Because she talked, I knew she wasn’t dead. Sometimes I realize an apparition is a ghost only when it fades or walks through a wall.
On other occasions, when they have been murdered and want me to bring their killers to justice, they may choose to materialize with their wounds revealed. Confronted by a man whose face has imploded from the impact of a bullet or by a woman carrying her severed head, I am as quick as the next guy to realize I’m in the company of a spook.
In the recent dream, I had been standing on a beach, snakes of apocalyptic light squirming across the sand. The sea had throbbed as some bright leviathan rose out of the deep, and the heavens had been choked with clouds as red and orange as flames.
In the west, the Lady of the Bell, suspended in the air above the sea, had floated toward me, arms folded across her breast, her eyes closed. As she drew near, her eyes opened, and I glimpsed in them a reflection of what lay behind me.
I had twice recoiled from the vision that I beheld in her eyes, and I had both times awakened with no memory of it.
Now I walked away from the pier railing, and sat beside her. The bench accommodated four, and we occupied opposite ends.
Boo curled up on the deck and rested his chin on my shoes. I could feel the weight of his head on my feet.
When I touch a spirit, whether dog or human, it feels solid to me, and warm. No chill or scent of death clings to it.
Still gazing out to sea, the Lady of the Bell said nothing.
She wore white athletic shoes, dark-gray pants, and a baggy pink sweater with sleeves so long her hands were hidden in them.
Because she was petite, her condition was more apparent than it would have been with a larger woman. A roomy sweater couldn’t conceal that she was about seven months pregnant.
I had never seen her with a companion.
From her neck hung the pendant for which I had named her. On a silver chain hung a polished silver bell the size of a thimble. In the sunless day, this simple jewelry was the only shiny object.
She might have been eighteen, three years younger than I was. Her slightness made her seem more like a girl than like a woman.
Nevertheless, I had not considered calling her the Girl of the Bell. Her self-possession and calm demeanor required lady.
“Have you ever heard such stillness?” I asked.
“There’s a storm coming.” Her voice floated the words as softly as a breath of summer sets dandelion seeds adrift. “The pressure in advance weighs down the wind and flattens the waves.”
“Are you a meteorologist?”
Her smile was lovely, free of judgment and artifice. “I’m just a girl who thinks too much.”
“My name’s Odd Thomas.”
“Yes,” she said.
Prepared to explain the dysfunctional nature of my family that had resulted in my name, as I had done countless times before, I was surprised and disappointed that she had none of the usual questions.
“You knew my name?” I asked.
“As you know mine.”
“But I don’t.”
“I’m Annamaria,” she said. “One word. It would have come to you.”
Confused, I said, “We’ve spoken before, but I’m sure we’ve never exchanged names.”
She only smiled and shook her head.
A white flare arced across the dismal sky: a gull fleeing to land as the afternoon faded.
Annamaria pulled back the long sleeves of her sweater, revealing her graceful hands. In the right she held a translucent green stone the size of a fat grape.
“Is that a jewel?” I asked.
“Sea glass. A fragment of a bottle that washed around the world and back, until it has no sharp edges. I found it on the beach.” She turned it between her slender fingers. “What do you think it means?”
“Does it need to mean anything?”
“The tide washed the sand as smooth as a baby’s skin, and as the water winked away, the glass seemed to open like a green eye.”
The shrieking of birds shattered the stillness, and I looked up to see three agitated sea gulls sailing landward.
Their cries announced company: footfalls on the pier behind us.
Three men in their late twenties walked to the north end of the observation platform. They stared up the coast toward the distant harbor and marina.
The two in khakis and quilted jackets appeared to be brothers. Red hair, freckles. Ears as prominent as handles on beer mugs.
The redheads glanced at us. Their faces were so hard, their eyes so cold, I might have thought they were evil spirits if I hadn’t heard their footsteps.
One of them favored Annamaria with a razor-slash smile. He had the dark and broken teeth of a heavy methamphetamine user.
The freckled pair made me uneasy, but the third man was the most disturbing of the group. At six four, he towered half a foot above the others, and had that muscled massiveness only steroid injections can produce.
Unfazed by the cool air, he wore athletic shoes without socks, white shorts, and a yellow-and-blue, orchid-pattern Hawaiian shirt.
The brothers said something to him, and the giant looked at us. He might be called handsome in an early Cro-Magnon way, but his eyes seemed to be as yellow as his small chin beard.
We did not deserve the scrutiny we received from him. Annamaria was an ordinary-looking pregnant woman, and I was just a fry cook who had been fortunate enough to reach twenty-one years of age without losing a leg or an eye, or my hair.
Malevolence and paranoia cohabit in a twisted mind. Bad men trust no one because they know the treachery of which they themselves are capable.
After a long suspicious stare, the giant turned his attention once more to the northern coast and the marina, as did his cohorts, but I didn’t think they were done with us.
Half an hour of daylight remained. Because of the overcast, however, twilight seemed to be already upon us. The lampposts lining the pier brightened automatically, but a thin veil of fog had risen out of nowhere to aid and abet the coming dusk.
Boo’s behavior confirmed my instincts. He had gotten to his feet. Hackles raised, ears flattened, he focused intently on the giant.
To Annamaria, I said, “I think we better go.”
“Do you know them?”
“I’ve seen their kind before.”
As she rose from the bench, she closed the green orb in her right fist. Both hands shrank back into the sleeves of her sweater.
I sensed strength in her, yet she also had an aura of innocence, an almost waiflike air of vulnerability. The three men were the kind to whom vulnerability had a scent as surely as rabbits hidden in tall grass have a smell easily detected by wolves.
Bad men wound and destroy one another, although as targets they prefer those who are innocent and as pure as this world allows anyone to be. They feed on violence, but they feast on the despoiling of what is good.
As Annamaria and I walked off the observation deck and toward the shore, I was dismayed that no one had come onto the pier. Usually a few evening fishermen would already have arrived with rods and tackle boxes.
I glanced back and saw Boo moving closer to the three men, who were oblivious of him. The hulk with the chin beard looked over the heads of the other two, again staring at Annamaria and me.
The