History.
It’s no surprise that anyone who bears a moniker like Odd Thomas is a little on the unusual side. Of course, his parents share different opinions concerning the origin of his name: While his mother claims that it was an uncorrected error on his birth certificate, intended to be other Todd or Dobb (supposedly after his Czechoslovakian uncle), his father insists that his name was always intended to be Odd. His father also states that he has no Czechoslovakian uncle.
The history of Odd’s family is both a mystery and a tragic story, with a supposed trait of insanity that runs on his mother’s side. Although his suspicions have never been confirmed for certain, he believes he shared something in common with the aunt he never knew, Cymry: An ability to see the dead. Odd suspects that, driven mad by her gift or having not kept it quite as secret as he had, Cymry had been institutionalized. Following a fate similar to his aunt’s is a possibility that looms over Odd’s head every day.
Odd’s upbringing, if you could call it that, had been an exceptionally dysfunctional one. The marriage between his parents had been cold and brief. Son to a narcissistic father who was hardly around and a highly mentally unstable mother, it’s amazing that Odd hadn’t gone crazy himself. Somewhere down the line, his mother’s insecurities with the outside world brought her to seek the comfort of a gun, its presence bringing her peace of mind. At age five, Odd fell ill with a severe case of influenza. As Odd cried for attention and comfort, his mother saw this as too much responsibility for her to bear; the weight of other people’s problems, even if it be her own son, was a crushing force to her psyche. Rather than entering Odd’s room and lying down in his bed to tend to him as any mother would, she brought her gun to his room. As she laid there beside him, she threatened to kill herself. This stifled Odd’s wails and tears for a time, but it could not stop his sickly coughing. The perpetual noise a nuisance to her throughout the night, his mother came and threatened to kill herself again. When that did not magically cure her son’s coughing fits, she pressed the muzzle of the gun over the boy’s right eye. For a long time, they stood there in, young Odd staring at the shiny bullet at the end of the chamber. Killing her son, however, would have only further condemned his mother into forced interaction with other people. This was seriously the only reason she only resorted to psychological abuse rather than physical ones throughout Odd’s childhood. Shamed by the trauma his mother put him through, Odd had never spoken of this to anyone-not even to the people he trusted most later on in life.
Naturally, neither of Odd’s parents had ever been aware of their son’s abilities. The truth of it would have burdened his mother into a psychological breakdown, whereas his father would have certainly wished to exploit Odd’s abilities for profitable gain. At age sixteen, he could no longer live with an insane mother or an absent father, for obvious reasons. Odd found refuge with a number of close friends, and the one relatively sane (albeit eccentric) family member, Grandma Sugars. The chief of police and his wife, Wyatt and Karla Porter, served as the mother and father figures that Odd never really knew, as well as Terri Stambaugh, who took him in and provided him with a job and a chance to start over. Around the same time, Odd met Bronwen “Stormy” Llewellyn, and the two became high school sweethearts. They were soul mates, in every definition of the word. They had matching birthmarks. And a gypsy mummy at a fair told them that they would be together forever. Therefore, it must be true.
In all his twenty years, Odd had never felt the desire to leave the small town of Pico Mundo, California. But not because it was in any way a particularly spectacular town; it was one of those kinds of forgettable places tourists often drive through, and rarely ever stayed. Both the living and the dead alike were prone to passing through (one of the tales Odd recounts included ex-US President Lyndon B. Johnson who, still wearing the hospital gown he died in, had mooned him on the streets. He has also became good friends with the ghost of Elvis freaking Presley. Seriously). Odd’s definition of the American Dream is his small town life, making a living as a fry cook at the local grille, content with his simple routine that was so frequently complicated by the needs of the dead. With Stormy at his side, however, Odd persevered.
Odd’s narrative begins on the morning of August 14th. When the ghost of Penny Kallisto, fell victim to a sexual predator, appeared to the fry cook, Odd sought justice for the crimes done to the girl. Penny led him to Harlo Landerson, a former classmate of Odd’s. Although the dead do not speak, Odd began to sense the scenario of Harlo’s misdeeds unfold before him, and upon confronting his former classmate in an almost dazed state, Harlo bolted, and Odd gave chase.
Taking down Harlo Landerson had only been the start of Odd’s interesting day. After allowing Penny Kallisto to pass on to the next life, Odd was relieved by Chief Porter as Harlo was arrested by the authorities. Afterwards, Odd casually goes to work like the man of action he is, flipping pancakes at the Pico Mundo Grille. Because that’s what a man of action does. No one would have suspected the morbidly obese man, who Odd charmingly dubs “Fungus Man” (seriously), to be a psychotic killer hellbent on mass murder. His bodach entourage, however, indicated otherwise.
In Scottish Gaelic mythology, bodachs are something like bogeymen. To Odd, they’re not that much different. He assumed this term when Odd encountered the only other person who could see them-a young British boy who called them bodachs. When it seemed that the bodachs were aware that the boy could see them, the child had been immediately run over by a runaway truck, after its perfectly healthy driver suffered a fatal heart attack. Bodachs are shadowy creatures that assemble in locations before an imminent disaster, so they serve as warning signs than anything else.
All the more reason for Odd’s unrest upon watching a whole platoon of them escorting the oblivious Fungus Man, who proceeded to order food and “eat like a ravenous swine”. Afterward, Odd consulted Terri and then went to meet up with Stormy after work, telling her of their unsettling customer. Stormy did not like the idea of Odd pursuing the Fungus Man, for fear of what would happen to him, but Odd’s moral obligation compelled him to pursue Pico Mundo’s potential threat.
Odd followed Fungus Man to his humble abode within the neighborhood of Camp’s End. There, he unearthed Fungus Man’s link to unexplained phenomena when he discovered a mysterious black room in the fat man’s house. Strangely enough, upon entering this room, Odd soon himself back in time a few minutes before he’s thrown a bit into the future. The room disappeared afterwards, as though it had never existed in the first place.
Over the course of the next twenty-four hours, Odd relentlessly pursued the peril that was soon to fall on Pico Mundo, fueled only on Pepsi, No Doz, chocolate, and sheer determination. He recounted an earlier moment he had with Elvis Presley who, unable to speak as the dead do not talk, expressed concern for Odd. It didn’t help that Elvis had been an emotional wreck the entire day. Odd figured this was because the day the tragedy is bound to strike the small town fell in between the days of Elvis and his mother’s death-days, but who could say for certain that the King of Rock and Roll might’ve foreseen the events that were soon to take place. Either way, it didn’t stop Odd from trying to prevent a mass murder and warning as many of his friends as he could about it.
Eventually, Odd found himself the one pursued by Fungus Man, who was actually given the unfortunate name of Robert Robertson. The Bob formerly known as Fungus Man wound up assaulting Odd and Stormy while they were having lunch at St. Bartholomew’s, vandalizing the church in the process. Some time later, after reporting Robertson’s assault, Odd returned to his flat only to discover the body of the fat man lying in his bath tub, murdered. Odd proceeded to dispose of the body in his place fast, for fear of being setup for murder and potentially getting killed himself should the murderer still be inside with him... Odd tossed Robertson’s body out the window, into Terri’s car, and off into the desert to divest himself of the evidence. Later on when Odd returned to the house on Camp’s End to further look for clues, he encountered Robertson’s ghost who, in blind rage, turned into a poltergeist. Odd thereafter sported a poltergeist-induced injury when a flipped fork flicked his forehead.
With time running out and Chief Porter out of commission when someone he apparently knew had attempted to murder him, Odd was on his own. He used his tracking ability, also called “psychic magnetism”, in order to find where he needed to go next. After making a few stops to his parents’, first his father, and then his mother, Odd realized that his psychic magnetism led him to his mother in order to swallow his fear of guns. He was led to the Green Moon Mall, where the real culprits were planning to make their move. As it turned out, the bodachs manipulated Odd into believing that Robertson was the real threat, when he had only been the pawn of a greater scheme. Bern Eckles and Simon Varner were members of the Pico Mundo Police Force, and had taken an interest in Satanism when they were much younger. As police officers, they were in the ideal position of authority. Varner had been the one who killed Robertson and attempted to set Odd up for his murder upon finding out that the fry cook had been onto their case.
Odd arrived at the Green Moon Mall in complete mayhem. He took down Bern Eckles with a baseball bat and, after reluctantly taking his gun, Odd shot down Simon Varner just in front of the ice cream shop where Stormy worked. Unable to find Stormy, Odd convinced himself that she was all right, and went to subdue the third gunman. The third member of the little satanic circle turned out to be Kevin Gosset, a school teacher, who shot Odd in the back twice while he’d been in the process of disarming a bomb set to go off in the mall. Odd passed out just as soon as he’d pulled out the wires, and woke up in the hospital, where he was greeted by all of his friends-Stormy included.
Once Odd was released from the hospital, he spent the next several days together with Stormy in her apartment, not answering phone calls and ignoring the relentless media pounding on their door. Over the period of time Odd was content with only Stormy’s company, as they had plans to get married soon. Unfortunately, the miracle never happen when Odd learned from his worried friends that Stormy had been among the nineteen fatalities at the Green Moon Mall massacre. It was then that Odd was forced to accept Stormy’s fate, say their goodbyes, and allowed her to move on to the next “great adventure”.
For the next six months, Odd had since left his tiny living space above his landlord’s garage and moved into Stormy’s apartment. He was awoken by the ghosts of Elvis Presley and a familiar Dr. Jessup. Odd learned that his childhood friend, Danny Jessup, had been abducted, leaving Dr. Jessup murdered in the kidnapping attempt. He confirmed Danny’s status among the living after paying a visit to his house, finding Dr. Jessup’s body, but no Danny. He was then assaulted by an unknown attacker.
Against Chief Porter’s advice, Odd chased the kidnappers alone, under the strict order from the kidnapper that if he did not, then his friend would die. At first, Odd and Porter suspected the culprit to be Danny’s biological father, Simon Makepeace. After some cryptic phone calls from a strange woman with a “smoky voice”, however, Odd began to learn that Simon had nothing to do with this (in fact, he learns later on that Simon was actually currently in prison). On top of that, he’d been told to go alone, or else Danny would die. The kidnapper decided to up her game by threatening to break Danny’s face-the only healthy part of Danny’s body that remains un-mutilated due to his dysfunction.
Using his psychic magnetism to locate Danny, Odd trudged through the water tunnels to an abandoned hotel, where he found his friend with a bomb strapped to him. Odd learned that Danny made several calls to a sex operator named Datura. Danny suffered from brittle bone disease, which made him lonely and deprived enough to even call a phone sex hotline, and that was where Danny made his huge, grave mistake: After developing an infatuation with Datura, Danny learned of her interest with the paranormal and proceeded to tell her several things about his psychic friend, Odd Thomas, in order to impress her. As a mean of getting to Odd, Datura kidnapped Danny in order to draw him out. Unable to disarm the bomb without blowing both Danny and himself up, Odd sought out Datura and her two silent partners, Cheval Andre and Cheval Robert. As it turned out, the reason Datura wished to meet Odd so badly was because she wanted him to show her ghosts. Unable to do this as the dead are visible only to him, Odd tricked Datura into pissing off a poltergeist. Distracted by the poltergeist’s rage, Odd was able to escape back to Danny and take care of the bomb by using Datura’s detonator to defuse it. He then told Danny to hide in an elevator, while Odd went back to take care of Datura and her compadres so they could escape.
After finding a shotgun in Datura’s room, Odd was attacked by Cheval Robert. Much to Odd’s dismay, he was forced to use the shotgun in order to kill Cheval Robert, knocking him out of the hotel window. Through reverse psychic magnetism (an opposite effect of psychic magnetism that draws others to Odd), Datura was able to find Odd. So was a certain mountain lion, which had attacked Datura from behind while the two were locked in conversation (because Datura just being a crazy enough bitch to believe that Odd could actually shapeshift into a cougar). While the big cat was distracted with Datura’s corpse, Odd made his way through the hotel, only to be hunted by the remaining Cheval Andre. Furious by the deaths of Datura and Robert, Odd was chased into the sewers where the two fought. Odd was able to use a knife to lay a fatal stab wound on Cheval Robert, but not without taking a slash across the chest himself.
It was implied that, after being washed down the sewer water and passing out, Odd died. He proceeded to undergo what might very well have been an out of body experience where he visited his friends, making sure that they were all right. He had no idea how he ended up outside of the Blue Moon Café, back in Pico Mundo, alive but not well: He was a mess, although mysteriously healed from the injury that should have otherwise killed him. Chief Porter then accompanied him back to the hotel where they rescued Danny, where Odd finally revealed the news to Danny of his father’s murder.
A couple months later, Odd spoke with Stormy’s uncle, Father Sean Llewellyn and rector of St. Bartholomew’s church, requesting that he seek peace with himself at a monastery. There, Odd spent seven months living as an honorary guest at St. Bartholomew’s Abbey in the Sierra Nevada mountains, accompanied by several monks and sisters, and a new friend named Boo, a golden retriever/German Shepard mix. But as expected, his peaceful life was hardly permanent when bodachs started appearing in the abbey. Pulled in by the new happenstances that began emerging at the abbey, Odd was drawn to the bedroom of a couple of fellow residents-two severely brain damaged children, Annamarie and Justine. Justine, who could not talk, began attempting to speak, while Annamarie, who could talk, began to speak for her:
Loop me in, Odd one.
Stormy’s words. Or rather, her catchphrase, whenever she asked Odd to fill her in on the latest supernatural scoop. From what Odd understood, it seemed that Stormy had been trying to reach out to him from the afterlife through the two girls-to warn him.
Not long after the bodachs started making their presence known, Odd stumbled upon Brother Timothy’s body in the midst of a snowstorm, only to be assaulted by an unknown attacker. Later on, the body had disappeared, and Brother Timothy was nowhere to be found. Odd suspected that Rodion Romanovich, a guest just like himself, had something to do with the nefarious plots that were seemingly going down at the monetary, and confided in Brother Knuckles who he had grown close to in the seven months he’d been living there. He also confided in the abbot and mother superior-the only other people who were aware of Odd’s gifts-warning them of the imminent dangers.
As if Odd didn’t have enough to worry about, strange noises began manifesting in the snowstorm, where he encountered a strange “galloping boneyard” and began seeing shifting, bone-shaped patterns against the abbey windows. While the bodachs began assembling into larger groups, Odd learned of the “Neverwas” from one of the St. Bartholomew’s residents; a man with Down’s syndrome, Jacob. And later, while visiting the ghost of Brother Constantine (a monk who supposedly killed himself, but Odd learns that his hanging had been no suicide), Odd also encountered the traditional image of Death at the abbey’s bell tower.
With time running out, the storm worsening, and the monetary ten miles away from the closest town, the abbey residents were on their own: Odd decided to gather the monks to the school in order to protect the children of the abbey. Drawn by his psychic magnetism once again, Odd was pulled to the location of Brother Timothy’s body, who had been serving as an incubator for another one of the bone creatures stalking the abbey midst the blizzard. Once the children were taken to the school and away from danger, Odd intended to leave Rodion Romanovich at the abbey. During their trek through the storm, Romanovich’s SUV was attacked by one of the bone creatures, and the confused monks just barely made it to the school with their lives.
Soon afterwards, Odd learned that Romanovich was actually an NSA agent, who’d been in cahoots with Brother Leopold. The two of them had been sent to investigate one of the resident monks, Brother John. Brother John, Jacob’s father who also known as the Neverwas (dubbed this due to having never been around when Jacob was a child), was a physicist who had been experimenting with reality within the very confinements of the abbey, claiming that he had discovered proof of God. With Romanovich’s assistance, Odd located Brother John’s laboratory where he conducted a computer model that could manifest thoughts into reality. Brother John was able to create the bone creatures and the Death specter simply because he thought them into reality; he was even able to will the life of a creature (also called a floppy) into existence, and will it out of existence just as easily. But the thoughts were beginning to get out of control, as the bone creatures were relentless in their attack on the abbey. Romanovich took his chances and shot Brother John, killing him instantly and destroying his creations as a result.
Some time after the incident, Odd decided to leave St. Bartholomew’s Abbey in order to go back to his life in Pico Mundo for Christmas. However, drawn by his psychic magnetism, Odd promptly told Ozzie to stop and got out of the car, explaining the feeling which he could not entirely explain: “It has everything I need. Maybe trouble, but maybe peace. I can’t tell. But it sure is calling me.” And Odd began following that pull all the way onto the highway. He’d been wandering ever since.