Brother Odd by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online

revelation of the butterfly would occur.
    Such comments suggested that Brother John might become someone other than who he is, someone greater.
    Because I was a guest and not a monk, I could not tease more out of the brothers. They were protective of him and of his privacy.
    I was aware of Brother John’s true identity only because he revealed it to me. He did not swear me to secrecy. He had said instead, “I know you won’t sell me out, Odd Thomas. Your discretion and your loyalty are figured in the drift of stars.”
    Although I had no idea what he meant by that, I didn’t press him for an explanation. He said many things I didn’t fully understand, and I didn’t want our relationship to become a verbal sonata to which a rhythmic
Huh? Huh? Huh?
was my only contribution.
    I had not told him my secret. I don’t know why. Maybe I would just prefer that certain people I admire do not have any reason to think of me as a freak.
    The brothers regarded him with respect bordering on awe. I also sensed in them a trace of fear. I might have been mistaken.
    I didn’t regard him as fearsome. I sensed no threat in him. Sometimes, however, I saw that he himself was afraid of something.
    Abbot Bernard does not call this place John’s Mew, as do the other monks. He refers to it as the adytum.
    Adytum
is another medieval word that means “the most sacred part of a place of worship, forbidden to the public, the innermost shrine of shrines.”
    The abbot is a good-humored man, but he never speaks the word
adytum
with a smile. The three syllables cross his lips always in a murmur or a whisper, solemnly, and in his eyes are yearning and wonder and perhaps dread.
    As to why Brother John traded success and the secular world for poverty and the monastery, he had only said that his studies of the structure of reality, as revealed through that branch of physics known as quantum mechanics, had led him to revelations that humbled him. “Humbled and spooked me,” he said.
    Now, as I finished the chocolate-chip cookie, he said, “What brings you here at this hour, during the Greater Silence?”
    “I know you’re awake much of the night.”
    “I sleep less and less, can’t turn my mind off.”
    A periodic insomniac myself, I said, “Some nights, it seems my brain is someone else’s TV, and they won’t stop channel surfing.”
    “And when I
do
nod off,” said Brother John, “it’s often at inconvenient times. In any day, I’m likely to miss one or two periods of the Divine Office—sometimes Matins and Lauds, sometimes Sext, or Compline. I’ve even missed the Mass, napping in this chair. The abbot is understanding. The prior is too lenient with me, grants absolution easily and with too little penance.”
    “They have a lot of respect for you, sir.”
    “It’s like sitting on a beach.”
    “What is?” I asked, smoothly avoiding
Huh?
    “Here, in the quiet hours after midnight. Like sitting on a beach. The night rolls and breaks and tosses up our losses like bits of wreckage, all that’s left of one ship or another.”
    I said, “I suppose that’s true,” because in fact I thought I understood his mood if not his full meaning.
    “We ceaselessly examine the bits of wreckage in the surf, as though we can put the past together again, but that’s just torturing ourselves.”
    That sentiment had teeth. I, too, had felt its bite. “Brother John, I’ve got an odd question.”
    “Of course you do,” he said, either commenting on the arcane nature of my curiosity or on my name.
    “Sir, this may seem to be an ignorant question, but I have good reason to ask it. Is there a remote possibility that your work here might…blow up or something?”
    He bowed his head, raised one hand from the arm of his chair, and stroked his chin, apparently pondering my question.
    Although I was grateful to him for giving me a well-considered answer, I would have been happier if he had without hesitation said,
Nope, no chance, impossible,