NOS4A2(137)

The Gasmask Man stood at her feet, pointing the valve down at her, holding the tank in both arms. She could hear the tank whispering to her, a long, deadly command to be silent: Shhh.

Her fingers touched a slab of metal, closed around it. She yanked her hand out of her pocket and held the lighter up between her and the Gasmask Man, as if it were a cross to ward off a vampire.

“Don’t make me,” she gasped, and tasted another mouthful of poison gingerbread smoke.

“Don’t make you what?” he said.

She flipped back the top of the lighter. The Gasmask Man heard it click, saw it for the first time, drew back a step.

“Hey,” he said, a note of warning in his voice. He took another step back, cradling the tank in his arms like a child. “Don’t! That isn’t safe! Are you crazy?”

Vic thumbed the steel gear. It made a harsh, scraping noise and spit a burst of white sparks, and for one miraculous moment it lit a ribbon of blue fire in the air. The flame unwound like a snake, the air burning, racing straight back at the tank. That faint white vapor, spraying from the valve, became a savage tongue of fire.

The sevoflurane tank was, briefly, a flamethrower with a short range, spraying flame from side to side as the Gasmask Man reeled away from Vic. He stumbled backward three more steps—inadvertently saving her life in the process. In the flaring light, Vic could read what it said on the side of the lighter:

KABLOOEY.

It was as if the Gasmask Man were pointing a rocket launcher at his chest and triggered it at point-blank range. It exploded through the bottom, a cannonade of white burning gas and shrapnel that lifted him off his feet and punched him back into the door. Three hundred liters of pressurized sevoflurane exploded all at once, turning the tank into a jumbo stick of TNT. Vic had no frame of reference for the sound it made, a great slam that felt like sewing needles stabbed into her eardrums.

The Gasmask Man struck the iron door almost hard enough to tear it off its track. Vic saw him crash into it through a blast of what seemed like pure light, the air glowing with a gassy brilliance that made half the room disappear for an instant in a blinding white flash. She instinctively lifted her hands to protect her face and saw the fine gold hairs on her bare arms crinkling and shriveling from the heat.

In the aftermath of the explosion, the world was changed. The room beat like a heart. Objects throbbed in time to the slamming of her pulse. The air was filled with a whirling golden smoke.

When she had entered the room, she’d seen shadows leaping up from behind the furniture. Now they were casting flashes of brightness. Like the tank of gas, they seemed to be trying to swell and erupt.

She felt a wet trickling on her cheek and thought it was tears, but when she touched her face, her fingertips came away red.

Vic decided she ought to go. She got up and took a step, and the room slewed violently to the left, and she fell back down.

She took a knee, just like they told you to do in Little League when someone was hurt. Burning scraps fell through the air. The room lurched to the right, and she lurched with it, onto her side.

The brightness jumped up from the cot, the sink, flashed around the edges of the doorway. She had not known that every object in the world could contain a secret core of both darkness and light, needing only a violent shock to reveal one or the other. With each thump of her heart, the brightness brightened. She could not hear any sound except the ragged working of her lungs.

She breathed deeply the perfume of burned gingerbread. The world was a bright bubble of light, doubling in size before her, swelling, straining, filling her vision, growing toward the inevitable—

Pop.





CHRISTMASLAND

JULY 7–9





The St. Nicholas Parkway


NORTH OF COLUMBUS, WAYNE CLOSED HIS EYES FOR A MOMENT, and when he opened them, the Christmas moon was sleeping in the night above and either side of the highway was crowded with snowmen who turned their heads to watch the Wraith pass.

The mountains rose before them, a monstrous wall of black stone at the edge of the world. The peaks were so high it looked as if the moon itself might get snagged among them.

In a fold a little below the highest part of the highest mountain was a basket of lights. It shone in the darkness, visible from hundreds of miles away, a great glowing Christmas ornament. The sight of it was so exciting that Wayne could hardly remain in his seat. It was a cup of fire, a scoop of hot coals. It throbbed, and Wayne throbbed with it.

Mr. Manx had one hand loose on the wheel. The road was so straight it could’ve been drawn with a ruler. The radio was on, and a boys’ choir sang “O Come All Ye Faithful.” In Wayne’s heart was an answer to their sacred invitation: We are on our way. We are coming as fast as we can. Save a little Christmas for us.

The snowmen stood in bunches, in families, and the breeze generated by the car snatched at their striped scarves. Snowmen fathers and snowgirl mothers with their snowchildren and snowpuppies. Top hats were in abundance, as were corncob pipes and carrot noses. They waved the crooked sticks of their arms, saluting Mr. Manx, Wayne, and NOS4A2 as they went by. The black coals of their eyes gleamed, darker than the night, brighter than the stars. One snowdog had a bone in his mouth. One snowdaddy held a mistletoe over his own head, while a snowmommy was frozen in the act of kissing his round white cheek. One snowchild stood between decapitated parents, holding a hatchet. Wayne laughed and clapped; the living snowmen were the most delightful thing he had ever seen. What foolishness they got up to!