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Wayne understood now that getting to go to Christmasland was better than going to Hogwarts Academy, or Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, or the Cloud City in Star Wars, or Rivendell in Lord of the Rings. Not one child in a million was allowed into Christmasland, only kids who truly needed. It was impossible to be unhappy there, in that place where every morning was Christmas morning and every evening was Christmas Eve, where tears were against the law and children flew like angels. Or floated. Wayne was unclear on the difference.

He knew something else: His mother hated Mr. Manx because he wouldn’t take her to Christmasland. And if she couldn’t go, she didn’t want Wayne to go either. The reason his mother drank so much was because getting smashed was the closest a person could ever get to feeling the way you felt when you were in Christmasland—even though a bottle of gin was as different from Christmasland as a dog biscuit was from filet mignon.

His mother had always known that someday Wayne would get to go to Christmasland. That was why she couldn’t stand to be around him. That was why she ran away from him for all those years.

He didn’t want to think about it. He would call her as soon as he got to Christmasland. He would tell her he loved her and that everything was all right. He would call her every day if he had to. It was true she sometimes hated him, that she hated being a mother, but he was determined to love her anyway, to share his happiness with her.

“Cold?” Manx cried, snapping Wayne’s thoughts back to the here and now. “You worry like my Aunt Mathilda! Go on. Roll the window down. Besides. I know you, Bruce Wayne Carmody. You are thinking serious thoughts, aren’t you? You are a serious little fellow! We need to cure you of that! And we will! Dr. Manx prescribes a mug of peppermint cocoa and a ride on the Arctic Express with the other kids. If you are still feeling in a glum mood after that, then there is no hope for you. Come on and roll down the window! Let the night air in to blow away the gloomies! Don’t be an old lady! It is like I am driving somebody’s grandmother instead of a little boy!”

Wayne turned to roll down the window, but when he did, he got a nasty surprise. His grandmother, Linda, sat next to him. He had not seen her for months. It was hard to visit with relatives when they were dead.

She was still dead now. She sat in a hospital johnny, untied so he could see her skeletal bare back when she leaned forward. She was sitting on the good beige leather seats with her bare ass. Her legs were scrawny and terrible, very white in the darkness, crawling with old black varicose veins. Her eyes were hidden behind a pair of shiny, silver, newly minted half-dollars.

Wayne opened his mouth to scream, but Grammy Lindy lifted her finger to her lips. Shhh.

“.down it slow can you ,reverse in think you If .Wayne ,truth the from away you driving He’s,” she warned him gravely.

Manx cocked his head, as if listening for a noise he didn’t like under the hood. Lindy had spoken clearly enough for Manx to hear her, but he didn’t look all the way around, and his expression suggested he thought he had heard something but wasn’t sure.

The sight of her was bad enough, but the nonsense she spoke—nonsense that hovered maddeningly on the edge of meaning—sent a shock of fright through Wayne. The coins over her eyes flashed.

“Go away,” he whispered.

“.himself for youth your keep and behind soul your leave He’ll .snap you until ,band rubber a like out you stretch He’ll .soul own your from away you drive He’ll,” Grammy Lindy explained, pressing a cold finger into his breastbone every now and then for emphasis.

He made a thin whining sound in the back of his throat, recoiling from her touch. At the same time, he found himself struggling to make sense out of her gravely recited gibberish. He’ll snap you—he got that. Band rubber? No, that had to be rubber band. There it was. She was saying things backward, and on some level Wayne understood that this was why Mr. Manx could not quite hear her in the front seat. He could not hear her because he was going forward and she was running in reverse. He tried to remember what else she had said, to see if he could untangle her dead-woman syntax, but it was already fading away from him.

Mr. Manx said, “Roll down the window, little boy! Do it!” His voice suddenly hard, not as friendly as it had been before. “I want you to grab some of that sweetness for yourself! Hurry now! We are almost to a tunnel!”

But Wayne couldn’t roll down the window. To do so would have required him to reach past Lindy, and he was afraid. He was as afraid of her as he had ever been of Manx. He wanted to cover his eyes so he wouldn’t have to see her. He took short little gasping breaths, a runner on the last lap—and his exhalations smoked, as if it were cold in the back of the car, although it didn’t feel cold.

He peered into the front seat for help, but Mr. Manx had changed. He was missing his left ear—it was tatters of flesh, little crimson strings swinging against his cheek. His hat was missing, and the head it had covered was now bald and lumpy and spotted, with just a few silver threads combed across it. A great flap of loose red skin hung from his brow. His eyes were gone, and where they had been were buzzing red holes—not bloody sockets but craters containing live coals.

Beside him the Gasmask Man slept on in his crisp uniform, smiling like a man with a full belly and warm feet.

Through the windshield Wayne could see they were approaching a tunnel bored into a wall of rock, a black pipe leading into the side of the hill.