One Door Away From Heaven

by Dean Koontz

  Sawing with the glass edge, Micky worked first on the length of cord that connected her wrist restraints to those that bound her ankles. The plastic cut easily, and because copper was a soft metal, the twist of wires at the heart of the cord offered only slightly little more resistance than did the coating.

  Thankful that she had remained limber by faithfully adhering to an exercise regimen while in prison, she pulled her feet up onto the small table and set to work on the loops of cord that trammeled her. In a few minutes, her feet were free.

  As she puzzled over how to hold the cutting edge of the glass to best apply it to her shackles without slicing her wrists, she heard faint noises elsewhere in the house. Then a loud thud was followed by a slamming door.

  Maddoc had returned.

  SLUMPED in a grungy armchair, Leilani didn’t know where she was or how she had gotten here, but though her thought processes remained frayed at the edges, she had no illusions that a maid would appear at any moment with a pot of Earl Grey and a tray of tea cakes.

  Wherever she might be, the place reeked more nauseatingly than the worst of old Sinsemilla’s toxin-purging baths. In fact, the stink was so offensive that perhaps this was where the years and years of dear Mater’s extracted toxins had been shipped for disposal. Maybe this foul miasma was what the wizard-baby breeder would smell like if she hadn’t soaked away her sins on a regular basis.

  Leilani slid to the edge of the chair, stood up—and fell down. The stench at floor level motivated her to get a grip on herself and concentrate to expel the haze that clouded her thoughts.

  Her brace had been taken. She’d been mere steps from freedom, from a Fleetwood full of aliens. Boy, dog, Amazons, and the prospect of great adventures without evil pigmen. Now this. The work of the doom doctor was evident. Tiny bird skulls staring with empty sockets.

  THE HAND’S USELESS nature, her pathetic dependency, her deep genetic corruption squirmed across every plane and curve and crook of the steel brace as surely as bacteria swarmed the surfaces of a public toilet.

  A highly educated man, Preston knew that her uselessness and her dependency were abstract qualities that left no residue on things she touched, and he knew that her genetic corruption could not be passed along like a viral disease. Nevertheless, his right hand, in which he held the brace, grew sticky with sweat, and as he roamed the maze in search of the Slut Queen, he became convinced that the girl’s hideous residues were dissolving in his perspiration and that they would seep deep into him through his traitorous pores. In the best of times, his sweat distressed him no less than did the urine and the mucus and the other offensive products of his metabolism, but in this instance, as his hand grew slimier, his antipathy to the girl swelled into a ripe disgust, disgust into a bile-black hatred that should have been beneath an ethical man like him. With each step that he took into the stinking bowels of the labyrinth, however, what he knew became less important than what he felt.

  HANDS STILL BOUND, holding the wicked shard of glass in front of her as though it were a halberd, Micky eased to an intersection of passageways, keeping her back against one wall of the maze, her head raised to detect faint telltale sounds. She moved as silently as fog, practicing a stealth that she had learned in childhood, when preventing further assaults on her dignity meant avoiding one of her mother’s bad boys by making of herself a living ghost, silent and unseen.

  She didn’t pause to saw at the wrist bindings, because that tricky task would take time, at least a few minutes, and would inevitably distract her. She was St. George in the lair, and the awakened dragon prowled.

  At the corner, she paused. The next passageway, meeting this one at right angles, continued both to the left and the right. She didn’t want to stick her head out there and find Maddoc watching, listening. She remembered how furtively, how fox-smooth, and with what boldness he had invaded Geneva’s home only a few nights ago, and she did not underestimate him.

  Her assessment of him immediately proved accurate when suddenly he cursed, his voice arising no more than a few feet from her, around the corner to the left, where he had been standing without so much as a revealing inhalation. But then, in an apparent fit of uncontrolled anger, he threw down something that hit the wood floor with a hard clatter, tumbled, and came to rest in front of the termination point of the passage in which Micky sheltered, only inches from her feet: Leilani’s leg brace.

  If he followed the steel contraption, they would be at once face-to-face, and her survival would hinge on her ability to thrust the shard of glass into one of his eyes in the instant of his surprise. Miss, cut only his cheek or his brow, and he would take advantage of her shackled hands to finish her with brutal dispatch.

  Micky held her breath. Waited. Shifted her body without moving her feet, turning to face the intersection more directly, glass at the ready.

  She wore a cheap and classic Timex. No digital components. Old-fashioned watchworks in the case. She swore she could hear the tick-tick-tick of gear teeth biting time between them. She’d never heard them before, but she detected them now, so acutely heightened were her senses.

  Nothing followed the clatter of the tossed leg brace. No sound of Maddoc approaching or departing. Just the expectant silence of a coiled snake, sans rattle.

  Loud, her rampant heart stampeded. Her body resonated just as hard ground would vibrate with the thunder of a herd of drumming hooves.

  Yet somehow she heard through the tumult of her heart, filtered it, and filtered out also the regiments of rain tramping across the roof, so she could still perceive the silence that otherwise ruled, and would perceive any sound that, however faintly, disturbed it.

  Wait here another minute? Two minutes? Can’t wait forever. When you stand still too long, they find you. Ghosts, living and not, must be elusive, in constant drift.

  She leaned forward, exposing as little as possible, just the side of her head, one wary eye.

  Maddoc had moved on. The next passageway, to the left and right, was deserted.

  The brace meant Leilani had been brought here. And she must not be dead yet, because Maddoc wouldn’t have removed the brace from her corpse, only from the living girl with the cold intention of further incapacitating her.

  A tough choice here. Leave the brace or try to take it? Getting Leilani out alive would be easier if the girl had two legs to stand on. But the contraption might make noise when Micky tried to gather it off the floor. Besides, with her hands tied, she couldn’t easily carry the brace and also effectively wield the shard of glass as a weapon.

  Micky stooped and gripped the appliance anyway, because Leilani would be not only faster and more surefooted with the brace, but also less afraid. She lifted it slowly, carefully. A faint clink and a tick. She held the brace against her body, cushioning it to prevent further noise, and rose to her feet.

  Because Maddoc was rain-soaked, Micky could see which way he had gone and where he’d come from. The bare wood floor, its finish long worn away, left no water standing on the surface, but sopped up each of the man’s wet steps, resulting in dark footprints.

  She was sure that he must have left the girl in the space with the television, where he had bound Micky herself earlier. Indeed, the trail led to that very place, but Leilani wasn’t there.

  BOTTLES, BOTTLES everywhere, and not one genie in them, nor any message meant to be tossed overboard at sea. They contained only the dried residue of soft drinks and beer, which in spite of its age lent a nose-wrinkling scent to the enclosed back porch.

  Stabbed but not disabled, Noah had hurried around the house with Cass and found the porch door unlocked. Guns drawn, they entered.

  The three-mile drive from Nun’s Lake had not provided sufficient time for Noah to get a grip on the complete background of the twins. Although he knew that they were ex-showgirls fascinated with UFOs, he remained more mystified than not by their game attitude and by their armaments.

  He hadn’t seen either of them fire a weapon, but from the wholly professio
nal way they handled guns, Noah felt as comfortable having Cass for a partner as he’d ever felt about any cop with whom he had partnered during his years in uniform.

  The floor of the porch groaned under the weight of a bottle collection that would, redeemed at a nickle apiece, purchase a fine automobile for the owners to put up on blocks in the front yard. When Noah led the way through a narrow walk space, the bottles made fairy music.

  The door between the porch and the kitchen was double-locked. One lock could easily be loided with a credit card, but the other was a deadbolt that would not succumb to a slip of plastic.

  They had to assume that Maddoc had either heard them drive up, in spite of the wind and rain and thunder, or that he had seen them arrive. Stealth might matter inside, but it didn’t matter when they were getting in.

  The bottles encroaching on both sides didn’t allow him a full range of motion, but he kicked the door hard. The shock of the impact expressed itself all the way into the wound in his shoulder, but he kicked again, and then a third time. Half eaten away by dry rot, the jamb crumbled around the lock, and the door flew inward.

  THREE BLOWS shook the house, and Preston knew at once that his hope of having more than the briefest pleasure with the Hand had in this instant evaporated.

  The Slut Queen wouldn’t have made that noise. She was in the farmhouse, seeking an exit, but striving not to draw attention to herself. In the unlikely event that she’d already found a route through the maze, she wouldn’t have needed to hammer her way out of the house.

  Preston hadn’t heard sirens, and no one had yelled police. Yet he didn’t delude himself that a burglar would, by chance, have chosen precisely this point in time to force entry. Someone had come to stop him.

  He abandoned his search for the Slut Queen hardly before it had begun, and turned back on his trail, eager to get to the armchair in which he’d left the Hand. He might still have time to choke the ugly little bitch to death, although such intimate contact would make his stomach churn, and then use the maze to slip away. He couldn’t allow her to fall under the protection of others, after all, because if at last she was able to convince anyone to listen to her, she would be the only witness against him.

  POLLY WANTS CURTIS to remain in Noah’s rental car, but galactic royalty will always have its way.

  Curtis wants Old Yeller to remain in the car, and he easily wins the issue that Polly lost, because sister-become is a good, good dog.

  The grassless yard has turned to mud that sucks at their shoes. They splash through deep puddles as lightning strikes a pine tree in a nearby field, about a hundred feet away, causing a banner of flame to flutter briefly through the boughs before the downpour quenches the fire, and thunder loud enough to announce the Apocalypse shakes the day. It’s all so wonderful.

  On the front porch, when she tries the door and finds it locked, Polly draws the pistol from her purse and tells Curtis to stand back.

  “It’d be cool to blow down the door,” the boy says, “but my way is easier, and Mother always says the simplest strategy is usually the best.”

  He places both hands lightly on the door, wills it to open, and down on the micro level, where it matters, the brass molecules of the deadbolt suddenly prefer to be there rather than here, to be in the lock’s disengaged position.

  “Can I learn that?” Polly asks.

  “Nope,” he says, pushing the door inward.

  “Got to be a spaceboy like you, huh?”

  “Every species has its talents,” he says, allowing her to enter first, with her gun drawn, because in fact she edges him aside and gives him no choice.

  Mummies line the downstairs hall. Indian mummies, embalmed in standing positions and clothed in their ceremonial best.

  At the back of the big house, Noah or Cass is kicking down the door, and seconds later, they appear at the far end of the hallway, gaping in amazement at the mummies.

  Polly signals them to check out the rooms on their end, and to Curtis, she says, “This way, sweetie.”

  He follows her into chambers more interesting than any he has seen since arriving on this world, but—Oh, Lord—it sure does seem to be the kind of place where serial killers would hang out by the dozen to reminisce about the atrocities they have committed.

  LEILANI WASN’T IN the chamber with the television, but her wet footprints lingered there, with the older, fading prints of Preston Maddoc. Micky could also see where the girl had faltered, fallen, and gotten up again, leaving the damp imprint of her sodden clothes.

  Micky followed this trail from one short passageway into another, then around a second blind corner, moving far faster than prudence allowed, terrified that the girl would blunder into Maddoc.

  Clearly, the bastard had brought her here to kill her, just as he’d brought Micky for that purpose. Couldn’t wait for Montana. Not with the complications that Micky had brought to his plans.

  The house shook with three loud, rapid knocks, not peals of thunder, but hard blows, as though someone had struck the building with a great hammer.

  The noise scared Micky, because she had no idea what caused it. A death blow of some kind? Maddoc triumphant? Leilani dead?

  Then Micky turned another corner, and the girl was six feet ahead, bracing herself with one hand against the maze wall, limping but making determined progress, such a small figure and yet somehow towering at the same time, her head held high, shoulders thrown back in a posture of absolute resolution.

  Sensing a presence, Leilani looked over her shoulder, and her expression at the sight of a faithful friend was a joy that Micky would never forget if she lived to be five hundred and if God chose to take all other memories from her in old age. All other memories, He could have if that day came, but she would never give Him the sight of Leilani’s face at this moment, for this alone would sustain her even in the hour of her death.

  WHEN HE DISCOVERED that the Hand wasn’t in the armchair where he’d left her, wasn’t anywhere in the television annex, Preston began to set the maze on fire.

  Ultimately, following what pain he’d wished to put her through, he’d always intended to leave the girl still alive so that she could live her last minutes in terror as the flames encircled her, and as the smoke stole the breath from her lungs. The former cruelty had been denied him; but he might still have the pleasure of standing in the rain outside and hearing her screams as she staggered and crawled helplessly through the baffling, burning labyrinth.

  Bundled newspapers and magazines offered the best fuel. The kiss of the butane lighter ignited an immediate passionate response. The publications were so tightly compacted in the lower portions of the walls that, almost as dense as bricks, they would burn fiercely and for hours.

  He circled the cramped space, bringing flame to paper in half a dozen places. He had never killed with fire before, except when as a boy he tortured bugs by dropping matches on them in a jar. Licking flames, lavishing bright tongues upon the walls, thrilled him.

  When he first found the armchair empty, Preston had noticed the runt’s damp footprints made patterns with his own. Now he followed them, pausing briefly every few steps to apply the lighter to the tinder-dry walls.

  NEITHER OF THEM had time to be weepy, but they wept anyway, even though tough babes like Micky B and dangerous young mutants were both averse to giving anyone the satisfaction of their tears.

  Crying didn’t slow Leilani as she used the fragment of yellow glass to cut the loops of lamp cord that shackled Micky’s wrists. She needed perhaps a half minute to do the job, less than a half minute to clamp the brace around her leg.

  When they were ready to move again, flames bloomed elsewhere in the maze. Leilani couldn’t yet see the fire itself, but its reflected light crawled the ceiling, like swarms of bright chameleons whipping lizardy tails across the plaster.

  Fear nothing. That’s what the surfers said. Yeah, sure, but how long since the last time that any of those dudes had to worry about being burned to death while they wer
e catching a honking big wave?

  They started back the way they had come, but simultaneously they noticed the damp footprints, and without discussing the matter, they reached the same conclusion: Preston would follow the spoor as surely as Micky had followed it.

  In truth, finding their way out was no harder if they went one direction instead of another. No easier, either.

  Already, on the ceiling, slithering salamanders of firelight faded behind rising masses of smoke that were first carried on the updraft but that would soon pour down through the labyrinth in thick, choking clouds.

  Micky put one arm around Leilani, lending support, and together they hurried as fast as the cyborg leg would allow. At intersection after intersection, they turned left or right, or continued straight ahead if that option existed, basing every choice on instinct—which brought them eventually to a dead end.

  TWO OF PRESTON’S three university degrees were in philosophy; consequently, he had taken numerous logic courses. He remembered one class that, in part, had dealt with the logic of mazes. When these three-dimensional puzzles were designed by educated mathematicians or logicians, who drew upon all their learned cunning to deceive, the result was usually a labyrinth that few could find their way through in a timely manner, and from which a certain percentage of frustrated challengers had to be rescued by guides. On the other hand, when the maze was designed by anyone other than a mathematician or a logician—by ordinary folk, that is—these more mundane mazemakers followed a startlingly predictable pattern, because the design flowed from instinct rather than from intelligent planning; evidently, embedded in every human psyche was an affinity for a basic pattern that rarely failed to be asserted in the designing of a maze. Perhaps this was the pattern of the network of caves and tunnels in which the first extended family of mankind had dwelled; perhaps the map of that earliest of all human homes had been imprinted in our genes, and represented comfort and security when we recreated it. The mystery intrigued psychologists as well as philosophers, though Preston had never spent much time brooding on the subject.