by Ilsa J. Bick
“Emma,” Eric said, “what if this is the same kind of energy sink that’s in the Peculiars? Wasn’t that designed as a barrier, a way of containing energy? Look at the smears. Remember what Lizzie said? Her dad said the glass makes the thought-magic slow down.”
“What does that mean?” Bode could see now that when he turned his head, his reflection lagged behind, the margins blurring into streamers. “Is that good?”
“No. It means there’s something beyond this, inside, the way the Peculiars trapped energy. Anything that can trap energy can trap us.” Emma actually backed up a step. “I’m not touching this. We can’t go through here. There’s got to be another way.”
“You know there isn’t. Emma, please, Rima’s on the other side. I feel it.” Casey’s face glistened and more tears streamed down his cheeks. “We have to help her!”
“Well, whatever you’re going to do, do it now,” Bode said. The scorpions’ squalls were much closer, no longer only echoes but a shrill of sound as focused and insistent as a drill coring through the bone of his skull. “I’ll settle for anyplace those things aren’t.”
“We got to go for it, Emma,” Eric said.
“Eric,” she said, “it’s an energy sink. That means it can steal from me, from us. You want to wake up dead inside solid rock?”
“Do you have any better ideas?” Eric said. “You have to get us through, Emma. It’s the only thing left.”
Well, Bode thought, not quite. Emma looked pretty spooked. Even if she could do it, Bode still thought it would take her much more time than they had left. But he had the gun. He had the can of gas, and their second jar besides. He had everything he needed, no more and no less.
In that moment, the shape of his future became clear. Shit, the writing really was on the damn wall now, wasn’t it?
“Get them through, Emma. You find Rima and that little girl, and then you guys clear out,” Bode said—and wheeled back the way they’d come.
“Bode!” Eric and Emma shouted. Bode saw Emma try to spurt after him, but Eric snagged her arms and held on tight. “Eric, no! Bode!” Emma cried. “Bode, stop!”
He did, but only at the bend and just for an instant. “Don’t drop them, Emma. Don’t let yourself get stuck. Get them out and get them clear, you hear?”
Then he rounded the corner and sprinted down the tunnel as the heavy pillowcase banged his thigh, as remorseless as a countdown.
BODE
Into the Black
1
HE LOOKED OVER his shoulder only once, enough to satisfy himself that they weren’t following, and then he dug in, dashing down the tunnel, closing the gap. Ahead, he could hear the tidal wave of the scorpions as they came in a susurrous hiss, like the ebb and suck of waves dragging over the rubble of shattered seashells. When he thought he’d gone far enough, he swiftly untied the sack, took out both the jar and the can, and set them side by side on the rock.
Jar or can? There would be no second chance, so he had to guess right the first time. He settled on the jar; the can was thinner, and unless the glass simply melted, the shards ought to have enough punch behind them to slice through aluminum. Pulling the Glock from the small of his back, he squatted and butted the muzzle against the glass. A bullet alone wouldn’t get the job done; that only worked in movie-magic and books and television. What he needed was the muzzle flash.
Sweaty fingers gripping the Glock, he waited through a long second and then another. Maybe ten seconds left, or maybe less, but a long time to wait alone, a lot of life to try to cram into too short a span: focusing on every breath, the hum of his blood, that steady thump of his heart; paying attention to the set of his body—this body—while knowing that each sensation was possibly the last he would ever feel.
Then, in that third second, a voice he knew and had been afraid was gone forever floated through his mind: Proud of you, son.
The relief he felt was so huge he could feel his throat ball and his eyes burn with the sudden prick of tears. “Thank you, Sarge.” He swallowed against watery salt. “I thought you would stay with Casey.”
In a moment. Right now, you need me.
“I needed you before. You could’ve warned me. You had to know what would happen once I got into the barn.”
I’m a soldier, son, and a ghost—not a mind reader.
“That’s not all you are, Sarge. I feel it. That’s right, isn’t it? You l-left me for C-Casey …” Faltering, he forced his trembling lips to cooperate. “But you must have some damn good reason. Please, Sarge, help them. Help Emma. You will, won’t you?”
If I can. I am as I have been written.
“I don’t know what means.” But he thought he might. What if his life, everything he’d experienced, was in preparation for this moment? If this was why he’d been written: to help the others, give them a chance? And where will I be if—when—I wake up? If Lizzie was right, he would open his eyes, and there would be jungle and heat and bullets whizzing, the black echoes waiting, and Chad, grousing about no smokes and lousy food. Perhaps he would have no memory of this, or the others, at all. A wash of sadness filled his chest because, of all the things he wanted to forget, these people weren’t among them. Theirs was a friendship and bond forged in battle, and he was afraid for them. He was afraid for the kid, Casey, most of all.
Something even worse behind that weird rock. I feel it. They got to protect the kid; Battle must know this.
And would he find them again, somewhere else? Was there another Bode, an infinite number of Bodes, living their lives, making their mistakes, writing their own nightmares? Finding these people whose fates were woven with and into his?
Or maybe we’re each other’s salvation. This might be atonement, too, a way of making things right.
“I’m sorry, Sarge.” He didn’t bother trying to hold back the tears now. What the hell; he was dead, no matter which way you sliced it. “I’m sorry I got hung up in the tunnel; I’m sorry I was late. You should’ve left. You should’ve gone, but you were there, waiting for me.” Bode’s voice broke. “I’m so sorry I got you killed.”
We were at war. My choices were mine. I wouldn’t leave you then, and I won’t leave you now.
“Thank you.” Bode’s vision blurred. His cheeks were wet. The air was screaming now. Only a few seconds left. “It’s been an honor to serve with you.”
The honor’s mine. Go with God. Then: I think now would be a good time, Bode.
Yes, he saw them coming, almost on him now: a seething, rippling river sweeping from the dark.
Into the black, he thought, and squeezed the trigger.
2
BODE HAD LESS than an instant and barely a moment, but that was enough for him to know that he was wrong. He was not going into the black at all.
Light bloomed, orange and hot, and took him.
EMMA
Push
1
“BODE, STOP!” BEYOND the tunnel, Emma heard the swell of the scorpions, very close now. She tugged against Eric, who still had her arms in an iron grip. “Eric, please, we have to go after him. We can’t let him do this.”
“Go after him for what, Emma?” Eric gave her a little shake. “Think. Bode knows that this is the only way. We don’t have a choice and there’s no more time! Now, come on! Don’t make this be for noth—”
The room lit with a sudden, brilliant flash. The air exploded with a huge roar. The concussive burst, hot and heavy with burning gasoline, blasted through the mouth of the tunnel, followed a second later by a boiling pillar of oily smoke. She felt her throat closing, the muscles knotting against the acrid sting.
“Em-Emma,” Eric choked, and then he was pulling her down. Hacking, Casey had already dropped and lay gasping like a dying fish as tears streamed down his cheeks. The air near the floor was a little better, although she could barely see through the chug of thick black smog. Emma’s head swirled, her shrieking lungs laboring to pull in breath enough to stay conscious.
“H-hurry,” Eri
c grunted. “Do it, Emma. Get us out!”
“C-Casey, take Eric’s hand,” she wheezed, and then she slammed her free hand against this strange black-mirror rock and thought, Push.
2
IT WAS DIFFERENT this time, and much, much more difficult.
Her head ballooned; the galaxy pendant, Lizzie’s cynosure, heated against her chest. Their chain of colors spun itself to being, and then the familiar tingle of a blink began as the earth seemed to shift and yawn. Beneath her fingers, she felt not rock but that thin rime of ice frosting her window, the liquid swirl of the bathroom mirror, that featureless black membrane in Jasper’s basement, the thick clot of that murderous fog.
Push. She narrowed her focus. At the same instant, she felt the heat from the galaxy pendant gather, build, surge, and then rocket from her mind, as bright and sizzling as a laser beam shot from the throat of an immense generator. Push, damn it, push, push.
They passed into the wall: not a plunge but a slow and torturous ooze, the bonds tethering the molecules of this strange, alien glass teasing and ripping. The black mirror—no, this Peculiar, thinned, as if the touch of her mind was a warm finger to frosted glass. Yet the way was not clear; the glass did not melt so much as give and grudgingly deform, the way a too-wet sponge dimpled.
With a stab of horror, she also realized they were slowing down. She was still pushing as hard as she could, but it was as if she were bogged down in something viscous and gluey, like a woolly mammoth caught in an infinitely deep tar pit. The energy sink was sapping them all. The chains of light linking her to Eric and Casey were beginning to fade, the colors bleaching away.
Emma! It was Casey, his thoughts stinging with red panic. Emma, I’m slipping, I can’t hold on, I can’t—
God, no! But she was tiring, fast, and the harder she fought, the less energy she had. Her mind skidded, her concentration faltering as her hold on the others slipped. The sensation was bizarre, as if her thoughts were clumsy feet trying to stay upright on glare ice.
Emma. Eric, steady and sure. Look at me. Feel me. Let me help.
Help? How? She saw the cobalt shimmer that was Eric, but that was all, and Casey had his hand so she couldn’t really feel Eric either. Casey was still there, but his touch was like smoke against her fingers. Her whole body was going numb, draining to an outline, a silhouette, as the energy sink bled her of color and life.
Eric, again: Feel me, Emma. Look for me. I’m right here.
Then she remembered. She thought of their kiss on the snow: Eric’s mouth searching hers, his hands framing her face, his body fitting to hers. Give him color; use the cynosure to fill him in. In another moment, she saw his face shimmering in the dark of her mind’s eye.
That’s it. Stay with me, Emma, Eric said, as their chain of three and many colors brightened. Hold on to me, look at me, use me, and keep going; get us through.
She didn’t know why this helped, and how any of this worked. She was only a junior in some yuppie private school, for God’s sake. There was no science she knew to explain this, but it was as if she believed Eric into being. Maybe it was his faith in her, or only the electricity between two people, the way the air thickens and crackles when they look at each other. The connection is there, and you know it.
But she hung on, and she pushed. Her ears filled with a rushing, a whirring, and then they were passing through much faster, the stubborn glue of the energy sink weakening, the bright beacon of Lizzie’s Sign of Sure as solid as any path. She felt the space of this bizarre Peculiar dilate like an immense pupil …
From beyond its margins, swelling from the dark and whatever waited, she heard a loud, long, bloody scream.
And she heard something clamor in a raucous, cawing chorus. She knew what that was, too.
Birds. Not a few. Not a couple dozen. But hundreds and hundreds of birds.
Dead ahead.
RIMA
Blood Binds
1
ONCE, IN BIO, they’d sat through a gruesome video of some sadist-scientist injecting formaldehyde into a squeaking, thrashing rat. For Rima, the poor thing couldn’t die fast enough, and yet that was not what horrified her most. The worst was when the red leeched from the rat’s eyes until they were a dead, milky white.
Stealing her mother’s whisper was like that.
Anita was screeching. She tried pulling away, but Rima hung on. The sensation was agony, like a rush of liquid nitrogen churning through her body, freezing her mind, icing her heart. Anita began to jitter and twitch as her whisper—her life and what rode in her soul—oiled into Rima.
And then she knew because she felt it.
No! Her back suddenly bowing with pain, Rima let out an agonized scream, but it was already too late. This is what it wanted. She felt her body expanding and deforming as the whisper-man uncoiled, streaming through her limbs, riding her blood to plump out her fingers, her toes. She felt the bite of rope still cinched around her right wrist and both ankles as the whisper-man squirmed and wriggled and bunched, and then she cried out as the rope split and fell away. For a wild second, she felt a spurt of hope. Maybe she would live through this; maybe she might actually be able to contain the whisper-man without …
All thought whited out as a monstrous pain ripped through her chest: not a single talon but razor-claws that dragged and tore and split. Her scream choked off as blood gushed into her mouth, and then it was all she could do to grab enough air.
Can’t hold it. She sucked in a gurgling gasp. Tearing me apart.
OH, POOR LITTLE RIMA. The whisper-man’s voice crawled over her mind. DOES IT HURRRRT?
“Y-yes.” Her mouth was sour with the taste of copper and pain. “Pl-please, t-take it back. L-leave me …”
TOO LATE. YOU’RE A BRAVE GIRL, AND STRONG, BUT NOT STRONG ENOUGH TO PLAY THIS GAME. IF IT HELPS, YOU’RE NOT THE ONE I WANT ANYWAY. FOR THE MOMENT, THOUGH, YOU’LL DO. NOW, YOU JUST RELAX AND LET ME DO ALLLL THE TALKING.
She felt her consciousness compress as the whisper-man crowded in. She recoiled, tried kicking out with her will, but he was walking over her mind now, insinuating himself into the cracks and crannies and secret places, prying her apart. The whisper-man surged in a river of black through her veins; her heart shuddered with the force of it, and when she looked at her hand, what little breath she had snagged in her throat.
Her skin was moving.
No. She could feel the blackness there, worming and heaving, those dark tentacles eeling over her bones, seeping into the meat of her. This was like Tania. The same thing was inside her now, balling in her gut, ready to skitter up her throat on its spidery legs.
NO, the whisper-man crooned in her mind. YOU STOLE A WHISPER, THAT’S ALL. A BIG BAD WHISPER, BUT NO MORE THAN THAT. ONLY BLOOD BINDS. ONLY BLOOD WILL DO.
She was on her feet. When had she done that? No matter. Warm blood trickled from the corners of her mouth and down her neck to soak her chest. Her vision was muddy and her cheeks were wet; when she put a hand there, her fingers came away ruby-red.
Overhead, the birds boiled and screamed. On the rock, at her feet, Anita was as still as a discarded wax figurine. Beyond the magic circle, the voodoo priestess cowered.
“You say you let me go.” The priestess sounded both aggrieved and frightened. “You make a promise. You say once you have the power, you free me.”
Rima opened her mouth …
2
AND THE GIRL’S lips formed words, but the words were not hers, and neither was the voice.
“YES,” the whisper-man said. It twisted Rima’s lips into a bloody crack of a smile. “BUT … I LIED.”
Then, it brought down the birds.
EMMA
To the End of Time
1
THE PECULIAR SPAT them out. They tumbled, not falling as much as rematerializing in a stagger, hands still linked: Emma first, then Casey, and finally Eric. A ball of sound broke over them, an echoing scream that rebounded off rock and doubled, and Emma thought, Cave. For a second
, she thought they might still be in Bode’s nightmare: same story, different page. Then the floor undulated and bunched, and whatever else she might have thought after that turned to dust in her mind.
The birds spread in a roiling, living carpet. Emma smelled blood and the birds’ feral, almost metallic stink. A thousand glassy eyes glittered; black beaks gaped to reveal pink mouths and yellow tongues. Most were crows, but there were a few owls, their curved talons slick and stained with blood, stringy with dark flesh.
As if responding to some signal, the birds lifted as one in a broad, ebony curtain and shot toward some spot high above, leaving behind shredded clothing and a tumble of stained bone. The birds massed—and then seemed to melt into the ceiling. They fell utterly silent without even so much as a rustle. Yet they were there; their beetle-bright eyes studded the ceiling in an alien galaxy, a splash of eerie starlight.
That was when Emma realized something else: she could see herself. Not from their eyes; she wasn’t in the birds’ heads, thank God. But she saw herself, as well as Casey and Eric, reflected from the rock high above, at their feet, and all around. They went on and on, another Emma/Eric/Casey and yet another Emma/Eric/Casey and another and another and another: an infinite number of Emmas and Erics and Caseys marching away to the end of time.
The cave was an immense black-mirror sphere.
“Emma,” Eric said, and pointed. “Look. Inside that circle of candles.”
She followed his gaze, and a blast of horror swept through her body.
“No.” Casey’s voice was an anguished whisper. “No.”
2
RIMA SWAYED. HER body glistened, as if she’d been dipped in red paint. More blood dribbled in crimson rills from her mouth, her ears, her shredded wrists, and a thousand rips in her skin. Her shirt was a bib of purple gore, and Emma gasped as fresh blood blossomed in a dark rose over Rima’s stomach. Blood leaked through tiny fissures in her skin to form rivulets that ran down her legs and dripped from her fingers to puddle on the rock with a sodden, dull puh-puh-puh-puh. Rima looked like a porcelain doll done in a fine crackle-glaze: a leaky vessel through which her life’s blood seeped and would soon drain away completely.