The Dickens Mirror

by Ilsa J. Bick

  Go! Slamming the rock with her hands, she cried out, the moment electric, her back arching. At once, she felt them streaming from her fingertips, all the pieces gushing like high water loosed from a dam. Her pulse was thundering, her heart smashing her ribs, and she thought the rest, gathered round the bodies, were still screaming, and Meme loudest of all: “No, no, no, I will not let you!” The inside of her skull ached with a lancing pain that shot from her forehead to the top of her spine, and yet her consciousness ballooned, that mind’s eye widening like a pupil until all that remained was a huge expanse: like a night sky with no stars. Her mind was clearing, the cobwebs tearing apart, as if someone had finally decided to sweep back a pair of heavy curtains, open the windows, and let in light and fresh air.

  And she thought, Go, Emma, go! Hurry!

  No reply. Although she didn’t think the girl was completely gone. She might never be, if it was true that every essence—a whisper, as Rima would’ve called it—left its mark.

  But she got her answer when, around her, the cavern groaned. Stone bucked and heaved under her feet, but unlike the quakes, there was no loud crack or bang of stressed rock giving way. This was like riding heavy swells in a sleek kayak.

  Kayak. That must be an Emma-thought. Because I don’t know how that feels, or what a kayak is. I’ve never seen the sea. Under her hands, the rock was shimmering, the ripples spreading wider and wider in a mirror image of that mind’s eye, and it was happening fast, within seconds: the stone smoothing, growing glassy and black.

  Almost there. It was Emma, a remnant anyway, still with her. Elizabeth, when the Mirror opens, you have to get out of the way fast. If you’re pulled in …

  “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “Only say when.”

  Just a few more … The black-mirror rock suddenly seethed, and then she felt the give under her hands. Way’s opening, Emma said. The cynosure ought to …

  A roar: “What are you doing?”

  EMMA

  Following the Light

  1

  “WHAT ARE YOU doing?”

  It was a guy’s voice, that doctor. Emma tore her eyes from Elizabeth, still hunched over that churning rock that was going mirror-smooth, and looked across to the others, still gathered around the bodies. Meme was screeching like someone was ripping out her heart. Crap, she’d feel the same way if she saw herself all laid out like an empty-eyed Barbie.

  Kicking free from Bode, Meme lunged at Doyle. Crying out, the constable stumbled away from the examination tables and threw up his hands (maybe he thought she was going to scratch his eyes out or something), and that was when Meme got her hands on that knife. Snatching it free, Meme let out another of those crazy, ripping shrieks and dashed for the bodies.

  That’s when everyone over there went nuts.

  “Meme!” Bode shouted. “Meme, don’t!” And Kramer was bawling, “No! Stop her! Don’t let her …” The London Meredith only stared, stunned, with disaster-victim eyes, but in her cage, the other Meredith was screaming, maybe for both of them: “No, no, not my little girl, please!”

  “Meme, no!” It was McDermott, pressed up to the bars. “I can help you, but please, please don’t ruin them! Not when I’m so close, not when I think I’ve found how to make things right!”

  “No, no, nothing makes this right!” Meme snarled. “It is their fate, their destiny to die, and who are you to play God?” Rearing, she plunged Doyle’s dagger down in a hard, fast stab—and straight into the smallest body: little Lizzie.

  “AAAHHH!” Meredith wailed as the knife sank all the way up to the hilt. Lizzie’s eyes jammed wide open, and her cherry-red mouth widened in a soundless scream, like that weird painting of the guy on the bridge against an angry, churning sky.

  “Noooo!” Meredith was practically clawing her eyes out. “Stop, stop! Don’t hurt my baby!”

  Too late for that, Emma thought. Blood boiled, spreading in a slick red lake over the little girl’s belly before leaking down the sides. Little Lizzie—although she really wasn’t yet, was she?—flopped and jerked and looked so much like a hooked salmon flip-flapping on the deck of Jasper’s boat, Emma wished she had a club or something to put the poor thing out of its misery.

  “Don’t!” McDermott shouted again. “Meme, stop! Not my baby, not my child!”

  “She is nobody’s child, as I am not,” Meme shouted. On its table, little Lizzie’s mouth still hung in that silent shriek, but what feeble light there’d been in those doll’s eyes fled as fast as blowing out a birthday candle. “She is no more real than I!”

  “Meme!” Bode grabbed at her arm, but Meme wrenched free, then brought the blade around in a whickering, backhanded arc. Bode jumped out of the way just in time as the knife flashed down again.

  “You are not me!” Meme slashed at the third body—the empty doll of a person that had Meme’s face. The skin over its cheeks and forehead, across its eyes, opened in wide, gaping, spurting red slashes. “You are not!”

  “Kid!” Emma jerked back around to see Chad’s eyes bugging from their sockets. He’d draped the other Tony over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, like soldiers did when they got a wounded buddy out. “Holy shit, kid, look at the bars, look at the bars!”

  She did, and her heart gave a huge kick in her chest. Their iron cells were dissolving, just like a special effect. She could see straight through, and in another second or so, there wouldn’t be any bars there at all. The whole room was like that, going molten as lava and shifting, and it was so fast. With every ripple, she felt the ground surge up and then sink as if she were on the deck of Jasper’s boat or a floating dock. The stone was like that, too, going as glassy as the surface of the big lake, and she thought, That’s Emma and the others.

  Her cut hand still tingled, and she could taste the quicksilver sparkle of an icy essence on her tongue. Her brain had turned into one giant Van de Graaff, arcing with electricity. At every pulse, she felt the cynosure’s heat, like something radioactive. It was so bright she had to squint.

  “Be ready!” Craning over her near shoulder, Elizabeth shouted, “As soon as the bars are gone, grab Chad’s hand and think of home, Emma, think of down …”

  2

  ELIZABETH NEVER SAW what came for her next. Neither did Emma, so focused on the evanescing bars and home. As soon as Emma thought that, the cynosure seemed to crackle with new life. All at once, a searing beam of light shot from it, unspooling in a ribbon, and Emma just had time to think that Einstein was right: light could be solid. She was staring, dumbfounded, and then Chad was shouting and pointing as the bars vanished—and that’s when she finally caught, from the corner of her eye, a ferocious flurry that was not this room reshaping itself.

  And Emma heard Bode: “NO!”

  “Elizabeth!” From her place beside her, Rima started to her feet and shouted, “Elizabeth, behind—”

  Whatever Rima said next was lost when Elizabeth let out a sudden, agonized shriek.

  Because that was when Meme stabbed her.

  3

  THE DAGGER SLICED into Elizabeth’s back, close to her spine. Arching, Elizabeth screamed again as, across the room, the London Meredith finally came out of her stupor and shouted, “No, no, no, please!”

  Meme paid no attention. She was snarling and grinning like something feral and pretty crazy. Teeth bared, she drove deeper, harder, twisting the hilt, and this time, when Elizabeth opened her mouth, a gout of blood boiled onto her lips and chin like water from a bubbler.

  At that, the room bellowed. The sound was enormous, deafening, a howl that reverberated and swelled and overlapped on itself in a shuddering chorus, as if some prehistoric giants had suddenly awakened. Along the wall, Emma saw that the blanks’ faces had split; they were nothing but mouths and teeth all lowing the same note. Even Weber was moaning.

  It’s them. Emma cast a wondering look straight up at the seething whirl that had once been rock. She wasn’t quite sure, but she could’ve sworn that, for just a second, there were
faces up there and all of them were shrieking. The room shuddered. It’s Emma and the shadows and everyone else.

  Not ten feet away, Elizabeth tottered, her now-deadening weight dragging her and Meme toward the Mirror’s edge. Before them, the glassy rock dilated and trembled. Emma thought that one step in the wrong direction, they’d both fall in and be gone, like getting sucked past the event horizon of a black hole.

  Please. Emma aimed a look up again at the faces that might be only her imagination. Help her! Could they, or Rima? She didn’t know, and there was no more time. Dangling from its chain around her neck, the cynosure’s bolt of light arrowed straight through and into the Mirror, scorching a path.

  “What are you doing, Meme?” Bode was there now, screaming. “What have you done?” Hooking his hands around her elbows, he yanked the other girl away. As soon as Meme let go, Elizabeth rocked back, blundering on her heels. Her knees gave. She sagged, knife still in her back and so deep that Emma could see the hilt ticking with her pulse. She sank onto her side in a widening crimson pool. There was blood everywhere, and the room was still howling.

  “Stop them! Don’t let them through!” Jerking her head to the left, she saw Kramer and the London Meredith now, maybe twenty feet away. They would be here in three seconds flat. “The girl’s got the cynosure!” Kramer cried.

  “Go, Emma!” Rima was on her feet, Tony’s arm draped over her neck. “Run now, run now!”

  “Come on, kid!” Still bowed under the other Tony’s weight, Chad was lunging in an awkward bounding leap for the Mirror. “Move!”

  “Wait! Jack!” Sweeping up her cat, she turned and dashed for the rock—a second too late.

  “No!” It was Kramer, and she and Chad both faltered, turning a last glance. His ruined face loomed, the one lidless eye bright as a headlamp. His hands clawed and shot out for a grab. “Give me the cynosure,” he foamed. “I want …”

  Gasping, she whirled. Kramer’s hands whisked through her long hair, and she cried out, but then Bode hurled himself into the doctor, and the two of them crashed to the bucking, heaving rock in a tangle of legs and thrashing arms. Behind, she heard the London Meredith keening, and then she stopped worrying about what was behind and focused only on what lay ahead and what she had to do.

  “Grab my hand!” she shouted, leaping for Chad, who waited at the Mirror’s lip. As soon as they touched, her vision seemed to erupt in a fan of colors, but it was gold and cobalt that were the brightest of them all: two threads racing down her arm to lace round their joined hands and cinch them tight.

  “GO, EMMA!” It was McDermott, somewhere behind all that. “Don’t look back, honey! GO-GO-GO-GO-GO!”

  Put us all where we belong. Take me home. And then, something she didn’t understand and that might not have been entirely her thought: Take me back BEFORE …

  Hurtling for the Mirror, Emma plunged into the dark, following the light.

  RIMA

  Into the Abyss

  1

  AND LIKE THAT, they were gone. Standing with Tony, supporting his weight, Rima watched as the cynosure’s light lanced through black-mirror rock. The surface, dark as tar, went molten and then swallowed them up like a thick pool of lime: the little girl and her cat, Chad, and the other Tony.

  “No!” Thrashing free of Bode, Kramer staggered toward the Mirror. He nearly tripped over this London’s Meredith, on her knees by Elizabeth. A short distance away, hair wild and all eyes, Meme stood, hands slack by her side, her fury spent. “Get up!” Kramer wrestled this London’s Meredith to her feet. “Take us, take us!”

  “I don’t have the cynosure.” This Meredith’s tone was dead. Elizabeth’s blood had soaked into her skirt, turning it a queer shade of purple very like her glasses. “I can’t follow, not through the Mirror. I’ll never find her again.”

  “Haven’t you been paying attention to all that’s transpired?” Spittle foamed through the ravaged flesh of Kramer’s jaw. “You found McDermott and that Meredith because he let that copy of you dream! That little girl, that Emma, dreams as well! All you need do is use the Peculiar as you have before. Find her through her dreams, and we get her back!”

  “But the Emma that bound them all together is here now.” This London’s Meredith raised her eyes to the rock. “The tie’s broken. You’ve not been listening. They’re not the same girl anymore. They were only the same girl at the pivot point where I found her. The cynosure works for her now, which means that whether she knows it or not, she carries the power to launch her life down a different path.”

  “Stop this!” Kramer pointed at the still-glimmering Mirror. “We need to go, and we need to go now while the way’s open!”

  “Doctor, take me with you, please.” Hair dragging round her face, Meme caught at Kramer’s arm. The girl’s hands were slick with gore. “I belong to you! Have you not always said?”

  “You?” Kramer jerked his arm free. “You’re filth, a creature, fit for nothing.”

  “No, please,” and then she cried out and clasped a hand to a suddenly flaming cheek.

  “Stop!” Bode was struggling to his feet. He looked as if he’d plunged into a tub of bright red paint. “Don’t hit her, don’t!”

  “But Doctor,” Meme began.

  “Did you not hear?” Grabbing Meme by the throat, Kramer drew back his hand for another blow. “Are you not listening?”

  “She may not be,” said this London’s Meredith, “but I am.” With a sudden wild shout, she spread her arms and barreled into them both.

  “What are you doing?” Staggering, Kramer reeled, Meme still in his grasp, and both wrapped up in the woman’s iron grasp. “Are you mad, woman?” he screamed. His free hand shot for a handhold—

  And he made it. He did. Rima saw the instant his fingers found purchase on rock and hooked. He had a grip; the tendons on the back of his hand strained and went taut. He had saved himself, and Meme.

  But then … the rock pulled back.

  2

  SHE WATCHED IT happen: how the stone knob shrank, withdrawing into itself, retreating like a tortoise, to leave Kramer with thin air, and nothing to stop his fall.

  “Rima?” She heard the note of wonder in Tony’s voice. “Did you …?”

  “Yes. It’s them.” She raised her eyes to the churning rock above. “It’s Emma.”

  “No!” Bode started for Kramer and the others. He was big and strong and they were still within reach, so he ought to have made it to them in time. But all of a sudden, he stumbled, and Rima saw a stony knuckle on the floor that had not been there a fraction of a second before—and knew that Emma had saved him.

  Sweeping forward, this London’s Meredith propelled Kramer and Meme with the force of an inexorable tide. She drove them all past the edge, and into the abyss.

  In an instant, the mirrored surface stilled. Although she was a good fifteen feet away, Rima saw how it coalesced and hardened to a surface as obdurate as cast iron.

  The way was closed.

  The Mirror was gone.

  RIMA

  The Way

  1

  “RIMA.” TONY’S VOICE was husky, cracked with pain. To her relief, however, his face had smoothed and his bleeding had diminished. The shadow-Emma had been right: her blood healed. “Can you help Elizabeth?” Tony asked.

  “I could try,” she began, but the room gave a convulsive shudder, a bump that made her stumble. There was a sharp crack and then a sound like a rush of water over a falls as a shower of rock came cascading down the walls—and she thought, Maybe not. This was different; was the cave breaking up now? Another hard bang, a pop, and now a spray of debris shot out in a stony geyser from the far wall. From above, there was an odd groan that was different from the bellow that had sounded when Elizabeth was stabbed. A moment later, she felt stone patter her hair and arms and heard it rattle along the floor.

  “What’s going …” Shielding her eyes against another rain of scree, she looked up and then gasped. “Oh my God. Tony, look up, look
at the ceiling!”

  “It’s coming down,” he said. “It’s not just breaking apart. It’s actually …”

  “Lowering. I know.” We’ll be buried alive, entombed here like insects in amber. “Come on, lean on me,” she said, draping one of Tony’s arms around her neck to take some of his weight. “There’s nothing more we can do.” Or that the shadows will allow. Perhaps Elizabeth truly belongs to and with them now. “We need to go.”

  “How? Where? Kramer came from over there, but …” With his free arm, Tony pointed toward the far wall, past the examination tables and on the other side near where the McDermotts’ cell had been. “Look.”

  “I see it,” she said grimly. The cave was still heaving and falling, the walls ebbing and flowing, but the ceiling was starting to come down as the space contracted. Sealing itself off. As she watched, a span of rock immediately behind the man-blanks elongated. Two molten lips opened and then closed around the blanks and Weber.

  “God!” Tony said. “Did it just absorb them?”

  “I think so.” She saw the McDermotts, arms clasped round one another, huddling near the one intact body, that new Meredith, but they were making no moves to get out. Maybe he knows a way and is waiting for the right time? Elizabeth … the other Emma … said he used a back door. But that was probably only useful for the McDermotts, not them. From what she understood, and that was precious little, she, Tony, and Bode either couldn’t pass through or might only end up like Kramer and this London’s Meredith and Meme: adrift in a dark limbo. Or perhaps this was where the McDermotts would stay, in this rocky tomb. Somehow she didn’t believe McDermott would, or that the shadows would stop them if they tried to leave. This was a man who made and remade those he loved. If he’d wanted to die with them, he could have, many times over. Perhaps, a version of himself already had—and would again. When you couldn’t save the woman you loved or your child, maybe a piece of the heart died, too.