NOS4A2 A Novel

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VIC SLEPT.

Her dreams were an incoherent flickershow of still images: a gasmask on a cement floor, a dead dog by the side of the road with its head smashed in, a forest of towering pine trees hung with blind white angels.

This last image was so vivid and mysteriously awful—those dark sixty-foot-high trees swaying in the wind like stoned revelers in a pagan ceremony, the angels flashing and gleaming in their branches—that she wanted to scream.

She tried to yell but couldn’t force any sound up her throat. She was trapped beneath a suffocating avalanche of shadow stuff, a mountainous heap of soft, airless matter. She fought to claw her way out, shoving desperately, flailing about with all the angry, wiry strength she could muster, until suddenly she found herself sitting up in bed, her whole body greased in sweat. Her father sat on the edge of the mattress beside her, holding her by the wrists.

“Vic,” he said. “Vic. Relax. You just smacked me hard enough to turn my head around. Lay off. It’s Dad.”

“Oh,” she said. He let go of her, and her arms dropped to her sides. “Sorry.”

He held his jaw between thumb and forefinger and wiggled it back and forth. “It’s okay. Probably had it coming.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. For whatever. Everyone’s got summin’.”

She leaned forward and kissed his whiskery chin, and he smiled.

“Your fever broke,” her father said. “You feel better?”

She shrugged, supposed she felt all right, now that she was out from under the great pile of black blankets and away from that dream forest of malevolent Christmas trees.

“You were pretty out of it,” he said. “You should’ve heard yourself.”

“What did I say?”

“At one point you were shouting that the bats were out of the bridge,” he told her. “I think you meant belfry.”

“Yeah. I mean . . . no. No, I was probably talking about the bridge.” Vic had forgotten, for a moment, about the Shorter Way. “What happened to the bridge, Dad?”

“Bridge?”

“The Shorter Way. The old covered bridge. It’s all gone.”

“Oh,” he said. “I heard that some dumb son of a bitch tried to drive his car across it and went right through. Got hisself killed and brought down most of the bridge with him. They demoed the rest. That’s why I told you I didn’t want you going out on that damn thing. They should’ve taken it down twenty years ago.”

She shivered.

“Look at you,” her father said. “You are just sick as a dog.”

She thought of her fever dream about the dog with the smashed-in head, and the world first brightened, then dimmed.

When her vision cleared, her father was holding a rubber bucket against her chest.

“If you have to choke something up,” he said, “try and get it in the pail. Christ, I’ll never take you to frigging Terry’s again.”

She remembered the smell of Petesweat and the ribbons of flypaper coated with dead bugs and vomited.

Her father walked out with the pail of sick. He came back with a glass of ice water.

She drank half in three swallows. It was so cold it set off a fresh shivering fit. Chris pulled the blankets up around her again, put his hand on her shoulder, and sat with her, waiting for the chill to pass. He didn’t move. He didn’t talk. It was calming just to have him there, to share in his easy, self-assured silence, and in almost no time at all she felt herself sliding down into sleep. Sliding down into sleep . . . or riding, maybe. With her eyes closed, she had a sensation, almost, of being on her bike again and gliding effortlessly into dark and restful quiet.

When her father rose to go, though, she was still conscious enough to be aware of it, and she made a noise of protest and reached for him. He slipped away.

“Get your rest, Vic,” he whispered. “We’ll have you back on your bike in no time.”

She drifted.

His voice came to her from far off.

“I’m sorry they took the Shorter Way down,” he murmured.

“I thought you didn’t like it,” she said, rolling over and away from him, letting him go, giving him up. “I thought you were scared I’d try to ride my bike on it.”

“That’s right,” he said. “I was scared. I mean I’m sorry they went and took it down without me. If they were going to blow the thing out of the sky, I wish they’d let me set the charges. That bridge was always a death trap. Anyone could see it was going to kill someone someday. I’m just glad it didn’t kill you. Go to sleep, short stuff.”