The Teelroy farmhouse offered an excellent alternative stage for the final act in the sad and useless life of the Hand. Of course, he wouldn’t be able to force her to confront, to touch, to kiss, and to settle down with her brother’s decomposing remains before he killed her, as he’d dreamed of doing for several months. He regretted being denied that delicious and sustaining memory. On the bright side, the maze offered the privacy that was necessary to torment the Hand at length, without much fear of interruption. And the very architecture of the Toad’s bizarre construction provided an ideal home for terror. Preston’s time alone in the Montana forest with the Gimp had been bliss. Admittedly, the bliss of a flawed man, but bliss nonetheless. This game with the Hand would be bliss doubled, tripled. And when it was over, as cruel as his pleasure would have been, he still would be able to take satisfaction—and even a measure of quiet pride—from the fact that in one day he had terminated three pathetic and useless drudges, preserving the resources that they would have consumed in the years ahead, sparing all useful people from the sight of their misery, and thereby increasing the total amount of happiness in the world.

Chapter 69

THE ALIEN SHAPECHANGER, come to save the world, looked like a nice boy. Although not as dreamy as Haley Joel Osment, he had a sweet face and an appealing sprinkle of freckles.

“In the entire known universe, there are only two species of shapechangers,” he earnestly informed her, “and mine is one of them.”

“Congratulations,” Leilani said.

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“Call me Leilani.”

He beamed. “Call me . . . well, you wouldn’t be able to pronounce it, considering the way the human tongue works, so just call me Curtis. Anyway, these are also the two most ancient species in the known universe.”

“How much of the universe is known?” she asked.

“Some say forty percent, others think closer to sixty.”

“Gee, I thought it would be no more than fourteen to sixteen percent. Okay, so are you here to change the world for the better or to pretty much destroy it?”

“Oh, Lord, no, my people aren’t destroyers. That’s the other species of shapechangers. They’re evil, and they seek only to serve entropy. They love chaos, destruction, death.”

“So being the two most ancient species . . . it’s sort of like angels and demons.”

“More than sort of,” he said, with a smile as enigmatic as that of the sun god on the ceiling. “Not to say we’re perfect. Good Lord, no. I myself have stolen money, orange juice, frankfurters, and a Mercury Mountaineer, although I hope and intend to make restitution. I have picked locks and entered premises not my own, driven a motor vehicle at night without headlights, failed to wear my seat belt, and lied on numerous occasions, though I’m not lying now.”

The funny thing was, she believed him. She didn’t know exactly why she believed him, but he seemed credible. Having spent her entire life in the company of deceivers, she’d developed perfect pitch when it came to differentiating the sour notes of lies from the music of the truth. Besides, she’d spent half her life being hauled around in search of ETs, and as bogus as the vast majority of the chased-down reports had proved to be, she had nevertheless been steeped in the concept of otherworldly visitors, and unconsciously she had come to accept that, even if elusive, they were real.

Here she stood face-to-face with a genuine space cadet and, for once, not one born on this world.

“I’ve come here,” the boy said, “because my dog told me you were in great distress and danger.”

“This keeps getting better.”

Shy, peering out from between Curtis’s legs, head slightly bowed and eyes rolled up to gaze at Leilani, the cute mutt slaps its tail against the floor.

“But I’m also here,” the boy said, “because you’re radiant.”

Second by second, Curtis appeared to be more the equal of Haley Joel Osment.

“Do you need help?” he asked.

“God, yes.”

“What’s wrong?”

Listening to herself, Leilani realized that what she was telling him—and what remained to be told—was nearly as incredible as his declaration of his extraterrestrial origin, and she hoped that he, too, possessed the perfect pitch to separate lies from truth. “My stepfather’s a murderer who’s going to kill me soon, my druggie mother doesn’t care, and I don’t have anywhere to go.”

“Now you do,” said Curtis.

“I do? Where? I’m not too keen on interstellar travel.”

From the bedroom at the back of the Fair Wind, with an unfailing instinct for spoiling a good mood, old Sinsemilla called, “LaniLaniLaniLaniLaniLani!” in an ululant squeal. “Come here, hurry! Lani, come, I neeeeeeed you!”

So shrill and eerie was dear Mater’s voice that Polly, the Amazon behind Curtis, pulled a gun from her purse and held it with the muzzle pointed at the ceiling, alert and ready.

“Coming!” Leilani shouted, desperate to forestall her mother’s appearance. More softly to the alien delegation, she said: “Wait here. I’ll handle this. Bullets probably wouldn’t work even if they were silver.”

Suddenly Leilani was scared, and this wasn’t the dull grinding anxiety with which she lived every day of her life, but a fear as sharp as the scalpel with the ruby blade that her mother sometimes used for self-mutilation. She was afraid Sinsemilla would burst out of the bedroom and be among them in a wicked-witch whirl, or pursue them in a shrieking fit, all the stored-up flash of electroshock therapy sizzling back out of her in a fury, and that in an instant she would put an end to all hope—or otherwise get herself shot by an alien blond bombshell, which Leilani didn’t want to see happen, either.

She took three swift steps past the foot of the sofabed, and then an amazing thought struck her nearly hard enough to knock her down. Halting, she looked at Cass beyond the window, at Curtis, at Polly behind him, and at Curtis again, before she found the breath to say, “Do you know Lukipela?”

The boy’s eyebrows arched. “That’s Hawaiian for Satan.”

Heart racing, she said, “My brother. That’s his name, too. Luki. Do you know him?”

Curtis shook his head. “No. Should I?”

The timely arrival of aliens, even without whirling saucer and levitation beam, ought to be miracle enough. She shouldn’t expect to discover that the greatest loss in her hard nine years would prove to be no loss at all. Though she saw divine grace and mercy at work in the world every day, and felt its power, and survived always on the strength she drew from it, she knew that not all suffering would be relieved in this life, for here people had the free will to lift one another but also to smash one another down. Evil was as real as wind

and wilier, and Preston Maddoc served it, and all the fervent hope in one girl’s heart could not undo what he had done. “LANILANILANILANI! Lani, I neeeeeeed you”

“Wait,” she whispered to Curtis Hammond. “Please wait.”

She moved as fast as ever her inhibiting left leg had allowed her to move, to the back of the Fair Wind, through the half-open door into the bedroom.

Chapter 70

ALONG THE COUNTY ROAD, lush meadows trembled in the wind, but no crop circles or elaborate designs formed in the grass as Preston passed.

The sky lowered steadily, as portentous as those in numerous films about alien contact, but no mother ship materialized out of the ominous clouds.

Preston’s quest for a close encounter would not end here in Idaho, as he had hoped. Indeed, he might spend the remaining years of his life traveling in search of that transcendent experience, seeking the affirmation that he believed ETs would give him.

He was patient. And in the meantime, he had useful work—which continued now with the Hand.

Aware that the clock was ticking off her last days, the Hand had begun to seek a way out of her trap. She had developed an unexpected bond with the Slut Queen and the ditzy aunt, had extracted the knife in her mattress only to find Tetsy’s penguin, and had then developed strategies to fight or evade Preston when he came for her.

He knew all this because he could read her journal.

The coded shorthand that she had invented for her writings was clever, especially for one so young. If she had been dealing with someone other than Preston Maddoc, her secrets would not have been plumbed.

Being a highly respected intellectual with friends and admirers in many academic disciplines, in several major universities, he had connected with a mathematician named Trevor Kingsley, who specialized in cryptography. More than a year ago, that codemaker— and breaker—had employed sophisticated encryption-analysis software to decipher the Hand’s journal.

Having been provided with a transcription of one full page from the journal, Trevor expected to get the job done in fifteen minutes, because that was the average time required to crack any simple code devised by anyone lacking significant education in various branches of higher mathematics; by comparison, more ingeniously composed systems of encryption required days, weeks, even months to penetrate. Instead of fifteen minutes, using his best software, Trevor required twenty-six, which impressed him; he wanted to know the codemaker’s identity.

Preston couldn’t understand what was so impressive about the code having resisted analysis for just an additional eleven minutes. He withheld the Hand’s name and made no mention of her relationship to him. He professed to have found the journal on a park bench and to have developed a keen curiosity about it because of its mysterious-looking contents.

Trevor also said that the text on the sample page was “amusing, acerbic but full of gentle humor.” Preston had read it several times, and although he was relieved to discover that nothing in it required him to paste patches on his original park-bench story, he hadn’t been able to find anything to smile about. In fact, using the translation bible that Trevor provided, Preston secretly studied the entire journal—a few pages every morning when Leilani showered, odd bits and pieces as other opportunities arose—and found not one amusing line, cover to cover. In the year since, continuing to sneak peeks at the girl’s self-important scribblings, he’d not been charmed into even a faint smile by any of her observations in subsequent entries. In fact, she’d revealed herself to be a disrespectful, mean-spirited, ignorant little smartass who was as ugly inside as out. Evidently, Trevor Kingsley had a degenerate sense of humor.

These past few days, as the journal entries revealed that the Hand was scheming to save herself, Preston made careful preparations to overcome her resistance with ease when he was ready to take her to a suitably secluded killing ground. He didn’t know when and in what circumstances he might need to overpower her, and while he hadn’t any concern that she could effectively resist him, lie didn’t want to give her a chance to scream and perhaps draw the attention of someone who would intervene on her behalf.

Since Friday, when they had driven east from California, he’d been carrying a folded, one-quart Hefty OneZip plastic bag in the left back pocket of his pants. The bag could be closed airtight by means of a small plastic slide-seal device built into it. Inside the OneZip was a washcloth saturated in a homemade anesthetic that he had produced by combining carefully measured quantities of ammonia and three other household chemicals. In his life’s work, he had used this concoction to assist in a few suicides. When inhaled, it caused instantaneous collapse into unconsciousness; sustained application resulted in respiratory failure and in the rapid destruction of the liver. He intended to use this anesthetic only to ensure against resistance and induce unconsciousness, because as a killing weapon, it was too merciful to excite him.

Nun’s Lake lay one mile ahead.

Chapter 71

OLD SINSEMILLA, wearing a sarong in a bright Hawaiian pattern, sat among the disheveled bedclothes, leaning back against mounds of pillows. She’d torn the pages out of her worn copy of In Watermelon Sugar and scattered this enlightening confetti across the bed and floor.

She wept but with fury, red-faced and tear-streaked and shaking. “Somebody, some bastard, some sick freak screwed around with my book, screwed it all up, and it’s not right, it’s not fair.”

Leilani cautiously approached the bed, looking for pet-shop boxes and the equivalent. “Mother, what’s wrong?”

With a snarled curse that tied her face in red knots of anger, Sinsemilla snatched handfuls of torn pages off the rumpled sheets and threw them in the air. “They didn’t print it right, they got it all wrong, all backwards, they did it just to mess with me. This page where that page should be, paragraphs switched around and sentences backwards. They took a beautiful thing, and they turned it into just a bunch of shit, because they didn’t want me to understand, they didn’t want me to get the message.” Mere tears gave way to wretched sobs and with her fists she pounded her thighs, struck herself again and again, hard enough to bruise. And maybe she hit herself because on some level she understood that the problem wasn’t the book, that the problem was her stubborn insistence to find the meaning of life in this one slim volume, to demand that broth be stew, to acquire enlightenment as easily as she daily attained escape through pills, powders, and injections.

In ordinary times—or as ordinary as any time could be aboard the Fair Wind—Leilani would have been patient with her mother, would have assumed the bitter role always expected of her in these dramas, providing sympathy and reassurance and attentive concern, drawing out the woman’s anguish as a poultice draws upon a wound. But this moment was extraordinary, for lost hope had been restored by means fantastic and perhaps even mystical; therefore, she dared not squander this chance by being once more entangled either by her mother’s emotional demands or by her own yearning for a mother-daughter reconciliation that could never happen.

Leilani didn’t sit on the bed, but remained standing, didn’t offer commiseration, but said, “What do you want? What do you need? What can I get for you?” She kept repeating these simple questions as Sinsemilla wallowed in self-pity and in perceived victimization. “What do you need? What can I get for you?” She kept her tone of voice cool, and she persisted, because she knew that in the end no amount of sympathy or attentive concern would in fact bring peace to her mother and that Sinsemilla would, as always, finally turn for solace to her drugs. “What do you need? What can I get for you?”

Persistence paid off when Sinsemilla—still crying, but trading anger for a good pout—slumped back against the pillows, head hung, and said, “My numbies. Need my numbies. Took some stuff already, but wasn’t numbies. Weirded me. Must’ve been bad shit. Supposed to take me after Alice down the rabbit hole, but it weirded me into some snake hole instead.”