NOS4A2 A Novel

The House of Sleep


BING’S YARD WAS FULL OF TINFOIL FLOWERS, BRIGHTLY COLORED and spinning in the morning sunlight.

The house was a little pink cake of a place, with white trim and nodding lilies. It was a place where a kindly old woman would invite a child in for gingerbread cookies, lock him in a cage, fatten him for weeks, and finally stick him in the oven. It was the House of Sleep. Wayne felt sleepy just watching the foil flowers spin.

Up the hill from Bing Partridge’s house was a church that had nearly burned to the ground. Almost nothing of it remained except for the front façade, with its high pointed steeple, tall white doors, and sooty stained-glass windows. The back side of the church was a caved-in debris field of charred rafters and blackened concrete. There was a sign out front, one of those boards with movable letters, so the pastor could let people know the service schedule. Someone had been fooling with the letters, though, had written a message that probably did not accurately represent the views of the congregation. It read:

THE NEW AMERICAN

FAITH TABERNACLE

GOD BURNED ALIVE

ONLY DEV1LS NOW

The wind rose in the huge old oaks, framing the parking lot around the scorched ruin of the church. Wayne could smell char, even with the windows rolled up.

NOS4A2 turned and eased up the driveway, toward a detached garage. Bing squirmed, digging in his pocket, and produced a remote control. The door rolled up, and the car rolled in.

The garage was a hollowed-out block of cement, cool and shady inside, with a smell of oil and iron. The metal odor came from the tanks. There were half a dozen green tanks in the garage—tall, rust-flecked cylinders with red stenciling on the side: FLAMMABLE and CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE and SEVOFLURANE. They were lined up like soldiers of some alien robot army awaiting inspection. Beyond the rows was a narrow staircase climbing to a second-floor loft.

“Oh, boy, time for breakfast,” Bing said. He looked at Charlie Manx. “I will make you the best breakfast you ever ate. Cross my heart and hope to die. The best. Just say what you want.”

“I want some time alone, Bing,” Manx said. “I want some time to rest my head. If I am not very hungry, it is probably because I am full up with all your prattle. Now, there are a lot of empty calories.”

Bing shrank. His hands crept toward his ears.

“Do not cover your ears and pretend you cannot hear me. You have been an utter disaster.”

Bing’s face wrinkled. His eyes shut. He began, hideously, to cry. “I could just shoot myself!” he cried.

“Oh, that is a lot of foolishness,” Manx said. “Anyway, you would most likely miss and put the bullet in me.”

Wayne laughed.

He surprised all of them, including himself. It had been like sneezing, a completely involuntary reaction. Manx and Bing looked into the backseat at him. Bing’s eyes streamed, his fat, ugly face distorted with misery. Manx, though—Manx watched Wayne with a kind of wondering amusement.

“You shut up!” Bing screamed. “Don’t you laugh at me! I’ll cut your face off! I’ll get my scissors and cut you all to pieces!”

Manx had the silver hammer in his hand, and he thumped it into Bing’s chest, pushing him back at his door.

“Hush,” Manx said. “Any child will laugh at the antics of a clown. It is perfectly natural.”

For a moment it flashed into Wayne’s mind how funny it would be if Manx had poked the hammer into Bing’s face and busted his nose. In his mind Bing’s nose popped like a water balloon filled with red Kool-Aid, an image so hilarious he almost laughed again.

A part of Wayne, a very distant, quiet part, wondered how he could find anything funny. Maybe he was still muddled up from the gas that Bing Partridge had sprayed at him. He had slept all night but did not feel rested. He felt ill and drained and warm. Warm most of all: He was boiling in his own skin, wished for a cool shower, a cool dip in the lake, a cool mouthful of snow.

Manx glanced sidelong at Wayne one more time and winked. Wayne flinched, his stomach doing a slow cartwheel.

This man is poison, he thought, and then said it to himself again, only in reverse. Poison is man this. And, having composed this odd, stilted, backward phrase, Wayne felt oddly, curiously better about himself, although he couldn’t have said exactly why.

“If you are feeling domestic, you could make a rasher of bacon for the growing young man. I am sure he would like that.”

Bing lowered his head and wept.

“Go on,” Manx said. “Go and be the crybaby in your kitchen where I don’t have to listen to it. I will deal with you soon enough.”

Bing let himself out and closed the door and walked past the car toward the driveway. As he went by the rear windows, he cast a hating look at Wayne. Wayne had never seen anyone look at him that way, like they genuinely wished to kill him, to strangle him to death. It was funny. Wayne almost burst out laughing again.

Wayne exhaled, slowly, unsteadily, did not want to be thinking any of the things he was thinking. Someone had unscrewed a jar of black moths, and they were fluttering around wildly inside his head now, a whirl of ideas: fun ideas. Fun like a broken nose or a man shooting himself in the head.

“I prefer to drive at night,” Charlie Manx said. “I am a night person at heart. Everything that is good in the day is even better in the night. A merry-go-round, a Ferris wheel, a kiss from a girl. Everything. Besides. When I turned eighty-five, the sunlight began to bother my eyes. Do you need to go winkie-wee?”

“You mean . . . go pee?”

“Or make chocolate cake?” Manx asked.

Wayne laughed again—a sharp, loud bark—then clapped a hand over his mouth as if he could swallow it back.

Manx watched him with bright, fascinated, unblinking eyes. Wayne did not think he had seen him blink once in all the time they had been together.

“What are you doing to me?” Wayne asked.

“I am driving you away from all the things that ever made you unhappy,” Manx said. “And when we get where we are going, you will have left your sadness behind. Come. There’s a bathroom here in the garage.”

He got out from behind the wheel, and in the same moment the door on Wayne’s right unlocked itself, the lock popping up with such a loud bang that Wayne flinched.

Wayne had been planning to run as soon as he had his feet under him, but the air was damp and hot and burdensome. It stuck to him, or maybe he was stuck to it, like a fly caught on flypaper. He got just one step, and then Manx had a hand on the back of his neck. His grip was not painful or rough, but it was firm. He effortlessly turned Wayne around, away from the open garage door.

Wayne’s gaze caught and held on the rows of battered green tanks, and he frowned. SEVOFLURANE.

Manx followed Wayne’s stare, and one corner of his mouth lifted in a knowing smile. “Mr. Partridge has a job with the custodial staff of a chemical plant three miles from here. Sevoflurane is a narcotic and anesthetic, much in demand by dentists. In my day the dentist would anesthetize his patients—even children—with brandy, but sevoflurane is considered far more humane and effective. Sometimes tanks are reported damaged, and Bing takes them out of commission. Sometimes they are not as damaged as they appear.”

Manx steered Wayne toward a flight of stairs that led to the second floor of the garage. Beneath the steps was a partly open door.

“Can I bend your ear for a moment, Wayne?” Manx asked.

Wayne pictured Manx grabbing his left ear and wrenching it until Wayne screamed and fell to his knees. Some awful, submerged part of himself also found this funny; at the same time, the skin on the back of his neck beneath Manx’s gaunt hand went crawly and strange.

Before he could reply, Manx went on. “I am puzzled about some things. I am hoping you can clear up a mystery for me.”

With his other hand, he reached beneath his greatcoat and produced a folded sheet of paper, dirty and stained. He unfolded it and held it in front of Wayne’s face.

BOEING ENGINEER VANISHES

“A woman with absurdly colored hair turned up at your mother’s house the other day. I am sure you remember her. She had a folder full of stories about me. Your mother and this lady made quite a scene in your mother’s yard. Bing told me all about it. You will be surprised to know that Bing saw the whole thing from the house across the street.”

Wayne frowned, wondered how Bing had been able to watch from across the street. The de Zoets lived over there. An answer suggested itself. It wasn’t funny in the slightest.

They reached the door under the stairs. Manx pulled the knob and opened it to reveal a little half bathroom under a slanted roof.

Manx reached for a chain hanging from a bare lightbulb and pulled it, but the room remained dark.

“Bing is letting this place go to the dogs. I will leave the door open to allow you a little light.”

He nudged Wayne into the dim bathroom. The door remained ajar about half a foot, but the old man stepped aside to give Wayne his privacy.

“How does your mother happen to know this peculiar lady, and why would they be talking about me?”

“I don’t know. I never saw her before.”

“You read the news stories she brought, though. Stories about me, most of them. I would like to tell you, the news reports about my case are full of the most outrageous libels. I have never killed a single child. Not one. And I am no kiddie fiddler either. The fires of hell are not hot enough for such people. Your mother’s visitor did not seem to think I was dead. That is a remarkable notion to have, considering that the papers widely reported upon not only my demise but also my autopsy. Why do you think she had so much faith in my continued survival?”

“I don’t know that either.” Wayne stood there holding his prick, unable to pee. “My mother said she was a crazy person.”

“You are not ‘having me on’ are you, Wayne?”

“No, sir.”

“What did this woman with the curious hair say about me?”

“My mother sent me inside the house. I didn’t hear any of it.”

“Oh, you are telling me a tall one now, Bruce Wayne Carmody.” But he didn’t say it like he was angry about it. “Are you having difficulties with your fiddlestick?”

“My what?”

“Your winkie. Your peepee?”

“Oh. Maybe a little.”

“It is because we are talking. It is never easy to tinkle when someone is listening to you. I will move three steps away.”

Wayne heard Manx’s heels rapping on the concrete as he moved off. Almost immediately Wayne’s bladder let go, and the urine rained down.

As he peed, he let out a long sigh of relief and tipped back his head.

There was a poster above the toilet. It showed a naked woman on her knees, with her hands tied behind her. Her head was stuffed into a gasmask. A man in a Nazi uniform stood over her, holding a leash, the collar around her neck.

Wayne shut his eyes, pushed his fiddlestick—no, penis, “fiddlestick” was a grotesque word—back into his shorts, and turned away. He washed his hands in a sink with a cockroach clinging to the side. As he did, he was relieved to discover he had not found anything funny about that awful poster.

It’s the car. It’s being in the car that makes everything seem funny, even when it’s awful.

As soon as he had this thought, he knew it was true.

He stepped out of the bathroom, and Manx was there, holding the door open to the backseat of the Wraith. In his other hand was the silver mallet. He grinned to show his stained teeth. Wayne thought he might be able to run as far as the driveway before Manx smashed his head in.

“Tell you what,” Manx said. “I would really like to know more about your mother’s confidante. I am sure if you put your mind to it, you will remember some details you have forgotten. Why don’t you sit in the car and turn it over in your mind? I will go and get your breakfast. By the time I come back, perhaps something will have occurred to you. What do you say to that?”

Wayne shrugged, but his heart surged at the thought of being alone in the car. The phone. He only needed a minute alone to call his father and tell him everything: Sugarcreek, Pennsylvania; pink house, right down the hill from a burned church. The cops would be here before Manx got back with his bacon and eggs. He climbed into the car willingly, without hesitation.

Manx shut the door and knocked on the glass. “I will be back in a jiffy! Don’t run away!” And he laughed as the lock banged down.

Wayne knelt on the seat to watch through the rear window as Manx left. When the old man had disappeared into the back of the house, Wayne turned, dropped to the floor, grabbed the walnut drawer beneath the driver’s seat, and yanked it open to get his phone.

Gone.





Bing’s Garage


SOMEWHERE A DOG BARKED AND A LAWN MOWER STARTED AND THE world went on, but here in the Rolls-Royce the world had caught in place, because the phone was gone.

Wayne pulled the drawer all the way out and put his hand in it, patting down the baize interior, as if the phone might be hiding under the drawer lining somehow. He knew he was not mistaken and that this was the drawer he had put it in, but he closed it and looked in the other drawer, beneath the passenger seat. It was just as empty.

“Where are you?” Wayne cried, although he already knew. While he had been washing his hands, Manx had climbed into the backseat and collected the phone himself. He was probably walking around with it in the pocket of his greatcoat right this instant. Wayne felt like crying. He had built a delicate cathedral of hope, deep inside him, and Manx had stepped on it, then lit it on fire. GOD BURNED ALIVE, ONLY DEV1LS NOW.

It was stupid—pointless—but Wayne went back and opened the first drawer again, for another look.

There were Christmas ornaments in it.

They had not been there a moment ago. A moment before, the drawer had been absolutely empty. Now, though, the drawer contained an enamel angel with tragic drooping eyes, a great silver snowflake dusted in glitter, and a sleeping blue moon in a Santa Claus cap.

“What is this?” Wayne said, hardly aware he was speaking aloud.

He lifted each out in turn.

The angel hung from a golden loop, turning gently, blowing her horn.

The snowflake looked deadly, a weapon, a ninja’s throwing star.

The moon smiled at his own private musings.

Wayne returned the ornaments to the drawer where he had discovered them and gently pushed the drawer shut.

Then: opened it again.

Empty once more.

He exhaled a frustrated, fuming breath and slammed the drawer, whispering furiously, “I want my phone back.”

Something clicked in the front seat. Wayne looked up in time to see the glove compartment fall open.

His phone sat on a stack of road maps.

Wayne stood in the backseat. He had to hunch, with the back of his head pressed to the ceiling, but it could be done. He felt as if he had just seen a bit of sleight of hand; a magician had passed a palm over a bouquet of flowers and transformed them into his iPhone. Mingled with his sense of surprise—astonishment, even—was an ill tickle of dismay.

The Wraith was teasing him.

The Wraith or Manx—Wayne had a notion that they were the same thing, that the one was an extension of the other. The Wraith was a part of Manx like Wayne’s right hand was a part of him.

Wayne stared at his phone, already knowing he had to try to get it, already knowing that the car had some way of keeping it from him.

But never mind the phone; the driver’s-side door was unlocked, nothing stopping him from getting out of the car and making a run for it. Nothing except that the last three times he had tried to climb into the front seat, he had somehow wound up in the back again.

He had been drugged then, though. The Gasmask Man had sprayed him with gingerbread smoke, and it had blurred his thoughts. He could hardly pick himself up off the floor. No wonder he kept falling into the backseat. The real wonder was that he had hung on to consciousness as long as he had.

Wayne lifted his right hand, preparing to reach across the divider, and noticed at that moment that he was still holding the Christmas ornament in the shape of the moon. He had, in fact, been rubbing his thumb along its smooth, sickle-shaped curve for a full minute now: a thoughtless gesture that he found curiously soothing. He blinked at it, briefly befuddled—he could’ve sworn he’d put all three ornaments back in their drawer.

That moon, Wayne noticed now, with its plump cheeks and big nose and long eyelashes, somewhat resembled his own father. He put it in his pocket, then lifted his hand once more and reached over the divider, in the direction of the glove compartment.

As his fingers crossed into the front seat, they dwindled. His fingertips became fleshy nubs that ended at the first knuckle. When he saw it happening, his shoulders jumped in a nervous reflex, but he did not pull back his hand. It was grotesque but also somehow fascinating.

He could still feel the ends of his fingers. He could rub his fingertips together, feel the leathery pad of his thumb stroking the end of his index finger. He just couldn’t see them.

Wayne reached farther over the divider, pushed his whole hand across the invisible barrier. His arm dwindled to a smooth pink stump, a painless amputation. He opened and closed a fist he couldn’t see. It was there; he could feel his hand was there. He just wasn’t sure where there was.

He reached a little farther, in the general direction of the glove compartment and his phone.

Something poked him in the back. At the same moment, the fingers of his invisible right hand struck something solid.

Wayne turned his head to look behind him.

An arm—his arm—stretched out of the seat behind him. It didn’t look as if it had torn through the seat but as if it had grown from it. The hand at the end of the arm was skin. So was the wrist. But close to the seat, the flesh darkened and roughened and became worn old beige leather, stretching out from the seat itself, putting visible strain on the fabric around it.

The natural thing to do would’ve been to scream, but Wayne was all screamed out. He made a fist with his right hand. The hand growing from the backseat clenched its fingers. It made his stomach go all funny, controlling a disembodied arm that had sprouted from a seat cushion.

“You should try thumb wrestling with yourself,” Manx said.

Wayne jumped, and in his alarm he pulled his right arm back. The disembodied limb protruding from the seat went away, was inhaled back into the leather, and in the next instant was attached to his shoulder again, where it belonged. Wayne clasped the hand against his chest. His heart rapped swiftly beneath it.

Manx was bent to peer in through the rear driver’s-side window. He grinned to show his crooked, protruding upper teeth.

“There is plenty of fun to be had in the back of this old car! You could not find more fun on four wheels!”

He had a plate in one hand, scrambled eggs and bacon and toast. In the other was a glass of orange juice.

“You will be glad to know there is nothing whatsoever healthy about this meal! It is all butter and salt and cholesterol. Even the orange juice is bad for you. It is actually something called ‘orange drink.’ I have never taken a vitamin in my life, though, and I have lived to a very advanced age. Happiness will do more for you than any wonder drug the apothecaries can invent!”

Wayne sat down on the rear couch. Manx opened the door, leaned in, and offered him the plate and the juice. Wayne noticed he had not been provided with a fork. Manx might carry on as if they were best friends, but he was not about to provide his passenger with a stabby weapon . . . a simple, perfectly clear reminder that Wayne was not a pal but a prisoner. Wayne took the plate—and then Manx climbed into the backseat to sit beside him.

Manx had said that hell was not too hot for the sort of men who fiddled with children, but Wayne readied himself, expected to be touched now. Manx would reach between Wayne’s legs, ask him if he ever played with his fiddlestick.

When Manx made his move, Wayne was ready to fight, and lose, and be molested. He would throw his breakfast at the guy. He would bite.

It wouldn’t matter. If Manx wanted to pull Wayne’s pants down and do . . . do whatever—he would do it. He was bigger. It was that simple. Wayne would do his best to live through it. He would pretend his body belonged to someone else and would think about the avalanche he had seen with his father. He would imagine being buried in snow with a kind of quiet relief. Someday he would be buried somewhere (sooner rather than later, he thought), and it wouldn’t matter anymore what Manx had done to him. He just hoped his mother never found out. She was so unhappy already, had fought so hard not to be crazy, not to be drunk, he couldn’t stand to imagine he would be the source of any more pain for her.

But Manx did not touch him. He sighed and stretched out his legs.

“I see you have already picked an ornament to hang up when we arrive at Christmasland,” Manx said. “To mark your passage into that world.”

Wayne glanced at his right hand and was surprised to see he was holding that sleepy moon again, running his thumb over the curve of it. He had no memory of taking it from his pocket.

“My daughters brought little angels to mark the end of their journey,” Manx said in a distant, musing voice. “Take care of it, Wayne. Guard it as if it were your own life!”

He clapped Wayne on the back and nodded toward the front of the car. Wayne followed his gaze . . . and saw that he was looking at the open glove compartment. At the phone.

“Did you really think you were going to hide something from me?” Manx asked. “Here in this car?”

It didn’t seem like the kind of question that required an answer.

Manx crossed his arms tightly over his chest, almost as if giving himself a hug. He was smiling to himself. He didn’t look angry at all.

“Hiding something in this car is as bad as putting it in the pocket of my coat. I am bound to notice. Not that I can blame you for trying! Any boy would try. You should eat those eggs. They will get cold.”

Wayne found himself struggling not to cry. He threw his moon on the floor.

“Here! Here! Do not be sad! I can’t stand for any child to be unhappy! Would it make you feel better to talk to your mother?”

Wayne blinked. A single tear splatted on a greasy piece of bacon. The thought of hearing his mother’s voice set off a small explosion inside Wayne’s body, a throb of need.

He nodded.

“Do you know what would make me feel better? If you told me about this woman who brought all the news stories to your mother. If you will scratch my back, I will scratch yours!”

“I don’t believe you,” Wayne whispered. “You won’t call her. No matter what I do.”

Manx looked over the divider, into the front seat.

The glove compartment snapped shut with a loud clack! It was so surprising that Wayne almost dumped his plate of eggs.

The drawer beneath the front driver’s seat slid open all by itself, almost without sound.

The phone rested in it.

Wayne stared at it, his breathing shallow, effortful.

“I have not told you a lie yet,” Manx said. “But I understand that you would be reluctant to trust me. Here is the thing: You know I will not give you the phone if you don’t tell me about your mother’s visitor. I will put it on the floor of this garage and back my car over it. That will be fun! To be honest, I think cell phones were invented by the devil. Now, think if you did tell me what I want to know. One way or another, you will have learned something important. If I do not let you call your mother, you will have learned I am a big fat liar and you will never have to trust me again about anything. But if I do let you call her, then you will know I am as good as my word.”

Wayne said, “But I don’t know anything about Maggie Leigh that you don’t know.”

“Well, now you have told me her name. See! The learning process has already begun.”

Wayne cringed, feeling he had just committed an unforgivable betrayal.

“Ms. Leigh said something that frightened your mother. What was it? Tell me and I will let you call your mother right this instant!”

Wayne opened his mouth, not sure what he was going to say, but Manx stopped him. He grabbed his shoulder then and gave it a gentle squeeze.

“Do not go making up stories, Wayne! Our deal is off if you are not straight with me from the get-go! Twist the truth even a little and you will regret it!”

Manx reached down and plucked a piece of bacon off the plate. One of Wayne’s teardrops glistened on it, a bright, oily gem. Manx bit off half and began to chew, teardrop and all.

“Well?” Manx asked.

“She said you were on the move,” Wayne said. “That you were out of jail and that Mom had to watch out. And I guess that’s what frightened my mother.”

Manx frowned, chewing slowly, his jaw moving in an exaggerated way.

“I didn’t hear anything else. Really.”

“How did your mother and this woman know each other?”

Wayne shrugged. “Maggie Leigh said she met my mother when she was a kid, but my mom said she had never met her before.”

“And which of them do you think was telling the truth?” Manx asked.

That one caught Wayne off guard, and he was slow to reply. “My . . . mother.”

Manx swallowed his bite of bacon and beamed. “See. That was easy. Well. I am sure your mother will be glad to hear from you.” He began to lean forward to reach for the phone—then sank back into his seat. “Oh! There is one more thing. Did this Maggie Leigh say anything about a bridge?”

Wayne’s whole body seemed to pulse in reaction to this question; a kind of tingling throb surged through him, and he thought, Don’t tell him that.

“No,” he said, before he had time to think. His voice went thick and choked, as if his lie were a piece of toast that had momentarily jammed in his throat.

Manx turned a sly, sleepy smile upon him. His eyelids sank to half-mast. He began to move, putting one foot out the open door, rising to go. At the same time, the drawer with the phone in it came to life, slamming shut with a loud bang.

“I mean yes!” Wayne cried, grabbing him by the arm. The sudden movement upset the plate in his lap, turning it over, dumping eggs and toast on the floor. “Yes, all right! She said she had to find you again! She asked if she could still use the bridge to find you!”

Manx paused, half in, half out of the car, Wayne’s grip still on his forearm. He stared down at Wayne’s hand with that look of dreamy amusement.

“I thought we agreed you were going to tell the truth from the get-go.”

“I did! I just forgot for a moment! Please!”

“You forgot, all right. You forgot to tell me the truth!”

“I’m sorry!”

Manx didn’t seem upset at all. He said, “Well. It was a momentary lapse. Maybe I can still allow a phone call. But I am going to ask you one more question, and I want you to think before you answer. And when you do answer, I want you to tell me the truth, so help you God. Did Maggie Leigh say anything about how your mother would get to this bridge? What did she say about the bike?”

“She . . . she didn’t say anything about the bike! No, I swear!” Because Manx had started to pull his arm free. “I don’t think she knew anything about the Triumph!”

Manx hesitated. “The Triumph?”

“Mom’s motorcycle. You remember. The one she was pushing up the road. She’s been fixing it for weeks. She works on it all the time, even when she should be sleeping. Is that the bike you mean?”

Manx’s eyes had assumed a cool, remote quality. His face softened. He bit his lower lip with his little teeth. It was an expression that made him look feebleminded.

“Huh! Your mother is trying to build a new ride. So she can do it again. So she can find me. You know, I wondered if she might be getting up to her old tricks as soon as I saw her pushing that motorcycle! And this Maggie Leigh—I imagine she has a ride of her own. Or she at least knows about those who travel on the other roads. Well. I have some more questions, but I am better off putting them to Ms. Leigh directly.” Manx’s hand slipped into the pocket of his greatcoat, drew out the photocopied news story about Nathan Demeter, and turned the sheet of paper so Wayne could look at it. Manx tapped the header on the old stationery:

HERE PUBLIC LIBRARY

HERE, IOWA

“And Here is where to look for her!” Manx said. “It is a good thing it is on the way!”

Wayne was breathing rapidly, as if he had just run a very long distance. “I want to call my mom.”

“No,” Manx said, and jerked his arm free. “We had a deal. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. My ears are still stinging from that whopper you tried to slip by me! That was too bad. You will learn soon enough that it is pretty hard to pull the wool over my eyes!”

“No!” Wayne screamed. “I told you everything you wanted to know! You promised! You said I’d have one more chance.”

“I said maybe I would allow a phone call if you told me the truth about your mother’s bike. But you didn’t know anything, and anyway, I did not say I would allow this phone call today. I think we will have to wait until tomorrow. I think if you have to wait until tomorrow, you will learn a very valuable lesson: No one likes a big fibber, Wayne!”

He shut the door. The lock banged down.

“No!” Wayne screamed again, but Manx had already turned away, was walking across the garage, weaving between the tall green gas tanks toward the stairs to the loft. “No! It’s not fair!”

Wayne dropped off the seat, onto the floor. He grabbed the brass handle of the drawer with his phone in it and pulled, but it didn’t budge, might as well have been nailed shut. He put one foot on the back of the divider between the front and the rear compartment and threw all his weight backward. His sweat-slippery hands came right off the handle, and he fell back into the seat.

“Please!” Wayne screamed. “Please!”

At the bottom of the stairs, Manx looked back at the car. There was an expression of weary tragedy on his face. His eyes were damp with sympathy. He shook his head, although whether in refusal or simply as a gesture of disappointment, it was impossible to tell.

He pressed a button on the wall. The automatic garage door rumbled down. He flipped a switch and turned out the lights before going upstairs and left Wayne alone in the Wraith.