by Ilsa J. Bick
There’s a slight crunch and pop as the woman’s boots grind broken glass. Wonder how come she hasn’t turned on the light? Maybe she can’t find it, but that’s dumb. The switch is right … Then Emma thinks, What are you doing, you nut? Don’t jinx—
There’s a distinctive snap. Flat yellow light flows into the gloom.
Stupid, Emma, you’re so stupid. Emma’s insides go all loose, like she might fall down in the next second. She’s always jinxing herself. You think too much.
Another snap. The light goes out. “This is fascinating.” The woman snicks the light on a second time, and then a third. “Worthy of study.”
Worthy of study? What, she’s never seen a light before? Still, the woman’s done her a favor. To the left, Jasper’s hulking old secretary looms, and she can see a larger, long wedge of shadow where the desk isn’t completely snugged to the wall. The opening’s just wide enough for a thin and wiry twelve-year-old kid. So she’s got a choice. She could hide behind the Victorian, quiet quiet quiet as a mouse—maybe even do a Lara or something and jam herself into the crack, tuck and plant her feet like a rock climber so that crazy lady won’t be able to see her feet. If Emma’s really lucky (hah!), the crazy lady will look around and kind of scratch her head—Huh, where’s Waldo?—and go back upstairs. Or Emma could do the same move and shove the desk really hard until it falls over. The desk isn’t wide enough to completely block the way, but it would certainly slow this woman down.
Emma doesn’t have that kind of time, though, and knows it. There’s only one way out of here. Should’ve bolted out the front door, taken my chances outside. At least there would be room to run. But the fog was so thick, she’d get lost. She even might have—and this is a weird thought—run to another place and time.
Yet there is also Jack, who could have chosen anywhere else to go in the house but has taken himself down cellar and led her to this back room. The cat’s long shadow dances up the wall as he bounds atop the boxes she wedged against white-painted cinderblock only a week before, as if he’s pointing: This way, Emma, move your butt!
Oh boy. Should she? Because she knows what the cat wants her to do. Those tiny panic-gerbils in her brain shrill, Are you crazy? Are you nuts?
No, mainly she’s desperate. Plowing across the room, she horses aside boxes. Please be what I think you are. Which is what, exactly? A tunnel? A door to another dimension or time? I don’t care, I don’t care, just be there. She is gasping again, and her heart is beating so hard that the harsh grind and hollow baps of the woman kicking aside glass and tin cans seem far away. A few seconds later, she feels a gush of very cold air around her ankles and she falls to her knees before painted cinderblock—
And the cinderblock is a white blank. Biting her lower lip, she corrals a small cry. That’s not right. Last week, there was a pull-ring. I couldn’t have imagined it. Could she? But I opened this; I know I did …
Oh! She sucks in a breath as that brass pull, just so right for her hand, sprouts like a mushroom, as if it’s been waiting for her to get on with it already; to really, truly want this.
As if this is the pivot, the now, around which her life turns: the end in which she’ll find her beginning.
9
EXCEPT FOR THE fact that she has no birthday candle now, everything’s the same: that frigid wash of air, that flawlessly perfect black square, the icy burn when she touches it. Beneath her fingers, the dark square gives like thick cellophane, and sounds dribble out: a static-y psst-spiss-spiss-psst like Rice Krispies, or a big, whispering crowd. Then, a tiny click and her hand plunges into the dark. The last time, that’s when something hooked her wrist. When she’d finally tugged free, her fingers were sickly white with cold and her blue birthday candle was frozen. Now, nothing snatches at her. Maybe going the whole hog is what the darkness has wanted all along.
Then Emma thinks, What are you doing? She wasn’t really thinking of crawling inside, was she? There are things in there that might be just as bad as what’s followed her down cellar. Stay here, though—I’ll get killed. But go in there and maybe, just maybe …
By her side, the cat is shifting from side to side, like a stallion at a starting gate. “Jack?” Her whisper’s as quivery as half-set Jell-O. Her lips have drawn back in a terrified rictus, and big tears roll down her cheeks. The tang of iron’s on her tongue. “Jack, do you know where …?”
A knife blade of shadow slashes up the far wall. “Emma.”
Emma screams and whirls around. By her side, Jack springs about a foot straight up, the way cats do. Yet when he lands, he stays. He’s not leaving her. She doesn’t know if she likes that or not. What if this kook kills her cat, too?
“Emma.” The woman steps to the threshold of this second room. “There’s nowhere left to run. Let’s not make a fuss.”
“Not make a f-fuss?” Emma’s chest is boiling over with fear. “Wh-who are y-you? What do you w-want?”
“Why, you, child. Although …” The woman’s head suddenly cocks as she stares through those weird purple glasses. “What is that?” Her smooth, buttery caramel tone has gone brittle. “Is that another device? Or a back door? Have you accessed it? Where does it go?”
Access? Back door? “I … I don’t …” It hits her then: She can’t tell I’ve opened it. Even with those funky glasses, she doesn’t know. From the woman’s question, Emma thinks this nut will be on her in a second if she gets even the slightest whiff that it’s open. But she asked where it went. That must mean the woman’s seen this or something like it before and knows that it’s an escape route, a tunnel, a door, and not just some black hole filled with stuff that’ll have her for lunch. If she doesn’t know it’s open … does that mean she can’t follow? The door opened for her; the pull-ring sprouted at Emma’s touch. So what if it closes up right after I go through?
What is she saying? What is she thinking? She’s not going in there. But Jack wants her to; Jack knows. And the crazy lady can’t get it open?
“Emma.” The woman moves into the room. “Come away, now.”
Go on go on, do it, you big fraidy-cat, go! “O-okay.” She sets her toes, tenses her thighs. “Okay, I … I’m c-coming, I give up; just p-please don’t h-hurt me, d-don’t …”
Then she shouts to the cat, “Go, Jack!”
And launches herself into the square.
10
LARA CROFT’S GOT nothing on a cat. Hurtling ahead, Jack’s gone in an instant, lost to the dark. She is a split second behind. The transition’s abrupt; the cold grabs her throat, and there is a rushing around her ears, as if a huge flock of blackbirds has suddenly startled. That static wash of whispers swells.
Maybe, if she hadn’t hesitated so long, she’d have made it, too.
A pair of strong hands clamps her ankles. She bucks, trying to kick her way free. No, NO! Jack is probably safe somewhere, but she’s been too scared, too slow, so stupid. No one will ever know. Sal and Jasper will find an empty house and a wrecked basement reeking of vinegar and smooshed pickles. But they also might see the square or, at the very least, that the boxes have been moved. Jasper might put it together. Will he come after her? Can he?
Help me, she thinks, furiously, to the dark and whatever lives here. You were here before; you grabbed me before, so help me now! Squirming deeper, she realizes that while there is nothing under her chest now—no floor, no concrete—she’s not falling either. She also can’t be quite certain, but are those lights? Stars? Open doorways?
Behind, the woman is hauling her back. Emma’s shirt rucks over her tummy. In seconds, she’ll be right back where she started, at this nightmare turn her life has taken.
Please. She grabs for the dark. If you’re here, please, I want this! Find me!
And then comes the strangest thought of all: Put me where I belong.
That idea … is hers, and it is not. It feels far ahead and in the future and as distant as one of those bright lights, and yet the thought is immediate, present, now. Along with this, there
is a sudden blooming in her head and a lurch, a tug like the set of a fishhook. Deep in her center, she knows: this is her chance.
Tearing a foot from the woman’s grasp, she pistons her leg back with all her might. Her foot connects with a solid bang she feels in her knee. The woman lets out a screech of pain. Her grip on Emma slackens—and that’s enough.
Emma launches herself into this black tide, and now she’s moving, fast, fast, faster, the sensation the same as in the moment she angles her kayak in a swift stream churning through rocks, slipping into exactly the right shoot at exactly the right time. Emma hurtles through the cold and dark, the current sweeping her to …
PART ONE
AWAKENINGS
1
SNAPPING BOLT UPRIGHT, he jolts awake with a scream perched on his tongue.
Jesus. Swallowing the shout, he grimaces at … gasoline? His mouth tastes like he’s been sucking on an exhaust pipe. Or that could be left over from his nightmare: something about a car or maybe a truck that jumped a guardrail and landed in a splinter of trees and … and snow? Yeah, that’s right. What else, what else? A girl. Yeah, there was a girl he … he liked? Yes. A girl he trusted. To whom he felt a connection. He wanted to protect her. She was sad and … and haunted, like him. What was her name? Come on … But no face wavers up from memory. Shit, shit. It’s all starting to drift away, like soap bubbles on a strong breeze. Yet what remains in his chest is a clot of deep, icy dread—and pain.
Because I got hurt. This thing appeared all of a sudden, out of the dark. Shivering, he hunches his shoulders and folds in on himself. Cold. In the dream, there was snow, a real blizzard. Then, from the dark, this big something came and … pain. Blood. And I got hurt, I got really, really hurt. An explosion next? He thinks so.
And then I died. The words are the mental moan of a kid ready to puke his guts out. God, this makes no sense. He took psych. You can be scared to death in a dream. You can think you’re running like crazy but really in slo-mo, even though the slavering thing chasing you is a whisper away, a hair’s breadth. In a nightmare, you might even see the knife or ax or claw. But you shouldn’t die. At the moment the ax whizzes down or the monster opens its mouth, you ought to wake up.
Only I didn’t. I died in my dream. I felt it happen. I-I f-felt …
He has to stop this. He’s fine. He’s awake now and in bed, in his own room, not out on the ice watching his life drain away in a hot, steaming red pool to mingle with gasoline. Gasoline, what the hell … Come on. He puts a hand to his chest. Just calm—
His thoughts stumble. What? Hair rising on his scalp, he mashes his hand to his ribs, right below his left collarbone. What, WHAT? No, that’s not possible! He’s sitting up. He’s in bed. He’s not dead.
So then where the hell is his heart?
2
IT’S AS IF he just has to think the word. Because, all at once, a knot swells behind his ribs. His chest heaves as if what’s inside is just now shaking awake. A second later, he feels a knocking in his throat as his heart vaults to life.
Okay. His lips throb with the wild gallop of his pulse. You’re fine. Relax. He … he was just freaked out. Anyone would be after a dream like that. He shivers again, the tiny hairs prickling on his neck. Best not to think about it. Maybe sit up, read …
Wait a second. Leaning forward, he sweeps blindly with outstretched hands. Where are his covers? He’s freezing, and it’s so dark—blacker than pitch—but he has no blankets. There are no sheets puddled around his waist. He shuffles his ankles but feels no spaghetti twist of a top sheet or rumpled wool. What? Stretching, he gropes but feels only the icy knobs of his bare toes. Hunh. Probably kicked off the blanket, or maybe it’s balled up with his top sheet. And why the hell is it so dark? Twisting to his left, he drops a hand for his night table. Has it ever been this dark—
It is then that he realizes: his hand is still falling. Because there is no night table.
What? He goes rigid as a post. That can’t be right. But there’s no mistake: his hand is lower than his left thigh, and that’s when he figures out that there’s no mattress either. His palm’s simply hanging there. But there’s got to be a mattress. I’m sitting on it. What’s going on?
The scream that followed him out of the nightmare and which he hasn’t let go of is a knuckle in his throat. There is something beneath his legs; he feels it … but is it really his bed? Cautiously, he shuffles his legs, listening hard for a squeal of box springs, feeling for the mattress’s many small dimples and quilted hillocks. The blackness beneath him is perfectly smooth, like … ice, I remember ice and gasoline … and there is no sound, no whisper of skin over a sheet or even a mattress pad.
He is balanced, in midair, on … nothing.
3
THIS IS NUTS. There has to be something here. A person can’t be in nothing, much less on it. But maybe that’s why it’s so dark. Nothing would be that way. Limbo would be like this.
And he’s just died. Okay, yeah, in a dream … but maybe at the end of your life, that’s what dying’s like.
No, my heart’s beating. But it wasn’t there five seconds ago; he had to think it into existence, didn’t he? No, I’m breathing. I’m thinking. I feel. As if seconding this, his heart gives his ribs a good hard kick. See? Relax. All he has to do is turn on a light. But … wait a second …
Is there a lamp in this room?
He has no idea. None. Zip. Zilch. But that’s crazy. What does my room look like? He knows that he shared it with Matt, before his brother went off to the Marines, but—
Oh God. He can feel himself trying to cringe away from this train of thought, but he can’t unthink it now. Like lamp and sheets and heart and room, the name Matt holds no real meaning. Matt = brother, but that’s all. No image splashes across the movie screen of his mind: no face, no true memories. Matt is just a word, and that’s nuts. Why can’t I remember? He knows he has a dying mother, and a pastor-dad always on him about getting right with God, implying that because he isn’t; because he’s one sick, ungrateful, unrepentant son of a bitch, and God punishes the wicked … say no more. Look no further. QED: your mom’s rotting from the inside out, and it’s your fault.
Yet he can’t find his parents’ faces in the file cabinet of his memory either. In fact, he can’t find … oh. He feels his heart curl on itself. No. No, that’s not right; that’s just … But he’s had the thought now, and it won’t be denied.
He can’t find the face of a mom or dad or brother—any more than he can his own.
4
THIS CAN’T BE right.
Of course I’ve got a face. I’m breathing; I hear my breath. I’m … I’m …
Oh. Oh shit. What I? Who am I? He can’t stop shaking. What’s my name?
Nothing happens in his head. Because he. Doesn’t. Know.
Stop, stop. Calm down. Stop trying so hard, it’ll come to you. Better to get in a rhythm, like a song: I am okay. I am fine. I have a brother. His name is Matt. He’s in the Marines.… As he chants this to himself, he feels his mind tiptoeing to the edge of a big black hole where his memories must swim like koi in an inky pool. All he has to do is net the right memory as it glides by. And Matt is gone, so this place … And it’s a room, it is; he just hasn’t found it quite yet.… It’s my room now, and this room is in a house, and that’s in … iiinnn … A blank moment as the bottom of his mind drops out, and then the name comes: Merit.
That’s right. He is so relieved he wants to weep. I live in Merit, Wisconsin, and my address is … His mind blunders again as if it’s stubbed a toe. My address is … He doesn’t know. Because he hasn’t one?
No, I am real. But then what’s his name? Where does he live? What does he look like? What …
All of a sudden, his hands move. He hasn’t thought it, didn’t plan this, but it doesn’t seem to matter. His hands float toward the space where his face should be … no, where his face is, is. He thinks his hands are right in front of his eyes, but he can’t be sure. His eyes,
though … Please. Please, God, they have to be here. I feel them. I’m not nothing.
He’s still in the dream. That’s got to be it. There’s a name for this, too, but it flits away with a silvery snap of its tail before he can capture it. His hands come closer and closer, the fingers wiggling like antennae. God, they could be tentacles for all I know, just like that thing in the dream … No! He slams down on that. Think only of your face … your face … His fingertips skim … something. Something smooth, smooth as
(ice)
glass, as
(ice)
perfectly unblemished marble.
No lips. He has no mouth. There is a shelf that must be his chin, but nothing else, and no whisper of air on his fingers either. He has no nose. No cheekbones. His palms graze where the hollows of his eyes, his sockets, ought to be, but when he blinks, and he thinks he’s blinking, there is no flutter of eyelashes against either palm.
His face is a blank.
5
NO. THE SCREAM he has worked to hold back so long balloons in a mouth and on a tongue that are not there. No no no! Please, God, help me help me, letmeoutletme—
All at once, there is some seismic shift within himself, an almost indescribable sensation of something worming to life. From the space where his mouth is not, lips suddenly pillow. The ridge of his nose thrusts into being. His eyes bud like tiny mushrooms: first as nubbins and then as flowering caps. The dead space in his mouth clenches as the moist snail of his tongue curls from the deep cavity that is the shell of his throat, and now he is screaming on a tidal wave of terror blacker even than the nightmare; he is shrieking, the word exploding from his throat: “NOOO NOOO NOOO—”
TONY