Being Odd, Part 2 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Magic Beach

Odd, Boo and Frank Sinatra had been in Magic Beach for about a month. Odd had spent the time working for an old actor named Hutch. There he also met Annamarie, a young pregnant woman, who was in danger. He agreed to die for her if need be, and in the meantime had to thwart an extensive terrorist plan to use nuclear weapons on four major US cities. Along the way, Odd was forced to kill at least six people. He also made new friends, including a dog named Murphy (a name which Odd changed to Raphael) and an old lady named Birdie.

Whiskey Beach was the setting for the Nora Roberts' novel of the same name, Hogsmeade was the town adjacent to Hogwarts in the "Harry Potter" series, and Liberty City was the setting for the video game "Grand Theft Auto 4".

Answer: Gun and cellphone

Birdena "Birdie" Hopkins had developed a psychic twinge of her own after the death of her husband several years earlier. She'd found herself drawn to people who needed her, good people she'd said, and that night it had led her to Odd. She gave him those two crucial items and drove him to the harbor. He'd been chased by a crooked cop and gotten lost. He'd later be taken into custody by that same bad man. After the gun had served its purpose, he tossed it into the ocean, never to be traced back to her. At the end of his journey, he called her to let her know he'd made it out alive.

Odd's boss and pal, Hutch, had given him money and a car. His friend Blossom, who'd also housed Annamarie for the night, gave them food and promised to join them on their adventure soon. Hutch also agreed to get rid of Odd's clothes for him.

Answer: Harry Lime

In the case of the very corrupt sociopath Hoss Shackett, Odd had not planned on the depth of misleading that occurred. Odd had shared or transferred a vision to both Utgard Rolf (chin beard guy) and Shackett. This vision sharing was of the planned nuclear bombing that they were involved in orchestrating, so Shackett believed Odd to be psychic. Odd took advantage of the man's assumption about that, and the fact that the police chief believed him to be working for the government. He "admitted" to being the covert operative Harry Lime, having received a special psychic power-inducing drug, and being willing to take a bribe to look the other way. What he actually did was all that was within his power, and that was to incite Frank Sinatra into a poltergeist-like rage tornado. It freed him from custody. At the end of the book, Odd left town with Annamarie, Boo, Frank and their new (and alive) pet, Raphael the Golden Retriever.

Milo Minderbinder was a character in "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller, Tom Ripley was from "The Talented Mr. Ripley" by Patricia Highsmith, and Bill Sikes was from "Oliver Twist" by Charles Dickens. Orson Welles played the character Harry Lime in the 1949 film "The Third Man".

Answer: Harmony Corner

The full title of this digital three party story is "Odd Interlude: A Special Odd Thomas Adventure", and the time frame is just 24 hours after the ordeal in Magic Beach. Harmony Corner's a small stretch of business and family off of the Coast Highway.

The three incorrect choices are locations in Stephen King novels.

Answer: Jolie

Jolie Ann Harmony was in danger. She'd started hiding out from the mind control of the alien/human hybrid Dr. Norris Hiskott. She led Odd out of Harmony Corner via a former storm drain and explained about the last five years. The doctor worked at Fort Wyvern (an allusion to Area 51), a military base/experimental government facility. While working on an alien craft and its inhabitants, Hiskott injected himself with alien DNA. He escaped the facility-wide lockdown and came to Harmony Corner. Three days later, he'd transformed into a serpentine monster and hid inside one of the family homes. One new aspect of his hybridization was being able to read and control minds. He'd committed awful intrusions upon the Harmony clan, including forcing them to murder.

Callie, Khloe, and Sofie are three lovely sisters I know.

Answer: Ed

Since the facility closing, Aladdin had been left in charge of security. Any human who'd been locked inside had long since died. One thing Ed was guarding was a massive alien sphere recovered with the alien spacecraft. Ed engaged Jolie in conversation, revealed it was not human, and helped her and Odd defeat Norris Hiskott, whom it knew all about. Ed explained that it had picked its own name, disliking the Aladdin reference. In the end, Odd was able to kill the hybrid. The town rejoiced quietly, burned down the house in which Hiskott lived, and said goodbye to Odd. Annamarie told Jolie to send her part of the story to Odd, via Ozzie Boone, and it would be included in the manuscript. This made Jolie very happy.

The story ended with Odd, Annamarie, and the two dogs on their way to Roseland.
And, the incorrect choices are characters from the TV series "Supernatural".

Answer: 1920

Roseland, at first, was deeply mysterious to Odd. They'd traveled there on his psychic intuition and garnered an invitation to stay by means of Annamarie's unique powers of persuasion. It was built in 1920 by a wealthy movie magnate named Cloyce Constantine.

He had been married to a woman named Madra at the time, and told her it was just a coastal getaway. It was so much more than that. The entire estate was one huge time-controlled device. The people who lived there were able to stay young forever, but not without consequences such as homicidal boredom and grotesque visitors from the future.

Answer: Nikola Tesla

Tesla was a brilliant scientist and engineer. He invented the AC induction motor and showed ways to harness energy that would not cost consumers anything. This caused him to lose funding on projects, as companies (like Westinghouse) wanted to make money from the use of electricity. In this story, Tesla was the unwitting creator of the Roseland estate, and communicated the desire for its destruction to Odd. Though not alive, nor a ghost, his disembodied presence told Odd to throw the "master switch" to the machine.

Roger Bacon invented the magnifying glass in the 13th century, Yevgeny Chertovsky invented the pressure suit in 1931, and Stephanie Kwolek invented Kevlar in 1965.

Answer: Yes

Odd's main goal was to save Timothy. Timothy was killed by his father, Cloyce, in 1925 at the age of ten. Cloyce went back in time to just a few moments before Tim's death, and saved him. When they returned to their present time, Tim was alive and also still dead. So, he lived for 95 years as a ten year old boy, never aging like the others, because he felt he had no destiny to age toward. That was untrue. After Odd flipped the master switch, he and Annamarie escaped with Tim and Roseland basically imploded on itself. They went on to rent a house together, as Annamarie continued her mysterious pregnancy, Tim began to lose memories of Roseland, Boo and Raphael played together and Odd waited on Alfred Hitchcock to seek his help. Hitchcock had appeared in the midst of Odd's retreat from the 'freaks' at Roseland, though Odd was too busy to find out why at the time. Hitchcock did have time to admit he'd known Cloyce through the movie industry.

Odd had been momentarily tempted to use the time traveling chronosphere inside Roseland to go back to Stormy. Instead, he only used it to go back one day, and then return, in order to heal the wounds he'd acquired at the hands of Cloyce.

Answer: Edie Fischer

Edie came to Odd's aid during his pursuit of the man he thought of as the rhinestone cowboy. She was widowed and had recently lost her long time friend and chauffeur, Oscar. Odd met a few other of Edie's friends on their journey together to save 17 kidnapped children. Edie was "smoothed out and fully blue", like most of her friends, and told Odd he was on his way as well. He'd be able to achieve that state of being after he saw the "true and hidden nature of the world".

Joyce Summers ("Buffy the Vampire Slayer"), Helen Roper ("Three's Company") and Marion Cunningham ("Happy Days") are TV characters.

Answer: True

Hitch, as he asked Odd to call him, proved to be very helpful in the rescue of the kidnapped children, as well as keeping Odd alive. Odd was shocked when he heard the man, dead over thirty years, speak to him. No ghost had ever been able to speak to him in the past, so Odd had assumed they just could not do it. Hitch explained to Odd that he was no lingering spirit.

He was there, on a mission, to aid Odd. He was not there to get help crossing over. After he'd done his job, he said goodbye to Odd and floated up and away, literally.

Answer: Diamond and ruby exclamation point brooch

Edie had pinned the brooch onto Odd's sweater sleeve for good luck. Prior to asking Odd the above questions, he also asked "Why are you wearing that, where did you get that?" There was always emphasis on the word "that" when he spoke. Obviously the symbol had some deep meaning Edie had not made Odd aware of, probably some spiritual symbol of powerful good. Lyle and his band of demon worshipers had not encountered any real show of force against them in four hundred years. Odd found a book in Elsewhere (a hidden side-realm to our real world) that chronicled each of those four hundred years.

The book ended magically. The children were taken to a place of immense good before being returned to their families. Boo, the ghost dog, decided to stay with one of the kids who could see him. Edie drove Odd back to Annamarie and Tim, and, unsurprisingly, she already knew Annamarie. Odd knew he had to go back to Pico Mundo, as some huge event was going to happen there. Full circle, it all led back home.

The blue diamond necklace (Heart of the Ocean) is my little homage to the 1997 film "Titanic", which my husband I watched many times before he passed away. A blue diamond also played a role in the 1943 film "Titanic".

Answer: A plague of weaponized rabies

There was a bit of time where Odd believed that the Malo Suerte Dam would be destroyed, sending a flood down onto Pico Mundo. The dam held back the Malo Suerte Lake, but Odd was unsure if that much water matched his dream of the entire town being drowned under its immensity.

He later realized the dam was a diversion, and its destruction symbolized a fear of water, which is what the historic rabies term meant - hydrophobia. Odd was able to find and remove the canister of weaponized rabies before it could be sent airborne.

Answer: Bullet

While on a motorcycle, Odd was chased by a vehicle. It was on his way back into Pico Mundo, and the SUV came very close to hitting him. This was in the beginning of the story. Later, stolen C-4 was used to blow up local buildings as a diversionary tactic, and Odd came very close to the flames.

He encountered coyotes a couple of times, inhabited by some evil doer, and talked his way out of being attacked, a lesson he'd learned from Annamarie several months earlier. In a farmhouse, just having saved a woman and her twin daughters, Odd encountered a female cultist who tricked him into getting a little too close to her.

She put a stiletto (knife) through his palm and out through the top of his hand. So, obviously none of these were fatal. It was a gunshot, as Odd ran from the carnival fun house with the rabies canister, that hit him in the chest. Chief Porter killed the cultist who delivered the fatal wound. Odd died surrounded by great people he knew well, like Chief Porter, Blossom Rosedale, Terri Stambaugh and Edie Fisher.

He also had new friends like Connie the face painter, whom he'd just met that day. It was very much like the dream he'd had the night before. The last thing he said before he died was "where is Annamarie?" He closed his eyes, and she was there.

Answer: Yes

He had a brief talk with Annamarie about who she really was, and she told him she was an avatar of sorts. She was a universal mother, still human, who was there to love those who had been unloved by their own mothers. She promised him that he was as fine a son as any mother could wish for, and "you need not be afraid of what will happen now". Odd found himself flying through "a smooth blue realm of radiance" and suddenly he could see the Mojave again. He was back in Pico Mundo, where he found Stormy in her apartment waiting for him. She told him it was time for their second life, the one of service.

Ozzie Boone wrote the final chapter, number fifty-three, of Odd's last story. As promised, none of these stories were published until after Odd's death. He admitted to having changed a few names to keep the real folks safe from harm. And, in a moment of awe, received Odd's last story not long after his death, via Ozzie's own computer printer. Odd explained that in his realm, time had no real affect on him. He was able to send the final story to Ozzie just hours after his own death.

Ozzie kept Odd and Stormy's ashes on the mantel above his fireplace, side by side, and the fortune teller's card in his own wallet.