White Space

by Ilsa J. Bick

  At that, the storm seems to pause a moment, or maybe it’s only the wind deciding to pull in a breath, because the snow shifts. Now, to her left and in the distance, she spots the dark spear of a tower thrusting above the far trees—and its clock face, bright as a moon.

  All right, that answers that question. Other than Dickens and that crazy stunt where Queen Elizabeth parachuted into the Olympics with Daniel Craig, she might not know much about England, but she recognizes that clock tower. Everyone does. Big Ben.

  That’s when she remembers something else, from a Lizzie-blink: a different London. Lizzie had thought that; her parents had mentioned it directly. But what did that mean—another London? Or would a little girl like Lizzie see the past as a different place, a separate Now?

  Or maybe it’s both. Her eyes snag on a furred arc of green-white balls of light strung between the clock tower and the bank opposite. What if we’re talking about not only travel between two points but also different times?

  Her thoughts suddenly fizzle and her vision seems to waver as the darkness ripples. For an instant, she thinks, Shit, can’t pass out now. But then, when she doesn’t and the darkness stops moving, her mind simply blanks.

  Because there, hovering just beyond the decorative marble cornice at the roof’s edge, is a tall jet slit, narrow as a lizard’s eye and outlined by the glister of a blare-white glow.

  No. You’re not real. Squeezing her eyes shut, she flutters them open again to find that the view hasn’t changed. If anything, the glow is stronger. Why did you make this, House? What do you want from me?

  “Emma.”

  At the sound of her name, her heart catapults into her mouth. I think about times and Nows, and House makes the Mirror appear. Gulping against a sour surge of fear, she turns. House makes him.

  Kramer is there, not far away, on the roof. His body is a well of shadow, the details indistinct. But like that slit-mirror that cannot really be there, Kramer is backlit by a faint, undulant luster, as sickly green as an old bruise. In a way, Kramer is the Mirror in human form: a blank daguerreotype, a cutout with no face and nothing she recognizes. But, oh, she knows that gargle of a voice that is one and many, because she has heard it before: in a Lizzie-blink, and on a Madison street conjured from memory.

  “There’s nowhere in this Now left to run,” Kramer says, his voice burring and humming as if the words are being run through a faulty synthesizer. “Or rather … you have a choice of where and in which Now you choose to be.”

  Where and in which Now? Having rested long enough—allowing her to see what it is that House wants her to know—the greedy wind starts up again to grab her gown, snatch at her hair. Glancing back over her shoulder at the hovering slit-mirror, she feels that familiar burn in her forehead, which had ebbed as soon as she bashed out that window, beginning to brighten and sting, coring like a laser through her brain.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.” She eases back a slow step and then another, her bare soles digging troughs in the snow. “Just let me go. I want to go home. I want out of this valley and this creepy house with its weird doors and rooms. I only want to wake up.”

  “Emma, this is your home and where you belong,” Kramer says. “This is your Now.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Between her breasts, the galaxy pendant on its crimson silk ribbon smolders and heats. I have plates that haven’t been invented; I carry the memory of the future. “If I’m only crazy, how come you know about Nows? You’re a liar. I’m still in the valley. I’m in House.”

  “Touché. But did I really say something just now?” Kramer cocks his head. “Are you sure you’re not imagining that I said something you’d like to hear? Even if I did speak, it is my word against your very intriguing delusion. Tell you what: if I’m not real, come to me.” Arms spread wide, Kramer starts toward her. Where she’s struggled and slipped on fresh-fallen snow, he seems to glide, and that is when she sees that his shoes aren’t sinking. She isn’t altogether sure his shoes even touch the snow at all. Something is also gathering … behind him? No, Kramer is shifting, going fuzzy at the edges, his body beginning to steam. “Come,” he says, skimming over snow. “Come with me.”

  Her voice locks in her throat. She is too frightened to scream. Her heart is thrashing in her chest, and the pendant is a scorching, calescent blaze.

  Run. Run now. Go through the Mirror before he—

  A blackness darker than night swarms over Kramer’s body, knitting itself into a tangle of scaly arms and spindle legs; into the thing that pulled itself from the book on the street she’s just left. Peekaboo, I see you. Its voice, whisper-man black, sweeps through her mind, working its fingers into the folds and crannies of her brain. Stay, Breath of My Breath. Drink, Blood of My Blood. Stay and plaaay through tiiime—

  “Get out of my head, get out of my head, get out of my head!” With a shriek, she whirls around and pelts across the roof, slip-sliding on ice and slick slate. She feels the whisper-man fling itself after, but she is running, running, running, and there is the black mirror, rushing for her face as the pain flares between her eyes and the galaxy pendant seems to explode against her chest, as hot and dazzling as a nova—and there is light, a wide blinding bolt that shoots from the pendant, unfurling itself in a path: light that is so strong and steady and sure, it’s as if she’s running on a bright, unerring seam.

  Forget what Einstein said about light. It’s not solid; you can’t run on light. It isn’t there and neither is the Mirror, a tiny panicked voice jabbers in her mind. Follow this and you’re dead. You’ll go over the edge, because you’re crazy; the doctors were right, Kramer’s right, and this path is not there, it doesn’t exist, it isn’t—

  Screaming, Emma plants both hands on icy marble, swings her legs, and then she is sailing for the mirror, following that ribbon of light, and crashing through in a hail of jagged black glass, and then she is falling, screaming, falling …

  EMMA

  The Opposite Ends to a Single Sentence

  ONTO A ROAD.

  London is gone. Her clothes are … regular clothes. Normal jeans, although she’s now wearing the turquoise turtleneck House let her find. Her head kills; that metal plate is gnawing a hole in her skull. She has brought nothing from the past except the galaxy pendant, which is, weirdly, still there and warm against her chest. Otherwise, she’s fine.

  Well, considering all this fog.

  Oh shit. Her eyes lock on the wreck of a car, crumpled against a sturdy tree, and then she knows exactly where—and when—she is. No, this is Lizzie’s life, her past, not mine; this has nothing to do with me.

  Suddenly, space wrinkles. The pendant fires and Emma rushes toward the wreck, though she hasn’t moved a muscle. It is as if she and Lizzie have occupied the opposite ends to a single sentence and someone has carved away everything in between. The degree of separation is now no more than a sliver of White Space between two adjacent letters in the same word. Or is she still, somehow, caught in the Mirror, between worlds? Between Nows?

  Or is this like the bathroom in House—she reaches out and feels her palms flatten on an icy, hard, impenetrable, invisible surface—and I’m on my side of the glass?

  Another thought, stranger still: Is this one of those places where the barrier’s thinnest?

  Beyond, on the other side, Emma can see Lizzie’s mother. Meredith’s head lolls; the air bag’s painted a slick red. The impact has displaced the engine block, the dashboard has ruptured, and the steering wheel has actually moved, jamming into Meredith’s body, tacking her to the seat like a bug to cardboard.

  Lizzie’s mother lets out a long, long moan.

  “M-m-mommmm?” Lizzie’s head is muzzy and thick.

  Wait a second, Emma thinks, on her side of the barrier. I feel her, like I’m in her head, in two places at once. How can that be?

  “Mom,” Lizzie whimpers. The car’s hood is an accordion, the dash only inches from Lizzie’s chest. Lizzie might be able to slither sideways, but th
ere is nowhere to go. “M-Mom?”

  “L-Liz …” The word is a hiss, but this is not the whisper-man. This is the voice of her mother, and she is dying; Lizzie knows that, and there is nothing Lizzie can do, no way to fix this.

  Trapped on the other side of this nightmare, Emma thinks, It’s like I’m bleeding into her life. She remembers Frank cutting himself, the sound of his blood squelching over the Mirror. I’m bleeding into her.

  “Mom?” Lizzie’s voice thins with grief and terror. Bright red blood jets from her mother’s chest and splish-splish-splishes onto vinyl. The steering wheel has done more than pin her mother against the seat. The wheel is broken, and the jagged column has punched through like the point of a lance. With every beat, Mom’s heart empties her veins just a little bit more.

  Please, House, get me out. Emma watches as the fog gushes into the car, swirling up in a whirlpool past Lizzie’s feet, her hips. You showed me the way out of that asylum. So, show me now. Get me out of Lizzie’s head, please.

  “L-Lizzieee.” Mom’s voice is weak, no more than a halting whisper. “G-get … a-awaaay …”

  The phone is still beeping. The fog has crept to Lizzie’s chest and continues to rise, snaking higher and higher, coiling around her shoulders in a white rope to hold her fast.

  Got to finish the special forever-Now, Lizzie thinks. The symbols she’s already formed are starting to fade, the purpling mad bleeding away like her mother’s blood. Got to make the last symbol.

  Symbol? Emma no longer wonders how she knows what Lizzie feels or thinks. She only wants this to end. What symbol?

  “R-run.” Mom coughs, and crimson gushes from her mouth. “L-Lizzie … h-h-h-hide …”

  “Momma, I … I can’t.” The lick of the fog, bright and cruel, is cold enough to burn, and very strong, stronger than Lizzie, and the phone is still ringing, ringing, ringing. The fog’s tongue tastes Lizzie’s chin. Its ice-fingers tickle her nose. She twists and turns, she holds her breath, but the fog doesn’t care. It slips in; it slithers up her nose. Its fingers crawl over her brain and dig into the meat and worm behind her eyes. Lizzie has one last symbol to make, only one, but whatever it was, she can no longer see it in her mind. No, no, it’s not fair, she is so close; she was almost done! If only she hadn’t waited! The fog plucks at the cords of her nerves and muscles. Her legs flop; her arms jitter and twitch—

  I’ve got to do something, Emma thinks, frantically. I’m so close, just a sliver of White Space. There’s got to be something I can do.

  Through Lizzie’s eyes, Emma watches the day gray as the darkness that is the fog flows over and through Lizzie’s vision like black oil, like something out of X-Files, when the aliens slip inside and hijack a ride.

  And then the light is gone, and Lizzie is blind. She opens her mouth to scream—and can’t. Her mouth is stitched shut. No, no, that’s not right. Lizzie’s mouth is no longer there.

  Oh my God. If Emma’s heart still beats, she no longer feels it. Lizzie’s face, her face!

  Lizzie’s face is going blank and whisper-man black, the way the words on a page are erased and scrubbed away, one by one, letter by letter, word by word, line by line.

  Then, the cell phone ceases its relentless beeping.

  Time’s up.

  A moment’s silence. A pause.

  Then, a click.

  And then,

  a soft …

  tiny …

  eep.

  And the phone says …

  EMMA

  Space Tears

  1

  “NO!” EMMA SHRIEKS. Her palms flatten against the edge of White Space. “House, stop this! Don’t listen, Lizzie, don’t listen!”

  House does nothing, and Emma knows there’s no more time for words. The galaxy pendant around her neck is a bright beacon, like a searchlight telling her mind where to go and what to do.

  Bridge the gap. Cross the space. This is like the mirror in the bathroom; this has to be why House showed me how to do this in the first place: to get me ready, prime my brain to believe I can. Just reach out and pull her across and do it now, do it now!

  So Emma thrusts her hand, hard; feels the White Space resist and deform and rip and then—

  Then there is pain.

  Oh God. She opens her mouth to scream, but her lungs won’t work. What is this? This isn’t like the bathroom mirror, where it was only cold and then burning. She isn’t prepared for how much this hurts, as if the glassy teeth of the broken window from that domed chapel for the mad have snagged her after all. This is altogether different than what she’s just done: crashing from the past through a phantom black slit-mirror to this Now. That didn’t hurt at all. One minute, she was in the snow, on the roof, sprinting from the spidery thing erupting from Kramer’s body—and then she was on a road.

  And this is not even close to what happened years ago: when she was twelve and found something down cellar in Jasper’s cottage that she’s determined not to think about. Because that might prove that, really, she’s only crazy.

  Now, the White Space rips. It gapes in a fleshy wound, and Emma is suddenly teetering on the lip between two worlds, two times, two stories. The Space tears, and she tears with it, her skin ripping, flayed from her bones the way paper splits along a seam. She can feel her heart struggling in her chest in great shuddering heaves, and then there is no thought at all, only a blaze of white-hot agony.

  Too late to go back, even if she wanted to: there is the car and Lizzie, right in front of her. She stretches, gropes for a handhold, as the gelid fog burns and scores her flesh. Her fingers slide over something solid: a small wrist, slick and tacky with blood. Her hand closes around Lizzie, and then she is pulling with all her might, dragging the girl from the car and away from the greedy fingers of that murderous fog, reeling her across shuddering time and shimmering White Space, bridging the gap between two letters, two words, two Nows. The White Space flexes, folds …

  2

  AND THEY TUMBLED back in a heap.

  Emma was knocked flat, smacking what little air she had left from her lungs. For a moment, all she could do was lie there, gulping like a hooked fish flipped onto a dock. Her heart hammered against her ribs. Blood bounded in her neck and head, her pulse beating time in her throbbing temples.

  The downstairs hallway, where she’d come back to find herself at that slit-door, was gone. She now lay on plush white carpet in a room with blush-pink walls edged in white trim. To the left, a pine loft bed hovered five feet off the floor. A dollhouse huddled just beneath, and a wine-red tongue of quilt, speckled with colorful glass, dangled over the lip of the bed.

  “Oh boy.” Sprawled on the carpet to Emma’s right, Lizzie lifted her head and said, weakly, “Wow, Emma, I thought you were never going to figure it out.”

  RIMA

  Something Inside

  DUCKING AROUND THE cold red brick of the church, Rima scuttled through the open door and fetched up against the last row of pews. The church was a ruin. The altar had been junked; a huge wooden crucifix lay in two jagged splinters as if snapped over a knee. Beyond the altar rail, an over-large Bible with gilt covers flopped facedown in a colorful halo of shattered, bloodred stained glass. A body, all in black, lay beyond the chancery railing where it had fallen back against a lectern, which was splashed with gore and liverish chunks of flesh. But there was something off about the body, too. The hands didn’t seem … quite right.

  There was the slight grate and pop of glass on stone as Casey came to crouch alongside. “Why did you run? Wha—” He sucked in a small gasp. “You hear that?”

  She did: a small mewling, hitching sound. Somebody crying. “Tania?” she whispered.

  “Who?” Casey asked.

  “Tania,” she said, as if that should be explanation enough. At his frown: “A friend.”

  “A friend from where?”

  “Here.” They were wasting time. Leaning out a little further, she called again, “Tania? Tania, it’s me.”

 
; A pause. The scuff of a boot over stone. “R-Rima?”

  “Yeah. I-I told you I’d come back.” The words just flew into her mouth, as if she was an actor dropped into a scene from a well-rehearsed play. But now she began to remember bits and pieces. She and Tania had been working in the school cafeteria when … when … She skimmed her lips with her tongue. When what?

  “Is it safe to come out?” Tania asked. “Did you bring the snowcat?”

  “The what?” The boy shot her a bewildered look. “What is she talking about?”

  “The snowcat,” she said, relieved. That’s right; I snuck out and found the snowcat. I drove it over. Her hand strayed to the front pocket of her parka, and her fingers slid over the jagged teeth of a key. I grabbed a gun and I left it in the snowcat.

  “What snowcat?” the boy asked.

  Instead of answering him, she called to her friend, “Yeah, Tania, the cat’s outside.” The words still felt strange in her mouth, but somehow she knew that these were the right words, filling in the blanks of a story still taking shape in her mind. “I found a rifle in the equipment shed, too. It’s in the snowcat. Come on, before they find us.”

  “Rima,” the boy said, urgently. “Rima, what rifle? Who are they? What are you talking about?”

  She fired off an impatient glance—and then felt a sudden jolt of panic. The boy’s face seemed familiar, especially his eyes, so stormy and gray. But she didn’t know him, couldn’t remember his name. Who is he? Do I know—

  “Rima?” The boy reached a hand to her shoulder. “Are you all right?”

  Casey. The name flooded into her as if flowing from his fingers. “Yes, I-I’m … Casey, I’m fine.”

  “Then what is this?” Casey asked. “Who’s Tania? Who are they?”

  Dangerous, that’s what they are. “Casey, I don’t know, I’m not sure.” But this is right; this is the right story. “All I know is, this is what’s supposed to hap—” She caught movement near the chancel rail, a flicker of shadow, and then a girl’s face, white and drawn beneath a thatch of wild black hair, slid above the edge of a pew. “Tania,” Rima said, relieved. “Are you all right?”