NOS4A2(72)

He lifted the stool an inch off the floor, moved it forward, set it down, hobbled forward with it. Now that he was standing, the inside of his head was going light again, his thoughts drifting like goose feathers on a warm breeze.

A song was running around and around in his head, stuck in an idiot loop. “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly. I don’t know why she swallowed the fly—Perhaps she’ll die!” Only the song grew in volume, building and building until it no longer seemed to be inside his head but in the air around him, coming down the hall.

“There was an old lady who swallowed a spider that wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her,” sang the voice. It was high-pitched, off-key, and curiously hollow, like a voice heard at a distance, through a ventilation shaft.

Sig glanced up and saw a man in a gasmask moving past the open door. The man in the gasmask had Giselle by the hair and was dragging her down the hall. Giselle didn’t seem to mind. She wore a neat blue linen dress and matching blue heels, but as she was hauled along, one of the shoes pulled loose and fell off her foot. The Gasmask Man had her long chestnut hair, streaked with white, wrapped around one fist. Her eyes were closed, her narrow, gaunt face serene.

The Gasmask Man turned his head, looked in at him. Sig had never seen anything so awful. It was like in that movie with Vincent Price, where the scientist crossed himself with an insect. His head was a rubber bulb with shining lenses for eyes and a grotesque valve for a mouth.

Something was wrong in Sig’s brain, something maybe worse than a stroke. Could a stroke make you hallucinate? One of his painted Huns had strolled right off his model of Verdun and into his back hallway, was abducting his wife. Maybe that was why Sig was struggling to stay upright. The Hun were invading Haverhill and had bombed the street with mustard gas. Although it didn’t smell like mustard. It smelled like cookies.

The Gasmask Man held up a finger, to indicate he would be back shortly, then continued down the hallway, towing Giselle by the hair. He began to sing again.

“There was an old lady,” the Gasmask Man sang, “who swallowed a goat. Just opened her throat and swallowed a goat. What a greedy bitch!”

Sig slumped over the stool. His legs—he couldn’t feel his legs. He reached to wipe the sweat out of his face and poked himself in the eye.

Boots clomped across the workshop floor.

It took an effort of will for Sig to lift his head. It felt as if there were a great weight balanced on top of it, a twenty-pound stack of iron.

The Gasmask Man stood over the model of Verdun, looking down at the cratered ruin, stitched with barbed wire. His hands on his hips. Sig recognized the man’s clothes at last: He wore the oil-stained jumpsuit of the air-conditioner repairman.

“Little men, little men!” the Gasmask Man said. “I love little men! ‘Up the airy mountain, down the rushy glen, we daren’t go a-hunting, for fear of little men.’” He looked at Sig and said, “Mr. Manx says I’m a rhyming demon. I say I’m just a poet and didn’t know it. How old is your wife, mister?”

Sig had no intention of answering. He wanted to ask what the repairman had done with Giselle. But instead he said, “I married her in 1976. My wife is fifty-nine. Fifteen years younger than myself.”

“You dog, you! Robbing the cradle. No kids?”

“Nr. No. I have ants in my brain.”

“That’s the sevoflurane,” the Gasmask Man said. “I pumped it in through your air conditioner. I can tell that your wife never had kids. Those hard little tits. I gave ’em a squeeze, and I can tell you, women who have had babies don’t have tits like that.”

“Why are you doing this? Why are you here?” Sig asked.

“You live across the street from Vic McQueen. And you have a two-car garage, but only one car,” the Gasmask Man told him. “When Mr. Manx comes back around the corner, he’ll have a place to park. The wheels on the Wraith go round and round, round and round, round and round. The wheels on the Wraith go round and round, all day long.”

Sig de Zoet became aware of a series of sounds—a hiss, a scratch, and a thump—repeating over and over. He couldn’t tell where they were coming from. The noise seemed to be inside his head, in the same way that the Gasmask Man’s song had seemed to be inside his head for a while. That hiss, scratch, and thump was what he had now, in place of thoughts.

The Gasmask Man looked down at him. “Now, Victoria McQueen looks like she has a real set of mommy titties. You’ve seen them firsthand. What do you think of her tits?”

Sig stared up at him. He understood what the Gasmask Man was asking but could not think how to reply to such a question. Vic McQueen was just eight years old; in Sig’s mind she had become a child again, a girl with a boy’s bicycle. She came over now and then to paint figurines. It was a pleasure to watch her work—painting little men with quiet devotion, eyes narrowed as if she were squinting down a long tunnel, trying to see what was at the other end.

“That is her place across the street, isn’t it?” the Gasmask Man said.

Sig intended not to tell him. Not to collaborate. “Collaborate” was the word that came to his mind, not “cooperate.”

“Yes,” he heard himself say. Then he said, “Why did I tell you that? Why am I answering your questions? I am not a collaborator.”

“That’s the sevoflurane, too,” the Gasmask Man said. “You wouldn’t believe some of the things people used to tell me after I gave ’em some of the sweet old gingerbread smoke. This one old grandma, like sixty-four years old at least, told me the only time she ever came was when she took it up the pooper. Sixty-four! Ugh, right? ‘Will you still need me, will you still ream me, when I’m sixty-four?’” He giggled, the innocent, bubbling laughter of a child.