Dean Koontz - One Door Away From Heaven

Curtis clutches at the hot dogs. Startled, the man lets go of the bundle. Having claimed the meaty treasure, Curtis scuttles past the cook, bound for freedom and a makeshift dinner, surprised by the arrival of the FBI, but not in the least heartened by this unexpected development.

When it rains, it pours, his mother had said. She never claimed that the thought was original with her. Universal truths often find expression in universal cliches. When it rains, it pours, and when it pours, the river runs wild, and suddenly we're caught up in a flood. But when we're in a flood, we don't panic, do we, baby boy? And he always knew the answer to that one: No, we never panic. And she would say, Why don't we panic in the flood? And he would say, Because we're too busy swimming!

Behind him, elsewhere in the kitchen, dishes clatter-shatter on the floor, and a soup pot or some such bounces bong-bong-bong across the tiles. Spoons or forks, or butter knives, spill in quantity, ringing off stainless-steel and ceramic surfaces with a sound like the bells that might announce a demonic holiday.

Then gunfire.

THE COFFEE HAD SIMMERED long enough to turn slightly bitter. By the time she sampled her third cup, Micky didn't mind the edge that the brew acquired. In fact, Leilani's story stirred in Micky a long simmering bitterness to which the coffee was a perfect accompaniment.

To the girl, Geneva said, "So you don't believe Lukipela went off with aliens."

"I pretend to," Leilani said quietly. "Around Dr. Doom, I play along with his story, all agog over Luki coming back to us one day— a year from now, two years — in a new body. It's safer that way."

Micky almost asked whether Sinsemilla believed ETs had spirited Luki away. Then she realized that the woman she'd encountered earlier would not only accept such a story but might as easily be convinced that Luki and the compassionate spacemen were sending her subliminal messages in reruns of Seinfeld, in the advertising copy on boxes of cornflakes, or in the patterns made by flocks of birds in flight.

Leilani took the first bite from her second serving of pie. She chewed longer than cooked apples warranted, gazing at her plate, as though puzzling over a change in the texture of the dessert.

"Why would he kill a helpless child?" Geneva asked.

"It's what he does. Like the postman delivers the mail. Like a baker makes bread." Leilani shrugged. "Read about him. You'll see."

"You haven't gone to the police," Micky said.

"I'm just a kid."

"They listen to kids," Geneva advised.

Micky knew from experience that this was not reliably the case. "Anyway," she said, "whether they believe you or not, they sure won't swallow your stepfather's story about extraterrestrial healers."

"It's not a story they'll hear from him. He says the ETs don't want publicity. This isn't just alien modesty. They're dead serious about it. He says if we tell anyone about them, they'll never bring Luki back. They have big plans for elevating human civilization to a level that merits Earth's inclusion in a Galactic Congress — sometimes he calls it the Parliament of Planets — and those plans will take time to carry out. While they're busy doing lots of mysterious good works behind the scenes, saving us from nuclear war and the embarrassment of chronic dandruff, they don't want a bunch of ignorant rubes poking around, searching for them in certain mountains in Montana and other places they like to hang out. So we're supposed to talk about the ETs only among ourselves. Sinsemilla totally buys into this."

"When he has to explain where Luki's gone, what'll he say?" Geneva wondered.

"First of all, there's nobody who'd notice or think to ask. We're always on the move, rambling around the country. No permanent neighbors. No friends, just people we meet on the road, like at a campground for an evening, and we never see them again. Sinsemilla long ago chopped loose her family. Before I was born. I haven't met any of them, don't know where they are. She never speaks about them, except once in a while she says what an intolerant and uptight bunch of poop vents they were — though, as you might expect, she uses more-colorful language. One of my pacts with God is that I won't be as foul-mouthed as my mother, and in return for all my self-discipline, He'll give her as long as she needs to explain her moral choices once she dies and finds herself standing at judgment. I'm not sure that God, even though He's God with all His resources, realizes what He's gotten Himself into by agreeing to those terms."

The girl forked up another mouthful of pie, and again she chewed with a stoic expression that suggested she was eating broccoli, not with clear distaste, but with the indifference of nutritional duty.

Geneva said, "Well, if it's the police asking after Luki—"

"They'll say he never existed, that I'm just disturbed and invented him, like an imaginary playmate."

"They can't get away with that, dear."

"Sure they can. Even before Dr. Doom, Sinsemilla was footloose. She says we lived in Santa Fe, San Francisco, Monterey, Telluride, Taos, Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, Tucson, and Coeur d'Alene before Dr. Doom. I remember some places, but I was too little to have memories of them all. A few months here, a few there. She was with different men, too, some doing drugs, selling, all looking for a big easy score of one kind or another, all the move-along type, because if they didn't move along, the local cops would've provided each of 'em with a room and a boyfriend. Anyway, who knows where any of those guys are now or whether they'd remember Luki — or admit to remembering him."

"Birth certificates," Micky suggested. "That would be proof. Where were you born? Where was Luki born?"

Another bite of pie. More joyless chewing. "I don't know."

"You don't know where you were born?"

"Sinsemilla says the Fates can't find you to snip your thread and end your life if they don't know where you were born, and they won't know if you can never speak of the place, so then you'll live forever. And she doesn't believe in doctors, hospitals. She says we were born at home, wherever home was then. At best. maybe a midwife. I'd be beyond amazed if our births were ever registered anywhere."

The bitter coffee had grown cool. Micky sipped it anyway. She was afraid that if she didn't drink it, she'd fetch the brandy and drink that instead, regardless of Leilani's objections. Alcohol never soothed her rage. She'd become a drinker because booze inflamed the anger, and for so long she'd cherished her anger. Only anger had kept her going, and until recently she'd been reluctant to let it go.

"You've got your father's name," Geneva said hopefully. "If he could be found. "

"I'm not sure Lukipela's dad and mine are the same. Sinsemilla's never said. She might not know herself. Luki and I have the same last name, but that doesn't mean anything. It's not actually our father's name. She's never told us his name. She's got this thing about names. She says they're magical. Knowing someone's name gives you power over him, and keeping your own name secret gives you more power still."

Witch with a broomstick up your ass, witch bitch, diabolist, hag, flying down out of the moon with my name on your tongue, think you can spellcast me with a shrewd guess of a name.

Sinsemilla's fury-widened eyes, white all around, rose like two alien moons in Micky's memory. She shuddered.

Leilani said, "She just calls him Klonk because she claims that was the noise he made if you rapped him on the head. She hates him a lot, which is maybe why she hates me and Luki a little, too. And Luki more than me, for some reason."

In spite of all that she knew about Sinsemilla Maddoc, Geneva cringed from this charge against the woman. "Leilani, sweetie, even though she's a deeply disturbed person, she's still your mother, and in her own way, she loves you very much." Aunt Gen was childless, not by choice. The love she'd never been able to spend on a daughter or a son hadn't diminished in value over time, but had grown into a wealth of feeling that she now paid out to everyone she knew. "No mother can ever truly hate her child, dear. No mother anywhere."