耶诞恶灵 (2013)

NOS4A2 (pronounced Nosferatu) is the third novel by American author Joe Hill. The book was published on April 30, 2013, through William Morrow and Company, and has since been adapted to a television series. NOS4A2 is a horror novel about a woman trying to save her son from a vicious, supernatural killer.

A limited-edition version of the book was released through Subterranean Press, featuring the novella Wraith that was cut from the manuscript as well as an alternate ending. The novel is called NOS4R2 in the United Kingdom.

Plot

In 1986, eight-year-old Victoria "Vic" McQueen discovers that she can find lost items by riding her Raleigh Bike through a particular covered bridge near her home in Massachusetts, which will transport her to the location of whatever she is seeking. For instance, when her mom, Linda, loses a butterfly bracelet, Vic goes back to a diner in New Hampshire to get it back.

Vic soon discovers that each trip through this "Shorter Way" Bridge exacts an increasing mental and physical toll on her. In order to prevent people from thinking her crazy or a liar, Vic must come up with excuses to explain how she is able to find items. On one such trip, Vic travels to an Iowa library where she meets Maggie Leigh, a librarian with a stutter who can use Scrabble tiles to gain information about future events. Maggie explains that they are both "creatives" who have the special ability to access "inscapes" outside of the normal world. Doing so takes a toll on the user, however, in the form of Vic's fevers and Maggie's gradually worsening stutter. Maggie warns Vic about a man she refers to as "the Wraith", a dangerous man with powers similar to theirs who drives a 1938 Rolls-Royce. Vic travels home but loses her bike and, as a result of using the Shorter Way, develops a terrible fever.

Meanwhile, the man Maggie warned about, Charles Talent Manx III, kidnaps children across the country in the Rolls-Royce. Manx enlists chemical plant worker Bing Partridge to steal a supply of gingerbread-scented sevoflurane from his workplace, which Manx uses to incapacitate his victims. Manx takes the children he abducts to a mysterious amusement park called "Christmasland" where they can purportedly be happy forever. Bing uses the sevoflurane to incapacitate the children's parents before raping and killing them.

In 1996, after separate arguments with her separated parents, 17-year-old Vic follows the Shorter Way to Sleigh House, Manx's residence in Colorado, so that she can be abducted to spite her mother. Upon arrival, she finds a child locked in the back of Manx's car and attempts to rescue him. Vic soon finds out, however, that the child has apparently become a monster in league with Manx. Vic takes refuge in Manx's house but is soon forced to flee when he arrives. She manages to escape Sleigh House at the last moment through a laundry chute after setting it on fire. She runs into overweight motorcyclist Lou Carmody, who takes her to a gas station to call the police. Manx arrives at the same station to purchase gas and is captured by the police after he attacks Vic and kills a soldier coming to her aid. Vic does not tell the police about how she arrived at Sleigh House, and they assume that Manx had kidnapped her and brought her to Colorado.

By 2008, Vic has entered into a relationship with Lou and has given birth to a son, Bruce Wayne Carmody, and develops a successful series of children's books. However, she remains unhappy and scarred by her past. Vic begins to be harassed by phone calls from Christmasland's vampire children, who chastise her for Manx's arrest and threaten to target Wayne. Vic's torment drives her to accidentally burn down the family's house, destroying her relationship with Lou and Wayne. Eventually, they part ways and Vic recovers after a stay in a psychiatric hospital. Meanwhile, in a prison infirmary, Manx briefly wakes from a coma to threaten a nurse.

In 2012, Maggie visits Vic with the news that Manx died in prison, resurrected himself, and then escaped. Vic refuses to believe Maggie and sends her away. Manx reunites and resumes abducting children with Bing. They kill Vic's neighbors and move into their house, watching Vic and her son from a distance. As Vic takes an old Triumph motorcycle for a test drive and discovers that it can enter the Shorter Way, Manx and Bing kidnap Wayne, who manages to contact Lou. Vic calls the police to report that Manx has abducted her child, but they refuse to believe her since Manx is officially dead. Instead, the police suspect Vic in the disappearance of her son, and FBI psychologist Tabitha Hutter is assigned to psychoanalyze her. Despite a cell phone trace that shows Wayne traveling toward Christmasland, on a severely distorted map of the United States, Hutter does not believe Vic's story.

Vic decides to find Wayne using the Shorter Way and runs from the police. She arrives at Bing's house and he attacks her, but she kills him in self-defense by lighting his sevoflurane on fire. Vic calls Lou and tells him what happened, giving Lou a subtle hint to meet her at her estranged father's house. Vic takes the Shorter Way to visit Maggie, who explains that Manx depends on the Rolls-Royce to reach Christmasland and steal his victims' souls so that he can retain his youth; the only way to stop him is to destroy the car. While Vic sleeps, Maggie finds a message in the tiles - "When the angels fall, the children go home" - and leaves a copy for her. Maggie spots Wayne outside the library and runs to get him, but is killed by Manx. Narrowly avoiding capture by local police, Vic takes the Shorter Way to reach her father's house, where Lou has already arrived. Vic's father supplies them with a load of explosives that he uses for his demolition work.