Usually, these evenings end with one tired old man, one battle-scarred hound dog, and one or more extremely dead raccoons, but as you may suspect, that will not be the case tonight.
When they return home, Hyder finds that Rachel, the preacher, and the neighbors cannot hear or see him, and are tending to the burial of both him and Rip.
They come to a gate tended by a man, who explains that Hyder can enter the Elysian Fields of the afterlife.
Later, Hyder and Rip stop to rest and are met by a young man, who introduces himself as an angel dispatched to find them and take them to Heaven.
At least, it happened that way once—in a mountainous area of the Twilight Zone.The plot is based on a 1953 episode of The Kate Smith Hour, "The Hound of Heaven", which was written by Hamner.