NOS4A2 A Novel

The House of Sleep


SHE DID NOT FEEL HURT; SHE WAS NOT IN PAIN. PAIN WOULD COME LATER.

Nor did it seem to her that she woke up, that there was ever a single moment of rising to awareness. Instead the parts of her began, reluctantly, to fit themselves back together. It was long, slow work, as long and slow as fixing the Triumph had been.

She remembered the Triumph before she even remembered her own name.

Somewhere a phone rang. She heard it clearly, the brash, old-fashioned rattle of a hammer on a bell, once, twice, three times, four. The sound called her back to the world but was gone by the time she knew she was awake.

The side of her face was wet and cool. Vic was on her stomach, on the floor, head turned to the side, cheek in a puddle. Her lips were dry and cracked, and she could not remember ever being so thirsty. She lapped at the water and tasted grit and cement, but the puddle was cool and good. She licked her lips to moisten them.

There was a boot near her face. She could see the black rubber waffling on the sole and a dangling shoelace. She had been seeing this boot off and on for an hour now, registering it for a moment, then forgetting about it as soon as she closed her eyes again.

Vic could not say where she was. She supposed she should get up and find out. She thought there was a good chance that the carefully fitted-together fragments of herself would collapse once more into glittering powder when she tried, but she didn’t see any way around it. She sensed that no one would be coming to check on her anytime soon.

She had been in an accident. On the motorcycle? No. She was in a basement. She could see the stained concrete walls, the surface flaking away to show stone behind. She could make out a faint basement odor as well, partly obscured by other smells: a strong reek of seared metal and a whiff of fecal matter, like an open latrine.

She got her hands under her and pushed herself up to her knees.

It didn’t hurt as bad as she thought it would. She felt aches in her joints, in the small of her back, in her ass, but they were like the aches caused by flu, not like the aches of shattered bones.

When she saw him, it came back to her, all of it, in a single piece. Her escape from Lake Winnipesaukee, the bridge, the ruined church, the man named Bing who had tried to gas her and rape her.

The Gasmask Man was in two pieces, connected by a single fatty string of gut. The top half of him was out in the hall. His legs were just inside the door, his boots close to where Vic had been sprawled.

The metal tank of sevoflurane had shattered, but he still held the pressure regulator that had been attached to the top, and some of the tank was attached to that—a helmet-shaped dome of twisted metal spikes. He was the thing that smelled like the ruptured septic tank, probably because his internal septic tank had in fact ruptured. She could smell his bowels.

The room looked skewed, knocked crooked. Vic felt dizzy taking it all in, as if she had sat up too quickly. The bed had been flipped over, so she could see the underside of it, the springs and legs. The sink had come away from the wall, hung at a forty-five-degree angle above the floor, supported only by a pair of pipes, which had come loose from their braces. Water bubbled from a cracked joint, pooling upon the floor. Vic thought if she had dozed a while longer, there was an excellent chance she could’ve drowned.

It took some doing to get to her feet. Her left leg didn’t want to unbend, and when it did, she felt a stab of pain intense enough to cause her to draw a sharp breath through clenched teeth. The kneecap was bruised in shades of green and blue. She didn’t dare put much weight on it, suspected it would fold under any real pressure.

Vic took a last look around the room, a visitor to a grubby exhibit in some museum of suffering. No, nothing else to see here. Let’s move along, folks. We have some fabulous pieces to examine in the next room.

She stepped between the Gasmask Man’s legs and then over him, being careful not to snag a foot on that low gut-string trip wire. The sight of it was so unreal she couldn’t feel ill.

Vic maneuvered around the top half of his body. She didn’t want to look at his face and kept her eyes averted while she moved past him. But before she had gone two steps back the way she’d come, she couldn’t help herself and glanced over her shoulder.

His head was turned to the side. The clear eyewindows showed staring, shocked eyes. The respirator had been punched backward to fill his open mouth, a gag made of melted black plastic and charred fiber.

She made her way down the hall. It was like crossing the deck of a boat beginning to capsize. She kept drifting to her right and putting a hand against the wall to steady herself. Only there was nothing wrong with the hallway. Vic herself was the boat in danger of rolling over, sinking back down into a churning darkness. She forgot to go easy once and let her weight settle on the left leg. The knee immediately folded, and she threw out an arm, grabbing for something to support her. Her hand closed on the bust of Jesus Christ, his face charred and bubbled on one side. The bust sat atop a bookshelf crammed with pornography. Jesus grinned at her lewdly, and when she drew her hand away, it was streaked with ash. GOD BURNED ALIVE ONLY DEV1LS NOW.

She would not forget about the left leg again. A thought occurred to her, random, not even entirely intelligible: Thank God it’s a British bike.

At the base of the stairs, her feet caught on a mound of garbage bags, a plastic-wrapped weight, and she tipped forward and fell into it—for the second time. She’d landed on this same mass of garbage bags when the Gasmask Man had knocked her down the stairs; they had cushioned her fall and quite likely saved her from shattering her neck or skull.

It was cold and heavy but not entirely stiff. Vic knew what was under the plastic, knew by the sharp raised edge of hip and the flat plane of chest. She did not want to see or know, but her hands tore at the plastic anyhow. The corpse wore a Glad-bag shroud, held tightly shut by duct tape.

The smell that gushed out was not the odor of decay but worse in some ways: the cloying fragrance of gingerbread. The man beneath was slim and had probably been handsome once. He hadn’t decomposed so much as mummified, his skin shriveling and yellowing, the eyes sinking back into his sockets. His lips were parted as if he had died in the middle of uttering a cry, although that might’ve been an effect of his flesh tightening and drawing back from his teeth.

Vic exhaled; it sounded curiously like a sob. She put her hand on the man’s cold face.

“I’m sorry,” Vic said to the dead man.

She couldn’t fight it, had to cry. She had never been what anyone would call a crying woman, but in some moments tears were the only reasonable response. To weep was a kind of luxury; the dead felt no loss, wept for no one and nothing.

Vic stroked the man’s cheek again and touched a thumb to his lips, and that was when she saw the sheet of paper, mashed up and shoved into his mouth.

The dead man looked at her pleadingly.

Vic said, “Okay, friend,” and plucked the paper out of the dead man’s mouth. She did it without any disgust. The dead man had faced a bad end here, had faced it alone, had been used, and hurt, and discarded. Whatever the dead man had wanted to say, Vic wanted to listen, even if she was too late for it to do any good.

The note was written in smudged pencil, with a shaky hand. The scrap of paper was a torn shred of Christmas wrapping.

My head is clear enuff to write. Only time in days. The essentials:

• I am Nathan Demeter of Brandenburg, KY

• Was held by Bing Partridge

• Works for a man named Manks

• I have a daughter, Michelle, who is beautiful and kind. Thank God the car took me, not her. Make sure she reads the following:

I love you girl. He can’t hurt me too bad because when I close my eyes I see you.

It is all right to cry but don’t give up on laughter.

Don’t give up on happiness.

You need both. I had both.

Love you kid—your father

Vic read it while sitting against the dead man and was careful not to cry on it.

After a time she swiped at her face with the backs of her hands. She looked up the stairs. The thought of how she had come down them produced a brief but intense sensation of dizziness. It amazed her that she had gone down them and lived. She had come down a lot quicker than she was going to go up. The left knee was throbbing furiously now, stabs of white pain shooting from it in rhythm with her pulse.

She thought she had all the time in the world to make it up the stairs, but halfway to the top the phone began to ring again. Vic hesitated, listening to the brash clang of hammer on bell. Then she began to hop, clutching the handrail and hardly touching her left foot to the floor. I’m a little Dutch girl, dressed in blue. Here are the things I like to do, sang a piping little-girl voice in her mind, chanting a hopscotch song that Vic had not thought of in decades.

She reached the top step and went through the door into blinding, overpowering sunlight. The world was so bright it made her woozy. The phone rang again, going off for the third or fourth time. Pretty soon whoever was calling would quit.

Vic grabbed for the black phone, hanging from the wall just to the right of the basement door. She held the doorframe in her left hand, realized only absently that she was still holding the note from Nathan Demeter. She put the receiver to her ear.

“My Lord, Bing,” said Charlie Manx. “Where have you been? I have been calling and calling. I was beginning to worry you had done something rash. It is not the end of the world, you know, that you are not coming with me. There may be another time, and meanwhile there are many things you can do for me. For starters you can fill me in on the latest news about our good friend Ms. McQueen. I heard a news report a while ago that she rode away from her little cottage in New Hampshire and vanished. Has there been any word of her since? What do you think she’s been up to?”

Vic swallowed air, exhaled slowly.

“Oh, she’s been all kinds of busy,” Vic said. “Most recently she’s been helping Bing redecorate his basement. I felt like it needed some color down there, so I painted the walls with the motherf*cker.”


MANX WAS SILENT JUST LONG ENOUGH FOR VIC TO WONDER IF HE HAD hung up. She was about to say his name, find out if he was still there, when he spoke again.

“Good gravy,” he said again. “Do you mean to tell me poor Bing is dead? I am sorry to hear it. We parted on unhappy terms. I feel bad about that now. He was, in many ways, a child. He did some awful things, I suppose, but you cannot blame him! He did not know any better!”

“Shut up about him. You listen to me. I want my son back, and I’m coming to get him, Manx. I’m coming, and you don’t want to be with him when I find him. Pull over. Wherever you are, pull over. Let my boy out at the side of the road, unhurt. Tell him to wait for me and that Mom will be there before he knows it. Do that and you don’t have to worry about me looking for you. I’ll let you slide. We’ll call it even.” She didn’t know if she meant it, but it sounded good.

“How did you get to Bing Partridge’s, Victoria? That is what I want to know. Was it like in Colorado that time? Did you go there on your bridge?”

“Is Wayne hurt? Is he all right? I want to talk to him. Put him on.”

“People in hell want ice water. You answer my questions and we’ll see if I answer yours. Tell me how you got to Bing’s and I will see what I can do.”

Vic trembled furiously, the beginnings of shock settling in. “You tell me first if he’s alive. God help you if he isn’t. If he isn’t, Manx, if he isn’t, what I did to Bing is nothing compared to what I’ll do to you.”

“He is well. He is a perfect little ray of sunshine! You get that, and that’s all you get for now. Tell me how you arrived at Bing’s. Was it on your motorbike? It was a bicycle in Colorado. But I suppose you have a new ride now. And did your new ride take you to your bridge? Answer me and I’ll let you speak to him.”

She tried to decide what to say, but no lie would come to mind, and she wasn’t sure it would change a damn thing if he knew. “Yeah. I crossed the bridge, and it took me here.”

“So,” Manx said. “You’ve got yourself a mean set of wheels. You’ve got a bike with an extra gear, is that it? But it didn’t take you to me. It took you to the House of Sleep. Now, I think there is a reason for that. I’ve got a ride with a few extra gears in it myself, and I know something about how they work. These things do have their quirks.” He paused, then said, “You told me to pull over and leave your son by the side of the road. You said you would be there before he knows it. The bridge can only take you to a fixed point, is that it? That would make sense. It’s a bridge, after all. The two ends have to rest on something, even if it is just resting on two fixed ideas.”

“My son,” she said. “My son. I want to hear his voice. You promised.”

“Fair is fair,” Charlie Manx said. “Here he is, Vic. Here is the little man himself.”





Shoot the Moon Fireworks, Illinois


IN THE DUSTY BRIGHT OF EARLY AFTERNOON, MR. MANX SWUNG THE Wraith off the road and into the dooryard of a fireworks warehouse. The place advertised itself with a sign that showed an engorged and furious moon with a rocket jammed in one eye, bleeding fire. Wayne laughed just to see it, laughed and squeezed his moon ornament.

The shop was a single long building with a wooden hitching post out front for horses. It came to Wayne then that they were back out west, where he had lived most of his life. Places up north had hitching posts out front sometimes, if they wanted to look rustic, but when you got out west, you sometimes saw piles of dry horseshit not far from posts like that; that was how you knew you were back in cowboy country. Although a lot of cowboys rode ATVs and listened to Eminem these days.

“Are there horses in Christmasland?” Wayne asked.

“Reindeer,” Manx said. “Tame white reindeer.”

“You can ride them?”

“You can feed them right out of your hand!”

“What do they eat?”

“Whatever you offer them. Hay. Sugar. Apples. They are not fussy eaters.”

“And they’re all white?”

“Yes. You do not see them very often, because they are so hard to pick out against the snow. There is always snow in Christmasland.”

“We could paint them!” Wayne exclaimed, excited by the thought. “Then they would be easier to see.” He had been having a lot of exciting thoughts lately.

“Yes,” Manx said. “That sounds like fun.”

“Paint them red. Red reindeer. As red as fire trucks.”

“That would be festive.”

Wayne smiled at the thought of it, of a tame reindeer patiently standing in place while he ran a paint roller over it, coloring him a bright candy-apple red. He ran his tongue over his prickly new teeth, mulling the possibilities. He thought when he got to Christmasland, he would drill a hole in his old teeth, put a string through them, and wear them as a necklace.

Manx leaned to the glove compartment and opened it and removed Wayne’s phone. He had been using it off and on all morning. He was, Wayne knew, calling Bing Partridge and not getting an answer. Mr. Manx never left a message.

Wayne looked out the window. A man was coming out of the fireworks place with a bag in one arm. He held the hand of a blond-haired little girl skipping along beside him. It would be funny to paint a little girl bright red. To take her clothes off and hold her down and paint her wriggling, tight little body. To paint all of her. To paint her right, you would want to shave off all that hair of hers. Wayne wondered what a person could do with a bag full of blond hair. There had to be something fun you could do with it.

“My Lord, Bing,” Mr. Manx said. “Where have you been?” Opening his door and climbing out of the car to stand in the lot.

The girl and her father climbed into his pickup, and the truck backed out across the gravel. Wayne waved. The little girl saw him and waved back. Wow, she had great hair. You could make a rope four feet long out of all that smooth, golden hair. You could make a silky golden noose and hang her with it. That was a wild idea! Wayne wondered if anyone had ever been hanged with their own hair.

Manx was on the phone for a while in the parking lot. He paced, and his boots raised chalk clouds in the white dust.

The lock popped up on the door behind the driver’s seat. Manx opened it and leaned in.

“Wayne? Do you remember yesterday I said if you were good, you could talk to your mother? I would hate for you to think Charlie Manx doesn’t know how to keep his word! Here she is. She would like to hear how you are doing.”

Wayne took the phone.

“Mom?” he said. “Mom, it’s me. How are you?”

There was hiss and crackle, and then he heard his mother’s voice, choked with emotion. “Wayne.”

“I’m here. Can you hear me?”

“Wayne,” she said again. “Wayne. Are you okay?”

“Yeah!” he said. “We stopped for fireworks. Mr. Manx is buying me some sparklers and maybe a bottle rocket. Are you all right? You sound like you’re crying.”

“I miss you. Mama needs you back, Wayne. I need you back, and I’m coming to get you.”

“Oh. Okay,” he said. “I lost a tooth. A few teeth, actually! Mom, I love you! Everything is okay. I’m okay. We’re having fun!”

“Wayne. You’re not okay. He’s doing something to you. He’s getting in your head. You have to stop him. You have to fight him. He’s not a good man.”

Wayne felt a nervous flutter in his stomach. He moved his tongue over his new, bristling, hooklike teeth. “He’s buying me fireworks,” he said sullenly. He had been thinking about fireworks all morning, about punching holes in the night with rockets, setting the sky on fire. He wished it were possible to light clouds on fire. That would be a sight! Burning rafts of clouds falling from the sky, gushing black smoke as they went down.

“He killed Hooper, Wayne,” she said, and it was like being slapped in the face. Wayne flinched. “Hooper died fighting for you. You have to fight.”

Hooper. It felt as if he had not thought of Hooper in years. He remembered him now, though, his great sad, searching eyes staring out of his grizzled yeti face. Wayne remembered bad breath, warm silky fur, stupid cheer . . . and how he had died. He had chomped the Gasmask Man in the ankle, and then Mr. Manx—then Mr. Manx—

“Mom,” he said suddenly. “I think I’m sick, Mom. I think I’m all poisoned inside.”

“Oh, baby,” she said. She was crying again. “Oh, baby, you hold on. Hold on to yourself. I am coming.”

Wayne’s eyes stung, and for a moment the world blurred and doubled. It surprised him, to feel close to tears. He did not really feel sad after all; it was more like the memory of sadness.

Tell her something she can use, he thought. Then he thought it again, but slowly this time, and backward: Use. Something. Tell.

“I saw Gran’ma Lindy,” he blurted suddenly. “In a dream. She talked all scrambled up, but she was trying to say something about fighting him. Only it’s hard. It’s like trying to lift a boulder with a spoon.”

“Whatever she said, just do it,” his mother said. “Try.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I will. Mom. Mom, something else,” he said, his voice quickening with a sudden urgency. “He’s taking us to see—”

But Manx reached into the back of the car and snapped the phone out of Wayne’s hand. His long, scrawny face was flushed, and Wayne thought there was a vexed look in his eyes, as if he had lost a hand of cards he’d expected to win.

“Well, that is enough chitchat,” Mr. Manx said, in a cheery voice that did not match the glare in his eyes, and he slammed the door in Wayne’s face.

As soon as the door was closed, it was as if an electrical current had been cut. Wayne slumped back into the leather cushions, feeling tired, his neck stiff and his temples throbbing. He was upset, he realized. His mother’s voice, the sound of her crying, the memory of Hooper biting and dying, worried him and gave him a nervous tummy.

I am poisoned, he thought. Poisoned am I. He touched his front pocket, feeling the lump made by all the teeth he had lost, and he thought of radiation poisoning. I am being irradiated, he thought next. “Irradiated” was a fun word, a word that brought to mind giant ants in black-and-white movies, the kinds of films he used to watch with his father.

He wondered what would happen to ants in a microwave. He supposed they would just fry; it didn’t seem likely they would grow. But you couldn’t know without trying it! He stroked his little moon ornament, imagining ants popping like corn. There had been a vague notion in the back of his mind—something about trying to think in reverse—but he couldn’t hold on to it. It wasn’t fun.

By the time Manx got back into the car, Wayne was smiling again. He wasn’t sure how long it had been, but Manx had finished his phone call and gone into Shoot the Moon Fireworks. He had a slender brown paper bag, and poking out of the top of the bag was a long green tube in a single cellophane package. The labels on the side of the tube identified it as an AVALANCHE OF STARS—THE PERFECT ENDING TO THE PERFECT NIGHT!

Manx looked over the front seat at Wayne, his eyes protruding a little from his head, his lips stretched in a disappointed grimace.

“I have bought you sparklers and a rocket,” Manx said. “Whether we will use either of them is another question. I am sure you were about to tell your mother we are on our way to see Miss Maggie Leigh. That would’ve been spoiling my fun. I am not sure why I should go out of my way to provide you with a good time when you seem set on denying me my small pleasures.”

Wayne said, “I have a terrible headache.”

Manx shook his head furiously and slammed the door and tore out of the dusty lot, throwing a cloud of brown smoke. He was in a sulk for two or three miles, but not far from the Iowa border a fat hedgehog tried to waddle across the road, and the Wraith struck it with a loud thud. The sound was so noisy and unexpected that Wayne couldn’t help himself and yelped with laughter. Manx looked back and gave him a warm, begrudging smile, then put on the radio, and the two of them sang along to “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and everything was better.