Joe Hill: Twittering From the Circus of the Dead

“His eyes were open, ” she said. “He looked right at me. He knew my name. He knew my son’s name.”

Patel said, “Ever had a conversation around him with one of the other nurses? No telling what the guy might’ve unconsciously picked up. You tell another nurse, ‘Oh, hey, my son just won the spelling bee.’ Manx hears it and regurgitates it mid-dream.”

She nodded, but a part of her was thinking, He knew Josiah’s middle name, something she was sure she had never mentioned to anyone here in the hospital. There’s a place for Josiah John Thornton in Christmasland, Charlie Manx had said to her, and there’s a place for you in the House of Sleep .

“I never got his blood in,” she said. “He’s been anemic for a couple weeks. Picked up a urinary-tract infection from his catheter. I’ll go get a fresh pack.”

“Never mind that. I’ll get the old vampire his blood. Look. You’ve had a nasty little scare. Put it behind you. Go home. You only have, what? An hour left on your shift? Take it. Take tomorrow, too. Got some last-minute shopping to finish? Go do it. Stop thinking about this and relax. It’s Christmas, Nurse Thornton,” the doctor said, and winked at her. “Don’t you know it’s the most wonderful time of the year?”

About the Author

JOE HILL is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels NOS4A2, Horns, and Heart-Shaped Box , and the prizewinning story collection 20th Century Ghosts . He is also the Eisner Award–winning writer of an ongoing comic book series, Locke & Key . You can learn more at www.joehillfiction.com, or follow Joe on Twitter, where he goes by the inspired handle of @joe_hill.

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Also by Joe Hill

NOS4A2

Horns

Heart-Shaped Box

20th Century Ghosts

Credits

Cover image by Adam Johnson

Copyright

A version of “Twittering from the Circus of the Dead” first appeared in The New Dead , edited by Christopher Golden, in 2010.

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

TWITTERING FROM THE CIRCUS OF THE DEAD. Copyright © 2013, 2010 by Joe Hill. Excerpt from NOS4A2 © 2013 by Joe Hill.All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

EPub Edition AUGUST 2013 ISBN 9780062293466

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