The Dickens Mirror

by Ilsa J. Bick

  “In this instance, what I want is immaterial.” The woman in black was willowy, with chestnut hair done in a neatly coiffed chignon. Rapt as a vulture, she gave the younger girl a keen look. “What Rima chooses is what matters. That’s the way of all binding, child, no matter what you call it. It is about free will.”

  “Oh, riiight.” The golden flaw in the girl’s right eye flashed. “You came after me with an ax.”

  “Do remember that I didn’t use it on you.”

  “Yeah, you only killed the door.”

  “As I said.” The woman raised a hand to a nasty purple-black splotch of a bruise just beneath her right eye. “I still want to know how you did that, what that was you went through. And that cat of yours.” The woman angled her head in a speculative look. “Quite an interesting creature. Positively Cheshire. Does it often slip in and out of blind spots like that? Do you know where it goes?”

  “Blind spots? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I …” The little girl’s grip on Tony tightened as he shivered and groaned. “Please, he’s dying. Why won’t you help him? Do you just want to see what happens when you get too many Tonys in the same place? How’d we even get here anyway? The last thing I remember is those …” The little girl’s lips trembled as new tears leaked over her cheeks. “Those squirmers crawling all over us and you, floating on the snow, just watching. You didn’t try to grab me that time, I don’t think. It was the fog, wasn’t it, because it’s energy and somehow you can use it to get around. So did it swallow us after we passed out? Is that how we got down here?”

  Ah, poppet, there’s a bright one. Black Dog’s muzzle brushed Doyle’s fingers. That talk about too many Tonys, she might be onto something. Could it be that the Tonys are making one another ill? Remember how our Tony was when we first saw him at Bedlam’s gate?

  Yes, the boy had been quite sick even then. Did that mean this other Tony—Future Tony, he decided—had already been taken prisoner? So draining each other, perhaps? Why? Because there was only so much Tony to go around? Or, as the girl said, too many Tonys in one place? Or had spiriting in a Tony who didn’t belong here, in London, triggered a slow unraveling in both? Yes, but by that logic—Doyle transferred his gaze to that man and woman in the far cell—that woman ought to be ill, too. So it couldn’t be just the mere fact of one too many Tonys. Has to be something else at play here.

  Perhaps. Black Dog’s breath was hot on his neck. (God, the animal was huge now.) Or that woman’s only just arrived, or somehow different from the Tonys.

  “After what happened on the snow, I’m very interested in why you’re not infected,” the woman in black said to the little girl. “Something in your blood, perhaps? Perhaps I ought to dissect you and find out.”

  “L-leave her alone.” Drawing in a halting breath, Rima lifted her head. A crimson ooze leaked from a nostril to drip from her jaw. Her bare arms undulated, rife with squirmers, though it seemed to Doyle that their eel and slither over the cliffs of her cheeks was slower, weaker, not as pronounced. They’re dying? A part of his mind wondered how she was doing that; maybe some natural resistance?

  “You want to s-see how much more I can draw?” Choking, Rima spat, backhanding a gobbet of coagulated blood from her mouth. “I w-will. Just n-need to rest a bit, that’s all.”

  The woman let out a small laugh. “That boy needs much more than you can muster, girl.” Squatting, the woman brought her face close to the bars. Her mouth curled to an avid half-moon. The way she crouched, the woman was like a hungry tarantula or a black widow spider ready to sink its fangs into that plump, hapless little fly. (And Doyle thought, Yes, Black Widow. As good a name as any.) “Although I am as intrigued by that ability of yours as I am about why little Emma seems to have left a bad taste in the squirmers’ mouths.”

  “So this is just some stupid experiment? We’re lab rats or something?” More tears chased down Emma’s cheeks. “You could help.”

  “You give me too much credit, child. Don’t you think if I’d discovered a cure for squirmers and rot, I’d have used it? Do you think I enjoy living in this Now? Trust me, if not for my daughter, I would find my way to a Now I could seal in some fashion so I might not be swept back.”

  “Seal? Swept … swept back?” Snuffling, Emma gave Black Widow a long, penetrating look. “You don’t have a choice, do you? You keep getting yanked back here, or maybe the fog … the Peculiar … can only go to certain places, like a bus with only so many stops on its route. Otherwise, you’re stuck, aren’t you?”

  “Very perceptive. You’re partially correct; I can’t go hither and thither, and yes, I must return. But there are more … stops than before. It is how I finally found you”—a wave of the hand at Future Tony and the rat-faced blond, neither of whom spoke—“and these others and another Rima’s Now.”

  Another Rima. Two Tonys, Black Dog mused. Doyle could imagine that devil tapping a paw to its muzzle in thought. The Nows must be worlds. Given what we’ve seen—and what’s in those sacks, poppet—perhaps there are many more Tonys and Rimas. Since there’s only the one Rima here, that might explain why she’s not taken ill in the same way that our Tony has.

  Perhaps, but that couldn’t be the sum of it all. Doyle’s eyes traveled back to the far cell, and that couple. By the same reasoning, that woman should be sick, too.

  Unless she is put together differently, like little Emma.

  Put together? Doyle’s eyebrows tented. He really was getting interested now. What an odd turn of phrase. And what’s that about Emma?

  Listen to her, poppet. Her accent. So different. Where did she come from? How did she get here?

  “Well, let us say that our little Rima had a doppelgänger. I can’t find her anywhere, and the Now is a shambles, the occupants only so much goo. I believe this means that Now’s Rima was essential. Without her, the Now disintegrated and … ohhh.” Black Widow put a finger to her lips. “I wonder, Emma: without you, will all you know fall apart?” She tossed a look at the two boys in the adjacent cell. “Or your Nows? Tony there, perhaps; you seem quite important. But you”—lifting her chin at the shaggy blond—“could it be that you’re nothing but a bit player, a vaudevillian of no importance whatsoever?”

  “Who cares what you think?” Thin but knotty with muscle, the scruffy young man was quite, quite twitchy in a way Doyle recognized. “You think I’m scared of you? Put you in a tunnel with a couple gooks, see how you do.” Scrambling to his feet, the young man banged an already torn and bloodied fist against iron. “Who are you? Where am I? Why’d you bring me here?”

  “Save your breath.” Inhaling long and tortuously, Future Tony said, “You won’t get answers that make any sense. Just be glad there isn’t another one of you here. Goes worse when there is.”

  “He’s right,” Emma said. “That’s what Meme told Bode.”

  “Bode?” The scruffy boy’s head whipped up. “He’s here? Last I saw, he was running.”

  “And he got away.” Black Widow’s mouth was a thread above her chin. “But I’ll find him again, probably more easily than before, now that you’re all linked.”

  “Linked?” Emma echoed. “By what?”

  “So if Bode got away,” the blond said, “who are you talking about?”

  “She’s talking about the Bode from here, our Bode, in this … this Now?” Emma looked up at Black Widow. “That’s right, isn’t it? He knows Bode’s double?”

  “Yes.” Black Widow glanced askance at the far cell, and Doyle saw how she and the man with the black hair and glasses locked gazes before Black Widow returned her eyes to Emma. From the corner of an eye, Doyle saw the man in the far cell whisper into his wife’s ear. When her head moved in a fractional nod, he slid his hand from her mouth to rest on her shoulder. “And quite possibly there’s more than just the one double,” Black Widow said.

  “What?” The shaggy blond scowled. “I don’t got no twin.”

  “I bet you do,” Emma said to the boy. “What’s your name?�
�

  The young man dug at a sore pocking the corner of his mouth. “Chad.”

  Stirring, Rima pushed up on her arms. “What?”

  “Right. If we’re all linked, then it makes sense that you’d know him, Rima,” Emma said. “Where’s your Chad?”

  “Dead, oh … years back. Drowned by the old Battersea Bridge.”

  “What?” Chad’s frown deepened. “What the hell you saying?”

  “She’s speaking of your doppelgänger in this Now,” Black Widow said. “Well, if he’s dead, less work for me. Be grateful, Chad. It explains why you’ve not taken a turn for the worse as the Tonys have.”

  “Hey.” It was Future Tony. Drawing a slow hand across his mouth, he said to Emma, “This Now stuff … she’s talking multiverses, right? We just studied that in school. So she’s snatching versions of us from different universes or timelines?”

  “Versions?” Black Widow snorted. “A good a term as any. You’re not a person. You’re a faint replica. You only think you’re living a life. None of you are even from a proper Now.”

  “A proper Now?” Emma echoed. “What’s the difference?”

  “I feel pretty damn real,” Chad said. “This cage is real. What I want to know is, how’d I start the morning in ’Nam and end up here?”

  “The fog,” Emma said. “Like I said, she travels in it, or becomes part of it … I’m not sure.”

  “But how …” Future Tony coughed red mist, cleared his throat, then spat. “How’d she find us?” he said, breathlessly. “How are we linked?”

  “Did you have a dream?” Emma asked. “Before she showed up?”

  “Yeah.” Future Tony’s face clenched. “A real bad one.”

  “It was all about a valley, wasn’t it? With a lot of snow?”

  “Hey,” Chad said. “Wait a goddamned minute.”

  “And monsters.” A shudder grabbed the Future Tony for a long shake. “One of them got me, hurt me and … Jesus.” The boy squeezed his head as if trying to keep his skull from exploding. “This is the nightmare.”

  “If only,” Black Widow said.

  What is that thing he’s going on about? What was this … this dream? Was it an illusion, a fantasy? Maybe a mirage, or a product of the mind’s most macabre imaginings? Doyle’s eyes fell to the examination tables and what lay hidden, cocooned in blankets and snugged in burlap sacks. Is that what you are: nightmares?

  No, a dream is what you live when you sleep. Black Dog licked Doyle’s left ear. A nightmare is what you’re relieved to find, upon waking, your life isn’t.

  “Christ, I had the same dream, man. That bat-shit crazy valley; the fog that rolled in out of nowhere, swallowed us up, and then landed us where there were things with …” The knob of his Adam’s apple bobbed as Chad swallowed. “But I don’t remember you,” he said to Tony.

  “Makes two of us.” Gulping back a strangled laugh, Future Tony coughed more blood. “But I remember Rima. She’s about the only person from the dream that I do.”

  “Yes.” Rima gave the boy a slow nod. “You gave the other Rima a muffler.”

  “To keep you warm.” Future Tony’s eyes rested on Rima’s face for a long moment. “You were the only one who felt real to me in that place. After that, I think I don’t remember anything else because I … I d-died.” Blood stained his lips the color of fresh roses. “That’s right, isn’t it? I s-saw you and then all I could think was … save her, do it for her, and then …”

  “Don’t think of it anymore.” Rima’s eyes pooled. “It’s past.”

  “Or prologue,” Black Widow said.

  “I think I died, too.” The tip of Chad’s narrow nose reddened. “The snow b-broke up and something grabbed me, pulled me down. Killed me. God, it hurt.” He looked at Emma. “Then I woke up. Is that what happened to you?”

  “I didn’t have that part of the dream, but now that I see you? I think we met. You and Bode were in a really weird house that showed me stuff I can’t hardly remember.” Emma looked to Black Widow. “That’s how you do it. It’s the nightmare. That’s why the fog has more stops than it did before. The stops are our Nows, and we’re linked because we’ve all had the same dream. It’s kind of like we’re infected. You use the dream to home in on us. It’s why I saw you come through the window, and our Tony saw you come after the other Tony through a mirror. Maybe you knew about us before but couldn’t find us until we had the dream, and then we showed you what we looked like, because Tony looked in a mirror and I saw my reflection in a window. Mirrors and windows are like your eyes into the Now. Either the fog travels through dreams—or maybe it’s what makes dreams—or you follow the dream and make the fog go to that Now. But here’s something I don’t understand. Our Tony was sick before the squirmers got him because the other Tony is here. If another Rima was here or a Chad or Bode, they’d be sick, too. If there was another me here, I bet I would be. Isn’t that right?”

  “These others … yes. You, however, I am not so sure.” Head cocked, Black Widow studied the girl. “You are singular, unique in your construction.”

  “I don’t know what that means.” Emma actually seemed to grow smaller, the way a flower might wilt under a hot sun. “But if what I said is right, then how come you’re not sick?” The girl turned a look down at the man and woman in the far cell and then back to Black Widow. “Because she’s here. So you ought to be.”

  “Well, I must be singular, too.” Showing her teeth, Black Widow slid a sidelong glance to the far cage. “Wouldn’t you agree, darling?”

  “Darling?” Emma repeated.

  In the cage, the handsome woman opened her mouth but closed it again when her husband squeezed her shoulder and then turned a stony face to Black Widow. “Where’s Kramer?” he asked.

  Kramer. Doyle goggled. Darling? That man knows Black Widow?

  But of course he would. Black Dog snuffled at his neck. Look at his wife.

  “Kramer? You’ll get your chance. I dare say he’ll be along …” Black Widow broke off as a far wall abruptly wavered much more violently than before, as if Doyle were looking into a vat of mercury into which someone had thrown a large boulder.

  “What the hell?” Chad said.

  The rock wall glimmered, both puckering and yet expanding. Then, a figure melted into being. A body was draped over its shoulders. At a glance, Doyle knew this figure wasn’t Kramer, but there was something wrong with this person’s face. Doyle squinted, then gasped, “God!” There was a crash of glass on stone. Swaying, Doyle gripped the worktable into which he’d bumbled with quivering arms. “Dear God, what is that thing?”

  Steady, dearest. Black Dog actually braced him up.

  “It ain’t got a face.” Any wider, and Chad’s eyes would plop from their sockets. “It’s a nothing, it’s a …”

  A blank, like the crowd. Doyle gulped back a surge of vomit. Like the hag! The man-thing was brutish, incomplete, only so much unformed clay. Beyond, the rock shimmered again, and then a clot of dismay iced his chest. No, Doyle thought, as he watched the girl, face ashen, emerge. No no no, you can’t be here, Meme, you can’t …

  “Oh!” Rima cupped a hand to her lips. Next to her, Emma’s eyes were wide with shock. “No,” Rima said. “No. Is he dead, is he …”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” Chad said, as the man-thing strode to an examination table and laid out a body with surprising gentleness, cradling the head with a massive hand. “Bode?”

  DOYLE

  All Mad Here

  1

  “YOU FUCKS!” CHAD screamed. Bode’s long brown hair had come undone, and a black rill of blood slowly wormed from a rude gash on his right temple. “What’d you do to him?”

  “He’s not your Bode, Chad.” Emma sounded as if she was trying very hard not to cry. “He’s ours.”

  God, if you’re listening, if there’s any mercy left in this world at all, please. Doyle watched as Meme slid alongside the man-thing and began to swab away blood from the boy’s face. Please, get Meme ou
t of here. He should do something, say anything. Sidle over, touch her, murmur, Leave this place. Come with me, and I’ll care for you.

  Oh, my dear bricky little Doyle. Black Dog chuffed. Then go, quickly, before Kramer returns. Kick the dust from your sandals, rest your head on her breasts.

  “Bode?” Rima clung to her cell’s bars. “What’s wrong with him? What happened? Is he dead? Did you kill him?”

  “Do calm yourself. He isn’t, though he ought since he drowned.” It was Kramer, emerging from the rock. He gestured at another man-thing just behind him that had a girl held fast by an arm. Like Bode, the girl was soaked to the skin. “You may thank her for his life.”

  “Elizabeth!” Black Widow started forward. “What happened? Is she all right?”

  “Stay.” Kramer held up his free hand. “She is not what you think.”

  “What are you talking—”

  “Oh my God!” It was the handsome woman in the far cell. Scrambling to her feet, she launched herself at the bars. “My God! She’s alive!”

  “No!” The man was by her side in a second. “You don’t understand.”

  “What’s to understand? I always knew she was alive, even after all those months of doctors telling me she’d died, that they couldn’t do a damn thing about the leukemia. I knew they were wrong. I told you that all we had to do was get to another Now and find her again.”

  “No. Love,” the man said, “it’s not as simple as—”

  “Yes, it is. That is my daughter.” She held out her bandaged arms. “Honey? Lizzie? Don’t be afraid. It’s Momma. You know your mom, don’t you?”

  Mother? Perhaps it was the way the air wobbled and shimmied, but Elizabeth looked very odd. Her face wavered as if Doyle were peering through flawed glass during a rainstorm. The effect was eerie, as if her features were uncertain how they ought to settle. Yet when Elizabeth looked toward the couple in the far cell, Doyle thought he registered first surprise and then a narrow expression of suspicion, a slight parting of her lips as her eyes settled not on the handsome woman who called herself mother … but the man. Her father? Doyle blinked. That was McDermott? If true, this meant that Kramer had known where McDermott was all along. Or really had been looking for him and only now found him. But how? Doyle’s eyes snapped back to Black Widow. The little girl, Emma, said they were all linked by that … that thing they call a nightmare. So Black Widow found the McDermotts through the same dream?