NOS4A2(110)

Lou was heaved on the bed like a beached manatee. When he spoke, he addressed the ceiling.

“Will you come stretch out with me for a while? Just . . . be here with me?”

She dropped the blinds and went to the bed. She put her leg over his legs and clasped herself to his side, as she had not done in years.

“You know that guy who looks like Mickey Rooney’s mean twin brother? Daltry? He said you were hurt.”

And she realized he hadn’t heard the story. No one had told him what had happened to her.

She told it again. At first she was only repeating what she told Hutter and the other detectives. Already the story had the quality of lines learned for a part in a play; she could recite them without thinking.

But then she told him about taking the Triumph for a short run and realized she didn’t have to leave out the part about the bridge. She could and should tell him about discovering the Shorter Way in the mist, because it had happened. Really happened.

“I saw the bridge,” she said quietly, lifting herself up to look into his face. “I rode onto it, Lou. I went looking for it, and there it was. Do you believe me?”

“I believed you the first time you told me about it.”

“You f*cking liar,” she said, but she couldn’t help smiling at him.

He reached out and put his hand on the swell of her left breast. “Why wouldn’t I believe you? It explained you better than anything. And I’m like that poster on the wall, in The X-Files: ‘I want to believe.’ Story of my life, lady. Go on. You rode across the bridge. Then what?”

“I didn’t ride across it. I got scared. Really scared, Lou. I thought it was a hallucination. That I was off my nut again. I slammed on the brake so hard that pieces came flying off the bike.”

She told him about turning the Triumph around and walking it off the bridge, her eyes shut and her legs shaking. She described how it had sounded in the Shorter Way, the shush and roar, as if she stood behind a waterfall. She said she knew it was gone when she couldn’t hear that sound anymore, and then it was a long walk back home.

Vic went on, telling how Manx and the other man were waiting for her, how Manx had come for her with his hammer. Lou was not a stoic. He flinched and twitched and cursed. When she told him about using the tappet key on Manx’s face, he said, “I wish’t you skullf*cked him with the thing.” She assured him she had tried her best. He thumped a fist into his own leg when she got to the part about the Gasmask Man shooting Manx in the ear. Lou listened with his whole body, a kind of quivering tautness in him, like a bow pulled to its limit, the arrow ready to fly.

He did not interrupt her, though, until she got to the part where she was running downhill for the lake, to escape them.

“That’s what you were doing when Wayne called,” he said.

“What happened to you at the airport? Really.”

“What I said. I got faint.” He rolled his head, as if to loosen his neck, then said, “The map. With the road to Christmasland. What is that place?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s not in our world, though. Right?”

“I don’t know. I kind of think . . . I kind of think it is our world. A version of it anyway. The version of it that Charlie Manx carries around in his head. Everyone lives in two worlds, right? There’s the physical world . . . but there’s also our own private inner worlds, the world of our thoughts. A world made of ideas instead of stuff. It’s just as real as our world, but it’s inside. It’s an inscape. Everyone has an inscape, and they all connect, too, in the same way New Hampshire connects to Vermont. And maybe some people can ride into that thought world if they have the right vehicle. A key. A car. A bike. Whatever.”

“How can your thought world connect to mine?”

“I don’t know. But . . . but, like, if Keith Richards dreams up a song and then you hear it on the radio, you’ve got his thoughts in your head. My ideas can get in your head just as easily as a bird can fly across the state line.”

Lou frowned and said, “So, like, somehow Manx drives kids out of the world of stuff and into his own private world of ideas. Okay. I can go with that. It’s weird, but I can go with it. So get back to your story. The guy wearing the gasmask had a gun.”

Vic told him about diving into the water, and the Gasmask Man shooting, and then Manx talking to her while she hid under the float. When she was done, she shut her eyes, nestled her face into Lou’s neck. She was exhausted—beyond exhausted, really, had traveled to some new precinct of weariness. The gravity was lighter in this new world. If she had not been tethered to Lou, she would’ve floated away.

“He wants you to come looking,” Lou said.

“I can find him,” she said. “I can find this House of Sleep. I told you. I rode to the bridge before I f*cked up the bike.”

“Probably threw the chain. You’re lucky you kept it shiny side up.”

She opened her eyes and said, “You have to fix it, Lou. You have to fix it tonight. As fast as you can. Tell Hutter and the police you can’t sleep. Tell them you need to do something to take your mind off things. People react to stress in strange ways, and you’re a mechanic. They won’t question you.”

“Manx tells you to come find him. What do you think he’s going to do to you when you do?”