Demon Box

It was the queerest thing. I sailed right up out of my body while Doctor Ogilvie was saying, I’m sorry, Topple, she’s gone—sailed right over the town through the night right on up to Heaven where the streets were lit with pure gold and the angels were playing harps and the moth I presume did not corrupt. Heaven. But when I started to go through the gates that were all inlaid pearl precisely like they are supposed to be this huge tall angel with an enormous book says to me, Wait a minute, little girl; what’s your name? I says Becky Topple and he says Becky Topple? Rebecca Topple? I thought so, Becky; you have been marked by the Blood of the Lamb of God Almighty and you aren’t due up here for another good seventy-seven years! The Son of Man Hisself has you down for not less than one entire century of earthly service! You’re to be a saint, Rebecca, did you know that? So you got to go on back, honey. I’m sorry…

And sent me sailing back through the clouds and the stars to Arkansas and Pine Bluff and Dr. Ogilvie’s house all fluttering at the parlor windows with torches and lamps like big angry millers and right down through the roof. I swear it was absolutely the queerest sensation, seeing my body in that room with all my folks and family crying and little Emerson T struggling with his papa to get to me, crying Becky aint dead aint dead cant be dead as I just drifted back into my body like so much smoke being sucked back down a chimney and took a breath opened my eyes and sat up and told them that the mute boy had not harmed me. No. Quite the contrary. That I’d been fooling around that gully and fell into the scrap iron and he had come along and seen me and saved me, thank the Lord (I had my fingers crossed, and said another Thank the Lord to myself) and