One Door Away From Heaven

by Dean Koontz

  The posters in her oven-warm office made the small room seem even warmer: pictures of cats and kittens, black and calico, Siamese and Angora and cute whiskery specimens of no clear breed, scampering and lounging languorously. These furry images lent a claustrophobic feeling to the space and seemed to pour feline warmth into the air.

  Seeing her visitor’s interest in the posters, F said, “In this work, I deal with so many ignorant, cruel, stupid people…sometimes I need to be reminded the world is full of creatures better than us.”

  “I certainly understand that,” said Micky, although she didn’t half understand. “I guess for me it would be dog posters.”

  “My father liked dogs,” said F, indicating that Micky should sit in one of the two client chairs in front of the desk. “He was a loud-mouthed, self-centered skirt-chaser. I’ll go with cats every time.”

  If dogs as an entire species earned F’s undying distrust because her old man liked them, how easy would it be to get on her wrong side with even an innocent remark? Micky counseled herself to adopt the deferent demeanor she’d learned—not easily—to use with authorities.

  Settling into the chair behind her desk, F said, “If you’d made an appointment, you wouldn’t have had to wait so long.”

  Pretending she’d heard courteous concern in the woman’s remark, Micky said, “No problem. I have a job interview at three, nothing till then, so I have plenty of time.”

  “What kind of work do you do?”

  “Customizing software applications.”

  “Computers are ruining the world,” said F, not contentiously, but with a note of resignation. “People spend more time interacting with machines, less time with other people, and year by year we’re losing what little humanity we have left.”

  Sensing that it was always best to agree with F, which would require Micky to explain her work with demon machines, she sighed, feigned regret, and nodded. “But it’s where the jobs are.”

  F’s face pinched with disapproval, but instantly cleared.

  Although the expression had been subtle and brief, Micky read into it the opinion that defendants at the Nuremberg trials had made similar excuses for working the gas chambers at Dachau and Auschwitz.

  “You’re concerned about a child?” F asked.

  “Yeah. Yes. The little girl who lives next door to my aunt. She’s in a terrible situation. She—”

  “Why isn’t your aunt making the complaint?”

  “Well, I’m here for both of us. Aunt Gen isn’t—”

  “I can’t approve an inquiry on hearsay,” F said, not harshly, almost regretfully. “If your aunt has seen things that cause her to be concerned about this girl, she’ll need to speak to me directly.”

  “Sure, of course, I understand. But, see, I live with my aunt. I know the girl, too.”

  “You’ve seen her being abused—struck or shaken?”

  “No. I haven’t seen any physical abuse taking place. I’ve—”

  “But you’ve seen evidence? Bruises, that sort of thing?”

  “No, no. It isn’t like that. No one’s beating her. It’s—”

  “Sexual abuse?”

  “No, thank God, Leilani says that’s not the case.”

  “Leilani?”

  “That’s her name. The girl.”

  “They usually say it’s not the case. They’re ashamed. The truth comes out only through counseling.”

  “I know that’s often the way it goes. But she’s different, this kid. She’s tough, very smart. She speaks her mind. She’d tell me if there were sexual abuse. She says there isn’t…and I believe her.”

  “Do you see her regularly? Do you speak to her?”

  “She came to our place for dinner last night. She was—”

  “So she’s not being confined? We’re not talking about abuse by cruel restraint?”

  “Restraint? Well, maybe we are, in a way.”

  “In what way?”

  The room was insufferably warm. As in many modern high-rises, for reasons of efficient ventilation and energy conservation, windows did not open. The system fan was on, but it produced more noise than air circulation. “She doesn’t want to be in that family. No one would.”

  “None of us gets to choose our family, Ms. Bellsong. If that alone constituted child abuse, my caseload would quadruple. By cruel restraint, I mean has she been shackled, locked in a room, locked in a closet, tied to a bed?”

  “No, nothing like that. But—”

  “Criminal neglect? For instance, is the girl suffering from an untreated chronic illness? Is she underweight, starved?”

  “She’s not starved, no, but I doubt her nutrition’s the best. Her mother’s apparently not much of a cook.”

  Leaning back, raising her eyebrows, F said, “Not much of a cook? What am I missing here, Ms. Bellsong?”

  Having slid forward on her chair, Micky sat in a supplicatory posture that felt wrong, that made it seem as though she were trying to sell her story to the caseworker. She straightened up, eased back. “Look, Ms. Bronson, I’m sorry, I’m not going about this at all well, but I’m really not wasting your time. This is a unique case, and the standard questions just don’t get to the heart of it.”

  Disconcertingly, while Micky was still talking, F turned to the computer on her desk, as if impatient, and began to type. Judging by the speed at which her fingers flew over the keys, she was familiar with this satanic technology. “All right, let’s open a case file, get the basic facts. Then you can tell me the story in your own words, if that’ll be easier, and I’ll condense it for the report. Your name is Bellsong, Micky?”

  “Bellsong, Michelina Teresa.” Micky spelled all three names.

  F asked for an address and telephone. “We don’t disclose any information about the complainant—that’s you—to the family we’re investigating, but we’ve got to have it for our records.”

  When the caseworker requested it, Micky also presented her social-security card.

  After entering the number from the card, F worked with the computer for a few minutes, pausing repeatedly to study the screen, entirely involved with the data she summoned, as if she’d forgotten that she had company.

  Here was the dehumanizing influence of technology, which she’d so recently decried.

  Micky couldn’t see the screen. Consequently, she was surprised when F, still focused on the computer, said, “So you were convicted of the possession of stolen property, aiding and abetting document forgery, and possession of forged documents with the intention to sell—including phony driver’s licenses, social-security cards….”

  F’s words did what too much lemon vodka and chocolate doughnuts had failed to accomplish: caused a tremor of nausea to slide through Micky’s stomach. “I’m…I mean…I’m sorry, but I don’t think you have a right to ask me about this.”

  Still gazing at the screen, F said, “I didn’t ask. Just ran an ID check. Says you were sentenced to eighteen months.”

  “None of that has anything to do with Leilani.”

  F didn’t reply. Her slender fingers stroked the keys, no longer hammering, as though she were finessing information from the system.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Micky said, despising the defensiveness in her voice, and the meekness. “The guy I was with at the time, he was into stuff I didn’t know about.”

  F remained more interested in what the computer told her about Micky than what Micky had to say about herself.

  The less that F asked, the more Micky felt obliged to explain. “I just happened to be in the car when the cops took him down. I didn’t know what was in the trunk—not the phony paper, the stolen coin collection, not any of it.”

  As though she hadn’t heard a word of Micky’s reply, F said, “You were sent to the Northern California Women’s Facility. That’s south of Stockton, isn’t it? I went to the asparagus festival in Stockton once. One of the booths offered dishes created by Women’s Facility inmates involved in a culinary vocational prog
ram. Far as I remember, none of them was particularly tasty. This says you’re still there.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s so wrong. I’ve never been to the asparagus festival.” When Micky saw F’s face tighten, she bit the tartness out of her voice, tried to sound contrite: “I was released last week. I came to live with my aunt until I get on my feet.”

  “Says here you’re still at NCWF. Two more months.”

  “I was granted early release.”

  “Doesn’t mention parole here.”

  “I’m not a parolee. I served my time, minus good behavior.”

  “Be right back.” F rose from her desk and, without making eye contact, went to the door.

  Chapter 36

  ACROSS THE BADLANDS, through the night, as the clouds move east and the sky purifies, the boy drives westward to the dog’s direction.

  Gradually the desert withers away. A grassy prairie grows under the rolling tires.

  Dawn comes pink and turquoise, painting a sky now as clear as distilled water. A hawk, gliding on high thermals, seems to float like the mere reflection of a bird on the surface of a still pool.

  The engine dies for lack of fuel, requiring them to proceed afoot in more fertile land than any they have seen since Colorado. By the time the Mountaineer coughs out the fumes from its dry tank, they’re finished with the prairie, as well. They are now in a shallow valley where cottonwood and other trees shade a swift-slipping stream and where green meadows roll away from the banks of the watercourse.

  Throughout the long drive, no one shot at them, and no more charred cadavers tumbled out of the night. Mile after mile, the only lights in the sky were stars, and at dawn, the great constellations conceded the stage to the one and nearest star that warms this world.

  Now, when Curtis gets out of the SUV, the only sounds in the morning are the muted pings and ticks of the cooling engine.

  Old Yeller is exhausted, as she ought to be, good scout and stalwart navigator. She totters to the edge of the brook and laps noisily at the cool clear current.

  Kneeling upstream of the dog, Curtis slakes his thirst, too.

  He sees no fish, but he’s sure that the brook must contain them.

  If he were Huckleberry Finn, he’d know how to catch breakfast. Of course, if he were a bear, he’d catch even more fish than Huck.

  He can’t be Huck because Huck is just a fictional character, and he can’t be a bear because he’s Curtis Hammond. Even if there were a bear around here somewhere, to provide him with a detailed example of bear structure and bear behavior, he wouldn’t dare get naked and try to be a bear and wade into the stream after fish, because later when he was Curtis once more and put on his clothes, he’d be starting all over in this new identity that remains his best hope of survival, and therefore he would be easier to spot if the worse scalawags showed up again, searching for him with their tracking scopes.

  “Maybe I am stupid,” he tells the dog. “Maybe Gabby was right. He sure seemed smart. He knew everything about the government, and he got us out of that trouble. Maybe he was right about me, too.”

  The dog thinks otherwise. With typical doggy devotion, she grins and wags her tail.

  “Good pup. But I promised to take care of you, and now here we are without food.”

  Relying on his survival training, the boy could find wild tubers and legumes and fungi to sustain him. The dog won’t want to eat those things, however, and won’t be properly nourished by them.

  Old Yeller calls his attention to the Mountaineer by trotting to it and standing at the closed passenger’s-side door.

  When Curtis opens the SUV for the dog, she springs onto the seat and paws at the closed glove box.

  Curtis opens the box and discovers that Gabby travels prepared for the munchies. Three packets of snack crackers, a package of beef jerky, turkey jerky, two bags of peanuts, and a candy bar.

  The box also contains the motor-vehicle registration for the SUV, which reveals that the owner’s name is Cliff Mooney. Obviously, if he’s related to the immortal Gabby Hayes, it must be through his mother’s side of the family. Curtis memorizes Cliff’s address, which he will one day need in order to properly compensate the man.

  With the glove-box vittles, boy and dog settle by the silvery stream, under the wide-spreading branches of a seventy-foot Populus candican, also known as the balm-of-Gilead or the Ontario poplar.

  Curtis knows more than movies: He knows local botany as well as local animal biology. He knows local physics, also complete physics, chemistry, higher mathematics, twenty-five local languages, and how to make a delicious apple pandowdy, among many other things.

  Regardless of how much you know, however, you can never know everything. Curtis is aware of the limitations of his knowledge and of the abyssal ignorance that lies beneath what he knows.

  Sitting with his back against the trunk of the tree, he tears the beef jerky into pieces and feeds it to the dog, morsel by morsel.

  Anyway, knowledge isn’t wisdom, and we aren’t here just to stuff ourselves with facts and figures. We are given this life so we might earn the next; the gift is a chance to grow in spirit, and knowledge is one of many nutrients that facilitate our growth. Mom’s wisdom.

  As the sun climbs higher, it cooks the night dew, and a low mist shimmers just above the meadow, as though the earth breathes out the dreams of the vanished generations buried in its breast.

  The dog watches the mist with such interest that she exhibits no impatience when Curtis takes a while to strip off the stubborn wrapping from the second jerky. Ears pricked, head cocked, she focuses not on the treat, but on the mystery that is the meadow.

  Her species has been granted limited but significant intellect, also emotions and hope. What most separates her from humankind and from other higher life forms isn’t her mental capacity, however, but her innocence. The dog’s self-interest expresses only in matters of survival, never degenerating into the selfishness that is expressed in an infinite variety of ways by those who consider themselves her betters. This innocence carries with it a clarity of perception that allows her to glory in the wonder of creation in even the most humble scene and quiet moment, to be aware of it every minute of every hour, while most human beings pass days or even weeks—and too often whole lives—with their sense of wonder drowned in their sense of self.

  Unwrapped jerky, of course, takes precedence over the meadow and the mist. She eats with a sense of wonder, too, with pure delight.

  Curtis opens one of the packets of crackers. He allows the dog two of the six little sandwiches with peanut-butter filling. She’s had all she needs now, and he doesn’t want her to be sick.

  Eventually, he’ll provide more balanced nutrition for her—but a better diet will have to wait until they are no longer in imminent danger of being gutted, beheaded, shredded, broken, blasted, burned, and worse. Running in desperate fear for your life is pretty much a righteous justification for eating junk food.

  Old Yeller takes another drink from the stream, then returns to Curtis and lies with her spine pressed snugly against the length of his left leg. Eating cracker sandwiches, he strokes her side with his left hand—slowly, comfortingly. Soon she is asleep.

  Commotion contributes to concealment, and motion is commotion. He would be safer if he remained on the move, and safer still if he reached a populous area and mingled with a great many people.

  The dog, however, doesn’t have his stamina. He can’t ask her to exhaust herself from lack of sleep and risk running herself to death.

  He finishes the four cracker sandwiches in the first pack, eats all six in the second pack, follows the crackers with the candy bar, and concludes breakfast with a bag of peanuts. Life is good.

  As he eats, his thoughts are drawn to Gabby’s abandonment of the Mercury Mountaineer in the middle of the salt flats. The caretaker’s conduct was at best eccentric and at worst psychotic.

  Gabby’s personality and behavior have been the most alien that Curtis has encountered o
n this adventure. Although many things about the cantankerous desert rat puzzle the boy, the explosive exit from the SUV, punctuated by a storm of foul language, and the flight on foot across the fluorescent plain are the most baffling. He can’t quite believe that his well-meant criticism of Gabby’s pronunciation of cojones could have caused the old man to hightail it into the barrens in an uncontrolled emotional fit of rage and /or humiliation.

  Another possibility teases at the back of Curtis’s mind, but he can’t quite haul it out in the light for inspection. As he’s puzzling over the matter, he’s distracted when the dog begins to dream.

  She signals her dreaming with a whimper: not a cry of fear, but a wistful sound. Her forepaws twitch, and from the movement of her hind legs, Curtis infers that she is running in her dream.

  He puts his hand on her flank, which rises and falls rapidly with her breathing. He feels her heartbeat: strong and quick.

  Unlike the boy for whom he named himself, this Curtis never sleeps. Therefore he never dreams. Curiosity compels him to employ the special boy-dog bond that synchronizes his mind to that of his sister-becoming. Thus he enters the secret world of her dreams.

  A puppy among puppies, she suckles at a teat, enraptured by the throb of her mother’s heart, which pulses through the nipple into her greedy lips, and then she submits to her mother’s licking, the great warm tongue, the black nuzzling nose icy with affection…scrambles clumsily over Mother’s furry flank, climbing eagerly as though some mystery lies beyond the curve of her mother’s ribs, an astonishment that she must see, must see…and then fur fades into meadow, cicadas singing, their music shivering in her blood…and now she’s an older dog racing through succulent grass in pursuit of an orange butterfly bright as a fluttering flame, burning mysteriously in the air…from meadow into woods, shadows and the scent of hemlock, the fragrance of decaying leaves and needles, here the butterfly as bright as the sun in a shaft of light but now eclipsed and lost…around her the croaks of woodland toads, as she follows the scent of deer along trails overhung by ferns, unafraid in the deepening shadows because the playful Presence runs with her here, as always elsewhere….