Sally Yan felt the pentagram in her hand, the malevolent will of the trees nearby and the tall, solemn, reverent peace of the woods she’d walked through in California with Lavinia. The frosty force was still buzzing inside her but she pictured the one being she most wanted to meet.

Then she opened hopeful eyes.

Lavinia knelt beside her, holding her hand and murmuring words of encouragement. Dozens of other hands touched her, lending strength. Jesse looked transformed but Walter seemed to be in some private hell of his own.

There was plenty of light to see all of this.

Two feet in front of her, visible and solid at last, floated a little fairy the size of a cat, held up not by wings exactly but by a liquid substance that glimmered like gold. Her eyes were kind and sparkling and cat-like, her cat-like ears pointed, and she would float like a cat to Sally and lick her nose if Sally willed it.

She quivered with joy as she waited for it to speak, though she knew what it would say.

“You have understood,” the fairy said, just right. “And so therefore, you may come in.”

The evil woods glowed with sudden twinkling lights as every head except Walter’s turned to see what Sally saw: a door, the door of a home in which they could all live, if they wanted. They had only to walk through.

***

Back when he was brave, Walter had made a gay basher back down by looking him in the eye and saying playfully, “I don’t know whether you want to beat the shit out of me or suck my cock.”

A moment later, the stunned stranger had bellowed obscenities after him as he walked away with Jesse. But the man hadn’t followed because, as Walter had known it would, the truth lay down that road.

The Rubber Stamp Man was close behind him as he turned onto the road where the truth lay. It was the granite stairs and the red front door of the house where Jeremy lived.

That door had just clicked shut. Walter’s thumb was still in the air. Vampires crowding the porch lifted their faces from the slimy spot which was all that was left of Jeremy’s little brother, and said, what do we do now, master?

He stumbled against the red door, feeling like his grief would fill a world. For the first time, he faced the truth. He hadn’t done this to himself or to Jesse or to their relationship. He had murdered a kid.

He raised his knuckles: I’ll come knock on this door, tell Jeremy’s parents that I’m the man who killed their son. Jeremy did not do it, I did.

He put his hand in his pocket again. He would do it someday, when they got back from this nightmare forest.

But that wasn’t enough. He had to do it now. He raised his hand again, jaw clenched with resolve.

***

The earth is not a spaceship. The earth is a home.

And so Sally changed the rules for the last time, created one last image for the world to play with.

“You can all come in. Come in, please come in. Just ask the fairy’s permission and come in.”

Around the world the new image spread. Some saw the golden (or pearly) gates of paradise. Sister Amanda saw something like that. Charity and Peter simply saw a home where they could live as wife and husband.

For some there was no coming home to the deep, real world. There was only cowering behind walls in houses of wood and stone.

For Walter LaMont, there was the sharp pain in his knuckles and his knock like the clanking of ghostly chains. Footsteps approached and stopped. The door swung open. Jeremy stood there, his eyes strangely joyful, just as they had been the last time Walter saw him in San Francisco.

He never took his revenge, Walter thought. He told me that sunlight could heal Jesse, and there was something strange in his eyes but he was right.

He faced Walter now with calm certainty. Walter braced himself to speak his piece but the Rubber Stamp landed on his shoulder with a hissing sear and a hand shoved him roughly through the door.

Approved.

***

For Helga Amundsen it was simple and obvious. There was a door before her and good things were on the other side. Joyfully she walked through, said Danke, and worked on holding it open for others.