One Door Away From Heaven

by Dean Koontz

  “I realized we were having a clandestine conversation,” Curtis replies, “but how sad to think your mother is the reason. You know, I don’t believe I’ve told you I’m an extraterrestrial.”

  “That is news,” Leilani agrees. “Tell me something else….”

  “Anything,” he promises, because she shines.

  “Are you related to a woman named Geneva Davis?”

  “Not if she’s of this planet.”

  “Well, she is more than not, I guess. But I’d swear you were at least a nephew.”

  “Should I be honored to meet her?” Curtis asks.

  “Yes, you should. And if you ever do, I sure would like to be a fly on the wall.”

  They are socializing so well, and suddenly this last statement of hers confuses him. “Fly on the wall? Are you a shapechanger, too?”

  Chapter 68

  CIRCLING FROM the Teelroy place to the Slut Queen’s car in the woods, Preston had time to think and to modify his initial plan.

  For one thing, when he first headed east through the field of weeds and scattered corn plants behind the farmhouse, he’d begun to think of her as the Drunk. But that didn’t resonate satisfactorily. Lady Liver Rot and Miss Shitfaced were both more fun, but still not right. He couldn’t call her the Tits, even though it was applicable, because he’d already used that one for Aunt Janice, the mother of his first kill, Cousin Dirtbag. Over the years, he had employed all the most interesting parts of female anatomy as his private names for other women. While he was willing to reuse a name if he could couple it with a fresh and pleasing adjective, he had also exhausted most of those in conjunction with anatomical terms. Finally he had settled on the Slut Queen, based on what little but telling details he knew about her weakness for men who used her and about the likelihood that she had been used against her will at a young age: Queens, after all, are born to their station in life.

  The importance of selecting the right name couldn’t be exaggerated. It must be amusing, of course, but yet it must also be an accurately descriptive sobriquet and must diminish the person sufficiently to dehumanize him or, in this case, her. These last two requirements were a matter of good ethics. To fulfill his obligation to thin the human herd and thereby preserve the world, a utilitarian bioethicist must cease to think about most of the herd as being people like he himself. In Preston’s inner world, only useful people, people with something of substance to offer humanity and with a high quality of life, had the same names as they did in the outer world.

  So, kill the Slut Queen. That was his mission when he left the farmhouse, and that remained his mission when he crept up behind her through the trees. Along the way from there to here, however, he had changed his mind about how the killing should be done.

  Finished with the serpent-head cane, Preston tossed it on the backseat of the Camaro.

  The Slut Queen’s keys were in the ignition. He used them to open the trunk of the Camaro.

  He dragged her across the woodland carpet of pine needles and dead vegetation, to the back of the car.

  Overlooking these deeds, the sky darkened further. A dam’s breast of stacked thunderheads seemed about to crack and tumble.

  Wind, a clever mimic, stampeded an invisible herd of snorting bulls through the trees, and then chased them with phantom packs of panting hounds in heat.

  All the bluster and the smell of an impending storm excited Preston. The Slut Queen—so attractive and limp and still warm—tempted him.

  The wildwood offered a savage bed. And the hooting wind spoke to a cruel brute in his heart.

  With an honesty in which he took pride, he fully acknowledged that he harbored this brute. Like everyone born of man and woman, he couldn’t claim perfection. This admission was part of the penetrating self-analysis that each ethicist must undergo to have the credibility and the authority to establish rules for others to live by.

  Seldom did he have the opportunity to deal in violence without restraint. Mostly, to avoid imprisonment, he had been limited in his killing to massive injections of digitoxin, genteel smothering, the administration of air-bubble embolisms….

  These recent exertions with the Toad and with the Slut Queen had been hugely revitalizing, invigorating. Indeed, Preston Maddoc was aroused.

  Unfortunately, he didn’t have time for passion. He had left his SUV in front of the farmhouse. A cane-clubbed body sprawled in that hat-lined bedroom, awaiting discovery. Although only the mentally impaired and carnival freaks were likely to visit the Toad for Sunday supper, Preston had to eliminate all incriminating evidence as soon as possible.

  The Slut Queen qualified as yet more evidence. He lifted her and tumbled her into the trunk of the Camaro.

  Some wet blood stained his hands. He scooped a wad of dry pine needles from the ground. He rolled them gently back and forth between palms and fingers, to remove the worst of the stains and to dry what would not easily wipe off.

  Then behind the steering wheel, out of the woods, onto the road, to the driveway, and past the old canted tractor.

  He parked beside the Durango, in front of the farmhouse.

  Hauling the Slut Queen out of the trunk proved much harder than dumping her into it.

  Blood glistened on the carpet where she’d rested. For an instant the sight of those stains paralyzed Preston.

  He had intended to stage things to make it appear as though the woman had burned to death in the farmhouse with the Toad. Packed wall to wall with stacked paper and wooden Indians and other dry tinder, accelerated with a gallon of judiciously placed gasoline, the blaze would be so intense that not much would remain of the bodies; even bones might be largely consumed, leaving little or no evidence that it hadn’t been the fire that had killed them. Jerkwater towns like Nun’s Lake didn’t possess the police and forensics capabilities to detect murders this thoroughly concealed.

  He would have to deal with the bloodstains in the trunk. Later. He would also need to wipe down portions of the car to eliminate his fingerprints. In time.

  Now, as the wind whipped up dust devils that capered in advance of him, he carried the Slut Queen in his arms: across the lawn, onto the porch, through the front door, into the lower hall, where Indians stood sentinel and offered cigars, past the wooden chiefs, smiling at the one that gave him the okay sign, and onward into the labyrinth.

  In these catacombs, he chose the place. He made the necessary preparations.

  Within a few minutes, he sat once more behind the wheel of the Durango.

  On his return trip to Nun’s Lake, wind buffeted the SUV as though urging it along, huffed and hooted at the window beside him as though offering its enthusiastic approval of the deeds that he had done and its counsel regarding what remained to be accomplished.

  Considering these developments, he could no longer wait for the Hand’s tenth birthday to deal with her. He couldn’t even delay until they returned to the site of the Gimp’s grave in Montana, though the moldering boy lay less than half a day away.

  The Teelroy farmhouse offered an excellent alternative stage for the final act in the sad and useless life of the Hand. Of course, he wouldn’t be able to force her to confront, to touch, to kiss, and to settle down with her brother’s decomposing remains before he killed her, as he’d dreamed of doing for several months. He regretted being denied that delicious and sustaining memory. On the bright side, the maze offered the privacy that was necessary to torment the Hand at length, without much fear of interruption. And the very architecture of the Toad’s bizarre construction provided an ideal home for terror. Preston’s time alone in the Montana forest with the Gimp had been bliss. Admittedly, the bliss of a flawed man, but bliss nonetheless. This game with the Hand would be bliss doubled, tripled. And when it was over, as cruel as his pleasure would have been, he still would be able to take satisfaction—and even a measure of quiet pride—from the fact that in one day he had terminated three pathetic and useless drudges, preserving the resources that they would have consumed in the y
ears ahead, sparing all useful people from the sight of their misery, and thereby increasing the total amount of happiness in the world.

  Chapter 69

  THE ALIEN SHAPECHANGER, come to save the world, looked like a nice boy. Although not as dreamy as Haley Joel Osment, he had a sweet face and an appealing sprinkle of freckles.

  “In the entire known universe, there are only two species of shapechangers,” he earnestly informed her, “and mine is one of them.”

  “Congratulations,” Leilani said.

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “Call me Leilani.”

  He beamed. “Call me…well, you wouldn’t be able to pronounce it, considering the way the human tongue works, so just call me Curtis. Anyway, these are also the two most ancient species in the known universe.”

  “How much of the universe is known?” she asked.

  “Some say forty percent, others think closer to sixty.”

  “Gee, I thought it would be no more than fourteen to sixteen percent. Okay, so are you here to change the world for the better or to pretty much destroy it?”

  “Oh, Lord, no, my people aren’t destroyers. That’s the other species of shapechangers. They’re evil, and they seek only to serve entropy. They love chaos, destruction, death.”

  “So being the two most ancient species…it’s sort of like angels and demons.”

  “More than sort of,” he said, with a smile as enigmatic as that of the sun god on the ceiling. “Not to say we’re perfect. Good Lord, no. I myself have stolen money, orange juice, frankfurters, and a Mercury Mountaineer, although I hope and intend to make restitution. I have picked locks and entered premises not my own, driven a motor vehicle at night without headlights, failed to wear my seat belt, and lied on numerous occasions, though I’m not lying now.”

  The funny thing was, she believed him. She didn’t know exactly why she believed him, but he seemed credible. Having spent her entire life in the company of deceivers, she’d developed perfect pitch when it came to differentiating the sour notes of lies from the music of the truth. Besides, she’d spent half her life being hauled around in search of ETs, and as bogus as the vast majority of the chased-down reports had proved to be, she had nevertheless been steeped in the concept of otherworldly visitors, and unconsciously she had come to accept that, even if elusive, they were real.

  Here she stood face-to-face with a genuine space cadet and, for once, not one born on this world.

  “I’ve come here,” the boy said, “because my dog told me you were in great distress and danger.”

  “This keeps getting better.”

  Shy, peering out from between Curtis’s legs, head slightly bowed and eyes rolled up to gaze at Leilani, the cute mutt slaps its tail against the floor.

  “But I’m also here,” the boy said, “because you’re radiant.”

  Second by second, Curtis appeared to be more the equal of Haley Joel Osment.

  “Do you need help?” he asked.

  “God, yes.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Listening to herself, Leilani realized that what she was telling him—and what remained to be told—was nearly as incredible as his declaration of his extraterrestrial origin, and she hoped that he, too, possessed the perfect pitch to separate lies from truth. “My stepfather’s a murderer who’s going to kill me soon, my druggie mother doesn’t care, and I don’t have anywhere to go.”

  “Now you do,” said Curtis.

  “I do? Where? I’m not too keen on interstellar travel.”

  From the bedroom at the back of the Fair Wind, with an unfailing instinct for spoiling a good mood, old Sinsemilla called, “LaniLaniLaniLaniLaniLani!” in an ululant squeal. “Come here, hurry! Lani, come, I neeeeeeed you!”

  So shrill and eerie was dear Mater’s voice that Polly, the Amazon behind Curtis, pulled a gun from her purse and held it with the muzzle pointed at the ceiling, alert and ready.

  “Coming!” Leilani shouted, desperate to forestall her mother’s appearance. More softly to the alien delegation, she said: “Wait here. I’ll handle this. Bullets probably wouldn’t work even if they were silver.”

  Suddenly Leilani was scared, and this wasn’t the dull grinding anxiety with which she lived every day of her life, but a fear as sharp as the scalpel with the ruby blade that her mother sometimes used for self-mutilation. She was afraid Sinsemilla would burst out of the bedroom and be among them in a wicked-witch whirl, or pursue them in a shrieking fit, all the stored-up flash of electroshock therapy sizzling back out of her in a fury, and that in an instant she would put an end to all hope—or otherwise get herself shot by an alien blond bombshell, which Leilani didn’t want to see happen, either.

  She took three swift steps past the foot of the sofabed, and then an amazing thought struck her nearly hard enough to knock her down. Halting, she looked at Cass beyond the window, at Curtis, at Polly behind him, and at Curtis again, before she found the breath to say, “Do you know Lukipela?”

  The boy’s eyebrows arched. “That’s Hawaiian for Satan.”

  Heart racing, she said, “My brother. That’s his name, too. Luki. Do you know him?”

  Curtis shook his head. “No. Should I?”

  The timely arrival of aliens, even without whirling saucer and levitation beam, ought to be miracle enough. She shouldn’t expect to discover that the greatest loss in her hard nine years would prove to be no loss at all. Though she saw divine grace and mercy at work in the world every day, and felt its power, and survived always on the strength she drew from it, she knew that not all suffering would be relieved in this life, for here people had the free will to lift one another but also to smash one another down. Evil was as real as wind and water, and Preston Maddoc served it, and all the fervent hope in one girl’s heart could not undo what he had done.

  “LANILANILANILANI! Lani, I neeeeeeed you!”

  “Wait,” she whispered to Curtis Hammond. “Please wait.”

  She moved as fast as ever her inhibiting left leg had allowed her to move, to the back of the Fair Wind, through the half-open door into the bedroom.

  Chapter 70

  ALONG THE COUNTY ROAD, lush meadows trembled in the wind, but no crop circles or elaborate designs formed in the grass as Preston passed.

  The sky lowered steadily, as portentous as those in numerous films about alien contact, but no mother ship materialized out of the ominous clouds.

  Preston’s quest for a close encounter would not end here in Idaho, as he had hoped. Indeed, he might spend the remaining years of his life traveling in search of that transcendent experience, seeking the affirmation that he believed ETs would give him.

  He was patient. And in the meantime, he had useful work—which continued now with the Hand.

  Aware that the clock was ticking off her last days, the Hand had begun to seek a way out of her trap. She had developed an unexpected bond with the Slut Queen and the ditzy aunt, had extracted the knife in her mattress only to find Tetsy’s penguin, and had then developed strategies to fight or evade Preston when he came for her.

  He knew all this because he could read her journal.

  The coded shorthand that she had invented for her writings was clever, especially for one so young. If she had been dealing with someone other than Preston Maddoc, her secrets would not have been plumbed.

  Being a highly respected intellectual with friends and admirers in many academic disciplines, in several major universities, he had connected with a mathematician named Trevor Kingsley, who specialized in cryptography. More than a year ago, that codemaker—and breaker—had employed sophisticated encryption-analysis software to decipher the Hand’s journal.

  Having been provided with a transcription of one full page from the journal, Trevor expected to get the job done in fifteen minutes, because that was the average time required to crack any simple code devised by anyone lacking significant education in various branches of higher mathematics; by comparison, more ingeniously composed systems of
encryption required days, weeks, even months to penetrate. Instead of fifteen minutes, using his best software, Trevor required twenty-six, which impressed him; he wanted to know the codemaker’s identity.

  Preston couldn’t understand what was so impressive about the code having resisted analysis for just an additional eleven minutes. He withheld the Hand’s name and made no mention of her relationship to him. He professed to have found the journal on a park bench and to have developed a keen curiosity about it because of its mysterious-looking contents.

  Trevor also said that the text on the sample page was “amusing, acerbic but full of gentle humor.” Preston had read it several times, and although he was relieved to discover that nothing in it required him to paste patches on his original park-bench story, he hadn’t been able to find anything to smile about. In fact, using the translation bible that Trevor provided, Preston secretly studied the entire journal—a few pages every morning when Leilani showered, odd bits and pieces as other opportunities arose—and found not one amusing line, cover to cover. In the year since, continuing to sneak peeks at the girl’s self-important scribblings, he’d not been charmed into even a faint smile by any of her observations in subsequent entries. In fact, she’d revealed herself to be a disrespectful, mean-spirited, ignorant little smartass who was as ugly inside as out. Evidently, Trevor Kingsley had a degenerate sense of humor.

  These past few days, as the journal entries revealed that the Hand was scheming to save herself, Preston made careful preparations to overcome her resistance with ease when he was ready to take her to a suitably secluded killing ground. He didn’t know when and in what circumstances he might need to overpower her, and while he hadn’t any concern that she could effectively resist him, he didn’t want to give her a chance to scream and perhaps draw the attention of someone who would intervene on her behalf.

  Since Friday, when they had driven east from California, he’d been carrying a folded, one-quart Hefty OneZip plastic bag in the left back pocket of his pants. The bag could be closed airtight by means of a small plastic slide-seal device built into it. Inside the OneZip was a washcloth saturated in a homemade anesthetic that he had produced by combining carefully measured quantities of ammonia and three other household chemicals. In his life’s work, he had used this concoction to assist in a few suicides. When inhaled, it caused instantaneous collapse into unconsciousness; sustained application resulted in respiratory failure and in the rapid destruction of the liver. He intended to use this anesthetic only to ensure against resistance and induce unconsciousness, because as a killing weapon, it was too merciful to excite him.