One Door From Heaven

sing along.

Chapter 9
        
        BANSHEES, SHRIKES TEARING at their impaled prey, coyote packs in the heat of the hunt, werewolves in the misery of the moon could not have produced more chilling cries than those that caused Leilani to say, "Old Sinsemilla," and that drew Micky to the open back door of the trailer.
        To the door and through it, down three concrete-block steps, onto the lawn in the last magenta murk of twilight, Micky proceeded with caution. Her wariness didn't halt her altogether, because she was certain that someone in terrible pain needed immediate help.
        In the yard next door, beyond the sagging picket fence, a white-robed figure thrashed in the gloaming, as though ablaze and frantic to douse the flames. Not a single tongue of fire could be seen.
        Micky crazily thought of killer bees, which might also have caused the shrieking figure to perform these frenzied gyrations. With the sun down, however, this was not an hour for bees, not even though the baked earth still radiated stored heat. Besides, the air wasn't vibrating with the hum of an angry swarm.
        Micky glanced back at the trailer, where Leilani stood in the open doorway, silhouetted against faint candleglow.
        "I haven't had dessert yet," the girl said, and she retreated out of sight.
        The apparition in the dark yard next door stopped squealing, but in a silence as disconcerting as the cries had been, it continued to turn, to writhe, to flail at the air. Its diaphanous white robe billowed and whirled as though this were a manic ghost that had no patience for the eerie but tedious pace of a traditional haunting.
        When she reached the swagging fence, Micky could see that the tormented spirit was of this earth, not visiting from Beyond. Pale and willowy, the woman spun and swooned and jerked erect and spun again, barefoot in the crisp dead grass.
        She didn't seem to be in physical pain, after all. She might have been working off excess energy in a frenetic freestyle dance, but she might just as likely have been suffering some type of spasmodic fit.
        She wore a silk or nainsook full-length slip with elaborate embroidery and ribbon lace on the wide shoulder straps and bodice, as well as on the deep flounce that hemmed the skirt. The garment appeared not merely old-fashioned but antique, not feminine in a liberated contemporary let's-have-hot-sex style, but feminine in a frilly post-Victorian sense, and Micky imagined that it had been packed away in someone's attic trunk for decades.
        Exhaling explosively, inhaling in great ragged gasps, the woman flung herself toward exhaustion, whether by fit or fandango.
        "Are you all right?" Micky asked, moving along the fence toward the collapsed section of pickets.
        Apparently neither as a reply nor as an expression of physical pain, the dancing woman let out a pathetic whimper, the fearful sound that a miserable dog might make in a cage at the animal pound.
        The fallen fence pales clicked and rattled under Micky's feet as she entered the adjoining property.
        Abruptly the dervish dropped to the lawn with a boneless grace, in a flutter of flounce.
        Micky hurried to her, knelt at her side. "What's wrong? Are you all right?"
        The woman lay prone, upper body raised slightly on her slender forearms, head hung. Her face was an inch or two from the ground and hidden by glossy cascades of hair that appeared to be white in the crosslight of the moon and the fading purple dusk, but that probably matched Leilani's shade of blond. Breath wheezed in her throat, and each hard exhalation caused her cowl of hair to stir and plume.
        After a hesitation, Micky put a consoling hand on her shoulder, but Mrs. Maddoc didn't respond to the touch any more than she had reacted to Micky's questions. Tremors quaked through her.
        Remaining at the stricken woman's side, Micky looked across the fence and saw Geneva at the back door of the trailer, standing on the top step, watching. Leilani remained inside.
        Reliably off-center, Aunt Gen waved gaily, as though the trailer were an ocean liner about to steam out of port on a long holiday.
        Micky wasn't surprised to find herself returning the wave. After a week with Geneva, she'd already absorbed a measure of her aunt's attitude toward the bad news and the sorrier turns of life that fate delivered. Gen met misfortune not simply