One Door From Heaven

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 lends 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 flu-idly 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