NOS4A2(98)

Her heel squeaked in the wet grass as she turned. She was moving at last. She lowered her head, grabbing at her helmet, wanting it off before she got where she was going. She felt comically slow, feet spinning furiously beneath her, going nowhere, while the grass bunched up under her in rolls, like carpet. There was no sound in the world but for the heavy drumming of her feet on the ground and her breath, amplified by the inside of the helmet.

The Gasmask Man was going to shoot her in the back, bullet in the spine, and she hoped it killed her, because she did not want to lie there sprawled in the dirt, paralyzed, waiting for him to shoot her again. In the back, she thought, in the back, in the back, the only three words her mind could seem to string together. Her entire vocabulary had been reduced to these three words.

She was halfway down the hill.

She yanked the helmet off at last, threw it aside.

The gun boomed.

Something skipped off the water to her right, as if a child had flung a flat stone across the lake.

Vic’s feet were on the boards of the dock. The dock heaved and slammed beneath her. She took three bounding steps and dived at the water.

She struck the surface—thought of the bullet slicing through the fog again—and then she was in the lake, she was underwater.

She plunged almost all the way to the bottom, where the world was dark and slow.

It seemed to Vic that she had, only moments before, been in the dim green drowned world of the lake, that she was returning to the quiet, restful state of unconsciousness.

The woman sailed through the cold stillness.

A bullet struck the lake, to her left, less than half a foot from her, punching a tunnel in the water, corkscrewing into the darkness, slowing rapidly. Vic recoiled and lashed out blindly, as if it could be slapped away. Her hand closed on something hot. She opened her palm, stared at what looked like a lead weight for a fishing line. The disturbed currents rolled it out of her hand, and it sank into the lake and only after it was gone did she understand she had grabbed a bullet.

She twisted, scissored her legs, gazing up now, lungs beginning to hurt. She saw the surface of the lake, a bright silver sheet high over her head. The float was another ten, fifteen feet away.

Vic surged through the water.

Her chest was a throbbing vault, filled with fire.

She kicked and kicked. Then she was under it, under the black rectangle of the float.

She clawed for the surface. She thought of her father, the stuff he used to blast rock, the slippery white plastic packs of ANFO. Her chest was packed full with ANFO, ready to explode.

Her head burst up out of the water, and she gasped, filling her lungs with air.

Vic was in deep shadow, under the boards of the float, between the ranks of rusting iron drums. It smelled of creosote and rot.

Vic fought to breathe quietly. Every exhalation echoed in the small, low space.

“I know where you are!” screamed the Gasmask Man. “You can’t hide from me!”

His voice was piping and raggedy and childish. He was a child, Vic understood then. He might be thirty or forty or fifty, but he was still just another of Manx’s poisoned children.

And yes, he probably did know where she was.

Come and get me you little f*ck, she thought, and wiped her face.

She heard another voice then: Manx. Manx was calling to her. Crooning almost.

“Victoria, Victoria, Victoria McQueen!”

There was a gap between two of the metal barrels, a space of perhaps an inch. She swam to it and looked through. Across a distance of thirty feet, she saw Manx standing on the end of the dock and the Gasmask Man behind him. Manx’s face was painted with blood, as if he had gone bobbing for apples in a bucket full of the stuff.

“My, oh, my! You cut me very well, Victoria McQueen. You have made a hash out of my face, and my companion here has managed to shoot off my ear. With friends like these! Well. I am blood all over. I will be the last boy picked at the dance from here on out, you see if I am not!” He laughed, then continued, “It is true what they say. Life really does move in very small circles. Here we are again. You are as hard to keep ahold of as a fish. The lake is a fine place for you.” He paused once more. When he began to speak again, there was almost a note of humor in his voice. “Maybe it is just as well. You did not kill me. You only took me away from my children. Fair is fair. I can drive off and leave you as you are. But understand that your son is with me now and you will never have him back. Although I expect he will call sometimes from Christmasland. He will be happy there. I will never hurt him. However you feel now, when you hear his voice again, you will see how it is. You will see it is better that he is with me than with you.”

The dock creaked on the water. The engine of the Rolls-Royce idled. She struggled out of the soggy, heavy weight of Lou’s motorcycle jacket. She thought it would sink straightaway, but it floated, looking like a black, toxic mess.

“Of course, maybe you will be inclined to come and find us,” Manx said. His voice was sly. “As you found me before. I have had years and years to think on the bridge in the woods. Your impossible bridge. I know all about bridges like that one. I know all about roads that can only be found with the mind. One of them is how I find my way to Christmasland. There is the Night Road, and the train tracks to Orphanhenge, and the doors to Mid-World, and the old trail to the Tree House of the Mind, and then there is Victoria’s wonderful covered bridge. Do you still know how to get there? Come find me if you can, Vic. I will be waiting for you at the House of Sleep. I will be making a stop there before I arrive in Christmasland. Come find me, and we will talk some more.”