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Vic lurched around the front of the car. Two steps led up to a door that she knew would open into the house itself.

The knob turned. The door eased back onto darkness.

Vic stepped through and pushed the door shut behind her and began to move across





A Mudroom


WHERE DIRT-SCUFFED LINOLEUM WAS PEELING UP IN ONE CORNER.

Her legs had never felt so weak, and her ears were ringing from a scream that was stuck in her head, because she knew that if she screamed for real, the Wraith would find her and kill her. About this there was no doubt in her mind—he would kill her and bury her in the backyard, and no one would ever know what had become of her.

She went through a second inner door and into





A Hallway


THAT RAN ALMOST THE ENTIRE LENGTH OF THE HOUSE AND WAS CARPETED in green wall-to-wall shag.

The hall smelled like a turkey dinner.

She ran, not bothering with the doors on either side of her, knowing they would only open into bathrooms and bedrooms. She clutched her right wrist, breathing through the pain.

In ten paces the hall arrived at a little foyer. The door to the front yard was on the left, just beyond a narrow staircase climbing to the second floor. Hunting prints hung on the walls. Grinning, ruddy-faced men held up bunches of dead geese, displaying them to noble-looking golden retrievers. A pair of swinging batwing doors opened into a kitchen on Vic’s right. The smell of turkey dinner was stronger here. It was warmer, too, feverishly warm.

She saw her chance, saw it clear in her mind. The man called the Wraith was entering through the garage. He would follow her through the side door and into the house. If she bolted now, rushed across the front yard, she could reach the Shorter Way on foot.

Vic lunged across the foyer, banging her hip on a side table. A lamp with a bead-trimmed shade wobbled, almost fell.

She grabbed the doorknob, turned it, and was about to pull it open when she saw the view through the side window.

He stood in the yard, one of the tallest men she had ever seen, six and a half feet at least. He was bald, and there was something obscene about his pale skull, crawling with blue veins. He wore a coat from another era, a thing with tails and a double line of brass buttons down the front. He looked like a soldier, a colonel in the service of some foreign nation where an army was not called an army but a legion.

He was turned slightly away from the house and toward the bridge, so she saw him in profile. He stood before the Shorter Way, one hand on the handlebars of her bike.

Vic couldn’t move. It was as if she had been injected with a paralytic. She could not even force her lungs to pull air.

The Wraith cocked his head to one side, the body language of an inquisitive dog. In spite of his large skull, his features were weasel-like and crowded close together in the center of his face. He had a sunken chin and an overbite, which gave him a very dim, almost feeble look. He looked like the sort of rube who would say every syllable in the word “ho-moh-sex-shu-al.”

He considered her bridge, the vast length of it reaching back into the trees. Then he looked toward the house, and Vic pulled her face from the window, pressed her back flat against the door.

“Good afternoon, whoever you are!” he cried. “Come on out and say how do! I will not bite!”

Vic remembered to breathe. It was an effort, as if there were restricting bands strapped around her chest.

The Wraith shouted, “You dropped your bicycle in my yard! Wouldn’t you like it back?” After a moment he added, “You dropped your covered bridge in my yard as well! You can have that back, too!”

He laughed. It was a pony’s whinny, heeeeee-eee! It crossed Vic’s mind again that the man might be feeble.

She shut her eyes and held herself rigidly against the door. Then it came to her he hadn’t said anything for a few moments and that he might be approaching the front of the house. She turned the bolt, put the chain on. It took three tries to get the chain in place. Her hands were slippery with sweat, and she kept losing her grip on it.

But no sooner had she locked the door than he spoke again, and she could tell by his voice that he was still standing out in the middle of the overgrown yard.

“I think I know about this bridge. Most people would be upset to find a covered bridge sitting in their front yard, but not Mr. Charles Talent Manx the Third. Mr. Charlie Manx is a man who knows a thing or two about bridges and roads turning up where they do not belong. I myself have driven some highways that don’t belong. I have been driving for a long time. You would be surprised if you knew how long, I bet! I know about one road I can only get to in my Wraith. It isn’t on any map, but it is there when I need it. It is there when I have a passenger who is ready to go to Christmasland. Where does your bridge go? You should come out! We sure do have a lot in common! I bet we will be fast friends!”

Vic decided then. Every moment she stood there listening to him was one less moment she had to save herself. She moved, pushed off from the door, raced down the foyer, batted through the batwing doors and into





The Kitchen


IT WAS A SMALL, DINGY SPACE WITH A YELLOW FORMICA-TOPPED TABLE in it and an ugly black phone on the wall, under a sun-faded child’s drawing.

Dusty yellow polka-dot streamers dangled from the ceiling, hanging perfectly motionless in the still air, as if someone had thrown a birthday party here, years ago, and had never entirely cleaned up. To Vic’s right was a metal door, open to reveal a pantry containing a washer and dryer, a few shelves of dry goods, and a stainless-steel cabinet built into the wall. Beside the pantry door was a big Frigidaire with sloopy bathtub styling.