NOS4A2(132)

Something made a fluttering sound in among the rafters. Vic inhaled deeply and smelled bats: a musty animal smell, wild and pungent.

All those times she had crossed the bridge, not once had it been the fantasy of an emotionally disturbed woman. That was a confusion of cause and effect. She had been, at moments in her life, an emotionally disturbed woman because of all those times she had crossed the bridge. The bridge was not a symbol, maybe, but it was an expression of thought, her thoughts, and all the times she had crossed it had stirred up the life within. Floorboards had snapped. Litter had been disturbed. Bats had woken and flown wildly about.

Just inside the entrance, written in green spray paint, were the words THE HOUSE OF SLEEP →.

She put the bike into first and bumped the front tire up onto the bridge. She did not ask herself if the Shorter Way was really there, did not wonder if she was easing into a delusion. The issue was settled. Here it was.

The ceiling above was carpeted in bats, their wings closed around them to hide their faces, those faces that were her own face. They squirmed restlessly.

The boards went ka-bang-bang-bang under the tires of the bike. They were loose and irregular, missing in places. The whole structure shook from the force and weight of the bike. Dust fell from the beams above in a trickling rain. The bridge had not been in such disrepair when she last rode through. Now it was crooked, the walls visibly tilting to the right, like a corridor in a fun house.

She passed a gap in the wall, where a board was missing. A flurry of luminous particles snowed past the narrow slot. Vic eased almost to a stop, wanted a closer look. But then a board under the front tire cracked with a sound as loud as a gun firing, and she felt the wheel drop two inches. She grabbed the throttle, and the bike jumped forward. She heard another board snap under the back tire as she lunged ahead.

The weight of the bike was almost too much for the old wood. If she stopped, the rotted boards might give way beneath her and drop her into that . . . that . . . whatever that was. The chasm between thought and reality, between imagining and having, perhaps.

She couldn’t see what the tunnel opened onto. Beyond the exit she saw only glare, a brightness that hurt her eyes. She turned her face away and spied her old blue-and-yellow bicycle, its handlebars and spokes hung with cobwebs. It was dumped against the wall.

The front tire of her motorcycle thumped over the wooden lip and dropped her out onto asphalt.

Vic glided to a stop and put her foot down. She shaded her eyes with one hand and peered about.

She had arrived at a ruin. She was behind a church that had been destroyed by fire. Only its front face remained, giving it the look of a movie set, a single wall falsely suggesting a whole building behind it. There were a few blackened pews and a field of smoked and shattered glass, strewn with rusting beer cans. Nothing beside remained. A sun-faded parking lot, boundless and bare, stretched away, lone and level, as far as she could see.

She banged the Triumph into first and took a ride around to the front of what she assumed was the House of Sleep. There she halted once more, the engine rumbling erratically, hitching now and then.

There was a sign out front, the sort with letters on clear plastic cards, that could be shifted around to spell different messages; it seemed more like the kind of sign that belonged in front of a Dairy Queen than in front of a church. Vic read what was written there, and her body crawled with chill.

THE NEW AMERICAN

FAITH TABERNACLE

GOD BURNED ALIVE

ONLY DEV1LS NOW

Beyond was a suburban street, slumbering in the stuporous heat of late day. She wondered where she was. It might still be New Hampshire—but no, the light was wrong for New Hampshire. It had been clear and blue and bright there. It was hotter here, with oppressive clouds mounded in the sky, dimming the day. It felt like thunderstorm weather, and in fact, as she stood there straddling the bike, she heard the first rumbling detonation of thunder in the distance. She thought that in another minute or two it might begin to pour.

She scanned the church again. There were a pair of angled doors set against the concrete foundation. Basement doors. They were locked with a heavy chain and a bright brass lock.

Beyond, set back in the trees, was a sort of shed or barn, white with a blue-shingled roof. The shingles were fuzzed with moss, and there were even some weeds and dandelions growing right from the roof. There was a large barn door at the front, big enough to admit a car, and a side door with just one window. A sheet of paper was taped up inside the glass.

There, she thought, and when she swallowed, her throat clicked. He’s in there.

It was Colorado all over again. The Wraith was parked inside the shed, and Wayne and Manx were sitting in it, waiting out the day.

The wind lifted, hot, roaring in the leaves. There was another sound as well, somewhere behind Vic, a kind of frantic, mechanical whirring, a steely rustle. She looked down the road. The closest house was a well-kept little ranch, painted strawberry pink with white trim so it resembled a Hostess snack cake, the ones with coconut on them. Sno Balls, Vic thought they were called. The lawn was filled with those spinning tinfoil flowers that people stuck in their yards to catch the wind. They were going crazy now.

A stubby, ugly retiree was out in his driveway, holding a pair of garden shears, squinting up at her. Probably a neighborhood-watch type, which meant if she wasn’t dealing with a thunderstorm in five minutes, she would be dealing with the cops.

She rode the bike to the edge of the lot, then switched it off, left the keys in it. She wanted to be ready to go in a hurry. She looked again at the shed, standing to one side of the ruin. She noticed, almost as an afterthought, that she had no spit. Her mouth was as dry as the leaves rustling in the wind.