Nos4a2

by Joe Hill

  She was halfway down the hill.

  She yanked the helmet off at last, threw it aside.

  The gun boomed.

  Something skipped off the water to her right, as if a child had flung a flat stone across the lake.

  Vic’s feet were on the boards of the dock. The dock heaved and slammed beneath her. She took three bounding steps and dived at the water.

  She struck the surface—thought of the bullet slicing through the fog again—and then she was in the lake, she was underwater.

  She plunged almost all the way to the bottom, where the world was dark and slow.

  It seemed to Vic that she had, only moments before, been in the dim green drowned world of the lake, that she was returning to the quiet, restful state of unconsciousness.

  The woman sailed through the cold stillness.

  A bullet struck the lake, to her left, less than half a foot from her, punching a tunnel in the water, corkscrewing into the darkness, slowing rapidly. Vic recoiled and lashed out blindly, as if it could be slapped away. Her hand closed on something hot. She opened her palm, stared at what looked like a lead weight for a fishing line. The disturbed currents rolled it out of her hand, and it sank into the lake and only after it was gone did she understand she had grabbed a bullet.

  She twisted, scissored her legs, gazing up now, lungs beginning to hurt. She saw the surface of the lake, a bright silver sheet high over her head. The float was another ten, fifteen feet away.

  Vic surged through the water.

  Her chest was a throbbing vault, filled with fire.

  She kicked and kicked. Then she was under it, under the black rectangle of the float.

  She clawed for the surface. She thought of her father, the stuff he used to blast rock, the slippery white plastic packs of ANFO. Her chest was packed full with ANFO, ready to explode.

  Her head burst up out of the water, and she gasped, filling her lungs with air.

  Vic was in deep shadow, under the boards of the float, between the ranks of rusting iron drums. It smelled of creosote and rot.

  Vic fought to breathe quietly. Every exhalation echoed in the small, low space.

  “I know where you are!” screamed the Gasmask Man. “You can’t hide from me!”

  His voice was piping and raggedy and childish. He was a child, Vic understood then. He might be thirty or forty or fifty, but he was still just another of Manx’s poisoned children.

  And yes, he probably did know where she was.

  Come and get me you little fuck, she thought, and wiped her face.

  She heard another voice then: Manx. Manx was calling to her. Crooning almost.

  “Victoria, Victoria, Victoria McQueen!”

  There was a gap between two of the metal barrels, a space of perhaps an inch. She swam to it and looked through. Across a distance of thirty feet, she saw Manx standing on the end of the dock and the Gasmask Man behind him. Manx’s face was painted with blood, as if he had gone bobbing for apples in a bucket full of the stuff.

  “My, oh, my! You cut me very well, Victoria McQueen. You have made a hash out of my face, and my companion here has managed to shoot off my ear. With friends like these! Well. I am blood all over. I will be the last boy picked at the dance from here on out, you see if I am not!” He laughed, then continued, “It is true what they say. Life really does move in very small circles. Here we are again. You are as hard to keep ahold of as a fish. The lake is a fine place for you.” He paused once more. When he began to speak again, there was almost a note of humor in his voice. “Maybe it is just as well. You did not kill me. You only took me away from my children. Fair is fair. I can drive off and leave you as you are. But understand that your son is with me now and you will never have him back. Although I expect he will call sometimes from Christmasland. He will be happy there. I will never hurt him. However you feel now, when you hear his voice again, you will see how it is. You will see it is better that he is with me than with you.”

  The dock creaked on the water. The engine of the Rolls-Royce idled. She struggled out of the soggy, heavy weight of Lou’s motorcycle jacket. She thought it would sink straightaway, but it floated, looking like a black, toxic mess.

  “Of course, maybe you will be inclined to come and find us,” Manx said. His voice was sly. “As you found me before. I have had years and years to think on the bridge in the woods. Your impossible bridge. I know all about bridges like that one. I know all about roads that can only be found with the mind. One of them is how I find my way to Christmasland. There is the Night Road, and the train tracks to Orphanhenge, and the doors to Mid-World, and the old trail to the Tree House of the Mind, and then there is Victoria’s wonderful covered bridge. Do you still know how to get there? Come find me if you can, Vic. I will be waiting for you at the House of Sleep. I will be making a stop there before I arrive in Christmasland. Come find me, and we will talk some more.”

  He turned and began to clump back up the dock.

  The Gasmask Man heaved a great unhappy sigh and lifted the .38, and the gun burped flame.

  One of the pine boards above her head snapped and threw splinters. A second bullet zipped across the water to her right, stitching a line in the surface of the lake. Vic flung herself backward, splashing away from the narrow crack through which she had been spying. A third bullet dinged off the rusted stainless-steel ladder. The last made a soft, unremarkable plop right in front of the float.

  She paddled, treading water.

  Car doors slammed.

  She heard the tires crunching as the car backed down across the yard, heard them thud over fallen fence rails.

  Vic thought it might be a trick, one of them in the car, the other one, the Gasmask Man, remaining behind, out of sight, with the pistol. She shut her eyes. She listened intently.

  When she opened her eyes, she was staring at a great, hairy spider suspended in what was left of her web. Most of it hung in gray shreds. Something—a bullet, all the commotion—had torn it apart. Like Vic, it had nothing left of the world it had spun for itself.

  SEARCH ENGINE

  JULY 6–7

  The Lake

  AS SOON AS WAYNE FOUND HIMSELF ALONE IN THE BACKSEAT OF THE Wraith, he did the only sensible thing: He tried to get the fuck out.

  His mother had flown down the hill—it seemed more like flying than running—and the Gasmask Man lurched after her in a kind of drunken, straggling lope. Then even Manx himself started toward the lake, hand clutched to the side of his head.

  The sight of Manx making his way down the hill held Wayne for an instant. The day had turned to watery blue murk, the world become liquid. Lake-colored fog hung thickly in the trees. The fog-colored lake waited down the hill. From the back of the car, Wayne could only barely see the float out on the water.

  Against this background of drifting vapor, Manx was an apparition from a circus: the human skeleton crossed with the stilt walker, an impossibly tall and gaunt and ravaged figure in an archaic tailcoat. His misshapen bald head and beaky nose brought to mind vultures. The mist played tricks with his shadow, so it seemed he was walking downhill through a series of dark, Manx-shaped doorways, each bigger than the last.

  It was the hardest thing in the world to look away from him. Gingerbread smoke, Wayne thought. He had breathed some of the stuff the Gasmask Man had sprayed at him, and it was making him slow. He scrubbed his face with both hands, trying to shake himself to full wakefulness, and then he began to move.

  He had already tried to open the doors in the rear compartment, but the locks wouldn’t unlock no matter how hard he pulled at them, and the windows wouldn’t crank down. The front seat, though—that was a different story. Not only was the driver’s-side door visibly unlocked, the window was lowered about halfway. Far enough for Wayne to wriggle out, if the door refused to cooperate.

  He forced himself off the couch and made the long, wearying journey across the rear compartment, crossing the vast distance of about a yard. Wayne grabbed the back of the
front seat and heaved himself over and—

  Toppled down onto the floor in the back of the car.

  The rapid leaping motion made his head spinny and strange. He remained on all fours for several seconds, breathing deeply, trying to still the roiling disquiet in his stomach. Trying as well to determine what had just happened to him.

  The gas that had gone up his snoot had disoriented him so that he hardly knew down from up. He had lost his bearings and collapsed into the backseat again; that was it.

  He rose to try once more. The world lurched unsteadily around him, but he waited, and at last it was still. He drew a deep breath (more gingerbread taste) and heaved himself over the divider and rolled and sat up on the floor of the backseat once again.

  His stomach upended itself, and for a moment his breakfast was back in his mouth. He swallowed it down. It had tasted better the first time.

  Down the hill, Manx was speaking, addressing the lake, his voice calm and unhurried.

  Wayne considered the rear compartment, trying to establish to himself how he had managed to wind up here again. It was as if the backseat went on forever. It was like there was nothing but backseat. He felt as dizzy as if he had just climbed off the Gravitron at the county fair, that ride that spun you faster and faster until centrifugal force stuck you to the wall.

  Get up. Don’t quit. He saw these words in his mind as clearly as black letters painted on the boards of a white fence.

  This time Wayne ducked his head and got a running start and jumped over the divider and out of the rear compartment and . . . back into the rear compartment, where he crashed to the carpeted floor. His iPhone leaped out of the pocket of his shorts.

  He got up on all fours but had to grab the shag carpet to keep from falling over, was that dizzy and light-headed. He felt as if the car were moving, spinning across black ice, revolving in a great swooping, nauseating circle. The sense of sideways motion was almost overpowering, and he had to briefly shut his eyes to block it out.

  When he dared to lift his head and look around, the first thing he saw was his phone, resting on the carpet just a few feet away.

  He reached for it, in the slow-motion way of an astronaut reaching for a floating candy bar.

  He called his father, the only number he had stored under FAVORITES, one touch. He felt that one touch was almost all he could manage.

  “What up, dawg?” Louis Carmody said, his voice so warm and friendly and unworried, Wayne felt a sob rise into his own throat at the sound of it.

  Until that moment he had not realized how close he was to tears. His throat constricted dangerously. He was not sure he would be able to breathe, let alone speak. He shut his eyes and had a brief, nearly crippling tactile memory of his cheek pressing to his father’s bristly face, his father’s rough, three-day growth of spiky brown bear fur.

  “Dad,” he said. “Dad. I’m in the back of a car. I can’t get out.”

  He tried to explain, but it was hard. It was hard to get all the air he needed to speak, hard to speak through his tears. His eyes burned. His vision blurred. It was hard to explain about the Gasmask Man and Charlie Manx and Hooper and gingerbread smoke and how the backseat went on forever. He wasn’t sure what he said. Something about Manx. Something about the car.

  Then the Gasmask Man was shooting again. The gun went off over and over as he fired at the float. His pistol jumped in his hand, flashing in the dark. When had it gotten so dark?

  “They’re shooting, Dad!” Wayne said in a hoarse, strained tone of voice he hardly recognized. “They’re shooting at Mom!”

  Wayne peered out through the windshield, into the gloom, but couldn’t tell if any of the bullets had hit his mother or not. He couldn’t see her. She was part of the lake, the darkness. How she took to darkness. How easily she slipped away from him.

  Manx did not stay to watch the Gasmask Man shoot the water. He was already halfway up the hill. He clutched the side of his head like a man listening to an earpiece, receiving a message from his superiors. Although it was impossible to conceive of anyone who might be superior to Manx.

  The Gasmask Man emptied his gun and turned away from the water himself. He swayed as he began to mount the hill, walking like one supporting a great burden on his shoulders. They would reach the car soon. Wayne did not know what would happen then but still had his wits about him well enough to know that if they saw his phone, they would take it away.

  “I have to go,” Wayne told his father. “They’re coming back. I’ll call when I can. Don’t call me, they might hear it. They might hear even if I turn it to mute.”

  His father was shouting his name, but there wasn’t time to say more. Wayne hit END CALL and flicked the phone over to mute.

  He looked for a place to stick the phone, thinking he would shove it down between the seats. But then he saw there were walnut drawers with polished silver knobs set beneath the front seats. He slid one open, flipped the phone in, and kicked it shut as Manx opened the driver’s-side door.

  Manx slung the silver hammer onto the front seat and climbed halfway in. He held a silk handkerchief to the side of his face, but he lowered it when he saw Wayne kneeling on the carpeted floor. Wayne made a small, shrill sound of horror at the sight of Manx’s face. Two distinct strings of ear dangled from the side of his head. His long, gaunt face wore a dull red wash of blood. A flap of skin hung from his forehead, some of his eyebrow sticking to it. Bone glistened beneath.

  “I suppose I look quite a fright,” Manx said, and grinned to show pink-stained teeth. He pointed to the side of his head. “Ear today, gone tomorrow.”

  Wayne felt faint. The back of the car seemed unaccountably dark, as if Manx had brought the night in with him when he opened the door.

  The tall man dropped behind the wheel. The door slammed itself shut—and then the window cranked itself up. It wasn’t Manx, couldn’t be Manx doing it. He was clutching one hand to his ear again, and the other was gently pressed to that loose flap of skin across his brow.

  The Gasmask Man had reached the passenger-side door and pulled on the handle—but as he did, the lock slammed down.

  The gearshift wiggled and clunked into reverse. The car lunged a few feet backward, rocks spitting from under the tires.

  “No!” the Gasmask Man screamed. He was holding the latch when the car moved and was almost dragged off balance. He stumbled after the car, trying to keep one hand on the hood, as if he could hold the Rolls-Royce in place. “No! Mr. Manx! Don’t go! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! It was a mistake!”

  His voice was ragged with horror and grief. He ran to the passenger door and grabbed the latch and pulled again.

  Manx leaned toward him. Through the window he said, “You are on my naughty list now, Bing Partridge. You have big ideas if you think I ought to take you to Christmasland after the mess you have made. I am afraid to let you in. How do I know, if I allow you to ride with us, that you will not riddle the car with bullets?”

  “I swear, I’ll be nice! I’ll be nice, I will, I’ll be nice as sugar and spice! Don’t leave! I’m sorry. I’m so sawwwwwwreee!” The inside of his gasmask was steamed over, and he spoke between sobs. “I wish I’d shot myself! I do! I wish it was my ear! Oh, Bing Bing, you stupid thing!”

  “That is plenty of your ridiculous noise. My head hurts enough as it is.”

  The lock banged back up. The Gasmask Man yanked the door open and fell into the car. “I didn’t mean it! I swear I didn’t mean it. I will do anything! Anything!” His eyes widened in a flash of inspiration. “I could cut my ear off! My own ear! I don’t care! I don’t need it, I have two! Do you want me to cut off my own ear?”

  “I want you to shut up. If you feel like cutting something off, you could start with your tongue. Then at least we would have some peace.”

  The car accelerated in reverse, thudding down onto blacktop, undercarriage crunching. As it hit the road, it slopped around to the right, to face back in the direction of the highway. The gearshift wiggled
again and jumped into drive.

  In all this time, Manx did not touch the steering wheel or the stick but remained clutching his ear and turned in his seat to look at the Gasmask Man.

  The gingerbread smoke, Wayne thought with a kind of dull-edged wonder. It was making him see things. Cars didn’t drive themselves. Backseats didn’t go on forever.

  The Gasmask Man rocked back and forth, making piteous noises and shaking his head.

  “Stupid,” the Gasmask Man whispered. “I am so stupid.” He banged his head on the dash, forcefully. Twice.

  “You will quit right this instant or I am leaving you by the side of the road. There is no reason for you to take out your failures on the handsome interior of my car,” Manx said.

  The car jolted forward and began to rush away from the cottage. Manx’s hands never left his face. The steering wheel moved minutely from side to side, guiding the Rolls along the road. Wayne narrowed his eyes, fixed his stare upon it. He pinched his cheek, very hard, twisting the flesh, but the pain did nothing to clear his vision. The car went on driving itself, so either the gingerbread smoke was causing him to hallucinate or—But there wasn’t an “or” in this line of reasoning. He didn’t want to start thinking “or.”

  He turned his head and looked out the rear window. He had a last glimpse of the lake, under its low blanket of fog. The water was as smooth as a plate of new-minted steel, as smooth as the blade of a knife. If his mother was there, he saw no sign of her.

  “Bing. Have a look in the glove compartment and I believe you will find a pair of scissors and some tape.”

  “Do you want me to cut out my own tongue?” the Gasmask Man asked hopefully.

  “No. I want you to bandage my head. Unless you would rather sit there and watch me bleed to death. I suppose that would be an entertaining spectacle.”