Free Saint Odd by Dean Koontz

cinnamon roll. “So you didn’t come home to die.”
    I could have said to them that the prospect of my death wasn’t what brought me home to Pico Mundo, but that were Death to find me in the course of this mission, I would have no regrets and, more to the point, would go through that dark door with more gratitude than fear. They might interpret those words as proof of a suicidal disposition. I was not suicidal, however, only full of longing for the girl whom I’d lost. No need to worry my closest friends.
    And so I said, “No, sir. I came home because I’m needed here—and because she’s here.”
    In spite of my assurances, Ozzie appeared no less worried. “Her ashes, you mean.”
    “Yes. And in a way, her, too. All my memories of her are here.”
    My surrogate fathers exchanged meaningful looks, but neither of them said anything. I figured they would be on their phones with each other by the time they left the park for the state highway.
    We packed the chafing dishes and plates and utensils and leftover food in boxes and coolers, and we loaded them into the spacious trunk of Ozzie’s customized Cadillac.
    “Not the remaining strawberries,” Ozzie said, taking possessionof that bowl at the last minute. “A weary traveler needs a snack to see him through a tedious journey.”
    “You’ll be home in fifteen minutes, sir.”
    “By the most direct series of streets, yes. But I may choose to take the scenic route.”
    “You didn’t have to do all this,” Chief Porter said to him. “A box of doughnuts would have been enough.”
    Ozzie pursed his lips and frowned in disapproval. “Doughnuts for a police officer would be such a cliché. I make an effort to avoid clichés in my life every bit as much as I eschew them in my books.”
    Although he was a warm-hearted man, Wyatt Porter had never been as much of a hugger as Ozzie Boone. He wanted a hug anyway.
    I said, “Be sure to tell Karla I love her, and tell her not to worry about me.”
    “It’s good to have you back, son. I hope your days of wandering are all behind you.”
    I watched them drive away.
    My attention was drawn to the lake by a sudden thrumming of wings and a chorus of low hoarse croaks. Eight or ten migrating egrets touched down where beach met water and spread out along the shore, each respecting the other’s hunting grounds. More than three feet tall, white but for their yellow bills and skinny black legs, moving slowly and with solemn deliberation, they stalked the shallows for their breakfast. They speared small wriggling fish from the water and tilted their heads to let the catch slide, still alive, down their long, sleek throats, and I wondered if even in the small brain of a little fish there might be a capacity for terror.

Eleven
    The night before my return to Pico Mundo. The seaside cottage where I and Annamaria and young Tim slept in separate rooms. Windows open for the sea air. Borne on that faintest of breezes came the lulling susurration of the gentle surf breaking on the shore
.
    In the still and ordered cottage, I endured a dream of chaos and cacophony. Shrill screams of terror, screams of glee. Through smears of light that blur my vision, faces leer, loom, but then swoon from me. Hands pulling, pushing, plucking, slapping. Through it all the eerie tortured wail and bleat and churr and howl that might have been what passed for music in an alien world without harmony
.
    Although I’d never been drunk in my life, I seemed to be drunk in the dream, reeling across ground that yawed like the deck of a storm-tossed ship. Wrapped in my arms, held to my chest: an urn, a mortuary urn. I heard myself calling Stormy’s name, but this was not the urn that held her ashes. Somehow, I knew this urn contained the remains of dead people beyond counting
.
    Ribbons of darkness suddenly wound through the whirl of blurring light, so that I feared that blindness would overcome me. The booming of my heart grew louder, louder, until it exceeded in