Читать книгу Odd Thomas Series Books 1-5 - Dean Koontz, Dean Koontz - Страница 75

FOR A WHILE I HAD GONE MAD. MADNESS runs in my family. We have a long history of retreating from reality.

A part of me had known from the moment Stormy came to me in the ICU that she had become one of the lingering dead. The truth hurt too much to accept. In my condition that Wednesday afternoon, her death would have been one wound too many, and I would have let go of this life.

The dead don’t talk. I don’t know why. So I spoke for Stormy in the conversations that she and I had shared during the past week. I said for her what I knew she wanted to say. I can almost read her mind. We are immeasurably closer than best friends, closer than mere lovers. Stormy Llewellyn and I are each other’s destiny.

In spite of his bandaged wounds, the chief held me tightly and let me pour out my grief in his fatherly arms.

Later, Little Ozzie led me to the living-room sofa. He sat with me, tipping the furniture in his direction.

The chief pulled a chair close to us. Karla sat on the arm of the sofa, at my side. Terri settled on the floor in front of me, one hand on my knee.

My beautiful Stormy stood apart, watching. I have never seen on any human face a look more loving than the one with which she favored me in that terrible moment.

Taking my hand, Little Ozzie said, “You know you’ve got to let her go, dear boy.”

I nodded, for I could not speak.

Long after the day of which I now write, Ozzie had told me to keep the tone of this manuscript as light as possible by being an unreliable narrator, like the lead character in Agatha Christie’s The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I have played tricks with certain verbs. Throughout, I have often written of Stormy and our future together in the present tense, as if we are still together in this life. No more.

Ozzie said, “She’s here now, isn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“She hasn’t left your side for a moment, has she?”

I shook my head.

“You don’t want your love for her and hers for you to trap her here when she needs to move on.”

“No.”

“That’s not fair to her, Oddie. Not fair to either of you.”

I said, “She deserves ... her next adventure.”

“It’s time, Oddie,” said Terri, whose memory of Kelsey, her lost husband, is etched on her soul.

Trembling in fear of life without Stormy, I rose from the sofa and hesitantly went to her. She still wore her Burke & Bailey’s uniform, of course, without the perky pink hat, yet she had never looked lovelier.

My friends had not known where she stood until I stepped before her and put one hand to her precious face. So warm to me.

The dead cannot speak, but Stormy spoke three words silently, allowing me to read her lips. I love you.

I kissed her, my dead love, so tenderly, so chastely. I held her in my arms, my face buried in her hair, her throat.

After a while, she put a hand under my chin. I raised my head.

Three more words. Be happy. Persevere.

“I’ll see you in service,” I promised, which is what she calls the life that comes after boot camp.

Her eyes. Her smile. Now mine only in memory.

I let her go. She turned away and took three steps, fading. She looked over her shoulder, and I reached out to her, and she was gone.