White Space

by Ilsa J. Bick

  She shook her head. “You’ve never met my mother. She and I don’t look at all like we belong to each other. Sometimes I think I popped out of nowhere or someone switched me at birth and my real mom’s got this awful kid. I don’t even like touching my mom. She feels”—she hugged herself—“like there’s something rotting inside. All the drugs she does, that’s probably pretty close.”

  “So if you feel dead people, their … whispers, like the little girl in your parka, Taylor? Is that what I’m doing?”

  “I don’t know.” She bent her head to study the snow. “Whatever it is, you seem okay now, but I think you should stay off this stuff until we can—”

  When she didn’t continue, Casey said, “Rima, what … oh, Jesus.”

  “Uh-huh.” She tried to say more, but all the words balled in her throat. In her parka, Taylor’s whisper tightened in alarm. I don’t know, honey; I have no idea.

  But she thought they better figure this out, and fast.

  RIMA

  Tell Me You See That

  AT THEIR FEET and all around the snowmobile, the snow suddenly bloomed with oily splotches. Like something’s leaking up from deep underground—or we’re on top of something and the snow’s melting, giving way. Her eyes ticked from the snow immediately around their runners to as far as she could see. It’s everywhere.

  “Rima.” Casey’s voice was library-quiet. “Tell me you see that.”

  “I see it.” The splotches stretched, seeming to sprout legs to creep over the snow. Like what happens when ink drips onto white paper, Rima thought. It seeps along the fibers. The spiderstains stretched and lengthened and merged. The fog was no longer gelid and still but swirling now, the turgid scent of blood-rust growing stronger. The snow began to shift and hump as black waves rippled all around the snowmobile.

  Then, with a monstrous scream, the ebony snow broke, splintering in a shuddering convulsion—

  “Ah!” Shrieking, she threw her arms around Casey as hundreds and hundreds, thousands, of crows bulleted from the snow: pulling together out of that weird oil, spinning in a screeching black funnel cloud, hurtling into that blister of a glare-white sky.

  “Where did they come from?” Casey shouted over the screams. His storm-gray eyes were jammed wide with shock. “What do they mean?”

  Death. Stunned, she followed the scrolling tangle of birds as they drew their black calligraphy onto the sky: arabesques and whorls and swoops and slashes and arcs. Crows are death, and there is so much here, more than we can imagine. Tightening her arms around Casey, she felt his slip about her waist, and wasn’t sure if the shudder working its way through her arms and into her chest was only hers. Yet, as frightened as she was, she was suddenly more afraid for him. It was crazy, stupid, something you did if you were major crushing on someone. But this is so dangerous for you, Casey; there is something here that wants you, will take you, if it can. I feel it.

  She had to get him out of here. Now that the birds had cracked out of their icy shell in their mad flight, the snow—if that’s really what it was—was pristine and white once more. All right; that’s a start. Maybe slide onto the snow, see if she felt anything now. If not, they needed to move, get out from under these birds if they could, put some distance between them. But what if the birds followed?

  One step at a time. She tipped her head back to that roiling sky. “I can still see them,” she said. The birds’ ebb and flow was almost as hypnotic as the sea, or like staring into the swirl of an ebony whirlpool that endlessly circled round and round and round. Like a black hole, the kind that ought to exist in outer space: you could trip over the edge and fall forever. “So maybe the fog’s burning off. Casey, you think you can drive the sled—”

  “Rima.” At his tone, she pulled her gaze from the sky. Casey was staring over her shoulder. “Behind you,” he said.

  She craned a look. A slit had appeared in the thick mist, as if someone had drawn a very sharp knife through taut white fabric. The lips of the cut drew back, and then this rent widened as the fog retreated. When she stopped to think about it later, the effect was like the parting of a curtain on some bizarre stage. Beyond the mist lay a thick forest, dark and very dense, that hemmed the snowfield on three sides.

  “Like walls,” Casey said. “Like we’re looking into a room.”

  That was exactly right. She watched as the fog wavered and glimmered—and then another shape pulled together, the fog sewing itself into something solid and blocky: red brick capped with a spire. A rosette window blossomed above a set of thick wooden double doors.

  “It’s a church,” Casey breathed. “And look, there, to the left.”

  “Cemetery.” The tombstones were a jostle of rectangles and squares, listing like broken teeth. Beyond, she spotted … was that a snowplow? No, that wasn’t right. The blocky vehicle was outfitted with treads, like a tank, and the discharge chute of a snowblower reared like an orange smokestack to the left of the cab. Instead of a blade, the huge, sharp corkscrew of an auger was mounted at the front of the vehicle.

  I know this. The certainty was so bright, it was like a searchlight had flared to life in the center of her brain. The church, the cemetery, and that thing with the auger is a snowcat, and it’s all important. But why? Why do I recognize thi—

  A scream, short and sharp, ripped through the air, followed by a loud, rolling BOOOMMM.

  Rima knew, instantly: not thunder, or an explosion.

  A shotgun.

  Coming from the church.

  EMMA

  A Bug Under a Bell Jar

  1

  “NO. JUST STAY away from me.” Cringing from Kramer’s outstretched hand, Emma slides a slow step back and then another, the rough carpet scratching her bare feet. She is suddenly very cold, and from the heavy overcoat Jasper wears, that faint sparkle of snowmelt on his shoulders, she thinks it’s probably winter.

  Of course it’s winter, you nut. Clad only in a coarse flannel nightgown, Emma shivers. It was snowing in the valley. Lily and I crashed in a blizzard. This hallway, this asylum, these people, all belong in a nightmare, a blink, a dream, a hallucination—or it’s House that is peopling this illusion, pilfering her memories for details: the embroidered pictures of flowers, the bowed ridged ceiling with its gas lamps, the low pedestal table to her immediate right with that stuffed toucan trapped under a glass dome.

  How could House build this from my mind? She doesn’t know or recognize this as a real place, or from any book. Now, that day in Madison, the one she just left, she almost understands. The bookstore exists; she had bought The Bell Jar that day. The broader details, even her mocha Frappuccino, were correct.

  Yet, unless she was taking a cue from all those Dickens novels and stories they listened to when she was young, she has never imagined Jasper as a bearded, middle-aged man in expensive evening clothes, complete with a walking stick. And Kramer, so different: no longer the Great Bloviator in prissy Lennon specs but a Victorian-era shrink decked out in purple panops. It’s as if she’s exchanged one monster for another.

  And I’ve never been here before, except in a blink I barely remember. I don’t know anything about asylums except what’s in The Bell Jar, do I? Did Dickens ever—

  “Come with me, Emma.” Kramer’s tone carries a note of command. “You and I will go to my office and sort this out”

  What, and then you’ll accuse me of stealing a dead guy’s story? She fights for control, her eyes stinging with frightened tears. Stop it; this is a dream, a blink; that’s why it echoes. House is building this from your memories. This isn’t real. But she’s hip-deep in it; this is like being chased by a monster in a nightmare—and, yes, isn’t that exactly what’s happening? You have to run in a nightmare; you don’t know you’re in one until you wake up. She can’t chance that House will rescue her.

  “No. I don’t want to sort it out. I’m not going anywhere with you.” Call it a hunch, but if she lets him take control in this hallucination or blink or whatever it is that H
ouse is doing, it’s the end. She’ll be trapped here. Behind her—and don’t ask her how; she just knows—this very long corridor is nothing but a blind alley, a dead end.

  Which means the only exit from this floor is the way that Jasper and Kramer came in. How am I going to get past them? Kramer is the point of the spear; Jasper hovers just behind Kramer’s left shoulder. Another foot or so back, Graves stands to Jasper’s right. But Weber, the thickset attendant with the strong dress to Jasper’s left, is the one she has to worry about. Her eyes fall to Jasper’s walking stick with its carved ivory handle, and she thinks, Right-handed.

  “I will go only if Jasper comes, too, and only him,” she says to Kramer. “But the rest of you back off, okay?”

  Kramer hesitates, and Graves, the nurse, says, “Doctor, I don’t think—” at the same moment that Weber grunts, “Them girls know how to make trouble.”

  “Those girls? I’ll thank you to remember that you’re speaking about my ward. Of course, Emma.” Arms open, Jasper’s already stepping past Kramer. “You’ll come to me, won’t you? No more fuss, eh?”

  Oh, just watch me. “No more fuss,” Emma says, and then she darts forward, her left hand reaching for the walking stick. Startled, Jasper flinches, but he’s too slow.

  “No!” Reaching for Jasper’s shoulder, Kramer tries to pull the other man back. “Emma, stop!”

  But she won’t; they can’t make her. Wrenching the stick from Jasper’s fingers, she whips it around like a club in a fast, high, whirring backhand. She feels a jolt in her wrist as the heavy ivory head connects, and then Kramer’s head snaps back, a spurt of blood jumping from a gash on his jaw. Stumbling, Kramer falls into Jasper, who tries an awkward catch and misses. The two of them go down in a tangle. Behind them, she sees Weber start with a rough exclamation, “Oi!” and then recover, gathering himself to charge.

  “Restrain her!” Kramer shouts, a hand clamped to his jaw. He is struggling to find his feet. “The door! Don’t let her off this ward!”

  Thank you. He’s just told her: the door is open. Still clutching the walking stick, she sprints to her right, sweeping porcelain bowls and the stuffed toucan from its low table in a clash of glass and metal. Weber makes a lunging grab, but she is smaller and faster, and dodges. She feels the drag of his fingers, and her scalp gives a yelp of pain, but then she’s dancing past, with the fleeting thought that whoever said girls with long hair would never survive the zombie apocalypse probably had something there.

  “Miss Lindsay!” Flanked by the other two attendants, Graves is stepping to block her way. “Stop this at on—” Graves lets out a breathless grunt as Emma rams the cane’s ivory head into the woman’s belly. Staggering, Graves takes an attendant down with her as she falls, and then Emma is sprinting for the exit in a swirl of white flannel. The hall is enormous, infinitely long, and alive with the muffled cries and catcalls of patients, the slap of hands on stout wood. Like feeding time at the zoo. Behind her, she hears heavy footfalls coming closer and Kramer’s shouts: “Miss Lindsay … No, Jasper, stay here … John, no, please remain on the ward and let me attend to this … Miss Emma! Emma, wait, wait!”

  Dead ahead, she spots an arched entryway, but … is that a curtain, or …? Oh shit. Her heart sputters as she realizes what she sees is a floor-to-ceiling iron grate, like the bars of an ancient jail. Which is exactly what this is: a prison for nuts, lunatics, the mad. I’m trapped.

  Then she remembers: Kramer didn’t want me to get to the door. Her eyes fall to a heavy wooden door set in the grate on iron hinges. Of course. You wouldn’t swing open the entire grate; there had to be a separate door that would allow doctors and nurses and patients to get in and out.

  Without pausing, she stiff-arms the door at a dead run—and screams as a lightning bolt of pain shoots up her arm. Gasping, she reels, her right hand singing, and nearly falls. The door is very heavy, nothing she can easily smack open. Hit that thing at the wrong angle or any faster, she might have broken her wrist. Blinking away tears, she staggers back and shoulders her way through. The door gives by grudging degrees, groaning open six inches, a foot. Wide enough. Plunging through onto a large stone landing, she turns, plants both hands, and muscles the door shut. It claps to with a loud bang.

  Through the open grate, she can see the others coming, Kramer in the lead. There is blotch of bright red blood on his white linen shirt. Got to stop them, slow them down … Across the landing stand identical iron grates and doors at nine and twelve o’clock, closing off yet more patient galleries, and the same to her immediate left. In all the corridors now, there is movement: the flow of long skirts and clump of heavy boots as the night nurses and attendants hurry to see just who has gotten loose.

  Got to get out of here. She should block the door behind her, if she can. Throwing a frantic glance at the large cast-iron square lock, with a keyhole directly beneath a brass knob at the upper right, she feels a sudden kick in her chest. Whoa—her eye fixes on that bright brass knob—wait a second.

  Attendants are shouting at her from the other galleries; there is the muted tinkle and shake of keys, but she barely hears. Staring at the knob, what she feels is recognition, a sense of something clearing in her mind, as if all the pieces to a tough physics problem are beginning to click.

  That’s the knob House showed me on the slit-door. “Oh Jesus,” she whispers, and another fit of trembling sweeps through her as her mind jumps back to her first thought when she found herself here. What if this is the real-world detail House plucked from her mind? Skull plates or not, what if I really belong here?

  “Emma!”

  Kramer’s shout breaks the spell. Her head jerks up, and she sees the men only twenty feet away. There are more crowded at every single grate. Figure this out later, you nut; move, move! She spots a small latch-bolt protruding from the bottom edge of the lock-plate and thinks, Push it. Jamming the small bolt to the left with the ball of her thumb, she hears the lock catch with a crisp snap.

  “Emma, stop!” Kramer says as he and the others crowd against the iron grate. Shaking out keys, Kramer reaches through the grate. There is a scrape of metal on metal as his key stutters on iron, and she realizes that she must have hit some kind of dead bolt that can only be opened from her side.

  “Emma.” Jasper wraps his hands around the iron bars. “Please, let them help you.”

  “If you refuse to listen to me, pay heed to John, your guardian,” Kramer says, still struggling with fitting the key. “You’re only making this more difficult for yourself, Emma.”

  Oh, I don’t think so. Wondering, though: John? Why had Kramer called Jasper by that name? Something important there …

  But she has no time to think anymore about it. Turning, she scuttles to the grate to her immediate left and jams the privacy bolt to. That will have to do; no time for the others. From all the wards now come muffled hoots and shouts and bangs as patients hammer their locked doors. Behind her, Kramer is shouting, “Porter! Porter!” and Emma thinks: Uh-oh. Scurrying to the head of the central staircase, she makes out denser shadows hustling over marble: the night guards coming to get her.

  And there is yet one more sound, distant but so familiar, that snags her: a kind of mad, booming, howling chorus rising from the depths of this building to seep through brick and open-worked iron grills: Matchi-Manitou, in his cave under Devils Island. And then she thinks, What?

  Out of the shadows below, a phalanx of seven men swarms for the stairs like an army of black spiders, and she backs away. Can’t get out that way. She won’t let them take her either. She won’t go down there. Down may be the way out, but down is also bad. Deep underground, in the dank basement of this asylum, there is …

  Matchi-Manitou, in his deep dark cave …

  A room, a sundry room, the words suddenly popping in her brain with the clarity of a flashbulb. The sundry room is padded with cork and India rubber for violent people like her. There is the rotary chair and thick, sickly sweet rust-red medicine and cold-water b
aths and more that is much, much worse.

  But how do you know this, Emma? And why is she thinking of Devils Island? That’s in Wisconsin, and she’s … She doesn’t know where she is, but she can feel the scream rising from her chest. How do you know what happens here?

  “Here now!” From far below, a very large man, round as a billiard ball, leads the charge, lumbering up the stairs and using a heavy stick for balance. “Stay there, Miss!”

  No way in hell. To her left are arched windows, and because there is so little light behind her, she makes out the open space of a very large courtyard or garden. Protruding immediately below is the snow-covered roof of some other building she can barely see. Flanking the garden on either side are extremely long wings, which must be more wards.

  I’m on the second floor. Her hand tightens on Jasper’s sturdy walking stick. Break a window. Climb down. And then she thinks: Seriously? She was no monkey in gym, and even if she manages it, she has no way of knowing how far the grounds extend and she can’t go fumbling around in the dark. It’s winter; she’ll freeze. Barefoot, she won’t get far anyway, and snow means tracks. But I have to get out, find a road and people. Figure out exactly where I am.

  Sprinting right, she pelts along a side landing toward the next flight of stairs, trailed by Kramer’s bellows, nurses and attendants trapped behind gated iron grilles, and the porter’s shouts. Wheeling around a marble newel post, she catches a glow of streetlamps through high windows and, closer, the wide columns of this building’s massive portico—and she falters. That’s the front of the building. So why is she heading up and not down? Okay, down is bad, and yeah, the front doors might be locked, and there’s the little problem of getting past all those men. But what are you doing, Emma? Why are you running up? This is a blink, a nightmare, and forget the stupid brass knob on the lock, how detailed this is, how real, and all that shit. She’s got to believe she’s still inside that creepy little house, the near twin to Frank McDermott’s home, and House has created this.