Dean Koontz - One Door Away From Heaven

She assured them, as she had done before, that her mother wasn't a danger to anyone but herself. Sure, once they were on the road again, old Sinsemilla might set the motor home on fire while cooking up rock cocaine for an evening of good smoking. But she didn't have the capacity for violence. Violence required not merely a passing madness or an enduring insanity, but also passion. If looniness could be converted into bricks of gold, old Sinsemilla would provide paving for a six-lane highway from here to Oz, but she didn't have any real passion left; drugs of infinite variety had scorched away all her passion, leaving her with nothing but dreary need.

Mrs. D and Micky were also worried about Dr. Doom. Of course he was a more serious case than old Sinsemilla because he had reservoirs of passion, and every drop of it was used to water his fascination with death. He lived in a flourishing garden of death, in love with the beauty of his black roses, with the fragrance of decay.

He also had rules that he lived by, standards that he wouldn't compromise, and procedures that must be strictly followed in all life-and-death matters. Because he had committed himself to healing Leilani one way or another by her tenth birthday, she wouldn't be in danger until the eve of that anniversary; by then, however, if she hadn't ascended in the sparkling rapture of a starship's levitation beam, Preston would "cure" her more speedily and with a lot fewer dazzling special effects than extraterrestrials — a theatrical bunch— traditionally employed. Smothering her with a pillow or administering a lethal injection prior to the eve of her birthday would violate Preston's code of ethics, and he was as serious about his ethics as the most devout priest was serious about his faith.

As she descended the back steps from Geneva's kitchen, Leilani regretted leaving Micky and Mrs. D so anxious about her welfare. She enjoyed making people smile. She always hoped to leave them thinking, What a crackerjack that girl is, what a sassy piece of work. By sassy, of course, she wanted them to mean "pert, smart, jaunty" rather than "insolent, rude, impudent." Walking the line between the right kind of sassy and the wrong kind was tricky, but if you pulled it off, you would never leave them thinking, What a sad little crippled girl she is, with her little twisted leg and her little gnarled hand. This evening, she suspected that she'd crossed the line between the wrong and the right kinds of sassy, and in fact walked out of sassy altogether, leaving them feeling more pity than delight.

The failure to achieve sassy status still wasn't the reason she was ashamed of herself, but she was getting closer to the truth, so as she crossed the dark backyard, she distracted herself with a silly joke. Pretending that the thorny tentacles of the bloomless rosebush had threatened her, she turned to confront it, formed a cross with her arms—"Back, back!" — and warded it off as if it were a vampire.

Leilani glanced toward Geneva's place to determine whether this performance had been well received, but scoping the audience was a mistake. Micky stood at the bottom of the steps, and Mrs. D stood above her, in the open doorway, and even in this poor light, Leilani could see that they both still looked deeply concerned. Worse than concerned. Grim. Maybe even bleak.

Another spectacular, memorable social triumph by Ms. Heavenly Flower Klonk! Invite this charmer to dinner, and she'll repay you with emotional devastation! Serve her chicken sandwiches, and she'll give you a tale of woe that might wring pity even from the chicken she's eating, were the poor fowl still alive! Extend your invitations now! Her social calendar is nearly full! Remember: Only a statistically insignificant number of her dinner companions commit suicide!

Leilani didn't glance back again. She made a point of crossing the rest of the yard and negotiating the fallen fence with as little hitching of her braced leg as possible. When she concentrated on physical performance, she could move with a degree of gracefulness and even with surprising speed for short distances.

She continued to feel ashamed of herself, not because of the dumb joke with the rosebush, but because she had rudely presumed to monitor and restrict Micky's use of alcohol. Such meddling required remorse, even though she'd been motivated by genuine concern. Micky wasn't Sinsemilla, after all. Micky could have a brandy or two and not wind up, one year later, facedown in a puddle of vomit, her nasal cartilage rotted away by cocaine, with a lush crop of hallucinogenic mushrooms growing on the surface of her brain. Micky was better than that. Yeah, sure, all right, Micky did indeed harbor the tendency to self-destruct through addiction. Leilani could detect that dangerous inclination more reliably than the most talented fungi-hunting pig could locate buried truffles, which wasn't a flattering comparison, although true. But Micky's tendency wouldn't cause her to wander off forever into the spooky woods where Sinsemilla lived, because Micky also owned a moral compass, which Sinsemilla either never possessed or long ago lost. So any nine-year-old smartass who was judgmental enough to tell Michelina Bellsong that she'd had enough to drink ought to be ashamed.

As she crossed the next backyard, where earlier her mother danced with the moon, Leilani admitted that her shame hadn't arisen from her rudeness regarding Micky's drinking any more than it had been caused by eating two pieces of pie. The truth — which she had promised God always to honor, but which sometimes she sidled up to when she didn't have the nerve to approach it directly — the truth was that her shame arose from the fact that she had spilled her guts this evening. Spilled, gushed, spewed. She'd told them everything about Sinsemilla, about Preston and the aliens, about Lukipela murdered and probably buried in the woods of Montana.

Micky and Mrs. D were nice people, caring people, and when Leilani shared the details of her situation with them, she couldn't have done them a greater disservice if she had driven a dump truck through the front wall of their house and unloaded a few tons of fresh manure in their living room. Not only was it a hideous and distressing story, but they could do nothing to help her. Leilani knew better than anyone that she was caught in a trap nobody could pry open for her, that to have any hope of escape, she must chew off her foot and leave the trap behind — figuratively speaking, of course — before her birthday. Spilling her guts this evening had gained her nothing, but she'd left Micky and sweet Mrs. D under a big stinky pile of bad news from which they should have been spared.

Reaching the steps on which Sinsemilla perched after the moon dance, Leilani felt tempted to glance toward Geneva's. She resisted the urge. She knew they were still watching her, but a cheery wave wouldn't buck up their spirits and send them to bed with a smile.

Sinsemilla had left the kitchen door open. Leilani went inside.

During her short walk, the electrical service had come on again. The wall clock glowed, but it displayed the wrong time.

In spite of the slender red hand sweeping sixty moments per minute from the clock face, the flow of time seemed to have been dammed into a still pool. Saturated by silence, the house brimmed also with an unnerving expectancy, as though some bulwark were about to crack, permitting a violent flood to sweep everything away.

Dr. Doom had gone out to a movie or to dinner. Or to kill someone.

One day a would-be victim, impervious to Preston's dry charm and oily sympathy, would have a surprise ready for the doctor. Not much physical strength was required to pull a trigger.

Luck never favored Leilani, however, so she didn't assume that this would be the night when he received a heart-stopping dose of his own poison. He would return home sooner or later, smelling of one kind of death or another.