One Door From Heaven

her throat, and backs away from the door.
        Old Yeller sneezes twice again as she rounds the front of the enormous motor home, and when, at Curtis's instruction, she looks up toward the panoramic windshield, she sees-as thus does he-neither a goblin nor a ghoul, but a pretty young girl of nine or ten. This girl stands beside the unoccupied driver's seat, leaning on it, bent forward, peering toward the lake and at the steadily hardening sky, probably trying to judge how long until the tension in the clouds will crack and the storm spill out.
        Hers might be the bitter despair and the long-distilled sourness of fear that in part drew sister-become to investigate this ominous motor home.
        Surely the girl isn't the source of the rotten fetor that, for the dog, identifies a deeply corrupted soul. She is too young to have allowed worms so completely to infest her spirit.
        Neither can she be the monster whose heart is a machine of rage and whose blood is hatred flowing.
        She notices sister-become and looks down. The dog-and Curtis unseen in his Fleetwood redoubt-gaze up from the severe angle that is the canine point of view on all the world above two feet.
        Yeller's wagging tail renders a judgment without need of words.
        The girl is radiant.
        In her home on wheels, where evidently she belongs, she appears nevertheless to be lost. And haunted. More than merely haunted, she half seems to be a ghost herself, and the big windshield lies between her and the dog as though it is a cold membrane between the land of the living and the land of the dead.
        The radiant girl turns away and moves deeper into the motor home, evanescing into the dim beyond.

Chapter 64
        
        NATURE HAD ALL but reclaimed the land that had been the Teelroy farm. Deer roamed where horses had once plowed. Weeds ruled.
        Undoubtedly handsome in its day, the rambling Victorian house had been remodeled into Gothic by time, weather, and neglect.
        The resident was a repulsive toad. He had the sweet voice of a young prince, but he looked like a source of warts and worse.
        At first sight of the Toad, Preston almost returned to his SUV. He almost drove away without a question.
        He found it difficult to believe that this odious bumpkin's fantastic story of alien healing would be convincing. The man was at best a bad joke, and more likely he was the mentally disordered consequence of generations of white-trash incest.
        Yet…
        During the past five years, among the hundreds of people to whom Preston had patiently listened recount their tales of UFO sightings and alien abductions, occasionally the least likely specimens proved to be the most convincing.
        He reminded himself that pigs were used to hunt for truffles. Even a toad in bib overalls might once in a while know a truth worth learning.
        Invited inside, Preston accepted. The threshold proved to lie between ordinary Idaho and a kingdom of the surreal.
        In the entry hall, he found himself among a tribe of Indians. Some smiled, some struck noble poses, but most looked as inscrutable as any dreamy-faced Buddha or Easter Island stone head. All appeared peaceable.
        Decades ago, when the country had been more innocent, these life-size, hand-carved, intricately hand-painted statues had stood at the entrances to cigar stores. Many held faux boxes of cigars as if offering a smoke.
        Most were chiefs crowned by elaborate feathered headdresses, which were also carved out of wood and were hand-painted like the rest of their costumes. A few ordinary braves attended the chiefs, wearing headbands featuring one or two wooden feathers.
        Of those not holding cigar boxes, some stood with a hand raised perpetually in a sign of peace. One of the smiling chiefs made the okay sign with thumb and forefinger.
        Two-a chief, a brave-gripped raised tomahawks. They weren't threatening in demeanor, but they looked sterner than the others: early advocates of aggressive tobacco marketing.
        Two chiefs held peace pipes.
        The hall was perhaps forty feet long. Cigar-store Indians lined both sides. At least two dozen of them.
        A majority stood with their backs to the walls, facing one another across the narrow walk space. Only four figures stood out of alignment, angled to monitor the front door, as if they were guardians of the Teelroy