Odd Thomas: You Are Destined to Be Together Forever by Dean Koontz Page A

from
Harum Scarum.
Sorry, sir, but it is ridiculous.”
    All other lingering spirits that I had known were limited in their wardrobe to the clothes they had been wearing when they died. Mr. Presley, however, was capable of manifesting in anything he had worn during his storied career. He tended to avoid the flashy Vegas costumes that made him look like a less-well-coiffed Liberace.
    Glancing over my shoulder, I saw that he had in an instant changed from the
Harum Scarum
garb to the flamenco-dancer costume that he had worn in
Fun in Acapulco
: tight black tuxedo pants, a two-thirds-length black jacket, and a ruffled white shirt with an elaborate black foulard at the throat.
    “Better,” I said.
    He made a gun of his thumb and forefinger, pointed it at me, and winked.
    You might wonder why Stormy Llewellyn would believe I can see spirits. She’s a practical girl with a commonsense plan for her future. She works part-time behind the counter at Burke & Bailey’s in the mall, scooping ice cream and mixing milkshakes. She intends to be an ice-cream entrepreneur with her own shop by the time she’s twenty-four and to build a chain of six stores by the time she’s thirty. She is already saving half her wages toward the financing of that plan. Stormy is not the kind of sixteen-year-old girl who believes everything—or anything—I say just because I’m her guy.
    I’m her guy.
I can’t tell you how deeply it pleases me to write those three words. My father’s a mess, my mother’s psychotic, I’m a fry cook without his own car, a geek who lives in one room and a bath above a garage, and I see dead people and worse. She’s the coolest girl in school, and every guy who sees her stands awestruck, with his tongue hanging out. Nevertheless,
I’m her guy,
me and no one else, maybe because I’m able to keep my tongue in my mouth when I look at her and because I can make her laugh.
    Anyway, she believes in my paranormal abilities because she’s had some experiences in my presence that confirmed them. For example, she was with me when an angry poltergeist destroyed my brand-new stereo system for no good reason. And Wyatt Porter, chief of police, has vouched for me, because I have shared my prophetic dreams with him and have given him other paranormally obtained information that has helped him close cases. Only the chief and his wife, Stormy, Ozzie Boone, and Terri Stambaugh know about my sixth sense, and they all protect me from discovery by others.
    Now, as I drove the Mustang along the alleyway behind the Pico Mundo Grille, Stormy said, “Maybe Elvis doesn’t want to leave this world because so many people loved him here. The day of his funeral, over fifty thousand gathered at the gates to Graceland.”
    “Guess you’ve been talking to Terri,” I said. My boss at the Grille was an obsessive Elvis fan, though she was fifteen when he died, and he was even then long past his prime.
    “The lines waiting to view him in his casket totaled two miles,” Stormy said.
    Mr. Presley had come forward from the backseat, leaning over the console to see Stormy’s face.
    She said, “They needed one hundred vans and four hours to move all the flowers from the funeral at Graceland to the cemetery for the graveside service.”
    As I braked at the end of the alley, I glanced at Mr. Presley, and he looked at me, and in his spirit eyes were spirit tears. He had always treated his fans with respect until the last few years, when his drug use and health problems prevented him from giving them the high-quality performances for which they had paid.
    We rode in silence for a block or so, and then Stormy said, “Eighty cops and forty sheriff’s deputies weren’t enough to control the grieving crowd. The governor had to call up thirty National Guardsmen to assist them.”
    Mr. Presley slipped once more into a corner of the backseat, gazing out a side window, clearly distraught.
    At a red traffic light, I stopped and glanced at Stormy, aware that