by Joe Hill
“YOU TATTOOED CUNT!” Charlie Manx screamed, his voice echoing through the vast hollow space. “YOU TATTOOED HOOR!”
The bumper banged into the back of the Triumph. The Triumph careened to the right, and Vic’s shoulder slammed into the wall with such force she was almost torn off the saddle. The board shattered to show the furious white static beyond. The Shorter Way rumbled and shuddered.
“Bats, Mama,” Wayne said, his voice soft, the voice of a younger, smaller child. “Look at all the bats.”
The air filled with bats, shaken loose from the ceiling. They whirled and raced about in a panic, and Vic lowered her head and flew through them. One struck her in the chest, fell to her lap, flapped hysterically, took to the air again. Another brushed the side of her face with a felty wing. It was a soft, secret, feminine warmth.
“Don’t be afraid,” Vic told him. “They won’t hurt you. You’re Bruce Wayne! All the bats in here are on your side, kiddo.”
“Yes,” Wayne agreed. “Yes. I’m Bruce Wayne. I remember.” As if he had for a while forgotten. Perhaps he had.
Vic glanced back and saw a bat strike the windshield of the Wraith, with enough force to smash a white spiderweb into the glass, directly in front of Charlie Manx’s face. A second bat thwacked into the other side of the windshield, in a spray of blood and fur. It remained caught in one of the windshield wipers, frantically beating a shattered wing. A third and a fourth bat smacked into the glass, bouncing off, flying away into the dark.
Manx screamed and screamed, a sound not of fear but of frustration. Vic did not want to hear the other voice in the car, the child’s voice—“No, Daddy, too fast, Daddy!”—but she caught it all the same, sounds amplified and carrying in the enclosed space of the bridge.
The Wraith slipped off course, swung to the left, and the front bumper hit the wall and tore away a three-foot section to reveal the hissing white static on the other side, an emptiness beyond thought.
Manx pulled at the wheel, and the Wraith lurched across the bridge, over to the right, hit the other wall. The sound of boards splintering and snapping was like machine-gun fire. Boards burst and shattered beneath the car. A hail of bats drummed into the windscreen, caving it in. More bats followed, whirling in the cockpit, striking Manx and his child about the head. The little girl began to scream. Manx let go of the wheel, flailing at them.
“Get away! Get away from me you god-awful things!” he screamed. Then there were no words, and he was just screaming.
Vic hauled on the throttle, and the bike launched itself forward, rushing the length of the bridge, through the darkness boiling with bats. It raced toward the exit, doing fifty, sixty, seventy, taking off like a rocket.
Behind her the front end of the Wraith crashed through the floor of the bridge. The rear end of the Rolls-Royce lifted into the air. Manx slid forward, into his steering wheel, his mouth opening in a terrified howl.
“No!” Vic thought he screamed. Or maybe . . . maybe it was Snow!
The Wraith pitched forward into snow, into white roar, tearing the bridge apart as it went. The Shorter Way Bridge seemed to fold in the center, and suddenly Vic was racing uphill. It collapsed in toward the middle, either end rising, as if the bridge were trying to close itself like a book, a novel that had reached its ending, a story that reader and author alike were about to set aside.
NOS4A2 dropped through the decayed and rotting floor of the bridge, fell into the furious white light and buzzing static, plunged a thousand feet and twenty-six years, dropping through time to hit the Merrimack River in 1986, where it was crushed like a beer can as it slammed into the water. The engine block came straight back through the dashboard and buried itself in Manx’s chest, an iron heart that weighed four hundred pounds. He died with a mouth full of motor oil. The body of the child that had sat beside him was sucked out in the current and dragged nearly to Boston Harbor. When her corpse was discovered, four days later, she had several dead, drowned bats tangled in her hair.
Vic accelerated—eighty, ninety. Bats gushed out of the bridge around her into the night, all of them, all her thoughts and memories and fantasies and guilt: kissing Lou’s big, bare chest the first time she ever took off his shirt; riding her ten-speed in the green shade of an August afternoon; banging her knuckles on the carburetor of the Triumph as she worked to tighten a bolt. It felt good to see them fly, to see them set free, to be set free of them herself, to let go of all thought at last. The Triumph reached the exit and flew with them. She rode the night for a moment, the motorcycle soaring through the frozen dark. Her son held her tight.
The tires hit the ground with great force. Vic was thrown hard against the handlebars, and the twinge in her kidney became an agonized tearing sensation. Keep it shiny side up, she thought, slowing fast now, the front tire wobbling and shaking, the whole bike threatening to fling them off and go down with them. The engine screamed as the motorcycle slammed over the rutted ground. Vic had returned to the clearing in the woods where Charlie Manx had led them over into Christmasland. Grass whipped frantically against the sides of the bike.
She slowed and slowed and slowed, and the bike gasped and died. She coasted. At last the Triumph eased to a stop at the tree line, and she could safely turn her head and look back. Wayne looked with her, his arms still clenching her tightly, as if they were, even now, racing along at close to eighty miles an hour.
Across the field she saw the Shorter Way Bridge and a gusher of bats pouring out of it into the starry night. Then, almost gently, the entrance to the bridge fell backward—there was suddenly nothing behind it—and vanished before it hit the ground with a weak pop. A faint ripple spread out across the high grass.
The boy and his mother sat on the dead bike, staring. Bats shrilled softly in the dark. Vic felt very easy in her mind. She was not sure there was much of anything left in there now, except for love, and that was enough.
She drove her heel into the kick-starter. The Triumph sighed its regrets. She tried again, felt things tearing inside her, spit more blood. A third time. The kick-starter almost refused to go down, and the bike made no sound at all.
“What’s wrong with it, Mama?” Wayne asked in his new, soft, little-boy’s voice.
She wiggled the bike back and forth between her legs. It creaked gently but otherwise made no other sound. Then she understood, and laughed—a dry, weak laugh, but genuine.
“Out of gas,” she said.
COME ALL YE FAITHFUL
OCTOBER
Gunbarrel
WAYNE WOKE ON THE FIRST SUNDAY IN OCTOBER, TO THE CLASH OF church bells pealing down the block. His father was there, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“What were you dreaming?” his new, almost-thin father asked him.
Wayne shook his head.
“I don’t know. I don’t remember,” he lied.
“I thought maybe you were dreaming about Mom,” New Lou said. “You were smiling.”
“I guess I must’ve been thinking about something fun.”
“Something fun? Or something good?” New Lou asked, watching him with his curious New Lou eyes—inquisitive and bright. “Because they aren’t always the same.”
“I don’t remember anymore,” Wayne told him.
Better to say that than to say he’d been dreaming about Brad McCauley and Marta Gregorski and the other children in Christmasland. Not that it was Christmasland anymore. It was just The White now. It was just the furious white static of a dead channel, and the children ran in it, playing their games. Last night’s game had been called bite-the-smallest. Wayne could still taste blood. He moved his tongue around and around inside the sticky socket of his mouth. In his dream he’d had more teeth.
“I’m taking the tow,” Lou said. “Got a piece of work needs doing. You want to come with me? You don’t have to. Tabitha could stay here with you.”
“Is she here? Did she sleep over?”
“No! No,” Lou said. He seemed genuinely surprised by the idea. “I just
mean I could call her and have her come by.” His brow furrowed in concentration, and after a moment he went on, speaking more slowly. “I don’t think I’d feel okay about that right now: a sleepover. I think that would be strange . . . for everyone.”
Wayne thought the most interesting part of this statement was the “right now” part, implying that his father might feel okay about a sleepover with Ms. Tabitha Hutter at some later date, TBD.
Three nights ago they had all come out of a movie—they did that now sometimes, went to movies together—and Wayne had looked back in time to see his father take Tabitha Hutter by the elbow and kiss the corner of her mouth. The way she’d inclined her head and smiled slightly, Wayne understood that it was not their first kiss. It was too casual, too practiced. Then Tabitha had seen Wayne looking and slipped her arm free of Lou’s hand.
“It wouldn’t bother me!” Wayne said. “I know you like her. I like her, too!”
Lou said, “Wayne. Your mom . . . your mom was—I mean, saying she was my best friend doesn’t even begin to—”
“But now she’s dead. And you should be happy. You should have fun!” Wayne said.
Lou eyed him gravely—with a kind of sorrow, Wayne thought.
“Well,” Lou said. “I’m just saying, you can stay here if you want. Tabitha is right down the street. I can have her here in three minutes. You gotta love a babysitter who comes with her own Glock.”
“No. I’ll keep you company. Where did you say we’re going?”
“I didn’t,” Lou said.
TABITHA HUTTER CAME BY ANYWAY, UNANNOUNCED, BUZZING UP TO the apartment while Wayne was still in his pajamas. She did that on occasion, came by with croissants, which she said she would trade for coffee. She could’ve bought coffee, too, but she claimed she liked the way Lou made it. Wayne knew an excuse when he heard one. There wasn’t anything special about Lou’s coffee, unless you liked your brew with an aftertaste of WD-40.
She had transferred to the Denver office to assist in the ongoing McQueen investigation—a case in which no charges had been filed or ever would be filed. She had an apartment in Gunbarrel and usually ate with Lou and Wayne once a day, ostensibly to talk about what Lou knew. Mostly, though, they talked about Game of Thrones. Lou had finished reading the first book right before he went in for his angioplasty and his gastric bypass, which were performed at the same time. Tabitha Hutter was there when Lou woke up, the day after the surgery. She said she wanted to make sure he lived to read the rest of the series.
“Hey, kids,” Tabitha said. “You sneaking out on me?”
“There’s a job needs doing,” Lou said.
“On Sunday morning?”
“People fuck up their cars then, too.”
She yawned into the back of her hand, a small, frizzy-haired woman in a faded Wonder Woman T-shirt and blue jeans, no jewelry, no accessories whatsoever. Aside from the nine-millimeter strapped to her hip. “Okay. Make me a cup of coffee before we go?”
Lou half smiled at this but said, “You don’t have to come. This could take a while.”
She shrugged. “What else am I going to do with myself? Outlaws like to sleep in. I’ve been FBI for eight years, and I’ve never once had cause to shoot anyone before eleven in the morning. Not as long as I get my coffee anyway.”
LOU GOT A DARK ROAST BREWING AND WENT TO START THE TRUCK, Tabitha following him out the door. Wayne was alone in the hall, pulling on his sneakers, when the phone rang.
He looked at it sitting in its black plastic cradle on an end table just to his right. It was a few minutes past seven, early for a call—but maybe it was about the job they were getting ready to go off on. Maybe whoever had ditched his car was being helped by someone else. It happened.
Wayne answered.
The phone hissed: loud roar of white noise.
“Wayne,” said a breathy girl with a Russian accent. “When are you coming back? When are you coming back to play?”
Wayne couldn’t answer, his tongue sealed to the roof of his mouth, his pulse ticking in his throat. It wasn’t the first time they had called.
“We need you. You can rebuild Christmasland. You can think it all back. All the rides. All the shops. All the games. There’s nothing to play with here. You have to help us. With Mr. Manx gone, there’s only you.”
Wayne heard the front door open. He hit END. As Tabitha Hutter stepped into the hallway, he was setting the phone back in its cradle.
“Someone call?” she asked, a kind of calm innocence in her gray-green eyes.
“Wrong number,” Wayne said. “I bet the coffee is done.”
WAYNE WASN’T OKAY, AND HE KNEW IT. KIDS WHO WERE OKAY DID NOT answer phone calls from children who had to be dead. Kids who were okay didn’t dream dreams like his. But neither of these things—not the phone calls or the dreams—was the clearest indicator that he was Not Okay. No. What really marked him out as Not Okay was the way he felt when he saw a photo of a plane crash: charged, jolted by excitement and guilt, as if he were looking at pornography.
He had been out driving with his father the week before and had seen a chipmunk run in front of a car and get squashed, and he had barked with sudden surprised laughter. His father had snapped his head around and looked at Wayne with hollow-eyed wonder, had pursed his lips to speak but then said nothing—silenced perhaps by the ill look of shock and unhappiness on Wayne’s face. Wayne didn’t want to think it was funny, a little chipmunk zigging when it should’ve zagged, getting wiped out by someone’s Goodyear. That was the kind of thing that made Charlie Manx laugh. He just couldn’t help himself.
There was the time he saw a thing about genocide in the Sudan on YouTube and had discovered a smile on his own face.
There was a story about a little girl being kidnapped in Salt Lake City, a pretty twelve-year-old blond girl with a shy smile. Wayne had watched the news report in a state of rapt excitement, envying her.
There was his recurring sense that he had three extra sets of teeth, hidden somewhere behind the roof of his mouth. He ran his tongue around and around his mouth and imagined he could feel them, a series of little ridges right under the flesh. He knew now that he had only imagined losing his ordinary boy teeth, had hallucinated this under the influence of the sevoflurane, just as he had hallucinated Christmasland (lies!). But his memory of those other teeth was more real, more vivid, than the stuff of his everyday life: school, trips to the therapist, meals with his dad and Tabitha Hutter.
He felt sometimes that he was a dinner plate that had cracked down the middle and then been glued back together, and the two parts did not quite line up. One side—the part of the plate that marked his life before Charlie Manx—was microscopically out of true with the other part of the plate. When he stood back and looked at that crooked plate, he could not imagine why anyone would want to keep it. It was no good now. Wayne did not think this with any despair—and that was part of the problem. It had been a long time since he’d felt anything like despair. At his mother’s funeral, he had very much enjoyed the hymns.
The last time he saw his mother alive, they were rolling her on a gurney toward the back of an ambulance. The paramedics were in a hurry. She had lost a great deal of blood. They would eventually pump three liters into her, enough to keep her alive for the night, but they were too slow to deal with the perforated kidney and intestine, not aware that her system was boiling with her body’s own poisons.
He had jogged alongside her, holding her hand. They were in the gravel parking lot of a general store, down the road from the ruin of Manx’s lodge. Later Wayne would learn that his mother and father had held their very first conversation in that parking lot.
“You’re okay, kiddo,” Vic said to him. She was smiling, although her face was spattered with blood and filth. There was an oozing wound over her right eyebrow, and she had a breathing tube stuck up her nose. “Gold don’t come off. What’s good stays good, no matter how much of a beating it takes. You’re okay. You’ll always be okay.”
He knew what she was saying. She was saying he wasn’t like the children in Christmasland. She was saying he was still himself.
But Charlie Manx had said something different. Charlie Manx said blood didn’t come out of silk.
Tabitha Hutter had a first tentative sip of her coffee and glanced out the window over the kitchen sink. “Your dad has the truck out front. Grab a jacket in case it’s cold? We should go.”
“Let’s ride,” Wayne said.
THEY SQUEEZED TOGETHER INTO THE TOW TRUCK, WAYNE SITTING IN the middle. There was a time when all three of them wouldn’t have fit, but New Lou didn’t take up as much space as the old Lou. New Lou had a Boris Karloff–in–Frankenstein look, with gangly hanging arms and a collapsed stomach beneath the big barrel of his chest. He had Frankenstein scars to match, running up from under the collar of his shirt along the length of his neck and behind his left ear, where they had performed the angioplasty. In the wake of that and the gastric bypass, his fat had just melted away, like so much ice cream left in the sun. The most striking thing was his eyes. It didn’t make sense that losing weight should change his eyes, but Wayne was more aware of them now, more conscious of his father’s intense, questing gaze.
Wayne settled into place beside his dad, then sat up, to get away from something digging into his back. A hammer—not an autopsy mallet but just an ordinary carpenter’s hammer, the wooden handle worn. Wayne set it next to his father’s hip.
The tow truck climbed away from Gunbarrel, following switchbacks through old firs, rising steadily into a spotless blue sky. Down in Gunbarrel it was warm enough in the direct rays of the sun, but up here the tops of the trees swished restlessly in a chill breeze that smelled fragrantly of the turning aspens. The slopes were streaked with gold.
“And gold doesn’t come off,” Wayne whispered, but just look: Leaves were coming off all the time, whisking out across the road, sailing the breeze.