by Ilsa J. Bick
“Yes.” Tania’s eyes, little-girl wide, flitted from her to Casey. “Who’s he?”
“Casey. He’s a friend.”
“From where?” Tania was standing now, a shotgun clearly visible, the barrel pointing at Casey’s chest. “I don’t remember him from class.”
Neither did she, exactly. She improvised. “I found him wandering around when I got the snowcat.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Casey turn another look, but she pushed on. “I couldn’t just leave him there.”
“How do you know he won’t change?”
Change? The word chilled her blood. Change into what? Then she remembered the broken body in the chancery, and those hands that weren’t quite right. “Who is that? Who did you shoot?”
“Father Preston.” Tania’s chin quivered. “I couldn’t stay in the gym, so I ran to the church and Father Preston was here, only he … he … I didn’t want to, but I had to!”
“Stay calm, Tania. It’s okay,” Rima said, and then she was up, breaking out from cover and going to her friend. Casey said something, but she barely heard, couldn’t really understand the words. “Come here,” she said, gathering the weeping girl in her arms. “It’s okay. It’s going to be all right.”
“Nice that you think so.” Tania smelled of charred gunpowder, the oil the groundskeeper—Fred, Rima thought, his name is Fred—used to clean the shotgun, and sweat. Turning her head into Rima’s shoulder, Tania slumped into her. “I’m so scared.”
“It’ll be okay.” Rima slid the gun from Tania’s slack fingers and handed the weapon to Casey. Casey’s face was a mask of confusion, but she could tell from the firm set of his mouth that he would follow her lead.
“Rima, I … I don’t feel so good,” Tania moaned against her shoulder. “I think I’m going to be … I think I might be s-sick.”
“We just have to get you out of—” Then Rima felt Taylor’s death-whisper flexing and bunching with alarm along Rima’s arms and around her middle, and that was when Rima’s mind registered what her hands—so sensitive to the whispers within—were telling her, what Taylor sensed.
There was something else here, under her hands. Not in Tania’s soot-stained parka or whispering in her clothes, no. Rima saw Tania’s face twist as another pain grabbed her middle.
There was something inside Tania.
EMMA
Just One Piece
“COME ON!” LIZZIE sprang to a sit. “We got to get the others, quick!”
“No, wait, wait a second,” Emma said. Her head ached, and a slow ooze of something wet wormed from her right ear. When she put a hand to her neck, the fingers came away painted bright red. From the pain she’d felt as she reached through White Space, she thought her skin would be torn in a dozen places, but other than the gash on her forehead she’d gotten when the van crashed, there wasn’t a scratch on her. The pendant wasn’t around her neck anymore either. Just another part of her blink, she guessed, like the flannel nightgown and Jasper’s ivory-handled walking stick—and good riddance.
Now that they were in the same space, in the same room, Emma could see that, really, they didn’t look all that much alike. Lizzie’s face was oval, the blond pigtails giving her the look of a pixie. Falling to the middle of her back, Emma’s hair was very dark, lush, and coppery, and her face was square.
What are you? Emma’s gaze fixed on the golden flaw in the little girl’s right eye, embedded in an iris that was a rich, lustrous, unearthly cobalt. Same flaw, same eye, identical color.
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said, and thought, with an unpleasant little ping in her chest, that this was the same thing she’d said only minutes ago to Kramer or the whisper-man or whatever the hell that had been. All these repetitions and echoes were starting to drive her crazy. It was as if she existed in multiple places at once, the lines slotting into her mouth depending on which choice she happened to make at that instant.
And then she thought, Whoa. Wait a second … multiple places?
“You have to,” Lizzie said. “I can’t do this alone. The others are lost; they’ve fallen between the lines. I couldn’t hold on to them all.”
Okay, so the kid was as crazy as she suspected she was. Not too comforting, that. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s happening.”
“I’ll explain everything, I promise,” Lizzie said, scrambling to her feet. “But we have to get them now.” When Emma still made no move to follow, the little girl said, impatiently, “Why did you reach through White Space if you didn’t want to help?”
“I didn’t know what I was doing.” That was almost true. The impulse had been instinctive, no more mysterious than rescuing a baby bird fallen from its nest. “You were in trouble and …” And I was in your head, which was just too freaky-weird. “I just knew I could.”
“But why?” Lizzie pressed. “Why did you really do it?”
“Because …” She bit off the rest. Oh, come on, what do you care if she thinks you’re nuts? Just say it. “I saw your dad, at the Dickens Mirror, in my blinks, and I did the same thing because House showed me: in the bathroom, at the slit-door to the … well, I think it’s a library. And I … I was in your head just now. It felt like we were the same somehow, like echoes or twins or …” She made an impatient gesture. “Only we’re not. I was wrong. I don’t look anything like you. You’re a little kid. I’m seventeen.” And I’m nuts and you’re … okay, maybe you’re nuts, too. “Whatever,” she said, and huffed out in annoyance. She was so taking her meds from now on. “I’m not you.”
“No, you’re not,” Lizzie said. “You’re just one piece. You all are.”
RIMA
I Don’t Know Who You Are
NO, GOD. NOT Tania, too. Cold sweat slicked Rima’s skin. The whisper of something unspeakable moved in a darkling roil deep within Tania to shiver and squirm beneath Rima’s hands. It can’t be happening to Tania, not when we’ve come this far.
Tania sensed something, because she drew back, her frightened eyes shimmering with tears. “What’s wrong?”
“N-nothing,” Rima managed. She was aware of … of that boy. Her mind blanked, as if all the words she’d been thinking were suddenly erased. The name that had been on the tip of her tongue only seconds ago vanished like smoke. The boy, that kid with her: What’s his name? She couldn’t remember. He didn’t even look all that familiar.
What’s happening to me? A bolt of panic shuddered through her chest. I remember Tania. I recognize the church. I know where I am. So why can’t I remember him?
“Rima,” the boy said, “I don’t think we should stay in here.”
He knows me. Anything she might have said knotted in her throat and wouldn’t come out. She felt as if her mind was being swallowed a bite at a time. How can he know me if I don’t recognize him?
“Rima?” The boy reached to touch her, then seemed to think better of that. “You’ve … you brought the snowcat, remember?”
Right. She almost let out a giddy laugh. The cat, I remember that. She was freaked out, that was all. Who wouldn’t be? After the carnage in the cafeteria, where the pimply guy with the dweeb hairnet in the serving line, Victor, suddenly howled and sprouted claws … who wouldn’t be spooked? Worry about this later. Just move, get out!
“Yes,” she said. “Right outside. We better get going.”
“Wait.” The boy was clutching Tania’s shotgun in one hand and now shucked in a shell, the pump making a loud, echoing, ratcheting, insectile sound. “Tania … Tania?” When the girl dragged up her head to look at him, the boy said, “How many shells are in the shotgun? Do you know? How many shots did you take?”
“T-two,” Tania said, then shook her head and moistened her lips. “N-no. Three, I … I th-think. I d-don’t know.”
“All right. It’s okay.” To Rima: “Let me go first, all right? Just in case. You take care of your friend.” Without waiting for her to agree, the boy turned and hurried up the center aisle.
“Co
me on, Tania. We’re almost out. Just hang on.” Threading an arm around the moaning girl, Rima staggered after the boy. Leaning so heavily against her that Rima was practically carrying her, Tania stumbled along, nearly doubled over with pain. Ahead, at the front entrance, Rima saw the boy put up a hand and then slide to the open front door. “Anything?” she whispered.
“No. Here, she’s too heavy for you. Let me help.” Darting back, the boy grabbed Tania’s other arm and took most of the girl’s weight. “She’ll fall otherwise.”
“Thanks.” And then Rima blurted, “I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are. I don’t remember your name. Isn’t that weird? I think I knew, but now …”
“I’m Casey.” The boy’s voice was calm, which surprised her, because his eyes, their color, were so strange: stormy and indefinite, as if they hadn’t quite settled in his face just yet. “It’s okay, Rima. We’ve had a really rough night so far.”
“Yeah?” Rima tried a shaky smile. “Feels like it’s been pretty bad.”
“And then some.” A brief smile flickered over the boy’s lips. “Come on.”
With Tania lurching between them, they wobbled outside and over the snow in an ungainly jog. At the sight of the blocky orange snowcat only a short distance away, Rima felt the cobwebs of uncertainty in her mind being swept away by relief. I know this. I recognize this. She also knew that there were two distinct parts to the vehicle: a glassed-in, two-seater forward cabin for the driver and a larger passenger cabin just behind that, like a smaller version of a semi-tractor trailer.
Turning to the boy—no, Casey; he’s Casey—she said, “Let’s take Tania around back. There’s a door there and more room for her to lie …”
There came a sudden hard bang, not the blast of a shotgun but the slam of stout wood against brick. With a jump of alarm, Rima turned and saw a dark blur—something with a head and arms, a swirling black torso—storming, insanely fast, from the church. In the blink of an eye and before she even had a chance to pull in a breath, the thing was there, right on top of them, looming over Casey, who was only just now beginning to turn, and there was no time to get to the snowcat, no time!
“Casey!” Rima shouted. “Casey, look out!”
EMMA
Find Your Story
“A PIECE.” EMMA stared. “A piece of what?”
“A piece of me,” Lizzie said. “I’ve been trying to pull you closer … gosh, forever. It’s way harder to grab someone who’s popped right off the page than you think.”
“What?” She felt the burn of a scream trapped somewhere in her chest. “You,” she said to the little girl, “are nuts. What are you talking about? That’s just an expression. All I want is to wake up and fall out of this blink into my life. I want you to get House to let me go.” As soon as she said that, she thought, Okay, that sounds pretty crazy, too.
“This isn’t a dream, or even a blink. I wish it were. It would be easier, maybe.” Lizzie looked suddenly … tired? No. For a brief second, her outlines seemed to glimmer, her eyes to actually … smoke, and Emma thought, Oh holy shit. But then the moment passed, and Lizzie was only a little girl with shock-trauma eyes: a kid who’d seen and been through too much. Like Emma, come to think of it. She didn’t like looking at the few pictures of herself before Jasper had the doctors surgerize her brain and repair her head and face. It always felt as if that little girl was a freak, a clay doll badly in need of molding, caught halfway between a formless nothing and something only vaguely human.
“I don’t know any other way to explain it,” Lizzie said, her cobalt eyes so dark and shadowy and haunted, they’d have been at home in an X-Files episode. “You’re a piece. Part of me is in you, like your eyes.”
“My eyes are just blue,” Emma said. “Eric’s eyes are blue. So are Rima’s.” Weren’t Bode’s eyes blue, too? Tony’s and Chad’s, she couldn’t recall, and Casey … maybe green? Brown? Hazel? She wasn’t sure.
“Yeah, but the others’ eyes aren’t exactly the same, not like ours. We’ve both got that birthmark, that little speck of gold? We’ve got our dad’s eyes,” Lizzie said.
“Our dad? That’s crazy. I don’t know who my dad is, and I’m not you.” Emma clambered to her feet, a move she regretted a split second later when her head swirled. Wow, it was like she was waking up from a bad fever. Or like I still got one. She put a hand to her forehead, but her skin was cool and dry. “I’m me.”
“Yes, yes, you are you, but …” Lizzie darted to her bookshelf. “Let me show you.”
“Ohhh no, no,” Emma said, as Lizzie tugged down not a book or a folder but a scroll tied with purple ribbon. “No more books, no more monsters slithering out of pictures and people morphing.”
“You’re in my room,” Lizzie said. “It can’t hurt you.”
“What are you talking about?” she said, but she almost understood. House was an island, the only place where light shone in this darkness. House had the power to whisk her places, or keep her in a single room. Jesus, what if Lizzie wasn’t here either? What if this was all House’s doing and just one more thing she was being shown for whatever reason?
I could go round and round this thing until my brain ties itself into a knot. Just got to accept something as a given, and I know I’m real. Yeah, but she’d interacted with Kramer; the snow had been freezing cold against her bare feet; the windowpanes smashed with the right sound in the right way. So had that been real, too? No, I know that was a blink because I’m pretty much back where I started: not out of the valley but back in House. Whatever House thought I needed to see and experience, I have.
“Did you make this place?” she asked. “This is the special forever-Now you were thinking about, isn’t it? That’s what those weird symbols were about. Is this what you were trying to make right before the crash?”
“Yeah, it is. It’s worked … okay, I guess. Here.” Lizzie unrolled the scroll. “Read that.”
“Wait a minute.” She didn’t make a move for the proffered roll of white parchment. “What does that mean, it’s worked okay? How is it supposed to work?”
“Too much to explain now, Emma, and you’re wasting time.” Lizzie thrust out the parchment. “Take it.”
It was on the tip of her tongue to say something snarky, like time was relative, but she thought, Oh, cut it out; she’s just a little girl.
The scroll was very strange, not yellowed with age or crackly but smooth and velvety soft. She’d never felt anything like it. The parchment was also completely blank, front and back. “Read what?” she asked, turning the scroll over and then back. “There’s nothing there.”
“Sure there is. There’s White Space.”
“Yeah, I see that it’s white, but that’s because it’s blank, Lizzie. I can’t read nothing.”
“You still don’t get it, do you? The words are there, in White Space. Haven’t you been paying attention? House showed you over and over again. You don’t put words on White Space; you pull them out. It’s like what our dad did with the Dickens Mirror.”
“No, it’s not,” she said, and wondered why she was bothering to argue this. “I remember what you saw, at least a little bit of it. He pulled out a thing … or the thing got into him.” She stopped, frustrated, wishing the memory of that blink was clearer. “Look, I’m sorry, but this is only blank parchment, and don’t give me that gobbledygook about how special your dad’s parchment was.”
“Well,” Lizzie said, “it was. It is. Wait, here, I know what you need.” Reaching on tiptoe, the girl yanked the coverlet from her loft bed. “Hold on to this. Honest, it’ll help a lot. I use it all the time to find you guys.”
The memory quilt: Emma recognized the swirl of colors, the rattle and chink of glass. She backed up a step. “Are you crazy? After what happened? I’m not touching that thing.”
“But Mom sewed on the Sign of Sure, and that will help.” The little girl thrust the quilt out to Emma. “Everything that’s important to a story is on the page. It’s already in White Spac
e. All you have to do is follow the path, the same way you do when you go between Nows.”
“Path?” But she remembered: on the roof, her galaxy pendant suddenly growing hot and then the leap of a bright beam. Light that was solid, like a path. I even thought about it that way.
“Yes. Use that to find the story and pull out the words.”
“Lizzie, you write on paper. There’s nothing magical about that, and no matter how special your dad’s parchment or ink, there are no words in this thing.”
“Yes, there are. You’ve just never thought of building a story this way before, that’s all.”
“But—”
“Emma, will you stop thinking so much?” Lizzie rapped, with an air of angry impatience that was, eerily, a bit like Kramer’s: I didn’t say steal. “The others are in trouble, and you’re wasting time! Now shut up and find your story.”
She gave up. The kid was nuttier than she was. No, no, the kid wasn’t real. This was a dream, a blink, or just another illusion conjured up by House. Eventually, she’d pop back into her life, and this would all be nothing more than a hazy memory, a vague uneasiness. She could live with that. Swear to God, she’d take the damn meds, too.
For something that wasn’t real, the scroll freaked her out. That velvety white was the color of the snow and the fog. It was the same color of white that hid Jasper-nightmares. Wait, was white a color? Yes and no: visible light was all wavelengths, all colors, combined. To see them, you had to use a prism, a specially fabricated piece of glass, to separate them into their component parts. Otherwise, white light was … white. It was nothing.
But still full of color, just waiting for you to use a special tool to pull them out. Then: Stop it. White light is white. Jasper slathered his paintings with white paint. This is only a blank parchment scroll. She studied the quilt. And this thing is only bits of cloth and glass sewn into pretty pat—