The Dickens Mirror

by Ilsa J. Bick

  “Be quiet. Don’t tell me what I ought and ought not do. Aren’t things bad enough?”

  “Yes.” There was something strangely comforting about speaking into the dark before his eyes. “But they’ll get worse, and you know it. Forget the rot and the fog. Horses are all gone. There are no more dogs, no cats. No one’s seen a bird since the Peculiar made it to the Tower.” The raid on the zoo, with its turtles and snakes, gazelles and hippos, an elephant, had been well before the toffs and Parliament and their good King Eddie decided to abscond in the middle of the night. None such as him had so much as a mouthful; the price for a quarter pound of civet had been three pounds, sixpence, which was more scratch than he’d seen in his entire life. Only those families with money, and there were plenty in those days, actually supped on zebra in raisin sauce, or a duck-and-hippo cassoulet, which he’d gathered was some fancy name for bean stew. Although he’d heard that the toffs complained about elephant. Said it was tough and too greasy, so much bowwow mutton. While a few animals had been spared—the lions, a few tigers, several monkeys, and a great black bear—that was only because some scientists thought monkeys were too close to people, and killing lions was too difficult. And where were those poor creatures now? Starved to death, still in their cages, behind a dense milky shroud? Or had they somehow become fog?

  No one knew. Once the fog lowered, not a soul came out again, and no one was stupid enough to wander in.

  “All that’s left is what vermin we can catch and what hordes we find. But how many more of those, you think?” Deep in his heart, he also thought they weren’t very far from consuming the dead. (In another, even more inaccessible part he didn’t let himself stare at for long, he thought some people were already there. Meat was meat.) But then it was a choice between heat and food, wasn’t it? Freeze to death with full bellies, or starve away to skin and bones on a warm brick floor. He moved a shoulder in a shrug. “Can’t be limitless. Soon there won’t be food to be had for love or money. It’ll be whoever’s left, and the Peculiar boxing us in on all sides.”

  “Well, until then, we do the best we can,” Rima said. “That day may be a long while off. It’s been like this for as long as any of us can remember. Who’s to say this won’t go on forever?”

  What she said was true. Everyone’s memory held the same black absence at the core. No one could recall a time before the coming of this weird, suffocating fog—the Peculiar—that was denser than any London Particular before it. (Pea-soup thick, a nauseating mixture of coal soot and smoke and fog, the Particulars had been bad enough, like to choke a fellow or turn spit brown and stain garments piss-yellow. But this fog was peculiar, like nothing anyone had ever seen, and the name stuck because it was so apt.) The doctors thought the Peculiar was responsible for all the holes in their memories, too. Noxious fumes and debilitating miasmas was what they said, fancy words that said nothing at all but carried weight and felt important.

  There were days, in fact, when Tony was convinced that he’d only just now come alive; that this was the first day of his life. He had a history, of sorts. Well … as much of one as any foundling left in swaddling clothes on Coram’s doorstep. He knew things. Staffers from the orphanage, for example. That Coram’s cutlery had lambs stamped into the metal, and they got roast instead of boiled beef on Sundays. He remembered a book he and Rima loved, all about the Isle of Mull off Scotland; they would take turns, spinning a future in words of high cliffs and a blue sea and a cottage with a good stone croft for sheep and always snow for Christmas; of the monster in its deep, dark cathedral cave on Staffa and how they might listen to it roar at night. He could recall the summer one boy, Chad, had gotten it into his head to take a dip in the Thames round the old Battersea Bridge, only to be pulled under by the current.

  He recalled all that—the book, the talk of a future, that boy—or thought he did. But damme if there weren’t days when his past felt flat and as insubstantial as air: no real feeling or true memories. That was what the Peculiar was doing to them all.

  Yet, so far as he knew, he was the only person with nightmares. (These days, the least little bit of news rippled through Lambeth like lightning, so he’d have heard if anyone else had them.) Was that the fog’s doing? He wasn’t sure, but he felt a deep foreboding. Something’s about to happen, and whatever it is, I think it’s nearly here.

  Then what? He should leave. Protect Rima. Yes, but go where? As far south or east or west as he could, until he reached the fog’s edge? Or go to Westminster or Tower, any of the bridges, and walk into the Peculiar, let it take me? Just the thought froze his blood. Who knew what waited inside all that?

  “Rima, this is getting out of control. This other Tony … it feels like he’s bleeding into me.” And yet even that wasn’t quite right. Not bleeding: stealing from me, emptying me out. The image of some parasite, latched on his mind, sent another stab of cold terror through his heart. “How long before he takes over and I don’t wake up as me anymore? Or what if he hollows me out, and I don’t ever wake again? What if I”—his throat tried to fist—“if I really h-hurt you? K-kill …”

  “Stop.” A light flutter of her fingers over his lips. “Don’t blame yourself for what you can’t help. You were having a nightmare, Tony, and that is all.”

  “But your dreams aren’t like mine.” When she didn’t respond right away, he drew his arm from his eyes. Shadows swarmed over her features, though her eyes were somehow even deeper and more limitless than before. “Rima? Are they?”

  “No.” She didn’t say it cautiously. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t have bad ones. Sometimes, I think it’s the fog trying to … to talk to us, perhaps. Or maybe it’s only reaching a finger into our minds, trying to decide if …”

  “What?” When she said nothing, he skimmed a tentative thumb over her chin. A brief touch, nothing more, and still a clean, clear arrow of desire—more potent even than his fear—struck his heart through. Stop. Swallowing, the taste of dying blood still strong on his tongue, he took his hand back. Surrender to that and you’ll kill her for sure. “What do you mean about the Peculiar talking to you?”

  She sighed. “I don’t know what I mean. I’m just …” Her hand slid onto his chest, and he gasped as he felt her—oh so fleeting—reach beyond the shell of his skin. “Please, Tony, let me help you. Just a little. I promise,” she whispered, though he could barely hear her over the groan that her touch pulled from his throat, “I won’t draw too much. Only enough to strengthen you. Please let me do this for you, please.”

  For a second, he wanted to surrender. So good, so good … better than a moist cloth or cool drink of water. He couldn’t describe what she truly did, but when she laid on hands and drew out sickness, it felt the way he imagined the sun would over high cliffs edging the sea: a burst of warmth that bathed his face and chest and body and left him as languid and drowsy as a lizard. For a time—shorter and shorter these days—nothing hurt, and he wasn’t afraid and allowed himself to see a future when there would be enough food and no fog and sweet relief and their cottage with its stone croft and … Rima, Rima, he heard himself moan again … Rima, there’s only Rima, please take it, draw it out, draw as much as you can bear and …

  “S-s-stop.” The word came out ragged and rough. Clasping her wrists, he pulled her fingers from his chest. “I c-can’t let you, Rima. I won’t. You can’t possibly take it all away, and it only makes you weaker and … no.” He tightened his grip when her mouth opened in protest. “Don’t. Don’t tell me that you’ll take just a bit and stop yourself before it’s too late. You want to help me now?” It took all of his self-control not to crush her to him. Instead, he turned and showed her his back. “Go away. Get some sleep, Rima. It’ll be morning soon, and always more work.” More bodies for us rats to gather. “And promise me, Rima, you have to give me your word: don’t touch me while I sleep. Don’t try to draw this sickness or whatever it is from me.”

  “It is my choice. This is mine to give.”

  �
��And mine to refuse. Rima …” He could hear his voice try to break, and he swallowed. “Rima, it will kill you. I will.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I don’t want to find out, because if that happens … I might as well slit my throat right now. I won’t be responsible for that. You can’t ask me to.”

  For a long moment, she was silent. She also didn’t move. He waited, eyes staring, his ears tingling as the others slept and, beneath, the furnace chuffed and thrummed like a gigantic hidden heart.

  Finally, there came a stir of fabric and then the slash of her breath across his jaw. “Damn you, Tony.” And he thought she really was crying this time. “Damn you to hell.”

  “That’s not a promise.”

  “No,” she said, “it’s not.” But she went back to her side.

  RIMA

  That Other Rima

  1

  DAMN HIM. RIGID with anger, Rima lay with her hands balled. Above the background cough of the furnace below, the air prickled with the sighs, soft moans, and musical murmurs of the others. She strained to parse out Tony above the rest. Normally, after a nightmare, sleep was a fugitive, which meant that between hours of toiling through snow by day and wrestling with the demons in his mind every night, Tony was hardly resting at all. Every morning—well, such as it was in daylight that was leaden and short-lived, the sky as likely to gray and blacken several times over—Tony’s eyes were sunken even deeper in his skull. He was dwindling to nothing but tough, knotty muscle and sinew, what with the dreams eating him alive.

  Well, not tonight. Because she had lied … well, omitted. Before he’d thrust her hands away, she’d made a very small suggestion that sleep could come for him, and soon. Whether that would work, she hadn’t a clue. This was the first time she’d tried. But damn him, I will help, whether he likes it or not. Spreading her hands, she studied the lick and dance of shadows cast by the dim and ruddy light along her slim fingers. What use are you if I can’t? Two lolly daddies, that’s what, if you can’t draw away his suffering and lend him strength.

  Sighing, she folded her hands to her chest. She’d also lied about something else. Tony’s nightmare? She’d had it, too. She’d seen another Tony, in agony and covered with blood, so much blood, and then there had been a bright, distant leap of fire and then a monstrous …

  2

  BANG.

  Rima’s eyes fly open. An explosion? The image of that bright burst sheeting her vision—fire, explosion, Tony, TONY!—is still so vivid. God, has the other retort gone up? Floundering to her knees in a puddle of frayed burlap, she holds her breath and listens, nerves still jangling. But there’s nothing. No shouts or screams, only the background chuff of the furnace and the soft shush of many people, deeply asleep. On the side opposite, she hears Tony drag in a long, muttering breath. A word or two in there: mom and … something about a cat? She loses it after a moment as Tony settles. Beneath her, the bricks are warm and still. No shudder. Not that an explosion’s required for a wall to buckle or a roof to cave these days, but for right now, the floor is still solid.

  She draws in a deep, steadying breath. The air smells of soot and roasted flesh, but she holds it a moment before letting go. Just another dream. But she’s lying to herself, and knows it. This has not been just another nightmare of some weird doppelgänger. She concentrates, trying to dredge up more detail besides that explosion. Before, all she got was a bizarre mélange: visions of a broken-down tenement, strange metal carts that rumbled along smooth roads with no cobbles, some sort of gigantic dustbin, much cleaner than any dustheaps she knew, but which the girl in her dreams thought of as Goodwill ghost-bins. (What could that mean? Ghosts that weren’t harmful but all Christmas cheer? It was a puzzle.) There was a woman, too—Mother, the word was a whisper over her brain; Anita—with bad teeth, sores on her mouth, and scabs beetling her arms. The girl was afraid of Anita, and it worked the other way around, too. Something about a … a knife? Yes, and it cut. I felt it. With a fingertip, she traced a thin phantom grin over the tender skin below her jaw. Right here. The other Rima’s mother thought that Rima was evil and tried to kill her.

  The snow is a new detail, too. Of course, there is snow everywhere these days, and cold. But she doesn’t think that’s it. There was also a valley. Which is odd because she’s never seen one in her life. The only valleys she knows are those she’s read about in that book she and Tony loved, all about Staffa and the monster in the cave and the Isle of Mull and mountains and soaring eagles and black cliffs edging the sea. (She would dearly love to see an eagle. She would love to be an eagle and fly away from this awful place. Skim an indigo sea and then climb and climb and test the limits of the sky.)

  In this dream, the snow was relentless, coming down in buckets. She’d been freezing, too, dressed in very odd clothes. “Parka.” The word is so strange on her tongue. “Duct … tape?” Or was that duck? And … “Jeans.” She runs a hand over a thigh and feels coarse wool, the slide of thin linen drawers beneath boys’ trousers. She thinks jeans are trousers. How odd. In her dream, that other Tony had also worn similar clothes: Parka. Jeans. Although the muffler—she caresses the loose coil of wool around her neck with a thumb—was exactly the same. Green, wasn’t it? That other Tony had given her, the other Rima, the muffler—scarf, he called it—twining it around her neck. This was exactly what her Tony had done, snatching up a green woolen snake from a pile of castoffs. (Weeks ago? Months? She can’t recall.) This will keep you warm, her Tony had said. All you need now is a pair of proper mittens.

  One hand caressing her muffler, she concentrates on teasing images from the general swirl in her mind. Snow. A valley. Other people … “Bode,” she whispers, and feels the shock thrill through her. He’d been in that nightmare valley, too, though so different: hair shorter, different and very odd clothes … dark green. A lot of pockets.

  All right, that’s not so surprising. You’ve known Bode all your life, ever since Coram’s. No mystery there. She and Tony and Bode had been foundlings together: orphans growing up in the same sprawling hospital. Did that explain the others in the dream? All roughly her age … although wasn’t one a little girl? A flash of blonde pigtails and very blue eyes. Dark blue, like mine, though with a fleck of bright color. Copper? Gold?

  There was a boy who stood out, too, though his face was indistinct. His eyes were queer. Stormy. Did that mean gray? She’s not sure. It’s a word that occurred to the other Rima, and now it’s stuck in her brain like gristle caught between her teeth. Something else about that boy. When I think about him, I feel a tug. In the dream, he’s important to that other Rima. She cares for him. Something happened to him, too, as well as to the other Rima. She just doesn’t know what, but she thinks …

  Oh. She claps a hand to her mouth to catch a moan. “That Rima dies. She dies in the dark.” Or is close to dying. Is dying right this very second? No, no. Gulping back a sob, she smears a fine line of sudden sweat from her upper lip. Don’t be absurd. That would mean the dream’s still going on; it’s happening right now in some other reality. “But I’m awake.” Her hands clench, the ragged nails biting into her palms, but this is good, because that pain is real; it’s no dream. “I’m awake and this is not happening; I am not that Rima, and this never happ—”

  Tony suddenly moans, a long and frightened lowing, and she hears him begin to thrash. God. She lurches around the slats to kneel by his side. His breathing’s ragged. Fever? She lays a hand on his forehead, meaning to check …

  A white blaze breaks over her mind, the full force of his dream smashing like the blow of a hammer. Her head snaps back, and she actually gasps. For the briefest moment—in the background of what she sees—she is positive there is that same bright burst of fire that sheeted through her own dream, except it is very close, right in front of her eyes: a searing gush that incinerates flesh from bones in seconds.

  There are other images, too many to grab hold of, and Tony, still asleep and in the grip of this nightmare, is tr
ying to scream now because something monstrous is coming for him, scuttling not out of the ice but from a … a mirror, and then there’s a face—lean and wolfish, with purple eyes—leering in his mind.

  At that instant, right before he wakes and strikes her in his panic, what she thinks is, My God. I know you.

  3

  NOW, SLEEPLESS, SHE was as certain of that—that she did indeed know this woman—as she’d been less than a half hour ago. But where from? Where have I seen that woman before?

  Sighing, Rima sat up. Maybe a turn in the cold night air would clear her head, blow away the cobwebs of that nightmare. Noiselessly, she rose, slipping into a thick woolen shirt. The shirt had a rip, and her socks needed darning, and she would dearly love a pair of mittens. After lacing on her cloddish hobnails and checking on Tony one more time, she wrapped herself in her green muffler and bulky coat and cautiously picked her way around sleeping children as she headed for the far catwalk. In the past, when there were still trains and regular deliveries, men would maneuver iron cars along high rails between the different retort-houses and offload coal through shoots. Nowadays, with no trains coming, the catwalks were the staging point for bodies destined for the flames. Already sweating—it was either wear the clothes or carry them, and she needed both hands free—she climbed down an iron ladder to a large brick room. Long-idled, huge bridles, gigantic iron scoops once used to dump a charge of coals into the furnace, depended from the ceiling. Down here and so much closer to the furnace, the air was sweltering and the orange-yellow light bright enough to scorch tears. Blinking, she averted her eyes and hurried to a side door.

  That first step, from jungle heat to mind-numbing cold and the constant snow, was always a jolt that stole her breath. Driven in near-horizontal sheets, snow stung her eyes, and she could feel the sweat on her neck already chilling. Spilling from the retort-house’s windows, squares of orange light throbbed on the snow. The outside brick wall was toasty, warm enough to melt the snow back a good foot, although days when bodies were in short supply could also mean daggers of ice frilling the retort’s eaves.