NOS4A2(18)
The stone lady’s smile widened, and Bing leaped back, a cry rising in his throat.
“Come along, Bing! Let’s be about our business! You aren’t dressed for this cold!” Manx shouted.
Bing was about to step forward, then hesitated to look at the arch over the open iron gate.
GRAVEYARD OF WHAT MIGHT BE
Bing frowned at this mystifying statement, but then Mr. Manx called again, and he hurried along.
Four stone steps, lightly sprinkled in snow, led down to a flat plane of black ice. The ice was grainy with the recent snowfall, but the flakes were not deep—any kick of the boot would reveal the smooth sheet of ice beneath. He had gone two steps when he saw something cloudy caught in the ice, about three inches below the surface. At first glance it looked like a dinner plate.
Bing bent and looked through the ice. Charlie Manx, who was only a few paces ahead, turned back and pointed the flashlight at the spot where he was looking.
The glow of the beam lit the face of a child, a girl with freckles on her cheeks and her hair in pigtails. At the sight of her, Bing screamed and took an unsteady step back.
She was as pale as the marble statues guarding the entrance to the Graveyard of What Might Be, but she was flesh, not stone. Her mouth was open in a silent shout, a few frozen bubbles drifting from her lips. Her hands were raised, as if she were reaching up to him. In one was a bunch of red coiled rope—a jump rope, Bing recognized.
“It’s a girl!” he cried. “It’s a dead girl in the ice!”
“Not dead, Bing,” Manx said. “Not yet. Maybe not for years.” Manx flicked the flashlight away and pointed it toward a white stone cross, tilting up from the ice.
LILY CARTER
15 Fox Road
Sharpsville, PA
1980–?
Turned to a life of sin by her mother,
Her childhood ended before it began.
If only there had been another
To take her off to Christmasland!
Manx swept his light around what Bing now perceived was a frozen lake, on which were ranked rows of crosses: a cemetery the size of Arlington. The snow skirled around the memorials, the plinths, the emptiness. In the moonlight the snowflakes looked like silver shavings.
Bing peered again at the girl at his feet. She stared up through the clouded ice—and blinked.
He screamed once more, stumbling away. The backs of his legs struck another cross, and he half spun, lost his footing, and went down on all fours.
He gazed through the dull ice. Manx turned his flashlight on the face of another child, a boy with sensitive, thoughtful eyes beneath pale bangs.
WILLIAM DELMAN
42B Mattison Avenue
Asbury Park, NJ
1981–?
Billy only ever wanted to play,
But his father didn’t stay.
His mother ran away.
Drugs, knives, grief, and dismay.
If only someone had saved the day!
Bing tried to get up, did a comical soft-shoe, went down again, a little to the left. The ray of Manx’s flashlight showed him another child, an Asian girl, clutching a stuffed bear in a tweed jacket.
SARA CHO
1983–?
39 Fifth Street
Bangor, ME
Sara lives in a tragic dream,
Will hang herself by age thirteen!
But think how she will give such thanks,
If she goes for a ride with Charlie Manx!
Bing made a gobbling, gasping sound of horror. The girl, Sara Cho, stared up at him, mouth open in a silent cry. She had been buried in the ice with a clothesline twisted around her throat.
Charlie Manx caught Bing’s elbow and helped him up.
“I’m sorry you had to see all this, Bing,” Manx said. “I wish I could’ve spared you. But you needed to understand the reasons for my work. Come back to the car. I have a thermos of cocoa.”
Mr. Manx helped Bing across the ice, his hand squeezing Bing’s upper arm tightly to keep him from falling again.
They separated at the hood of the car, and Charlie went on to the driver’s-side door, but Bing hesitated for an instant, noticing, for the first time, the hood ornament: a grinning lady fashioned from chrome, her arms spread so that her gown flowed back from her body like wings. He recognized her in a glance—she was identical to the angels of mercy who guarded the gate of the cemetery.
When they were in the car, Charlie Manx reached beneath his seat and came up with a silver thermos. He removed the cap, filled it with hot chocolate, and handed it over. Bing clasped it in both hands, sipping at that scalding sweetness, while Charlie Manx made a wide, sweeping turn away from the Graveyard of What Might Be. They accelerated back the way they had come.
“Tell me about Christmasland,” Bing said in a shaking voice.
“It is the best place,” Manx said. “With all due respect to Mr. Walt Disney, Christmasland is the true happiest place in the world. Although—from another point of view, I suppose you could say it is the happiest place not in this world. In Christmasland every day is Christmas, and the children there never feel anything like unhappiness. No, the children there don’t even understand the concept of unhappiness! There is only fun. It is like heaven—only of course they are not dead! They live forever, remain children for eternity, and are never forced to struggle and sweat and demean themselves like us poor adults. I discovered this place of pure dream many years ago, and the first wee ones to take up residence there were my own children, who were saved before they could be destroyed by the pitiful, angry thing their mother became in her later years.