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“Oh. Okay,” he said. “I lost a tooth. A few teeth, actually! Mom, I love you! Everything is okay. I’m okay. We’re having fun!”

“Wayne. You’re not okay. He’s doing something to you. He’s getting in your head. You have to stop him. You have to fight him. He’s not a good man.”

Wayne felt a nervous flutter in his stomach. He moved his tongue over his new, bristling, hooklike teeth. “He’s buying me fireworks,” he said sullenly. He had been thinking about fireworks all morning, about punching holes in the night with rockets, setting the sky on fire. He wished it were possible to light clouds on fire. That would be a sight! Burning rafts of clouds falling from the sky, gushing black smoke as they went down.

“He killed Hooper, Wayne,” she said, and it was like being slapped in the face. Wayne flinched. “Hooper died fighting for you. You have to fight.”

Hooper. It felt as if he had not thought of Hooper in years. He remembered him now, though, his great sad, searching eyes staring out of his grizzled yeti face. Wayne remembered bad breath, warm silky fur, stupid cheer . . . and how he had died. He had chomped the Gasmask Man in the ankle, and then Mr. Manx—then Mr. Manx—

“Mom,” he said suddenly. “I think I’m sick, Mom. I think I’m all poisoned inside.”

“Oh, baby,” she said. She was crying again. “Oh, baby, you hold on. Hold on to yourself. I am coming.”

Wayne’s eyes stung, and for a moment the world blurred and doubled. It surprised him, to feel close to tears. He did not really feel sad after all; it was more like the memory of sadness.

Tell her something she can use, he thought. Then he thought it again, but slowly this time, and backward: Use. Something. Tell.

“I saw Gran’ma Lindy,” he blurted suddenly. “In a dream. She talked all scrambled up, but she was trying to say something about fighting him. Only it’s hard. It’s like trying to lift a boulder with a spoon.”

“Whatever she said, just do it,” his mother said. “Try.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I will. Mom. Mom, something else,” he said, his voice quickening with a sudden urgency. “He’s taking us to see—”

But Manx reached into the back of the car and snapped the phone out of Wayne’s hand. His long, scrawny face was flushed, and Wayne thought there was a vexed look in his eyes, as if he had lost a hand of cards he’d expected to win.

“Well, that is enough chitchat,” Mr. Manx said, in a cheery voice that did not match the glare in his eyes, and he slammed the door in Wayne’s face.

As soon as the door was closed, it was as if an electrical current had been cut. Wayne slumped back into the leather cushions, feeling tired, his neck stiff and his temples throbbing. He was upset, he realized. His mother’s voice, the sound of her crying, the memory of Hooper biting and dying, worried him and gave him a nervous tummy.

I am poisoned, he thought. Poisoned am I. He touched his front pocket, feeling the lump made by all the teeth he had lost, and he thought of radiation poisoning. I am being irradiated, he thought next. “Irradiated” was a fun word, a word that brought to mind giant ants in black-and-white movies, the kinds of films he used to watch with his father.

He wondered what would happen to ants in a microwave. He supposed they would just fry; it didn’t seem likely they would grow. But you couldn’t know without trying it! He stroked his little moon ornament, imagining ants popping like corn. There had been a vague notion in the back of his mind—something about trying to think in reverse—but he couldn’t hold on to it. It wasn’t fun.

By the time Manx got back into the car, Wayne was smiling again. He wasn’t sure how long it had been, but Manx had finished his phone call and gone into Shoot the Moon Fireworks. He had a slender brown paper bag, and poking out of the top of the bag was a long green tube in a single cellophane package. The labels on the side of the tube identified it as an AVALANCHE OF STARS—THE PERFECT ENDING TO THE PERFECT NIGHT!

Manx looked over the front seat at Wayne, his eyes protruding a little from his head, his lips stretched in a disappointed grimace.

“I have bought you sparklers and a rocket,” Manx said. “Whether we will use either of them is another question. I am sure you were about to tell your mother we are on our way to see Miss Maggie Leigh. That would’ve been spoiling my fun. I am not sure why I should go out of my way to provide you with a good time when you seem set on denying me my small pleasures.”

Wayne said, “I have a terrible headache.”

Manx shook his head furiously and slammed the door and tore out of the dusty lot, throwing a cloud of brown smoke. He was in a sulk for two or three miles, but not far from the Iowa border a fat hedgehog tried to waddle across the road, and the Wraith struck it with a loud thud. The sound was so noisy and unexpected that Wayne couldn’t help himself and yelped with laughter. Manx looked back and gave him a warm, begrudging smile, then put on the radio, and the two of them sang along to “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and everything was better.





The House of Sleep


MOM, SOMETHING ELSE. HE’S TAKING US TO SEE—” WAYNE SAID, but then there was a clatter, a thunk, and the loud thud of a slamming door.

“Well, that is enough chitchat,” Manx said, in his sunny, carnival barker’s voice. “The good little man has been through a lot lately. I wouldn’t like him to become overwrought!”