The Dickens Mirror

by Ilsa J. Bick

  Emma, come on, help us. Show us the way. Blinking against another hail of stone, she eyed the lowering ceiling, the crinkling walls that were beginning to collapse in on themselves in fanlike folds. You can’t have done all this only to let us die here.

  “Rima!” Tony was staring behind them. “Look!”

  She turned in time to see the rock part just wide enough for them to pass through. The way was dark, like a long throat. If there was an end, she couldn’t see it.

  “Where do you think it goes?” Tony asked, then gasped as the floor turned a slow roll, as if nudging them forward. “What the blazes?”

  Right, Emma, I hear you. This is the way to whatever future awaits. Her gaze fell to Bode, who was still where he’d fallen, on his knees by Elizabeth’s body. “Bode, get up. Let’s go.”

  “What for?” Bode’s face held a stunned look, and the hopelessness in his eyes scared her a little. Using the side of a hand, he brushed a fall of Elizabeth’s hair from a cheek. She’d lost so much blood that her skin had gone glassy and nearly transparent. Her half-open eyes were already glazing. Bode looked up at them. “First Meme and now … I was supposed to protect Elizabeth. That’s what I was to do and …”

  “And so now what? You’re to die as penance?” The brutal edge surprised her. “We still have a chance. Elizabeth gave it to us then, just as Emma and her shadows are now.” She jerked her head toward the mouth of the tunnel, still patiently waiting. But not for much longer. Another splintery smash as rock shattered, and she thought, Only a few more minutes and there’ll be nothing left here, no space at all. What was above them now? Doesn’t matter. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get up!”

  For a split second, she thought he would argue; do something incredibly stupid, like wave them on and then lie down and wait for the rock to smother him. No, Emma, you wouldn’t let that happen, would you? No answering bump of reassurance this time.

  “Right,” she said as Bode pushed to his feet. “Let’s …”

  “Wait!” It was Doyle. She’d completely forgotten about him, but now she saw the constable pulling himself up from where he cowered in a corner not far from the examination tables. His uniform was undone, the coat hanging open, and most of the buttons missing. His hair was a fifteen puzzle of corkscrews, as if he’d been trying to tear it out by the roots. Like Bode, he was awash in gore, much of it on his face, so his eyes started from a mask of red. “Take me with you!” He began clawing his way around rubble. The floor was strewn now with boulders. “Don’t leave me here!”

  “Then come on!” Tony shouted. “Hurry!”

  “Yes. Coming! Don’t—” Doyle yelped as the floor suddenly shifted. A huge crack sketched itself over the rock, and then widened in a crooked black smile. Crying out, Doyle flung himself forward as the stony slab tilted, and then all of a sudden, the man was looking at them across a gap too wide to jump. “No!” Bawling, he looked to the lowering ceiling. “It’s not fair! What did I do? I only done what I was asked! I was only …”

  “You kids!” McDermott was standing now, an arm about his wife, as more debris showered down. “Rima, go! Don’t you see? She’s giving you a way, but you have to be brave enough to take it! Go on, all of you, and live your lives!”

  Live our lives? As rats? And a way to where? To what?

  “No!” Doyle cried again. Beyond, two of the examination tables had toppled. The bloodied bodies of the new Meme and the little girl were limp as cast-off rag dolls. “What about me, what about me?”

  “Come on.” Bode had taken Tony from her, but now he stretched out a hand and gave her wrist a gentle tug. “It’s a chance, chuckaboo. Let’s take it.”

  At the tunnel’s mouth, she paused for a last look, sweeping her eyes right to left, and frowned. Elizabeth’s body had vanished, and her blood, too. Absorbed like the blanks? Across that chasm, Doyle was still shouting and shaking his fist. Emma, why not let Doyle come with us? There was no reply, no surge in the rock, but she wondered if, like Meme, Doyle was a creature of this place, with no part to play in whatever future awaited—and so here he must remain.

  And what about the McDermotts? Emma, don’t try to stop them going. Whatever his reasons, McDermott’s our creator, our father. You can’t blame him for trying to cheat death.

  It was then that, beyond and at the limits of this dwindling space, she thought she saw something … dimple. Was it the air? The rock? For some reason, she was reminded of the moment the Peculiar spat first that cat and then little Emma out onto the snow and into the tangle of their lives, where perhaps she’d been a thread all along. She thought about the rock and how it had absorbed the blanks, Weber. Elizabeth, too, folding the girl into its embrace.

  That was when she realized: the McDermotts were gone.

  Back door. A huge wave of relief coursed through her. They took it. Or Emma and the shadows let them. Either way, it amounted to the same thing. But to where?

  And what of them now?

  “Rima!” It was Bode, his voice echoing down the tunnel’s throat. “Come on!”

  Now the floor did bump, just the once, its meaning clear: Go.

  Right. Turning away from what was left of Bedlam, she followed, as Doyle’s screams chased after.

  2

  SOMETIME LATER, AFTER they’d walked and jogged five hours or five seconds—there was no telling—Rima thought she saw a fiery glister of milky light far in the distance.

  “Oi.” Pulling up short, Bode cocked his head. “You hear that? That … sound?”

  She did, and it was really two sounds: a barely discernible thump … a pause … and then a boom.

  “You know what it reminds me of?” Strong enough now to stand on his own, Tony took a few steps forward. “When the Thames runs high. The way it slaps the abutments. Got the same rhythm.”

  “Oh, wonderful,” Bode said. “We’re probably running in an old sewage tunnel, along with the rest of the offal. Either that or we’re about to hit an underground river.”

  Somehow she doubted Emma would do that to them. “But there’s light,” Rima said, and then she sniffed. “Is that … do you smell salt?”

  DOYLE

  Back to the Future

  1

  “GODDAMN IT, GODDAMN it!” Frothing, Doyle watched as those accursed rats disappeared only for the tunnel to pucker in on itself and vanish. McDermott was gone, too, and his wife. There one second, then poof! He noticed McDermott had left the body of his new Meredith behind, too, like so much rubbish destined for a dustheap.

  Oh, but you’ll just make yourself another, won’t you? If not here, then you’ll dip your nice sharp nib somewhere new. Doyle knew: once a sneak, always a sneak. Breaking the rules the first time was the hard part. After that, you could justify anything.

  “What about me? I’m not so bad.” All right, all right, maybe it was one thing to try and cheat fate; when your daughter withered no matter how hard you worked, and your wife always went mad on a road to self-destruction. Maybe what McDermott had done wasn’t so monstrous. Oh, but what about Meme? What had that been about? He’d been fashioning Emma at various ages, in different ways? What was it about Emma that McDermott couldn’t give up?

  “I don’t bloody care!” he shouted. “I am not a monster. Everything I did, I had to. What did I ever do to you?” Another shower of debris raised a cloud of dust, and he began to cough. Rocks nipped his cheeks. One particularly large stone, big as his fist, bulleted onto the back of his neck and nearly knocked him flat. He felt the shock of it all the way through to his chest. The ceiling was now so low that in another few moments, he’d be able to clamber up on a table and touch it. God, if he’d only hung on to his black blade, he could slit his throat. Better that than to be ground to paste.

  Wait. He snuck a hand into his coat. His fingers slid over metal, and then he was drawing out his Webley. One bullet. That’d be all it would take. His hand was shaking. He was afraid to thread his finger through the trigger guard for fear the gun would go off.
But this was a way out. The mouth would be best. Blow out the back of his skull. Over in an instant. At the last second, he could be master of himself. But maybe not yet.

  “Come on. You helped the kids, that McDermott. You helped everyone but me. Why? What, you going to squash me flat?” he croaked. “I saved you.” Though he had no earthly idea who he was really talking to, or if that balanced out the fact that he’d killed Battle and, well, done so much more. For all he knew, whatever had invaded this place had turned it over to new management, maybe even the devil.

  That was when he realized. “Black Dog?” He turned a complete circle. “Where are you?” He went so far as to push up his sleeve. The death hound’s maddened gaze stared back, but it was only strange ink and didn’t answer. “Goddamn you, where did you …”

  Here. It was a growl at his back. He spun round, and then a cry of joy rocketed from his mouth. There, across the way, not ten feet distant, he saw two fiery eyes peering out from the ebony maw of a tunnel. Come, poppet. This is the way.

  He started forward, a single step, then stopped. There was something here he didn’t quite like, but it was like having to choose between a needle or going without, wasn’t it?

  Crouching, he bounded for the tunnel, only just ducking inside as the ceiling behind slammed down. It was like watching a giant eye close. Now he was completely in the dark. Standing there, nerves vibrating, he listened to rock settling around this space. I’ve no guarantee this is a way out. Maybe it’s not a tunnel at all. Maybe it was only a room, or a short open seam that would eventually close down to a narrow slit the deeper and farther he went. How thin, through what width, could a man wriggle? Worms did it. So did squirmers. God, the image of him as an infection threading beneath the skin of the earth sent shivers racing up and down his spine.

  “Black Dog,” he whispered. Silly not to use his full voice, but his heart was knocking so hard he felt the pulse in his teeth. His eyes strained for those telltale glowing slits. This wasn’t like the death hound. It never led … well, except with the hag. It always slunk behind, nipping at his heels, the monkey on his back—like the needles, the pints, the pipes. “Black Dog?”

  This way. To his left. He looked but saw nothing. Then he felt a tiny nip at his bum. Go. You want to stay here until you become wizened as a mummy?

  “But I can’t see. What am I supposed to do, feel around in the dark?” But then he remembered: match safe. He always carried one for his bull’s-eye. Patting around in his trouser pocket, he drew out the rattling metal case, tweezed out a match, then ran it over the ridged striker. The match caught with a spit of phosphorus and a stink of sulfur, and he thought, God, I smelled that.

  “Oh, thank you,” he breathed into the dark. Perhaps this was the way for him, and now things would go back to normal, or better than. First his sense of smell coming back, and then perhaps taste … God, what I wouldn’t give for a biscuit, a good strong cuppa. A humbug. Anything. Just give it all back.

  The match’s reach wasn’t much, but enough to show a narrow straw of a tunnel just high and wide enough for him to pass without knocking his shoulders or head. He sniffed. Above the fading aroma of sulfur, the air wasn’t stale, although it was a bit … fishy? His nose crinkled. Mildew and something rotted. An animal, perhaps. He shook out the match before it could scorch his fingers.

  Onward, my darling. Black Dog gave his rump a nuzzle. Back to the future.

  “Is that a joke?” He waited for the hound’s reply, but none came.

  So Doyle began to walk. It wasn’t as hard as he thought it would be. The tunnel was so snug there was no way to turn around or bumble into a wall. The floor was a little odd, a touch concave straight down the center in the way of a sewage conduit, something that allowed for very little deviation. He could swear he felt the smooth indentations of boots worn into rock, as if many souls had walked this way before. You watch; I’ll end up in the Thames with the rest of the city’s leavings.

  Not at all, poppet. What is it they say? Black Dog paused as if in thought. In a man’s end, one may find his beginnings?

  “I think it’s the other way round,” he said, and then stopped again. That fishy smell was stronger. How long had they been walking anyway? His stomach rumbled. He was suddenly famished. Have to be close to the end. Surely he wasn’t fated to wander the bowels of the earth for all time? He heard something then, a faint … trickling? Shite, water? “Damn,” he said, pulling another match from his silver-plated safe, “I have wandered into a sewer …”

  And then, from somewhere ahead—perhaps only a few inches—there came …

  a soft …

  moist …

  slithery …

  rustle.

  2

  OH. HE FROZE, match poised above the striker. All his hair was on end. He could feel his lids peeling back and the whites of his eyes drying as they bulged. He was quivering.

  Black Dog? He didn’t dare let a breath escape the fence of his teeth, much less a sound. Is that you?

  No answer, although ahead and again … a slight, papery, slithery rustle. Like something shifting position. Snake, shedding its skin? Snakes liked sewers. So did rats.

  That made him think of the Webley. Yet that meant a choice. Revolver or match: he couldn’t have both. Gun don’t do me no good if I can’t see what I’m shooting.

  “Goddamn it, Black Dog, stop yer games,” he hissed. “Where are you?”

  No answer. The air was nasty, the taste coating his mouth foul, as if he’d licked a privy clean with his tongue. Just my luck, he thought, running his match over the striker. Get my taste back now, and what do I get? The match spluttered a shower of tiny yellow sparks, then resolved to a finger of flame that he lifted to light the way ahead. I get …

  “Shite.” The word fell from his mouth, and then nothing more came for a time.

  For a time.

  3

  IT WAS NAKED and in tatters, decayed skin peeling away in greenish strips as he’d always imagined. Its head was bulbous, the long hair dragging in dank tangles like wet seaweed. Its jowls sagged, sloughing from bone. Its man’s breasts already had, exposing a bird’s cage of ribs and the soft and blackened rot of dead muscle and putrid, liquefied fat. When it flexed its gnarled, clawed hands, a scatter of moist, scaled skin flaked off to drop with sodden splats on stone.

  Only the eyes were different, and they were black mirrors, smooth as stones, and captured the light so well Doyle saw himself—his pale, horrified face—twice over.

  “Arrrtieee.” When this monstrosity gave his ruined head a rakish cock, there was a wet ripping sound as the skin over his neck and decayed tendon unraveled. There was a series of crackles as vertebrae crumbled, so that when his father smiled, he did so on end, with his left ear flat on that shoulder. “Been waiting on you, oh … a long time, son.”

  Yes. Black Dog chuffed from somewhere behind. And do you know, poppet, that quote? I believe you’re right. In your beginnings, you do find your end.

  4

  THE SCREAM FINALLY came then.

  It didn’t last long.

  THIS IS …

  NOW

  “WHAT?” BLINKING, TONY snaps to. For a moment, his mind is a little muzzy, as if he’s just swum to consciousness from a drugged sleep. But then the world firms, and there’s slick, cool tile under his bare feet and light dew on his cheeks from a steamy shower. Mist veils the bathroom mirror. Behind the fog, a vague silhouette of a boy waits. Water drips from the ceiling because he’s forgotten the exhaust again, and his father’s going to bust his chops about that because the parsonage is so goddamned old and the last thing he needs is to go hat in hand to the deacons and blah, blah, blah. Next to the shower stall, a tongue of wallpaper has come unglued, and that sucks. He’ll have to fix that before school. Superglue, this time: Christ, that stuff never comes off.

  Must’ve zoned out. Michael Jackson’s tinny soprano sputters from his piece-of-crap Sony transistor, and for what must be the ten trillionth time
, old Michael’s warning that they’re going to geeeet you. Tony clutches his tired Snoopy electric toothbrush in one hand, a half-strangled Crest tube in the other. If Matt were home, he’d have a cow, bitching about Tony not rolling the tube up from the bottom. Tony guesses the Marines make tight-asses out of everyone. Sometimes he thinks he squeezes the Crest around the middle just to give his brother something to complain about and settle them into their old ways again: Matt busting his balls, then wrestling him into a headlock for a knuckle rub while Tony squirms and yells, Quit it, you asshole, quit it!

  Mainly, though, it’s because every time Matt walks through that door, a huge surge of relief washes through Tony because, thank Christ, his brother’s still alive. Like, I didn’t imagine you. Which is so damned crazy.

  No way he’ll tell anyone about that either. The doe-eyed social worker’ll probably say he’s not dealing with his mom and all, but she can screw herself. Let cancer eat up your mom from the inside out, lady, and then see how great you feel. (The social worker is his dad’s idea. Says they all need to come to a state of grace, which is weird coming from a pastor. But his dad’s a total basket case. So Tony goes.)

  He can’t recall what he’s just been thinking. Probably nothing, but he does that a lot these days. His eyes drop first to the Dickens novel he’s got to write that damned paper for: a ten-pager comparing and contrasting Dickens’s use of doubles in this monster with either Great Expectations or that story … The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain? Gag him with a spoon. At least Haunted Man is short, the last Christmas book Dickens published, and anyone with half a brain can see that Evil Genius is really Redlaw. Thank God, they’re going on to Sherlock Holmes next. Hound of the Baskervilles—now that’s a story. That black dog gives him the shivers. He wonders if he can talk the teacher into trying Lovecraft after that. Talk about …