White Space

LIZZIE Whisper-Man Black

ONLY MOM POPS out of the barn, and she is screaming: “Get in the car, get in the car, just get in the car!” Mom hauls Lizzie down the porch steps, practically throws Lizzie into the front seat. She thrusts the memory quilt into Lizzie’s lap: “Hang on to that; don’t let go, no matter what!” Mom’s hand shakes so bad the ignition key stutters against metal, and she’s sobbing: “Oh please, oh please, oh please, come on, come on, come on goddamnit, come on!” She lets out a little cry as the key socks into place and the engine roars.

Then they are moving, moving, moving, going very fast, racing after their headlights, her mother hammering the accelerator. The force slams Lizzie back against the seat; her teeth come together—ka-chunk—and her tongue screams as the taste of dirty pennies floods her mouth. But Lizzie is too scared to cry; she is absolutely silent, quiet as a mouse, as the car fishtails, kicking up gravel rooster tails.

We’re never coming back. She clutches her memory quilt in both hands. The glass might be magic, and those stitches as strong as her mother, but Lizzie’s life is unraveling. I’ll never see my house again. I’ll never find Marmalade.

She cranes over her shoulder. Peering through the rear window is like seeing a movie through the wrong end of a telescope. She watches as their farmhouse, Wisconsin-sturdy and built to last until the end of time, recedes. To the left and across the drive, the big prairie barn hulks in the gloom, and that is when her sharp eyes pick out the pulse of a weird orange glow that is very, very wrong.

“Mom!” she says, urgently. “Mom, the barn’s on fire!”

“I know,” her mother says. “I set it.”

“Mom!” A blast of horror rips through her body. “We’ve got to go back! We’ve got to get Marmalade! We’ve got to find Daddy; we have to save him!”

“We can’t save your dad.”

“But Mom!” Lizzie’s frantic. Why doesn’t her mother understand? “Daddy needs us!”

“No, he needs it, Lizzie. He hangs on, takes it inside, and the horrible, awful things it asks in return …” Her mother’s voice falters, then firms. “Lizzie, why do you think we came here after London? Why do you think we live so far away from other people?”

So no one gets hurt. She thinks of the terrible things in her father’s books: squiggle-monsters and spider-things growing in people’s chests and crawly things in tunnels and parents eating their kids. What Mom says is true.

Because when her father turned from that mirror … his face was gone. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. Nothing but a shuddering, churning blank.

Then this thing with no face raised her dad’s hands like a policeman stopping traffic. The cuts were gone. Her father’s palms were smooth—until the skin split and lids peeled back and there were eyes, one on each palm. They were not her father’s eyes, because they were not hers. Like father, like daughter, their eyes are identical: a deep indigo with a tiny fleck of gold on one iris. Lizzie’s birthmark floats in her right eye and is the mirror image to her father’s on his left.

But the eyes that stared from her father’s palms were whisper-man black. The whisper-man was in there, and her dad was the glove, just as Mom said he’d been, years back and before Lizzie, in the other London.

But what if I can make the whisper-man want me instead? This is a new thought, and so stunning Lizzie’s chest empties of air. If I can get it to leave Dad and slip into me—

There is a sudden, massive flash. The light is so bright the inside of the car fires the color of hot gold. A split second later, Lizzie hears the rolling thunder of an explosion.

“Oh God,” Mom says. In that molten glow, Lizzie sees the shine of her mother’s tears. “Oh God, forgive me.”

“No, Momma, no!” She could’ve fixed it; she could’ve made it better. “Why did you do that?”

“You don’t understand.” He mother drags a hand across her eyes like a weary child. “It was the only thing left.”

“No, it wasn’t! I could’ve fixed things, I could’ve helped—”

From the backseat comes a flat, mechanical beep. Her mother gasps. The sound is so jarring and out of place it seems to come from the deep, dark valley of a dream.

“It’s your phone,” Lizzie says.

“I know that,” Mom says.

Beep.

“Should I answer?” Lizzie asks.

Beep.

“No,” her mother says.

“But what if …” Like a birthday wish, Lizzie’s afraid to say it out loud. “Mom, what if it’s Dad?”

Beep.

“It might be his voice, but it wouldn’t be him, Lizzie. Your father’s gone.”

Beep.

“But what if—”

“I said no!” her mother snapped. “Sit down and—”

No, Lizzie thinks, furiously. Against her palms, she feels the sudden tingling surge as the Sign of Sure, sewn on her memory quilt, feeds on her thoughts: all that energy stored up in her brain that wants to whisk her through the Dark Passages, that must find a way out. No, Momma’s wrong; I can fix this. I’ll make it want me. I’ll build a forever-Now and swoosh the whisper-man there with the Sign of Sure.

She unbuckles her belt.

“What are you doing?” her mother raps. “Sit down, young lady.”

“I don’t have to listen to you,” Lizzie spits, and then she is scrambling up, twisting around in her seat, reaching for her mother’s purse. Through the rear window, she can see the forest’s black walls squeezing the road, as if her past is a book whose covers are slowly, inexorably closing. Then, in the sky, she sees something else, and for a second, her heart forgets how to beat.

“M-Mom?” The word comes out in a rusty whisper. Her throat clenches as tight as a fist. “M-Mom, the s-sky … i-it’s …”

“Oh no.” Her mother’s eyes flick to the rearview, and then she cups a hand to her mouth as if she might be sick. “Oh my God, what have I done?”

“Mom?” Lizzie can’t look away. “Mom, what is that?”

“The Peculiars … all that stored energy, I’d hoped it would be enough to take out the Mirror, but I didn’t stop to think that your father had already opened the gateway; he’d bound that thing and … My God, I’ve only given it more fuel.” Mom sounds as broken as the Peculiars and the Mirror. “What did I do?”

Behind them, the sky is moving. High above the trees, something steams across the night: a boiling wall of white so dense that the stars are winking out, one by one.

Something has bled into this world, all right. Something is storming after them. Something is running them down.

Not an aurora.

Not clouds.

What is coming for them is the fog.

EMMA Not the Way I’m Made

“EMMA.” PAUSE. “EMMA.”

A voice, very distant, as tinny as a radio. For a horrible second, her ears heard that weird hiss—peekaboo, I see you—and she thought, Kramer?

“Emma?”

She didn’t answer. Wouldn’t. Couldn’t. God, she was freezing. She hurt. The cold was intense, the snow burning across her skin like a blowtorch. When she pulled in a breath, she heard a jerky little cry jump out of her mouth as something with claws grabbed her ribs and ripped her chest.

“Emma?” The voice was closer now, on her right, and it wasn’t the radio or Kramer at all. Why would she even think that? “Emma, come on, wake up.”

A … a boy? Where? Emma tried moving her head. There was a liquid sound, and then a thick, choking chemical funk.

“Emma, can you hear me?”

Her neck screamed. So did her back. Her forehead throbbed, a lancet of pain stabbing right between her eyes, not only from the blink but …

We crashed. I’m still in the van, but I saw that little girl again, too, and someone or something was … chasing her? But what? She couldn’t remember. The threads of the vision were fraying, unraveling. Didn’t matter. She dragged a hand to her aching forehead. She felt the familiar nubbins and that bigger circle of her skull plate just beneath her skin, but also something wet and sticky that was not gasoline.

Blood. Cut. How deep? Her fingers slid over torn flesh but not metal. She must’ve hit pretty hard. Her head was swimmy and she was already dizzy from gas fumes. Her stomach did a long, slow roll. No, please, I don’t want to puke.

“Emma, can you hear me?”

“Yeah,” she breathed. She tried prying her lids open. They felt sewn shut, and she had to work to make her muscles obey. Then the darkness peeled away, and she winced against a stab of silver-blue light. “Bright.”

“Sorry.” The featureless blot of the boy’s head and shoulders moved between her and the snowmobile’s headlight.

“Better?”

“Uh,” she said, and swallowed, waiting for her stomach to slither back down where it belonged. It was only then that she realized he was on his hands and knees, peering through a window. The van had flipped. She was lying on the roof. Or was it the ceiling? She couldn’t think. What was the last thing she remembered from this world? The sensation of whizzing through space, a free fall, and then the bang as the van plowed into something nose-first. Her back had slammed the windshield, and she’d rebounded, flying past the steering wheel, her shoulder clipping the driver’s side headrest as she shot for the rear window, as Lily screamed and screamed.

“Lily?” Her voice came out in a weak little wheeze. “Lil?”

“Hey.” The boy squirmed in, sloshing through gasoline until his face was right up to hers: so close she could feel his warm breath on her cheek. “Hey, look at me, stay with me. Here,” he said, lacing his fingers around her left hand. “Feel that? Remember me? Eric?”

“Yes, I … I do. I remember.” It took a lot of work and concentration to swallow. “But where’s Lil?”

“We need to get her out of there.” Another boy, a voice she didn’t recognize. “That gas isn’t stopping. I’ve never seen so much gasoline. How much you think this thing holds?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Eric tossed the words over his shoulder, while his eyes never left hers. “You guys got a blanket or maybe a first aid kit? She’s bleeding pretty bad.”

“First aid kit in the trunk,” the boy said again. “Hang on.”

A girl’s voice: “I’ll come with you.” The boy and girl moved off, their voices dissipating like smoke.

“You’re going to be okay.” Eric’s grip on her hand tightened. “I’ve got you now, Emma. You just keep looking at me. Don’t worry about anything else, all right? Can you tell me what hurts?”

Everything? “My head. Chest. Hurts to breathe. I think I hit the steering wheel.”

“Might be nothing more than a bruise. What about your neck?”

“Eric.” She swallowed back against another tidal surge of nausea. “Where’s Lily?” When he hesitated, she thought, Oh God. “Lily … she … she’s dead, isn’t she? I got her killed, didn’t I? Where is she? Is she”—ignoring the knifing pain in her neck and shoulders, Emma tried to turn her head—“was she thrown or is she still …”

“Emma, does it really matter? Seeing won’t change anything.”

No. She used her eyes the way she might her fingers, tracing the shape of his nose, that line of jaw, tangling in hair that was wavy, black, and thick. Even in the gloom, she could see the deep blue of his eyes. You don’t understand, Eric. Seeing is believing. Seeing changes everything. Aloud, she said, “Thank you for not leaving us.”

“Not the way I’m made.” He cupped her cheek. “Come on,” he said, gently. “Let’s get you out of here.”

CASEY Dead Man’s Shirt

“OH BOY.” TONY was kneeling in deep snow by the Camry’s rear tire. “This is not good.”

“No shit, Sherlock,” said Casey, smearing ice from his cheeks. He grimaced as snowmelt trickled down his neck to soak the collar of Big Earl’s shirt. Casey hadn’t wanted the thing, but his was shredded, cut to ribbons by Big Earl’s switch, and blood-soaked to boot. At first, shrugging into Big Earl’s oversize flannel had been like slipping on the slack, discarded husk of a gigantic python, and just about as pleasant. The thing was a little better now, but that wasn’t saying much, all things considered. The shirt felt … squirmy. Not alive, exactly, but every now and again, he thought he could feel it actually moving in tiny creeps, as if trying to worm into and wrap itself around the muscles and bones of his much smaller, slighter frame. Which, of course, was crazy; the thing was just a dead man’s shirt. Still … he could feel his skin flinch and cringe, withdrawing the way cats slithered low to the ground when they just didn’t want to be touched. He shrugged, wincing as old flannel raked raw flesh and clotted blood. “Man, that tire’s flatter than a pancake.”

“Wh-what happened?” said Rima, doing the freezing person two-step. “I thought you were being c-careful.”

“I was, but …” Tony sighed, his breath huffing in white steam the wind grabbed and tore apart. “If I had to guess, I’d say one of these downed spruces. Branches are sharp as spears. Probably drove over one buried under the snow.”

“Do you have a spare?” asked Emma, shivering. Gasoline didn’t freeze, and she and Eric were drenched, the stink hanging over them in a noxious cloud. Tony had dredged up a space blanket for her, but it didn’t seem to be doing much—not that this broke Casey’s heart or anything. “Or maybe a pump you could run off the battery?”

“The car’s buried,” Casey said, impatiently. Idiot. She looked like hell, too. In the flashlights, the shock-hollows beneath her eyes were purple smudges. Wouldn’t let Eric touch the gash on her forehead, but had bandaged it herself. Not such a hot job either. She also seemed kind of out of it: like she zoned every so often.

She’s probably high. Big Earl’s voice misted over his mind. Or drunk. Probably why she crashed.

Now, he’d had Big Earl in his head about as many times as he’d slid into the old fart’s clothes. Like never. The fact that he did hear Big Earl now should’ve freaked him out, but Casey was surprised to find that he was more … interested.

“Look,” Casey said to Emma, “you can change the tire five times, if that’ll make you happy. Even if you manage to get the tire to reinflate, take a look around. Snow’s way too deep. There’s no way this car’s going anywhere.”

“Wow,” Rima said. “N-n-negative often?”

“No.” He wanted to smack her, and this was also a new impulse. Big Earl had been the one to hit first and never ask questions later. “I’m just saying.”

“But if he’s got a spare or a pump, it’s worth a try,” Eric said. “We can’t be any worse off than we are now.”

Oh, wanna bet? Casey wasn’t sure if that was his voice or his dad’s—not that it mattered, because he agreed. But he kept his mouth shut. None of these people had a clue, but he knew: This valley is wrong. It doesn’t belong. The valley was a big black mouth and that road was its throat, and they were at the bottom, in the dark and the cold and the snow that just kept coming, like dirt filling a grave.

Which they could use, come to think of it. Casey’s eyes slid to the van. Through the window, he could make out a fur-trimmed parka that had once been white but was now oozy with blood and lumpy-bumpy from the body underneath.

“Well …” Tony looked uncomfortable. “I think we’re already worse off. I don’t have a pump, and my spare’s leaning against the wall of our garage. I did lawns this summer, so I took it out to make room for the mower. Just never got around to putting it back.”

“So what do we do?” Emma asked.

“We get you someplace warm,” Eric said.

“You know, we’re all kind of cold,” Casey said. He saw the sharp look Rima threw his way. Yeah, yeah, bite me.

“Ease up, Case,” Eric said.

“Ease up?” It figured. Eric got to play G.I. Joe; poor widdle Emma was saved; and still, here they were, oh-so-screwed. “In case you haven’t noticed, no one’s going anywhere warm. We’re stuck.”

“Yes, but we still have the sleds.”

“Which won’t fit everybody.”

“Case, I know,” Eric said, “but getting upset won’t—”

“You know, I’ll feel whatever I want.” Casey’s fists bunched. He took a step toward his brother and enjoyed the surprise in Eric’s eyes. “Quit bossing me around.”

“Casey,” Emma said. “He didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Am I talking to you?” Casey rounded. “Do you see me talking to you?”

“Casey,” Eric said, shocked. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Guys,” Rima said. “Stop.”

“Yeah, yeah, whoa,” Tony said, putting his hands up. “Everyone, calm down. This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Well, that’s good, because we’re not going anywhere,” Casey spat.

“But Eric’s right. You’ve got sleds,” Tony said. “Can’t we use them?”

“Are you deaf? I just said: there’s not room for everyone. My sled is a one-man. It doesn’t have enough power to make it back up that grade; it’s too steep. I’d sink, or just get stuck, or roll. Eric’s got the only two-seater, and it hasn’t got enough zip to get back up either. We’re both stuck down here with you.” Casey leveled a look at Eric. “Right?”

Eric’s eyes narrowed as if Casey was some bug he’d never seen before. “Yes,” Eric said after a long pause. His gaze slid away, but not before Casey registered the hurt. “He’s right.”

For a split second, Casey felt a sharp prick of shame. What was wrong with him? This was Eric. His brother had nearly gotten killed saving him.

Bull, Big Earl whispered. He was saving himself. You aren’t doing anything you shouldn’t have done a long time ago. He’s afraid you’ll get strong, stronger than him. Strong as me.

Right. Yeah. Eric should be afraid. Served him right for boogying off to boot camp and leaving Casey with Big Earl in the first place.

“Even if by some miracle we did manage to load everyone on the sleds and get back up? I don’t know this road. I’ve never seen this valley, to tell you the truth. I have no idea where we are in relationship to anything, and the way the snow is coming down”—planting his hands on his hips, Eric gave the snow an angry scuff—“visibility would be pretty bad. We’d have to go slow, and I think …” He looked back up at them. “I think we’d probably run out of gas. I don’t have a tent or shelter in the Ski-Doo.”

“So you’re saying we’d freeze to death,” Emma said.

“I’m saying I really don’t want to find out.”

“So then what?” Rima clamped her hands under her armpits. “Stay in the c-c-car? Won’t we just freeze to d-d-death here?”

For the first time, Casey noticed how small she was, like a doll. The snow was up past her knees, and the wind grabbed her wild, shoulder-length curls. That duct-taped parka was so ratty, Casey bet you could see daylight through it. If he was cold, that girl must be freezing. She seemed, actually, kind of nice, and pretty, too, with intense, violet eyes. He slid a gloved hand into his parka and felt the bunched wool of a spare watch cap. Didn’t people lose most of their heat through their heads? Maybe he ought to give her his—

Not your problem, boy. Big Earl’s voice seemed to steam like breath, wreathing Casey in the fruity reek of old beer. Every man for himself.

Casey hesitated. He actually thought back to his father, Yeah, but she’s cold.

So what? Casey heard the sneer in Big Earl’s voice. You look out for numero uno, boy. None of this do-gooder crap Eric’s always spouting out his piehole. You’re better than that.

Right. Casey crushed the cap back into his pocket. Not his problem.

“I’m saying you guys have a better chance of riding out the storm in the car than with everyone piled onto the sleds.” Eric nodded at the faint dimple of the road snaking away from the car. “But a sled could still make it fine down there. This road has to go somewhere.”

“Well, we were following a truck,” Tony said. “That’s how we ended up down here to begin with. We lost him about a quarter of a mile back. I’ll bet there’s a turnoff or something you could find with the sled.”

“Worth checking out.” Eric shrugged. “Okay, I’ll go.”

“I’ll come with you,” Tony said. “I got some flares we can set up, and I think my dad stowed a couple walkie-talkies in the trunk that he uses when he goes hunting. I don’t know the range, but they’re worth taking along. That way, we can find the car again and maybe keep in touch.”

“No way,” Casey said. “If Eric’s going, then I am out of here, too—and on my own sled, thanks.”

“But Casey, if you take your sled, that l-leaves us with n-nothing.” Rima’s face was going so white with cold, her eyes stared like sockets. “What if s-something happens to you g-guys?”

“Yeah,” Casey snapped. “So … what, I should freeze my ass off to keep you company?”

“Casey!” Eric snatched at his arm. “Calm down. Stop it!”

“What?” Batting his brother’s hand away, Casey squared off and set his feet. “You want to fight, Eric, huh? Well, bring it on, bro; let’s go.”

“Guys, please, this isn’t helping. Don’t argue,” Emma said.

Casey rounded on her. “You know, Emma, just shut the hell up. If you hadn’t almost gotten us killed, we wouldn’t be stuck down here in the first—”

“Casey!” Eric rapped, though Casey noticed that his brother was careful not to touch him again. “What is wrong with you? Leave it! What’s done is done.”

Casey bristled. “Yeah, what’s done is done, all right. You did a real nice job with Da—” He bit down on the rest.

No one said anything for a long moment. The wind whistled and fluted through warped metal. Finally, Eric said, much more quietly, “Someone has to check this out, Case. I can’t force you to stay, but I think you should, just in case.”

“In case what? In case things get worse?”

“In case I don’t make it. You’re my brother. I don’t want you to get hurt, and right now, it’ll be risky sledding. But come morning, when the storm dies, you might find a better way out, and for that, you’ll need a sled.”

“If it dies,” Casey said. “You ever think that it might not? No, of course you didn’t. So, instead of us getting somewhere safe, now we’re down here … Oh, but I forgot.” He did a mock head-slap. “What’s done is done.”

No one took the bait on that. After another moment, Tony said, “Eric, man, you really shouldn’t be alone. What happens if you get stuck? A sled that big, I’ll bet it takes more than one person to get it out of a drift.”

“Tony’s right,” Emma said. “You’ve got a two-seater. Leave the other sled, but I’ll come with you.”

“No way,” Eric said. “You’re hurt.”

“All the m-more reason she should g-go with you,” Rima said. She threw a defiant look at Casey, as if daring him to disagree. “Like you s-said, she needs to get someplace w-warm. L-last time I ch-checked, that’s not h-here. If you f-find a place, she c-can stay while you c-come back for us.”

Hands still on hips, Eric looked from Rima to Emma, then sighed. “All right. I don’t have any other warmer clothes for you, Emma, but there’s a spare helmet in the Skandic, so you won’t totally freeze.”

“I’ll be okay,” Emma said. “You’ll be my windbreak.”

Oh, ha-ha. An itch of annoyance dug at Casey’s neck as he saw Eric crack a grin. I see what you’re doing, bitch, but he’s my brother. I knew him first. He belongs to me. When Eric turned to him, that stupid shit-eating grin slipped, which was just fine with him.

“Case?” Eric said. “Please, I’m asking you to stay.”

“Fine,” he said. “Be a hero. Be a Boy Scout. It’s what you’ve always wanted, right? Here’s your big chance to impress us.”

“Jesus,” Tony said. “You just don’t quit.”

“Case,” Eric said, patiently, “it’s not that—”

“You know,” he said, “I don’t care, Eric. Whatever. You and Emma, I hope you’re really happy together.”

The others ignored him, which was par for the course, the idiots. But come morning, if Eric wasn’t back? He was gone and good riddance to bad rubbish, as Big Earl would’ve said. Strange, how comfortable all those ideas felt now. For that matter, he couldn’t tell if that was his voice in his head anymore or Big Earl’s.

And stranger still: only an hour before, Big Earl’s shirt had been way too big. A Boy Scout troop could have pitched it, gathered round, and sung “Kumbaya.” But now?

Now, the damn thing actually fit Casey like a second skin.

LIZZIE I Want to Tell You a Story

“LIZZIE, IT’S LIVED in your dad’s skin. It may have your father’s voice, but it won’t be him, don’t you understand?” Mom gulps back a sob as the cell in Lizzie’s hand chirps again. “Please, honey, don’t answer. I know you want to, but you can’t save him. Your father is gone. Now sit down, turn around, and put on your seat belt.”

“No,” she says. “I won’t.” Parents don’t have all the answers, and Mom has already failed, hasn’t she? Heart thumping, she hangs over the front seat to stare out the car’s rear window. Behind them, the fog is a greedy mouth swallowing up this reality, gaining fast. Mom just said that all the energy from the Peculiars is there, all tangled up with her dad and the whisper-man—and Mom should know: energy’s never gone. So her dad isn’t either. The whisper-man only thinks he’s got her dad.

But I’ll fix you. Just you wait and see. She punches up the cell. “Daddy? Daddy, are you there?”

“No, Lizzie.” Sparing her a sidelong glance, her mother makes a grab, but Lizzie cringes away and out of reach. “Please, hang up.”

Lizzie doesn’t answer. The glass on Lizzie’s memory quilt ticks and rattles, and she can feel it starting to heat. Gripping a tongue of fabric in her right hand, she uses her index finger to trace a special Lizzie-symbol: two sweeping arcs, piled like twin smiles, stabbed through with a zagdorn, capped with a bristle of four horns.

“Lizzie.” Mom risks a peek, but without her panops, Lizzie knows that her mother can’t see these symbols and wouldn’t know what they were even if she could. “What are you doing?”

“Dad?” Lizzie grips the cell in her left hand, tight. The barndil hovers in midair. Make a luxl next; yes, that’s the right sign. “Dad, are you there? You have to talk to me. I want you to talk to me.”

Are you sure? The reply is immediate, as if the voice has been standing at the door, waiting for Lizzie to throw open the lock and invite it in. This is what you want?

“Yes,” Lizzie says. “I’m sure. I want this. Let me talk to my dad.”

“No, Lizzie, don’t!” her mother says, sharply. “Don’t want it. Don’t invite it! Listen to me!”

No. The voice in Lizzie’s head is a sigh, a susurration, and the words are black slush, freezing her veins. Listen to me, Little Lizzie. Are you willing? Are you sure?

“You bet.” Her finger’s moving faster now, the glass of the memory quilt crackling as the symbols fly so fast and furiously she can barely keep track of all the weird shapes, how they’re knitting and weaving together: swhiri, molumdode, czitl. Teoxit. “Yes. I’m here. Talk to me, Daddy,” she says at the same time she’s drawing and thinking hard, I want this; I’ve got the Sign of Sure and I want this. Want me, use me, take me instead of …

“L-L-Lizzie?” Dad says, only hesitantly, as if he’s never had a voice and just decided to give this a try for the very first time. “H-honey?”

“Dad!” Lizzie’s heart leaps because it’s her dad, it is. Caulat! her finger screams. Stim syob duxe! “Daddy, it’s me!”

“No, Lizzie,” her mother says, “it’s not—”

“L-Liz … Lizzie?” Dad’s voice wobbles. “Lizzie, is that y-you?”

“Yes.” Her lips are quivering, and her eyes burn, but she can’t cry, she mustn’t cry now; she has to focus and be sure; she has to be quick. Frit. Yaanag. “Daddy, listen, I want to tell you a story. Are you listening?”

“Yes, I’m … I’m listening, honey. I’m … yes, I’m here,” her daddy says, but she can tell he’s not really, not all the way. He’s still down deep. Well, she’s going to fix that. Oh boy, just you wait and see.

“Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Lizzie,” she says. Ptir. Zisotin. “And she loved her daddy very, very much. Her daddy wrote books—scary, scary books—but she didn’t care, because no matter what he did, he was still her daddy.” Smin trevismin. “Lizzie thought he was very, very brave to reach into the Dark Passages where the monsters live—and she wanted to be just like him. So she tried really hard to make new Nows.”

“What?” her mother says. “What?”

Riwr. “She drew adventures and she gave her dolls names and she grabbed them from her daddy’s book-worlds, and they all went away to other Nows together.” Pripper.

“My God,” her mother whispers, “you used the dolls? You switched? Lizzie, how did you do that?”

“But th-then …” Lizzie falters, the zared only halfway to being. “Then …”

“Go on,” her dad says, like a little kid. He’s much closer now. “What happens next?”

She swallows. Come on, come on, don’t stop now. She watches her hand move—down, up, cross, swizzuloo—and complete the zared. “Then, one summer, it was really hot and dry and the plants were thirsty and she wanted to help. So she did something she’d never tried before. She made a storm, a big storm, a monster storm from a different Now, and she brought it back.”

“Oh God,” her mother says.

“You did that?” Dad whispers—and is he crying? She hopes so, but she’s not sure. “Honey, it rained for three days straight. There were kayaks on Main Street.”

“Oh boy, I know.” She has stopped drawing. Her arm is tired, but her finger is fire and strange electric tingles ripple over her skin, stroking the hair on her arms and along her neck. Her brain is as white-hot as the sun. “I was really dumb. And the crazy lady in the attic: I did her, too. I made her move the block to a different story.”

“What?” her mother says.

“How?” Her dad sounds way interested now.

“You said there was a writer’s block,” Lizzie said, “and I thought, okay, I’ll just get her to suck the block out of your story and cough it up way high in the attic where you can’t see. That’s why she was all inky and dirty. She kept slurping down your block whenever it started to get bad again.”

“Oh my God,” her mother says, a touch of wonder in her voice now. “A house has stories. You took it literally. The attic is a different story.”

That’s it; that’s exactly it. Lizzie clutches the phone. “So don’t you see, Daddy? You don’t need the whisper-man anymore. You have me. I’m all the Sign of Sure you need. I’ll help you.” Her eyes brush the symbols, pulsing and swarming through the air. They are good and well-formed, and now she can see that they are beginning to go purpling mad. Good. Purpling mad is rare; purpling mad is the color of energy and power and thought-magic. “We can make book-worlds and go to other Nows together.”

“No,” her mother says.

“You will?” Dad laughs, like, Wow, there goes a butterfly! “Oh, that’s exactly what I need. Are you sure? You have to want this, sweetie. You have to be sure.”

“I’m sure.” Hot tears splash her cheeks. “I want you, Daddy. I love you. I’m so, so sorry I got you in trouble.”

“That’s okay, sweetie, I’ve got you,” he says. “Now, come home, honey. Concentrate and come to Daddy, and we’ll build great worlds.”

“I will, Daddy, I will, but you have to make the whisper-man go away. Send him back. Put his fog where it belongs and Momma will bring us home.”

“Oh, well now,” her dad says, “I can’t do that.”

She knew it. She had this really bad feeling: this story was too good to be true. Jumgit. “Why not?” she asks, not that she really wants to know. She’s got to keep her dad interested just a little while longer …

“Because I like him,” Dad says, simply, the way he says, Oh look, there’s a bug. “He’s my friend.”

“No, Daddy.” She’s running out of time. The fog is almost on them. The shapes flying from her finger are the right ones; they have to be. “No, no, Daddy, it can only be us.”

“Oh, don’t be silly, there’s plenty of room. He’s my friend and you’re my daughter and so he’s yours and you’re mine, Lizzie; you’re mine, and I see you.” His voice is changing again, crooning and thinning to a whisper: “Peekaboo, I see you, Lizzie. I see you.”

“I see you, too, Daddy,” Lizzie says, picking up the cadence, chanting the mantra. Sk’lm. “I see you—”

“I see you, so come and play, Lizzie. Come play …”

“Come …” She falters, the symbol she’s sketching only halfway to being. What was she supposed to do next? “Come play …”

“Yesss, Blood of My Blood, Breath of My Breath, come play, Lizzieee; come, let’s plaaay a game; come and—”

“Play.” What was she thinking? She gives her finger a long, stupid stare. What was she doing? “Come play,” she says, slowly. “Come—”

“Lizzie!” Her mother’s hand lashes out and smacks the phone from Lizzie’s hand. The cell flies against the dash, then tumbles to the foot well, but the voice still seeps from the speaker: “Come plaaay, Blood of My Bloood, come plaaay …”

“That’s enough. Shut that thing up,” her mother grates. When Lizzie doesn’t move, her mother’s palm flicks, quick as a whip. The slap is crisp and loud as the snap of an icicle. “Damn it, Lizzie, do what I say! Hang up now while there’s still

RIMA Soother of the Dead

“TIME,” TONY SAID.

“Already?” Rima was practically worshipping the heater. The air dribbling from the vents wasn’t exactly toasty, but better than nothing.

“Sorry. That was fifteen minutes.” Tony turned off the Camry’s engine, and the fan cut out. “I’ll crank her up again in an hour.”

“Something to live for.” Rima tucked her hands under her arms again as another stutter-flash of lightning burst high above. She jumped, but the crow prancing on the hood didn’t flinch. That thing was seriously creeping her out, and she didn’t understand either. Yeah, there was the woman who’d died in Tony’s Camry, but her whisper was very weak and nearly gone. Lily’s body was in the van. Could it be Taylor’s death-whisper in her parka? That would be a first. Once Rima wore something—started soothing that death-whisper—the crows eventually went away.

She gasped as a cannon-roll of thunder boomed loud enough to make the car shimmy. Taylor’s death-whisper reacted, squirming over Rima’s arms. Easy, honey, Rima thought. Easy, we’re all scared. “What keeps doing that?” she asked.

Casey’s voice drifted up from the backseat: “Thunder-snow.” He’d been so quiet back there, Rima had almost forgotten about him. A relief, actually: Casey was one nasty kid. “It’s just a thunderstorm with snow instead of rain.”

“Oh.” She watched as Casey went back to reading one of Tony’s old comics by flashlight. On the lurid cover, two kids ran from some guy wearing these severed heads strung together like an ammunition belt. Rima looked away with a shudder. Read something like that and you’d guarantee nightmares for a week.

“Cold?” Tony made a move to peel out of his parka. “You can take my sweater.”

“No, don’t be crazy. I’m okay.” A lie, but she wasn’t going to take his clothes. Besides, who knew if he was the original owner? She eyed the crow. Was that because of something Tony had? Or Casey? Both?

“At least take the gloves. They’re spares.” Tony tugged a pair of brown woolen mittens from his pocket. When she still hesitated, he said, “I just bought them new a couple weeks ago.”

They were probably fine, then. She tugged on the mittens, waited a second, felt nothing except wool, and then slid her hands beneath her thighs with a sigh of relief. They could be stuck in that car for a very long time—and that made her think of something. She didn’t want to suggest it, but they had to be practical. “You know, if they don’t find anything, or we have to stay here awhile, we should check out the van. There might be food.”

“Are you volunteering?” Casey asked.

She didn’t want to go. “Sure. My idea, after all.”

“You’ll freeze before you make it five feet,” Tony said, and sighed. “It’s okay. I’ll go. I should, anyway. I’ve got a shovel in the trunk, and we need to keep the tailpipe clear.”

“You shouldn’t be out there alone.”

“Oh gee, I wonder who should go with him,” Casey put in.

“No one’s asking you,” Tony said.

“Yeah, right.” Casey gave him the hairy eyeball. “Whatever. Give me a chance to clear the snowmobile. You want to unlock the doors?”

“Sure, sorry.” Tony stabbed at the control, and the locks thunked. Bullying open the door, Casey pushed his way out of the car on a raft of bitter wind and without a backward glance.

Tony looked over at Rima. “Is it my imagination, or is Casey getting even meaner?”

“It’s not your imagination,” she said, turtling into hunched shoulders. The outside air hacked at her face like switchblades.

“Rima, jeez,” Tony said, and then he was tugging off his scarf to twine around her neck. “Take this. My mom made it. I’ve got a hat and … Hey.” He gave her an odd look. “Rima, are you all right?”

“Yes.” Her voice sounded very tiny in her ears. The death-whisper in that scarf was very strong, swelling in her chest and boiling over in a red tide. She blurted, “I’m sorry about your mom.”

Shock flooded his face. “What?” he said. “What?”

“She knew you were scared.” A sudden tingle ran through her fingers, and before she knew what she was doing, she’d peeled off a mitten and laced her fingers around Tony’s wrist. At her touch, she heard him suck in a quick, astonished breath; felt the sting of his surprise and the keener, glassy edge of his grief. “But it didn’t matter. She loved you, Tony.”

“My … my mom …” His face was whiter than bone. “How do you …?”

“It’s kind of a long story,” she said, surprised that Tony was someone she wouldn’t mind telling. “How about we talk when we’re someplace safe?”

She would remember this moment later. By then, it would be abundantly clear that no place in this valley was truly safe. Unfortunately, she wasn’t a mind reader, only a soother of the dead.

“That better be a promise,” Tony said.

“It is. Be careful.” She released him, but she felt their connection draw itself in an invisible strand, like a spider spinning silk. “I mean it.”

“I know. You stay warm,” he said, and then he backed out of the car and was swallowed by the storm.

TONY Maybe God’s Just a Kid

1

THEY WORKED BY flashlight, having set three flameless flares Eric had found in the Ski-Doo’s cargo bin at equally spaced intervals along the road. The flares had a weird kind of bulb Tony had never heard of—LED?—but gave off a lot of light, maybe even more than flares you lit with strikers. A good thing Eric was prepared, too. Of the two measly flares Tony had dug out of the Camry’s trunk, one was useless, the paper corroded and the powder inside dribbling out, which Eric said was probably magnesium and explosive when exposed to water. That had spooked him so bad, Tony didn’t dare strike the second flare and, instead, just tucked it in a coat pocket. Probably just as well; with all that spilled gas from the van—and how much had that thing held, anyway?—strike a match or light a flare, and they might end up barbecued.

After three minutes of shoveling, he was puffing; by ten, his muscles screamed. He kept hoping the work would dull him out, but Tony’s mind just wouldn’t quit. How had Rima known about his mother? How could she?

Almost a year gone by and his mother’s death still felt like a slow nightmare, the kind where you’re running in place from a monster with a million eyes, spiky teeth, and a zillion tentacles. Tony got so he hated mornings, because that meant one more day watching his mother get eaten up alive. Lung cancer gutted her, chewed her up inside, until she was nothing more than a papery husk of skin stitched over brittle bone. She reeked: an eye-watering fog of rot and shit and sour vomit. Whenever she coughed, he kept expecting bloody hunks of gnawed lung or liver or intestine to come flying out of her mouth. She always wanted a kiss, too. He couldn’t say no; he wasn’t a monster; he loved her. Yet no matter how much he washed his teeth afterward, her taste stayed with him. Got so bad he wanted to rip off his lips, tear out his tongue. Forget food.

Come to think of it, wasn’t that when he’d started in with the horror comics, the Lovecraft? Yeah, had to be, because that’s when he’d brought home the Twisted Tales Casey had been thumbing through, and Tony knew that because of what happened when his preacher-dad got on him to make time for God. The second story in the comic was about a platoon fighting off this giant rat, only the soldiers turned out to be toys. So when his dad started in, Tony showed him the story: Dad, you ever stop to think that maybe God’s just a kid and we’re the dolls? That shut his dad up good.

His mom finally, finally died a week before Christmas. As soon as the principal showed up in his chem class, Tony knew. He’d driven home, taking it as slowly as he could. There would be people at the house: the deacon and pastor, probably a gaggle of church auxiliary ladies trying to find room in the freezer for the ten trillion casseroles sure to turn up. Would his mother still be there? Or would they have taken her to the funeral home already? He hoped they had. He didn’t need to say good-bye. Her dying had been the longest good-bye of his life.

On the way, he passed a burger place, and he was suddenly, inexplicably starved. So he pulled in. Ten o’clock in the morning, and he couldn’t cram in the onion rings fast enough.

Three blocks from home, he pulled over just in time to vomit everything into the gutter. He vomited so hard, and for so long, that he thought his stomach would fly out of his mouth and land with a squishy splat. When he finally lurched into the house, which reeked of Kraft macaroni and cheese, his father was too deep into his own grief to ask Tony where he’d been, and Tony saw no reason to volunteer.

For the next two weeks, he endured meaningful looks, mournful sighs, and a steady stream of people who were just so sorry. The church ladies brought over so much tuna fish casserole he kept expecting his shit to squirm with cheesy noodles.

But his mother was gone. No viewing, no open casket. He never saw her again, and he was so frigging relieved, he knew God would hate him forever.

Now, here was proof. There was a dead girl out there. His car was useless. They were stuck in the snow, far away from anyone who might help them.

And now Rima had touched him and stroked the nightmare to life.

2

NEARLY AN HOUR later, they were done. Tony was drenched in sweat, but now that he’d stopped moving, he could feel his clothes stiffening as his sweat began to freeze. “Let’s go back and crank on some heat. Then we can deal with the sled.”

“Fine with me.” Steam rose from Casey’s watch cap in curls, which the wind shredded. “What about the van?”

Tony tossed a glance over his shoulder toward the general direction of the spruce grove. Maybe fifty, sixty yards, and nothing to see, not even the suggestion of trees. Slogging through the deep snow would be a complete hassle, and he was tired, scared, and not exactly thrilled with the idea of rooting around a dead girl. Yet he had promised, and it wasn’t as if Rima didn’t have a good point about food. Tony turned the flashlight back to study the trail they’d broken through the snow and all around the Camry. Their tracks were already filling, an inch of new snow dusted the hood, and the wind had thrown two or three more inches onto the trunk. If this kept up, they might be at this all night. Wait too long and digging out the van could take hours.

“I’ll check it out. Take me fifteen minutes,” he said. “You get warm.”

With the balaclava, Casey’s face held about as much expression as Jason’s, only Jason’s hockey mask was white. “If we can’t see the van, you won’t be able to see us.”

“I’ll look every couple yards and make sure I still can, okay? If I lose you, I won’t go any further.”

“Whatever,” Casey said, already turning away. “Your funeral.”

ERIC Devil Dog

1

SHE’D LOST HER gloves somewhere along the way, so Eric had taken Emma’s icy hands and thrust them beneath his parka. Body heat, he’d explained; keep them out of the wind. Her hands were still there, but warm now, her long fingers laced over his stomach. Her chest spooned his back. Eric liked how that felt—as if her touch was a kind of promise.

Emma’s voice fizzed through his headset, “What are you thinking?”

About how good you feel. How I like that we kind of fit together. How I think we could talk about things. “I’m thinking it’s weird,” he said, swiping a thin rime of fresh snow from his plastic visor. Thank God, he’d found the faceplate before he and Casey ventured into the valley. With this wind and cold, driving the sled without one would’ve been impossible. At bare minimum, his nose would have fallen off, and he’d be looking at some serious frostbite.

“Yeah, me too,” she said. “Something’s … off. You know?”

She was right. The turnoff Tony and Rima described was a half mile back of the wreck. There’d been tire tracks, but the storm reduced their speed to a crawl, and eventually, the tracks were no more than suggestions. They’d been about to turn back when Emma spied a slight silver smudge in the distance that grew brighter and more distinct as they approached, still using the truck’s tracks as a guide. Fifteen miles from the turnoff, those furrows took a sharp dogleg left at a mailbox nailed to a post and so lathered with snow they couldn’t make out the name. Eric didn’t care. A mailbox meant a house, and that meant people.

The driveway was long. Two miles and change, according to Eric’s odometer, which was … a little odd, but people did like to spread out in the country. Then the silver smudge suddenly resolved to an actual light—and became a farm.

But there’s something really strange about this setup. Through a slant of driving snow, Eric eyed the truck, which had been pulled right up to the house’s front stoop. The truck was 1970s-ancient: a burnt-red Dodge D200 two-door pickup with a crew cab. Someone—two guys, judging from the size of the prints—had driven up, swung out, and taken the steps, and not all that long ago. The footprints were filling in, but Eric still made out the treads. Only a thin white mantle of snow glazed the Dodge’s windows and hood.

“Wyoming plates,” Emma said. “I can tell from the bucking bronco on the left. Read it in a book somewhere.”

“Yeah?” At her tone, he craned his head over his shoulder. They were close enough that their helmets bumped. “You say that as if it means something.”

Instead of replying, she swung off the Skandic and waded against the driving snow and through thigh-high drifts to the Dodge. The wind snatched Tony’s space blanket, pulling it out behind her like a flag made of aluminum foil. “What are you doing?” he called. Dismounting, he slogged against the suck and grab of the snow at his calves. He watched as she crouched to swipe the Dodge’s front plate, which was a brighter red than the car, with raised white reflective letters and numbers.

“Sixty-seven,” she said, tracing with an index finger. “See? Stamped in the upper right-hand corner.”

Hunkering down beside her, he studied the plate a second, then shrugged. “Okay. So?”

“So … does that mean the year the plate was issued? Because that would be weird, wouldn’t it?” She looked at him, the legs of a furry blood-tarantula staining her bandage as it bunched with her frown. “We always get a renewal sticker every year, not a new plate.”

“Do you guys have a vintage car?” When she shook her head, he said, “Well, that explains it, then. They’re probably vintage plates, like the truck.”

“Maybe, but don’t vintage cars have special plates? Like blue or something, and a different numbering system? This looks like a regular license.”

“Well, maybe it’s different in Wyoming than Wisconsin.” He waited a beat. “You want to tell me what’s eating you?”

“What’s eating me?” Grunting a humorless laugh that was mainly air, she pushed to a stand. “You mean, more than everything else tonight?” She shivered and pulled Tony’s space blanket tighter around her shoulders. “I don’t know … it’s just”—she turned a look from the truck to the house—“this feels … off. I know I keep saying that, but it’s not right, Eric. I just can’t put my finger on what it is, though.”

He stood, wincing a little as his knees complained. “Everything looks weird at night. Plus, we’re in a storm, and you’re hurt.” The urge to comfort her, pull her into a hug, was very strong, and he throttled it back. “A lot’s happened, Emma. You crashed. You lost a friend. I don’t know about you, but when my day started, I sure didn’t see myself ending up here.” If anything, his day had started out even worse. As spooked and worried as he was … I actually feel better here. A crazy thought. He looked down at her face, so ghostly white and pinched with cold. I feel better here, with her, than I have with anyone anywhere else in as long as I can remember.

“Yeah, you can say that again.” Her eyes shimmered, and she looked askance. Even with that thick screen of snow, he saw her jaw clench. “I know all that,” she said, meeting his eyes again. She pulled herself straighter. “But that’s not what I mean. Look at the truck, Eric. It’s barely covered. All this snow, but it’s like it just got here.”

“Well …” He threw the Dodge an uncertain look. “Maybe it did. Those guys’ tracks are only just now filling up.”

“But Eric, we’ve been on the sled for a long time, at least an hour, don’t you think? Long enough for the tracks on the road to almost disappear. And the crash …” She swallowed. “Eric, that happened a couple hours ago, right? The sled’s odometer says we’ve come a little more than fifteen miles. But the turnoff wasn’t that far back from the van where Tony said he and Rima lost the truck.”

“A half mile, yeah.” He saw what she was driving at. Even if it also took whoever drove it here an hour, that meant these guys should’ve been here for quite a while. The truck’s tracks hadn’t deviated. The driver hadn’t stopped or turned off somewhere else along the way. The way the snow was coming down, not only should the truck’s tire tracks up this long driveway have filled in, but that Dodge ought to be nearly invisible.

So how come we still see tracks? Why isn’t there more snow on this truck? On an impulse, he tugged off a glove and put his hand on the truck’s hood.

“Is it warm?” Emma asked.

“No,” he said, taking his hand back. The metal had leeched all the feeling, and he haahed a breath and shook his hand to push the blood into his fingers to warm them. Man, that was cold. Burned like a blowtorch. “But with barely any snow on it at all, it ought to be.”

“Right. That’s what I mean by off. Sounds crazy, but … it’s almost like the storm wanted to make sure we saw the tracks, this truck.” Emma inclined her head at the Skandic. “I mean, look at the sled. It’s already filling up.”

“Yeah,” he said, taking in the thickening layer of white on the sled’s seats and foot wells. Screwing his hand back into his glove, he studied the house, a two-story with a large wraparound porch, which reared up from a field of solid white. A glider, laden with snow, hung from chains to the right of the front door. More snow pillowed in hanging baskets suspended from hooks on either side of the porch steps. The porch light illuminated the front door in a spray of thin yellow light. The door was black, hemmed by sidelights of glowing pebbled glass. To the left, a large bay window fired a warmer, buttery yellow, and further back, a feeble glow spilled through a side window. Kitchen, maybe. The second story was completely dark.

“Somebody’s home for sure,” he said, wondering why that didn’t necessarily make him feel any better. His nerves were starting to hum with anxiety, and a creep of uneasiness slithered up his neck. “Must be the guys with the truck.”

“If they live here, then why do they have Wyoming plates?”

“Maybe they’re just visiting.”

“Then where are the other cars? Or trucks? This is a farm. Where is everything? Where are all the other machines?”

“Well, they wouldn’t leave them out in the snow. Maybe they store everything,” he said, turning from the house to look at the barn, which stood off to the right, maybe a good seventy, eighty yards away. A large spotlight, with the kind of shallow metal shade that looked a little like a flying saucer, surmounted a very tall pole in the very center of a wide-open space; fence posts marched to either side. The top rungs of a large corral were visible, but no animals had been out for some time. The snow was unbroken and very deep, and that barn, huge and hulking, felt deserted: an enormous hollow shell and nothing more.

“No equipment sheds,” Emma said, coming to stand beside him. “No silos. If you’ve got animals, you usually have a silo for grain. There aren’t any water troughs in that corral that I can see, and no equipment sheds. So maybe there are tractors or something in there, but I’ll bet there aren’t. Eric, this feels like someone’s idea of a farm, like a movie set.”

“Maybe it’s a hobby farm,” he said, and wasn’t sure he even convinced himself. Turning from the barn, he stared back at the house for a long moment, listening to the dull slap of snow on his helmet. “Whatever it is, we can’t stay out here.”

“I know.” Huffing out a breath, she shook snow from Tony’s space blanket. “I guess we knock.”

He didn’t want to, though he didn’t see a choice. “Stick close, okay? People in Wisconsin can be pretty strange.”

“Ed Gein,” she said.

“Lived on a farm,” he said.

“Jeffrey Dahmer didn’t.”

“But he should’ve.” He felt his mouth quirk into a lopsided grin. “Gein, Dahmer, Taliesin … it must be the water.”

“Yeah.” She gave him a strange look. “Must be.”

“Are you all right?”

“Just a headache.” Closing her eyes, she pinched the bridge of her nose. “Bad.”

“You hit your head pretty hard.”

She shook her head. “I’ve had headaches for a long time. I’m supposed to take medicine, but …” Her voice dribbled away.

The tug of his attraction—that insane urge to hold her—was so strong it hurt. He imagined removing that helmet, cupping her face in his hands, and then … “We need to get you inside. Hold up a sec.” Wading back to the Skandic, he lifted the seat, dug around in the storage box, and came up with Big Earl’s Glock. He felt her stare as he jammed the muzzle into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back. “When we go up there …”

“I know. Stay close.”

“I’m not kidding around. I mean it,” he said, almost angrily. “I don’t want you getting hurt worse than you already are.”

“Too late for that,” she said.

2

NO STORM DOOR, which was weird. No peephole and no doorbell either, just an old-fashioned brass knocker. Eric gave a couple quick raps. Waited a few seconds. Hammered the door with his fist. “Hello?”

“That did something,” Emma said, nodding toward the door.

Eric saw a swarm of darkening shadows in the pebbled sidelights as someone approached. A moment later, the knob rattled and the door swung open on a balloon of warm air scented with the unmistakable aroma of macaroni and cheese.

“Yeah?” The guy was maybe just a year or two older than Eric: not tall but compact, wiry, and lean as a whippet. Like the truck, his clothes were vintage, olive drab BDUs, although it looked like the kid had taken pretty good care of them. BODE was embroidered in dark blue letters on a subdued ribbon over his left breast pocket. Over the right was another ribbon: U.S. ARMY. From the SSI on the left shoulder, whoever had owned them back in the day had been Airborne, and 7th Cav. He recognized the subdued badge: that distinctive shield with its black diagonal stripe and silhouette of a horse’s head. The kid’s gaze flicked from Eric to linger on Emma. “What happened to you?”

“My friend and I were in a wreck,” Emma said, and then her voice wobbled a little. “Eric and his brother and two other people stopped to help, only their car’s stuck, so we followed your tracks and—”

“Whoa, you guys crashed?”

“Yeah.” Eric studied the guy another long second. Those BDUs were way out of regs. Pockets were a little strange, too. Slanted and a little big. The whole getup was like something a guy might wear in a chop shop, but the way the kid carried himself was … military. On the other hand, he was a newly minted Marine; what did he know? Maybe they did things differently in the Army, or the uniform belonged to a relative. “You Army?”

“What, the uniform give it away?”

He pushed past the sarcasm. “Seventh Cav?”

“C Company, Second Battalion, yeah.” The kid’s sky blue eyes narrowed. “So? You got a brother over there or something?”

“No. Just me … I mean, soon.” Eric stuck out his hand. “I’m Eric. Just finished basic at Parris.”

“Yeah? A devil dog? Hey, that’s cool.” Something in the guy’s face unknotted, and he grabbed Eric’s hand. “Bode. You got orders?”

Since killing my father? Well, not so much. He forced a grin. “Lejeune. I hear we’re going to ship out to Marja.”

“Where’s that?”

“Um … Helmand Province, I think.” At the kid’s puzzled expression, Eric said, “You know, Afghanistan.”

“Afghanistan.” Bode still looked mystified.

“Bode?” Another voice, drifting up from behind. “Who is it?”

“Got us a devil dog,” Bode said, and now Eric saw another kid, also military and in the same olive drab, about five feet back. A paper napkin was tucked at his neck. Bode said, “That’s Chad. We’re on leave. Chad, this is Eric and that’s—”

“Emma,” she said.

“Hey,” Chad said around macaroni and cheese. His face was narrow, his nose no more than a blade, and he was pretty twitchy, kind of wired. To Eric, he looked a bit like a small and very anxious rat. Chad swallowed, said, “So what’s going on? You guys broke down?” His nose wrinkled. “Man, what’d you guys do, take a bath in gas or something?” To Emma: “What are you wearing? You look like a baked potato.”

“Space blanket,” she said.

“What?” Bode and Chad tossed a glance, and then Bode said to Emma, “You mean, like one of those souvenir Apollo things? From Cape Kennedy?”

“What?” she asked. “You mean, Canaveral?”

“Naw,” Chad said. “They changed it. That’s the old name.”

“Say, can we come in?” Eric interrupted. “It’s really cold.”

“Ah sure, yeah, jeez.” Then Bode glanced past Eric’s shoulder. “Hey, look at that. It stopped snowing.”

“What?” Five seconds before, the blowing snow had been thick and driving. Now, no snow fell at all, not even the occasional solitary flake. Like someone turned it off. Eric stuck his hand beyond the porch railing. No snow. What—

A static burst, followed by a staccato buzz, sounded from his left-hand pocket, and he jumped. The walkie-talkie; Eric had forgotten about it.

“It can’t be them,” Emma said. “We’re too far away.”

“Those your friends?” Bode asked.

“Might be, but she’s right. They’re fifteen miles back,” Eric said.

“Radios sometimes travel better at night,” Bode said.

“Yeah.” The handset’s oversize antennae caught on the inside fabric of his pocket, and Eric fought to work it free. A hash of static and broken words crackled from the unit’s mechanical throat: mur … danger … bodies …

“Hey,” Bode said. “Sounds like you snagged the same police channel we—”

He broke off as Eric got the handset out just in time for them all to hear the scream.

TONY It’s a Mirror

TONY LOST THE Camry after ten yards, although Casey’s flashlight and the brighter crimson penumbras from the three flares were still visible. After five more yards, the snow swallowed the third and farthest flare; at twenty-five, more or less, the second disappeared. Casey’s flashlight dimmed, but Tony could still pick it out. As an experiment, he waved his flashlight over his head in a big arc. A few moments later, Casey’s light bobbed a reply. So far, so good.

He walked for what seemed like a very long time and until his face ached with cold. Clots of snow had gathered on his chest and shoulders, and his eyelashes dripped iced tears. Wow, had the van been this far? He didn’t think so. He turned to look back. Casey’s flashlight was gone, but the flare nearest the Camry still flickered, the pinprick of light as fuzzy as a red cotton ball.

Okay, relax. So long as you see the flare, you’re still okay. But where was that stupid van? Fifteen more steps and he would call it—

His boot came down with a splash. Gasping, he jumped back as the smell came rolling up. Gas. Was that right? He aimed his flashlight, and frowned. Gas pooled over the snow. He lifted a careful heel, eyeing how the gas slopped and rippled around his boots. Deep. This can’t be right; no car holds this much gasoline. You’d need a tanker truck for it to have leaked this much.

Even so, that the gas was still liquid was wrong, too. Shouldn’t the gas have seeped into the snow, or …

Wait a minute. He shuffled, felt his boots skate and slide as the ripples expanded in ever-wider circles. That wasn’t snow under the gas. It was ice, as smooth and featureless as silvered glass. Beneath his feet, his face wavered and swam, his reflection so perfect that he could see the swirl of snow haloing his head. It’s a mirror.

“That is too weird,” he said, just to hear himself. His heart was suddenly thumping. “This has to be an optical illusion or something. You can’t make a mirror out of ice. It’s just … I don’t know … compacted snow and gasoline and …” He stopped. Never a whiz at chemistry or science, even he knew that made no sense.

Yeah, but then what is this? Flexing his knees, he pushed off on his toes with a little hop. His boots splished, the gasoline sloshed, but the mirror-ice didn’t give or crack. He’d stirred something up, though. As he watched, a gelid veil smoked from the pool in thick, white tongues. Mystified, he swept a hand through the mist, watched as his palm cleaved the suddenly nacreous air. Where his hand touched, there was a slight give, a webby stickiness that reminded him of pushing through musty cobwebs down cellar.

This wasn’t right. A creeping uneasiness slithered up his spine. The curtain of fog was rising, not lifting from the ice so much as growing. He aimed the spear of his flashlight straight up. The light didn’t penetrate more than a few feet before the smoking mist swallowed it whole. The beam’s color was off, too: not blue-white but a ruddy orange, like old blood. Yet he saw enough.

The fog was moving: not dissipating or being swept away by the wind but weaving and knitting itself together over his head. The fog was walling him in.

Oh boy. His mouth went desert-dry. He should … yeah, he should really get out of here. The fumes were thickening, dragging over his face in cloying fingers that worked into his nose and down to his throat to worm into his lungs.

Which way? He turned a wild circle, but the fog gobbled up his light. The air was getting worse, too. He tried pulling in thin sips, but the tickle at the back of his throat became an itch, then a scratch, and then he was coughing and couldn’t stop. He felt his throat closing even as his mouth filled with spit. Something squirmed in his throat, like maybe there was an animal with furry legs and sharp claws crawling around in there.

Crazy, that’s cra—

Something ripped behind his ribs, as if the blade of a hot knife had suddenly sliced through muscle and bone. Grunting, he clutched at his chest, felt the boil of something clenching, bunching. God, there was something inside him! This was like his mother, the way she clawed at her chest.

Can’t … can’t breathe. His fingers raked his throat, scored his flesh. No air … can’t … got to get out, get out, get—

A hand slid onto his shoulder.

CASEY This Is Creepy

“CASEY, IT WAS fifteen minutes a half hour ago,” Rima said.

“Tell you what,” Casey said. “You’re so worried, you go.”

“We should both go.”

“Why? So we can all get lost and freeze to death? Tony might have gone around to the other side of the van. That would block the flashlight. He could be turned around, facing the other way. We wouldn’t see the flashlight then either.”

“But he signaled us every couple of minutes before you lost him.”

“I didn’t lose him.”

“God, would you stop? I’m not blaming you. All I’m saying is there’s been nothing for a long time. We should see him coming back at least.”

This was probably true. Maybe too much glare? Casey thumbed off his flashlight, then pressed his face against the icy slab of window glass. Nothing to see. He chewed on his lower lip. Maybe they should go. “Do you remember if Tony had a rope or extension cord or, I don’t know, something we can tie off to the car?”

“He wouldn’t have anything long enough to reach the van.”

“I know that,” Casey said, impatiently. “But if we can extend our reach, get away from the car a good fifty feet or so, then one of us can keep going with the flashlight, right? The other one hangs back and yells.”

“Oh, right,” she said. “Sorry. That’s a good idea, Casey.”

He knew that. “So was there anything?”

“I don’t remember. Maybe we should check your sled?”

He should’ve thought of that. He was pretty sure he had chains and a couple bungee cords. Popping his door, he flicked on his flashlight, almost climbed out, but then remembered those stupid locks. Reaching over the front seat, he yanked the keys, pocketed them—and frowned. Ducking out of the car again, he sniffed. “You smell that?”

“Yeah.” She was looking at him across the Camry’s snow-silted roof. “That’s—”

“Gas.” He faced the direction where the van lay. “I didn’t smell it before.”

“Maybe the wind changed direction?”

“No, I—” And that’s when it hit him. “It’s stopped snowing. There’s no wind.”

Rima turned her face to the black, featureless bowl of night sky. “Can that happen? I mean, all of a sudden like that?”

How should he know? Did he look like he worked for The Weather Channel? But she’s right; this is creepy. No wind, no snow. Like someone hit a switch or turned off the spigot. If anything, the air was much colder now, and heavier somehow. “Come on,” he said, then stopped as his boot came down with a small splish. “Hey, what …”

Whatever else he would’ve said died right then and there.

Because from the darkness came a scream.

TONY She Has to Be Here

TONY WHIRLED, THE flashlight tumbling from his hand to fly into the fog. The night came slamming down as he backpedaled, his feet slipping, his balance finally going. He went down like a rock. The impact was like wiping out on an ice rink: a solid, bone-rattling blow that drove the air from his lungs. Gasoline sheeted over his body; cold fuel slapped his face. His throat closed on a mouthful of gasoline, and then he was choking, his vision starting to speckle with black filaments. Ropy drool poured from his open mouth. His thoughts swirled in a swoon: Passing … out …

At the last possible second, the knotted muscles of his throat relaxed, and he pulled in a great, wrenching gasp. His chest throbbed; something inside there seemed to push. There was still gas in his mouth, too, and the fumes got him coughing again.

Someone out here. On the ice. With him. “Whooo?” The word rode on a breathy shriek. “Who’s … who’s th-there?”

No answer.

“C-C-Casey?”

No answer.

Oh God, oh God, I’m in so much trouble. With his flashlight gone, the night was inky and close. He couldn’t seem to pull in enough air. The fog’s webby fingers threaded up his nose and steamed into his brain, and then he was gasping as the fog squirmed into the space behind his eyes. His head went swimmy. The thinking part of his mind knew he was hyperventilating and only making things much worse, but he couldn’t help it. If he didn’t get out of this, if he couldn’t find his way back, he was going to faint, or freeze, or both.

He pushed to his feet and stood a moment, swaying, his pulse rabbiting through his veins. The fog was thick, but the flares showed through the storm, right? So, it stood to reason that if he could just get a little closer to his car, he ought to pick one out. From there, it was a cakewalk. All he had to do was get himself pointed the right way. Put the van at his back, and he was set.

He shuffled forward, pushing through the fog, the gasoline slopping and gurgling around his boots. After twenty steps, he still hadn’t found the van and panic started to bleed into his chest again. Where could it—

Bam! A bomb went off in his face, right between his eyes, and he screamed with pain. Blood flooded his mouth, then spurted from his broken nose in a great spume, and he simply dropped in a sodden heap. He couldn’t get up. Everything hurt, even his hair. Blindly, he put out a gloved hand, felt an upside-down door handle. In his terror, he’d run right into the van. Which side? He slid his hand down a bit then felt his glove sink into something soft and flaccid. “Ahhh,” he said, the sound coming out as a thick half-moan, half-scream. He must be at the passenger’s side window and that dead girl. Then his brain caught up to what his hands, even through gloves, had already registered.

There was the coat, yes. But …

No. He thought back to that slithering touch, and a swell of terror flooded his chest. No, no, she has to be here; she’s dead, she’s dead, she—

Over the thunder of his heart, Tony heard something new.

A single …

lonely …

splash.

TONY Get Up, or You’re Dead

TONY FROZE.

Behind him. Someone there. Not Casey or Rima; he knew that. They would’ve called out. Even with the fog, he ought to see a little light, but—

Splash.

God, what was that? He felt the scream boiling on his tongue. That wasn’t an animal. No animal in its right mind would be out here, in the cold and dark, just hanging around, waiting for a dumb, stupid kid to bumble—

Splash.

Get up. Every hair on his head stood on end. Get up, or you’re dead. Get up, or it will find you. Get up, run, do something, get up!

But he did not get up. He couldn’t. Instead, Tony shrank, shivering, against the van, his nose still dripping blood, which was beginning to freeze to his chin.

Splash. Pause. Slosh.

The handset. He had the walkie-talkie. He could call for help. Call someone.

Slosh.

Eric can’t help. He’s probably too far away. I’m all alone out here and— Another splish, and now the lake of gasoline rippled and broke against his legs. Getting closer, coming right for me. He had to do something, do something.

Slosh. Splish.

He eased the handset from his pocket.

Splash. Pause. Splash-splash.

He brought the handset to his mouth.

Sploosh.

“Help.” His voice was so low, so small, there was almost no sound at all. “Help, help me.”

Splash-splash …

“Help,” he said, louder now. “Help me. Somebody, help!”

SPLASH-SLOSH-SPLASH …

“No!” Tony shouted. He stared in horror as the blackness gathered and folded and formed shadows in the dark: something monstrous and denser than the night, and it was right there, it was right there, it was right—

“HELP ME!” Tony shrieked. “HELP ME, SOMEBODY HELP—”

CASEY Full Fathom Five

“CASEY!” RIMA GASPED. “That was Tony!”

“I know.” The words felt thin in his mouth, like flat letters on white paper. “I can’t see …”

“HELLLP!” Tony’s shriek tore through the night. “PLEASE HELP ME!”

“Tony!” Rima floundered around the hood, and that was when Casey heard not the shush of snow but a splash.

Water? He sniffed, and then his eyes widened. “Hey, do you smell that?”

“What are you …” She stopped moving and looked down, then shuffled her feet. Casey heard the slap and gurgle of liquid against the Camry’s metal chassis. “Gasoline?” she said. “But where did it come from? The van? How? The van couldn’t possibly hold that much.”

“I don’t know,” he said. Even if you factored in a rupture in the Camry’s tank, that wouldn’t explain this. “Look, I think we need to take a second here and …”

Another shriek from Tony, agonized and shrill, and then Rima was sloshing away from the car: “Tony! Tony, we’re—”

“No!” Casey’s arm pistoned out; his fist closed around her arm. “Don’t! Wait!” He heard her gasp and felt her go rigid. “What?” he said.

“Let me go!” And then she was shrieking, batting at him, like she’d completely lost it: “Let me go, let me go!” Flailing wildly, she tried twisting away. “Don’t touch me!”

“Rima!” Jesus, what was wrong with her? The girl was still screaming, and from across the ice, in the dark, Tony shrieked again: a drill bit of sound that cored into the meat of his brain, and God, all Casey wanted was for Tony to stop screaming and for this nutcase to stop hitting him. “Rima, stop, be quiet! You want whatever’s out there to find us, too?”

“Let go, let go!” In the light from his flashlight, he could see the cords standing in her neck and the glitter of an animal fear in her eyes. “Take your hands off!”

“Fine! Okay! There, you stupid …” As soon as he released her, she staggered, her feet tangling and slip-sliding. Without thinking, he reached for her again—to steady her, give her a hand; he was just trying to help, for God’s sake—but she aimed a kick, a goddamned kick.

“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked. “I told you not to touch me!”

“All right! Fine! Fall on your ass; I don’t give a shit!” Another blood-curdling scream from Tony set his teeth. “Just get back in the goddamned car!”

“What?” Rima was wild-eyed, her face drained of color. “No! Are you crazy? We have to help him!”

Was he crazy? “We can’t! What’s already happened has happened! We have to get inside, get off the snow!” Casey was already splashing back to the car. The gasoline fumes were starting to get to him; he could feel the burn in his throat. Breathing was hard, and his head ached. Lurching for the back door, he felt his boot suddenly skate, and he thought, Ice? Wait, what happened to the snow?

Another scream boiled from the darkness, but the sound was now much different: formless and queerly garbled, a drowning kid’s gurgle, and as liquid as this improbable lake of gasoline.

I don’t want to know, I don’t want to see this. Desperate now: “Rima, we can’t help him. We can’t even see him!”

She still wasn’t moving, the idiot. “But we can’t just leave him.”

“Yes, we can, and I’m going,” Casey said, and then he was grabbing the handle of the back door before he remembered: locked. Damn stupid … He was shaking so bad he couldn’t sock the key into the lock, had to hold it with both hands. Come on, come on. He felt the key ram home, and then he was twisting the key, hauling back on the handle. The door opened with a shriek, the hinges crying out. He practically dove into the car. Craning round, he saw that Rima hadn’t moved.

Well, screw this shit, and screw her. He dragged the door closed with a hard thunk. The locks socked home, and only then did he allow himself a relieved sigh. Safe. Or as safe as he could be in this nightmare. Of course, if whatever was out there came for them, he wasn’t so sure about that either. Car windows broke, didn’t they? You’d have to be one strong mother to do it, but a rock, a hammer, a stout piece of pipe, and then he was screwed. Man, what he wouldn’t give for a weapon.

Outside, Rima was a murky silhouette, still as a statue. Fine, let her die out here; he wasn’t risking his ass for a guy he’d just met. What was he supposed to do, anyway? Throw snowballs? Spit? God, his head was killing him from all those fumes. The metal box of the car muted Tony’s screams, so they were only bad and not bone-chilling, as if he were listening to a horror movie leaking from a distant television—but that was still plenty horrible enough.

Shut up, Tony. Casey squeezed his eyes tight. The taste of gasoline furred his tongue. Swallowing made him gag. Saliva pooled, and he spat, trying to rid himself of the taste. Shut up, Tony. Shut up, and die already if you’re going to, but shut the f— He let out a startled yelp at a sharp bap on the window behind his head. Turning, he saw Rima at the door. “What?” he shouted. “What do you want now?”

“Open up!” Rima’s fist hammered the window again. Even in the gloom, her eyes were bright and raw with terror. “Casey, please, open the door! Something’s coming! Quick, open the door!”

Oh, so now she wanted in. Fine, fine, crazy stupid bitch … Still fuming, he reached for the lock, no real thought behind it at all, only reflex, and then Big Earl, who’d been so quiet, boomed, What the hell you doing, boy?

“What?” He hesitated, his fingers hovering in midair, twitching a little like the legs of a spider. “I’m … I’m letting her in.” Thinking, I’m talking to a dead man. I’m having an argument with a ghost.

What the hell for? You lost what little sense you had? It wasn’t just that Big Earl was huge in his head. Casey felt the big man’s phantom arms crush his ribs, drive the breath from his chest. She made her bed. She had her chance.

“Casey!” Rima slammed both palms against the window, hard enough that he felt the jolt in his legs. “Please! Don’t leave me out here!”

“I … Dad, no … I have to h-help …” His hand wouldn’t obey. What was wrong with him? It was as if he were a robot whose circuits had frozen. “Can’t l-leave her to d-die out there. What if there really is s-something …?”

This is your problem. You think Eric thought about anything other than getting rid of me? You think he didn’t mean it? Big Earl oozed contempt. He might have killed me, but at least he had the guts to do what needed doing.

“S-stop comparing me to him.” A lick of anger, but his skin was suddenly pebbly with gooseflesh as a dark chill rippled through his veins. What’s wrong with my hand? Then, another and much stranger thought: Is it mine? “I’m my own p-person. I can handle m-myself.”

“Casey!” Rima pounded again. “Open the door!”

Then be a man.

This was the problem with being Big Earl’s son: you hop-skipped right over being a kid. True, he didn’t particularly like Rima; he wasn’t going to put himself on the line for her. But opening the door was so simple. And it is the right thing to do. A man makes his own decisions, too. So why did his hand refuse to move? “Dad, she just n-needs to—”

You giving me lip? You saying no to me?

“N-no, sir … I m-mean …”

Spit it out, boy.

“You’re … you’re d-dead,” Casey stammered. Whatever held him in place, was wrapped around his body, tightened its grip, like the muscular arms of a gigantic octopus. His ribs felt brittle as crackle-ice. His chest didn’t want to move. “Why … h-how can I still be h-hearing you? P-please, I h-have to open the d-door, just l-let me …”

You have to listen to me, boy.

“Casey!” Rima pleaded. “Please, listen, Casey, please!”

“I …” He couldn’t make his lungs work. “Dad, n-no, I n-need …”

I’ll show you what you need. His father’s voice sizzled in his blood. Take you down a peg.

“N-no, Dad,” he gasped, thinking to his hand: Move, move! Hurry, unlock the door, unlock the door! “S-stop. Just l-let me …”

And that was when he saw his hand … glimmer.

“Ah!” he screamed as the skin rippled and wavered as if underwater. Everything around him—the sense of the car seat beneath him, Rima’s terrified shouts, even the numbing cold—suddenly dropped out, as if the soundtrack to this movie had hit a glitch. There was only his hand, which was trying to deform and shift, growing larger, rougher, thicker, and cracked with calluses. Tufts of hair sprouted over the knuckles. It was as if his hand had slid into Big Earl’s skin. Or maybe Big Earl was only turning him inside out the way you shucked a messy glove and what he now saw was what lay beneath.

Or he’s in my blood, eating his way out. This couldn’t be real. Dizzy with horror, he watched as Big Earl’s hand jerked away from the lock.

“N-no.” A sudden cold sweat slimed his neck and upper lip. “Puh-please, d-don’t. Stop, s-stop!” He could hear his breath hissing from between clenched teeth, feel the shudder in his biceps as he tried fighting back, to make Big Earl’s hand obey, to stop moving, to stop …

Casey slapped himself, very hard: a stunning blow, an open-palm crack as sharp as a gunshot. A cry jumped off his tongue. There was a wink of pain as his teeth cut his cheek. Very faintly, above the thunder of his blood, he heard Rima shout: “No, Casey, stop! Don’t let him—”

“H-help,” he panted, his mouth filling with salt and rust. His voice sounded so small, almost not there at all. “E-Eric, help, someone, please …” And then his hand—his father’s hand—was a fist, and Casey couldn’t fight it. He could feel his will draining away, the numb acceptance of a beaten dog, which he knew too well because he’d been here so many times before: kneeling, watching Big Earl advance with that switch, his fist, a belt, and knowing that running only made things a hundred times worse.

He hit himself again and again and again, and all those books had it totally wrong: there was no numbing, no going away, no mental click so he could float above and let this happen to that boy-shaped punching bag. He felt this, each and every blow, right into his teeth, his bones. With every punch, he heard his breath come in a grunt—ugh, ugh, ugh—as his head whipped to the side, snapping on the stalk of his neck. He could feel the skin tear over his cheek, and there was now blood on his chin, down his throat, and then his vision was blacking as he kept beating himself, Big Earl bellowing with every blow: You want help, you want help, you want—

“Listen to me! You’re Casey!” Rima was right up against the glass, even as Big Earl was still raging, but—impossibly—it was the arrow of her voice, sharp and true, that pierced his terror. “You are Eric’s brother; you are yourself; you are Casey, and Casey would open the door! Do it, Casey! Please, don’t let me die out here. Open the door, Casey; fight him and do it now, do it now, do it—”

I’m Casey. He grabbed desperately at the thought. I’m Eric’s brother—

No, you are mine, boy. Big Earl was huge in his head. You are my blood, you are—

“Casey, fight this!” Rima shouted through glass. “You are your own person!”

Mine, boy! You’re mine and I’ll make a man of you—

“No one makes me! I’m Casey!” Roaring, he drove his fist forward, hard and fast, throwing all his weight into a blow he aimed not for his face but the window. Through a haze of pain and tears, he saw Rima start back, and then he screamed as a bomb of white-hot pain erupted at the moment of impact, streaming through his bones to ball in his shoulder. He felt the skin over his knuckles tear, and now there was blood smeared on the window, and more dripping from his hand—but, he saw, it was his hand once more, his.

And Rima knew … Somehow she knew, but how? No time to wonder. In a few moments, he thought he might not care, because he could feel that one weird rocket of strength ebbing and Big Earl still there, this hulking presence at the edge of his mind, withdrawing, yes, but only as a grudging wave does from the shore: so far, and no further, because the ocean is remorseless and eternal—and it would be easy, so easy to stop fighting, to let Earl swamp him, drown him. It was only a matter of time anyway, wasn’t it? Big Earl was strong—he always had been—and Casey was nothing but a kid, a runt, another mouth to feed, a miserable excuse for a son who would never amount to—

Do it, Casey. Already, he could feel the silver sliver of himself, a Casey that he recognized, going dark, starting to slide away, being pulled under full fathom five. Do it, Casey! Do it now, open the door, save her while you still can and before he comes back, before …

“Do it.” The words were clumsy in his torn mouth. Swallowing back blood, he pawed at the locks, his bloody fingers awkward, but the pain kept him focused a few seconds more. There was a thunk as the locks disengaged. In the next second, Rima was scrambling inside on a wash of frigid air, another scream from Tony, and the stink of gasoline.

“Something’s coming.” Her voice was thin and tight. She wrestled with the handle, her hands in their wool gloves slipping over bare metal as she muscled the door shut. “Something’s out there!”

“What? How close?” Still panting, Casey brought his good fist down on the master lock, then felt around for the flashlight. Thumbing it on, he worked his aching jaw, grimacing at a lancet of pain. His cheek was already swelling, going to be a hell of a bruise, and someone tell him just why had he risked his neck for this girl; why had he been hitting himself? You’re going as crazy as she is. Sucking blood from his torn knuckles, he spat out copper and a gasoline fug. “Did you get a look at it?”

“No. But I heard it. It’s … big, and Tony …” Her back was rigid, and she seemed to be quite careful to keep some distance between them. She flicked him a quick glance, her eyes raking his face, lingering on his jaw. “Listen, Casey, what just happened to you, I—”

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sudden movement, and then something flew into the car, smacking the metal shell with a meaty thud. Startled, Casey jerked his flashlight to the window—and screamed.

“Tony!” Rima shrieked. “Tony!”

ERIC A Night Coming On Fast

ON THE PORCH, as that horrible scream went on and on, they all stared at the handset he held in a death grip. Before the shriek had even fully died, Eric was shouting into the unit: “What’s happening, what’s happening? Tony? Casey? Casey?”

“Jesus,” said Bode.

All the reply he got was the scream again, louder and so full of terror, Eric felt the sound working its way inside to ice his blood. Beside him, he heard Emma gasp.

“Eric,” she said. “Oh my God, that sounds like Tony.”

“Yeah, I know.” Heart pounding, he clicked off the handset’s volume and jammed the unit back into his parka. Whirling on his heel, he plunged down the porch steps. God, Casey, Casey! “Stay here, Emma, just stay here!”

“No! No, Eric, wait, wait!” Emma stumbled, the deep snow on the porch snagging her boots and dragging at Tony’s space blanket. Staggering, she clutched the railing before she could take a header. “Eric, you can’t go alone!”

“Emma.” He snatched up his helmet. “They’re in trouble, and I’m not staying here. My brother is out there!”

“And no one is saying you shouldn’t go.” Flinging off Tony’s space blanket, she floundered down the steps and grabbed his arm. “Of course you should. They need help, but so do you. It’s crazy for you to go alone. Let me come with you.”

“No way, Emma.” Tightening his helmet’s chin strap, he drilled her with a ferocious glare. “You’re already hurt.”

“But I can help. I’m fine. It’s just a hit to the head. Please, let me come with you.”

And here was the hell of it: he didn’t want to leave her. How can this be? We just met. Eric could feel the tug-of-war in his chest, the need to go a claw, the desire to stay a knife ripping at his heart. “Emma,” he said, exasperated. He grabbed his hand back before he could touch her, afraid that he’d give in to this new and raw emotion because what he wanted … what he needed … Swallowing around a sudden lump, he pushed back on the impulse to hold her close, crush his mouth to hers. What is this? Why do I feel this? What is this? It was the sort of thing you read in bad teen novels; he didn’t believe in this crap. The only person he’d loved in this world—ever—was Casey. But now there was this strange girl that he could imagine knowing better, wanted to be with … and he had no more time to wonder about this.

“Please,” he ground out, “please stay here. I need to know that you’re safe, and you won’t be if you come. I can’t help my brother if I have to worry about you, too.”

“I’m not a doll,” she said. “It’s not like I’m going to break.”

“But you’re not real fit to fight either.” It was the big kid in the olive drab BDUs, Bode. “It’s not a girlie thing. You look ready to chew nails, but you’re already kind of banged up.”

Eric saw her jaw set. “So you going with him?” Emma fired back. “Or are you just hassling me and going to let him walk into this on his own?”

“Emma, no,” Eric said, although he thought Bode was one kid he’d like to have with him in a fight. “It’s one thing to ask for help with a stuck car. Whatever’s going on out there, it’s not their fault, or their problem.”

“Yeah, what he said.” It was the twitchy, narrow-nosed guy, Chad, on the steps. “We don’t know what we’d be walking into.”

“And that’s a reason to do nothing?” Emma flung back. “You guys are soldiers, for God’s sake!”

“Gee, thanks for that intel. I was kind of wondering where I got these funky clothes. Now tell me something I don’t know,” Chad said. “Anyway, I’m on leave.”

“Yeah, but”—a swift sparrow of uncertainty flitted through the sky blue of Bode’s eyes—“come on, Chad. You really going to let this guy walk into God knows what by himself?”

“You know, guys, I don’t have time for this. I’m going,” Eric said, stabbing the sled’s ignition. He looked up as Emma stepped to block his way. “Emma!” he shouted over the engine’s throaty roar. He cranked the throttle, blasting out a loud vroom-vroom, but she wouldn’t budge. “Get out of the way. Move!”

“Not unless you take me with you!” she said.

Don’t you think I want to? Please listen to me; please let me protect you from whatever is out there. “You can’t help!”

“I know you’re trying to protect me,” she said, her words an eerie echo of his own. She covered his hand with hers. Her eyes were intent and so strange, with that one tiny golden flaw in her right eye and the rest such an alien cobalt blue it was as if he were staring into a night coming on fast. If you didn’t know better, you might think eyes like that existed only in dreams. “But I don’t want anything to happen to you either,” she said. “You shouldn’t go alone.”

“Man, she’s right.” Bode had come to stand next to her. “Never go into the field without someone to watch your back. Me and Chad will come.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Eric said, but with less force. Honestly, he didn’t want to walk into this alone; he only wanted Emma safe.

“Aw, Bode,” Chad said. “I don’t know.”

“Shut up, Chad, we’re going.” Bode dragged on a watch cap, then tugged a pair of gloves from his jacket. “Leave the sled, Devil Dog. We got chains for the Dodge, and we’re less exposed that way—more protection. You got a weapon?”

It was on the tip of his tongue to say no, but then he remembered. Eric cut the engine. As the sled died with a grumble, he reached under his parka to tug Big Earl’s pistol from the small of his back. “Just this.”

“Whoa.” Bode’s forehead crinkled. “Nice gun, but … they issuing Glocks these days?”

“No.” He saw that Emma was very still, but her eyes were wide, the question on her face practically a shout. He dodged his gaze back to Bode. “It was my dad’s,” he said.

“How many rounds?”

One less than it started the day with. Back at the cabin, everything had happened so fast, he hadn’t bothered to check. Knowing Big Earl, the clip would be full. Shucking the round in the chamber, he popped out the magazine. “Been fired once today already,” he said, wanting to kick himself for mentioning that and not looking at Emma at all but busying himself with thumbing in the bullet he’d shucked from the chamber into the clip. Butting the magazine back into place, he jacked the slide. “So, fourteen plus one.”

“Holy shit.” Chad’s eyebrows shot for his hairline. “That many?”

“Whoa.” This seemed to be Bode’s go-to. “That legal, Devil Dog?”

“Um … sure, my dad had …” He caught himself. “He bought it at some gun show.”

“That’s a lot of bullets,” Chad said.

Puzzled, Eric felt his eyebrows draw together. “It’s a Glock nineteen, standard fifteen-round mag. You can buy them all over. I’ve even seen them with that huge thirty-three-round clip.”

“Thirty-three?” Bode said.

“That’s it, man,” Chad said. “I got to get me one of those. Hell with that measly eight-shot Colt.”

“Huh.” Bode shook his head. “Well, nice as that is, best you leave that here with her. It’s only good close in anyway. More distance between us and the bad guys, the better.”

“Wait a minute.” Emma put her hands up in a warding-off gesture. “Get that thing away from me.”

“No, he’s right, Emma. You’ll be all alone here.” He proffered the weapon. “Come on, take the gun.”

“But I don’t know anything about guns. I mean, yeah, I’ve read about them …”

“What’s to know?” Bode said. “Only pick it up if you’re gonna use it. Glocks don’t got a safety, so just point and squeeze the trigger. Oh, and make sure you don’t shoot one of us.”

“Ha-ha,” Emma said. “No one’s shooting anybody.”

“Not yet,” Chad said, sourly.

“Some gook comes busting in,” Bode said, “you’ll have to.”

“What?” She shot Eric a mystified look. “What are you talking about?”

“The enemy, of course,” Chad said.

“Listen, if I’m leaving this behind, do you guys have weapons?” Eric said.

“In the house.” Bode hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Bolt-action rifle, shotgun. I think there’s something we can dig up for you, too. Give us two minutes to get our shit together, Devil Dog.” Wading back up the steps, Bode jerked his head at Chad. “Let’s go.”

Chad opened his mouth to say something, changed his mind, shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

When they were gone, Emma said, “Why can’t we all stay together?”

“I’m not having this discussion. Please, Emma, take the gun. If you don’t want to do it for yourself, do it for me. You don’t want anything to happen to me?” He extended the weapon, grip first. “Feeling’s mutual.”

Some emotion flashed through her pinched, anxious features. She nodded. “All right,” she said, although she looked as if she’d be happier to accept a python instead. “What do I do?”

“Keep the muzzle pointed at the ground. Don’t aim that thing at anyone unless you’re going to shoot. Other than that, there’s not much to it. There’s a round in the chamber. Like Bode said, there’s no safety, so be careful. You probably shouldn’t keep it in your pocket either. If you need it in a hurry, you don’t want it to hang up or snag. I’d carry it behind, tucked in your jeans around back, the way I did, all right?”

“Okay,” she said, awkwardly stiff-arming the weapon down and out to one side. “Just point and shoot, right?”

“That’s the size of it. But you got to loosen up. Here.” Stepping around, he fitted her back into his chest and reached down her arms to cup her hands and seat the gun. “Come on, ease up, you got a death grip on this thing. It’s not going to go off by itself.”

“Right. Sorry.” Working out her shoulders, she blew out in annoyance. “Like this?”

He felt the tension leak from her stance as she relaxed into him. “Yeah, good. But always keep your trigger finger outside the guard until you’re ready to shoot. Bend your knees a little, too, like this.” She wasn’t a small girl, but at six-two, he thought he had a good five inches on her. Stooping a little, he butted the points of his knees into the back of hers. “Bend … that’s good. And spread your feet … Excellent. See? Just like the movies.”

She exhaled a shaky laugh, then half-turned until he felt her cheek on his chin. “Wonder which one we’re in.”

Not one with a happily ever after, he thought, grimly. Not for me. When this was over, he’d have to turn himself in. It had been crazy to run, a panicked and brainless move, and that was no kind of life for Casey. But before that, he could save his brother, and keep Emma safe. Of course, when everything came out about Big Earl, she wouldn’t want to have anything to do with him. But I can do a few things right before then.

“This is important,” he said. If she turned her head just a little more … Idiot; stay sharp. He forced himself to pull his head back a little. “In the movies, they pump out those bullets really fast because they’re firing blanks. No kick, no climb; they never have to draw down again. But you’ll have to, okay? So aim for center mass. You have a much better chance of actually hitting someone that way. But that means you’ll have to wait until whoever’s coming is close. I know that’s scary, but …” His eyes scoured her face, and he knew that he really should let her go; she seemed to have figured out how to hold the weapon. But this moment may never come again. “You’ll have to bide your time, Emma, pick your shot. Okay?”

“I can do that.” She paused. “This is going to sound stupid, like one of those bad movies? But Eric … please be careful.”

“Yeah.” The voice came from the porch, and Eric looked up to see Chad, shotgun in hand, scuffing down the steps, with Bode just behind. “We will,” Chad said. “Thanks for your concern.”

In the wash of light spilling from the house, Eric saw Emma’s cheeks color as she stepped out of his arms and turned. “Eric, I mean it—”

There came a rolling boom, distant but unmistakable, and Eric knew: that was not thunder. He looked over at Bode and Chad. “We have to go, now.”

“Got that right.” Bode shot the bolt of his rifle. “Playing our song, man.”

Emma looked at Eric. “What was that?”

But it was Chad who answered. “Nothing real good.”

CASEY Where’s His Tongue?

“TONY!” RIMA CRIED. “Oh my God!”

Jesus. Casey felt all the air wick out of his throat. Tony was pressed against the glass, palms flat, fingers splayed, like a little kid peering into a toy store window. Tony’s face—what was left of it—was a macerated, staring mask of blood and skin, bone and muscle, grinning teeth with no lips and bulging eyes with very little flesh. When the boy opened his savaged mouth, more blood gushed, slick and steaming, to splash the glass.

No tongue, Casey thought, crazily. He hasn’t got a tongue. Where’s his tongue?

“EHHH EEE NNNN!” Tony gurgled. His smeary hands swarmed over the glass. “OHHHENNN UHHH, EHHH EEE NNN!”

“Tony! Let him in, Casey!” Rima tried reaching past to jab open the locks. “Hurry! Open up, and let him in, hurry!”

“NO! Don’t open it, don’t open it!” Before he knew what he was doing—no, no, that was a lie; he knew what he was doing, all right—Casey gave her a good one, a stinging backhanded swat. He pulled the slap at the last second; he didn’t want to knock her out, just stop her. The blow caught Rima on the forehead just above her left eye. He heard her gasp, and then she went sprawling, the back of her head thudding against the passenger’s side door. “Rima, damn it! Stop! We can’t help him!”

“What is wrong with you?” Tears were leaking from her eyes, and a thin trickle of blood inched down her jaw from where she’d bitten her lip. She put a trembling hand to her forehead, like a little girl who couldn’t believe that the parent she thought was so wonderful just five minutes ago could turn on a dime. “We would help you.”

“Then you’re stupid,” Casey said, flatly. “You’ve got a death wish. Getting ourselves killed won’t save him.”

“My God, what are you?” Her mouth worked like she wanted to spit. “How can you do this? Why are you letting him do this?”

“Him? What the hell are you—” He broke off at a sudden, wet, squeaking sound that reminded Casey of running his finger over the condensation of a bathroom mirror. He looked back to see Tony’s hands scrabbling over the glass like wet spiders, his bloody fingers trying to dig in but finding nothing to grab. At the sight, Casey’s stomach turned over.

Every man for himself, boy, Big Earl whispered. You’re doing the right thing. Don’t listen to her. Stay strong. Be a man.

No. But it was such a tiny thought, no more substantial than a soap bubble, and he could feel the crush of Big Earl’s enormous hand over his mind. This … Dad, it’s not right, it’s not—

He heard himself suck in a quick breath as the night beyond Tony, that awful black jam of shadows … moved.

“What is that?” Rima’s voice was a thin shriek. “Oh my God, what is that?”

I don’t know. He didn’t want to see this. Casey tried jerking his eyes away, but it was as if the same force that had controlled his hand was unfurling in the hollow of his skull, reaching fingers to grasp at his head and hold him fast so he couldn’t look anywhere else. It was exactly like the time Big Earl came home from the pound with a mutt. Casey had been … he couldn’t remember how old. A little kid. Ten? Twelve? He just didn’t know. But the dog, he remembered: a Heinz 57, tan with a white ruff and a delirious, stubby little tail that went wild as the dog jumped up to flick its wet pink tongue at Casey’s chin and try to lick his giggles.

Cut out that baby crap, Big Earl had snarled. Giving the rope knotted around the dog’s neck a hard yank, Big Earl had marched the animal into the woods behind their cabin. Reluctant now, the dread growing, Casey had trailed, wishing he were anywhere else.

It’s not a damn pet. I’m trying to teach you something here. Take this—his father thrust that wicked Glock into Casey’s hands—and kill that thing … NO. Clamping a hand over Casey’s head, Big Earl turned him back, the way you’d crank a hot water tap, when he tried backing up and looking away. Do it, you little pissant. Grow a couple, and be a man for once.

If he had been the man his father wanted, Casey should’ve shot the bastard dead, right then and there, and saved Eric and him all this trouble, these years of grief. But he was just a kid, and what Casey remembered was how everything inside just … stopped, the way that dog’s stubby tail suddenly stilled. The small animal had looked up at Big Earl and then to Casey, and then its dark eyes, so bright before, dulled—like it knew what would happen next.

Unlike the dog, though, Casey couldn’t look away from Tony and this horror show now. Because it was only human to stare at what should stay buried in nightmares; to gawk as a wolf brought down a deer and began to eat it alive. To play shoot-’em-up video games. Or was it that Big Earl simply wouldn’t let him turn away? Casey was no longer sure, and maybe that wasn’t important anymore.

Now, Casey couldn’t help but watch—horrified but, yes, breathless, excited—as a long muscular rope slithered from the blackness beyond to coil around Tony’s waist.

“No,” Rima said, broken. She pressed her knuckles to her mouth. “Tony.”

“OOOHHH!” Tony shrieked. His eyes were headlamps, white and round with terror. “OOOHHH!”

TONY A Thing with Eyes

THEY WERE THERE, they were right there. Open the door, open the—

“OOORRR!” Tony slapped at the window with fingers that were more bone than meat. With no tongue now, everything came out as mush, but they must see, they must know he needed help. Help me, help me, don’t let me die! Open the door, open the door, the door! “ORRR!”

Blood poured down his throat, and Tony choked, hacking out a brackish spray that tasted of salty copper mixed with the thick gag of gasoline. He could feel his life pumping from shredded arteries and veins, and a creeping cold spreading from his limbs toward his chest, rising for his head. He was dying; he was going to die out here.

Rima, help, help, don’t leave me, don’t leave me, don’t leave—

From somewhere close behind, the thing bellowed. His heart turned over. What was it, what was it? He could not see it; he had never had the chance, because there was only the dark, that strange fog that had contracted on itself, and then the cold slash of the night, and this thing’s claws and jaws and steaming, stinking breath that smelled of rot and bloat.

Then, through the blood-smeared window, he saw Rima’s face swim toward him, and he felt a bright flame of sudden hope. Yes, yes, open the door, let me in, please! But then he saw Casey push Rima away and … had Casey hit her?

Oh God, oh God … A suffocating drape of despair closed around his chest and stoppered his breath. Casey was going to leave him out here, let him die … Please. He slapped at the window again, hearing the high squeaky drag of thick blood over cold glass. Please let me in, please save me.

Then he felt it—the night, the fog, the monster; it was one and the same—gathering itself out there, closing in, moving. “Uhhh,” he moaned, “uhhh, eeesss …”

A thick, strong rope—no, an arm, a tentacle; what is this thing?—wormed around his middle.

No no no! “OHHH!” The scream bubbled from his mouth on a choking gout of fresh blood. He felt the rope tighten and bunch, the muscles tensing. “OHHH!”

With one savage jerk, it yanked him from the glass. Wailing, Tony hurtled backward, rocketing through the night like a yo-yo recalled by its owner at the twitch of a finger. The rope flicked, releasing him, and Tony let out another scream as he flew in a plunging arc. He crashed to the gas-slicked ice, like a large stone dropped into a still pond. A wide corona of gasoline shot up, then splashed back down to mingle with his blood.

Got to get away. He rolled to his stomach, his parka bunching around his middle. Oh God, I don’t want to die, please. He began a desperate, flopping wriggle, and he thought about worms trapped on the sidewalk after a hard rain. He had no idea where he was going, or how far he’d get, but if he could just get away, if it would stop hurting him …

Then, around the iron fist of his fear, he registered something hard digging into his belly—and remembered. There was something he could do. It would also be the very last thing he ever did.

No. For a second, everything stilled: the wild rampaging of his heart, the thrum of his blood, the breaths that hacked his throat. No, I can’t. God, don’t ask me to.

From not very far away, the thing let out a high, rusty shriek. He rolled onto his back, eyes bulging from their ruined sockets, straining to see, to make sense. My God, he didn’t even know what was out there, but it would unzip his skin with a single swipe of a claw. His guts would slosh onto the ice, and then it would hunker over him and feed. He might even be still alive when it did; he would die feeling it rip him to pieces. And there was nowhere to run, no place he could find to hide.

The thing screamed again, and he felt the dig at his middle and thought, Well, why the hell not? I’m going to die anyway. And God, was that too weird or what? A laugh boiled in his throat to tangle with a bloody sob. A year left before graduation, and he’d never even kissed a girl. How pathetic was that? But he remembered the moment he and Rima touched. Not love at first sight so much as a connection and, perhaps, a promise. Or maybe it was nothing more complicated than hope and a single kindness. Whatever it was, he knew: despite his fear, he could do it for her.

Groaning, he forced his shredded hand into his pocket, then willed his nerveless fingers to close. He had to move his whole shoulder to tug his hand free. He was starting to shake now, too—shock and pain and the cold and black terror so complete it was a wonder he was still alive. It took nearly all his strength just to twist off the cap. Once done, he leaned back on his elbows, panting, swallowing back blood, listening to the splash and slither as the thing crept closer …

Wait … He could hear his breath shuddering from his throat. Not yet …

And closer …

Please, God—he stifled a scream as ripples of gasoline broke against his legs—if you’re real, if you’re there, please help me, keep me alive just a little longer …

And now so close he heard the moist, fleshy smack-smack of its jaws …

Hang on, Tony. He could feel his mind trying to fall away in a final swoon, like a heavy boulder plunging from a cliff so high the drop was bottomless …

The slap-splash of its body heaving over the ice …

Focus. His heart was racing, frantically trying to pump what was no longer there. The shuddering was out of his control now, and he was cold, so cold … Stay with it. His ears sharpened on the soft plik-plik-plik of the last of his blood as it dripped into the larger lake of gasoline in which he lay. Don’t die yet, Tony. Stay alive a few more seconds.

And now he smelled it: more potent than the cloying reek of gasoline, this was a stink as dank and putrid as the moist carcass of a long-dead animal, so rotten that a single touch would rupture the thin membrane of papery skin to release a runny spume of green goo, yellow pus, a liquefied heart. The smell was, he realized, the reek steaming from his mother at the very end. It was the stink of the fog itself—his personal nightmare—and it was close now, right on top of him.

Now. He put everything he had into it, all that was left. With one shaky snap of his hands, he scraped the striker against the end of the flare. The flare bloomed to life in a sputtering, bright flame. The darkness peeled back in a black shriek; the fog parted, drawing aside like curtains; and what leapt from the night … what he saw …

Oh my God. His mind tilted, and he nearly lost his already failing grip on the flare. No, this can’t be happening. I read you, but you’re not real, you can’t be …

Then, a single, last memory: as he cringed on the strange mirror-ice, he remembered the feel of the fog’s fingers worming into his lungs, snagging his blood, walking his brain …

To find this? Because this was a monster he recognized. It was something he knew, and well, because he had thought it into being, this cancer that burrowed through his mother’s guts, on a dark stage in his mind.

It was a thing with eyes—with an insane sweep of a million myriad black and glittery eyes, a boil of writhing tentacles, a bristle of teeth, a swooning horror that even Lovecraft could never have survived thinking, much less writing—but it was here, it was here, it was on top on him, it was—

Tony didn’t have time for more than that. No time to think how such a nightmare could be, or how it had been plucked from his mind. No time for much of anything, in fact.

With the last of his strength, Tony thrust the sputtering flame into the thing’s bloody, gasoline-soaked maw and then

RIMA Don’t Look Back

IN THE CAMRY, with no screen of wind-driven snow to block her view, Rima saw it all: a quick, bright spark blooming in the dark, and then, for the briefest of instants, the brooding mass of something huge and monstrous.

What is that? She could feel her lungs forget how to work. Are those … are those arms? And then she put something else together: Tony had lit a flare. Oh my God … “Casey,” she said, urgently, “the—”

“The gas,” he finished for her. “Oh sh—”

The darkness broke apart in a fireball, a geyser of orange-yellow flame that shot toward the sky. The light was bright, worse than staring into the full round heat of the sun, and blistered her eyes. With a cry, she threw up her hands as the light seemed to sear its way into her brain—

And Tony was gone. Just like that. She knew it. She had his scarf, after all. One moment Tony was there, cupping her flesh in the most fleeting of whispers—and then not. Poof.

Wait, she thought, suddenly. That’s not how it usually hap—

There was another huge boom as the van exploded. This second fireball was eye-wateringly bright, and she saw the wreck’s mangled metal skeleton actually lift from the snow. Pieces rocketed into the air and then streamed down in blazing arcs just like those big firecrackers on the Fourth of July, the kind that blossomed in a thousand different directions. A flaming tire whizzed past the car; twisted bits of scorched metal rained in a hot shower.

“Oh shit, shit!” Scrambling over the front seat, Casey landed half on, half off the rear bench, then flung himself at the passenger’s side door. He gave the handle a ferocious yank, then cursed. “Rima, pop the locks! We got to get out! Come on, get out, get out of the car!”

She saw them coming now, too: flaming streamers of burning gasoline slithering toward them over the snow. No, not snow now: ice, odd and milky—but why wasn’t it melting? She watched in a kind of horrified paralysis as the greedy flames gobbled up distance and raced through the dark, heading right—

“Pop the locks!” Casey bawled. “Rima, pop the goddamned locks!”

With a gasp, Rima stretched, tripped the control, heard the ka-thunk of the locks, and then threw herself against the door. This time, the door flew open and she tumbled out. Casey was already there, scrambling to his feet.

“Come on,” he shouted, making a grab for her arm. “Come on, Rima! Run, run!”

Her flesh shrank from his touch, and she had to swallow back the scream that tried crawling past her teeth. But she knew what to expect now: that she would feel the ghost of Big Earl’s hard, meaty, callused hands instead of Casey’s because his father’s death-whisper, clinging to the flannel shirt, was that strong.

“Come on!” Casey cried, hauling her to her feet, and then he was churning through that lake of gasoline, dragging her along as they slipped and scrambled away from the car: two steps, four, six, ten …

Don’t look back. Rima dug in, willing herself to stay upright, feeling the treacherous ice trying to upend her. Don’t look back; run, run, ru—

The Camry blew.

The explosion was a fist between her shoulders, and Rima was suddenly airborne, flying over the snow on a gust of superheated air. The concussive force tossed her a good forty feet, and she had time to remember that weird, rock-hard ice and what something as solid as stone might do to a person smacking into it with such force. She had time to think, I’m dead.

Then she crashed—but not against the ice. Hurtling like a spent meteor, she bulleted into thick snow. She was not a big girl, or heavy, but the blast jammed her deep. Snow pillowed into her mouth and plugged her nostrils. Spluttering, she flailed, trying to fight her way back to the surface, but she was socked in tight.

In her parka, Taylor’s death-whisper shrieked with the terror that Rima felt explode in her chest. Her lungs were already burning from lack of air. A red haze blurred the margins of her vision. Out, out, she had to get out! But which way was up? How much air did she really have? Her heart galloped in her chest. She was cocooned so thoroughly, her parka bound her as tightly as a mummy’s wrappings. With Taylor twisting and squirming, the feeling was like being trapped in a gunnysack with a nest of snakes.

Completely disoriented, she swept her arms to either side, trying to scour out an air pocket. The snow in front of her face gave, and then there was space: not a lot, but more than before.

Okay, that’s good, come on, you can do this; you have to. Rima kept sweeping, doing the breaststroke over and over again. She felt the hollow grow from the size of a baseball to that of a basketball. There was also a little more air than before, because the snow wasn’t solid ice; there were air pockets and even slivers of space between flakes. She pulled in a thin breath and then another. The air was close, but she could breathe. Although her chest and arms and face were cold, heat palmed her calves. Must be fire from the explosion. So now she knew which way was up. Not good, not good … A sharp nail of panic scraped the back of her neck. If she felt heat on her leg, that meant …

My God, I’m upside down. My feet are above my head. I’m like a cork in a wine bottle.

But wait a minute, wait … I feel heat. That meant part of her—her legs, her boots—must be visible. Yeah, but someone had to be looking for her. Casey might be dead or in just as much trouble. If he wasn’t dead, well, she didn’t think that Big Earl would let Casey stick around.

She thought of that touch, the death-whisper that was Big Earl. Casey must be wearing something of his father’s. The parka? No, she thought it must be the shirt, that red-checked flannel she’d spied dragging over his knuckles earlier but that had seemed to retreat as the hours went by: a shirt that was first too big and now just right. Casey wouldn’t save her, because Big Earl wouldn’t give a damn. Any second now, those flames would die, and then, if Casey was still alive, she’d catch the muted cough of that snowmobile.

Wait! What was that? Had she heard something? She strained, her ears tingling. There was something there, I heard …

Something above her, beyond this prison of deadening snow … shuffled.

Her heart surged. Casey? Or maybe Eric and Emma had come back with help. She opened her mouth to shout—then clamped back, her throat closing down, as something else occurred to her.

The thing that killed Tony is gone. But what if there’s another? A shiver rippled down her spine. Oh God. Her chest was a sudden scream of pain, as if Taylor’s terrified death-whisper were trying to gnaw a hole through her skin and burrow itself deep inside to hide. But Rima could only wait, quivering, in a darkness that was growing thicker and more airless by the second—and it was a choice now, wasn’t it? Say nothing, do nothing, and she would suffocate. But something is there, it’s getting closer, it’s right on top of—

Something slithered around her ankle, and closed.