Manx- De-Aging Process

  Manx looked at him in the rearview mirror. Wayne felt flushed and muddleheaded from sleeping heavily, and perhaps for that reason it did not startle him to see how young and healthy Manx looked.

  His hat was off, and he was as bald as ever, but his scalp was smooth and pink, not white and splotchy. It had, only yesterday, looked like a globe, displaying a map of continents no one in his right mind would ever want to visit: the Isle of Sarcoma, North Liver Spot. Manx’s eyes peered out from beneath sharp, arched eyebrows, the color of hoarfrost. Wayne did not think he had seen him blink once in the days they’d been together. For all he knew, the man had no eyelids.

  Yesterday morning he had looked like a walking corpse. Now he looked like he was in his mid-sixties, vital and healthy. But there was a kind of avid stupidity in his eyes—the greedy stupidity of a bird looking at carrion in the road and wondering if it could get some tasty bits without being run down.

  “Are you eating me?” Wayne asked.

  Manx laughed, a harsh caw. He even sounded like a crow.

  “If I have not taken a bite out of you yet, I am not likely to,” Manx said. “I am not sure you would make much of a meal. There is not a lot of meat on you, and what is there is starting to smell a bit gamy. I am holding out for an order of those sweet-potato fries.”

  Something was wrong with Wayne. He could feel it. He could not put his finger on what it was. He was achy and sore and feverish, but that might’ve just been from sleeping in the car, and this was something more. The best he could manage was a sense that his reactions to Manx were off. He had almost been surprised into laughter when Manx said the word “gamy.” He had never heard a word like that dropped into conversation before, and it struck him as hilarious. A normal person, though, wouldn’t laugh at his kidnapper’s choice of words.

  “But you’re a vampire,” Wayne said. “You’re taking something out of me and putting it into you.”

  Manx considered him briefly in the rearview mirror. “The car is making both of us better. It is like one of these vehicles they have now that they call hybrids. Do you know about the hybrids? They run half on gasoline, half on good intentions. But this is the original hybrid! This car runs on gasoline and bad intentions! Thoughts and feelings are just another kind of energy, same as oil. This vintage Rolls-Royce is getting fine mileage out of all your bad feelings and all the things that ever hurt and scared you. I am not speaking poetically. Do you have any scars?”

  Wayne said, “I slipped with a putty knife, and it gave me a scar right here.” He held up his right hand, but when he looked at it, he could not find the hairline scar that had always been on the ball of his thumb. It mystified him what could’ve happened to it.

  “The road to Christmasland removes all sorrows, eases all pain, and erases all scars. It takes away all the parts of you that weren’t doing you any good, and what it leaves behind is made clean and pure. By the time we arrive at our destination, you will be innocent not only of pain but also of the memory of pain. All your unhappiness is like grime on a window. When the car is done with you, it will be cleared away and you will shine clear. And so will I.”

  “Oh,” Wayne said. “What if I wasn’t in the car with you? What if you went to Christmasland alone? Would the car still make you . . . younger? Would it still make you shine?”

  “My, you have a lot of questions! I bet you are a straight-A student! No. I cannot get to Christmasland alone. I cannot find the road by myself. Without a passenger the car is just a car. That is the best thing about it! I can be made happy and well only by making others happy and well. The healing road to Christmasland is just for the innocent. The car will not let me hog it all for myself. I have to do good for others if I want good to be done to me. If only the rest of the world worked that way!”

- Christmasland: Indiana