by Ilsa J. Bick
“We’re too late.” Casey was trembling. “We’re too late; it’s got her.”
“Good for you, Casey!” Rima boomed, although the voice was not hers, or the whisper-man’s either, the one Emma had heard in her blinks of Madison and that asylum. Definitely a man’s voice, though.
Beside her, she heard Eric suck in a breath. “What?” she asked. Eric’s skin had gone white as salt. “Eric?”
“Oh God.” Eric’s face was a mask of horror. “God, no, please don’t do this.”
“No.” Casey tensed, and he might have sprung into the circle if Eric hadn’t snatched his brother’s arm. “No, no!” Casey was crying, trying to fight his way free. “It’s not right, it’s not right!”
“Now, Casey. Son.” The monster wearing Rima made a tsk-tsk. “Is that any way to talk to Dear Old Dad?”
ERIC
My Nightmare
THIS IS MY fault. Beneath his hands, Eric could feel Casey shuddering, a vessel under pressure, ready to explode. We’re in my nightmare now.
“You’re dead!” Casey’s hands knotted to fists. “You’re dead!”
“Why, Son.” The thing in Rima, the monster with Big Earl’s voice, pulled a pout. A huge, ruby-red tear trickled down her cheek. “That hurts my feelings, it really does.”
“I’m not your son!” The cords stood out in Casey’s neck. “Don’t call me that!”
“Don’t, Casey. That’s what it wants,” Eric said. Big Earl had been a big man with a large man’s bluster, but this was like being caught in an echo chamber. His dead father’s voice battered his brain. Eric’s mouth filled with a taste of clean steel, and he grabbed onto his hate, hugged it as tightly as he held his weeping, raging brother. Good, stay angry; anger was something he could use. He willed his mind to diamond-bright clarity. This is the enemy. No matter what its face, it always has been. “Don’t give it any more power.”
“Oooh,” the whisper-man boomed in Big Earl’s voice, “you always were a smart boy, Eric. I guess Emma was a good teacher, huh?”
Emma let go of some small sound, almost the whimper of a trapped animal, but Eric kept his gaze screwed to the whisper-man. “Leave her out of this. She’s got nothing to say to you. She’s got nothing to do with you.”
“Oh now, Son, you’d be surprised.” The whisper-man threw Eric a wink. “Because she’s got everything to do with you.”
The words barely registered. This thing might have his father’s voice and Rima’s face; it might enjoy and feed upon this kind of sadistic play, but take away the bluster and it was clear: this thing needed them for something. Not only that: Eric knew, instinctively, that they must be willing to give it up. Otherwise, it would have taken what it wanted already, the same way it had snatched Rima and Lizzie.
And where is Lizzie? He risked a quick glance left and right; saw both the ravaged body of what he thought must’ve been a woman and a lumpy heap of bones, stringy flesh, and bloody clothing reduced to tatters. The skeletonized body seemed small but still too large for a little girl. What’s it done with her?
“Stop playing games. You need something from us,” Eric said. “What is it? Where’s Lizzie?”
“A boy with your gifts.” The whisper-man tut-tutted. “And you went into the Marines? Such a waste.”
“Gifts?”
“Why yes, Son. You’re a smart kid; you’ve figured it out already. Each of you has a special gift, even if you don’t know what it is just yet.”
“Stop calling him that! You’re not our father. He’s not your son and neither am I,” Casey said. “We know what you are.”
“OH, CASEY,” the whisper-man said, reverting back to its own voice, which wasn’t necessarily a relief. To Eric, it sounded like both a gargle and the scream of nails over a blackboard. It felt like knives in his brain. “YOU DON’T HAVE A CLUE, MY BOY. YOU REALLY DON’T.”
“Fine, then show yourself.” Casey scrubbed away the whisper-man’s words with an angry swipe of his hand. “Stop playing games. If this is our nightmare, you don’t need Rima. Let her go.”
“OH NOW, I COULDN’T DO THAT—NOT YET, ANYWAY,” the whisper-man said. “WE NEED TO COME TO TERMS FIRST. SO I THINK I’LL HOLD ON TO HER FOR THE TIME BEING.” A crimson spider stretched along Rima’s left side as a fresh seam opened. “A LITTLE COLLATERAL, DON’TCHA KNOW.”
“Collateral for what?” Eric said.
“A BARGAIN, OF COURSE. A NEGOTIATION.”
“What could we possibly have that you can’t already take?” Eric said. “Where can we go? We’re in your space.”
“I want to talk to Rima,” Casey said.
“I WANT TO TALK TO RIMA, PLEASE,” the whisper-man said. “CASEY, WE REALLY HAVE TO WORK ON YOUR MANNERS.”
“Where is she?” Casey shouted.
“SHE’S RIGHT HERE—SCREAMING HER HEAD OFF, I’LL GIVE YOU THAT. THIS IS THE PROBLEM WITH USING YOU WHEN YOU’RE AWAKE. EXCEPT FOR EMMA, IT’S MUCH EASIER WHEN YOU’RE ASLEEP. WHY, IF I WEREN’T SUCH A STRONG CUSS, SHE MIGHT DISTRACT ME.”
“What?” Eric heard Emma say; from her tone, he couldn’t tell if she was startled or had suddenly found the missing piece of a mental jigsaw puzzle.
“What do you mean, using us when we’re awake?” Eric said to the whisper-man. “Why is Emma different? What are you talking about?”
The thing in Rima’s body kept on as if he hadn’t spoken. “BUT RIMA’S JUST A SLIP OF A THING, AND NOT VERY STRONG. SO SENSITIVE, SO SWEET—AND I KNOW SHE LIKES YOU, CASEY. SHE WOULD DO ANYTHING TO SAVE YOU. TRUST ME ON THAT. I THINK THE TWO OF YOU WERE SOMEHOW MEANT FOR EACH OTHER.”
“Then please stop hurting her.” Casey’s lips trembled, but he shrugged out of Eric’s grasp and pulled himself up straight. The deep bruises on his translucent skin were as livid as clotted blood. “Let her go before you kill her. You have the power to do that.”
“It does, but it won’t, Casey. Not yet, anyway. It wants to play just a little longer,” Emma said. She had gone very pale. Her cobalt eyes were nearly violet in the bad light. “Where’s McDermott? Where’s Lizzie?”
“THAT BRAT?” The whisper-man spluttered a wet, horsey sound. Blood misted in a tiny cloud. “LITTLE LIZZIE WAS NEVER HERE.”
EMMA
Monster-Doll
SHE HAD ALREADY half-guessed the truth. The story had spun itself out in her blinks: Lizzie’s parents, the Mirror, the panops and Peculiars, Lizzie’s dolls, the flight from the house, that crash, and that very last blink in which Meredith lay dying, with Lizzie not far behind, as the fog leaked and nosed its way inside the little girl. There had been all that talk about tangles. But the shock still hit Emma like a slap.
Lizzie had felt it with the monster-doll, which must have been some incarnation of the whisper-man. How Lizzie did it, Emma couldn’t guess, but it must be a little like any kid at play: you act out all the parts. You get into the doll’s head and lose yourself in a fantasy world. Somehow, using the galaxy pendant, Lizzie must’ve crossed into some realm. Bypassing the gateway that was the Mirror? Or had she found another machine? For that matter, maybe the cynosure had more than one function, could be used in ways Lizzie’s parents hadn’t known or understood.
Either way, Lizzie had grabbed a piece of the whisper-man—or he’d hung on to her; who knew?—and then the whisper-man talked to her in a language she could understand. They’d played. They went places; it had shown her how to do things in different Nows. Yet, with every contact, untangling who she was from it was harder. A bit of Lizzie was always left behind, and vice versa. It had sunk in its teeth, gotten a taste. So when the fog finally caught them after the crash, that enormous tangle of energy—from the Peculiars, the whisper-man, and what was left of her father—invaded the little girl, walked her brain, and became her, sliding inside Lizzie’s skin to wear her the way you did a glove. It just hadn’t done it fast enough, and Lizzie had time to finish her special forever-Now and imprison them both.
“I think she was never here, as a girl, for us,” Emm
a said, “but she put you here. She made this place out of her idea of a Peculiar, and then she bound you. She was bleeding, and you need that, don’t you? It’s the actual blood that matters. It’s why McDermott cut himself. It wasn’t only to activate the Mirror. It was to give you a way in that would stick.” But it must not work all at once unless there’s enough time. What was it that McDermott had said? A cumulative exposure, something he had to do over and over again. He must’ve thought that if he cut himself just every so often, took in only a little of its energy, he could use it without it having enough of a hold to use him.
So was that what London had been about? McDermott taking in too much? But there had been something wrong with Meredith McDermott, too. Scars. I remember scars on her arms. Her memory was faulty; there were holes, things she couldn’t recall. Hadn’t McDermott said that Meredith and Lizzie went away? To where?
“YOU KNOW, YOU’RE VERY SMART, A REAL CHIP OFF THE OLD LIZZIE-BLOCK.” The whisper-man gave a sly, ghastly wink. “I CAN SEE WHERE ERIC GETS IT.”
“Why do you keep saying that?” Eric asked.
Emma kept her eyes screwed to the whisper-man. “We’re not talking about that.”
“OH, BUT WE ARE. YOU ALL NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE STAKES HERE,” the whisper-man said.
“What’s to understand?” Casey said. “You’re an asshole.”
“SO ELOQUENT. EMMA’S GUESSED MOST OF IT, I’LL BET. IT’S REALLY VERY SIMPLE. AFTER THE CRASH, I GOT INTO THAT LIZZIE AND, OH BOY, WAS THAT A MISTAKE. SHE WAS MUCH STRONGER THAN EVEN I REALIZED AND SUCH A BRIGHT, CREATIVE LITTLE GIRL! YOUNGER MINDS AREN’T BOUND BY LOGIC; NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO CONFORM TO RULES. WHO KNEW SHE’D PAID SUCH CLOSE ATTENTION TO HER MOTHER AND THOSE PECULIARS? OH, I KNEW THE RISKS. SHE WASN’T A PUSHOVER LIKE DEAR OLD FRANK, WHO HAD THE KNACK BUT JUST DIDN’T KNOW WHEN TO STOP. BUT I COULDN’T RESIST. REALLY, AFTER I SAW HOW SHE COULD PULL THINGS BACK INTO HER REALITY—THAT STORM, FOR EXAMPLE; HECK OF A THING—AND WITHOUT DESTROYING THAT PARTICULAR NOW, WELL, I KNEW I JUST HAD TO GET ME MORE OF THAT.”
“Where is she?” Eric said. “Is she dead? Did you kill her?”
“SON, LIZZIE WAS GONE FROM HERE A LONG TIME AGO,” the whisper-man said. “WITHIN MINUTES OF THAT SWOOSH. OH, SHE’S ALIVE SOMEWHERE ELSE, AN INFINITE NUMBER OF VERSIONS IN ALL THOSE MULTIVERSES YOU TALKED ABOUT, ALTHOUGH THAT’S TOO NEW AGE FOR ME. CALL IT A REALM, OR A NOW. EVEN A BOOK-WORLD, WITH ITS SECRET COMPARTMENTS. IT’S ALL THE SAME IN A WAY, BECAUSE THE WORLD OF A BOOK IS SO REAL TO ITS CHARACTERS, AND THOSE WHO READ IT, TRIP INTO IT, GET LOST.”
“Where you can’t stay long,” Emma said. “Now or book-world, it doesn’t matter, because you’re bound to Lizzie’s story and she’s bound you here. You can be what you want here but nowhere else.”
“WELL, IT’S NOT AS LIMITING AS THAT. BINDING WORKS BOTH WAYS. GIVE A LITTLE, GET A LITTLE. YOU’RE RIGHT; LIZZIE AND I ARE TANGLED, THE SAME WAY THAT FRANK’S IN HERE AND, OF COURSE, ALL … WELL …” It threw Emma another wink, so eerily similar to the one McDermott had given her in that Madison-blink, she felt a swift, sharp frisson race up her neck. “MOST OF YOUR STORIES, THE ONES STORED IN THE PECULIARS.”
“What do you mean, most?” Eric said. “There are others? Ones that aren’t finished, like …” Emma felt Eric move a little closer, as if to shield her, too. “Like Emma’s?”
In reply, the thing only hunched Rima’s left shoulder, but when it did, Emma heard a distinctive riiip that made her flash to Sal tearing up old sheets for rags. “SO I CAN BREACH THE PECULIAR FOR SHORT PERIODS OF TIME, BECAUSE LIZZIE HAD THAT KNACK; JUST LONG ENOUGH TO GRAB ONE OF YOU, WHICH ONLY MEANS THAT I GRAB THAT PIECE OF HER IN YOU. I CAN VISIT ANY NOW AND PLAY WITH THE VERSION OF YOU—IN YOU—THAT EXISTS IN THAT NOW FOR A LITTLE WHILE. TRUE, EXCEPT FOR EMMA, YOU’RE ASLEEP AND YOU MISS ALL THE FUN; WELL … MOST OF YOU DO.”
All my blackouts. All those blinks. She felt the cold, keen blade of this new horror slice into her heart. They haven’t been fugues or seizures. It’s been using me, wearing me to visit versions of me in different timelines. And it could use her while she was awake. Why? Because I’m my own person: real, not set in a story with an inevitable end?
“Emma’s the key, isn’t she?” Eric said. “She’s the constant. This has all been a series of … of tests. You manufactured everything so Emma would eventually learn what to do to get you out of here and into a different Now. That’s why you kept bringing different people. You had to keep altering the mix to help her get there. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“What?” Somehow this idea was even worse. “Eric, what are you saying?”
“Think about it, Emma,” Eric said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. If it’s tangled with Lizzie and McDermott, then it already knew you had the ability. What it had to figure out was who would help you get there. Must’ve sucked for it, constantly having to hit the reset button.”
“You’re saying I’ve … I’ve been here before?” Multiple contacts with this thing? In this place? But didn’t every contact leave a stain? How infected with it was she?
“BINGO!” The whisper-man gave Rima’s right knee an exaggerated by-golly slap that left a palm-sized splotch on her jeans that swiftly turned the color of blackberry jam. “BY GOD, YOU’RE A BRIGHT SONUVAGUN. BUT IT WASN’T AS SIMPLE AS ALL THAT. IT WAS ALSO A MATTER OF EMMA COMING INTO HER OWN, MARSHALLING THE RIGHT ABILITIES HERE AND, WELL, IN THAT LIFE SHE’S MADE FOR HERSELF. EACH OF YOU HAS A GIFT, MY BOY, WHETHER YOU KNOW IT OR NOT. BUT ONLY ONE OF YOU HAS THE GIFT I NEED.”
“What’s that?” asked Casey. “Who?”
“WHY, THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING, SON. I NEED SOMEONE WHO CAN CARRY A WHISPER, AN ENERGY AS STRONG AS MINE, WITHOUT COMING APART AT THE SEAMS. I NEED A MIND THAT CAN ABSORB ME WITHOUT GOING TOO MAD, SO WE CAN PLAY TOGETHER FOR A NICE, LONNNG TIME ACROSS THE NOWS,” the whisper-man said. When it smiled, Rima’s lower lip split in two to sag from her teeth. “I NEED THE GIFT, CASEY, OF YOU.”
ERIC
Write the Person
“NO.” ERIC MOVED to put himself between Casey and the whisper-man. “You can’t have him. You can’t have any of us.”
“OH, I BEG TO DIFFER.” Rima’s clothes were drenched now, and blood painted every inch of her face. “SEEMS I ALREADY GOT LITTLE RIMA NOW, HAVEN’T I? IF YOU DON’T HURRY, YOU WON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT ME LETTING HER GO EITHER. SHE’LL JUST DIE, AND IT WON’T BE PRETTY. OH NO, IT WON’T BE PRETTY AT ALL.”
As if to put the period to that, a fresh split opened on Rima’s throat with a meaty rip to reveal a faint glimmer of tendon and red, wet muscle. Eric felt a fresh surge of anger at their helplessness—at his. No one could lose that much blood and survive. But this thing did have powers. “If you leave, will that save her? Can you heal her somehow?”
“OH, YOU BETCHA.” A tremor squirmed through Rima’s cheeks, and the whisper-man let out a sudden groan. “AHHH … WHOA, BOY, BETTER HURRY. SHE’S IN A LOT OF PAIN.”
“Eric,” Casey began.
“No. Don’t even think about it, Case.” Eric’s heart beat hard and loud in his ears. Cold sweat rimed his upper lip, and a cramp of fear grabbed his stomach. Being scared wasn’t bad, was it? His drill sergeant once said that anyone who wasn’t a little freaked out was a damn fool. The trick was not to let it paralyze you.
I can do this. I’ve been fighting one way or another for my whole life—against Big Earl, the odds. Myself. Just one last battle.
“Take me,” he said. “Use me.”
“No,” Emma said. “Eric, don’t.”
“SORRY, BOY,” the whisper-man said. “I DO SO ADMIRE YOU, BUT ONLY CASEY WILL DO.”
“It’s all right.” Except for the bruises, dread had bleached Casey’s skin until his face was nearly transparent. “I’ll do it.”
“Case, you can’t.” Eric’s hand tightened on Casey’s forearm. “I won’t let you.”
“But you heard it. I’m the only one who can save her.” Casey’s eyes were wet. “You’d do it for Emma or me.
Please, Eric. Let me do this for her.”
“It’s a liar, Casey.” Emma’s tone was steely and sure. “No one can save her now, not even you.”
“But it said it would,” Casey said.
“YOU HAVE MY WORD ON THAT,” the whisper-man put in.
“Screw you,” Emma spat. “You don’t have that kind of power. If you did, Tony and Bode and Chad and Lily would be here. Lizzie died from the crash; I don’t see you healing her. Even if she’d lived, she couldn’t have held you forever. Eventually, you would’ve ripped her apart the way you’re killing Rima now. If you could heal like that, you could hop in and out of Lizzie, patch her up, wash, rinse, repeat a hundred times over. You wouldn’t need Casey.”
“I KEEP—AAHHH.” The thing grunted. Rima’s lips peeled away from teeth tinted orange with blood. Her upper lip trembled, then tore, the skin stretching and thinning and coming apart in wet threads. “I KEEP FORGETTING,” it said, using Rima’s hand to knuckle away blood, “WHAT A SMART LITTLE ORPHAN GIRL YOU ARE. WITH YOUR GIFTS, YOU AND I COULD GO FAR, BUT YOU’RE NOT STRONG ENOUGH TO HOLD ME EITHER. OURS WOULD BE A VERY SHORT UNION. LUCKY FOR ME, YOU STUMBLED ON HOW TO WRITE THE PERSON WHO COULD. OOOPS.” The whisper-man put a mangled hand to Rima’s ruined lips in mock dismay. “LET THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG. ME AND MY BIG, FAT, BLOODY MOUTH.”
“Write the person?” A feather of alarm stroked Eric’s neck. Emma, he saw, had gone very still. “Emma, what’s he talking about?”
“WHY, YOUR GIFTS, ERIC,” the whisper-man said. “HAVEN’T YOU WONDERED WHY YOU AND EMMA ARE, WELL, SUCH GOOD PALS, AND SO SOON, TOO? WHY YOU LIKE HER SO MUCH? WHY YOU ARE SO ATTRACTED, CARE SO MUCH ABOUT HER? EVEN THINK ALIKE? BET YOU COULD FINISH EACH OTHER’S SENTENCES, AM I RIGHT?”