“And I understand. I mean, I see it. I know it’s been happening. Everywhere. It’s just that some of it isn’t really like being sick. It’s strange, more than anything else.”

“ ‘Strange is this vision into the future of our future,’ ” the Reverend said, quoting something Frankie didn’t recognize.

“But they said they were coming back. And when Ms. Kotula—the gallery owner—told me about you, I thought maybe you’d know something about when they were coming.”

“I can’t tell you the exact date of the end of the Earth.” The Reverend sighed. It sounded like an admission, not a self-imposed rule.

“It wasn’t that. I wanted to know about the … the Ninth Coming, I guess it would be. The last time they come to help people. They told me they were going to come back after I got sick, and that when they did, they would know how to help. Not just me. Everyone who’s sick. From anything.”

“Tall order,” the Reverend said.

“I’m curious, more than anything else. About what’s going to happen. If there are going to be antidotes. I mean, whether or not I’m still here, I want to know. And if it is going to be a time when I’m still … around, that would be great too. It would just help, knowing.”

“I don’t know anything about the Ninth,” the Reverend said. “Everything up to and including the Tenth? They don’t let out that information. They don’t want us to know.”

“I don’t draw the way I used to,” Frankie said, focusing on the spacecraft. “My hand movement, I mean. Even my signature doesn’t look like it did a year ago.”

“Flip that crate over.”

He reached down and turned the crate so that its bottom was facing up. The Reverend extended one of his long legs, and with his muddy boot he centered the crate under the spacecraft. He nodded to Frankie.

“Go on. Stick your head inside. Mind you, it’s not for touching; it’s for looking.”

“What is it?”

“I call it ‘The Diorama of My True Abduction.’ ”

Frankie hesitated. The Reverend glared at him over the bottle. Rubbing his palms against his hips, Frankie moved forward, bent down, and stepped onto the crate. Slowly, he stood upright. His head ascended into the dark bowels of the spacecraft.

He heard a scratching sound, and sensed the craft moving around him. Then the inside of it lit up gradually as if controlled by a dimmer switch.