White Space

by Ilsa J. Bick

  Lizzie opened her mouth, then closed it. A look of absolute bewilderment flooded into her face.

  “You don’t remember,” Bode whispered. “Jesus, you don’t know.”

  “Easy,” Eric said, though even he looked a little shaky. “She’s just a kid.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Easy. Let’s … let’s take it …” Bode raked both hands through his dark, close-cropped hair. “Jesus, I can’t deal with this anymore, okay? What’s the bottom line? Why did you bring us here, and what the hell we got to do to get out?”

  “It’s like I told Emma.” Lizzie’s cobalt eyes dropped to her hands. “I need you to get my dad. If we can, then I think he can help us.”

  “What do you mean, help us?” Bode said. “We were fine until you got it in your head to put us in this mess!”

  “Oh yeah,” Eric said. “Shot at by Vietcong and crawling through tunnels full of booby traps. You were doing great.”

  “How can we get your dad, Lizzie?” Casey said. “He’s dead.”

  “No.” Lizzie shook her head. “Not really.”

  “Dead is dead,” Bode said. “Gone is gone. You just said …”

  “Like I don’t know that.” Lizzie’s expression darkened with anger, and her eyes deepened to that odd and smoky sapphire glimmer Emma had trouble reading. “He’s gone from that Wisconsin,” the little girl said, “but he was tangled up in the whisper-man, and the whisper-man’s in my special Now.”

  As are you, and yet … Putting aside how bizarre this all was, Emma felt this tickle of uneasiness along her neck. Lizzie could obviously leave this place long enough to grab them. Yet if she and her dad and the whisper-man and the leftover energies from every Peculiar are tangled together … She could feel her brain inching toward something else she could sense but didn’t quite know yet.

  “So, your dad’s here?” When Lizzie nodded, Bode said,

  “Where?”

  “He’s the barn,” she said.

  “The one outside?” Bode turned a frown to them before looking back at Lizzie. “So what’s the problem?”

  “I can’t find him. Whenever it sees new people, it adds rooms and I get lost.”

  “What? A barn can’t make more rooms.”

  “Sure it can,” Lizzie said, “if it’s alive.”

  ERIC

  What Does That Make Us?

  “SO WHAT ABOUT the snowmobile?” Yanking open another cupboard, Bode stared at the shelves crammed with Kraft macaroni and cheese. “Man, I see one more Blue Box, I’m gonna pound somebody.”

  “There’s a loaf in the bread box,” Eric said. He was sitting on a kitchen chair, with his right leg propped on another. Emma had eased up his bloody jeans to the knee, exposing an ugly eight-inch rip in the calf he’d snagged on that ruined guardrail … God, hours ago, from the feel of it. Days. The deep gash was ragged and crusted with old blood. Emma had dug up both a first aid kit in a downstairs bathroom and a half-bottle of antibacterial soap under the kitchen sink, which was, Eric thought, a little odd. Almost like the house knew we might need it. “Couple jars of peanut butter in the pantry.”

  “Christ no,” Bode said. “Only thing peanut butter’s good for in Charlie rats is stopping you up if you got the runs.”

  “Charlie rats?” Emma looked up, a crumpled gauze, spotted with bright red blood, in one hand. “What is it with you guys and rats?”

  “What?” Bode looked confused. “No. It’s short for C-rations. Rations. Rats?”

  “You mean, MREs?”

  “No … ah … you know, MCIs.” At her blank expression, Bode said, “Meal, Combat, Individual? Canned food? It’s what the Army gives us for chow.”

  “Cans?” Emma said.

  “We use plastic now, and they have a different name,” Eric said.

  “Really?” Bode’s eyebrows arched. “Cool. How do they taste?”

  “Uh … well, you know …” He bit back a grunt as Emma touched moist, soapy gauze to the torn meat of his wound. His mangled muscles twitched as if jumping out of the way. Between the pain and the gasoline reek from his and Emma’s parkas, which they’d draped over some spare chairs, he was starting to get a little woozy, too. He cleared his throat, grimacing at the faint chemical taste on his tongue. “I’ve only had a couple, in basic, but they’re okay, I guess. Although they still put in peanut butter, so you’d probably still hate them.”

  “Naw, nothing’s worse than ham and motherfu … uh, lima beans,” Bode said, with a sidelong glance at Emma. “Anything else in this place?”

  “Oreos in the cookie jar and bags …” His thoughts derailed at another jab of pain. “Bags of M&Ms in the pantry,” he finished in a gasping exhale. To Emma: “Go easy. Feels like you’re scraping bone.”

  “Maybe because it’s deep,” she said. “Hold still. I’ve got to clean it.”

  “That’s it for food?” Bode said.

  “Stop complaining. Those are all the important food grou—aaahhh.” At another knifing hack of pain, he gripped his chair seat with both hands. “Jesus.”

  “Stop being such a baby,” Emma said, adding the soiled gauze, now the color of a cranberry, to a growing pile. “Just a little bit more, and then I’ll rinse it out, smear on some ointment, and bandage it up.” Tearing open another pack, she dipped the gauze into a small bowl of warm, sudsy water, then carefully spread the wound with the fingers of one hand. From where he sat, Eric saw pink muscle and a minute layer of yellow fat curds just under the skin. “You really could use some stitches, though.”

  “I could do that, no sweat,” Bode said.

  “No thanks. I know where you got your training.” He smeared pain-sweat from his forehead with the back of one hand. To Emma: “You seem like you know what you’re doing.”

  “Mmm. Lots of practice.” The corner of her mouth quirked in a grin. “My Uncle—well, guardian—Jasper was always getting dinged up on his boat. Once he hooked himself with this big old nasty barb right here.” She pointed to her left cheek. “Just missed the eyeball. That was fun. He blamed it on the group he took out that day; said they brought bananas. If he’d known, he’d never have let them on.”

  “What’s wrong with bananas?” he asked.

  “Bad luck for boats.” Emma shrugged. “Don’t ask me. Anyway, he wouldn’t go into the emergency room. Made me take it out right there at the kitchen …” She suddenly straightened, the grin slipping off and a look he couldn’t decipher creasing her forehead and cutting small lines at the corners of her narrowed eyes. “At the kitchen table.” She paused. “Just like now.”

  “Hey.” Leaning forward, he touched a finger to her right forearm and felt her shiver. “You okay?”

  “You look kind of peaky,” Bode said.

  “No, it’s …” Shaking her head, she exhaled. “I’m fine. Just a little déjà vu.”

  “So what about the sled?” Bode asked, returning to his first question. “Can we use that to get out of here?”

  “We’ve been over this … Hey, Case,” he said, as his brother wobbled through the kitchen door. “Where’s Rima?”

  “Upstairs,” Casey said, gingerly lowering himself into a straight-back chair. “Lizzie wanted something from her room, and Rima didn’t think she should go alone.”

  And you let them go? Alone? That they weren’t all in the same place where they could keep an eye on each other made him uneasy, but he kept his mouth shut. Casey had been so edgy before, not himself. The way his little brother looked now only scared him more. The hollows beneath Casey’s eyes were as livid and purple as the bruises on his neck and that huge lump on his jaw. God, had Big Earl punched Casey before, back at the cabin, and he’d just not noticed? And that thing in the snowcat choking the life out of him … Too close. A couple more seconds, Casey would’ve …

  “Did I hurt you?” Emma said, suddenly looking up.

  “What?” He had to work to look away from visions of Casey lying dead in that snowcat, or broken, his blood seeping between the warped boards of that da
mned cabin, as Big Earl bellowed.

  “I asked if I hurt you,” she said, her careful eyes on his. “You jumped.”

  “No, it’s okay,” he said, but he heard how rough his tone was, and swallowed. “So, Case … how you feeling?”

  “Betcha still hurting,” Bode said. “You’re pretty beat up, kid.”

  “I’m okay,” Casey said, though a small grunt escaped as he shifted on his chair. “Is there anything to drink?”

  “Moo juice in the fridge.” Bode opened a cupboard. “Or you gotchyer Kool-Aid, gotchyer Swiss Miss, and we got water.”

  Casey made a face. “That’s it?”

  “Not unless you can figure a way to suck macaroni and cheese through a straw. What’ll it be, kid?”

  “Hot chocolate. I can get it,” Casey said, half rising and then cautiously sliding back onto his seat as Bode waved him down. “Okay, if you’re offering. Thanks.”

  “You sure you’re all right?” Eric heard the slight nagging note, but he hated this feeling of helplessness more. “Emma, is there anything like aspirin or something in the med kit?”

  “Yes,” she said, giving him a long look he couldn’t read. “Some Motrin, too.”

  “What’s that?” Bode asked.

  “Ah … like aspirin, only not.” She looked back at Casey. “Might make you feel better.”

  “No, really, guys, stop fussing. It’s not like I’m a doll … What?” Casey looked from Eric to Emma and back. “What’d I say?”

  “Déjà vu all over again,” Emma said, and hunched a shoulder. “We seem to keep repeating some of the same phrases, that’s all.”

  “If we’re as tangled as Lizzie says, maybe that’s what happens,” Eric said.

  “Naw, come on.” Bode flapped a hand. “They’re just expressions.”

  “You really believe that?” Emma said. “Still?”

  Casey filled the small silence that followed. “So why were you guys talking about the sled?”

  “Bode wants to bug out,” Eric said.

  “Hey, Devil Dog.” Bode ran water from the tap into a kettle. “When you say it like that, sounds like I want to cut and run just when things are getting hairy.”

  “Well, you do.”

  “Then what would we do about Lizzie?” Casey asked. “We can’t leave her here.”

  “Watch me.” Bode set the kettle on the stove, then turned on the gas. A hiss, and then a circlet of blue flame sprouted. “Now, see, that’s just wrong. Where’s the gas coming from? What’s powering the lights?”

  “Everything. This place, the fog … that’s how it works here. Or just think of everything as energy, just in different forms.” Emma paused, her eyes ticking back to Eric’s again. “Even us.”

  The same thought had occurred to him. Odd, how the two of them seemed to be on the same wavelength. But it was a good feeling, one he’d never had before. “I don’t see it happening any other way.”

  “You know, you guys keep looking at each other like that,” Bode said, prying the plastic cap off a can of Swiss Miss, “one of you’s gonna catch fire.”

  Eric saw the spots of sudden color on Emma’s cheeks as she ducked her head. “No,” she said, carefully drying his wound with clean gauze. “I was just thinking about how this must work, that’s all.”

  “Uh-huh,” Bode said, spooning cocoa mix into a mug. “You keep telling yourself that.”

  Eric changed the subject. “Look, Bode, if I thought we stood a chance on the sled, I’d try, but we don’t, because there are too many of us, and I’m not leaving anyone behind. Even if we could, where would we go? We might wander around for hours and be right back where we started, or lost in the snow, which would be ten times worse—if the fog even lets us get that far.”

  “He’s right.” Emma squirted a thin worm of clear antibiotic ointment into Eric’s gash. “We’re not going anywhere until we finish this thing.”

  “Whatever this thing is,” Bode said. “Me, I personally don’t get it. What’s so hard about getting her dad out of some creepy old barn?”

  “Well,” Casey said, blowing on his hot cocoa, “obviously something. Eventually, we’re going to have to go over and find out what.”

  “Aw, no.” Bode raised his hands in a warding-off gesture. “Count me out. Let the kid fight her own battles.”

  “So what, you’re going to sit here, eat macaroni and cheese, and complain?” Eric said as Emma began to wrap a gauze roll around his calf. “That’s your plan?”

  “For that matter, what makes you think House or the fog will let you?” Emma looked up at Bode. “House created rooms and sent me places. So we’re doing the barn, Bode. It’s only a matter of when … and who. I don’t think we can go out one at a time either. She brings people over in groups for a reason, probably trying to find the right combination.”

  “Of what?” Bode asked.

  “Skills? We all must have something. Rima’s got that whisper-sense going. Emma can use the memory quilt, and she pulled us here,” Eric said.

  “Yeah, well …” For an instant, Bode’s eyes unfocused, flicking left before firming on Eric’s face. “I’m nothing special. What about you and the kid?”

  “Beats me.” Although he thought he saw a shadow whisk through Casey’s face. “Maybe it depends on what the barn throws at us.”

  “So you think the barn’s like House?” Emma said.

  “Has to be.” He’d been thinking about this. “Remember what Lizzie said: not my dad’s in the barn. She said he’s the barn. It’s kind of subtle, but given your experience in this house …”

  “So what?” Bode said.

  Eric watched Emma think about this, then give a slow nod. “You mean that the barn was his space. It’s where her dad worked. So the barn is … him? A manifestation, a way for her to see him?” she said. “Or only a product of how she thinks about him?”

  “Maybe all those things,” he said.

  “Then why not just make him a person?” Casey asked.

  “She might not be able to. She keeps saying tangled. Maybe that barn’s as much of her dad as the fog allows her to see.” Of course, this begged the question of just how they were supposed to untangle the guy’s, well, energy or essence or whatever.

  “Huh.” Casey took a meditative sip of his cocoa, then stared into his mug. “Kind of makes you wonder what this house is. Or who.”

  “It’s probably like the barn. Not one thing or person, but pieces all mixed together.”

  “But with one dominant personality, maybe,” Emma said. “As scary as the rooms and visions have been, everything I saw and did was built upon what came before it. Every situation put me into another where I was given an example of what I had to do and then”—Emma seemed to test the word before she said it—“prompted to do exactly what I’d been shown. Sort of okay, here’s how and now you try. I don’t know if House was playing with, showing, or training me up until I finally got the idea of what I was here to do. Just like Lizzie said.”

  “Could be all three.” He’d thought about this, too. Emma has to be part of this, somehow; the reason the rest of us are here. It was the only thing that made sense. Lizzie tried various characters in various combinations, so they must each have a part to play—but Lizzie said that Emma was more tangled with her than the rest of them. Only Emma had been shown the memory quilt. If that cynosure was a machine, it recognized Emma, and she’d used that to reach through and pull them here. This house showed Emma something very much like this Dickens Mirror.

  Emma has to be the key, a focal point.

  Which made him wonder: assuming Lizzie had always known Emma was more tangled than they, had Emma been here before, with others, but failed? Or maybe only they died in this place, but Lizzie somehow got Emma out? That actually might be just one more component to Emma’s strange seizures or fugues, those blinks.

  She might have been here before, but when she wasn’t ready or hadn’t acquired the necessary skills. He studied Emma as she snipped paper tape
to secure the gauze wrap around his leg. So what if all this—the crash, this valley, all this death—what if this has been designed for Emma, too?

  Aloud, he said only, “The house might have a lot of her mom in it.”

  “Or what a little kid would wish for and associate with her mom. Lizzie said Meredith died before Lizzie could finish this place.” Emma paused, then added, with a shrug, “On the other hand, no one ever found a body, so it’s a decent thought. House is the only place with light. It’s warm. There’s food.”

  “So if a piece of her mom, or the idea of her, takes care of Lizzie and makes food, gives us a place to rest and be safe,” Casey asked, “what does her dad … what does the barn make?”

  “Maybe what Frank McDermott made best,” Eric said.

  “Books?” Bode asked.

  “No.” Emma shook her head. “Monsters. Death. Things that live in the dark.”

  “Hell,” Bode said after a pause, “you’re talking about a tunnel. A lot of nightmares in a black echo, and they aren’t all human.”

  “For you,” Eric said, and glanced at his brother. “I’ll bet it’s a different nightmare for each of us.”

  “Different characters, different books.” Emma gave them all a strange look. “I wonder if that’s why the others Lizzie brought here before failed.”

  “How do you mean?” Bode asked.

  “I get it.” As soon as she’d said it, Eric knew what she was driving at. “Once they hit the barn, they must meet up with their monsters.”

  “Jesus.” Bode’s eyes widened. “You mean they die? Like that kid, Tony?”

  “I don’t see how it can be any other way,” he said. “Otherwise, the people she’s brought before would still be here, trying to figure a way out.”

  “Aw, man.” Bode hooked his hands around the collar of his BDU as if it was a ledge and he was hanging on for dear life. “Aw, man.”

  “Eric, if that’s true, and we’re all … you know, his, like he’s our father”—Casey shot him an anxious look—“then what about us? What does that make us? If everything is all tangled here, doesn’t that make us a little like him, and all the monsters? And God, what does that make Liz—” Breaking off, Casey frowned up at the ceiling at the same moment that Eric heard something: sharp but short, as if cut in two.