NOS4A2(17)

THE DAY HAD FLED, AND THE HEADLIGHTS OF THE WRAITH BORED into a frozen darkness. White flecks raced through the glare, ticked softly against the windshield.

“Now, this is snow!” Charlie Manx cried from behind the steering wheel.

Bing had snapped from drowsiness to full wakefulness in a moment, as if consciousness were a switch and someone had flicked it on. His blood seemed to surge, all at once, toward his heart. He could not have been more shocked if he’d woken to find a grenade in his lap.

Half the sky was smothered over with clouds. But the other half was plentifully sugared with stars, and the moon hung among them, that moon with the hooked nose and broad, smiling mouth. It considered the road below with a yellow sliver of eye showing beneath one drooping lid.

Deformed firs lined the road. Bing had to look twice before he realized they were not pines at all but gumdrop trees.

“Christmasland,” Bing whispered.

“No,” Charlie Manx said. “We are a long way off. Twenty hours of driving at least. But it’s out there. It’s in the West. And once a year, Bing, I take someone there.”

“Me?” Bing asked in a quavering voice.

“No, Bing,” Charlie said gently. “Not this year. All children are welcome in Christmasland, but grown-ups are a different case. You must prove your worth first. You must prove your love of children and your devotion to protecting them and serving Christmasland.”

They passed a snowman, who lifted a twig arm and waved. Bing reflexively lifted his hand to wave in return.

“How?” he whispered.

“You must save ten children with me, Bing. You must save them from monsters.”

“Monsters? What monsters?”

“Their parents,” Manx said solemnly.

Bing removed his face from the icy glass of the passenger window and looked around at Charlie Manx. When he had shut his eyes a moment earlier, there had been sunlight in the sky and Mr. Manx had been dressed in a plain white shirt and suspenders. Now, though, he had on a coat with tails and a dark cap with a black leather brim. The coat had a double line of brass buttons and seemed like the sort of thing an officer from a foreign country might wear, a lieutenant in a royal guard. When Bing glanced down at himself, he saw he also wore new clothes: his father’s crisp white marine dress uniform, boots polished to a black shine.

“Am I dreaming?” Bing asked.

“I told you,” Manx said. “The road to Christmasland is paved in dreams. This old car can slip right out of the everyday world and onto the secret roads of thought. Sleep is just the exit ramp. When a passenger dozes off, my Wraith leaves whatever road it was on and slides onto the St. Nick Parkway. We are sharing this dream together. It is your dream, Bing. But it is still my ride. Come. I want to show you something.”

As he had been speaking, the car was slowing and easing toward the side of the road. Snow crunched under the tires. The headlights illuminated a figure, just up the road on the right. From a distance it looked like a woman in a white gown. She stood very still, did not glance into the lights of the Wraith.

Manx leaned over and popped the glove compartment above Bing’s knees. Inside was the usual mess of road maps and papers. Bing also saw a flashlight with a long chrome handle.

An orange medicine bottle rolled out of the glove compartment. Bing caught it one-handed. It said HANSOM, DEWEY—VALIUM 50 MG.

Manx gripped the flashlight, straightened up, and opened his door a crack. “We have to walk from here.”

Bing held up the bottle. “Did you . . . did you give me something to make me sleep, Mr. Manx?”

Manx winked. “Don’t hold it against me, Bing. I knew you’d want to get on the road to Christmasland as soon as possible and that you could see it only when you were asleep. I hope it’s all right.”

Bing said, “I guess I don’t mind.” And shrugged. He looked at the bottle again. “Who is Dewey Hansom?”

“He was you, Bing. He was my pre-Bing thing. Dewey Hansom was a screen agent in Los Angeles who specialized in child actors. He helped me save ten children and earned his place in Christmasland! Oh, the children of Christmasland loved Dewey, Bing. They absolutely ate him up! Come along!”

Bing unlatched his door and climbed out into the still, frozen air. The night was windless, and the snow spun down in slow flakes, kissing his cheeks. For an old man (Why do I keep thinking he’s old? Bing wondered—he doesn’t look old), Charles Manx was spry, legging ahead along the side of the road, his boots squealing. Bing tramped after him, hugging himself in his thin dress uniform.

It wasn’t one woman in a white gown but two, flanking a black iron gate. They were identical: ladies carved from glassy marble. They both leaned forward, spreading their arms, and their flowing bone-white dresses billowed behind them, opening like the wings of angels. They were serenely beautiful, with the full mouths and blind eyes of classical statuary. Their lips were parted, so they appeared to be in midgasp, lips turned up in a way that suggested they were about to laugh—or cry out in pain. Their sculptor had fashioned them so their breasts were pressing against the fabric of their gowns.

Manx passed through the black gate, between the ladies. Bing hesitated, and his right hand came up, and he stroked the top of one of those smooth, cold bosoms. He had always wanted to touch a breast that looked like that, a firm, full mommy breast.