by Joe Hill
“No!” the Gasmask Man screamed.
“Well then. You will have to do what you can for my ear and my head. And take off that mask. It is impossible to talk to you while you have that thing on.”
The Gasmask Man’s head made a popping sound as it came out of the mask, much like a cork popping from a bottle of wine. The face beneath was flushed and reddened, and there were tears streaked all down his flabby, quivering cheeks. He rummaged through the glove compartment and came up with a roll of surgical tape and a pair of little silver scissors. He unzipped his tracksuit to reveal a stained white muscle shirt and shoulders so furry they brought to mind silverback gorillas. He stripped off the undershirt and zipped the jacket up.
The blinker clicked on. The car slowed for a stop sign, then turned onto the highway.
Bing scissored several long strips of undershirt. He folded one neatly and put it against Manx’s ear.
“Hold that there,” Bing said, and hiccupped in a miserable sort of way.
“I would like to know what she cut me with,” Manx said. He glanced into the backseat again, met Wayne’s gaze. “I have had a history of poor dealings with your mother, you know. It is like fighting with a bag of cats.”
Bing said, “I wish maggots were eating her. I wish maggots were eating her eyes.”
“That is a vile image.”
Bing looped another long strip of undershirt around Manx’s head, binding the pad to his ear and covering the slash across his forehead. He began to fix the undershirt in place with crosswise strips of surgical tape.
Manx was still looking at Wayne. “You are a quiet one. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“Let me go,” Wayne said.
“I will,” Manx said.
They blew past the Greenbough Diner, where Wayne and his mother had eaten breakfast sandwiches that morning. Thinking back on the morning was like thinking back on a half-remembered dream. Had he seen Charlie Manx’s shadow when he first woke up? It seemed he had.
“I knew you were coming,” Wayne said. He was surprised to hear himself saying such a thing. “I knew all day.”
“It is hard to keep a child from thinking about presents on the night before Christmas,” Manx said. He winced as Bing pressed another strip of tape in place.
The steering wheel rocked gently from side to side, and the car hugged the curves.
“Is this car driving itself?” Wayne asked. “Or am I just seeing that because he sprayed stuff in my face?”
“You don’t need to talk!” the Gasmask Man screamed at him. “Quaker Meeting has begun! No more laughing, no more fun, or we cut out your stupid tongue!”
“Will you stop talking about cutting out tongues?” Manx said. “I am beginning to think you have a fixation. I am speaking to the boy. I do not need you to referee.”
Abashed, the Gasmask Man returned to snipping strips of tape.
“You are not seeing things, and it is not driving itself,” Manx said. “I am driving it. I am the car, and the car is me. It is an authentic Rolls-Royce Wraith, assembled in Bristol in 1937, shipped to America in 1938, one of fewer than five hundred on these shores. But it is also an extension of my thoughts and can take me to roads that can exist only in the imagination.”
“There,” Bing said. “All fixed.”
Manx laughed. “For me to be all fixed, we would have to go back and search that woman’s lawn for the rest of my ear.”
Bing’s face shriveled; his eyes narrowed to squints; his shoulders hitched and jerked with silent sobs.
“But he did spray something in my face,” Wayne said. “Something that smelled like gingerbread.”
“Just something to put your mind at ease. If Bing had used his spray properly, you would be resting peaceably already.” Manx cast a cool, disgusted look at his traveling companion.
Wayne considered this. Thinking a thing through was like moving a heavy crate across a room—a lot of straining effort.
“How come it isn’t making you two rest peaceably?” Wayne asked finally.
“Hm?” Manx said. He was looking down at his white silk shirt, now stained crimson with blood. “Oh. You are in your own pocket universe back there. I don’t let anything come up front.” He sighed heavily. “There is no saving this shirt! I feel we should all have a moment of silence for it. This shirt is a silk Riddle-McIntyre, the finest shirtmaker in the West for a hundred years. Gerald Ford wore nothing but Riddle-McIntyres. I might as well use it to clean engine parts now. Blood will never come out of silk.”
“Blood will never come out of silk,” Wayne whispered. This statement had an epigrammatic quality to it, felt like an important fact.
Manx considered him calmly from the front seat. Wayne stared back through pulses of bright and dark, as if clouds were fleeting across the sun. But there was no sun today, and that throbbing brightness was in his head, behind his eyes. He was out on the extreme edge of shock, a place where time was different, moving in spurts, catching in place, then jumping forward again.
Wayne heard a sound, a long way off, an angry, urgent wail. For a moment he thought it was someone screaming, and he remembered Manx hitting his mother with his silver mallet, and he thought he might be sick. But as the sound approached them and intensified, he identified it as a police siren.
“She is right up and at them,” Manx said. “I have to give your mother credit. She does not delay when it comes to making trouble for me.”
“What will you do when the police see us?” Wayne asked.
“I do not think they will bother us. They are going to your mother’s.”
Cars ahead of them began to pull to either side of the road. A blue-silver strobe appeared at the top of a low hill ahead of them, dropped over the slope, and rushed toward them. The Wraith eased itself to the margin of the road and slowed down considerably but didn’t stop.
The police cruiser punched past them doing nearly sixty. Wayne turned his head to watch it go. The driver did not even glance at them. Manx drove on. Or, really, the car drove on. Manx still hadn’t touched the wheel. He had folded down the sun visor and was inspecting himself in the mirror.
The bright-dark flashes were coming more slowly now, like a roulette wheel winding down, the ball soon to settle on red or black. Wayne still felt no real terror, had left that behind in the yard with his mother. He picked himself up off the floor and settled on the couch.
“You should see a doctor,” Wayne said. “If you dropped me off somewhere in the woods, you could go to a doctor and get your ear and head fixed before I walked back to town or anyone found me.”
“Thank you for your concern, but I would prefer not to receive medical treatment in handcuffs,” Manx said. “The road will make me better. The road always does.”
“Where are we going?” Wayne asked. His voice seemed to come from a distance.
“Christmasland.”
“Christmasland,” Wayne repeated. “What’s that?”
“A special place. A special place for special children.”
“Really?” Wayne pondered this for a time, then said, “I don’t believe you. That’s just something to tell me so I won’t be scared.” He paused again, then decided to brave one more question. “Are you going to kill me?”
“I am surprised you even need to ask. It would have been easy to kill you back at your mother’s house. No. And Christmasland is real enough. It is not so easy to find. You cannot get to it by any road in this world, but there are other roads than the ones you will find on a map. It is outside of our world, and at the same time it is only a few miles from Denver. And then again it is right here in my head”—he tapped his right temple with one finger—“and I take it with me everywhere I go. There are other children there, and not one of them is held against his or her will. They would not leave for anything. They are eager to meet you, Wayne Carmody. They are eager to be your friend. You will see them soon enough—and when you finally do, it will feel like coming home.”
T
he blacktop thumped and hummed under the tires.
“The last hour has seen a lot of excitement,” Manx said. “Put your head down, child. If anything interesting happens, I will be sure to wake you.”
There was no reason to do a thing Charlie Manx told him, but before long, Wayne found he was on his side, his head resting on the plump leather seat. If there was any more peaceful sound in all the world than the road murmuring under tires, Wayne didn’t know what it was.
The roulette wheel clicked and clicked and stopped at last. The ball settled into black.
The Lake
VIC BREASTSTROKED INTO THE SHALLOWS, THEN CRAWLED THE LAST few feet up onto the beach. There she rolled onto her back, legs still in the lake. She shook furiously, in fierce, almost crippling spasms, and made sounds too angry to be sobs. She might’ve been crying. She wasn’t sure. Her insides hurt badly, as if she had spent a day and a night vomiting.
In a kidnapping nothing is more important than what happens in the first thirty minutes, Vic thought, her mind replaying something she had once heard on TV.
Vic did not think what she did in the next thirty minutes mattered at all, did not think any cop anywhere had the power to find Charlie Manx and the Wraith. Still, she shoved herself to her feet, because she needed to do what she could, whether it made a difference or not.
She walked like a drunk in a hard crosswind, swaying, following a wandering path to the back door, which is where she fell again. She went up the steps on hands and knees, used the railing to get to her feet. The phone began to ring. Vic forced herself onward, through another burst of lancing pain, sharp enough to drive the breath out of her.
She reeled through the kitchen, reached the phone, caught it on the third ring, just before it could go to voice mail.
“I need help,” Vic said. “Who is this? You have to help me. Someone took my son.”
“Aw, it’s okay, Ms. McQueen,” said the little girl on the other end of the line. “Daddy will drive safe and make sure Wayne has a real good time. He’ll be here with us soon. He’ll be here in Christmasland, and we’ll show him all our games. Isn’t that fine?”
Vic hit END CALL, then dialed 911.
A woman told her she had reached emergency services. Her voice was calm and detached. “What’s your name and the nature of your emergency?”
“Victoria McQueen. I’ve been attacked. A man has kidnapped my son. I can describe the car. They only just drove away. Please send someone.”
The dispatcher tried to keep the same tone of steady calm but couldn’t quite manage it. Adrenaline changed everything.
“How badly are you hurt?”
“Forget that. Let’s talk about the kidnapper. His name is Charles Talent Manx. He’s . . . I don’t know, old.” Dead, Vic thought but didn’t say. “In his seventies. He’s over six feet tall, balding, about two hundred pounds. There’s another man with him, someone younger. I didn’t see him too well.” Because he was wearing a fucking gasmask for some reason. But she didn’t say that either. “They’re in a Rolls-Royce Wraith, a classic, 1930s. My son is in the backseat. My son is twelve. His name is Bruce, but he doesn’t like that name.” And Vic began to cry, couldn’t help it. “He has black hair and is five feet tall and was wearing a white T-shirt with nothing on it.”
“Victoria, the police are en route. Was either of these men armed?”
“Yes. The younger one has a gun. And Manx has some kind of hammer. He hit me with it a couple times.”
“I’m dispatching an ambulance to see to your injuries. Did you happen to get the license plate?”
“It’s a fucking Rolls-Royce from the thirties with my little boy in the back. How many of those do you think are driving around?” Her voice snagged on a sob. She coughed it up and coughed up the license-plate tag as well: “En-o-ess-four-a-two. It’s a vanity plate. Spells a German word. Nosferatu.”
“What’s it mean?”
“What’s it matter? Look it the fuck up.”
“I’m sorry. I understand you’re upset. We’re sending out an alert now. We’re going to do everything we can to get your son back. I know you’re scared. Be calm. Please try to be calm.” Vic had a sense that the dispatcher was half talking to herself. There was a wavering tone in her voice, like the woman was struggling not to cry. “Help is on the way. Victoria—”
“Just Vic. Thank you. I’m sorry I swore at you.”
“It’s all right. Don’t worry about it. Vic, if they’re in a distinctive car like a Rolls-Royce, that’s good. That will stand out. They aren’t going to get far in a vehicle like that. If they’re anywhere on the road, someone will see them.”
But no one did.
WHEN THE EMTS TRIED TO ESCORT HER TO THE AMBULANCE, VIC ELBOWED free from them, told them to keep their fucking hands off.
A police officer, a small, portly Indian woman, inserted herself between Vic and the men.
“You can examine her here,” she said, leading Vic back to the couch. Her voice carried the lightest of accents, a lilt that made every statement sound both vaguely musical and like a question. “It is better if she doesn’t go. What if the kidnapper calls?”
Vic huddled on the couch in her wet cutoffs, wrapped in a throw. An EMT wearing blue gloves planted himself next to her and asked her to drop the blanket and remove her shirt. That got the attention of the cops in the room, who cast surreptitious glances Vic’s way, but Vic complied wordlessly, without a second thought. She slopped her wet shirt on the floor. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and she covered her breasts with one arm, hunching forward to let the EMT look at her back.
The EMT inhaled sharply.
The Indian police officer—her name tag read CHITRA—stood on Vic’s other side, looking down the curve of Vic’s back. She made a sound herself, a soft cry of sympathy.
“I thought you said he tried to run you over,” Chitra said. “You did not say he succeeded.”
“She’s going to have to sign a form,” said the EMT. “A thing that says she refused to get in the ambulance. I need to cover my ass here. She could have cracked ribs or a popped spleen and I could miss it. I want it on record that I don’t believe treating her here is in her best medical interest.”
“Maybe it’s not in my best medical interest,” Vic said, “but it is in yours.”
Vic heard a sound go around the room—not quite laughter but close to it, a low male ripple of mirth. There were by now six or seven of them in the room, standing around pretending not to look at her chest, the tattoo of a V-6 engine set above her breasts.
A cop sat on the other side of her, the first cop she had seen who wasn’t in uniform. He wore a blue blazer that was too short at the wrists, a red tie with a coffee stain on it, and a face that would’ve won an ugly contest walking away: bushy white eyebrows turning yellow at the tips, nicotine-stained teeth, a comically gourdlike nose, a jutting cleft chin.
He dug in one pocket, then another, then lifted his wide, flat rear and found a reporter’s notebook in his back pocket. He opened it, then stared at the pad with a look of utter bafflement, as if he had been asked to write a five-hundred-word essay on impressionist painting.
It was that blank look, more than anything else, that let Vic know he wasn’t The Guy. He was a placeholder. The person who would matter—the one who would be handling the search for her son, who would coordinate resources and compile information—wasn’t here yet.
She answered his questions anyway. He started in the right place, with Wayne: age, height, weight, what he’d been wearing, if she had a recent photo. At some point Chitra walked away, then returned with an oversize hoodie that said NH STATE POLICE on the front. Vic tugged it on. It came to her knees.
“The father?” asked the ugly man, whose name was Daltry.
“Lives in Colorado.”
“Divorced?”
“Never married.”
“How’s he feel about you having custody of the kid?”
“I don’t have custody. Wayne is just
—We’re on good terms about our son. It’s not an issue.”
“Got a number where we can reach him?”
“Yes, but he’s on a plane right now. He visited for the Fourth. He’s headed back this evening.”
“You sure about that? How do you know he boarded the plane?”
“I’m sure he had nothing to do with this, if that’s what you’re asking. We’re not fighting over our son. My ex is the most harmless and easygoing man you’ve ever met.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve met some pretty easygoing fellas. I know a guy up in Maine who leads a Buddhist-themed therapy group, teaches people about managing their temper and addictions through Transcendental Meditation. The only time this guy ever lost his composure was the day his wife served him with a restraining order. First he lost his Zen, then he lost two bullets in the back of her head. But that Buddhist-themed therapy group he runs sure is popular on his cell block in Shawshank. Lotta guys with anger-management issues in there.”
“Lou didn’t have anything to do with this. I told you, I know who took my son.”
“Okay, okay. I have to ask this stuff. Tell me about the guy who worked on your back. No. Wait. Tell me about his car first.”
She told him.
Daltry shook his head and made a sound that could’ve been a laugh, if it expressed any humor. Mostly what it expressed was incredulity.
“Your man ain’t too bright. If he’s on the road, I give him less than half an hour.”
“Before what?”
“Before he’s facedown in the fecking dirt with some state cop’s boot on his neck. You don’t grab a kid in an antique car and drive away. That’s about as smart as driving an ice-cream truck. Kind of stands out. People look. Everyone is going to notice a period Rolls-Royce.”
“It isn’t going to stand out.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
She didn’t know what she meant, so she didn’t say anything.
Daltry said, “And you recognized one of your assailants. This would be . . . Charles . . . Manx.” Looking at something he had scribbled in his notepad. “How would you know him?”