White Space

by Ilsa J. Bick

  “Did you—” Emma began as Bode said, “Hey, you hear …”

  But it was Casey who moved first. “Oh God,” he said, bolting up from the table so quickly his mug overturned with a slosh. “That was Rima.”

  RIMA

  A Safe Place

  “WOW, GREAT ROOM,” Rima said, and meant it. She took in the plush carpet, pink walls, the litter of toys. “I’ve never seen a loft bed before.”

  “It was my idea.” Lizzie was crouched beneath the bed, fiddling with a wood box overflowing with various miniature Ken and Barbie-like dolls clearly meant for play with that dollhouse. “I wanted a private space just like my dad, so Dad got it built for me special, same as my dollhouse.”

  “It’s really nice.” Rima knelt beside the little girl. The dollhouse was a painted lady: a riot of Victorian bric-a-brac, with gabled roofs and turrets. “So, is this where you spend most of your time?” Odd. She hadn’t thought about that until now, but here was this ageless little girl stuck where time had no meaning and there was virtually no sense of place. It’s like being locked in a padded cell on a mental ward. She eyed the toys. Or trapped in a dollhouse.

  “Some.” Lizzie hunched a shoulder, her attention focused on sifting through and pulling out very specific dolls that, at a glance, seemed oddly mismatched, as if they came from many different sets. “I like to play, but I’m not always here. I can leave for a little while.”

  “Leave the house to come get one of us from a”—she stumbled—“a book-world.” She did believe the girl’s story and Emma’s theories, but only because arguing against what was going on didn’t change anything and she knew what she’d experienced. And I have to believe that Tony, or some version of him, is alive somewhere. If Emma and Eric were right about alternative timelines, Tony could be anywhere, even lurking in a future chapter of her own story. Casey, too: slotted into the life she knew as a boy she simply hadn’t met yet.

  “Yeah,” Lizzie said. “It’s kind of hard, but I can do that. I can visit, too.”

  “Visit?” She blinked. “What do you mean?”

  “You know … come over and visit. To play.”

  “A …” She fumbled. “Like a playdate?”

  “Yeah. I play with most of you guys, but mainly Emma.” Lizzie was unwinding a miniature scarf from a girl doll’s neck, spooling and unspooling it around a finger the way a chameleon shot and then recalled its sticky tongue. “I only come when you’re asleep, though.”

  “When I’m …” Her heart did a quick, surprised fillip. “Why? I mean … why when we’re asleep?” And what do you mean, we play?

  “Because you guys are harder. You’re, you know … you’re set. Emma’s way easier. She and I play a lot. In a way, it’s nice when you’re set the way you are, because it makes you easier to see and find. But it can also be a bad thing.”

  “How come?” She couldn’t believe she was actually having this conversation, although she wasn’t sure that while she could say the words, she understood their meanings. See us better because we’re set? “Are you saying that it’s easier to find us on the … the page? In the book-world?”

  “Yeah. I mean, it’s not super easy, because for a bookperson, the book-world is the Now. It’s all you know, but you can still go a lot of places in it. Dad called them subplots and subtexts and things that happen off stage. They’re like … hidden compartments in a jewelry box or something. In a book, you can read about a book-person’s day or one hour out of a day or five minutes, and then—poof—a chapter later, or the very next page or paragraph, it’s the day before or after or next week or even two months later, a year. You could be on a different planet. But what about all the time and space in between, see? Those are the hidden, secret parts, all the good stuff between the lines nobody ever thinks about but that has to be there. Book-people can find their way there and do all kinds of things, especially when they’ve got parts of what lives in the Dark Passages in them. That’s why people liked my dad’s books so much; the book-worlds were so real they could get lost in them. Dad said the stories got under their skin and lived inside. A ton of people even wrote themselves into the book-worlds and dressed up like their favorite characters and went on and on and on, sometimes for their whole lives. Dad called it”—Lizzie screwed her face in thought—“fan fiction.”

  The whole universe between the covers of a book. But parts of what lives in the Dark Passages? Did she mean the energy in the Dark Passages … whatever that was?

  “But it’s also kind of bad, too,” Lizzie continued. “To grab the book-world you, I mean. It’s like you’re wearing a big old sign: I’m Rima. That makes it way easier for the others in the Dark Passages to notice you. Then they try to grab on, like catching a ride, and oh boy, you don’t want that.”

  Forget words she could say: she felt like she’d stumbled into a blurry foreign film from Outer Mongolia with no subtitles. “Others? You mean like what grabbed Emma when she was a little girl?” Then she thought of something else: “Wait a second, you said you came to visit book-worlds, right? But Lizzie, you said a book-world’s not a Now. A … a timeline is a Now, an alternative universe. And the Dark Passages … you said they were big halls between Nows. There aren’t Dark Passages between you and book-worlds, right?”

  “Right, only between the Nows, and they’re big, long, really dark halls,” Lizzie said, “with lots and lots of shadows and places to hide.”

  Places to hide? “But Lizzie, if you can only grab book-people with some of you in them and they only know book-worlds, even the books with lots of hidden compartments … how are the book-people getting into the Dark Passages?”

  “Because I take them.”

  “But why? How? Don’t you need the Mirror for that?”

  The little girl gave Rima a no, silly look. “I’ve never needed the Mirror to get from one Now to the next. All I have to do is think a Now, then the Sign of Sure shows me and I go and play for as long as I want. Well …” A finger of dark oil seemed to glimmer through her blue-blue eyes. “I used to be able to stay a long time. I can’t now. Like I said, I always get pulled back. It’s never long enough.”

  “Oh.” She swallowed. “What lives in the Dark Passages? It’s not, ah, just energy?”

  “Oh, it’s energy all right, but really bad energies, like the whisper-man. When they notice you, they try to grab and hang on so you’ll pull them through, too.”

  “And that’s not good for a Now.”

  “Right. Too much of their kind of energy is terrible for a Now, like an infection. It can break the Now. That’s why it’s important to play with you book-people while you’re sleeping. That way, you don’t see them, and they can’t see you very well either.”

  “Why?” But she thought she understood. No science whiz, even she knew that large portions of the brain shut down with sleep.

  “Because part of you, the one that says hi, I’m Rima, turns off. Even if they do manage to get their hands on you and I drop you along the way—like into a strange Now? It’s still okay because you’re asleep and everyone expects dreams to be weird. I always find you guys again because we’re tangled, so that’s okay.”

  “Oh.” She was starting to feel dizzy. Emma and Eric might get this, but physics had always given her a headache. Had Lizzie just said book-world people like her could go to different Nows? She somehow takes me out of the book-world? How would that work? And God, what does go on between the lines? “So when you come to … to play … if we’re … we’re turned off, what do we do?”

  “Not a lot, but that’s also because I always put most of you-you in a safe place, anyway. It would be really bad for you to wake up in another Now.”

  “What?” She was startled. “What do you mean, you put me in a safe place? How can you both visit and then put me somewhere?”

  “Easy.” Lizzie’s blue eyes, dark as India ink, were surprisingly calm. They were, Rima thought, very deep, as if filled with water found only at the bottom of the sea. “I can … i
f I trade places with the part of you that’s mostly Rima and just play with … you know … the outside.”

  “The outside. You trade …” The words knotted in Rima’s throat. “Places.” She swallowed against a rising dread. Isn’t that what Emma thought happened with this girl’s father and the whisper-man? Something Emma says she saw in one of her visions? “You mean you take our place? Like a substitute?”

  “No.” Lizzie’s face gathered into another you silly, and then she pinched her own left forearm and levitated that with her right hand, the way a puppeteer manipulated strings. Rima saw that Lizzie had wound that tiny doll-sized green scarf around one finger, the way you’d knot a string so as not to forget something. “I take you.”

  “Take?” A slow horror spread through her chest. “You … you live inside us? But … but …” You can’t take a whole body across. Could she? Wow, she really could use Eric or Emma; this was so Star Trek. Then the idea—intuition, really, a leap—popped into her brain to spill from her mouth: “You’re not taking my body, are you? You’re taking the essence, the energy that makes me Rima. That’s what you bring to different Nows.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Lizzie beamed. “Only I don’t take the whole you-you. I can’t. Well, I could, but then it gets too crowded and another Rima would go crazy, and that’s not fair. Really bad things happen then. I remember a couple times, when I wasn’t very good yet? Other Rimas and Emmas and stuff tried killing themselves because of all the noise in their head. Some of them even ended up in the hospital.”

  “Another …” Different timelines. Alternative universes. When she put her hand to her lips, she felt the shuddering thump-thump-thump of her pulse. She’s talking about slipping part of me and herself into another, different Rima. While that Rima was asleep? No, that must be what she means by crowded, why she says the other Rima would go crazy. You’d have two minds—three, if you count Lizzie—occupying the same body.

  “Anyway, it’s not for very long,” Lizzie continued in that chatterbox little-girl way, but now Rima thought she detected the hum of another lower, darker, subterranean note. “Like I said, I always get pulled back here. I visit Emma the most because she’s the closest to me. Her lives are kind of cool.”

  “Lives?” she said, weakly. Other timelines. Other universes. Other Emmas.

  “Yeah. Well, except for homework. I let her do most of that because she’s way smart; I just have to kind of turn off parts of her so she doesn’t wake up all the way—except sometimes when I think she needs help. Like writing her story for this class? I did that for her; she was too freaked. The rest of you guys are way harder to live inside when we play in your book-worlds, because you’re all written out already. Unless we go between the lines and into secret subtexts and stuff, we don’t stay in your book-worlds that much. Not that you’re a bad person or anything, but your book-world life is pretty ooky, Rima.” Lizzie’s too-blue eyes, tinged now with that strange smoke, fixed on hers. “Too many bad feelings, and your mom is kind of, you know, messed up.”

  There was more to this, much more, but she had to get out of the room and back down to the others. “We should …” She slicked her numbed lips and tried to get up, to push herself from the floor where she’d knelt next to the little girl. Little girl, my ass, there is definitely something … something … But her legs trembled and felt as weak as water. “You know,” she said, finally planting a foot solidly to the floor, “I think we really should go downstairs …”

  Her voice choked off as her eyes fell to the dollhouse—and really noticed the dolls over which Lizzie had been so engrossed for the first time.

  There were six: three boys, three girls. One boy had short, muddy-brown hair; a mass of brown curls topped a second; and the third was a wispy blonde. One girl was a luxuriant copper, while the other sported a wild, unruly shock of shoulder-length honey-blonde curls. The third doll was a very light, corn-tassel blonde.

  But their faces, their hands … Rima’s heart was inching up her throat. They’re not Barbie or Ken dolls. They’re porcelain. They’re glass.

  The dolls’ clothes were all wrong, too. With that Victorian dollhouse, they should’ve worn crinolines and petticoats and lacy fans and velvet trousers with cummerbunds and top hats adorned with diamond stickpins. Instead, the dolls were dressed in jeans, sweaters, jackets, and …

  Fatigues. Rima felt the blood drain from her cheeks, and her arms prickle with a forest of gooseflesh. Bode’s wearing olive-green fatigues. So was Chad. Tony’s hair was curly and brown. Bode’s hair is dark brown. Her eyes zeroed in on the girls. The copper color was right. She hadn’t gotten a good look at Lily, but she’d bet the girl had been a blonde. And my hair … The trembling had moved from her legs to her chest and arms … I never can get those curls to behave.

  The fingers of a shiver tripped up her spine. Casey said the soldiers in the comic were toys. This wasn’t a coincidence, but still her mind insisted: No, no, don’t be stupid. It can’t be. But Lizzie had said it: I always put most of you-you in a safe place.

  And then, through the swell of her horror, she realized who wasn’t there. My God, where’s—

  “So, Rima.” And then she was staring into Lizzie’s eyes, or they hooked hers, because Rima could feel the grip, the dig. The beginnings of the pain, like a thousand sharp pincers biting her brain. That odd glimmer spread from Lizzie’s eyes and overflowed, rippling through the little girl’s features, which began to shimmer, to smoke. To run together. Lizzie’s cobalt eyes shifted, darkened, deepened, oiled …

  Get out, Rima thought. Her mind was racing; she could hear the shriek in her bones, feel the twitch of her muscles trying to obey, but she couldn’t move. Run, Rima, run. Get out while you still can. Get out before her eyes change, before they change all the way!

  “So,” Lizzie—or whatever this thing really was—said in a whispery voice from a faraway place Rima was certain she had never been, “what game should we play next?”

  PART FIVE

  WHISPER-MAN

  EMMA

  Remember Him

  1

  “IS ANYONE ELSE freaked out?” Bode’s voice was hushed, as if they’d crept into a cemetery or haunted house instead of onto the porch. The big boy hefted a stout leg from one of the kitchen chairs he and Eric had broken up for clubs. “Because I’m completely there, man,” he said.

  “I hear that.” Letting out a long breath, Eric peered over at Emma. “You have any ideas?”

  “Other than everything’s been swallowed up?” Huddled in her still-damp parka, Emma hunched her shoulders against a shiver of dread. “Not a clue.”

  After storming upstairs and finding nothing in Lizzie’s room but the dollhouse and that scatter of toys, they’d swarmed out of the house to find that, once again, everything had changed. Now, the fog was everywhere: a solid white wall that hemmed the house in all the way around. No breaks. No thin spots at all.

  She was also bothered by something else she hadn’t seen. Earlier, as the others bolted from Lizzie’s room, she’d paused, her eye falling on that box of porcelain dolls and the pile of six set off to one side. If we’re book-world characters, this almost makes sense. It would be like playing with Ariel from The Little Mermaid, or Frodo. Or a Captain Kirk action figure. At Holten Prep, there was this one guy who was so seriously obsessed with Stephen King, he snapped up a pair of Carrie action figures for a couple hundred bucks just this past year. She bet there were McDermott fans who did the same. So the dolls weren’t awful. What made them unusual was that they were porcelain. Glass.

  And if she was right about what they were and represented … two were missing. Two dolls that should be there weren’t.

  “What do you mean, it’s disappeared?” Casey’s skin was drawn down tight over his skull. Purple smudges formed half-moons in the hollows beneath his stormy eyes. Wound around his neck like a talisman was Rima’s scarf, which she’d left in the downstairs family room. “The barn’s got to be there. We’ve searched
the whole house. The barn’s the only place left to look.”

  “Then we got this huge problem, don’t we?” Bode waved his club at the fog, which hadn’t spilled onto the porch but simply stopped at the very edge. “That stuff’s pea soup. You could wander out five feet and get lost.”

  Walling us in. The air was rich with that same metallic stink, too: crushed aluminum and wet copper. It was the smell of blood and this weird snow and the blackness down cellar. Everything that’s happened before keeps happening over and over again. Clamping her hands under her arms, she shivered, hugging herself harder. But I don’t understand what the point is.

  “It’s daring us to come and get them,” Eric said, and she had the weirdest sense he’d somehow provided her with an answer. “Rima and Lizzie are insurance, that’s all.”

  “Then why cover up the barn?” Bode asked. “Why make the fog worse?”

  “Upping the ante. It’s another test.” Eric looked at her. “You said that everything you’ve done is preparation for the next step. What if this is it?”

  “Crossing through the fog?” She frowned. “What kind of test would that be?” What he’d said also made her think of something else: what if House wasn’t all Lizzie’s mom, or even a healthy chunk? They’d assumed House was a safe haven. I’m missing something. “I guess I could try finding them with the cynosure and pulling them through?” She heard the question and made a face. “Somehow I don’t think that will work. I really think we’re supposed to do exactly what Lizzie wanted: go over there.”

  “So can we stop talking and spouting theories that get us nowhere and just do something here for a change?” Casey’s voice hummed with frustration. “God, Lizzie was right. You guys are overthinking this! Come on, let’s just go!”