by Ilsa J. Bick
“I … well, I …” Rima’s face suddenly went slack, and she gave him an incredulous look. “No?” It came out sounding like a question. “Not that I recall?”
Tony took her hand again. “Me neither.”
“Right. That’s what I thought.” Bode felt as frightened as they looked. “Makes three of us.” He looked to Emma, who was squirming, a hand over her mouth. “All right, out with it. You’ve dreamt, haven’t you?”
“Oh yeah, lots of times,” the girl said. “Some I remember, a ton I don’t, especially when I’ve been awake for a while. But everyone dreams.”
Remembering Kramer and Meme, the way they said dream and nightmare, Bode said, “Maybe not all of us.”
“Yes, and we recall more as time goes by,” Rima said, “not less. It’s as Tony said, the feeling that something’s going to happen.”
“But if you guys haven’t ever had a dream, how do you know what to call it?” Emma said. “Where would the word come from? Why would you think nightmare?”
“And why that nightmare altogether? Why are we dreaming about us somewhere else?” Bode’s gaze went back to his reflection, so steady in that broken glass. A strange thought: What happened when he looked away? Did his reflection scratch its nose? Cross its eyes? Take itself away completely? Then he noticed something beyond his ghostly image: that reflection he’d thought was his lantern was brighter than before, and bobbed. Oh, bloody hell. “Someone’s coming,” he said. “They probably rousted Weber. Can’t let him get his hooks in any of you.”
“What do we do?” Tony put himself between the girls and the door. Clutching her cat, Emma had scrambled to her feet. “Is there a back way?” Tony asked.
“Not so’s that cove won’t see you before you can make yourselves scarce. ’sides, your cart’s out there. He’ll know you’re about.” Snapping his fingers, Bode held out his hand. “Give me your chopper.”
“Bode, no.” Rima put a hand on Tony’s arm to stay him. “Killing Weber will only make things worse.”
“You end up in that asylum, and you’ll be singing a different tune. ’sides, we can’t let him get ahold of Emma here, not with what we’ve all dreamt. Maybe she’s not the same girl, but this is just too close for comfort, too many coincidences. Now,” he said, dousing his lantern, “give me the damned chopper.” As Tony reluctantly handed it over, there was a sudden shift in pressure as wind flooded in from outside. The door to this space chattered on its hinges.
He’s inside. Putting a finger to his lips, he pointed the others to a corner thick with slate shadows, then tiptoed to a position in line with the storeroom door. Monkeying up the shelves, he cocked his elbows and brought the square blade above his head. From this angle, a quick downward strike, and the blade would bury itself in Weber’s skull as soon as the man opened the door. One good whack.
Over the pounding of his heart, he heard the slow clump of boots on stone. In a far corner, Rima pressed Emma behind her, although Bode saw Tony creeping round with the broken handle of an ax or sledge clutched in his fists. No, what’s he doing? Bode waved him back, but Tony only took a position opposite the door and hefted the stout handle over a shoulder for a swing if Bode missed.
A slim ribbon of yellow fired the floor as Weber came to stand before the door. Bode felt the man on the other side, could imagine him listening for a shuffle, the rasp of a sole on brick. Then his pulse skipped at a crisp rattle as the knob turned.
Wait. Bode’s fists cramped on the chopper’s handle. Wait for it …
A fan of light unfurled as the door opened and Weber stepped over the threshold, lantern upraised. Bode thought Weber whispered his name as he came forward, but it was hard to hear over the storm in his ears. Every nerve of his being focused on the blurred hump of Weber’s head. Sucking in a breath, he thought, Now!
“Bode!” Rima’s shriek pierced the thunder rampaging through his skull. “No!”
Too late.
BODE
Panops
1
HE’D PUT HIS weight into it. The chopper’s blade cleaved air, whizzing down in a fast, hard, whickering arc.
Then Bode saw what he’d missed. Weber might be many things, but this was certain: he wouldn’t be wearing a skirt. Or a shawl. There was time for him to register an oval blur, to parse out a face. Realizing his mistake, Bode tried angling the blade—also a split second too late.
Opposite, there was a sudden flurry of movement. Flinging himself forward, Tony got one arm up. There was a hard chuck as the chopper bit the stout wood ax handle. Vibrations burred through Bode’s palms to ball in his shoulders. But it was enough to deflect the killing blow. Now off-balance and with his own momentum against him, Bode staggered, lost his footing, and crashed to cold brick. At the same time, he heard the smash of glass as a lantern snuffed. He landed with a sickening thud that knocked the breath from his lungs. Dimly, he heard the clatter of steel on stone as he lost his grip on the chopper. Gagging, chest hitching, he managed a shrieking gasp and then another. My God. Rolling to his knees, he held himself up on trembling arms. That was close.
To his left, on the floor, Emma was still hanging back. Rima had rushed from her corner to drop next to Tony, who was already sitting up. “I’m fine, I’m not hurt,” he was saying, although there was a dark rivulet snaking from a nostril. He backhanded it from his upper lip. “Leave off, Rima, I’m not dying. But what about …?” Then Tony gasped as he got a good look at the intruder. “God, Rima, it’s …”
“Who are you?” Rima’s tone cut the gloom as sharply as that blade had sliced air. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to … to see.” Her shawl was askew, her copper hair come undone to tumble around her shoulders. “For myself. And if it was true, to warn you.”
Tony opened his mouth again, but Rima jumped in. “True? True about what? Warn us about what?”
“What they are planning.” She looked to Bode. “I am sorry; I should have called out.” Then she blinked as if her brain had just now caught up, because her head swiveled back to peer into the far corner. “Who are you?” she asked Emma.
“She’s mute,” Rima said. “Can’t make a sound, poor thing. We don’t even know her name.”
“Oh.” The other girl put a hand to a cheek. “But she looks so familiar.”
“Muh …” Finally, after what felt like ages, Bode’s balky throat cooperated. “M-Meme. What the devil?”
2
“I NEEDED RAGS and followed you out of the office a few moments later, so I overheard when Kramer went on about wanting to meet these rats. The way he was, how insistent, I just knew.” Light flickered over Meme’s face, steeping the hollows of her cheeks in shadow. She pushed a lush coppery hank of her tousled hair from her forehead. “I had to come see for myself, to be sure.”
“Be sure of what?” Bode’s nerves still buzzed. Every time he looked at her, he felt the weight of the blade, heard the riffling hoosh as it sliced down. If not for Tony, she would be dead now, her skull shattered like a rotten nut. As cold as it was in the storeroom, what flowed through his veins was icier still. “What did you need to see?”
“Them.” She nodded toward Tony and Rima, who stood close together. Emma still hung back, as if reluctant to draw attention, which was fine with Bode. Tony’s pale skin was a shade of weak piss and glistened with fine sweat. He’d rested his hips against that low table, still laid with bodies in burlap. Rima’s arm was around Tony’s waist, but Bode thought it was more to prop him up. “I had to see it for myself,” Meme said. “If you were real.”
“Real?” Mouth working, Tony spat dark foam. His teeth were faintly orange. “There, that blood real enough for you? I don’t understand what’s so fascinating. First, your doctor and now you … what is it about us? We’re nobodies. We’re rats.”
“True. Here.” Meme nodded. “But not everywhere.”
“What?” Tony and Bode said at the same time.
“What do you mean, everywhere?” Rima said, th
en put a hand to her lips. “God, you’ve had the nightmare?”
“Nightmare?” A slight wrinkle between Meme’s eyes. “No. I have not.”
“But you said everywhere. You’re talking about another Tony; I know you are.” Rima bunched her fists on her chest. “Another me, and a different Bode. Aren’t you?”
“I do not know about … about Bode.” Meme sounded surprised, and now she darted a probing look his way before turning back. “Or you,” she said to Rima. “That is, she could not find your double at all. That world was in ruins. Falling apart, like London, only worse, is what I heard.”
“That world?” Bode held his hands out. “This is the world.”
“Yes, our world. Our London. Meme is talking about a place like the valley. Like where Em …” Tony cleared his throat. “Like where the other Tony comes from.”
“But how do you know?” Rima asked Meme. “If you’ve not had the dream …”
“Dream.” Meme said it tentatively. “I told you, I do not know anything about that. But I do know you.” Her cobalt eyes fixed on Tony. “You are ill, are you not? And getting worse?”
Rima put a protective hand on Tony’s arm. “What do you know about that?”
“How long?” Meme asked Tony.
“Can’t remember, exactly.” Tony made a vague gesture. “Sometimes it feels like this morning’s the very first day. So it’s either been a while or just started.” He gave a weak and breathy laugh. “Specific enough for you?”
“What does it feel like?” Meme’s hand tightened to a fist over her heart. “Is it something dark pulling at you, draining you dry?”
“Yes,” Tony whispered. His face seemed to shiver. “That’s exactly it. A whirlpool, drawing me down. It feels like I’ll drown.”
“Stop it, Tony. No one’s going to drown.” Eyes flashing, Rima looked at Meme. “Why are you doing this? Can’t you say anything plain?” Rima started for the other girl, but Bode grabbed her elbow. Glaring, she tried tugging free, but he held her fast. “Whose side are you on, Bode? If she knows …”
“She’s here, isn’t she? She came to warn us.” Bode looked at Meme. “But you do know what’s happening, at least in part.” It wasn’t a question. “It’s something to do with Kramer, isn’t it? What you and him was talking about?”
After a moment, her head moved in a small nod. She held out a hand, palm up. “Give me the glasses.” When he didn’t move, she said, “I know you stole them. Doctor always keeps them in his vest, which needed cleaning from all that blood. But when I checked a while ago, they were gone.” Her gaze was steady on his. “If I wished to turn you in, I would have done so already.”
“Why are they important?” Rima asked as Bode, wordless, handed them over. Then her voice changed, rising a notch. “Wait … she. You’ve said she several times over. It’s that woman, isn’t it? The one I spotted in the window?”
Without replying, Meme unfolded the glasses, then hooked the tips behind her ears. She turned a long, speculative look first at Bode, then transferred her eyes to Rima. Emma she bypassed completely—didn’t even remark on the cat, still as a statue, in the girl’s arms—and turned instead to Tony. Bode saw her face grow taut.
“What is it?” A thrum of fear in Tony’s voice. “What do you see?”
“Nothing good.” Taking off the glasses, Meme held them out to Bode.
“For God’s sake!” Rima said. “Just tell us!”
But Meme only shook her head. “You would not believe me.”
“Go on.” Tony pulled himself straight as Bode reluctantly seated the glasses, pushing the nosepiece with a forefinger. “Out with it, brother. What do you see?” Tony asked.
For a second, Bode thought it was a trick of their one lantern. Then a cry jumped out of his mouth. “Christ!” Throwing his hands up before his face, he stumbled back on his heels and might’ve fallen if he hadn’t fetched up against the table with its dead.
“Bode?” Rima’s voice was distant. “Bode, what …?”
“Oh God.” The round knob of a head butted his hip. His heart boomed. Yet he couldn’t look away. “M-Meme, what does this mean? What does it mean?”
“Bode … Brother.” Tony’s face, the intact one, kept trying to break apart, but that was because Bode’s eyes were full of tears. “Please,” Tony said. “Tell me.”
“Go on.” Meme’s tone was as detached as any he’d ever heard from Kramer. Or that inspector, Battle. “Tell him.”
“I … I s-see …” The words came in a tremulous whisper. “T-Tony, I see …”
3
WHAT BODE SAW was mercifully blurred, as if Tony was composed of overlapping shadows. But there was still plenty of definition. So he saw enough, and realized that this was from that part of the nightmare he’d been denied because the other Bode, his doppelgänger, wasn’t there at that precise moment. But Rima had described it in broad strokes, and so he thought that what he saw now was twofold: the friend he had known for as long as his faulty memory stretched, and the other Tony as he had been in the last moments of that other boy’s life.
The shadow-Tony was a pulpy mess: no lips, no eyelids, and only dark vertical slits where his nose had been. Awash with hemorrhage, his eyes wept ruby tears. It was as if someone had taken a very sharp knife—or only a razor claw—and cut just above Tony’s brow, at his hairline, etching a fine, bloody arc from ear to ear, and then worked his fingers between fascia and muscles, the better to peel Tony’s face from his skull the way you would the rind of an orange.
“Bode?” When his Tony spoke, the other Tony moved its mouth, and that was how Bode knew that boy’s tongue had been ripped out by the roots. “It’s him, isn’t it?”
With shaking fingers, Bode dragged off the spectacles and was relieved when the shadow-Tony vanished. “I think so.”
Tony looked at Meme. “So he’s really dead?”
“Yes and no,” she said.
“For God’s sake!” Cursing, Bode shook the glasses in Meme’s face. “What do you mean?” He might’ve thrown them, but Rima’s hands closed over his and plucked the glasses from his grasp. He barely noticed. All his frustration and fear were focused on the other girl. “Are you saying that because the other Tony died, that’s killing our Tony? What?”
“Yes and no.” When Bode’s face changed, Meme put up her hands. “I am not toying with you. I really mean yes and no.”
“What kind of answer …,” he began, but Rima said, suddenly, “Wait, I understand. Yes, the other Tony died in the valley. But then he … went back?”
“To his world, where he began.” Meme put up that warning hand again. “I do not truly understand all of it. Kramer has his theories, but even he has only an inkling. Neither of them understand fully, except …” She let that go.
He heard the neither and thought, Who? Who else is there? Then, a mental tap on the shoulder: The woman? She was here, in the asylum, at this moment? Or was Meme talking about those mysterious patients? When she was speaking with Kramer, Meme mentioned two boys. From what he recalled, it sounded to Bode as if there were also at least two adults: a man and his wife. “Who? Understand what?”
“How it all works, with the Nows, what they call Many Worlds.”
“Many Worlds,” Rima echoed. “As in many of us? More than one?” She eyed the purple glasses with a look that was half curiosity, half dread. “And these let you see … what we really are?” With exaggerated care, she slipped them on and looked up at Meme. “Or who …” Rima’s throat moved in a sharp swallow. Her face went so pale and glassy, it seemed to Bode that he could see clear through. “Who we … we might not be?”
“Yes, but I think that is also only a portion of it. Sometimes, I am not entirely sure what I am looking at,” Meme said. “To me, they are … shadows.”
“That’s what I saw,” Bode said.
After another second, Rima pulled the glasses free and refolded first the lenses and then the arms with exquisite care. Her face was unreadable. “Th
at’s why you wanted to see us?” She handed the glasses over to Meme. “Because this doctor knows about another Tony?”
“It is a bit more than that.” Meme paused. “I also know they have a device they have been trying to make work for the longest time.”
“They have more than just the glasses?” Bode asked.
“The panops? Yes.”
“All-seeing,” Rima said. Bode could’ve sworn he heard a tremor.
Meme nodded. “Anyone can use them just as you and Bode did. But not everyone can make the cynosure work.”
“What’s that?” Bode asked.
“Some kind of guide? Like a lantern? Or lens? It is a way of getting to the right world, the correct Now.” Meme shrugged. “They have not been able to make it work, and it is of no use to them anyway unless they find another device. Dickens Mirror, Kramer calls it.”
“Dickens.” Bode frowned. Name didn’t ring a bell. “Is that a place? Or some kind of glass?”
“I …” It might have been I; Bode wasn’t sure because Emma quickly closed down on whatever was trying to find its way out of her mouth. Good girl, he thought to her. Mum’s the word.
“No.” Meme favored Emma with a long look. “Dickens is … was … a person.”
“What kind of person?” Bode said, hoping to draw her gaze to him.
Her eyes shifted. “A writer from another Now. As I said, they do not truly understand either. They think the Mirror is here in London, but they have not been able to locate it. After today, however, they think they are a step closer.”
“Why?” Tony asked. “What happened today?”
“We all had the same nightmare,” Rima said.
Meme’s forehead showed that small frown. “They have not spoken of that.”