The Man Made of Smoke

“It was an old camper van […] There was a rusted metal grille screwed over the black window in the side. Staring at the glass behind it was like looking into a night sky: a kind of fathomless darkness dotted with pale, misty constellations of mold […] The vehicle seemed to tower over me, and the shadow it cast felt colder than it should. As I moved to the front, I noticed there were patterns in the dirt along the bottom of the van that looked like children’s handprints. The metal was ticking slightly in the heat.”

The camper van used by the Pied Piper is an important symbol in the book, representing both his evil and societal indifference to obvious red flags. Dan’s description makes it clear that the van carries visibly sinister signs, such as blackened side windows that have been blocked with a grille and children’s handprints at the bottom, yet no one else notices its oddness. Dan’s realization that the van is eerie demonstrates his child’s intuition. In the text, children are often more alert to evil than adults, perhaps because they aren’t yet numbed by life.

“I reached down carefully, my hands shaking. It was heavier than paper. Some kind of thin card. The back was perfectly white, but when I turned it over I realized that it was a photograph.

It took me a second to make sense of what I was seeing.

And when I did, I began to scream.”

These lines are an example of the text’s use of horror and suspense conventions to build a sense of dread. Though the novel doesn’t describe the photo’s horrific contents until much later, the allusion to Dan’s abject terror itself imbues tension in the plot. Since the chapter ends on these lines, the uncertain cutaway further adds to the atmosphere of fear and suspense.

“It is interesting to note how an event that becomes formative for a patient might appear utterly inconsequential to an observer. We can never know the importance of our actions, however small and innocent they might seem. An interaction that, for us, is gone in a heartbeat might be something that another person finds impossible to forget.”

Dan’s notes after meeting Richard Barber illustrate the ripple effects of a single encounter. Dan has been irrevocably changed by a single day in his life, the meeting with James.