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“Ugh!” she cried. “Ugh! Ugh! Oh, God!”

It smelled like fresh-poured iron.

“Your boy, Josiah,” Charlie Manx said to her, his voice grating and harsh. “There’s a place for him in Christmasland, with the other children. I could give him a new life. I could give him a nice new smile. I could give him nice new teeth.”

Hearing him say her son’s name was worse than having Manx’s hand on her wrist or blood on her feet. (Clean blood, she told herself, clean.) Hearing this man, convicted murderer and child molester, speak of her son made her dizzy, genuinely dizzy, as if she were in a glass elevator rushing quickly into the sky, the world dropping away beneath her.

“Let go,” she whispered.

“There’s a place for Josiah John Thornton in Christmasland, and there’s a place for you in the House of Sleep,” Charlie Manx said. “The Gasmask Man would know just what to do with you. Give you the gingerbread smoke and teach you to love him. Can’t bring you with us to Christmasland. Or I could, but the Gasmask Man is better. The Gasmask Man is a mercy.”

“Help,” Ellen screamed, except it didn’t come out as a scream. It came out as a whisper. “Help me.” She couldn’t find her voice.

“I’ve seen Josiah in the Graveyard of What Might Be. Josiah should come for a ride in the Wraith. He’d be happy forever in Christmasland. The world can’t ruin him there, because it isn’t in the world. It’s in my head. They’re all safe in my head. I’ve been dreaming about it, you know. Christmasland. I’ve been dreaming about it, but I walk and walk and I can’t get to the end of the tunnel. I hear the children singing, but I can’t get to them. I hear them shouting for me, but the tunnel doesn’t end. I need the Wraith. Need my ride.”

His tongue slipped out of his mouth, brown and glistening and obscene, and wet his dry lips, and he let her go.

“Help,” she whispered. “Help. Help. Help.” She had to say it another time or two before she could say it loud enough for anyone to hear her. Then she was batting through the doors into the hall, running in her soft flat shoes, screaming for all she was worth. Leaving bright red footprints behind her.

Ten minutes later a pair of officers in riot gear had strapped Manx down to his cot, just in case he opened his eyes and tried to get up. But the doctor who eventually arrived to examine him said to unlash him.

“This guy has been in a bed since 2001. He has to be turned four times a day to keep from getting sores. Even if he wasn’t a gork, he’s too weak to go anywhere. After seven years of muscle atrophy, I doubt he could sit up on his own.”

Ellen was listening from over next to the doors—if Manx opened his eyes again, she planned to be the first one out of the room—but when the doctor said that, she walked across the floor on stiff legs and pulled her sleeve back from her right wrist to show the bruises where Manx had grabbed her.

“Does that look like something done by a guy too weak to sit up? I thought he was going to yank my arm out of the socket.” Her feet stung almost as badly as her bruised wrist. She had stripped off her blood-soaked pantyhose and gone at her feet with scalding water and antibiotic soap until they were raw. She was in her gym sneakers now. The other shoes were in the garbage. Even if they could be saved, she didn’t think she’d ever be able to put them on again.

The doctor, a young Indian named Patel, gave her an abashed, apologetic look and bent to shine a flashlight in Manx’s eyes. His pupils did not dilate. Patel moved the flashlight back and forth, but Manx’s eyes remained fixed on a point just beyond Patel’s left ear. The doctor clapped his hands an inch from Manx’s nose. Manx did not blink. Patel gently closed Manx’s eyes and examined the reading from the EKG they were running.

“There’s nothing here that’s any different from any of the last dozen EKG readings,” Patel said. “Patient scores a nine on the Glasgow scale, shows slow alpha-wave activity consistent with alpha coma. I think he was just talking in his sleep, Nurse. It even happens to gorks like this guy.”

“His eyes were open,” she said. “He looked right at me. He knew my name. He knew my son’s name.”

Patel said, “Ever had a conversation around him with one of the other nurses? No telling what the guy might’ve unconsciously picked up. You tell another nurse, ‘Oh, hey, my son just won the spelling bee.’ Manx hears it and regurgitates it mid-dream.”

She nodded, but a part of her was thinking, He knew Josiah’s middle name, something she was sure she had never mentioned to anyone here in the hospital. There’s a place for Josiah John Thornton in Christmasland, Charlie Manx had said to her, and there’s a place for you in the House of Sleep.

“I never got his blood in,” she said. “He’s been anemic for a couple weeks. Picked up a urinary-tract infection from his catheter. I’ll go get a fresh pack.”

“Never mind that. I’ll get the old vampire his blood. Look. You’ve had a nasty little scare. Put it behind you. Go home. You only have, what? An hour left on your shift? Take it. Take tomorrow, too. Got some last-minute shopping to finish? Go do it. Stop thinking about this and relax. It’s Christmas, Nurse Thornton,” the doctor said, and winked at her. “Don’t you know it’s the most wonderful time of the year?”