Odd Thomas

for the swinging door, trying to clip the phone to my belt. I dropped it, left it for later, and shoved through the swinging door, into the living room.
        A lamp had been knocked to the floor. The ceramic base had shattered.
        When I tore open the front door and saw no one on the stoop or on the lawn, I slammed it shut. Hard. The boom shook the house, and making noise greatly pleased me after so much pussyfooting. My anger felt good.
        I rushed through the archway, into the narrow hall, seeking the perpetrator. Bedroom, closet, study, closet, bathroom. No one.
        Crows on the roof hadn't knocked over the lamp. Nor a draft. Nor an earthquake.
        When I returned to the kitchen to pick up my phone and get out of the house, Robertson was waiting there for me.
        

CHAPTER 50
        
        FOR A DEAD MAN WHO NO LONGER HAD A STAKE IN the schemes and games of this world, Robertson lingered with singular ferocity, as infuriated as he had been when I had watched him from the bell tower at St. Bart's. His mushroom-colony body now seemed powerful, even in its lumpiness. His soft face and blurry features hardened and sharpened with rage.
        No bullet hole, scorch mark, or stain marred his shirt. Unlike Tom Jedd, who carried his severed arm and pretended to use it as a back scratcher out there at Tire World, Robertson was in denial of his death, and he chose not to sport his mortal wound, just as Penny Kallisto had initially manifested without evidence of strangulation, acquiring the ligature marks only in the company of Harlo Landerson, her killer.
        In high agitation, Robertson circled the kitchen. He glared at me, his eyes wilder and more fevered than those of the coyotes at the Church of the Whispering Comet.
        When I had begun to out him, I had unintentionally made him a liability to his collaborator, setting him up for murder, but I had not pulled the trigger. Evidently, his hatred for me nonetheless exceeded what he harbored for the man who had killed him; otherwise, he would have done his haunting elsewhere.
        Ovens to refrigerator, to sink, to ovens, he circled while I stooped and picked up the cell phone that I'd dropped earlier. Dead, he didn't worry me a fraction as much as he had when I had thought he'd been alive in the churchyard.
        As I clipped the phone to my belt, Robertson came to me. Loomed before me. His eyes were the gray of dirty ice, yet they conveyed the heat of his fury.
        I met his stare and didn't retreat from him. I've learned that it's not wise to show fear in these cases.
        His heavy face indeed had the quality of a fungus, but a meaty variety. Very portobello. His bloodless lips drew back from teeth that had seen too little of a brush.
        He reached past my face and cupped his right hand against the back of my neck.
        Penny Kallisto's hand had been dry and warm. Robertson's felt damp, cold. This was not his real hand, of course, only part of an apparition, a spirit image, that only I could have felt; but the nature of such a touch reveals the character of the soul.
        Although I refused to shy from this unearthly contact, I cringed inwardly at the thought of the creep playing with the ten souvenirs in his freezer. The visual stimulation of those frozen trophies might not always satisfy. Perhaps he thawed them now and then to increase his tactile pleasure and to conjure a more vivid memory of each kill - tweaking, pinching, petting, caressing, planting tender kisses upon those mementos.
        No spirit, however evil, can harm a living person merely by touch. This is our world, not theirs. Their blows pass through us, and their bites draw no blood.
        When he realized that he could not make me cower, Robertson lowered his hand from my neck. His fury doubled, trebled, wrenching his face into a gargoyle mask.
        One way exists for certain spirits to harm the living. If their character is sufficiently pernicious, if they give their hearts to evil until malevolence ripens into incurable spiritual malignancy, they are able to summon the energy of their demonic rage and vent it upon the inanimate.
        We call them poltergeists. I once lost a brand-new music system to such an entity, as well as the handsome award plaque for creative writing that I had won in that high-school competition judged by Little Ozzie.
        As he had done in the sacristy at St. Bart's, Robertson's