NOS4A2

Vic leaves a week later and is now sober for the first time in her adult life. She stays with her mother because she needs to make amends, the eighth step of the recovery process. At the end of the spring, Lou calls Vic to see if Wayne can spend the summer with her. They’ve been separated for three years but are still on good terms. During a stay in a psychiatric hospital, Vic accepted that her trips to the Shorter Way were delusions. She feels more stable now that she has been treated for her mental health. She rents a cottage for the summer and feels optimistic, but her mother dies that weekend. Wayne flies in to stay with her, along with Hooper, his Saint Bernard. As they drive, Vic thinks of the days ahead as, Vic McQueen Tries to be a Mother, Part II.

Vic remembers a girl that had sung a song about Christmas in the Denver psychiatric hospital. The song included a line about Vic and Santa’s Sleigh. Later that night, Wayne hears Vic whispering the words, and she realizes she had been the one yelling the lyrics in the hospital. She asks Wayne to bring her the tacklebox of fishing gear. Wayne accidentally brings her a toolbox instead. It has a key in it that says “TRIUMPH” on it. She asks him to show her where he got it.

The carriage house at the lake is nice, but Wayne wants to be on his phone constantly. Vic sees the motorcycle, covered, in the garage. It says “TRIUMPH” on it and belongs to the woman who rents the house. She remembers the eight years spent with Lou. Wayne writes “ours” on the dust on the Triumph’s tank. Vic smudges it out and writes “MINE.”

A man named Sigmund de Zoet is painting tiny soldiers when one of the figures moves. He smells gingerbread as the rest of his figures start wobbling toward him. He falls and breaks something in his hip and then shouts for Giselle, then for Vic, who lives across the street, but she is in New Hampshire. He wonders if he has had a stroke.

He hears the song about the old lady who swallowed the fly. A man in a gasmask is singing it as he drags Giselle past the door. The man tells Sigmund that he’s there so he can watch Vic’s house. Sigmund answers the man’s questions but isn’t sure why he can’t resist, not realizing that the gas makes him compliant.

Vic works on the new book and Triumph while Wayne is at day camp. She has decided that she wants to do a Christmas-themed version of Search Engine. She dedicates mornings to working on the book, and afternoons for repairing the motorcycle. The work progresses quickly. However, Vic occasionally catches herself singing a song about Christmasland.

Vic and Wayne return to Vic’s mother’s house for the Fourth of July so Vic can go through her things. On a drive, Wayne asks her if the ghosts who talked to her were real. Vic says no and explains that she got the help she needed to see her confusion for what it was. When they get to the house, Maggie Leigh is sitting on her porch. With a stammer, Maggie says that The Wraith is on the road again and that Manx is free. She reminds Vic of when she scraped her knee. Disturbed, Vic sees that Maggie’s arm is covered in cigarette burns. She tells herself that Maggie only knows Wayne’s name because Vic dedicated the first book to him. Vic remembers the library and the tiles but tells Maggie that she is mistaken about everything else.

Vic tells Maggie that Wayne doesn’t know about Manx. Maggie says the authorities think Manx died the previous year at the age of 115. She shows Vic several newspaper articles about Manx’s death as Vic remembers the smoke in the laundry chute at the Sleigh House. One article talks about his body disappearing from the morgue. The next article is about a man with a Rolls-Royce who disappeared with the car. Maggie says only Vic can stop him. Inside, Vic watches her leave. Vic realizes that she is wearing the FU earrings Maggie gave her years ago.

Wayne looks through Maggie’s folder—which Vic left on the porch—when he goes outside. He looks at Sigmund’s dirty lawn and wonders if he could go look at the painted soldiers. Then Wayne remembers his mother burning down their house before she went to the psychiatric hospital. After breaking up with Vic, Lou dated another woman named Carol, but she and her boyfriend stole Lou’s identity. Wayne is finishing the articles when he sees Hooper in the yard across the street. He sees the curtains twitch as if someone is watching. Wayne goes across the street to the porch and sees something move at the peephole. As he goes to ring the doorbell, he doesn’t notice that the handle is already turning, as if someone is about to come outside.

Bing is on the other side of the door, holding a gun. He plans to use the gas on the boy if he comes in. Manx has been asleep for a day now, so Bing can’t ask him what to do. He has never seen Manx so old, and with so little energy. For now, Manx has told him that they are only allowed to watch. Bing knows that if he makes a mistake, he will never get to go to Christmasland. He watches Lou arrive in a car and greet Wayne.

Bing thinks of Maggie as a junkie. Then, he remembers the giant Y incision in Mr. Manx’s chest. Later, he watches TV with Sigmund and his wife—it is implied that they are dead. That night, he sees Lou take the boy, which annoys him; Manx wants to take the boy and the woman together. Then, Vic leaves as well. Bing remembers Mr. Manx’s arrival in the Wraith. He had been starved. Then he remembers how long he kept Mr. Demeter in the basement. He looks at the sheet of paper on the ground outside: It’s an article about Demeter’s disappearance. Mr. Manx comes out that evening and demands to know why he put the dead adults in the living room. Bing says they are better than no company.

Lou and Wayne stay at an expensive Hilton. Late that night, Wayne asks Lou if Charles Manx is “a big deal” (422). Lou’s heart pounds as he wonders how to answer the question. He worries constantly about his health and hates that he has gained so much weight. Wayne tells him about Maggie’s visit.

Lou had heard about Manx’s death on the radio. He thinks Maggie—whoever she is—must know that Vic is the girl who got away. Vic’s condition with Lou had been that no one but her would ever be allowed to tell Wayne about Manx. This means that Lou never got a chance to tell Wayne about his proudest moment: protecting Vic from Manx.

Lou talks to Vic before the fireworks. They talk about explosives known by the acronym “ANFO.” They are made from horse fertilizer and Vic’s father knows how to make them. Vic asks whether Wayne has asked about Maggie. Lou says that he asked about Manx and tells Vic that thinks that Maggie might be a reporter.

Lou and Vic have never talked about the story with Manx because there are things Lou doesn’t want in his head. Now Vic says they never talked about it because she isn’t sure of what really happened. In one version of her memories, she recalls Manx drugging her, putting her in his trunk, and driving her cross-country with the boy. She got out, burned the house down, and went to Lou. The other way—the other memory—is about the bike, the Shorter Way, and her talent for finding lost things, all of which culminated in Lou saving her at the country store. She finally tells him about meeting Maggie in Iowa.

Lou says that the bridge story must be a delusion, and Vic agrees, but there is no doubt that Maggie is the librarian she met, and that Maggie claims to have tracked her down to tell her Manx is back. Vic had decided that Maggie was fake, but now believes she might have been wrong.

Vic tells Lou that their relationship was never a mistake. She thinks Maggie may have been in the psychiatric hospital and may have heard Vic talking about Manx. This could explain how she could know Vic’s story but would account for Vic’s memories of the Shorter Way Bridge.

Mentally, she compares her pills to a paperweight: They pin her delusions down, but don’t erase them. Actually, she’s been out of her medication, Abilify, for a week. Lou asks her to come to Colorado. She agrees to come with Wayne. As the fireworks start, Lou gives her his helmet to wear when she rides Triumph.

Vic realizes that she still hasn’t refilled her prescription as she drives Wayne and Hooper back to the carriage house. She doesn’t notice the car following her.

Wayne wakes in his mother’s bed to a thumping noise. He thinks he sees Manx coming in, but the outline of Manx turns out to be Hooper. The dog whines. Wayne looks out the window and sees Triumph’s headlight, which reminds him of a Cyclops’s eye. Then, he realizes that Hooper is actually outside with his mother, and he’s confused by the jumble of images he has seen since waking. When he goes outside, Vic says he had a bad dream, so she put him in her bed. They work on the bike together, then race each other to the lake.

Vic works on the motorcycle, which finally starts. Wayne hears her tell the bike that it knows why she found it. She leaves after telling him that she will be back in five minutes. Wayne gives her a curved blade called a Tappet, a combination of a wrench and knife. She doesn’t see the headlights that follow her.

Soon, Vic sees a familiar-looking barn and is suddenly on the Shorter Way Bridge. She smells the bats, and her brake pedal falls off. She sees static between the planks of the bridge and tells herself that it isn’t real. She believes she is hallucinating because she is off her medication. Vic closes her eyes. When she opens them, the bridge is gone, and she is on the highway with her broken motorcycle.

Wayne goes back into the house and texts his dad. He is watching SpongeBob when he hears Hooper bark. The window reflects the TV screen. For a moment, the program shows Santa putting a hook through SpongeBob’s head before throwing him into his bag. When Wayne looks back the cartoon is normal again.

An “ugly” man knocks on the front door. He asks to use the phone because he hit a dog with his car. Wayne sees a tall man standing next to an old car, and also next to a white mound. It is Hooper, but he is still alive. Wayne recognizes Manx and tells him not to touch him. The man has donned a gasmask. Manx blames Wayne’s mother for keeping him from his own children. Wayne screams for Hooper, and the dog bites Bing’s ankle. Manx hits the dog in the head with a silver hammer, killing him. When they try to put Wayne in the car, Wayne bites Bing’s forearm. Bing punches Wayne. In a daze, Wayne hears his mother shouting that she is coming, but they get him into the car and drive away.

Triumph won’t start so Vic walks. Before she gets back and sees what is happening with Wayne, she imagines telling him that she must return to the psychiatric hospital. For the first time, Vic wishes she had a cell phone. She sings Silent Night as she worries about Wayne waiting for her. She gets there in time to see Manx and Bing put Wayne in the Wraith. The Wraith goes through the fence as Manx tries to hit her with the car. A log from the fence strikes her and knocks her down.

Manx asks Bing to put Wayne to sleep while he deals with Vic. Bing threatens Wayne in the backseat as Wayne watches Vic in the grass outside. Her hand moves as she tries to regain her wits. Manx hits her left shoulder with the hammer. Wayne screams and Bing hits him in the mouth with the gas can, then says he must watch. Manx breaks Vic’s spine with the hammer. Bing tells Wayne to pay attention because the good part is starting.

Vic feels as if she is at the bottom of the lake as she hears Wayne screaming from a distance. She hears Manx’s voice but can’t remember who hit her or who is mocking her. She hears her bones break and realizes that it is Manx attacking her, but she doesn’t understand why she doesn’t feel more pain. Then, she realizes that the cracking noises were not from her bones, but from the Kevlar fitted into Lou’s jacket and helmet, which she is wearing. She hears her father’s voice giving her a pep talk. She focuses on his voice and Lou’s jacket.

Manx mocks her for her failures as a mother and girlfriend. She feels the curved blade in her pocket and hits him in the forehead with it, just as he hits her in the helmet, breaking parts of it off. Manx collapses on the hood of the Wraith as Bing gets out and points a gun at Vic.

When Bing sees Mr. Manx fall, it feels like when he fired a nail into his father’s head. Manx pushes himself up just as Bing fires, taking off Manx’s left ear with the bullet. He apologizes while Manx screams at him to get Vic, who is running away.

Lou is in the airport’s food court with an hour before his flight. A young boy watches him with pity in his eyes. Lou hates his inability to change his habits. He feels that he was an accomplice to Vic’s deterioration, since he never stopped her erratic behavior until the house burned down. His phone rings as a Christmas song plays from its speaker. The caller ID says it is from Wayne. Wayne says he’s in the back of a car and Vic is fighting with two men. He says one is Manx, and Lou hears gunfire in the backfire as Wayne says that the doors won’t unlock. Wayne says they’re coming back and tells Lou not to call so they won’t hear the phone. Then, he hangs up. A cop approaches Lou as he starts to call 911. His chest hurts and he falls, convinced that he is having his first heart attack at age 36.

Vic runs rather than getting shot. She screams to Wayne that she will find him. She reaches the water as bullets hit the ground around her. She dives as more bullets hit the water. When she finally comes up, Bing doesn’t know where she is. Manx shouts that she will never see Wayne again, but he will let him call her from Christmasland. Then, Manx dares her to come find him at the House of Sleep before he leaves for Christmasland. Vic hears the car leave with Wayne inside.

While Manx and Bing are outside the car confronting his mother, Wayne jumps into the front seat, but immediately reappears on the back seat. He is disoriented from the gas. He calls Lou, then slides the phone into a drawer beneath the front seats. When the gasmask man tries to get in, the doors lock as he screams and apologizes to Mr. Manx. Manx finally lets him in and says he is on his naughty list now. The car drives itself as Manx holds his hands on his tattered face. He tells Bing to take off his mask and bandage his head. Manx tells Wayne he is in his own universe in the back and no one else is allowed to come in front.

Wayne hears a police siren as Manx says the cops are going to Vic’s house. He also says that he’s not going to hurt Wayne at Christmasland. He explains that it can’t be reached through normal roads, but that it is also only a few miles from Denver. He also says that no child is there against their will, but none would choose to leave. Wayne falls asleep.

Vic crawls to her house and answers the phone in time to hear a girl say that she and Mr. Manx will make sure Wayne has fun at Christmasland. Vic calls 911. She describes her attackers, the Wraith, and gives them the license plate. When the police and emergency medical personnel arrive, an officer named Chitra questions and examines Vic. She answers their questions but thinks they look and act incompetent.

They question her about Lou, and Vic is incredulous that they could suspect his involvement. She tells a detective named Daltry about the Wraith and Manx, including the fact that he kidnapped her when she was 17 years old. As she talks, she remembers her last glimpse of Wayne in the Wraith. Then, she has other memories of him at different ages. She offers to make food for the officers and EMTs.

A police report goes out for two white males, but Vic is frustrated that they don’t mention Charles Manx. Outside, she and Chitra talk about Hooper, and Chitra tells her that the dog is dead. Inside, an FBI agent named Tabitha Hutter talks to Vic. She says they can’t mention Manx by name in the reports because he is dead, and then asks Vic to tell her whatever she can. Vic complies but leaves Maggie and the bridge out of the story.

Hutter asks about the tappet, the curved wrench she cut Manx with. She can’t explain how Manx, who was at least 85-years old, after having spent a decade in a coma, could fight her and drive away after being cut and shot. Hutter is a psychiatric evaluator for the FBI. She says she collects information similar to the way that the robot in Search Engine does. In fact, a Quantico instructor used the books as a tool for observation training. Hutter asks Vic to look at pictures of hammers for her. Suddenly, Lou comes into the room. He hugs Vic and asks what they’re going to do.

Lou tells Hutter he missed his flight. He says that Wayne called him and tells Hutter that Wayne “has to be a grown-up, ‘cause Vic and I did such a shitty job of being grown-ups ourselves” (563).

Hutter says they can find his iPhone. She asks if Lou is okay, and he explains what he calls a panic attack at the airport. The blue dot on the location app shows that it is on “THE ST. NICK PARKWAY” (567), on a continent that looks like a distorted America. It shows locations like “ORPHANAGE,” “THE TREE HOUSE OF THE MIND,” “LOVECRAFT KEYHOLE,” “PENNYWISE CIRCUS,” and “THE NIGHT ROAD” (568). The caption says United Inscapes of America. When Hutter asks, Vic says it doesn’t mean anything to her.

Vic tells Lou about taking the Triumph across the bridge, and he believes her. When they talk about the iMap, she describes inscapes as similar to when someone hears a musician’s song—listeners then have the musician’s ideas in their heads. She says Lou must fix the Triumph so she can go to the House of Sleep. Now that she has seen Manx bleed, she is hopeful about fighting him. He’ll have to stop or rest at some point. Lou agrees, if she takes him with her.

Wayne feels peaceful when he wakes up. The huge mountains make the Rockies look small. The moon has a face. Wayne sees that Manx is healing and realizes that going to Christmasland is better than anything. Now, he understands that his mother is jealous that he gets to go, and she doesn’t. That’s why she hates Manx. Suddenly, his dead grandmother, Lindy, is sitting next to him in a hospital nightie with half-dollars over her eyes. While speaking backward, she tells Wayne that Manx is driving him away from the truth and that he will steal his soul. Manx can’t hear her because he is going forward while she goes in reverse. Manx asks who is back there with him, and Lindy vanishes. Now, he looks like a “devil.” Wayne says he doesn’t want to go. He screams that he doesn’t like it as Bing wakes up.

Wayne can see his breath in the car. He remembers his phone and reminds Manx that he said he owes him one for killing his dog. He asks to make one call. Manx agrees, but not before insulting Vic and criticizing her tattoos as “an invitation to men of poor character to stare” (593). Wayne eases the drawer open and sees that his phone is still there. As they drive through a small town, Wayne screams through the window to the people on the street, but everyone just waves at him. Manx says they can’t hear what Wayne wants them to hear. They are almost to the House of Sleep.

Vic’s phone rings at six in the morning. It’s her father. Vic tells him not to call again. Then, she tells Hutter again that she doesn’t know what Christmasland is.

Vic recognizes the hammer Manx used on her after Hutter shows her a selection on her iPad. Hutter asks if they can have a press conference, because some people are viewing the case as a real-life Search Engine story. She thinks that Vic’s popularity could help them. She also says that soon they will have to talk about what happened in 1996 when Manx kidnapped her.

Vic thinks that Hutter believes she killed Wayne and the dog. Daltry asks her why no one has seen the Wraith, gives her a cigarette, and suggests that she might be mentally “unstable.” She still has his lighter when he walks away.

The car takes them past the burned church by Bing’s house. The marquee says, “THE NEW AMERICAN FAITH TABERNACLE. GOD BURNED ALIVE. ONLY DEVILS NOW” (682). Wayne sees green gas tanks in Bing’s garage. He laughs when Manx scolds Bing about being a disaster. Wayne tries to think in reverse to hide his thoughts, but it is difficult. He realizes that he is imagining violent images that suddenly seem hilarious to him.

Manx shows Wayne the article about Demeter’s disappearance and asks about Maggie. While Wayne urinates, Manx talks to him through the door. He asks who she is and why they were talking about him. Wayne says he didn’t hear it. Now that he is outside, he realizes the car is what makes him think gruesome things are funny. Manx tells him to get back in the car and think. Wayne plans to use his phone when he gets a chance. However, when he opens the drawer, the phone is gone.

His phone is gone, but Christmas ornaments have replaced it in the drawer: an angel, a moon, and a snowflake. He closes the drawer and thinks about his phone. He hears a click and sees the glove compartment open in the front seat. His phone is in the glove compartment and Wayne thinks the Wraith is teasing him. When he reaches into the front seat, his fingers and arm disappear as if he has placed them in another dimension, making them invisible. Then, he feels his own arm poking him from the back seat, as if it had been rerouted when he reached forward. Manx suggests he thumb wrestle himself, before getting into the backseat and giving Wayne a plate of breakfast. He notices that Wayne is still holding the moon. He offers Wayne the phone in exchange for information about Maggie.

Wayne says Maggie told Vic that Manx was on the move again. He also says she mentioned the bridge and said Vic had to find him again. Manx asks if Maggie mentioned a bike and Wayne thinks he is talking about the Triumph. He says he’ll ask Maggie himself because Here, Iowa, is on their way. Then, he denies Wayne the phone call, before turning off the garage lights and leaving Wayne in the Wraith.

Vic tells Hutter the fake version of the story, the version she told Lou, which does not involve the Shorter Way. They discuss her fixations on the children. Prior to Vic’s press conference, Hutter shows her some pages from the Christmas Search Engine, which is still incomplete. The drawing shows fanged children with blank eyes, trapped under ice, as well as children hiding in alleys with scissors, waiting to surprise pedestrians.

Lou left a note that says the bike isn’t ready yet. Vic briefly wishes that Lou had never picked her up. She admits that her Search Engine drawings make her look guilty and isn’t sure what to do next. She calls Maggie, who says that Wayne is still alive. This is enough to put Vic in motion. Hutter and Vic talk in Wayne’s room. Hutter tapped Lou’s phone, listened to Vic’s call with Maggie, and now she wants answers. She says that if Vic doesn’t tell the truth, they’ll question Lou as a suspect. She mentions that Lou managed to start the Triumph the night before, and that the hammer Vic identified from the photos is a bone mallet. Hutter says she must arrest her as Lou comes in. Vic escapes out the window and rides away on the Triumph, almost hitting a reporter as Hutter watches.

Wayne tries, unsuccessfully, to get out of the car by hitting his head on the window. Randomly, he imagines having a pet butterfly named Sunny. A butterfly comes into the car when the window rolls down an inch. He pulls out a loose tooth and realizes that he likes the taste of the blood. Manx comes in and says it’s time to go. He asks what happened to the butterfly, and Wayne realizes that he has pulled off one of its wings for fun.

Manx says Bing learned a lot about Maggie on the internet. However, he doesn’t let Bing into the car. He says he is out of chances. They drive away as Bing screams and cries. Wayne realizes that he is smiling.

Vic cries as she drives. She thinks about her need for the open road, and thinks it is because it is the opposite of being institutionalized. There is still no rear brake on the Triumph, but the motorcycle handles well. Soon, she finds the Shorter Way Bridge.

Vic sees a spraypainted arrow leading to The House of Sleep. After crossing the bridge, she arrives behind a ruined church. She looks in the garage window and sees Wayne and Manx sitting in the Wraith. The pressure builds behind her eye.

As she breaks into the garage, she realizes the Wraith isn’t there. A man across the street shouts that he’s calling the cops. He says that two people left the house half an hour before. Still, Vic believes she is supposed to be here because the bridge always took her where she was needed. The man across the street invites her in to use his phone. She thinks his voice sounds like the man who shot at her. Inside, he puts on the gasmask, surprises Vic, and hits her with garden shears.

She falls down the stairs and lands on something wrapped in plastic. Bing comes down and hits her in the stomach with the tank, before dragging her to another room and putting a mask on her to give her the gingerbread gas. She yanks the tubing out and he hits her again. He says she is his second chance to go to Christmasland.

Vic remembers Daltry’s lighter. She takes it out and ignites it. The canister explodes and throws Bing against the door. As she fights the effects of the gas and struggles to remain conscious, she smells gingerbread.