NOS4A2 is a 2013 horror novel by author Joe Hill. It tells the story of Victoria (Vic) McQueen’s years-long struggle against the child killer Charles Manx. Hill—the son of author Stephen King—uses the novel to explore themes of parenthood, alternate realities, resilience, and forgiveness.

Content Warning: This guide and the source material reference child abduction and endangerment, as well as domestic violence.

Plot Summary

The story jumps between timelines, but it begins in 2008, as the 85-year-old Charles Manx awakens from a decade-long coma in a California prison infirmary. He threatens his nurse and tells her that her son, Josiah, should visit him in Christmasland, where he takes all his children.

The book then jumps to 1986, where protagonist Victoria McQueen (“Vic”) is exploring her inexplicable talent for finding lost things. She rides her bike through a bridge she calls the Shorter Way. The bridge takes her to the location of whatever she is looking for, such as a bracelet. However, each time she uses the bridge, it comes at a physical and mental cost. She always experiences pain or a fever during and after her excursions. During one trip, she meets an Iowa librarian named Maggie. Maggie has a set of Scrabble tiles that function similarly to the Shorter Way Bridge, but Maggie’s tiles tell her answers to specific questions. Using the tiles to ask questions causes her to stammer. She warns Vic about a man who is using a car named the Wraith to abduct children. Back in her home, Vic develops a fever and loses her bike.

During this time, Manx enlists the help of a man named Bing Partridge. Bing works at a chemical plant and has access to a gas called sevoflurane. He helps Manx gas children to make them docile before Manx takes them to Christmasland. Visiting Christmasland is Bing’s greatest hope, and Manx promises to take him once Bing helps him save 10 children from the monsters that are their parents.

In 1996, the bridge takes Vic to the Sleigh House in Christmasland, where Manx takes many of his victims. She tries to save a boy who is in the back of the Wraith—Manx’s car. She escapes but is almost killed as the Sleigh House burns down. She makes it to a gas station, but Manx gets there and sets a military man on fire, which leads to Manx’s capture. A man in the gas station—Lou Carmody—saves Vic and drives her away on his motorcycle.

In 2008, Lou and Vic are not married, but they have a son, Bruce Wayne Carmody. Vic is now a successful author of a series of children’s puzzle books, called Search Engie. Despite her success, she is tormented by the past, a condition she treats with drugs, alcohol, and obsessive work, particularly when she begins to receive phone calls from children at Christmasland. They blame her for Manx’s capture.

In 2012, Maggie resurfaces and tells Vic that Manx revived and escaped the prison hospital. Manx and Bing kill the neighbors in the house across the street from Vic. While Vic is out, Manx and Bing abduct Wayne after killing Hooper, Wayne’s Saint Bernard. When Vic reports the kidnapping, no one believes her story about Manx, who “died.” The FBI psychological evaluator Tabitha Hutter can’t believe Vic’s story and hopes that she and Lou are not involved in the abduction. Vic escapes and makes it to Bing’s house via the Shorter Way. She kills him by using a cigarette lighter to ignite the gas in the canister he is trying to use on her. She then travels to Maggie’s library in Iowa. Maggie has deteriorated. She has a substance use disorder and harms herself with cigarette burns to reduce her stammer and force clarity into her thoughts. They sleep in the library that night, which was ruined by a flood.

Police officers arrive and Vic escapes from them, but Manx reaches the library and kills Maggie with a hammer. Vic then travels to her father Chris’s house and finds Lou there. Chris provides her with a fertilizer called ANFO that he uses to make explosives. He shows them how to use the detonators as the FBI arrives in pursuit.

Vic and Lou escape the agents, but Chris dies when Detective Daltry shoots him twice. Vic then travels to Christmasland, where she finds Wayne. After a prolonged fight with the abducted children, she can blow up the town with her father’s explosives. Manx and one of his daughters pursue Vic and Wayne, but the Shorter Way Bridge collapses and vanishes, dropping them into the river far below and killing them. Before she dies from injuries sustained in the fight, Vic tells Wayne that he will always find a way to be okay.

Later that year, Lou and Hutter are dating. Wayne is tormented by thrilling images of violence that he can’t get out of his head. The three of them go to the Sleigh House and smash the ornaments in the trees. Wayne returns to normal when they smash a ceramic moon that was linked to him. He finally feels that he can be free of Manx’s influence. Two of the abducted children appear by the house and Hutter tends to them as Wayne hears a motorcycle in the distance.