White Space

by Ilsa J. Bick

  “Yes? And what mistake might that be?” When she was silent, Battle said, “Or mightn’t there have been something else you discovered below stairs, secreted down a hidden passage off the servants’ quarters? Something so horrible that your mind completely unhinged? That this is a hysterical fantasy of dual identities you’ve manufactured because it is preferable to the truth?”

  “No,” she said, with a sudden, sickening dismay. “I … I know what I saw.” But did she? The doctors were always so pissed that she wouldn’t take her meds, and she blinked away so often.

  Stop this. You know what you know. Listen to the way you think. It’s not like them at all. You know things they don’t. You’ve seen the future.

  Kramer said, “No one doubts your sincere belief in the fiction you’ve written or the characters; the duality of the brain and variations de la personnalité that allow you to people your world. Anything is better than remembering what was really there: not a door—”

  “No.” She felt her fist tighten around the knife. This was like The Bell Jar: Esther Greenwood going slowly nuts, déjà vu all over again. “No, there was a door, a hand, and it was cold, it was—”

  “It was not a door, but a gap, a tomb, an abomination of a reliquary,” Battle said. “A pile of rubble, a heap of crumbling mortar and disintegrating brick. Not a phantasmagorical tale out of Poe or Wilkie Collins, but something real, with texture and color and a stink of decay—”

  “Stop. I won’t listen to you.” This couldn’t be happening. She knew about 9/11 and movies, relativity and Hardy’s Paradox and Starbucks. “I don’t remember anything but my life, my life, my real—”

  “And bones,” Battle interrupted. “Bones, Elizabeth.”

  “B-bones?” She couldn’t pull in enough air. “No, no, I don’t know … I didn’t see—”

  “But I did. I’ve seen the evidence myself in the blackened skeletal remains of the corpses you discovered below stairs. You found the murderer hard at work, a demon masquerading as a man; a monster that spirited you away and would’ve made you his next victim. There is no house to which you may return because he burned it to the ground in a futile attempt to obliterate any evidence of his crime. In that, at least, he has failed. But make no mistake: whatever feelings you may still have for him, this man is a lunatic. He is depravity and evil incarnate,” Battle said, in a voice so heavy with doom, with words so weighty with the inevitable, they felt as remorseless as hammer blows. “And he wears your father’s face.”

  4

  THE WORLD STOPPED. It just. Paused. The time was short, only as long as the speed of thought, but it was as if she were falling again, swooning into a great darkness from which she would never escape.

  Then the world began to spin once more, and a flood of horror washed through her veins at the same instant that a bright flash, like the death of a lightbulb, popped in the black of her mind, as if the private movie that was her life had decided to start up again.

  The image, every sensation, was crisp and brutally clear: broken bits of mortar on chill, packed earth; the funk of mold and something gassy and much fouler, like meat going green with decay; an empty black square from which rotten bricks had tumbled; and a scurrying, scritch-scratchy sound of rats’ feet over stone. Of whispers from shadows, in the dark. And when she lifted her candle and reached in … When she reached in, she’d touched …

  Fingers, limp and still. A hand as cold and smooth as glass with nothing beyond the wrist but hard bone stringy with dead flesh and leathery sinew …

  And, farther back, gleaming in the candle’s uncertian light, a face with wide, black, staring sockets …

  No. Her mind shied away. No, that can’t be right, not when I can remember the others and Eric, Eric, where are you, where—

  “Listen to him, Elizabeth,” Kramer said. “Inspector Battle is telling the truth. Your father was a monster. He would’ve murdered you.”

  No, no, that wasn’t true. Her father was a pathetic asshole who strangled himself with the ratty laces of tattered All Stars. “No, I know what I saw, what I felt.” She was panting again as sobs swelled in her chest. “When I reached into the Dark Passages, something grabbed me and … and …” Her tongue stumbled.

  “Yes?” Kramer prompted. Two attendants had sidled closer, but he put out a restraining hand. “What is it?”

  The radios. She almost said those words aloud, but she’d sound even crazier spouting nonsense about boxes that talked. Radios would not be invented for, well, a long time. Yet talk of the murders had been on every station. Lily mentioned how that was all the radios talked about. Lily had known. So had Bode. Had the others?

  The important thing was she hadn’t known one single solitary thing about the murders. Not. One.

  And yet, at different points during this long night, she’d heard radios and words, so broken and distorted she barely understood. What issued from their mechanical throats were always portions of the same story, like the recurring theme of a melody she didn’t know, whose words she just couldn’t catch.

  Police. Investigation. A young girl’s discovery of …

  ’Orrible murder. She could hear the Kramer of her Now in an exaggerated Cockney: ’orrible murders and ghastly crimes fit for a Victorian tabloid.

  My God. She was shaking so hard, it was a wonder her body didn’t break into a million pieces. This Now … this is my reality? The rest was a … a delusion? A hallucination?

  “Would you like to know how many children your father murdered, Miss Elizabeth?” Battle asked.

  No, she didn’t need him to tell her, because she knew, exactly: There will be—

  “Eight bodies,” Battle intoned, in his heavy doom-voice. “Eight children. Five boys, three girls. You’d have been the ninth.”

  The same number I put in my story, the one I wrote for Kramer; the one he accused me of stealing from a dead man. Her heart boomed. Her skull was breaking apart. This was like when she’d perched on the other side of White Space, watching Lizzie crash, her mind so tangled in the little girl’s she’d felt Lizzie’s terror, known her thoughts. But that was House …

  —no, this house, an asylum with its stark walls and many rooms and whispers issuing up from grates and the dark.

  That was the whisper-man

  —Kramer, with his lisp and snaky hiss—

  manipulating me, showing me what to do until I understood enough to use the cyn—

  Wait a minute; wait just a goddamned minute. Her free hand crept to her neck. The galaxy pendant, the cynosure, was a dead cinder, a chill ball of lifeless glass on a beaded chain, but the relief that washed over her mind made her want to cry out. That was real. Her fingers traced the edges of Eric’s dog tags. Eric had been real; everything in that valley happened.

  “You’re trying to trick me,” she said, and thought, Shit, I sound paranoid. “I know what happened. You can’t take that away—”

  From the corner of her left eye, Emma caught a sudden flurry of movement and jerked her head around just as Weber passed off that sack of a strong dress to the boy behind him, and charged. As Weber danced forward, she threw the knife, not with the intention of hitting anything, but she needed Weber to look at something else for a split second. He did, batting the knife to one side with his arm, and in that instant, she whirled, snatched up the cockatoo’s bell jar in a one-handed grab, and hurled it as hard as she could. There was a dull bock as the heavy jar struck Weber above his nose, right between the eyes. Bellowing, Weller staggered back against Kramer and Battle, and all three men crashed to the floor.

  “Elizabeth!” Kramer managed to get to one knee. “What are you—”

  “Doyle!” Battle shouted, struggling to extricate himself from the bawling, bleeding Weber. “Stop her! Don’t let her—”

  She didn’t stay to hear more. Turning, she vaulted in a bloom of white down the hall and saw, instantly, that there was no iron gate, no inset door, but only another T junction. Shit. The layout was different. She dug in
and ran as fast as she could. So, which way: right or left?

  This is no way out. It was the spidery voice again, and nothing hesitant about it this time around. They’ll trap you the way you’ve trapped me.

  No, no! Air tore in and out of her lungs. She was Emma Lindsay; she didn’t belong here. She had a life elsewhere, else-when. And Eric, I remember Eric, how he felt, his voice, his eyes, how he smelled and tasted, and I remember Casey. She could hear them coming now, as she had before, the heavy footfalls. They’d be on her soon. Think, Emma, think; there has to be a way.

  At the T, she doglegged a sharp right, and then she saw it at the end of yet another very long, very stark corridor: an oval flash.

  A mirror. The Mirror. Yes. She forced her legs to go fast, faster. I’ll go there, I’ll go through!

  “Emma!” It was Kramer, behind her. “Don’t! You can’t. It’s not what you think!”

  How could he know what I— That made her falter, but for only a moment. Emma, he called me Emma. He knows I’m telling the truth. Or maybe he was only humoring her, trying to get her to hesitate just long enough for them to catch up. No, not going to fall for that. The way out was right in front of her. All she had to do was run, and then she would be through, falling to some other—

  “Don’t do it, Emma!” Kramer cried. “That’s not—”

  “I’m not listening to you!” She charged. Get me out, she thought to the cynosure, get me out, take me anywhere but here; just get me out! Behind, she heard Kramer still shouting, the thud of boots as the others closed, but she had a head start, was nearly there; so close now she saw her reflection rushing to meet her—

  But something was wrong. There was no bloom, no heat, no swoon, no purple maw chewing holes through the back of the world. On the beaded chain, the heavy glass orb and Eric’s tags only clattered against her chest.

  There is no Sign of Sure. Spider, in her web, in the dark heart of her brain, and what was left of this body’s rightful owner. Yet what and who that girl had been in this Now, Emma couldn’t tell. It’s only glass, Spider rasped. Those are strips of ordinary tin, only so much rubbish picked from a dustbin. You’re a mad girl in a ruined world. Look in the mirror, Little Alice, loooook.

  Dead ahead, there was a girl rushing through the mirror, ready to break free and—

  Wait. Heart pounding, she realized what else was wrong, what was different, as her face filled the glass and became the world—this Now—blotting out all else.

  She saw eyes. They were cobalt, with that golden birthmark, but they were all she truly recognized. Oh, there was a girl, a wild thing with hair bright as corn and violent as a gorgon’s serpents, but she did not have Emma’s face.

  The girl hurtling headlong to meet her—twin to her twin, image to her reflection, this Now’s version of all that she was—was little Lizzie, all grown up.

  “NO, NO, NO!” she shrieked, and rocketed for the mirror with all she had left.

  5

  MAYBE A PIECE of her knew the truth or had listened to the seeds of doubt Spider planted, because, at the very last second, she’d thrown up her arms to shield her face.

  It was an explosion. The impact was as much sound as it was something physical, a bright detonation of shock and pain that wiped away all thought in a stunning, violent burst. There came a glissando splash as the mirror shattered and rained razor-edged daggers. A second later, there was a heavier crash as the now-empty frame—and it was only blank, unblemished wood—toppled.

  The world stuttered. Someone began to wail, the sound wordless and horrible and black. From the coppery taste at the back of her throat, she realized that this wailing someone was she. Staggering, she felt her knees wobble, then buckle, and then she was sinking into a warm, wet tangle of bloodied nightclothes and torn flesh as a Babel of voices swelled: She’s bleeding, she’s bleeding; quick, fetch bandages; I’ll need my bag … someone fetch the surgeon; hold her, hold her; she’s a spitfire, sir, an alley cat; hold her fast, don’t let her …

  “Easy, Miss Elizabeth, easy.” There were rough, hard, strong hands on her now, wrapping her up, bracing her shoulders. But the voice was young, that of a boy not quite yet a man, and reached through the fog of her pain to stir memory. “I’ve got you, Miss … Here, here, what’s your name—Doyle? Take her hands; soon as we’ve got her into the strong dress, we’ll slip on those gloves.”

  “No, no!” Gasping, she looked up and then let out a small cry that was half a scream, half a sob. If her mind had been glass, it would have ruptured as the mirror just had. My God, it’s … “Bode,” she rasped. “Bode, help me, please, let me go, please don’t do this, don’t!”

  “Shhh, shhh, I’ve got you, you’re safe now.” His hair was longer but the same muddy brown, and looking into Bode’s eyes was like staring into a cloudless sky. “I knew you’d recognize me, Miss, yeah? Your old pal?” This Now’s Bode turned a grin that twitched a thin thread of scar stitching its way from the corner of his jaw down his neck and under his ear. “I won’t let them hurt you, Miss Elizabeth, but you got to stay still now.”

  “Bode. Listen to me,” she moaned as Doyle, his face flushed and a splash of her blood on his jaw, wrapped his huge hands around her wrists. “Please, I don’t need the dress. I’ll be quiet, I won’t make trouble, but please …”

  “Shhh. You know the rules.” Nodding at Doyle, who thrust her right arm into a sleeve of the strong dress, Bode tipped her a wink. “Not that I blame you,” he said, as Doyle shoved her left arm to. “Got a good one off. Wouldn’t mind taking Weber down a notch …” He grunted as she bucked, arching her back and thrashing. “Now, Miss Elizabeth,” he said, expertly rolling her onto one side before straddling and then holding her clamped between his legs as he secured the strong dress with leather straps. She heard the chink of metal chain and the snick of hasps. “None of that. You’ll make it worse for yourself.”

  “All right, that’s enough.” It was Kramer, somewhere over her head, out of sight. “I’ll finish dressing her wounds. Bode, if you would, make sure the others stay back while I tend to her? And for God’s sake, someone find that surgeon.”

  “N-no,” she said, and choked on thick blood. She tried to spit it out but was so weak her tongue only managed to shove a gob of foamy spit past her lips. She could feel it worm down her jaw like a slug. “Puh-please, Bode, d-don’t leave …”

  “I can stay.” Bode sounded both sympathetic and, she thought, pretty freaked out. “I don’t mind. She knows me, sir. She’ll listen to me. Please, sir, I want to help her.”

  “No. Thank you for your assistance, Bode, but if you and the constable would now withdraw?” There was a pause, followed by the fading clop of boots. Through a haze of pain and blood, she saw Kramer suddenly float into her field of vision like a bad dream.

  “Well,” Kramer said, reaching into an inner pocket of his waistcoat and withdrawing a pair of brassy spectacles, “let’s take a look at the damage, shall we?”

  Her breath thinned to a wheeze as he unfolded the earpieces. Yet only when she caught a flash of purple and saw him carefully unhinge the third and fourth lenses was she certain. I was right. He knows …

  “Ah,” Kramer said, and used the tip of his pinky to push his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. As he did so, she heard an anomalous sound, something that didn’t belong: the faint tick of metal … against metal. “That’s better,” he said, sinking to the floor and gathering her onto his lap. “All the better to see you with, my dear.”

  Balanced on Kramer’s nose was a pair of panops.

  6

  “YOU … you’re wearing …” Trussed and chained in the strong dress, she couldn’t fight him, and the pain was so intense, she could see it, raw and white and too bright. “You called me Emma. You know I’m telling the truth.”

  The magenta lenses seemed to smolder. “I know what you are, yes. Here.” He pressed a bottle to her lips. “Drink this.”

  “No, I don’t w-want …” A sickly, cloying scent
curled into her nose, and she gagged, tried turning away, but Kramer clamped her aching head to his chest with one arm and pinched her nostrils shut until she couldn’t hold her breath any longer and opened her mouth. Gagging against the too-sweet syrup flooding her throat, she thrashed and spat out a rust-red spume of a tonic of laudanum and passionflower. “N-no!”

  “Yes.” Kramer slapped her cheek, twice, hard enough to make her gasp, and then the drug was streaming down her choking throat. “Drink it.”

  She had no choice. He was killing her. This was prison; this was poison. Emma felt the swoon beginning to overtake her as a remorseless, inexorable tide, and it would have her, it would carry her away, and she was lost, and Eric, the others—

  “You … you know the truth. I’m n-not Elizabeth. Puh-please,” she moaned, and the higher, lighter register of her voice—this stranger’s—frightened her even more. “Let me go. You know I don’t belong here.”

  “But you do. In this world, you are the mad daughter of a lunatic genius who is, unfortunately …” Kramer held up a hand, turning it back and forth in an echo of McDermott for Meredith: See? Not a scratch. “A killer. A murderer. A host to a black evil from the Dark Passages … just as this body is for you. I wondered when you would return, be drawn back.”

  Return? Drawn back? She’d been here before? Maybe so. The whisper-man had stolen her in blinks. And Lizzie said a different London … But the Lizzie she’d known was a little girl. Yet this Now was new—and so was Lizzie? Wouldn’t Lizzie have remembered being older? Maybe not, if whatever had happened to her mother to cause those odd gaps in her memory had affected Lizzie, too. But what? “Wh-what do you want? Why are you d-doing this?”

  “You have knowledge I need. I will help you, Emma, and in return, you will help me,” Kramer said in his sibilant, snaky whisper. They were on the floor together, her body pressed to his, and his mouth so close to her ear that she heard the sigh and felt the hot steam of his