The Nix(178)

He looks like, maybe, a gnome. Or a small troll. Actually he looks exactly like the figurine of a house spirit her father gave her so many years ago. The nisse. He is small and round, maybe three feet tall, hairy, white-bearded, fat, caveman-faced. He leans against the wall with his arms crossed and his legs crossed and his eyebrows raised, looking at Faye skeptically, as if he doesn’t believe in her existence rather than the other way around.

She might have otherwise panicked at this sight, but her body is so tired.

I’m dreaming, she says.

So wake up, the house spirit says.

She tries to wake up. She knows the thing that usually pulls her out of dreaming is the realization that she’s dreaming, which has always frustrated her; dreams, she thinks, are best when you know they’re dreams. Then you can act without consequence. It’s the only time in her life that is worry-free.

Well? the ghost says.

You’re not real, she says, even though she has to admit this does not feel like a dream.

The house spirit shrugs.

You spend all night praying for help and when help finally arrives, you insult it. That is so typical of you, Faye.

I’m hallucinating, she says. Because of those pills.

Look, if I’m not wanted here, if you’ve got this situation under control, then best of luck to you. There are plenty of people out there who would appreciate my help. He points a stubby finger toward the window, the outside world. Listen to them, he says, and just then the big basement room is crashing with sound, the discordant and overlapping voices of people pleading for help, asking for protection, voices young and old, male and female, as if the room were suddenly a radio tower picking up every frequency on the dial all at once, and Faye can hear students asking for protection from the cops, and cops asking for protection from the students, and priests asking for peace, and presidential candidates asking for strength, and snipers hoping they won’t have to pull the trigger, and National Guardsmen staring obliquely at their bayonets asking for courage, and people everywhere offering whatever they can in return for safety: promises that they’ll start going to church more, that they’ll be better people, that they’ll call their parents or children soon, they’ll write more letters, give to charity, be kind to strangers, stop doing whatever bad things they are currently doing, quit smoking, quit drinking, be a better husband or wife, a whole symphony of kindnesses that might result if they are simply spared on this one ugly day.

Then, just as quickly, the voices turn off, and the basement is silent again, the last noise to fade being the low deep thrum of someone chanting: Ommmm.

Faye stands and looks at the house spirit, who is himself looking innocently at his own fingernails.

Do you know who I am? he says.

You’re my family’s house spirit. Our nisse.

That’s one word for it.

What’s another word?

He looks at her, his eyes black and sinister. All those stories your father told you about ghosts that look like rocks or horses or leaves? Yeah, that’s me. I am the nisse, I am the nix, not to mention various other spirits, creatures, demons, angels, trolls, et cetera.

I don’t understand.

No, you wouldn’t, he says, and he yawns. You guys haven’t figured it out yet. Your map is just way off.





11


NOW THE GIRLS HAVE SWITCHED from “Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh!” to “Kill the pigs! Kill the pigs!” and the uncles are glued to the television because the girls are full of confidence after their cop-car-tipping success and obviously feel indestructible right now because they taunt the various cops they see along their slow march south yelling “Hey piggy!” and “Soo-ee!” and stuff like that. And the reason this is unswitchoffable television and why the uncles keep yelling Honey c’mere you’ve got to see this and why they are considering calling all their buddies to make sure they’re watching too is because the police? And the National Guard? They’re waiting for the bitches a couple blocks away. It’s like a trap. They’re to the west of the girls’ route waiting to flank them and drive into them and split open their wedge (ha-ha) and the girls have no idea this is about to happen.

The uncles know this because of chopper cam.

And right now they are just about as grateful to chopper cam as they are to their mother on their birthdays. And they wish there were some way they could record for all time what is about to happen and watch the chopper-cam footage over and over and maybe put it in a scrapbook or time capsule or shoot it into space on the back of a satellite to show the Martians or whoever the hell else is out there some pretty goddamn entertaining TV. And the Martians? The first thing they’ll say when they land their flying saucers on the White House lawn? They’ll say, Those girls had it coming.

About a hundred cops in riot gear wait for the girls, and behind them a platoon of National Guardsmen in gas masks, holding rifles with f*cking daggers attached to the barrels, and behind them this monstrous metal thing with nozzles on the front like some kind of terrible Zamboni from the future that the TV folks tell them the purpose of, which is gas. Tear gas. A thousand gallons.

And they’re waiting behind a building for the girls to come to them, and the uncles feel really present and edgy and almost like they’re with the cops or something, and they think that this moment—even though the uncles are hundreds of miles away from it and all they’re really doing is sitting on a couch watching an electronic box while their food goes cold—might be the best thing that has ever happened to them.