Nos4a2

by Joe Hill

  Her jacket was unzipped, and it scooped up the air and ballooned around her. She rushed on into low fog.

  She did not see a pair of close-set headlights come on down the road behind her, glowing dimly in the mist.

  Neither did Wayne.

  Route 3

  TREES AND HOUSES AND YARDS FLASHED BY, DARK, BLURRED SHAPES only dimly apprehended in the mist.

  There was no thought in her. The bike rushed her away from thought. She had known that it would, had known the first moment she saw it in the carriage house that it was fast enough and powerful enough to race her away from the worst part of herself, the part that tried to make sense of things.

  She triggered the gearshift with her foot again, and then again, and the Triumph jumped forward each time, swallowing the road beneath it.

  The fog thickened against her, blowing into her face. It was pearly, evanescent, the sunlight striking through from somewhere up and to the left, causing the whole world to glow around her as if irradiated. Vic felt that a person could not hope for more beauty in this world.

  The damp road hissed like static under the tires.

  A gentle, almost delicate ache caressed her left eyeball.

  She saw a barn in the shifting mist, a long, tall, tilted, narrow structure. A trick of the billowing vapor made it appear to be sitting in the middle of the road, not a hundred yards away, although she knew that the highway would hook off to the left in another moment and swing her past it. She half smiled at how much it looked like her old imaginary bridge.

  Vic lowered her head and listened to the susurration of the tires on wet asphalt, that sound that was so like white noise on the radio. What were you listening to when you tuned to static? she wondered. She thought she had read somewhere that it was the background radiation in which the entire universe bathed.

  She waited for the road to hook left and bring her around the barn, but it kept on straight. That tall, dark, angular shape rose before her until she was in its shadow. And it wasn’t a barn at all, and she only realized that the road ran straight into it when it was too late to turn aside. The mist darkened and went cold, as cold as a dip in the lake.

  Boards slammed under the tires, a rapid-fire knocking sound.

  The mist was snatched away as the bike carried her up and out of it and into the bridge. She sucked at the air and smelled the stink of bats.

  She drove her heel down on the brake and shut her eyes. This isn’t real, she thought, almost whispered to herself.

  The foot pedal for the brake went all the way down, held for a moment—and then came completely off. It fell onto the boards with a deep, hollow thud. A nut and a collection of washers went jingling after it.

  The cable that carried the brake fluid flapped against her leg, spurting. The heel of her boot touched the worn boards beneath her, and it was like putting her toe into some nineteenth-century threshing machine. A part of her insisted she was hallucinating. Another part felt her boot striking against the bridge and understood that her hallucination would snap her in two if she dumped the bike.

  She had time to look down and back, trying to process what was happening. A gasket spun through the air from somewhere, carving a whimsical arc through the shadows. The front tire wobbled. The world slurved around her, the back tire skidding out and around, slamming madly across loose boards.

  She lifted herself up from the seat and slung her weight hard to the left, holding the bike up more by will than by strength. It slid sideways, rattling across the boards. The tires grabbed at last, and the bike came to a shuddering stop and immediately almost fell over. She got a foot down first, held it up, although only barely, gritting her teeth and struggling against the sudden weight.

  Vic’s breathing echoed raggedly in the barnlike interior of the Shorter Way Bridge, unchanged in the sixteen years since she had last seen it.

  She shivered, clammy in her bulky motorcycle jacket.

  “Not real,” she said, and shut her eyes.

  She heard the gentle, dry rustling of the bats overhead.

  “Not real,” she said.

  White noise hissed softly, just on the other side of the walls.

  Vic concentrated on her own breath, inhaling slowly and steadily, then exhaling again through pursed lips. She stepped off the bike and stood beside it, holding it up by the handlebars.

  She opened her eyes but kept her gaze pointed at her feet. She saw the boards, old, grayish brown, worn. She saw flickering static between the planks.

  “Not real,” she said for a third time.

  She closed her eyes again. She wheeled the bike around, to face back the way she had come. Vic began to walk. She felt the boards sink under her feet, under the weight of the little Triumph Bonneville. Her lungs were tight, and it was hard to draw a full breath, and she felt sick. She was going to have to go back to the mental hospital. She was not going to get to be Wayne’s mother after all. At this thought she felt her throat constrict with grief.

  “This is not real. There is no bridge. I am off my meds and seeing things. That’s all.”

  She took one step and another step and another and then opened her eyes again and was standing with her broken motorcycle in the road.

  When she turned her head and looked back over her shoulder, she saw only highway.

  The Lake House

  THE LATE-AFTERNOON FOG WAS A CAPE THAT FLAPPED OPEN TO ADMIT Vic McQueen and her mean machine, then flapped shut behind her, swallowing even the sound of the engine.

  “Come on, Hooper,” Wayne said. “Let’s go in.”

  Hooper stood on the margin of the road, staring at him uncomprehendingly.

  Wayne called again when he was in the house. He held the door open, waiting for his dog to come to him. Instead Hooper turned his big, shaggy head and peered back along the road—not in the direction Wayne’s mother had ridden but the other way.

  Wayne couldn’t tell what he was looking at. Who knew what dogs saw? What the shapes in the mist meant to them? What odd, superstitious notions they might hold? Wayne was certain dogs were as superstitious as humans. More, maybe.

  “Suit yourself,” Wayne said, and shut the door.

  He sat in front of the TV with his iPhone in one hand and texted with his dad for a few minutes:

  Are u at the airport yet?

  Yep. They pushed my flight back to 3 so I’m going to be sitting here awhile.

  That sux. What r u gonna do?

  Gonna hit the food court. Gonna hit it so hard it CRIES.

  Mom got the bike going. She’s out riding around.

  She wearing her helmet?

  Yes. I made her. Coat too.

  Good for you. That coat adds +5 to all armor rolls.

  LOL. I love u. Have a safe flight.

  If I die in a plane crash remember to always bag and board your comics. Love you too.

  Then there was nothing more to say. Wayne reached for the remote control, switched on the TV, found SpongeBob. His official stance was that he had grown out of SpongeBob, but with his mother gone he could dispense with the official stance and do what he liked.

  Hooper barked.

  Wayne got up and went to the picture window, but he couldn’t see Hooper anymore. The big dog had vanished into the watery white vapor.

  He listened intently, wondering if the bike was coming back. It felt as if his mother had been gone longer than five minutes.

  His eyes refocused, and he saw the TV reflected in the picture window. SpongeBob was wearing a scarf and talking to Santa Claus. Santa stuck a steel hook through SpongeBob’s brains and threw him into his bag of toys.

  Wayne jerked his head around, but SpongeBob was talking to Patrick and there wasn’t any Santa Claus.

  He was on his way back to the couch when he heard Hooper at the front door at last, his tail going thump, thump, thump, just as it had that morning.

  “Coming,” he said. “Hold your horses.”

  But when he opened the door, it wasn’t Hooper at all. It wa
s a short, hairy, fat man in a tracksuit, gray with gold stripes, the sleeves pushed back to show his forearms. His head was a patchy bristle, as if he had mange. His eyes protruded from above his broad, flattened nose.

  “Hello,” he said. “Can I use your phone? We’ve had a terrible accident. We’ve just hit a dog with our car.” He spoke haltingly, like a man reading his lines from a cue card but having trouble making out the words.

  “What?” Wayne asked. “What did you say?”

  The ugly man gave him a worried look and said, “Hello? Can I use your phone. We’ve had a terrible accident? We’ve just hit a dog. With our car!” They were all the same words, but with emphasis in different places, as if he were not sure which sentences were questions and which were declarations.

  Wayne looked past the ugly little man. Back down the road, he saw what looked like a dirty roll of white carpet lying in front of a car. In the pale, drifting smoke, it was hard to see either the car or the white mound clearly. Only it wasn’t a roll of carpet, of course. Wayne knew exactly what it was.

  “We didn’t see it, and it was right in the road. We hit it with our car,” the little man said, gesturing over his shoulder.

  A tall man stood in the mist, next to the right front tire. He was bent over, his hands on his knees, considering the dog in a speculative sort of way, as if he half expected Hooper to get back up.

  The little man looked down at his palm for a moment, then back up, and said, “It was a terrible accident.” He smiled hopefully. “Can I use your phone?”

  “What?” Wayne said again, although he had heard the man perfectly well, even through the ringing in his ears. And besides, he had said the same thing, three times now, with almost no variation at all. “Hooper? Hooper!”

  He pushed past the little man. He did not run but went at a fast walk, his gait jerky and stiff.

  Hooper looked as if he had dropped onto his side and gone to sleep in the road in front of the car. His legs stuck out straight from his body. His left eye was open, staring up at the sky, filmy and dull, but as Wayne approached, it moved to track him. Still alive.

  “Oh, God, boy,” Wayne said. He sank to his knees. “Hooper.”

  In the glare of the headlights, the mist was revealed as a thousand fine grains of water trembling in the air. Too light to fall, they blew around instead, a rain that wouldn’t rain.

  Hooper pushed creamy drool out of his mouth with his thick tongue. His belly moved in rapid, panting breaths. Wayne couldn’t see any blood.

  “My Lord,” said the man who stood looking down at the dog. “That is what you call bad luck! I am so sorry. The poor thing. You can bet he does not know what happened to him, though. You can take some consolation from that!”

  Wayne looked past the dog at the man standing by the front of the car. The man wore black boots that came almost to his knees and a tailcoat with rows of brass buttons on either side of the placket. As Wayne lifted his gaze, he took in the car as well. It was an antique—an oldie but a goodie, his father would say.

  The tall man held a silver hammer in his right hand, a hammer the size of a croquet mallet. The shirt beneath his coat was watered white silk, as smooth and shiny as fresh-poured milk.

  Wayne lifted his gaze the rest of the way. Charlie Manx stared down at him with large, fascinated eyes.

  “God bless dogs and children,” he said. “This world is too hard a place for them. The world is a thief, and it steals your childhood from you and all the best dogs, too. But believe this. He is on his way to a better place now!”

  Charlie Manx still looked like his mug shot, although he was older—old going on ancient. A few silver hairs were combed across his spotted, bare skull. His scant lips were parted to show a horribly colorless tongue, as white as dead skin. He was as tall as Lincoln and just as dead. Wayne could smell the death on him, the stink of decay.

  “Don’t touch me,” Wayne said.

  He got up on unsteady legs and took a single step backward before he thumped into the ugly little man standing behind him. The little man gripped him by the shoulders, forcing him to remain facing Manx.

  Wayne twisted his head to look back. If he had the air, he would’ve screamed. The man behind him had a new face. He wore a rubber gasmask with a grotesque valve where his mouth belonged and glossy plastic windows for eyes. If eyes were windows to the soul, then the Gasmask Man’s offered a view of profound emptiness.

  “Help!” Wayne screamed. “Help me!”

  “That is my aim exactly,” said Charlie Manx.

  “Help!” Wayne screamed again.

  “I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream,” the Gasmask Man said. “Keep shouting. See if that’s what you get. Big hint, bucko—no ice cream for screamers!”

  “HELP!” Wayne shouted.

  Charlie Manx put his gaunt fingers over his ears and made a pained face. “That is a lot of filthy noise.”

  “Boys who make filthy noise don’t get any toys,” the Gasmask Man said. “Boys who yelp get no help.”

  Wayne wanted to vomit. He opened his mouth to scream again, and Manx reached out and pressed a finger to his lips. Shhh. Wayne almost flinched at the smell of it, an odor of formaldehyde and blood.

  “I am not going to hurt you. I would not hurt a child. There is no need for a lot of caterwauling. My business is with your mother. I am sure you are a fine boy. All children are—for a while. But your mother is a lying scallywag who has given false witness against me. That is not the end of it either. I have children of my own, and she kept me from them for years and years. For a decade I could not see their sweetly smiling faces, although I heard their voices often enough in dreams. I heard them calling for me, and I know they went hungry. You cannot think what it is like, to know your children are in need and that you cannot help them. It will drive a normal man to madness. Of course, some would say I did not have far to drive!”

  At this both men laughed.

  “Please,” Wayne said. “Let me go.”

  “Do you want me to gas him out, Mr. Manx? Is it time for some gingerbread smoke?”

  Manx folded his hands at his waist and frowned. “A short nap might be the best thing. It is hard to reason with a child who is so overwrought.”

  The Gasmask Man began to force-march Wayne around the front of the car. Wayne saw now that it was a Rolls-Royce, and he flashed to one of Maggie Leigh’s newspaper articles, something about a man disappearing in Kentucky along with a 1938 Rolls.

  “Hooper!” Wayne screamed.

  He was being propelled past the dog. Hooper twisted his head, as if snapping at a fly, moving with more life than Wayne would’ve guessed possible. He bit, shutting his teeth on the Gasmask Man’s left ankle.

  The Gasmask Man squealed and stumbled. Wayne thought, for an instant, that he might leap free, but the little man had long, powerful arms, like a baboon’s, and he got his forearm around Wayne’s throat.

  “Oh, Mr. Manx,” the Gasmask Man said. “He’s biting! The dog is biting! He’s got his teeth in me!”

  Manx raised the silver hammer and dropped it on Hooper’s head, like a man at a fair, using a sledgehammer to test his strength, hitting the target to see if he could ring a bell. Hooper’s skull crunched like a lightbulb under a boot heel. Manx hit him a second time to be sure. The Gasmask Man tore his foot free and turned sideways and kicked Hooper for good measure.

  “You dirty dog!” the Gasmask Man cried. “I hope that hurt! I hope that hurt a lot!”

  When Manx straightened up, there was fresh, wet blood glistening on his shirt in a rough Y shape. It seeped through the silk, trickling from some wound on the old man’s chest.

  “Hooper,” Wayne said. He meant to scream it, but it came out as a whisper, barely audible even to himself.

  Hooper’s white fur was stained all red now. It was like blood on snow. Wayne couldn’t look at what had been done to his head.

  Manx bent over the dog, catching his breath. “Well. This pup has chased his last f
lock of pigeons.”

  “You killed Hooper,” Wayne said.

  Charlie Manx said, “Yes. It looks like I have. The poor thing. That is too bad. I have always tried to be a friend to dogs and children. I will try to make it up to you, young man. Consider that I owe you one. Put him in the car, Bing, and give him something to take his mind off his cares.”

  The Gasmask Man shoved Wayne ahead of him, hopping along, keeping his weight off his right ankle.

  The back door of the Rolls-Royce popped and swung wide. No one was sitting in the car. No one had touched the latch. Wayne was baffled—amazed, even—but did not linger on it. Things were moving quickly now, and he couldn’t afford to give it thought.

  Wayne understood that if he climbed into the backseat, he would never climb out again. It would be like climbing into his own grave. Hooper, though, had tried to show him what to do. Hooper had tried to show him that even when you seemed completely overpowered, you could still show your teeth.

  Wayne turned his head and sank his teeth into the fat man’s forearm. He locked his jaw and bit down until he tasted blood.

  The Gasmask Man shrieked. “It hurts! He’s hurting me!”

  His hand opened and shut. Wayne saw, in close focus, words written in black marker on the Gasmask Man’s palm:

  PHONE

  ACCIDENT

  CAR

  “Bing!” hissed Mr. Manx. “Shhh! Put him in the car and hush yourself!”

  Bing—the Gasmask Man—grabbed a handful of Wayne’s hair and pulled. Wayne felt as if his scalp were being ripped up like old carpet. Still, he put one foot up, bracing it against the side of the car. The Gasmask Man moaned and punched Wayne in the side of the head.

  It was like a flashbulb going off. Only instead of a flash of white light, it was a flash of blackness, behind his eyes. Wayne dropped the foot braced against the side of the car. As his vision cleared, he was pushed through the open door and fell onto all fours on the carpet.