White Space

by Ilsa J. Bick

  “Why?” Casey asked.

  “Because they’re like wearing a sign: Shoot me.”

  “How are we going to see?”

  “We don’t. We go by feel.”

  Eric shook his head. “I honestly don’t think a guy with a gun is the worst thing we’re going to run into down here. We’ll make better time if we leave the lights on. Besides, I’d kind of like to see what I’m up against, if you know what I mean.”

  Because we will have to fight. Eric didn’t have to say it for Bode to know he was right. “But we don’t even know if Rima and Lizzie are here. This is from my head.”

  “They’re here,” Casey said.

  “Yeah?” Bode looked at Casey with fresh curiosity. When he took my hand; it happened when Casey touched me. “How do you know that?”

  “I just know.” Casey’s face was a glimmering silver oval. “Lizzie, I can’t tell, but Rima is close by.” He fingered the scarf. “I just know,” he repeated.

  Eric regarded his brother for a long moment. “Can you tell us which way, Case?”

  Casey’s tongue flickered over his lips. Then he gave a jerky nod and pointed to the tunnel beyond Eric. “Down there.”

  They set out, Bode in the lead with Casey on his heels, then Emma and finally Eric, bringing up the rear. They shambled like hunchbacks, their boots grinding and scuffing against the hard-packed earth; the pillowcase, with its gasoline-filled Swiss Miss can and peanut butter jar, sloshed and gurgled against Bode’s left thigh.

  Emma’s voice reached him from behind. “Hey, guys, the tunnel’s getting larger. I can stand up, and it’s not really all dark. Look at the walls.”

  She was right. The walls glowed: not brightly, but with a soft green luminescence that bled from the blackness itself.

  “That’s so weird,” Eric said, and then gave a soft laugh. “Well, weirder. Bode, you ever seen a tunnel like this before?”

  “No.” Bode thought about those muscular tentacles that coiled up from the inky snow to drag Chad to whatever lived beneath. “Is this thing going to break up? Like, are there too many of us in one spot?”

  A pause. “I don’t think so,” Emma said. “You go to the trouble to take Lizzie and Rima, and then you kill us all at once? Makes no sense. This is about something else.”

  “A test?” Eric said to her. “To see if you can get us here?”

  “But we are here,” she said.

  “Can you get us back out the way we came?” Bode asked. Stupid; he should’ve thought about that earlier. “You know, do that color thing?”

  She made a face. “I don’t think so. Don’t ask me how to describe it, but this doesn’t have the same feel of … of potential. Like energy you can mold and use. I think this place is set.” She peered at him through the gloom. “Don’t beat yourself up about this, Bode. If it wasn’t you, it would’ve been one of us.”

  “Then what is this?” asked Casey. “A way of picking us off one by one?”

  No one answered—mostly, Bode thought, because, yes or no, either way, you lose. Although he agreed with Eric. This had the feel of a trial by fire of some sort. He wished Battle would tell him what. For a dead guy, Battle knew a great deal about life. But the sarge, who had lived inside Bode’s head for so long, was silent and had been for quite some time now, even before the barn. Yet he’d been here; Bode could always feel him, this quiet burn in his head like the flicker of a pilot light. After the fight on the snow, though, Battle had only … listened? Maybe not even that; Bode just couldn’t tell.

  And then Casey touches me—and Battle’s gone. I felt him go. Bode armed sweat from his forehead. So where is he? Why did he leave? His stomach pulled to a knot of anxiety. Sarge, I need you. Please, talk to me. If he was hovering somewhere around, however, Battle remained mute.

  Ahead, Bode saw that the tunnel was now very wide and much higher, enough so he had clearance for a good roundhouse swing. He’d be able to take a pretty good shot at whatever might hurl itself from the dark.

  That’s all wrong. It shouldn’t be this way. This isn’t like any tunnel I’ve ever seen, or worried about.

  A soft sound drifted out of the dark: a whispery rustle that was not the sharp scrape of a boot. He pulled up so suddenly that Casey smacked into him. “Hey,” Casey said.

  “Quiet!” Bode held his breath, trying to listen above the boom of his heart. He probed the darkness with his light, but there was nothing in front, on the floor, or behind. Yet the sound kept on, papery and dry and somehow not only louder but larger: a scurrying, rhythmic shush that grew and grew and …

  “What is that?” Emma whispered. “Where is it coming from?”

  “I don’t know.” He didn’t want to think about rats or snakes or …

  Then his heart stuttered as he heard something new: the spatter of pebbles raining like fine hail onto rock.

  Oh shit.

  He aimed his light straight up.

  BODE

  Dead End

  THE ROCK DIRECTLY overhead was alive—with scorpions.

  Big as rats, with bulbous black bodies and pincer-claws long as fishhooks, they seethed over the stone. Diamond teardrops of glittering poison dripped from enormous barbs at the tip of shiny, curled tails. But instead of mandibles, these scorpions’ heads were unformed and smooth as mirrors. Then, in the next instant, gashes appeared and split to become mouths.

  Jesus. Bode felt the cracks in his mind widening, his thoughts splintering. The glassy surfaces peeled back to reveal eyes: dead eyes, black eyes, the eyes of cobras, the eyes of nightmares. Faces, they have faces.

  “RUN!” he screamed, much too late.

  As one, the scorpions dropped from the ceiling. Bode felt the hard bodies bouncing off the padded arms and shoulders and chest of his jacket. They bulleted off his scalp, then slithered over his face. One landed on his left shoulder, hooked, and held on. With a wordless screech, Bode swung the flashlight like a club. The heavy stock batted the thing from his shoulder, and it tumbled, pincers flailing. These just managed to snag his pants, and then the thing’s tail was stabbing him again and again, the pointed barb working to pierce the tough olive canvas of his fatigues. Still shouting, Bode battered at the thing with the butt of his flashlight. Losing its grip, the thing did a flip and landed on its back. Its spindly legs churned, the pincers snapping uselessly at air. Its many eyes glared up at Bode, and it let out a rasping, almost mechanical chitter that sounded eerily like an M16 cycling on full auto.

  “Die!” Bode brought the sole of his boot smashing down. He felt the soft belly give as the scorpion’s body burst in a viscous spray of thick, yellow fluid. Cursing, he ground the thing into paste. The others were screaming and flailing and stamping; the floor was turning sludgy with slick, gooey, foul ichor. The only reason they weren’t dead—not yet, anyway—was their clothing. But their faces were exposed, and their hands.

  “Get them off!” Emma shrieked. Her hair was a living tangle. “Get them off, get them off, get them off!”

  “Emma!” Spinning her close, Eric swatted scorpions with his bare hands, crushing them like overripe grapes beneath his boots.

  “Bode, we got to go!” Casey bawled. “We got to get out, we got to go, we got to go!”

  Bode didn’t need convincing. “Go back, go back the way we came!”

  “We can’t!” Still hugging Emma close, Eric aimed his flashlight back down the tunnel. “Look!”

  Whirling round, Bode followed the light—and what he saw made his guts clench.

  The floor was moving now, too. The scorpions were there, a remorseless, black, undulating river. Driving us forward, Bode thought wildly. Just like the fog, making sure we keep going this way. We should be dead by now, but we’re not. They’re herding us.

  No choice but to keep going. “Move!” Bode grabbed Casey, spun him, and then gave the boy a vicious shove to send him on his way. “Go, kid, go go go!”

  “Casey, wait!” Eric shouted. “Emma, quick, give me the lighter!”
>
  “What?” Bode asked, but Emma had already tossed the lighter to Eric, who was yanking out his torch. Bode thought, Yeah. He grabbed his own unlit torch. “Emma, the matches!”

  She jerked out the box; the dry chatter of wood inside cardboard was like dice on stone. She worked out a match, struck it; the match flared, and then her torch caught with a small hoosh as flames fled up the rags in liquid, orange-yellow runnels. Eric was already swinging his. The creatures didn’t like the fire; rearing on their hind legs, they hissed. Their pincers snick-snapped, the clawed jaws clashing like scissors. A few got too close, and then the air was alive with a pop-pop-pop, the scorpions bursting in sprays of stringy yellow mucus. Several tried shooting beneath the flaming arc of Eric’s torch, but then Emma was right there, by Eric’s side. Together, they swept their torches back and forth, keeping the scorpions at bay while Bode jabbed at the ceiling.

  The things retreated, but Bode knew they couldn’t keep this up forever. Their torches were too weak, and the second they turned to run, the scorpions would sweep after them. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Eric strip out of his parka and shout to Emma, “Give me your coat! Take off your coat!”

  “Devil Dog!” Bode bawled. “What the hell you doing?”

  But it was Emma who answered. “Gas!” She yanked off her jacket. “Our parkas are still wet, and we’ve got a jar of gasoline!”

  “Guys, get ready to run!” Tossing their parkas into the roiling mass, Eric threw his torch after, then spun on his heel. “All right, Bode, Casey, go, g—”

  The parkas went up in a flaring yellow ball with a solid, heavy whup! The scorpions’ reaction was instantaneous. The ebony wave shied as the air filled with stuttering pops loud as gunshots. The scorpions’ screeches became a keening wail as a thick, sooty bloom pillowed through the tunnel. A second later, the jar of gas, still zipped in one pocket of Eric’s parka, erupted like a flash-bomb: a great, hard, brilliant bang.

  They charged down the tunnel, Casey in the lead, boots clapping stone, running so fast the walls streamed and blurred. Their torches guttered, and Emma’s died, but no help for that. Bode’s breath tore in and out of his throat; he kept expecting the walls to sprout more of those scorpion-things at any second. The tunnel was curving right now, growing ever wider, and he thought, Got to be a room, there’s got to be a junction; that’s how these things work.

  Almost before the thought was fully formed in his mind, the maw of a junction pulled apart and firmed to his right. At the same instant, he saw that the way dead ahead was blocked. Again, there was really no choice. They may have stopped the scorpions for the moment, but the tunnel itself would make sure they went in only one direction. “Casey,” he shouted, “to your right, that way!”

  Cutting right, Casey darted out of sight. Bode followed, the blackness unreeling like a tongue. Room, room, there’s got to be a room; there’s got to be a way out of this ma—

  Casey pulled up so fast that Bode couldn’t stop in time. He hit the kid a solid body blow, and they went down in a tangle of boots and legs. “You okay, you okay? What the hell, why did you—” The question evaporated when Bode got a good look at what lay directly ahead. A bright arrow of fresh terror pierced his heart. Behind him, over the thud of his pulse, he heard the clatter of boots and then Emma’s voice, broken and horrified: “Oh no.”

  Because she now saw what he did: a rock wall, as glassy and smooth and flawless as a silvery-black diamond, not three feet away.

  The tunnel was a dead end.

  RIMA

  The Worst and Last Mistake of Her Life

  “A HUG?” ANITA repeated, as if her brain was a faulty computer trying to process information in a language it had never learned. “You … you would do that?”

  “Yes.” The word dribbled from Rima’s mouth, pathetic and small. “You’re my mother.”

  “Oh honey.” Anita’s legs suddenly unhinged. At first, Rima thought her mother might be falling, but then she saw Anita awkwardly catch herself with the nearly empty wine bottle, the glass letting out a dull chuk as Anita knelt. “Honey,” Anita said, boozily, “you don’t know how mush I’ve wanted that. But what could I do? The stain on your soul was shhho black, I wuss always afraid you’d drag me down.”

  Of all the things her mother could have said, that actually stroked a bright flare of anger. Keep it together; only got one shot at this, or it’s over. “That’s past now, Mom,” she said, not bothering to try to control the shudder in her voice. Anita was so wasted, she would hear it as fear—and oh God, yes, Rima was afraid.

  “Girl lies,” the priestess said.

  So did a lot of adults, mainly to themselves. With an effort, Rima kept that thought from reaching her face. Her eyes never wandered from her mother. “I know how hard it’s been,” she said to Anita. “And I’ve been so afraid.” It helped that this was true. I don’t want to die down here. Please, God, don’t let me die here. She had never been more frightened of her mother than at this very instant. But then again, this wasn’t her mother, not really. This was the mother her nightmare had made. To hell with McDermott and his stories; this is my life; I’m real. I’ve written my own mistakes, my private nightmares. What power she had was in her. If this came out of her mind, then the way out must already be inside her, too. She had to remember that. “Mom, if you’re going to do this, I think you better.”

  The knife was already moving, and too late, Rima wondered if her mother understood. The blade flashed down, and then Anita was sawing at the rope tethering Rima’s right hand. At that, her heart tried to fail. I’m left-handed. It knows that’s my weaker hand. So she would have to be very quick. She watched the knife eating the rope; the tension around her wrist eased, and a second later, her hand was free.

  A sudden, fierce urgency flared to snatch at her mother, made a grab, do something, and Rima had to work hard to muscle back the impulse to knot her fist in Anita’s hair. Wait, be patient. Don’t spook her, because you won’t get another chance. Wait for it.

  As if sensing some danger, her mother rocked back on her heels. The muzzy look on her face sharpened a moment, and the knife she still clutched twitched, the point moving to hover over Rima’s throat.

  “Careful of the knife.” Rima licked her lips. “You don’t want to cut yourself.”

  For a shuddering moment, nothing happened. The bright spark that was the point of the knife ticked back and forth ever so slightly with each beat of Anita’s heart. Rima said nothing, held her breath. Then she heard the knife clatter to the rock, and Anita was leaning forward, practically falling on top of her—and Rima thought, One chance.

  “Oh, my poor baby, come here,” Anita sighed, snaking her arms around Rima’s neck and shoulders. “Come to Momma, baby.”

  “Oh, Mom.” Her voice broke as she carefully wound her arm around Anita’s thin shoulders. “I forgive you,” she whispered—and then she clamped down and felt for the center of her mother with all her might.

  In the next instant, when Anita began to scream—when it was much too late—Rima understood: she had just made the worst and last mistake of her life.

  Too late, Rima understood everything.

  BODE

  The Shape of His Future

  “NO, NO, NO, no, no!” Bode swung his torch right and left, but there were no chinks in the rock, no breaks. The rock was as smooth as a black mirror; his reflection so perfect, it was like staring through a window to a moonless night. “This can’t be right!”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Eric said. The high scream of the scorpions swelled from the mouth of the tunnel. “If the other tunnel ended, how can this be a dead end, too?”

  “Because this is where we’re supposed to end up.” Casey reached for the glassy rock, and his hand’s ghostly twin floated to meet him. “This is the way it wants us to go.”

  “Kid, we’re not talking fog now. This is solid rock,” Bode said. He saw the margins of Casey’s reflection smudge and blur—and then the ruddy gli
mmer of a face suddenly seemed to ooze from Casey’s body to appear on the rock’s mirrored surface.

  Holy smoke. He knew the others couldn’t see this. The kid—

  “But it’s the wrong rock.” Emma’s expression was tight, intense. “Look at it. This is almost like obsidian, volcanic glass.”

  “So what?” he grated, bunching his fists. His brain was yammering, Get out, get out, get out! Despite what he saw in the rock—something that should’ve reassured him they might still have a chance—Bode was more frightened now than he’d ever been in his life. His back prickled. If you spent enough time worming on your belly through black echoes, you got a sense when there was something coming for you out of the dark, and he could feel the scorpions swarming down the tunnel. Those things would rush through the archway in a broad black river, and he would drown in a writhing sea of pincers and stingers. They would slither into his mouth, swarm down his throat, eat him from the inside out, scrape his eyeballs from their sockets. Got to get out, got to get out. “What does that matter?”

  “Glass isn’t an organized solid. Light doesn’t show itself until it reflects or bounces off something. That’s why you see yourself in a mirror but not necessarily in clear glass. But look at us.” When she moved her hand from side to side, its mirror image echoed but blurred and elongated into shimmering, smeary trails. “This isn’t really reflecting. It’s as if the reflection’s being … slowed down?”

  So what? His nails were slicing crescent divots from his palms. Tell me something I can use! Bode had to really work at not grabbing Emma by the shoulders and shaking her until her eyeballs jittered. “Yeah? How does that help us?”

  “It’s like it … traps the light.” Casey’s hand was still pressed to his glimmering double. “As if it’s coming back to us out of tar or something.”