NOS4A2(43)

Vic swung the frying pan at his hand. She threw herself into her swing with her whole weight, and the force of the blow carried her straight into the door. She recoiled, stumbled backward, and sat down on the floor. The boy jerked his hand outside, and she saw that three of his fingers had been smashed out of true, grotesquely bent the wrong way.

“You’re funny!” he shouted, and laughed.

Vic kicked her heels, sliding backward on her ass across the cream-colored tiles. The boy stuck his face through the broken windowpane and waggled his black tongue at her.

Red flame belched out of the oven, and for a moment her hair was burning on the right side of her head, the fine hairs crinkling and charring and shriveling up. She swatted at herself. Sparks flew.

Manx hit the front door. The chain snapped with a tinny, clinking sound; the bolt tore free with a loud crack. She heard the door smash into the wall with a house-shaking bang.

The boy reached through the broken window again and unlocked the back door.

Burning strips of flypaper fell around her.

Vic shoved herself up off her ass and turned, and Manx was on the other side of the batwing doors, about to step into the kitchen. He looked at her with a wide-eyed and avid fascination on his ugly face.

“When I saw your bike, I thought you would be younger,” Manx said. “But you are all grown. That is too bad for you. Christmasland is not such a good place for girls who are all grown.”

The door behind her opened . . . and when it did, there was a feeling of all the hot air being sucked out of the room, as if the world outside were inhaling. A red cyclone of flame whirled from the open oven, and a thousand hot sparks whirled with it. Black smoke gushed.

When Manx swatted through the batwing doors, coming for her, Vic shied away from him, squirming out of reach and ducking behind the big bulky Frigidaire, stepping toward the only place that remained to her, into





The Pantry


SHE GRABBED THE METAL HANDLE OF THE DOOR AND SLAMMED IT shut behind her.

It was a heavy door, and it squalled as she dragged it across the floor. She had never moved such a heavy door in all her life.

It had no lock of any kind. The handle was an iron U, bolted to the metal surface. Vic grabbed it and set her heels apart, her feet planted on the doorframe. A moment later Manx yanked. She buckled, was jerked forward, but locked her knees and held it shut.

He eased off, then suddenly pulled again, a second time, trying to catch her napping. He had at least seventy pounds on her, and those gangly orangutan arms of his, but with her feet braced against the doorframe her arms would come out of their sockets before her legs gave.

Manx stopped pulling. Vic had an instant to look around and saw a mop with a long blue metal handle. It was just to her right, within arm’s reach. She pushed it through the U-shaped door latch, so the mop handle was braced across the doorframe.

Vic let go and stepped back, and her legs wobbled, and she almost sat down. She had to lean against the washing machine to keep her feet.

Manx pulled the door again, and the mop handle bashed against the frame.

He paused. When he pulled at the door the next time, he did so gently, in an almost experimental way.

Vic heard him cough. She thought she heard childlike whispering. Her legs shook. They shook so forcefully that she knew if she let go of the washing machine, she’d fall over.

“You have got yourself in a tight spot now, you little firebug!” Manx called through the door.

“Go away!” she screamed.

“It takes a lot of brass to break into a man’s house and then tell him to git!” he said. But he said it with good humor. “You are scared to come out, I suppose. If you had any sense, you would be more scared to stay where you are!”

“Go away!” she screamed again. It was all she could think to say.

He coughed once more. A frantic red firelight glimmered at the bottom of the door, broken by two shadows that marked where Charlie Manx had placed his feet. There was another moment of whispering.

“Child,” he said to her, “I will let this house burn without a second thought. I have other places to go, and this hidey-hole has been burned for me now, one way or another. Come out. Come out or you will smother to death in there and no one will ever identify your burnt remains. Open the door. I will not hurt you.”

She leaned back against the washing machine, gripping the edge with both hands, her legs wobbling furiously, almost comically.

“Pity,” he said. “I would’ve liked to know a girl who had a vehicle of her own, one that can travel the roads of thought. Our kind is rare. We should learn from one another. Well. You will learn from me now, although I think you will not much care for the lesson. I would stay and talk longer, but it is getting a trifle warm in here! I am a man who prefers cooler climes, to be honest. I am so fond of winter I am practically one of Santa’s elves!” And he laughed again, that whinnying shit-kicker laugh: Heeeeee!

Something turned over in the kitchen. It fell with such an enormous crash that she screamed and almost leaped up onto the washing machine. The impact shook the whole house and sent a hideous vibration through the tiles beneath her. For a moment she thought the floor might be in danger of caving in.

She knew from the sound, from the weight, from the force of it, what he had done. He had gripped that big old fridge, with the sloopy bathtub styling, and overturned it in front of the door.