Dean Koontz - One Door Away From Heaven

Playing cards are fanned on the table, and Polly gathers them up as she says, "I don't mean to salt your grief, sweetie, but if we're going to help, we need to know the situation. Were your folks killed in a cover-up because they saw too much, something like that?"

"Yes, ma'am. Something like that."

Slipping the deck of cards into a pack bearing the Bicycle logo and setting the pack aside, Polly says, "And evidently you also saw too much."

"Yes, ma'am. Something like that, ma'am."

"Please call me Polly, but never ask me if I want a cracker."

"Okay, ma'— Okay, Polly. But I like crackers, so I'll eat any you don't want."

As Curtis noisily sucks root beer and melting ice cream through a straw, Cass leans forward conspiratorially and whispers ominously, "Did you see an alien spacecraft, Curtis?"

He licks his lips and whispers, "More than one, ma'am."

"Call me Cass," she whispers, and now their conversation is firmly established in this sotto-voce mode. "Castoria sounds too much like a bowel medication."

"I think it's pretty, Cass."

"Should I call you Curtis?"

"Sure. That's who I'm being. who I am."

"So you saw more than one alien ship. And did you see. honest-to-God aliens?"

"Lots of 'em. And some not so honest."

Electrified by this revelation, she leans even farther over the table, and a greater urgency informs her whisper. "You saw aliens, and so the government wants to kill you to keep you from talking."

Curtis is utterly beguiled by her twinkly-eyed look of childlike excitement, and he doesn't want to disappoint her. Leaning past his root beer, not quite nose-to-nose with Cass, but close enough to feel her exhilaration, he whispers, "The government would probably lock me away to study me, which might be worse than killing."

"Because you had contact with aliens?"

"Something like that."

Polly, who has not leaned over the table and who does not speak in a whisper, looks worriedly at the nearby window. She reaches over her sister's head, grabs the draw cord, and shuts the short drape as she says, "Curtis, did your parents have an alien encounter, too?"

Although he continues to lean toward Cass, when Curtis shifts his eyes toward Polly, he answers her in a normal tone of voice, as she has spoken to him: "Yes, they did."

"Of the third kind?" whispers Cass.

"Of the worst kind," he whispers.

Polly says, "Why didn't the government want to study them, like they want to study you? Why were they killed?"

"Government didn't kill them," Curtis explains.

"Who did?" whispers Cass.

"Alien assassins," Curtis hisses. "Aliens killed everyone in the house."

Cass's eyes are bluer than robin's eggs and seemingly as big as those in a hen's nest. She's briefly breathless. Then: "So. they don't come in peace to serve mankind."

"Some do. But not these scalawags."

"And they're still after you, aren't they?" Polly asks.

"From Colorado and clear across Utah," Curtis admits. "Both them and the FBI. But I'm getting harder to detect all the time."

"You poor kid," Cass whispers. "All alone, on the run."

"I've got my dog."

Getting up from the booth, Polly says, "Now you've got us, too. Come on, Cass, let's pull stakes and hit the road."

"We haven't heard his whole story yet," Cass protests. "There's aliens and all sorts of spooky stuff." Still leaning toward Curtis, she drops her voice to a whisper: "All sons of spooky stuff", right?"

"Spooky stuff," he confirms, thrilled to see the delight that he has given her with this confirmation.

Polly is adamant. "They're hunting for him right across the state line. They're sure to come nosing around here soon. We've got to get moving."

"She's the alpha twin," Cass whispers solemnly. "We've got to listen to her, or there'll be hell to pay."

"I'm not the alpha twin," Polly disagrees. "I'm just practical. Curtis, while we get the rig ready to roll, you take a shower. You're just a little too fragrant. We'll throw your clothes in the washer."

He's reluctant to endanger these sisters, but he accepts their hospitality for three reasons. First, motion is commotion, which makes it harder for his enemies to detect him. Second, but for the big windshield, the motor home is more enclosed than most vehicles; the other windows are small, and the metal shell largely screens his special biological-energy signature from the electronic devices that can detect it. Third, he has been Curtis Hammond for approximately two days, and the longer that he settles into this new life, the harder he is to find, so he probably poses little danger to them.

"My dog could use a bath, too."

"We'll give her a good scrubbing later," Polly promises.

Past the galley, a door stands open to a water closet on the right, which is separate from the rest of the bathroom. On the left, a vertically stacked washer-dryer combination.

Directly ahead is the bathroom door, and beyond it lies the last eighteen feet or so of the motor home. The sole bedroom is accessed through the bath.

Old Yeller stays behind with Polly, and Cass shows Curtis how to work the shower controls. She unwraps a fresh cake of soap and lays out spare towels. "After you've undressed, just toss your clothes out the bathroom door, and I'll wash them."

"This is very nice of you, ma'am. I mean Cass."

"Sweetie, don't be silly. You've brought us just what we've been needing. We're girls who like adventure, and you've seen aliens."

How her eyes sparkle on the word adventure, only to sparkle even more bewitchingly on the word aliens. Her face glows with excitement. She all but quivers with expectation, and her body strains against her clothes just as the powerful body of Wonder Woman forever strains against every stitch of her superhero costume.

Alone, Curtis removes his small treasury from his pockets and puts the cash aside on the vanity. He slides open the bathroom door just far enough to toss his clothes out in front of the washer, then slides it firmly shut again.

He is Curtis Hammond enough to blush at being naked here in the sisters' bathroom. At first this seems to indicate that he's well settled in his new identity, already more Curtis than he is himself, and becoming more Curtis all the time.

Peering in the mirror, however, he watches his face darken to a shade of scarlet that he's never noticed in other people, suddenly causing him to question whether he's fully in control of himself. A blush this fierce is surely beyond the range of human physiological response. He seems to be as red as a lobster cooking in a pot, and he's convinced that anyone, seeing him like this, would suspect that he's not who he pretends to be. Furthermore, he looks so sheepish that his expression alone would fill any policeman with suspicion and predispose any jury to convict.

Heart beating fast and hard, counseling himself to remain calm, he steps into the shower before turning on the water, which Cass advised him not to do. It's immediately so hot that he cries out in pain, stifles the cry, mistakenly cranks the water hotter still, but then over-compensates, and stands in a freezing spray. He's lobster-bright from top to bottom, and his teeth chatter so hard he could crack walnuts, if he had walnuts, and it's just as well he doesn't have walnuts, because the shells would make a mess, and then he'd have that to clean up. Listening to himself babble to himself about walnuts, he's amazed that he has survived this long. Once more he tells himself to be calm — not that it did much good the last time.

He remembers that Cass advised a quick shower because the motor home isn't connected to utilities; the system is operating off the vehicle's storage tanks and the gasoline-powered generator. Because he failed to obtain a precise definition of quick, he's certain that he's already used more water than is prudent, so he soaps up as fast as possible, rinses down, remembers his hair, pours shampoo straight from the bottle onto his head, realizes at once that he has seriously overused the product, and stands in rising masses of suds that threaten to fill the shower stall.