The Dickens Mirror

by Ilsa J. Bick

  “Meme!” Bode shouted, still moving away but slowly, his head swiveling from side to side. “Meme, what are you doing? Why are you doing this?”

  “I told you.” Meme’s voice came back, instantly, not only from the tunnel before them but all around: misting from the ceiling, steaming up from the rock floor, sighing from the many cells’ black mouths. “She has to come with me. She is the reason we are all dying.”

  “That’s not true, Meme, and you know it.” Bode was already crowding her back the way they’d come. “We were dying before Emma got here. London’s been falling down forever.”

  “I am not speaking of Emma but Elizabeth, too. Kramer is right. She is the key, the nexus. Stop Elizabeth—stop Emma—and all this goes away.” Meme’s words were a mournful sough, like wind through bare branches. “I do not want to do this, Bode. But you leave me no choice.”

  “You’ve got choice, Meme,” Bode said. “There’s always choice.”

  They were about halfway down the tunnel from which they’d just come. Still a hell of a lot of open doors between them and that junction, too. That crazy, chain-smoking miner dude from years back said that miners left behind blind tunnels all the time, places where they’d started to core out rock and then stopped either when the vein petered out or when what they were getting wasn’t worth the effort. Maybe there were other, smaller openings and corridors here, too, or a shallow room, something with an entrance that was kid-sized, low to the ground. That would work if it wasn’t too obvious. She thought of the dark square down in Jasper’s cellar, which looked pretty damned good right now, back door into her Now or not.

  “I am his creature,” Meme said from ahead, above, behind. From the open cell doors. “I must do what he wants.”

  “But you haven’t.” Bode pulled up. “You helped me. You helped my friends.”

  “Bode,” Emma warned, in a low voice. “You’re not going to convince her.”

  “I knew her before you and that damned nightmare.” His words quavered with anger. “Why’d you have to come? Why’d you spoil it all? I was better off not knowing, not dreaming.”

  “She is not your friend, Bode,” Meme said, and now Emma heard the rustle of a woolen skirt coming from her left. Shit, she sounds close. Emma peered into an open cell door. Like she’s right beside us. She thought of House and that barn in the valley, both of which had been manifestations of Lizzie’s parents. It’s like this is Meme, or her domain: it responds to her. When she screams, it screams and … That rustle came again—and her blood froze. Oh shit.

  “Meme, I know what … who you saw in those glasses,” Bode said. “That don’t matter to me. There has to be an explanation, a reason, a—”

  “Bode.” Emma’s hand shot for his arm. “Bode, shut up. Listen.”

  “What?” Rounding, teeth bared, Bode snapped, “I don’t care what you say; Meme will listen to …”

  The sound came again.

  “Oh holy God.” Bode’s eyes went round, and then jerked to the open cell door on her left. “Do you hear?”

  She tried to say yes, but her throat wouldn’t let go of the word.

  The rustle coming from the open cell door was not wool, because, she thought, this wasn’t Meme. Instead, what came was a rhythmic shush-shush-shush of feet over worn canvas, and not just in that cell now. That steady shush-shush-shush was everywhere, as whatever was inside each cell kept coming on and coming on and …

  Shush. Shush-shush-shush.

  She didn’t think she was even breathing. If her heart was beating, she didn’t hear that either.

  Shush-shush-shush …

  Then, the thick, impenetrable darkness of the cell on her left peeled back, like a heavy curtain being raised on a stage, as something within slowly slid into view.

  2

  IT WAS A man—and it wasn’t. It had the right form, like a man-sized silhouette on a target range. It wore clothes, but they were nondescript: a general impression of a shirt and trousers and boots, but with no detail or color or buttons or lacings. It was like looking at the idea of clothes on the idea of a man: a cardboard cutout with just enough detail for her mind to fill in the blanks and register shirt, pants, boots, the same way she might read tree or mountain in a book and let her imagination give the tree color, the mountain height and definition.

  What drew itself from the dark of each cell had a head and shoulders, arms, a torso, and legs. There were hands and fingers. Ears … she wasn’t sure. Really, she was too stunned by the rest of its face to worry about that.

  The face was a swirling, churning, amorphous mess. No eyes or mouth. Nothing, not even the blade of a nose. The face was flat and blank, though it simmered like the surface of a pond in a heavy rain.

  She’d just seen Weber’s head, reduced to paste and pulp, begin to stitch itself together. Somehow, though, this was worse.

  For a stunned instant, she was paralyzed, a deer caught in the headlights. You watch. She stared at the thing with the swirling, seething blank of a face. It’ll settle; it’ll be a mirror or the whisper-man. Or her face, swimming up to spread and mold itself to this thing’s skull. She could practically hear her doctor from so many years ago: I can give you any number of looks …

  “Come on.” Bode gave her arm a hard tug that made her stumble and nearly fall. “Come on! We don’t got time for this! We got to go, we got to go, we got to run.”

  He was already turning, yanking her along. All up and down the line, blank-faced things stepped from their cells—then turned, en masse, and started for them.

  It’s the scorpions again. But she thought this might even be worse, and not only because they had no weapons at all—and God, what good was a lousy little scalpel against things like these?

  Grabbing her skirt in both hands, she floundered after him. Keeping up with Bode was torture; he outpaced her in an instant. She wanted to shout at him to slow down, but she had no breath in reserve. It’s Elizabeth’s body wearing out; whatever’s making her sick is eating her up from the inside. Her lungs were on fire, and every step jarred and ripped at the muscles around her ribs. That crushed-tin-can taste was on her tongue again, and she could feel blood splash her lips and trickle from her gaping mouth. Every inhalation was like pulling air through a throat jammed with broken glass. Elizabeth’s body was rail-thin, but Emma felt heavy and clumsy, as if wading through concrete. Her vision was going fuzzy, too. Far ahead, Bode was graying out, seeming to disappear before her eyes.

  Don’t pass out. Keep going. Hands whisked through her hair, and she gasped, whipping her head to one side. More hands seemed to sprout from open cells to snatch at her clothes. If she’d had breath, she might have screamed. God, it was like that sea of hands and fingers in her cell, only this she couldn’t command or wish away, if she even had before. Can’t be that much farther to the junction, can it? Unless the tunnels were changing, too, like one of those movie special effects where things telescoped away in a swoop. Maybe there is no junction anymore, and these things will keep after us and after us, run us down, tear us apart …

  Then, like a mirage, the end of this particular tunnel swam into view. Bode was already past. To her left, the last cell was coming up, and then she was even with it, though nearly spent. Need to rest. She slowed without really meaning to. Reflex, that was all, and Elizabeth’s body wearing out.

  Then, out of the corner of her left eye, she saw a smudgy blur. What? She looked, but in slow motion, her mind as gluey as her body, and by the time her brain ticked through what she was seeing …

  It was already too late.

  RIMA

  These Ravening Dead

  “TONY!” HER PARALYSIS lifted. Sweeping up the chopper, Rima screamed to Emma, “Back up, back up!”

  She brought the blade straight down. The chopper’s keen edge buried itself with a hollow crack, splitting the boy’s skull. A gray slop of decaying, jellied brains gushed from the split, and more dribbled from the boy’s ears and eyeless sockets. The boy’s jaws slacken
ed, but now there were other hands on Tony and he was screaming, the snow under his torn arm going crimson, as they swarmed him like ravenous rats feasting on carrion.

  “NO!” Emma was stabbing at backs and buttocks, but it was like spitting into the face of a hurricane. “Let him go, leave him alone!”

  Rima sprang for the roiling mass of bodies. Tony’s pike still jutted straight up, waggling like an obscene masthead void of its sail, but she couldn’t see him for all these ravening dead. Slashing in a sweeping cut, she drove the chopper into the side of a neck—man, woman, she couldn’t tell—and watched with sick horror as the head swooned until the right ear rested on its shoulder … and still, the thing did not turn to face her but jabbered and tried clawing up the back of another blocking its way.

  “Stop it!” It was Emma, fists balled. She shrieked at the woman. “Don’t hurt him anymore! I’ll come with you! That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “Rima!” Whipping round, she saw Tony rearing up, smeared with his own blood and the viscous tar of foul ichor and decayed guts. A girl with no nose or lower jaw had twined her arms round his neck and now clung to him like a lover. “Rima!” he shouted, and then she spotted a flash of steel in his right hand. “Emma! Girls, run, get away, run!”

  No, no, no! “Tony, stop!” she shrieked as Emma screamed, “Kill her, Tony, kill her!” He was already driving, ramming the blade home, his penknife burying itself in the girl’s swollen, churning belly.

  That’s it, Rima thought. We’re done for.

  The girl arched. Her mouth unhinged, and what came was a wordless, ululating bellow. Then, in the blink of an eye, her stomach erupted, tore itself apart, releasing a mist of red fluid and black squirmers.

  No. Her breath stoppered in her throat. The mist bloomed over Tony, who was already coughing and choking, clawing at his face as the ebony whips wormed down his mouth, up his nose, and into his ears. Dumb with horror, Rima watched as they thrashed and cored into the whites of his eyes, and now there were ruby tears streaming down his cheeks, as Tony, back bowed in agony, collapsed to the snow, gargling blood, his skin rippling as squirmers bored and chewed.

  “What are they?” Emma shrieked, eyes bulging with terror. “What are they, Rima, what are they?”

  They are our death. She couldn’t move. Really, where could she run anyway? The fog, perhaps, if it would’ve taken her. Less than two seconds had passed, and they were coming for her now, hundreds of them corkscrewing, eeling, riding a seemingly endless red river of the girl’s blood. She felt the moist flick of something on her cheek and then dozens more, and all at once, they sprang for her exposed flesh and writhed over her face. As soon as she opened her mouth to scream, they leapt into her mouth and she felt them instantly swim down her throat, fan out through her lungs. Agony detonated in her chest. Her knees buckled. Somewhere, in the far distance, she heard Emma screaming and knew the squirmers had found the girl, too, and then that knowledge winked out and there was only pain and the constant burrowing, slithering, chewing.

  Rima barely registered when she hit the ground, though she saw white rush for her face; felt the crawl and rapid slither up her cheeks. Black filaments swarmed before her vision, and as they reared to strike, she saw them, up close, for what they were: bristling maws and glaring red pinpricks for eyes.

  She managed a single, last scream.

  EMMA

  Way Out

  FROM THE LAST cell on the left, an arm shot out.

  Shrieking, she stumbled, her boots skidding over stone as a hand wrapped itself around her left arm and gave her a single, powerful yank. A short distance ahead, she saw Bode begin to turn, but he wouldn’t get there in time. This thing was already reeling her in like a hooked fish.

  “No!” she screamed as that churning, roiling blank of a face loomed. Elizabeth was small, and this thing was taller by a head. In her right hand, she still had the candle in its iron holder, and now she pistoned her arm in a hard punch, an uppercut to the jaw. Whatever else this man-thing was, it had skin, and she felt the moment of impact, the slight hesitation as the spike pierced and then skewered flesh and drove into denser tissue.

  For a split second, there was nothing. Then, the thing’s face bloomed and became a mouth—or maybe only an opening; she couldn’t tell, and it didn’t matter. What erupted was a bristling maw. No eyes, no nose, no other features: just that mouth jammed full of spiky teeth. Clawing at its neck, the thing bawled, a loud, guttural blast of a bellow as a torrent of black ichor, hot and sticky, spurted from beneath its jaw. It blundered back, the spike of the candle holder still jittering, and shrieked again, except the sound was multiplied, a clamor that rose and doubled on itself. Despite her terror, she looked back down the tunnel and saw why. All the things were screaming, each and every blank’s face peeling back like lips to reveal open mouths, sharp teeth.

  “Come on! Don’t look!” It was Bode, face cramped with horror. Whirling her around, he jammed a hand between her shoulders and crowded her on ahead in the junction. “Go go go!”

  “Which way, which way?” Her chest was heaving. Sweat glued hair to her forehead and cheeks. Behind, the creatures’ screams were climbing in a Doppler crescendo. As they rushed into the four-way junction, she snatched another gasping breath. “Bode, which way?” Then she stopped short as her stomach bottomed out. “Bode?”

  “They’re gone.” Bode spun around so quickly he’d have fallen if she hadn’t grabbed his arm. “All the passages are gone, even the tunnel with your cell! But how can they be gone? We just passed them; they were just here!”

  We’re at a dead end, just like in the valley. She threw a wild eye over blank, glowing rock. Without the cynosure, she was certain she’d never get through this. She wasn’t sure this was even the same type of rock. But you did it once. She pressed her hands against a cool blank of glassy stone. Come on, you stupid rock. You grew hands before. Now, give me …

  She felt it happen: a slight push and swell. Then the rock glimmered, rippling like thick mercury under her hands as the stone wavered and began to melt.

  “Christ!” Bode stared. The entire rock was in motion, undulating and churning in the same way as those blank creatures and Weber’s face. “How’d you do that?”

  “I don’t know.” This can’t be the Mirror or this Now’s version of it, can it? Or down cellar, my back door? That felt too easy. It would mean the answer had been under Kramer’s nose the whole time—and he was part of this Now. This had to be like House’s library door and that bathroom mirror. They were all illusions designed as … tests? Training? Blank faces, blank rock … The creatures’ screams were a swarm, growing louder, bigger, swelling to fill the junction as, low to the ground, the suddenly liquid margins of the stone pulled up and apart in a black inverted grin: the mouth of a low tunnel. If this was a test, though, that means someone’s pulling the strings. Probably Kramer. But why? Simply to see what she could do?

  Or to see what Meme—her doppelgänger—might?

  The cells opened because of her. Those things came after us … because of her.

  “You understand they’re driving us.” The voice wasn’t hers, but she almost didn’t recognize Elizabeth’s either. “She’s driving us. Yeah, I opened that, but it might not really be me doing anything.”

  “A trap?” Bode had already dropped into a crouch. “Don’t think it much matters. This is a way out. You want to stay here, wait for those things to catch us?”

  Meme cares about Bode. She won’t hurt him. She hoped. In the back of her too-quiet mind, she wondered if Elizabeth knew how Meme felt about the boy. And where are you, Eric? Rima?

  “Go.” She crowded in behind Bode. “Hurry.”

  EMMA

  Still Waters

  1

  AS SOON AS they’d scrambled through the entrance, she felt space above them, though not that kind of expansive soaring away she’d sensed in those first few moments in the barn, before her Bode’s nightmares of VC tunnels had sprung to life, o
r when she’d gotten them through that energy sink into the whisper-man’s mirror-cave. This ceiling was simply higher, and her first thought: Like a mine. Then, a second thought: Oh crap. Clamping down, reining in her thoughts, she waited, skin fizzing, for the space to shift around her, but nothing happened. Okay, so it’s not responding to me. Or maybe it was that the whole mine thing hadn’t been that big a deal. Except for the moment that dude turned off his light and she’d almost killed herself stepping into an old flooded shaft … mostly, she’d had a good time. Hell, she’d already lived through the valley, and if that hadn’t been a nightmare, she didn’t know what was.

  At least she didn’t have to keep running. She wasn’t sure how much longer she’d have lasted before Elizabeth’s body just up and quit. Take a breath. She backhanded sweat from her forehead and blood from her mouth. Take it easy and think about this a second. Whether this is Meme or you, you’re here for a reason. That’s the way it had been with House and in the barn: every scenario designed to get her to act in a certain way—or learn a skill. This wasn’t just good luck. On the other hand, this really might have nothing to do with her. Then … with Bode? Did he have some ability, like Rima? Like Casey?

  Behind, she felt something close down. There was no sound, nothing dramatic. It was only a feeling of the rock drawing down and in. Shit. Before she even turned, she knew what had happened, because she didn’t hear the creatures anymore. The entrance was gone. That diffuse glow faded, too, drawing down like the wick of a dying candle. Within seconds, it was black as pitch. They were sealed inside, like flies in amber.

  For a second, neither spoke. The moist air was musty and stale, as if they’d cracked the door on a basement room no one had visited in years. She could hear the slight plik of water dripping onto stone and more pattering onto her hair to trickle along her scalp. Otherwise, it was so quiet she heard Bode swallow.