NOS4A2(160)

Tires whined shrilly on the asphalt. Her paralysis broke. Or maybe she had never been paralyzed. Maybe her muscles and nerves—the meat and wiring—had always understood what the conscious mind didn’t want to know, that it was already too late to get out of the way. She bolted across the lot, toward Wayne, some unformed, absurd notion in her head that she could get to him, pull him into the woods, into safety. She crossed in front of the Wraith. An icy light rose around her. The engine roared. She glanced sidelong, thinking, Please let me be ready, and the car was there, the grille so close that her heart seemed to fill her mouth. He was not aiming the Rolls at her but instead rushing up alongside and past her. He had one hand on the wheel and was stretching his upper body out the open window. The wind sucked his black hair back from his high, bare brow. His eyes were wide and avid with hilarity, and there was a look of triumphant joy stamped across his face. In his right hand, he held a silver hammer as big as God.

She did not feel the mallet connect with the back of her neck. There was a sound, like she had stepped on a lightbulb, a pop and a crack. She saw a flash, a white, brilliant blink of light. Her fedora whirled away like a tossed Frisbee. Her feet continued racing over the blacktop, but when she looked down they were pedaling in air. She had been lifted right off the ground.

Maggie hit the side of the car as she came down. She spun and struck the asphalt and rolled, arms flying. She went over and over and wound up against the far curb, on her back. Her cheek was pressed to the rough blacktop. Poor Maggie, Maggie thought, with genuine if somewhat muted sympathy.

She found she could not lift her head or even turn it. At the periphery of her vision, she could see that her left leg was bent inward at the knee, the hinge folding in a direction in which it was never meant to go.

Her velvet sack of letters had hit near her head and vomited tiles across the parking lot. She saw an H, an M, a U, some other letters. You could spell HUM with that. Do you know you’re dying, Ms. Leigh? No, but HUM a few bars and I’ll fake it, she thought, and coughed in a way that might’ve been laughter. She blew a pink bubble from her lips. When had her mouth got all full of blood?

Wayne stepped down into the parking lot, swinging his arms back and forth. His face had a white, sick gleam to it, but he was smiling to show a mouthful of shiny new teeth. Tears tracked down his face.

“You look funny,” he said. “That was funny!” Blinking at tears. He wiped the back of one hand, thoughtlessly, across his face, spreading a bright streak across his downy cheek.

The car idled, ten feet away. The driver’s-side door opened. Boots scraped on the blacktop.

“I did not think there was anything funny about her falling into the side of the Wraith!” Manx said. “There is one hell of a dent in the side of my Wraith now. To be fair, there is a bigger dent in this scrawny bitch. Back in the car, Wayne. We have to make some miles if we’re going to reach Christmasland before sunup.”

Wayne sank to one knee beside her. His tears had left red lines on his pale cheeks.

Your mother loves you, Maggie imagined telling him, but all that came out was a wheeze and blood. She tried to tell him with her eyes instead. She wants you back. Maggie reached for his hand, and Wayne took hers and squeezed.

“.sorry I’m,” he said. “.it help Couldn’t”

“’S all right,” she whispered, not really saying it, just moving her lips.

Wayne let go of her hand. “You rest,” he said to her. “You just rest here. Dream something nice. Dream about Christmasland!”

He hopped to his feet and trotted out of sight. A door opened. A door closed.

Maggie’s gaze shifted to Manx’s boots. He was almost standing on her scattering of Scrabble tiles. She could see other letters now: a P, an R, a T, an I. Could make TRIP with that. I think he broke my neck—what a TRIP! she thought, and smiled again.

“What are you smiling about?” Manx asked, his voice shuddering with hate. “You have nothing to smile about! You are going to be dead, and I am going to be alive. You could’ve lived, too, you know. For another day anyway. There were things I wanted to know . . . like who else you told about me. I wanted—Don’t you look away from me when I am talking to you!”

She had shut her eyes. She didn’t want to stare at his upside-down face from here on the ground. It wasn’t that he was ugly. It was that he was stupid. It was the way his mouth hung open to show his overbite and his crooked brown teeth. It was the way his eyes bulged from his skull.

He put his boot in her stomach. If there was any justice, she wouldn’t have been able to feel it, but there was no justice and never had been, and she screamed. Who knew you could hurt so bad and not pass out from it?

“You listen, now. You did not have to die like this! I am not such a bad fellow! I am a friend to children and wish no ill will on anyone except those who would try to stop my work! You did not have to line up against me. But you did, and look where it has got you. I am going to live forever, and so is the boy. We will be living the good life while you are turning to dirt in a box. And—”

She got it then. Strung the letters together, saw what they spelled. She got it, and she made a huffing sound, blowing a spray of blood on Manx’s boots. It was an unmistakable sound: the sound of laughter.

Manx scuttled backward half a foot, as if she had tried to bite him.

“What’s funny? What’s so funny about you dying and me living? I am going to drive away, and no one is going to stop me, and you are going to bleed to death here, and where is the big laugh in that?”