NOS4A2(19)

“It is, truly, a place where the impossible happens every day. But it is a place for children, not adults. Only a few grown-ups are allowed to live there. Only those who have shown devotion to a higher cause. Only those who are willing to sacrifice everything for the well-being and happiness of the tender little ones. People like you, Bing.

“I wish, with all my heart, that all the children in the world could find their way to Christmasland, where they would know safety and happiness beyond measure! Oh, boy, that would be something! But few adults would consent to send their children away with a man they have never met, to a place they cannot visit. Why, they would think me the most heinous sort of kidnapper and kiddie fiddler! So I bring only one or two children a year, and they are always children I have seen in the Graveyard of What Might Be, good children sure to suffer at the hands of their own parents. As a man who was hurt terribly as a child himself, you understand, I’m sure, how important it is to help them! The graveyard shows me children who will, if I do nothing, have their childhoods stolen by their mothers and fathers. They will be hit with chains, fed cat food, sold to perverts. Their souls will turn to ice, and they will become cold, unfeeling people, sure to destroy children themselves. We are their one chance, Bing! In my years as the keeper of Christmasland, I have saved some seventy children, and it is my feverish wish to save a hundred more before I am done.”

The car rushed through the cold, cavernous dark. Bing moved his lips, counting to himself.

“Seventy,” he murmured. “I thought you only rescue one child a year. Maybe two.”

“Yes,” Manx said. “That is about right.”

“But . . . how old are you?” Bing asked.

Manx grinned sidelong at him—revealing that crowded mouthful of sharp brown teeth. “My work keeps me young. Finish your cocoa, Bing.”

Bing swallowed the last hot, sugary mouthful, then swirled the remnants. There was a milky yellow residue there. He wondered if he had just swallowed something else from the medicine cabinet of Dewey Hansom, a name that sounded like a joke or a name in a limerick. Dewey Hansom, Charlie Manx’s pre-Bing thing, who had saved ten children and gone to his eternal reward in Christmasland. If Charlie Manx had saved seventy kids, then there had been—what? Seven pre-Bing things? The lucky dogs.

He heard a rumbling: the crash, rattle, and twelve-cylinder whine of a big truck coming up behind them. He looked back—the sound was rising in volume with each passing moment—but could see nothing.

“Do you hear that?” Bing asked, unaware that the empty lid of the thermos had slipped from his suddenly tingling fingers. “Do you hear something coming?”

“That would be the morning,” Manx said. “Pulling up on us fast. Don’t look now, Bing, here it comes!”

That truck roar built and built, and suddenly it was pulling by them on Bing’s left. Bing looked out into the night and could see the side of a big panel truck quite clearly, only a foot or two away. Painted on the side was a green field, a red farmhouse, a scattering of cows, and a bright smiling sun coming up over the hills. The rays of that rising sun lit foot-high lettering: SUNRISE DELIVERY.

For an instant the truck obscured the land and sky, and SUNRISE DELIVERY filled Bing’s entire visual field. Then it rolled rattling on, dragging a rooster tail of dust, and Bing flinched from an almost painfully blue morning sky, a sky without cloud, without limit, and squinted into





The Pennsylvania Countryside


CHARLIE MANX ROLLED THE WRAITH TO THE SIDE OF THE ROAD and put it into park. Cracked, sandy, country road. Yellowing weeds growing right up to the side of the car. Insect hum. Glare of a low sun. It could not be much later than seven in the morning, but already Bing could feel the fierce heat of the day coming through the windshield.

“Wowser!” Bing said. “What happened?”

“The sun came up,” Manx said mildly.

“I’ve been asleep?” Bing asked.

“I think, really, Bing, you’ve been awake. Maybe for the first time in your life.”

Manx smiled, and Bing blushed and offered up an uncertain smile in return. He didn’t always understand Charles Manx, but that only made the man easier to adore, to worship.

Dragonflies floated in the high weeds. Bing didn’t recognize where they were. It wasn’t Sugarcreek. Some back lane somewhere. When he looked out his passenger window, in the hazy golden light, he saw a Colonial with black shutters on a hill. A girl in a crimson, shiftlike flower-print dress stood in the dirt driveway, under a locust tree, staring down at them. In one hand she held a jump rope, but she wasn’t leaping, wasn’t using it, was just studying them in a quizzical sort of way. Bing supposed she hadn’t ever seen a Rolls-Royce before.

He narrowed his eyes, staring back at her, lifting one hand in a little wave. She didn’t wave back, only tipped her head to the side, studying them. Her pigtails dropped toward her right shoulder, and that was when he recognized her. He jumped in surprise and banged a knee on the underside of the dash.

“Her!” he cried. “It’s her!”

“Who, Bing?” Charlie Manx asked, in a knowing sort of voice.

Bing stared at her, and she stared right back. He could not have been more shocked if he had seen the dead rise. In a way he had just seen the dead rise.

“Lily Carter,” Bing recited. Bing had always had a good mind for scraps of verse. “‘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 . . .’” His voice trailed away as a screen door creaked open on the porch and a dainty, fine-boned woman in a flour-dashed apron stuck her head out.