shadow, and find them as warm as the living, not because this is the way they are but because this is the way I want them to be. Perhaps by this device, I mean to deny the power of death.
        My supernatural gift might reside not in my mind but instead in my heart. The heart is an artist that paints over what profoundly disturbs it, leaving on the canvas a less dark, less sharp version of the truth.
        Dr. Jessup had no substance, but he leaned heavily upon me, a weight. He shook with the sobs that he could not voice.
        The dead don’t talk. Perhaps they know things about death that the living are not permitted to learn from them.
        In this moment, my ability to speak gave me no advantage. Words would not soothe him.
        Nothing but justice could relieve his anguish. Perhaps not even justice.
        When he’d been alive, he had known me as Odd Thomas, a local character. I am regarded by some people-wrongly-as a hero, as an eccentric by nearly everyone.
        Odd is not a nickname; it’s my legal handle.
        The story of my name is interesting, I suppose, but I’ve told it before. What it boils down to is that my parents are dysfunctional. Big-time.
        I believe that in life Dr. Jessup had found me intriguing, amusing, puzzling. I think he had liked me.
        Only in death did he know me for what I am: a companion to the lingering dead.
        I see them and wish I did not. I cherish life too much to turn the dead away, however, for they deserve my compassion by virtue of having suffered this world.
        When Dr. Jessup stepped back from me, he had changed. His wounds were now manifest.
        He had been hit in the face with a blunt object, maybe a length of pipe or a hammer. Repeatedly. His skull was broken, his features distorted.
        Torn, cracked, splintered, his hands suggested that he had desperately tried to defend himself-or that he had come to the aid of someone. The only person living with him was his son, Danny.
        My pity was quickly exceeded by a kind of righteous rage, which is a dangerous emotion, clouding judgment, precluding caution.
        In this condition, which I do not seek, which frightens me, which comes over me as though I have been possessed, I can’t turn away from what must be done. I plunge.
        My friends, those few who know my secrets, think my compulsion has a divine inspiration. Maybe it’s just temporary insanity.
        Step to step, ascending, then