NOS4A2(142)

Wayne nodded and thoughtfully tugged one of his upper teeth out of his mouth. He poked his tongue at the hole where it had been, the blood oozing in a warm trickle. He could feel a new tooth, beginning to protrude where the old one had been, although it felt less like a tooth, more like a small fishing hook.

He put the lost tooth in the pocket of his shorts, with the others. He had lost five teeth in the thirty-six hours he had been in the Wraith. He wasn’t worried about it. He could feel rows and rows of small new teeth coming in.

“Later, you know, my wife accused me of being a vampire, just like you,” Manx said. “She said I was like the fiend in that first movie we saw together, the German picture. She said I was draining the life out of our two daughters, feeding off them. But here it is, so many years later, and my daughters are still going strong, happy and young and full of fun! If I were trying to drain the life out of them, I guess I did a poor job of it. For a few years there, my wife made me so unhappy I was about ready to kill her and me and the children, too, just to be done with it. But now I can look back and laugh. Have a peek at my license plate sometime. I took my wife’s horrid ideas about me and made a joke out of them. That is the way to survive! You have to learn to laugh, Wayne. You have to keep finding ways to have fun! Do you think you can remember that?”

“I think so,” Wayne said.

“This is all right,” Manx told him. “Two guys driving together at night! This is just fine. I don’t mind saying you are better company than that Bing Partridge. At least you do not feel the need to make a foolish song out of everything.” In a shrill, piping voice, Manx sang, “I love you, I love me, I love playing with my winkie-wee!” He shook his head. “I have had a number of long trips with Bing, and each was longer than the last. You cannot imagine what a relief it is to be with someone who is not always singing foolish songs or asking foolish questions.”

“Can we get something to eat soon?” Wayne asked.

Manx slapped the wheel and laughed. “I guess I spoke too quickly—because if that is not a foolish question, it is close to it, young Master Wayne! You were promised some sweet-potato fries, and by God I mean for you to have them. I have brought over a hundred children to Christmasland in the last century, and I have not starved one to death yet.”

The diner of the fabled sweet-potato fries was another twenty minutes west, an installation of chrome and glass set in a parking lot the size of a football field. Sodium-vapor lights on thirty-foot-high steel poles lit the blacktop as bright as day. The lot was crowded with eighteen-wheelers, and through the front windows Wayne could see that every stool along the bar was occupied, as if it were twelve noon and not twelve at night.

The whole country was on the watch for an old man and a child in an antique Rolls-Royce Wraith, but not one person in the diner looked outside and took note of them, and Wayne was not surprised. He had by now accepted that the car could be seen but not noticed. It was like a channel on TV that was broadcasting static—everyone skipped right over it. Manx parked up front, nose-in to the side of the building, and it did not once occur to Wayne to try jumping or screaming or banging on the glass.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Manx said, and winked at Wayne before he climbed out of the car and made his way inside.

Wayne could see through the windscreen and into the diner, and he watched Manx weave through the crowd bunched around the front counter. The TVs above the bar showed cars zooming around a racetrack; then the president behind a podium, waving his finger; then an icy blonde speaking into a microphone while she stood in front of a lake.

Wayne frowned. The lake looked familiar. The picture cut, and suddenly Wayne was looking at the rental house on Winnipesaukee, cop cars parked along the road out front. There in the diner, Manx was watching the TV, too, his head tilted back to see.

The picture cut again, and Wayne saw his mother coming out of the carriage house on the Triumph. She wasn’t wearing a helmet, and her hair whipped behind her, and she rode straight at the camera. The cameraman couldn’t get out of the way in time. His mother sideswiped him as she sped past. The falling camera offered a whirling view of sky, grass, and gravel before hitting the ground.

Charlie Manx walked briskly out of the diner, got behind the wheel, and NOS4A2 glided back onto the road.

His eyes were filmed over, and the corners of his mouth were pinched in a hard, disagreeable frown.

“I guess we’re not going to have those sweet-potato fries,” Wayne said.

But if Charlie Manx heard him, he gave no sign.





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.