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    One Door Away from Heaven: A Novel
    One Door Away from Heaven: A Novel
    One Door Away from Heaven: A Novel
    Ebook828 pages26 hours

    One Door Away from Heaven: A Novel

    By Dean Koontz

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Suspense, humor and plenty of heart . . . spooky and satisfying.”—People

    Michelina Bellsong is on a mission. She is following a missing family to the edge of America . . . to a place she never knew existed—a place of terror, wonder, and shattering revelation. What awaits her there will change her life and the life of everyone she knows—if she can find the key to survival. At stake are a young girl of extraordinary goodness, a young boy with killers on his trail, and Micky’s own wounded soul. Ahead lie incredible peril, startling discoveries, and paths that lead through terrible darkness to unexpected light.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRandom House Publishing Group
    Release dateJun 15, 2007
    ISBN9780307414250
    One Door Away from Heaven: A Novel
    Author

    Dean Koontz

    <p>Dean Koontz ist in Pennsylvania geboren und aufgewachsen. Er begann parallel zu seiner Tätigkeit als Lehrer zu schreiben. Seine Frau Gerda erkannte schnell sein Talent und unterstützte ihn in den folgenden Jahren finanziell, sodass er sich voll auf seine Karriere als Schriftsteller konzentrieren konnte. Inzwischen wurden seine Werke in 38 Sprachen übersetzt und mehr als 450 Millionen Mal verkauft. Dean lebt mit Gerda und ihrem Golden Retriever Elsa in Südkalifornien.</p>

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    Reviews for One Door Away from Heaven

    3.5/5

    456 ratings17 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Still reading this. A Koontz novel about a boy(who is not a boy and a dog that is not a dog) Imagine that. Great so far. A little too much going on though. Seems to me like he had two or three ideas and decided to put them all in one story.
    • 4/5
      Leilani Klonk is under a death sentence, her mother is drugged out and will be no help, her only hope is the neighbors next door. Mi my and Aunt Gen have their own problems. The alien who will be known as Curtis Hammond may be her salvation if he can survive the hunt by the FBI and the evil aliens. Great concept, strong characters, good pacing.
    • 4/5
      Amazing that I actually love something from Dean Koontz--that's what I learned from this book.
    • 4/5
      Still reading this. A Koontz novel about a boy(who is not a boy and a dog that is not a dog) Imagine that. Great so far. A little too much going on though. Seems to me like he had two or three ideas and decided to put them all in one story.
    • 2/5
      I really enjoyed the story and the characters (although many were very cartoonish), but he just phoned in the ending. It ws just lame.
    • 4/5
      it wasn't one of dean koontz best but it was a good read. he kept you interested in the characters as he built the story and as always tied all of them together in the end. if you are a koontz fan the book is defferently worth reading
    • 2/5
      "At the mere thought of survival, guilt churns a bitter butter in his blood"

      This was 12 pages into the book and I had mixed feelings about the language Koontz had been using. I reached this statment and laughed out loud. There is more of this sort of thing in this book than I see in most books and it is a little much. Having said that, I am still reading and am 220 pages into the almost 600 pages.

      At this point the three separate stories being told have not converged. The story of Curtis is, I think, the weakest and I hope it will improve when/if it joins the others. The story of Micky and Leilani and the story of Noah are both strongly written, interesting and enjoyable. The Curtis story is told from the perspective of a young boy and his dog ("Fun. Hey, get his shoe! Shoe, fun, shoe shoe! What could be better than this, except a cat chase...") - perhaps that is why I enjoy it less.

      I'm still not convinced that I will finish this... have read another 20 pages and am giving up. This is a little too much like work.
    • 4/5
      This book is really good, however, one part of the book runs really slow and is a little difficult to get into until the end. It's definitely interesting for the most part, especially if you're into aliens and things of the like.
    • 4/5
      I've come to the conclusion that Dean Koontz is a good writer with everything except for endings. This book is no exception.

      The ending wasn't "bad" but it wasn't great and was a little lackluster considering the rest of the story.

      The main story had me completely enthralled and kept me up a few nights. I really liked the characters and felt that the ever so tidy ending wasn't completely suited to the rest of the atmosphere.

      All in all- the story I give 4 stars and the ending I give 2 stars and since it was a long one I balance it out with and average of 3.5 stars.

      If you enjoy Koontz this is worth a read but be prepared for his little happy bow-tie endings.
    • 1/5
      Uhhh I have a love/hate relationship with Dean Koontz and this book I hated. It was just over 600 pages and I think I enjoyed maybe the last 50 pages or so. The characters were unrelatable and I couldnt connect with anything or anyone in the book. For being such a long book I felt like there was little jolts of excitement but the amount of dullness surrounding it choked it out. The plot hops around between the different characters and you litterally have to wait til the book is almost over to understand how they connect and until then your kind of lost. What else can I say this book was just not for me
    • 4/5
      This read a bit like an author on cruise-control. Not necessarily a bad thing, but some of the repartee sounded a bit smug and it grated after a while.

      There were a lot of bits I did like, including some superb minor characters (F Bronson - brilliant!), and the plot twist that occurs partway through, with just enough clues dropped to grab the reader's attention. I could have happily lost the twins, though.

      A good read overall, one of Dean Koontz' better ones of recent years
    • 5/5
      In a dusty trailer park on the far edge of the California dream, Michelina Bellsong contemplates the choices she has made. At twenty-eight, she wants to change the direction of her troubled life but can't find her way—until a new family settles into the rental trailer next door and she meets the young girl who will lead her on a remarkable quest that will change Micky herself and everything she knows—or thinks she knows—forever.

      Despite the brace she must wear on her deformed left leg, and her withered left hand, nine-year-old Leilani Klonk radiates a buoyant and indomitable spirit that inspires Micky. Beneath Leilani's effervescence, however, Micky comes to sense a quiet desperation that the girl dares not express.

      Leilani's mother is little more than a child herself. And the girl's stepfather, Preston Maddoc, is educated but threatening. He has moved the family from place to place as he fanatically investigates UFO sightings, striving to make contact, claiming to have had a vision that by Leilani's tenth birthday aliens will either heal her or take her away to a better life on their world.

      Slowly, ever more troubling details emerge in Leilani's conversations with Micky. Most chilling is Micky's discovery that Leilani had an older brother, also disabled, who vanished after Maddoc took him into the woods one night and is now "gone to the stars."

      Leilani's tenth birthday is approaching. Micky is convinced the girl will be dead by that day. While the child-protection bureaucracy gives Micky the runaround, the Maddoc family slips away into the night. Micky sets out across America to track and find them, alone and afraid but for the first time living for something bigger than herself.

      She finds herself pitted against an adversary, Preston Maddoc, as fearsome as he is cunning. The passion and disregard for danger with which Micky pursues her quest bring to her side a burned-out detective who joins her on a journey of incredible peril and startling discoveries, a journey through terrible darkness to unexpected light.

      ONE DOOR AWAY FROM HEAVEN is an incandescent mix of suspense and humor, fear and wonder, a story of redemption and timeless wisdom that will have readers cheering. Filled with tragedy and joy, with terror and hope, it solidifies Dean Koontz's reputation as one of the foremost storytellers of our time. This is Dean Koontz at his very best—and it doesn't get any better than that.
    • 4/5
      This one was sort of a mixed bag for me, there was a lot i liked about it, and a lot i didnt like about it. I loved the huge cast of characters, all of which i thought we fun and well developed. The parts where the action was good, it had me completley sucked in, however a lot of the book really felt bloated and dragged on. Plus the story itself was just kind of wierd and quirky. Overall a good book, you'll either love it or hate it most it likely.
    • 2/5
      Since this is going to be a rather critical review, I should preface it by saying that I am a big Dean Koontz fan, I grew up reading Koontz, and I loved most of his books up until this one. This is where he got unbearably preachy (in a sort of quasi-New Age/born-again Christian kind of way). I suppose he'd been hinting at it in his stories and novels for years, but it wasn't until toward the end of the book immediately prior to this one, From the Corner of His Eye, that he became more boldly explicit about it---and since that book still sold millions of copies, I guess he felt he had a mandate to go into full-blown Jesus freak mode in this one. Well, here's one reader he lost. I finally got all the way through this one, but only because I already had it on audiobook and had nothing better to listen to at work one day. This book is still two steps above, say, the Left Behind series, but the fact that it can be put in the same category with it for comparison at all is not complimentary.

      Similarly, Koontz has lost all sense of restraint in terms of style. After all, why say something in only one way, when you could treat the reader to three witty metaphors, or four...or five (usually three, though, I don't know if there's supposed to be some special religious significance to that)? And enough with the alliterative triplets! Koontz seems to think they're amusing, or poetic, or something, but a "gaggle of giggling girls?" Gag me. To be fair, Koontz can really turn a phrase, and he's generally a fine writer, but it really seems like he's trying too hard...or not trying hard enough to edit. I suppose with the super-blockbuster status he's achieved, Koontz's publisher allowed him to de facto fire his editor.

      As for the specific content of the novel, it's part detective story about a drunken ex-cop private investigator who is good at what he does but cares too much, part drama about a deformed little girl living with her abusive mother and stepfather and the neighbors who try to help her, and part road-trip/buddy movie about a little boy and his dog and all the interesting characters they meet on their trek...all familiar, almost cliche elements, but Koontz puts his own touches on each and manages to bring them all together at the end plausibly, though not terribly satisfyingly (the ending is frankly, even leaving aside the stupid theological elements, dumb). The main characters are sympathetic and wonderfully heroic at times (although his spunky heroines are all pretty much the same, just at different ages), and some of the side characters the boy meets during the road trip movie part of the story are hilarious (a Gabby Hayes lookalike in particular is great). The villain, however, is simply a strawman who represents the ideas Koontz disagrees with for him to rail against.

      Which brings us to the book's thematic problems, of which there are really too many to discuss here, but some of the major ones can't be overlooked. To be sure, Koontz is right to explicitly criticize (and even label as evil) Peter Singer, a real-life ethicist who is surely among the worst in modern academia (and that's saying something). And Koontz's broader criticisms of utilitarianism generally are often on-target. But he combines Singer with Jack Kevorkian to create his villain (whom he actually calls "Dr. Doom"), thereby attempting to brand anyone who disagrees in any respect with G. W. Bush's "culture of life" b.s. as a monster. And in case you haven't gotten the point yet, believe it or not there are more than one of these thinly-veiled Kevorkian characters (in entirely separate storylines, not just like there's a whole gang of them running around or something). Entirely absent are any considerations of whether a patient is terminally ill with no hope of anything that could really be called a human life in their future, of whether all their other options have been exhausted, and most importantly of whether *they* *choose* to end their own suffering; to assist them humanely and compassionately is literally no different from the most gruesome murder in Koontz's eyes---thus Koontz has his villain dispatch people whom *he* (the villain) views as unhappy indiscriminately, with or without their consent, sometimes with a painless injection, sometimes with an axe. In short, Koontz offers us God as the sole source and arbiter of ethics---an extremely dubious position, to say the least---or (an incredibly extreme version of) utilitarianism, as our only ultimate alternative. It should go without saying that this is a false alternative.

      Turning to psychology, Koontz offers us more of the same sort of nonsense. One character is a self-destructive drug addict who likes to cut herself---and Koontz informs us that her problem is...wait for it...too MUCH self-esteem? Is he serious?! Unfortunately, he is. It's perfectly true that the "self-esteem" movement that is so prevalent in our educational system today turns out neurotic, narcissistic sociopaths with absolutely zero ability to relate to other human beings, but this has nothing to do with genuine self-esteem, based on actual achievement. Rather, what Koontz has clumsily taken their word to be real esteem for the self is mere pseudo-"self-esteem", based not on an individual's actual choices or character but simply on having been born, as they are told that "everybody's special" regardless of what they actually make of their lives and selves.

      Koontz fares no better when he ventures into metaphysics than he did in ethics. The worst bit is at the end, when the hero asks the villain, who believes that life on earth was designed by super-intelligent aliens, "Well then who created the aliens?" Koontz seems to think that this question obliterates the villain's position, and that the obvious answer is, "God." But he seems to have failed to notice that the same question can be applied to God with equal validity. After all, if life is allegedly so complex as to require an intelligent designer in order to explain it, any designer able to fill that role would have to be even more complex, and thus in even greater need of such an explanation in turn. The only real answer the intelligent design people have to this is that the chain has to stop somewhere in order to avoid an infinite regress, so it should stop with God, who is eternal. But why have God at all, when one could just as easily posit that the universe itself is eternal (and extend this to any "irreducible complexities" within it, though I don't think there really are any in the sense the intelligent design crowd means it)?

      The problem with Koontz's attempts to incorporate philosophy into his novels is that he's not a very good philosopher, and this kind of sloppy thinking only hurts his books. He writes (or used to write) good thrillers, and he writes with great humor, and he should stick to that...and get a better editor.
    • 5/5
      UFOs, aliens, an empathetic dog, a crippled girl, and a host of supporting characters overcoming past traumas to reach out to others all are combined by Dean Koontz in a book that is the most compelling statement I have ever seen made about the right to life, no matter what one's condition. As always with his novels, few things are what they seem.Two basic plots run parallel before their heroes find themselves coming together to fight off a very evil villain. "What is one door away from heaven," is a question that one character has asked another since her childhood. The answer, along with the overall theme of the book, is enough to make us all examine our lives more carefully ... and be thankful that Koontz's writing reflects his beliefs so honestly
    • 5/5
      Dean Koontz? Really! I generally like Dean Koontz, but he really stepped up his game for this book. The chapter about the snake is just brilliant. If you are going to read a Dean Koontz book, this should be the one.
    • 3/5
      Michelina Bellsong is on a mission. She is following a missing family to the edge of America...to a place she never new exsited - a place of terror, wonder, and shattering revealtion. What awaits her there will change her life and the life of everyone she knows - if she can find the key to survival. At stake are a young girl of extraordianry goodness, a young boy with killers on his trail, and micky's own wounded soul

    Book preview

    One Door Away from Heaven - Dean Koontz

    Chapter 1

    THE WORLD IS FULL of broken people. Splints, casts, miracle drugs, and time can’t mend fractured hearts, wounded minds, torn spirits.

    Currently, sunshine was Micky Bellsong’s medication of choice, and southern California in late August was an apothecary with a deep supply of this prescription.

    Tuesday afternoon, wearing a bikini and oiled for broiling, Micky reclined in a lounge chair in her aunt Geneva’s backyard. The nylon webbing was a nausea-inducing shade of green, and it sagged, too, and the aluminum joints creaked as though the lawn furniture were far older than Micky, who was only twenty-eight, but who sometimes felt ancient.

    Her aunt, from whom fate had stolen everything except a reliable sense of humor, referred to the yard as the garden. That would be the rosebush.

    The property was wider than it was deep, to allow the full length of the house trailer to face the street. Instead of a lawn with trees, a narrow covered patio shaded the front entrance. Here in back, a strip of grass extended from one side of the lot to the other, but it provided a scant twelve feet of turf between the door and the rear fence. The grass flourished because Geneva watered it regularly with a hose.

    The rosebush, however, responded perversely to tender care. In spite of ample sunshine, water, and plant food, in spite of the regular aeration of its roots and periodic treatment with measured doses of insecticide, the bush remained as scraggly and as blighted as any specimen watered with venom and fed pure sulfur in the satanic gardens of Hell.

    Face to the sun, eyes closed, striving to empty her mind of all thought, yet troubled by insistent memories, Micky had been cooking for half an hour when a small sweet voice asked, Are you suicidal?

    She turned her head toward the speaker and saw a girl of nine or ten standing at the low, sagging picket fence that separated this trailer space from the one to the west. Sun glare veiled the kid’s features.

    Skin cancer kills, the girl explained.

    So does vitamin D deficiency.

    Not likely.

    Your bones get soft.

    Rickets. I know. But you can get vitamin D in tuna, eggs, and dairy products. That’s better than too much sun.

    Closing her eyes again, turning her face to the deadly blazing heavens, Micky said, Well, I don’t intend to live forever.

    Why not?

    Maybe you haven’t noticed, but nobody does.

    I probably will, the girl declared.

    How’s that work?

    A little extraterrestrial DNA.

    Yeah, right. You’re part alien.

    Not yet. I have to make contact first.

    Micky opened her eyes again and squinted at the ET wannabe. "You’ve been watching too many reruns of The X-Files, kid."

    I’ve only got until my next birthday, and then all bets are off. The girl moved along the swooning fence to a point where it had entirely collapsed. She clattered across the flattened section of pickets and approached Micky. Do you believe in life after death?

    "I’m not sure I believe in life before death," Micky said.

    I knew you were suicidal.

    I’m not suicidal. I’m just a wiseass.

    Even after stepping off the splintered fence staves onto the grass, the girl moved awkwardly. We’re renting next door. We just moved in. My name’s Leilani.

    As Leilani drew closer, Micky saw that she wore a complicated steel brace on her left leg, from the ankle to above the knee.

    Isn’t that a Hawaiian name? Micky asked.

    My mother’s a little nuts about all things Hawaiian.

    Leilani wore khaki shorts. Her right leg was fine, but in the cradle of steel and padding, her left leg appeared to be malformed.

    In fact, Leilani continued, old Sinsemilla—that’s my mother—is a little nuts, period.

    Sinsemilla? That’s a…

    Type of marijuana. Maybe she was Cindy Sue or Barbara way back in the Jurassic period, but she’s called herself Sinsemilla as long as I’ve known her. Leilani settled into a hideous orange-and-blue chair as decrepit as Micky’s bile-green lounge. This lawn furniture sucks.

    Someone gave it to Aunt Geneva for nothing.

    She ought to’ve been paid to take it. Anyway, they put old Sinsemilla in an institution once and shot like fifty or a hundred thousand volts of electricity through her brain, but it didn’t help.

    You shouldn’t make up stuff like that about your own mother.

    Leilani shrugged. It’s the truth. I couldn’t make up anything as weird as what is. In fact, they blasted her brain several times. Probably, if they’d done it just once more, old Sinsemilla would’ve developed a taste for electricity. Now she’d be sticking her finger in a socket about ten times a day. She’s an addictive personality, but she means well.

    Although the sky was a furnace grate, although Micky was slick with coconut-scented lotion and sweat, she’d grown all but oblivious of the sun. How old are you, kid?

    Nine. But I’m precocious. What’s your name?

    Micky.

    That’s a name for a boy or a mouse. So it’s probably Michelle. Most women your age are named Michelle or Heather or Courtney.

    My age?

    No offense intended.

    It’s Michelina.

    Leilani wrinkled her nose. Too precious.

    Michelina Bellsong.

    No wonder you’re suicidal.

    Therefore—Micky.

    I’m Klonk.

    You’re what?

    Leilani Klonk.

    Micky cocked her head and frowned skeptically. I’m not sure I should believe anything you tell me.

    Sometimes names are destiny. Look at you. Two pretty names, and you’re as gorgeous as a model—except for all the sweat and your face puffy with a hangover.

    Thanks. I guess.

    Me, on the other hand—I’ve got one pretty name followed by a clinker like Klonk. Half of me is sort of pretty—

    "You’re very pretty," Micky assured her.

    This was true. Golden hair. Eyes as blue as gentian petals. The clarity of Leilani’s features promised that hers was not the transient beauty of childhood, but an enduring quality.

    Half of me, Leilani conceded, might turn heads one day, but that’s balanced by the fact that I’m a mutant.

    You’re not a mutant.

    The girl stamped her left foot on the ground, causing the leg brace to rattle softly. She raised her left hand, which proved to be deformed: The little finger and the ring finger were fused into a single misshapen digit that was connected by a thick web of tissue to a gnarled and stubby middle finger.

    Until now, Micky hadn’t noticed this deformity. Everyone’s got imperfections, she said.

    This isn’t like having a big schnoz. I’m either a mutant or a cripple, and I refuse to be a cripple. People pity cripples, but they’re afraid of mutants.

    You want people to be afraid of you?

    Fear implies respect, Leilani said.

    So far, you’re not registering high on my terror meter.

    Give me time. You’ve got a great body.

    Disconcerted to hear such a thing from a child, Micky covered her discomfort with self-deprecation: Yeah, well, by nature I’m a huge pudding. I’ve got to work hard to stay like this.

    No you don’t. You were born perfect, and you’ve got one of those metabolisms tuned like a space-shuttle gyroscope. You could eat half a cow and drink a keg of beer every day, and your butt would actually tighten up a notch.

    Micky couldn’t remember the last time that she’d been rendered speechless by anyone, but with this girl, she was nearly befuddled into silence. How would you know?

    I can tell, Leilani assured her. You don’t run, you don’t power walk—

    I work out.

    Oh? When was your last workout?

    Yesterday, Micky lied.

    Yeah, said Leilani, and I was out waltzing all night. She stamped her left foot again, rattling her leg brace. Having a great metabolism is nothing to be ashamed about. It’s not like laziness or anything.

    Thanks for your approval.

    Your boobs are real, aren’t they?

    Girl, you are an amazing piece of work.

    Thanks. They must be real. Even the best implants don’t look that natural. Unless there’s major improvement in implant technology, my best hope is to develop good boobs. You can be a mutant and still attract men if you’ve got great boobs. That’s been my observation, anyway. Men can be lovely creatures, but in some ways, they’re pathetically predictable.

    You’re nine, huh?

    My birthday was February twenty-eighth. That was Ash Wednesday this year. Do you believe in fasting and penitence?

    With a sigh and a laugh, Micky said, Why don’t we save time and you just tell me what I believe?

    Probably not much of anything, Leilani said, without a pause. Except in having fun and getting through the day.

    Micky was left speechless not by the child’s acute perception but by hearing the truth put so bluntly, especially as this was a truth that she had long avoided contemplating.

    Nothing wrong with having fun, said Leilani. "One of the things I believe, if you want to know, is that we’re here to enjoy life. She shook her head. Amazing. Men must be all over you."

    Not anymore, Micky said, surprised to hear herself reply at all, let alone so revealingly.

    A lopsided smile tugged at the right corner of the girl’s mouth, and unmistakable merriment enlivened her blue eyes. Now don’t you wish you could see me as a mutant?

    What?

    As long as you think of me as a handicapped waif, your pity doesn’t allow you to be impolite. On the other hand, if you could see me as a weird and possibly dangerous mutant, you’d tell me none of this is my business, and you’d hustle me back to my own yard.

    You’re looking more like a mutant all the time.

    Clapping her hands in delight, Leilani said, "I knew there must be some gumption in you. She rose from her chair with a hitch and pointed across the backyard. What’s that thing?"

    A rosebush.

    No, really.

    Really. It’s a rosebush.

    No roses.

    The potential’s there.

    Hardly any leaves.

    Lots of thorns, though, Micky noted.

    Squinching her face, Leilani said, I bet it pulls up its roots late at night and creeps around the neighborhood, eating stray cats.

    Lock your doors.

    We don’t have cats. Leilani blinked. Oh. She grinned. Good one. She hooked her right hand into an imitation of a claw, raked the air, and hissed.

    What did you mean when you said ‘all bets are off’?

    When did I say that? Leilani asked disingenuously.

    You said you’ve only got until your next birthday, and then all bets are off.

    Oh, the alien-contact thing.

    Although that wasn’t an answer, she turned away from Micky and crossed the lawn in a steel-stiffened gait.

    Micky leaned forward from the angled back of the lounge chair. Leilani?

    I say a lot of stuff. Not all of it means anything. At the gap in the broken fence, the girl stopped and turned. Say, Michelina Bellsong, did I ask whether you believe in life after death?

    And I was a wiseass.

    Yeah, I remember now.

    "So…do you?" Micky asked.

    Do I what?

    Believe in life after death?

    Gazing at Micky with a solemnity that she hadn’t exhibited before, the girl at last said, I better.

    As she negotiated the fallen pickets and crossed the neglected sun-browned lawn next door, the faint click-and-squeak of her leg brace faded until it could have been mistaken for the language of industrious insects hard at work in the hot, dry air.

    For a while after the girl had gone into the neighboring house trailer, Micky sat forward in the lounge chair, staring at the door through which she had disappeared.

    Leilani was a pretty package of charm, intelligence, and cocky attitude that masked an aching vulnerability. But while remembered moments of their encounter now brought a smile to Micky, she was also left with a vague uneasiness. Like a quick dark fish, some disturbing half-glimpsed truth had seemed to dart beneath the surface of their conversation, though it eluded her net.

    The liquid-thick heat of the late-August sun pooled around Micky. She felt as though she were floating in a hot bath.

    The scent of recently mown grass saturated the still air: the intoxicating essence of summer.

    In the distance rose the lulling rumble-hum of freeway traffic, a not unpleasant drone that might be mistaken for the rhythmic susurration of the sea.

    She should have grown drowsy, at least lethargic, but her mind hummed more busily than the traffic, and her body grew stiff with a tension that the sun couldn’t cook from her.

    Although it seemed unrelated to Leilani Klonk, Micky recalled something that her aunt Geneva had said only the previous evening, over dinner….

    CHANGE ISN’T EASY, Micky. Changing the way you live means changing how you think. Changing how you think means changing what you believe about life. That’s hard, sweetie. When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change, because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable.

    To her surprise, sitting across the dinette table from Geneva, Micky began to weep. No racking sobs. Discreet, this weeping. The plate of homemade lasagna blurred in front of her, and hot tears slid down her cheeks. She kept her fork in motion throughout this silent salty storm, loath to acknowledge what was happening to her.

    She hadn’t cried since childhood. She’d thought that she was beyond tears, too tough for self-pity and too hardened to be moved by the plight of anyone else. With grim determination, angry with herself for this weakness, she continued eating even though her throat grew so thick with emotion that she had difficulty swallowing.

    Geneva, who knew her niece’s stoic nature, nevertheless didn’t seem surprised by the tears. She didn’t comment on them, because she surely knew that consolation wouldn’t be welcome.

    By the time Micky’s vision cleared and her plate was clean, she was able to say, I can do what I need to do. I can get where I want to go, no matter how hard it is.

    Geneva added one thought before changing the subject: It’s also true that sometimes—not often, but once in a great while—your life can change for the better in one moment of grace, almost a sort of miracle. Something so powerful can happen, someone so special come along, some precious understanding descend on you so unexpectedly that it just pivots you in a new direction, changes you forever. Girl, I’d give everything I have if that could happen for you.

    To stave off more tears, Micky said, That’s sweet, Aunt Gen, but everything you have doesn’t amount to squat.

    Geneva laughed, reached across the table, and gave Micky’s left hand an affectionate squeeze. "That’s true enough, honey. But I’ve still got about half a squat more than you do."

    STRANGELY, here in the sunshine, less than a day later, Micky couldn’t stop thinking about the transforming moment of grace that Geneva had wished for her. She didn’t believe in miracles, neither the supernatural sort that involved guardian angels and the radiant hand of God revealed nor the merely statistical variety that might present her with a winning lottery ticket.

    Yet she had the curious and unsettling sensation of movement within, of a turning in her heart and mind, toward a new point on the compass.

    Just indigestion, she murmured with self-derision, because she knew that she was the same shiftless, screwed-up woman who had come to Geneva a week ago with two suitcases full of clothes, an ’81 Chevrolet Camaro that whiffered and wheezed worse than a pneumonic horse, and a past that wound like chains around her.

    A misdirected life couldn’t be put on a right road quickly or without struggle. For all of Geneva’s appealing talk of a miraculous moment of transformation, nothing had happened to pivot Micky toward grace.

    Nevertheless, for reasons that she could not understand, every aspect of this day—the spangled sunshine, the heat, the rumble of the distant freeway traffic, the fragrances of cut grass and sweat-soured coconut oil, three yellow butterflies as bright as gift-box bows—suddenly seemed full of meaning, mystery, and moment.

    Chapter 2

    IN A FAINT and inconstant breeze, waves stir through the lush meadow. At this lonely hour, in this strange place, a boy can easily imagine that monsters swim ceaselessly through the moon-silvered sea of grass that shimmers out there beyond the trees.

    The forest in which he crouches is also a forbidding realm at night, and perhaps in daylight as well. Fear has been his companion for the past hour, as he’s traveled twisting trails through exotic underbrush, beneath interlaced boughs that have provided only an occasional brief glimpse of the night sky.

    Predators on the wooden highways overhead might be stalking him, leaping gracefully limb to limb, as silent and as merciless as the cold stars beneath which they prowl. Or perhaps without warning, a hideous tunneling something, all teeth and appetite, will explode out of the forest floor under his feet, biting him in half or swallowing him whole.

    A vivid imagination has always been his refuge. Tonight it is his curse.

    Before him, past this final line of trees, the meadow waits. Waits. Too bright under the fat moon. Deceptively peaceful.

    He suspects this is a killing ground. He doubts that he will reach the next stand of trees alive.

    Sheltering against a weathered outcropping of rock, he wishes desperately that his mother were with him. But she will never be at his side again in this life.

    An hour ago, he witnessed her murder.

    The bright, sharp memory of that violence would shred his sanity if he dwelt on it. For the sake of survival, he must forget, at least for now, that particular terror, that unbearable loss.

    Huddled in the hostile night, he hears himself making miserable sounds. His mother always told him that he was a brave boy; but no brave boy surrenders this easily to his misery.

    Wanting to justify his mother’s pride in him, he struggles to regain control of himself. Later, if he lives, he’ll have a lifetime for anguish, loss, and loneliness.

    Gradually he finds strength not in the memory of her murder, not in a thirst for vengeance or justice, but in the memory of her love, her toughness, her steely resolution. His wretched sobbing subsides.

    Silence.

    The darkness of the woods.

    The meadow waiting under the moon.

    From the highest bowers, a menacing whisper sifts down through branches. Maybe it is nothing more than a breeze that has found an open door in the attic of the forest.

    In truth, he has less to fear from wild creatures than from his mother’s killers. He has no doubt that they still pursue him.

    They should have caught him long ago. This territory, however, is as unknown to them as it is to him.

    And perhaps his mother’s spirit watches over him.

    Even if she’s here in the night, unseen at his side, he can’t rely on her. He has no guardian but himself, no hope other than his wits and courage.

    Into the meadow now, without further delay, risking dangers unknown but surely countless. A ripe grassy scent overlays the more subtle smell of rich, raw soil.

    The land slopes down to the west. The earth is soft, and the grass is easily trampled. When he pauses to look back, even the pale moonlamp is bright enough to reveal the route he followed.

    He has no choice but to forge on.

    If he ever dreamed, he could convince himself that he’s in a dream now, that this landscape seems strange because it exists only in his mind, that regardless of how long or how fast he runs, he’ll never arrive at a destination, but will race perpetually through alternating stretches of moon-dazzled meadow and bristling blind-dark forest.

    In fact, he has no idea where he’s going. He’s not familiar with this land. Civilization might lie within reach, but more likely than not, he’s plunging deeper into a vast wilderness.

    In his peripheral vision, he repeatedly glimpses movement: ghostly stalkers flanking him. Each time that he looks more directly, he sees only tall grass trembling in the breeze. Yet these phantom outrunners frighten him, and breath by ragged breath, he becomes increasingly convinced that he won’t live to reach the next growth of trees.

    At the mere thought of survival, guilt churns a bitter butter in his blood. He has no right to live when everyone else perished.

    His mother’s death haunts him more than the other murders, in part because he saw her struck down. He heard the screams of the others, but by the time he found them, they were dead, and their steaming remains were so grisly that he could not make an emotional connection between the loved ones he had known and those hideous cadavers.

    Now, from moonlight into darkling forest once more. The meadow behind him. The tangled maze of brush and bramble ahead.

    Against all odds, he’s still alive.

    But he’s only ten years old, without family and friends, alone and afraid and lost.

    Chapter 3

    NOAH FARREL WAS SITTING in his parked Chevy, minding someone else’s business, when the windshield imploded.

    Noshing on a cream-filled snack cake, contentedly plastering a fresh coat of fat on his artery walls, he suddenly found himself holding a half-eaten treat rendered crunchier but inedible by sprinkles of gummy-prickly safety glass.

    Even as Noah dropped the ruined cake, the front passenger’s-side window shattered under the impact of a tire iron.

    He bolted from the car through the driver’s door, looked across the roof, and confronted a man mountain with a shaved head and a nose ring. The Chevy stood in an open space midway between massive Indian laurels, and though it wasn’t shaded by the trees, it was sixty or eighty feet from the nearest streetlamp and thus in gloom; however, the glow of the Chevy’s interior lights allowed Noah to see the window-basher. The guy grinned and winked.

    Movement to Noah’s left drew his attention. A few feet away, another demolition expert swung a sledgehammer at a headlight.

    This steroid-inflated gentleman wore sneakers, pink workout pants with a drawstring waist, and a black T-shirt. The impressive mass of bone in his brow surely weighed more than the five-pound sledge that he swung, and his upper lip was nearly as long as his ponytail.

    Even as the last of the cracked plastic and the shattered glass from the headlamp rang and rattled against the pavement, the human Good Plenty slammed the hammer against the hood of the car.

    Simultaneously, the guy with the polished head and the decorated nostril used the lug-wrench end of the tire iron to break out the rear window on the passenger’s side, perhaps because he’d been offended by his reflection.

    The noise grew hellish. Prone to headaches these days, Noah wanted nothing more than quiet and a pair of aspirin.

    Excuse me, he said to the bargain-basement Thor as the hammer arced high over the hood again, and he leaned into the car through the open door to pluck the key from the ignition.

    His house key was on the same ring. When he finally got home, by whatever means, he didn’t want to discover that these behemoths were hosting a World Wrestling Federation beer party in his bungalow.

    On the passenger’s seat lay the digital camera that contained photos of the philandering husband entering the house across the street and being greeted at the door by his lover. If Noah reached for the camera, he’d no doubt be left with a hand full of bones as shattered as the windshield.

    Pocketing his keys, he walked away, past modest ranch-style houses with neatly trimmed lawns and shrubs, where moon-silvered trees stood whisperless in the warm still air.

    Behind him, underlying the steady rhythmic crash of the hammer, the tire iron took up a syncopated beat, tattooing the Chevy fenders and trunk lid.

    Here on the perimeter of a respectable residential neighborhood in Anaheim, the home of Disneyland, scenes from A Clockwork Orange weren’t reenacted every day. Nevertheless, made fearful by too much television news, the residents proved more cautious than curious. No one ventured outside to discover the reason for the fracas.

    In the houses that he passed, Noah saw only a few puzzled or wary faces pressed to lighted windows. None of them was Mickey, Minnie, Donald, or Goofy.

    When he glanced back, he noticed a Lincoln Navigator pulling away from the curb across the street, no doubt containing associates of the creative pair who were making modern art out of his car. Every ten or twelve steps, he checked on the SUV, and always it drifted slowly along in his wake, pacing him.

    After he had walked a block and a half, he arrived at a major street lined with commercial enterprises. Many businesses were closed now, at 9:20 on a Tuesday night.

    The Chevy-smashing shivaree continued unabated, but distance and intervening layers of laurel branches filtered cacophony into a muted clump-and-crackle.

    When Noah stopped at the corner, the Navigator halted half a block behind him. The driver waited to see which way he would go.

    In the small of his back, holstered under his Hawaiian shirt, Noah carried a revolver. He didn’t think he would need the weapon. Nevertheless, he had no plans to remake it into a plowshare.

    He turned right and, within another block and a half, arrived at a tavern. Here he might not be able to obtain aspirin, but ice-cold Dos Equis would be available.

    When it came to health care, he wasn’t a fanatic about specific remedies.

    The long bar lay to the right of the door. In a row down the center of the room, each of eight plank-top tables bore a candle in an amber-glass holder.

    Fewer than half the stools and chairs were occupied. Several guys and one woman wore cowboy hats, as though they had been abducted and then displaced in space or time by meddling extraterrestrials.

    The concrete floor, painted ruby-red, appeared to have been mopped at least a couple times since Christmas, and underlying the stale-beer smell was a faint scent of disinfectant. If the place had cockroaches, they would probably be small enough that Noah might just be able to wrestle them into submission.

    Along the left wall were high-backed wooden booths with seats padded in red leatherette, a few unoccupied. He settled into the booth farthest from the door.

    He ordered a beer from a waitress who had evidently sewn herself into her faded, peg-legged blue jeans and red checkered shirt. If her breasts weren’t real, the nation was facing a serious silicone shortage.

    You want a glass? she asked.

    The bottle’s probably cleaner.

    Has to be, she agreed as she headed for the bar.

    While Alan Jackson filled the jukebox with a melancholy lament about loneliness, Noah fished the automobile-club card out of his wallet. He unclipped the phone from his belt and called the twenty-four-hour help-line number.

    The woman who assisted him sounded like his aunt Lilly, his old man’s sister, whom he hadn’t seen in fifteen years, but her voice had no sentimental effect on him. Lilly had shot Noah’s dad in the head, killing him, and had wounded Noah himself—once in the left shoulder, once in the right thigh—when he was sixteen, thereby squelching any affection he might have felt toward her.

    The tires will probably be slashed, he told the auto-club woman, so send a flatbed instead of a standard tow truck. He gave her the address where the car could be found and also the name of the dealership to which it should be delivered. Tomorrow morning’s soon enough. Better not send anyone out there until the Beagle Boys have hammered themselves into exhaustion.

    Who?

    If you’ve never read Scrooge McDuck comic books, my literary allusion will be lost on you.

    Arriving just then with a Dos Equis, the cowgirl waitress said, When I was seventeen, I applied for a character job at Disneyland, but they turned me down.

    Pressing END on his phone, Noah frowned. Character job?

    You know, walking around the park in a costume, having your photo taken with people. I wanted to be Minnie Mouse or at least maybe Snow White, but I was too busty.

    Minnie’s pretty flat-chested.

    Yeah, well, she’s a mouse.

    Good point, Noah said.

    And their idea was that Snow White—she ought to look virginal. I don’t know why.

    Maybe because if Snow was as sexy as you, people would start to wonder what she might’ve been up to with those seven dwarves—which isn’t a Disney sort of thought.

    She brightened. Hey, you probably got something there. Then her sigh vented volumes of disappointment. I sure did want to be Minnie.

    Dreams die hard.

    They really do.

    You’d have made a fine Minnie.

    You think so?

    He smiled. Lucky Mickey.

    You’re sweet.

    My aunt Lilly didn’t think so. She shot me.

    Ah, gee, I wouldn’t take it personal, said the waitress. Everybody’s family’s screwed up these days. She continued on her rounds.

    From the jukebox, a mournful Garth Brooks followed Alan Jackson, and the brims of all the Stetsons at the bar dipped as though in sad commiseration. When the Dixie Chicks followed Brooks, the Stetsons bobbed happily.

    Noah had finished half the beer, straight from the bottle, when a slab of beef—marinated in hair oil and spicy cologne, wearing black jeans and a LOVE IS THE ANSWER

    T-shirt—slipped into the booth, across the table from him. Do you have a death wish?

    Are you planning to grant it? Noah asked.

    Not me. I’m a pacifist. A meticulously detailed tattoo of a rattlesnake twined around the pacifist’s right arm, its fangs bared on the back of his hand, its eyes bright with hatred. But you ought to realize that running surveillance on a man as powerful as Congressman Sharmer is substantially stupid.

    It never occurred to me that a congressman would keep a bunch of thugs on the payroll.

    "Who else would he keep on the payroll?"

    I guess I’m not in Kansas anymore.

    Hell, Dorothy, where you are, they shoot little dogs like Toto for sport. And girls like you are stomped flat if you don’t stay out of the way.

    The country’s Founding Fathers would be so proud.

    The stranger’s eyes, previously as empty as a sociopath’s heart, filled with suspicion. What’re you—some political nut? I thought you were just a sad-ass gumshoe grubbing a few bucks by peeping in people’s bedrooms.

    I need more than a few right now. How much did your Navigator cost? Noah asked.

    You couldn’t afford one.

    I’ve got good credit.

    The pacifist laughed knowingly. When the waitress approached, he waved her away. Then he produced a small waxy bag and dropped it on the table.

    Noah drew comfort from the beer.

    Repeatedly clenching and relaxing his right hand, as though he were troubled by joint stiffness after long hours of punching babies and nuns, the pacifist said, The congressman isn’t unreasonable. By taking his wife as a client, you declared that you were his enemy. But he’s such a good man, he wants to make you his friend.

    What a Christian.

    Let’s not start name-calling. Each time the politician’s man flexed his fist, the fanged mouth widened on the tattoo snake. At least take a look at his peace offering.

    The bag was folded and sealed. Noah peeled back the tape, opened the flap, and half extracted a wad of hundred-dollar bills.

    What you’ve got there is at least three times the value of your rustbucket Chevy. Plus the cost of the camera you left on the front seat.

    Still not the price of a Navigator, Noah observed.

    We’re not negotiating, Sherlock.

    I don’t see the strings.

    There’s only one. You wait a few days, then you tell the wife you followed the congressman all over, but the only time he ever slung his willy out of his pants was when he needed to take a leak.

    What about when he was screwing the country?

    You don’t sound like a guy who wants to be friends.

    I’ve never been much good at relationships…but I’m willing to try.

    I’m sure glad to hear that. Frankly, I’ve been worried about you. In the movies, private eyes are always so incorruptible, they’d rather have their teeth kicked out than betray a client.

    I never go to the movies.

    Pointing to the small bag as Noah tucked the cash into it once more, the pacifist said, Don’t you realize what that is?

    A payoff.

    "I mean the bag. It’s an airsickness bag. His grin faded. What—you never saw one before?"

    I never travel.

    The congressman has a nice sense of humor.

    He’s hysterical. Noah shoved the bag into a pants pocket.

    He’s saying money’s nothing but vomit to him.

    He’s quite the philosopher.

    You know what he’s got that’s better than money?

    Certainly not wit.

    Power. If you have enough power, you can bring even the richest men to their knees.

    Who said that originally? Thomas Jefferson? Abe Lincoln?

    The bagman cocked his head and wagged one finger at Noah. You have an anger problem, don’t you?

    Absolutely. I don’t have enough of it anymore.

    What you need is to join the Circle of Friends.

    Sounds like Quakers.

    It’s an organization the congressman founded. That’s where he made a name for himself, before politics—helping troubled youth, turning their lives around.

    I’m thirty-three, Noah said.

    The Circle serves all age groups now. It really works. You learn there may be a million questions in life but only one answer—

    Which you’re wearing, Noah guessed, pointing at the guy’s LOVE IS THE ANSWER T-shirt.

    Love yourself, love your brothers and sisters, love nature.

    This kind of thing always starts with ‘love yourself.’

    It has to. You can’t love others until you love yourself. I was sixteen when I joined the Circle, seven years ago. A wickedly messed-up kid. Selling drugs, doing drugs, violent just for the thrill of it, mixed up in a dead-end gang. But I got turned around.

    Now you’re in a gang with a future.

    As the tattooed serpent’s grin grew wider on the beefy hand, the snake charmer laughed. I like you, Farrel.

    Everybody does.

    You might not approve of the congressman’s methods, but he’s got a vision for this country that could bring us all together.

    The ends justify the means, huh?

    See, there’s that anger again.

    Noah finished his beer. Guys like you and the congressman used to hide behind Jesus. Now it’s psychology and self-esteem.

    Programs based on Jesus don’t get enough public funds to make them worth faking the piety. He slid out of the booth and rose to his feet. You wouldn’t do something stupid like take the money and then not deliver, would you? You’re really going to shaft his wife?

    Noah shrugged. I never liked her anyway.

    She’s a juiceless bitch, isn’t she?

    Dry as a cracker.

    But she sure does give the man major class and respectability. Now you go out there and do the right thing, okay?

    Noah raised his eyebrows. What? You mean…you want me to give this bag of money to the cops and press charges against the congressman?

    This time, the pacifist didn’t smile. "Guess I should have said do the smart thing."

    Just clarifying, Noah assured him.

    You could clarify yourself right into a casket.

    With the coils of his soul exposed for all to see, the bagman, sans bag, swaggered toward the front of the tavern.

    On their barstools and chairs, the cowboys turned, and with their glares they herded him toward the door. If they had been genuine riders of the purple sage instead of computer-networking specialists or real-estate salesmen, one of them might have whupped his ass just as a matter of principle.

    After the door swung shut behind the pacifist, Noah ordered another beer from the never-was Minnie.

    When she returned with a dew-beaded bottle of Dos Equis, the waitress said, Was that guy a stoolie or something?

    Something.

    And you’re a cop.

    Used to be. Is it that obvious?

    Yeah. And you’re wearing a Hawaiian shirt. Plainclothes cops like Hawaiian shirts, ’cause you can hide a gun under them.

    Well, he lied, I’m not hiding anything under this one except a yellowed undershirt I should’ve thrown away five years ago.

    My dad liked Hawaiian shirts.

    Your dad’s a cop?

    Till they killed him.

    Sorry to hear that.

    I’m Francene, named after the ZZ Top song.

    Why do a lot of cops from back then like ZZ Top? he wondered.

    Maybe it was an antidote to all that crap the Eagles sang.

    He smiled. I think you’ve got something there, Francene.

    My shift’s over at eleven.

    You’re a temptation, he admitted. But I’m married.

    Glancing at his hands, seeing no rings, she said, Married to what?

    Now that’s a hard question.

    Maybe not so hard if you’re honest with yourself.

    Noah had been so taken with her body and her beauty that until now he hadn’t seen the kindness in her eyes.

    Could be self-pity, he said, naming his bride.

    Not you, she disagreed, as though she knew him well. Anger’s more like it.

    What’s the name of this bar—Firewater and Philosophy?

    After you listen to country music all day, every day, you start seeing everyone as a three-minute story.

    Sincerely, he said, Damn, you would have been a funny Minnie.

    You’re probably just like my dad. You have this kind of pride. Honor, he called it. But these days, honor is for suckers, and that makes you angry.

    He stared up at her, searching for a reply and finding none. In addition to her kindness, he had become aware of a melancholy in her that he couldn’t bear to see. That guy over there’s signaling for a waitress.

    She continued to hold Noah’s gaze as she said, Well, if you ever get divorced, you know where I work.

    He watched her walk away. Then between long swallows, he studied his beer as though it meant something.

    Later, when he had only an empty bottle to study, Noah left Francene a tip larger than the total of his two-beer check.

    Outside, an upwash of urban glow overlaid a yellow stain on the blackness of the lower sky. High above, unsullied, hung a polished-silver moon. In the deep pure black above the lunar curve, a few stars looked clean, so far from Earth.

    He walked eastward, through the warm gusts of wind stirred by traffic, alert for any indication that he was under surveillance. No one followed him, not even at a distance.

    Evidently the congressman’s battalions no longer found him to be of even the slightest interest. His apparent cowardice and the alacrity with which he had betrayed his client confirmed for them that he was, by the current definition, a good citizen.

    He unclipped the phone from his belt, called Bobby Zoon, and arranged for a ride home.

    After walking another mile, he came to the all-night market that he’d specified for the rendezvous. Bobby’s Honda was parked next to a collection bin for Salvation Army thrift shops.

    When Noah got into the front passenger’s seat, Bobby—twenty, skinny, with a scraggly chin beard and the slightly vacant look of a long-term Ecstasy user—was behind the steering wheel, picking his nose.

    Noah grimaced. You’re disgusting.

    What? Bobby asked, genuinely surprised by the insult, even though his index finger was still wedged in his right nostril.

    At least I didn’t catch you playing with yourself. Let’s get out of here.

    That was cool back there, Bobby said as he started the engine. Absolutely arctic.

    Cool? You idiot, I liked that car.

    Your Chevy? It was a piece of crap.

    "Yeah, but it was my piece of crap."

    Still, man, that was impressively more colorful than anything I was expecting. We got more than we needed.

    Yeah, Noah acknowledged without enthusiasm.

    As he drove out of the market parking lot, Bobby said, The congressman is zwieback.

    He’s what?

    Toast done twice.

    Where do you get this stuff?

    What stuff? Bobby asked.

    This zwieback crap.

    "I’m always working on a screenplay in my head. In film school, they teach you everything’s material, and this sure is."

    Hell is spending eternity as the hero in a Bobby Zoon flick.

    With an earnestness that could be achieved only by a boy-man with a wispy goatee and the conviction that movies are life, Bobby said, "You’re not the hero. My part’s the male lead. You’re in the Sandra Bullock role."

    Chapter 4

    DOWN THROUGH THE HIGH FOREST to lower terrain, from night-kissed ridges into night-smothered valleys, out of the trees into a broad planted field, the motherless boy hurries. He follows the crop rows to a rail fence.

    He is amazed to be alive. He doesn’t dare to hope that he has lost his pursuers. They are out there, still searching, cunning and indefatigable.

    The fence, old and in need of repair, clatters as he climbs across it. When he drops to the lane beyond, he crouches motionless until he is sure that the noise has drawn no one’s attention.

    Previously scattered clouds, as woolly as sheep, have been herded together around the shepherd moon.

    In this darker night, several structures loom, all humble and yet mysterious. A barn, a stable, outbuildings. With haste, he passes among them.

    The lowing of cows and the soft whickering of horses aren’t responses to his intrusion. These sounds are as natural a part of the night as the musky smell of animals and the not altogether unpleasant scent of straw-riddled manure.

    Beyond the hard-packed barnyard earth lies a recently mown lawn. A concrete birdbath. Beds of roses. An abandoned bicycle on its side. A grape arbor is entwined with vines, clothed with leaves, hung with fruit.

    Through the tunnel of the arbor, and then across more grass, he approaches the farmhouse. At the back porch, brick steps lead up to a weathered plank floor. He creaks and scrapes to the door, which opens for him.

    He hesitates on the threshold, troubled by both the risk that he’s taking and the crime he’s intending to commit. His mother has raised him with strong values; but if he’s to survive this night, he will have to steal.

    Furthermore, he is reluctant to put these people—whoever they may be—at risk. If the killers track him to this place while he’s still inside, they won’t spare anyone. They have no mercy, and they dare not leave witnesses.

    Yet if he doesn’t seek help here, he’ll have to visit the next farmhouse, or the one after the next. He is exhausted, afraid, still lost, and in need of a plan. He’s got to stop running long enough to think.

    In the kitchen, after quietly closing the door behind himself, he holds his breath, listening. The house is silent. Evidently, his small noises haven’t awakened anyone.

    Cupboard to cupboard, drawer to drawer, he searches until he discovers candles and matches, which he considers but discards. At last, a flashlight.

    He needs several items, and a quick but cautious tour of the lower floor convinces him that he will have to go upstairs to find those necessities.

    At the foot of the steps, he’s paralyzed by dread. Perhaps the killers are already here. Upstairs. Waiting in the dark, waiting for him to find them. Surprise.

    Ridiculous. They aren’t the type to play games. They’re vicious and efficient. If they were here now, he’d already be dead.

    He feels small, weak, alone, doomed. He feels foolish, too, for continuing to hesitate even when reason tells him that he has nothing to fear other than getting caught by the people who live here.

    Finally, he starts up toward the second floor. The stairs softly protest. As he ascends, he stays close to the wall, where the treads are less noisy.

    At the top is a short hallway. Four doors.

    The first door opens on a bathroom. The second leads to a bedroom; hooding the flashlight to dim and more tightly focus the beam, he enters.

    A man and a woman lie in the bed, sleeping soundly. They snore in counterpoint: he an oboe with a split reed; she a whistling flute.

    On a dresser, in a small decorative tray: coins and a man’s wallet. In the wallet, the boy finds one ten-dollar bill, two fives, four ones.

    These are not rich people, and he feels guilty about taking their money. One day, if he lives long enough, he will return to this house and repay his debt.

    He wants the coins, too, but he doesn’t touch them. In his nervousness, he’s likely to jingle or drop them, rousing the farmer and his wife.

    The man grumbles, turns on his side…but doesn’t wake.

    Retreating quickly and silently from the bedroom, the boy sees movement in the hall, a pair of shining eyes, a flash of teeth in the hooded beam of light. He almost cries out in alarm.

    A dog. Black and white. Shaggy.

    He has a way with dogs, and this one is no exception. It nuzzles him and then, panting happily, leads him along the hallway to another door that stands ajar.

    Perhaps the dog came from this room. Now it glances back at its new friend, grins, wags its tail, and slips across the threshold as fluidly as a supernatural familiar ready to assist with some magical enterprise.

    Affixed to the door is a stainless-steel plaque with laser-cut letters: STARSHIP COMMAND CENTER, CAPTAIN CURTIS HAMMOND.

    Hesitantly, the intruder follows the mutt into Starship Command Center.

    This is a boy’s room, papered with large monster-movie posters. Display shelves are cluttered with collections of science-fiction action figures and models of ornate but improbable spaceships. In one corner a life-size plastic model of a human skeleton hangs from a metal stand, grinning as if death is great fun.

    Perhaps signifying the beginning of a shift in the obsessions of the resident, a single poster of Britney Spears also adorns one wall. With her deep cleavage, bared belly, and aggressive sparkling smile, she’s powerfully intriguing—but also nearly as scary as any of the snarling, carnivorous antagonists of the horror films.

    The young intruder looks away from the pop star, confused by his feelings, surprised that he possesses the capacity for any emotions other than fear and grief, considering the ordeal he has so recently endured.

    Under the Britney Spears poster, in a tangle of sheets, sprawled facedown in bed, his head turned to one side, lies Curtis Hammond, commander of this vessel, who sleeps on, unaware that the sanctity of his starship bridge has been violated. He might be eleven or even twelve, but he’s somewhat small for his age, about the size of the night visitor who stands over him.

    Curtis Hammond is a source of bitter envy, not because he has found peace in sleep, but because he is not orphaned, is not alone. For a moment, the young intruder’s envy curdles into a hatred so thick and poisonous that he feels compelled to lash out, to hammer the dreaming boy and diminish this intolerable pain by sharing it.

    Although trembling with the pressure of his misplaced rage, he doesn’t vent it, but leaves Curtis untouched. The hatred subsides as quickly as it flourished, and the grief that was briefly drowned by this fierce animosity now reappears like a gray winter beach from beneath an ebbing tide.

    On the nightstand, in front of a clock radio, lie several coins and a used Band-Aid with a blot of dried blood on the gauze pad. This isn’t much blood, but the intruder has recently seen so much violence that he shudders. He does not touch the coins.

    Accompanied by dog snuffles and a flurry of fur, the motherless boy moves stealthily to the closet. The door is ajar. He opens it wider. With the flashlight beam, he shops for clothes.

    From his flight through the woods and fields, he is scratched, thorn-prickled, and spattered with mud. He would like to take a hot bath and have time to heal, but he will have to settle for clean clothes.

    The dog watches, head cocked, looking every bit as puzzled as it ought to be.

    Throughout the theft of shirt, jeans, socks, and shoes, Curtis Hammond sleeps as soundly as though a spell has been cast upon him. Were he a genuine starship captain, his crew might fall prey to brain-eating aliens or his vessel might spiral into the gravitational vortex of a black hole while he dreamed of Britney Spears.

    Not a brain-eating alien but feeling as though he himself is in the thrall of black-hole gravity, the intruder returns quietly to the open bedroom door, the dog remaining by his side.

    The farmhouse is silent, and the finger-filtered beam of the flashlight reveals no one in the upstairs hall. Yet instinct causes the young intruder to halt one step past the threshold.

    Something isn’t right, the silence too deep. Perhaps Curtis’s parents have awakened.

    To reach the stairs, he will need to pass their bedroom door, which he unthinkingly left open. If the farmer and his wife have been roused from sleep, they will probably remember that their door was closed when they retired for the night.

    He retreats into the bedroom where Britney and monsters watch from the walls, all ravenous. Switches off the flashlight. Holds his breath.

    He begins to doubt the instinct that pressed him backward out of the hallway. Then he realizes that the dog’s swishing tail, which had been softly lashing his legs, has suddenly gone still. The animal has also stopped panting.

    Dim gray rectangles float in the dark: curtained windows. He crosses the room toward them, struggling to recall the placement of furniture, hoping to avoid raising a clatter.

    After he puts down the extinguished flashlight, as he pulls the curtains aside, plastic rings scrape and click softly along a brass rod, as though the hanging skeleton, animated by sorcery, is flexing its bony fingers in the gloom.

    Curtis Hammond mutters, wrestles briefly with his sheets, but doesn’t wake.

    A thumb-turn lock frees the window. Gingerly, the intruder raises the lower sash. He slips out of the house, onto the front-porch roof, and glances back.

    The dog looms at the open window, forepaws on the sill, as if it will abandon its master in favor of this new friend and a night of adventure.

    Stay, whispers the motherless boy.

    In a crouch, he crosses the roof to the brink. When he looks back again, the mutt whines beseechingly but doesn’t follow.

    The boy is athletic, agile. The leap from the porch roof is a challenge easily met. He lands on the lawn with bent knees, drops, rolls through cold dew, through the sweet crisp scent of grass that bursts from the crushed blades under him, and scrambles at once to his feet.

    A dirt lane, flanked by fenced meadows and oiled to control dust, leads to a public road about two hundred yards to the west. Hurrying, he has covered less than half that distance when he hears the dog bark far behind him.

    Lights blaze, blink, and blaze again behind the windows of the Hammond place, a strobing chaos, as though the farmhouse has become a carnival funhouse awhirl with bright flickering spooks.

    With the lights come screams, soul-searing even at a distance, not just shouts of alarm, but shrieks of terror, wails of anguish. The most piercing squeals seem less like human sounds than like the panicked cries of pigs catching sight of the abattoir master’s gleaming blade, although these also are surely human, the wretched plaints of the tortured Hammonds in their last moments on this earth.

    The killers had been even closer on his trail than he’d feared. What he sensed, stepping into that upstairs hallway, hadn’t been the farmer and wife, awakened and suspicious. These are the same hunters who brutally murdered his family, come down through the mountains to the back door of the Hammond house.

    Racing away into the night, trying to outrun the screams and the guilt that they drill into him, the boy gasps for breath, and the cool air is rough in his raw throat. His heart like a horse’s hooves kicks, kicks against the stable of his ribs.

    The prisoner moon escapes the dungeon clouds, and the oiled lane under the boy’s swift feet glistens with the reflected glow.

    By the time he nears the public road, he can no longer hear the terrible cries, only his explosive breathing. Turning, he sees lights steady in every window of the house, and he knows that the killers are searching for him in attic, closets, cellar.

    More black than white, its coat a perfect camouflage against the moon-dappled oil, the dog sprints out of the night. It takes refuge at the boy’s side, pressing against his legs as it looks back toward the Hammond place.

    The dog’s flanks shudder, striking sympathetic shivers in the boy. Punctuating its panting are pitiful whimpers of fear, but the boy dares not surrender to his desire to sit in the lane beside the dog and cry in chorus with it.

    Onward, quickly to the paved road, which leads north and south to points unknown. Either direction will most likely bring him to the same hard death.

    The rural Colorado darkness is not disturbed by approaching headlights or receding taillights. When he holds his breath, he hears only stillness and the panting dog, not the growl of an approaching engine.

    He tries to shoo away the dog, but it will not be shooed. It has cast its fortune with his.

    Reluctant to be responsible even for this animal, but resigned to—and even somewhat grateful for—its companionship, he turns left, south, because a hill lies to the north. He doesn’t think he has the stamina to take that long incline at a run.

    On his right, a meadow bank grows, then looms, as the two-lane blacktop descends, while on his left, tall sentinel pines rise at the verge of the road, saluting the moon with their higher branches. The slap-slap-slap of his sneakers echoes between the bank and the trees, slap-slap-slap, a spoor of sound that sooner or later will draw his pursuers.

    Once more he glances back, but only once, because he sees the pulse of flames in the east, throbbing in the dark, and he knows that the Hammond place has been set ablaze. Reduced to blackened bones and ashes, the bodies of the dead will offer fewer clues to the true identity of the killers.

    A curve in the road and more trees screen him from sight of the fire, and when he entirely rounds the bend, he sees a truck stopped on the shoulder of the highway. Headlights doused in favor of the parking lights, this vehicle stands with engine idling, grumbling softly like some hulking beast that has been ridden hard and is half asleep on its feet.

    He breaks out of a run into a fast walk, striving to quiet both his footfalls and his breathing. Taking its cue from him, the dog slows to a trot, then lowers its head and slinks forward at his side, more like a cat than like a canine.

    The cargo bed of the truck has a canvas roof and walls. It’s open at the back except for a low tailgate.

    As he reaches the rear bumper, feeling dangerously exposed in the ruddy glow of the parking lights, the boy hears voices. Men in easy conversation.

    Cautiously he looks forward along the driver’s side of the truck, sees no one, and moves to the passenger’s side. Two men stand toward the front of the vehicle, their backs to the highway, facing the woods. Lambent moonlight spangles an arc of urine.

    He doesn’t want to endanger these people. If he stays here, they might be dead even before they empty their bladders: a longer rest stop than they had planned. Yet he’ll never elude his pursuers if he remains on foot.

    The tailgate is hinged at the bottom. Two latch bolts fix it at the top.

    He quietly slips the bolt on the right, holds the gate with one hand as he moves to the left, slips that bolt, too, and lowers the barrier, which is well oiled and rattle-free. He could have stepped onto the bumper and swung over the gate, but his four-legged friend wouldn’t have been able to climb after him.

    Understanding its new master’s intent, the dog springs into the cargo bed of the truck, landing so lightly among its contents that even the low rhythmic wheeze of the idling engine provides sufficient screening sound.

    The boy follows his spry companion into this tented blackness. Pulling the tailgate up from the inside is an awkward job, but with determination, he succeeds. He slides one bolt into its hasp, then engages the other, as outside the two men break into laughter.

    Behind the truck, the highway remains deserted. The parallel median lines, yellow in daylight, appear white under the influence of the frost-pale moon, and the boy can’t help but think of them as twin fuses along which terror will come, hissing and smoking, to a sudden detonation.

    Hurry, he urges the men, as if by willpower alone he can move them. Hurry.

    Groping blindly, he discovers that the truck is loaded in part with a great many blankets, some rolled and strapped singly, others bundled in bales and tied with sisal twine. His right hand finds smooth leather, the distinctive curve of a cantle, the slope of a seat, pommel, fork, and horn: a saddle.

    The driver and his partner return to the cab of the truck. One door slams, then the other.

    More saddles are braced among the blankets, some as smooth as the first, but others enhanced with ornate hand-tooled designs that, to the boy’s questioning fingertips, speak of parades, horse shows, and rodeos. Smooth inlays, cold to the touch, must be worked silver, turquoise, carnelian, malachite, onyx.

    The driver pops the hand brake. As the vehicle angles off the shoulder and onto the pavement, the tires cast loose stones that rattle like dice into the darkness.

    The truck rolls southwest into the night, with the twin fuses on the blacktop raveling longer in its wake, and utility poles, carrying electric and telephone wires, seem to march like soldiers toward a battleground beyond the horizon.

    Among mounds of blankets and saddlery, swathed in the cozy odors of felt and sheepskin and fine leather and saddle soap—and not least of all in the curiously comforting, secondhand scent of horses—the motherless boy and the ragtag dog huddle together. They are bonded by grievous loss and by a sharp instinct for survival, traveling into an unknown land, toward an unknowable future.

    Chapter 5

    WEDNESDAY, after a fruitless day of job-seeking, Micky Bellsong returned to the trailer park, where much of the meager landscaping drooped wearily under the scorching sun and the rest appeared to be withered beyond recovery. The raging tornadoes that routinely sought vulnerable trailer parks across the plains states were unknown here in southern California, but summer heat made these blighted streets miserable enough until the next earthquake could do a tornado’s work.

    Aunt Geneva’s aged house trailer looked like a giant oven built for the roasting of whole cows, in multiples. Perhaps a malevolent sun god lived in the metal walls, for the air immediately around the place shimmered as if with the spirits of attending demons.

    Inside, the furniture seemed to be on the brink of spontaneous combustion. The sliding windows were open to admit a draft, but the August day declined the invitation to provide a breeze.

    In her tiny

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