NOS4A2 A Novel

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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 f*ck 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.”

“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.”

The 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.