Nos4a2

by Joe Hill

  “Bing!” Manx cried. “Close that door! Someone is coming! That dreadful woman is coming!”

  “Your ass is grass,” the Gasmask Man said to Wayne. “Your ass is so much grass. And I am the lawn mower. I’m going to mow your ass, and then I’m going to fuck it. I’m going to fuck you right in the ass.”

  “Bing, mind me now!”

  “Mom!” screamed Wayne.

  “I’m coming!” she shouted back, tiredly, her voice arriving from a great distance and without any particular urgency.

  The Gasmask Man slammed the car door.

  Wayne rose onto his knees. His left ear throbbed where he had been struck, burned against the side of his face. There was a nasty aftertaste of blood in his mouth.

  He looked over the front seats and out the windshield.

  A dark shape walked up the road. The mist played fun-house tricks with the optics, distorting and enlarging the shape. It looked like a grotesque hunchback pushing a wheelchair.

  “Mom!” Wayne screamed again.

  The front passenger-side door—which was on the left, where the steering wheel would’ve been in an American car—opened. The Gasmask Man climbed in, pulled the door shut behind him, then twisted in his seat and pointed a pistol in Wayne’s face.

  “You want to shut your mouth,” the Gasmask Man said, “or I’ll drill you. I’ll pump you full of lead. How would you like that? Not too much, I bet!”

  The Gasmask Man considered his right arm. There was a misshapen purple bruise where Wayne had bitten him, enclosed in parentheses of bright blood where Wayne’s teeth had broken the skin.

  Manx slid behind the steering wheel. He put his silver mallet on the leather between him and the Gasmask Man. The car was running, the engine producing a deep, resonant purr that was felt more than heard, a kind of luxurious vibration.

  The hunchback with the wheelchair came through the mist, until all at once it resolved into the shape of a woman walking a motorcycle, pushing it laboriously by the handlebars.

  Wayne opened his mouth to shout for his mother again. The Gasmask Man shook his head. Wayne stared into the black circle of the barrel. It was not terrifying. It was fascinating—like the view from a high peak at the edge of a straight drop.

  “No more laughing,” the Gasmask Man said. “No more fun. Quaker Meeting has begun.”

  Charlie Manx dropped the car into drive with a heavy clunk. Then he glanced over his shoulder once more.

  “Do not mind him,” Manx said. “He is an old spoilsport. I think we can manage to have some fun. I am all but certain of it. In fact, I am about to have some right now.”

  Route 3

  THE BIKE WOULDN’T START. IT WOULDN’T EVEN MAKE HOPEFUL noises. She jumped up and down on it until her legs were worn out, but not once did it produce the low, deep, throat-clearing sound that suggested the engine was close to turning over. Instead it made a soft puff, like a man blowing a contemptuous sigh through his lips: fffftt.

  There was nothing to do except walk.

  She bent to the handlebars and began to push. She took three effortful steps, then paused and looked over her shoulder again. Still no bridge. There had never been any bridge.

  Vic walked and tried to imagine how she would begin the conversation with Wayne.

  Hey, kid, bad news: I shook something loose on the motorcycle, and it got broke. Oh, and I shook something loose in my head, and that got broke, too. I’m going to have to go in for service. When I get settled in the psycho ward, I’ll send you a postcard.

  She laughed. It sounded, to her ears, much like a sob.

  Wayne. I want more than anything to be the mom you deserve. But I can’t. I can’t do it.

  The thought of saying such a thing made her want to puke. Even if it were true, that didn’t make it feel any less cowardly.

  Wayne. I hope you know I love you. I hope you know I tried.

  The fog drifted across the road and felt as if it were passing right through her. The day had turned unaccountably chilly for early July.

  Another voice, strong, clear, masculine, spoke in her thoughts, her father’s voice: Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, kid. You wanted to find the bridge. You went looking for it. That’s why you stopped taking your meds. That’s why you fixed the bike. What are you really scared of? Scared that you’re crazy? Or scared that you aren’t?

  Vic often heard her father telling her things she didn’t want to know, although she had spoken to him only a handful of times in the last ten years. She wondered at that, why she still needed the voice of a man who had abandoned her without a look back.

  She pushed her bike through the damp chill of the mist. Water beaded up on the weird, waxy surface of the motorcycle jacket. Who knew what it was made out of—some mix of canvas, Teflon, and, presumably, dragon hide.

  Vic removed her helmet and hung it off the handlebars, but it wouldn’t stay there, kept dropping into the street. Finally she jammed it back on her head. She pushed, trudging along the side of the road. It crossed her mind she could just leave the bike, come back for it later, but she never seriously entertained the notion. She had walked away from the other bike once, the Raleigh, and had left the best of herself behind with it. When you had a set of wheels that could take you anywhere, you didn’t walk away from it.

  Vic wished, for maybe the first time in her life, that she owned a cell phone. Sometimes it seemed as if she were the last person in America not to have one. She pretended it was a way of showing off her freedom from the twenty-first century’s technological snares. In truth, though, she could not bear the idea of having a phone on her all the time, wherever she went. Could not be at ease knowing she might get an urgent call from Christmasland, some dead kid on the line: Hey, Ms. McQueen, did you miss us?!?

  She pushed and walked and pushed and walked. She was singing something under her breath. For a long time, she wasn’t even aware she was doing it. She imagined Wayne standing at the window at home, staring out into the rain and fog, shifting nervously from foot to foot.

  Vic was conscious of—and tried to quash—a gathering feeling of panic out of proportion to the situation. She felt she was needed at home. She had been gone far too long. She was afraid of Wayne’s tears and anger—and at the same time looked forward to them, to seeing him, to knowing that everything was all right. She pushed. She sang.

  “Silent night,” she sang, “holy night.”

  She heard herself and stopped, but the song continued in her head, plaintive and off-key. All is calm. All is bright.

  Vic felt feverish in her motorcycle helmet. Her legs were soaked and cold from the fog, her face was hot and sweaty from her exertions. She wanted to sit down—no, lie down—in the grass, on her back, staring up at the low, curdled sky. But she could see the rental house at last, a dark rectangle on her left, almost featureless in the fog.

  The day was dim by now, and she was surprised there were no lights on in the cottage, aside from the wan blue glow of the TV. She supposed she was surprised, too, that Wayne wasn’t in the window watching for her.

  But then she heard him.

  “Mom!” he shouted. With her helmet on, his voice was muffled, a long way off.

  She hung her head. He was fine.

  “I’m coming,” she called back wearily.

  She had almost reached the foot of the driveway when she heard a car idling. She looked up. Headlights glowed in the fog. The car they belonged to had been pulled over at the side of the road, but the moment she spotted it, it began to move, sliding up onto the blacktop.

  Vic stood and watched it, and as the car came forward, shedding the fog, she could not say she was entirely surprised. She had sent him to jail, and she had read his obituary, but some part of her had been waiting to see Charlie Manx and his Rolls-Royce again for her entire adult life.

  The Wraith slid out of the mist, a black sleigh tearing through a cloud and dragging tails of December frost behind it. December frost in July. The roiling white smoke boiled away from the
license plate, old, dented, rust-shot: NOS4A2.

  Vic let go of the bike, and it fell with a great crash. The mirror on the left handlebar exploded in a pretty spray of silver splinters.

  She turned and ran.

  The split-rail fence was on her left, and she reached it in two steps and jumped onto it. She made the top cross-tie when she heard the car lunging up the embankment behind her, and she jumped and landed on the lawn and took one more step, and then the Wraith went through the fence.

  A log helicoptered through the air, whup-whup-whup, and nailed her across the shoulders. She was slammed off her feet and over the edge of the world, dropped into a bottomless chasm, fell into cold, roiling smoke without end.

  The Lake House

  THE WRAITH STRUCK THE FENCE OF SKINNED POLES, AND WAYNE WAS flung off the rear seat and onto the floor. His teeth banged together with a sharp clack.

  Logs snapped and flew. One of them made a clobbering sound, drumming against the hood. In Wayne’s mind that was the sound of his mother’s body hitting the car, and he began to scream.

  Manx thumped the car into park and turned on the seat to face the Gasmask Man.

  “I do not want him to have to watch any of this,” Manx said. “Seeing your dog die in the road is pitiful enough. Will you put him to sleep for me, Bing? Anyone can see he has exhausted himself.”

  “I ought to help you with the woman.”

  “Thank you, Bing. That is very thoughtful. No, I have her well in hand.”

  The car rocked as the men climbed out.

  Wayne struggled to his knees, lifted his head to look over the front seat, through the window, and into the yard.

  Charlie Manx had that silver mallet in one hand and was coming around the front of the car. Wayne’s mother was flat on the grass amid a scattering of logs.

  The back left-hand door opened, and the Gasmask Man climbed in next to Wayne. Wayne lunged to his right, trying to get to the other door, but the Gasmask Man caught his arm and pulled him over beside him.

  In one hand he had a little blue aerosol can. It said GINGERSNAP SPICE AIR FRESHENER on the side and showed a woman pulling a pan of gingerbread men out of an oven.

  “I’ll tell you about this stuff right here,” the Gasmask Man said. “It may say Gingersnap Spice, but what it really smells like is bedtime. You get a mouthful of this, it’ll knock you into next Wednesday.”

  “No!” Wayne cried. “Don’t!”

  He flapped, like a bird with one wing nailed to a wooden board. He wasn’t flying anywhere.

  “Oh, I won’t,” the Gasmask Man said. “You bit me, you little shit. How do you know I don’t have AIDS? You could have it. You could have a big, dirty mouthful of my AIDS now.”

  Wayne looked over the front seat, through the windshield, into the yard. Manx was pacing around behind Wayne’s mother, who still hadn’t moved.

  “I ought to bite you back, you know,” the Gasmask Man said. “I ought to bite you twice, once for what you did and once more for your dirty dog. I could bite you in your pretty little face. You have a face like a pretty little girl, but it wouldn’t be so pretty if I bit your cheek out and spit it on the floor. But we’re just going to sit here instead. We’re just going to sit here and watch the show. You watch and see what Mr. Manx does with dirty whores who tell dirty lies. And after he’s done with her . . . after he’s done, it’ll be my turn. And I’m not half so nice as Mr. Manx.”

  His mother moved her right hand, opening and closing her fingers, making a loose fist. Wayne felt something unclench inside him. It was as if someone had been standing on his chest and had just stepped off, giving him his first chance in who knew how long to inhale fully. Not dead. Not dead. She was not dead.

  She swept the hand back and forth, gently, as if feeling in the grass for something she had dropped. She moved her right leg, bending it at the knee. It looked like she wanted to try to get up.

  Manx bent over her with that enormous silver hammer of his, lifted it, and brought it down. Wayne had never heard bones break before. Manx struck her in the left shoulder, and Wayne heard it pop, like a knothole exploding in a campfire. The force of the blow drove her back down onto her belly.

  He screamed for her. He screamed with all the air in his lungs and shut his eyes and lowered his head—

  And the Gasmask Man grabbed him by his hair and yanked his head back. Something metal smashed Wayne in the mouth. The Gasmask Man had clubbed him in the face with the can of Gingersnap Spice.

  “You open your eyes and watch,” the Gasmask Man said.

  Wayne’s mother moved her right hand, trying to lift herself up, crawl away, and Manx hit her again. Her spine shattered with a sound like someone jumping on a stack of china plates.

  “Pay attention,” the Gasmask Man said. He was breathing so hard it was steaming up the inside of his mask. “We’re just getting to the good part.”

  Under

  VIC SWAM.

  She was underwater, she was in the lake. She had plunged almost all the way to the bottom, where the world was dark and slow. Vic felt no need for air, was not conscious of holding her breath. She had always liked going deep, into the still, silent, shadowed provinces of fish.

  Vic could’ve stayed under forever, was ready to be a trout, but Wayne was calling her from the surface world. His voice was a long way off, yet she still heard the urgency in it, heard that he was not yelling but screaming. It took an effort to kick for the surface. Her arms and legs didn’t want to move. She tried to focus on just one hand, sweeping it at the water. She opened her fingers. She closed her fingers. She opened them again.

  She opened her hand in the grass. Vic was in the dirt, on her stomach, although the sluggish underwater feeling persisted. She could not fathom—ha, ha, fathom, get it?—how she had wound up sprawled in her yard. She could not remember what had hit her. Something had hit her. It was hard to lift her head.

  “Are you with me, Mrs. Smarty-Pants Victoria McQueen?” someone said.

  She heard him but couldn’t register what he was saying. It was irrelevant. Wayne was the thing. She had heard Wayne screaming for her, she was sure of it. She had felt him screaming in her bones. She had to get up and see that he was all right.

  Vic made an effort to push herself onto all fours, and Manx brought his bright silver hammer down on her shoulder. She heard the bone crack, and the arm caved beneath her. She collapsed, bashed the ground with her chin.

  “I did not say you could get up. I asked if you were listening. You will want to listen to me.”

  Manx. Manx was here, not dead. Manx and his Rolls-Royce, and Wayne was in the Rolls-Royce. She knew this last fact as certainly as she knew her own name, although she had not laid eyes on Wayne in half an hour or more. Wayne was in that car, and she had to get him out.

  She began to push herself up once more, and Charlie Manx came down with his silver hammer again and hit her in the back, and she heard her spine break with a sound like someone stepping on a cheap toy: a brittle, plasticky crunch. The blunt force drove the wind out of her and slammed her back to her stomach.

  Wayne was screaming again, wordlessly now.

  Vic wished she could look around for him, get her bearings, but it was almost impossible to pick her head up. Her head felt heavy and strange, unsupportable, too much for her slender neck to bear. The helmet, she thought. She was still wearing her helmet and Lou’s jacket.

  Lou’s jacket.

  Vic had moved one leg, had drawn the knee up, the first part of her plan to get back on her feet. She could feel the dirt under her knee, could feel the muscle in the back of her thigh trembling. Vic had heard Manx pulverize her spine with his second swing, and she was not sure why she could still feel her legs. She was not sure why she wasn’t in more pain. Her hamstrings ached more than anything else, bunched tight from pushing the bike half a mile. Everything hurt, but nothing was broken. Not even the shoulder she had heard pop. She drew a great shuddering breath, and her ribs expanded effortless
ly, although she had heard them crack like branches in a windstorm.

  Except it had never been her bones breaking. She had heard the snapping of those Kevlar plates fitted into the back and shoulders of Lou’s bulky motorcycle jacket. Lou had said you could catch a telephone pole at twenty miles an hour wearing his coat and still have a chance at getting back up.

  The next time Manx hit her, in the side, she shouted—more in surprise than pain—and heard another loud snap.

  “You will want to answer me when I am speaking to you,” Manx said.

  Her side throbbed—she had felt that one. But the snap had only been another plate going. Her head was almost clear, and she thought if she made a great effort, she could heave herself to her feet.

  No you don’t, said her father, so close he might’ve been whispering in her ear. You stay down and let him have his fun. This is not the time, Brat.

  She had given up on her father. Had no use for him and kept their few conversations as short as possible. Did not want to hear from him. But now he was here, and he spoke to her in the same calm, measured tone of voice he’d used when he was explaining how to field a grounder or why Hank Williams mattered.

  He thinks he’s busted you up real good, kiddo. He thinks you’re beat. You try and get up now, he’ll know you aren’t as bad as he thinks you are, and then he will get you. Wait. Wait for the right time. You’ll know it when it comes.

  Her father’s voice, her lover’s jacket. For a moment she was aware of both the men in her life looking after her. She had thought they were both better off without her and that she was better off without them, but now here, in the dirt, it came to her that she had never really gone anywhere without them.

  “Do you hear me? Can you hear my voice?” Manx asked.

  She didn’t reply. She was perfectly still.

  “P’hraps you do and p’hraps you don’t,” he said after a moment of thought. She had not heard his voice in more than a decade, but it was still the dumb-ass drawl of a country rube. “What a whore you look, crawling in the dirt in your skimpy little denim shorts. I remember a time, not so long ago, when even a whore would have been ashamed to appear in public dressed like you and to spread her legs to ride a motorbike in lewd parody of the carnal act.” He paused again, then said, “You were on a bike the last time, too. I have not forgotten. I have not forgotten the bridge either. Is this a special bike like that other one? I know about special rides, Victoria McQueen, and secret roads. I hope you gallivanted to your heart’s content. You will not be gallivanting anymore.”