Odd Thomas

table, Viola said, "Odd, will you read me?"
        More than a few folks in Pico Mundo think that I'm some sort of psychic: perhaps a clairvoyant, a thaumaturge, seer, soothsayer, something. Only a handful know that I see the restless dead. The others have whittled an image of me with the distorting knives of rumor until I am a different piece of scrimshaw to each of them.
        "I've told you, Viola, I'm not a palmist or a head-bump reader. And tea leaves aren't anything to me but garbage."
        "So read my face," she said. "Tell me - do you see what I saw in a dream last night?"
        Viola was usually a cheerful person, even though her husband, Rafael, had traded up to a waitress at a fancy steak house over in Arroyo City, thereafter providing neither counsel nor support for their two children. On this occasion, however, Viola appeared solemn as never before, and worried.
        I told her, "The last thing I can read is faces."
        Every human face is more enigmatic than the timeworn expression on the famous Sphinx out there in the sands of Egypt.
        "In my dream," Viola said, "I saw myself, and my face was… broken, dead. I had a hole in my forehead."
        "Maybe it was a dream about why you married Rafael."
        "Not funny," Terri admonished me.
        "I think maybe I'd been shot," Viola said.
        "Honey," Terri comforted her, "when's the last time you had a dream come true?"
        "I guess never," Viola said.
        "Then I wouldn't worry about this one."
        "Best I can remember," Viola said, "I've never before seen myself face-on in a dream."
        Even in my nightmares, which sometimes do come true, I've never glimpsed my face, either.
        "I had a hole in my forehead," she repeated, "and my face was… spooky, all out of kilter."
        A high-powered round of significant caliber, upon puncturing the forehead, would release tremendous energy that might distort the structure of the entire skull, resulting in a subtle but disturbing new arrangement of the features.
        "My right eye," Viola added, "was bloodshot and seemed to… to swell half out of the socket."
        In our dreams, we are not detached observers, as are the characters who dream in movies. These internal dramas are usually seen strictly from the dreamer's point of view. In nightmares, we can't look into our own eyes except by indirection, perhaps because we fear discovering that therein lie the worst monsters plaguing us.
        Viola's face, sweet as milk chocolate, was now distorted by a beseeching expression. "Tell me the truth, Odd. Do you see death in me?"
        I didn't say to her that death lies dormant in each of us and will bloom in time.
        Although not one small detail of Viola's future, whether grim or bright, had been revealed to me, the delicious aroma of my untouched cheeseburger induced me to lie in order to get on with lunch: "You'll live a long happy life and pass away in your sleep, of old age."
        "Really?"
        Smiling and nodding, I was unashamed of this deception. For one thing, it might be true. I see no real harm in giving people hope. Besides, I had not sought to be her oracle.
        In a better mood than she'd arrived, Viola departed, returning to the paying customers.
        Picking up my cheeseburger, I said to Terri, "October 23, 1958."
        "Elvis was in the army then," she said, hesitating only to chew a bite of her grilled-cheese sandwich. "He was stationed in Germany."
        "That's not very specific."
        "The evening of the twenty-third, he went into Frankfurt to attend a Bill Haley concert."
        "You could be making this up."
        "You know I'm not." Her crisp dill pickle crunched audibly when she bit it. "Backstage, he met Haley and a Swedish rock-'n'-roll star named Little Gerhard."
        "Little Gerhard? That can't be true."
        "Inspired, I guess, by Little Richard. I don't know for sure. I never heard Little Gerhard sing. Is Viola going to be shot in the head?"
        "I don't know." Juicy and cooked medium-well, the meat in the cheeseburger had been enhanced with a perfect pinch of seasoned salt. Poke was a contender. "Like you said, dreams are just dreams."
        "She's had things hard. She doesn't need this."
        "Shot in the head? Who does need it?"
        "Will you look after her?" Terri asked.
        "How would I do that?"
        "Put out your psychic feelers.