White Space

EMMA Remember Him

1

“IS ANYONE ELSE freaked out?” Bode’s voice was hushed, as if they’d crept into a cemetery or haunted house instead of onto the porch. The big boy hefted a stout leg from one of the kitchen chairs he and Eric had broken up for clubs. “Because I’m completely there, man,” he said.

“I hear that.” Letting out a long breath, Eric peered over at Emma. “You have any ideas?”

“Other than everything’s been swallowed up?” Huddled in her still-damp parka, Emma hunched her shoulders against a shiver of dread. “Not a clue.”

After storming upstairs and finding nothing in Lizzie’s room but the dollhouse and that scatter of toys, they’d swarmed out of the house to find that, once again, everything had changed. Now, the fog was everywhere: a solid white wall that hemmed the house in all the way around. No breaks. No thin spots at all.

She was also bothered by something else she hadn’t seen. Earlier, as the others bolted from Lizzie’s room, she’d paused, her eye falling on that box of porcelain dolls and the pile of six set off to one side. If we’re book-world characters, this almost makes sense. It would be like playing with Ariel from The Little Mermaid, or Frodo. Or a Captain Kirk action figure. At Holten Prep, there was this one guy who was so seriously obsessed with Stephen King, he snapped up a pair of Carrie action figures for a couple hundred bucks just this past year. She bet there were McDermott fans who did the same. So the dolls weren’t awful. What made them unusual was that they were porcelain. Glass.

And if she was right about what they were and represented … two were missing. Two dolls that should be there weren’t.

“What do you mean, it’s disappeared?” Casey’s skin was drawn down tight over his skull. Purple smudges formed half-moons in the hollows beneath his stormy eyes. Wound around his neck like a talisman was Rima’s scarf, which she’d left in the downstairs family room. “The barn’s got to be there. We’ve searched the whole house. The barn’s the only place left to look.”

“Then we got this huge problem, don’t we?” Bode waved his club at the fog, which hadn’t spilled onto the porch but simply stopped at the very edge. “That stuff’s pea soup. You could wander out five feet and get lost.”

Walling us in. The air was rich with that same metallic stink, too: crushed aluminum and wet copper. It was the smell of blood and this weird snow and the blackness down cellar. Everything that’s happened before keeps happening over and over again. Clamping her hands under her arms, she shivered, hugging herself harder. But I don’t understand what the point is.

“It’s daring us to come and get them,” Eric said, and she had the weirdest sense he’d somehow provided her with an answer. “Rima and Lizzie are insurance, that’s all.”

“Then why cover up the barn?” Bode asked. “Why make the fog worse?”

“Upping the ante. It’s another test.” Eric looked at her. “You said that everything you’ve done is preparation for the next step. What if this is it?”

“Crossing through the fog?” She frowned. “What kind of test would that be?” What he’d said also made her think of something else: what if House wasn’t all Lizzie’s mom, or even a healthy chunk? They’d assumed House was a safe haven. I’m missing something. “I guess I could try finding them with the cynosure and pulling them through?” She heard the question and made a face. “Somehow I don’t think that will work. I really think we’re supposed to do exactly what Lizzie wanted: go over there.”

“So can we stop talking and spouting theories that get us nowhere and just do something here for a change?” Casey’s voice hummed with frustration. “God, Lizzie was right. You guys are overthinking this! Come on, let’s just go!”

“Not so fast, kid.” Bode reached for Casey’s arm, but a single black glare from the younger boy, and Bode thrust his hand into a jacket pocket. “I know you’re hot to trot, and I don’t blame you. But we got to think this through. Remember: other characters … other people, have been here before,” Bode said, grimly. “Things haven’t turned out so great for them. If we’re walking into a fight, we need more and better weapons than the crap we’ve found so far.”

Crap was right. While the boys had been dismantling kitchen chairs for clubs, Emma had unearthed three flashlights, a lighter, and a packet of birthday candles (blue, of course). Toss in the box of fireplace matches and Eric’s Glock, and that was it for weapons. All the long guns—Bode’s rifle and shotgun, the shotgun Casey had retrieved from that church—were gone, left behind in the doomed truck. Not that it would’ve mattered, anyway, because they had no ammunition.

Emma watched as Eric stepped to the edge of the porch and looked down to where his snowmobile ought to be. A thoughtful expression drifted over his face. “What?” she asked.

“Got an idea. Wait a second.” Darting back into the house, he returned a few moments later with a can of Swiss Miss in one hand and the lacy curtains that had hung from the kitchen window bunched in the other.

“Hey, you want to kill someone,” Bode said, “you go for the Nestlé Quik.”

“Ha-ha.” But Eric was grinning.

“What’s the can for?” Casey asked.

“Gas,” Eric said. “There’s a siphon and an empty can in the rumble seat of the Skandic. Big Earl used to …” He stopped, his jaw hardening. “We always carry them, just in case. And there’s a whole quart of oil, too.”

“So what?”

“So we fill up this Swiss Miss can and maybe a couple more. The gas might come in handy.”

“Well, you and Emma are kind of walking gas tanks already,” Bode observed. “But yeah, I see where you’re going.”

“I don’t,” Casey said.

She did. “Fire. Bombs.”

“Bombs?” Casey gaped. “You mean, like Molotov cocktails?”

“Well, not exactly,” Eric said. “We don’t have the right bottles.”

“What about the peanut butter?” Emma said. “We could empty the jars.”

“For a Molotov?” Bode made a face. “Might work, but the mouths are really wide and you have to score the glass to get it to blow up right. We don’t have that kind of time anyway.”

“How do you guys know these things?” Casey asked.

“Books,” Eric and Emma said together.

“ ’Nam,” Bode said.

“Gas burns and so does oil.” Eric cocked his head back at the house. “Grab a couple sheets from the beds upstairs, tear some into strips to wind around these chair legs, soak ’em in oil, and then we have torches.”

“But we can’t see the snowmobile,” Bode pointed out. “The same thing you’re worried about with the barn could happen here. Get yourself turned around, might not find your way back.” He paused. “Or it could be like what went down in the truck.”

“The fog swallowing and then taking me somewhere? Possible, but I have a feeling this is the end of the line. Anyway, we know where the snowmobile was.” Eric held up the curtains. “Tie these together, make ourselves a rope, I’m good to go.”

“Not alone, you’re not. I’m coming with you.” When Eric opened his mouth to protest, Emma put up a warning hand. “Don’t even start. We’ve already seen what the fog can throw at us. There’s no telling what could come out of it. You can’t siphon and watch your back at the same time.”

“Emma, the chances of anything bad happening to me are small,” Eric argued. “I’m not trying to leave. I only want another weapon.”

“Which it may not want you to have.”

“You popping off shots in a whiteout—”

“Is a terrible idea,” she finished for him. “Promise, I won’t do that.”

“But I thought you didn’t like guns,” Bode said.

“And I still don’t.” She hefted a chair leg. “Let’s go.”

2

“KEEP TALKING.” ERIC was looping a last knot of lacy curtain around his middle. “It’ll keep me oriented. If I don’t answer, give me a chance to tug or something. If you don’t get anything, then you guys pull us back. Whatever you do”—he gave the knot a final yank—“for God’s sake, don’t let go.”

Bode tightened his grip on the very end of the makeshift rope. “We’re on it.”

“What do you want me to say?” Casey said, paying out lacy curtain from the coils in his hands.

“I don’t care.” Eric shuffled to the first step with Emma, one hand hooked into his waistband, a half step behind. “Sing. Tell jokes. Whatever.”

“La-la-la-la,” Bode droned.

“Something with a beat would be nice,” Eric said.

“Row, row, row your boat …” Bode might be a decent soldier, but his voice made Emma’s brain hurt.

“Oh, that’s much better,” she said.

“MERRILY, MERRILY, MERRILY, MERRILY,” Bode boomed. “Life is but a—”

“Shut up.” Casey’s skin was white as salt. “Just shut the hell up. This isn’t funny.”

“Easy, Case,” Eric said.

“You shut up, too,” Casey said. “If it was Emma, you’d be the same way.”

Despite everything, her neck heated and she was grateful that Eric didn’t look her way. After a small silence, Bode said, “I’m sorry, kid. I was just blowing off some steam.”

“Yeah.” Doubling up on the makeshift rope, Casey set his feet and lifted his chin at Eric. “Go. And be careful.” He looked at Emma. “Don’t let anything happen to him.”

She only nodded, then looked to Eric, who stood to her left, and raised her eyebrows. “Ready?”

“Uh-huh.” Eric’s mouth had set in a determined line. “You stay close.”

“Don’t worry about that.” Her fist tightened around the chair leg. “Any closer, I’ll be on your left.”

At the edge of the porch, Eric hesitated, then put out a gloved hand. Emma watched the fog swirl and then cinch down around Eric’s wrist as if Eric had stuck his hand into a vat of whipped cream. “What’s it feel like?” she asked. “Is it cold?”

“Not really.” Eric’s eyebrows tented in a bemused frown. “Kind of thick, though. Almost … molten.”

“Can’t see your hand from here, man. It’s like it got amputated,” Bode said, passing Emma a flashlight. “I don’t think the light’s going to do you any good. That stuff’s too soupy and the light will scatter. But I’m curious how far you can go before we lose it.”

The answer was about five feet. On the first step, Emma could still look back and see two hazy shadows. By the second step, Casey and Bode had disappeared.

“It’s totally weird.” Casey’s voice was flatter than paper and as insubstantial as mist. “We see the rope, but it looks like it’s holding itself up.”

With Eric’s left hand wrapped tightly around the porch railing, they eased to the third step and then the fourth; at their feet, the fresh-fallen snow humped and sifted. Yet the snow made absolutely no sound at all. The air was still and silent. Eric was right, too; she felt the fog as something turgid, like tepid Jell-O just beginning to set.

Or blood on the verge of clotting. The hairs on her neck prickled; a scrape of fear dragged over her chest. What are you doing? Annoyed, she clamped her jaws until the small muscles complained. Stop it, you nut.

“Guys.” Casey’s voice reached them from what sounded like very far away: “Found it yet?”

“Not yet,” Eric said.

“Eric?” A beat, and then they heard Casey call again: “Eric?”

“I said, not yet!” Eric called.

Bode: “Barely hear you, man. You guys sure you’re still by the house?”

“About as sure as I can be.” Eric stretched his right hand, groped through the white muck, and shouted: “I feel the hedges. The sled’s got to be maybe ten feet in front of me.”

“What if it’s not here?” She thought she saw something flit past to her right, but when she darted a look, there was nothing but the fog. Weird. She was certain she’d seen a figure. A man? Rima?

No. She reined in on the images that tried forming right behind her eyes. Don’t do that. Don’t think of a specific person or try to pull meaning out of this stuff. That’s what it wants. Remember what happened to Rima and Casey.

“It’s here. I know it’s right …” Eric let out a sudden grunt and hitched up so fast Emma piled into him. Gasping, she tripped, lost her grip on the club, and stumbled just as Eric twisted and made a grab.

“Gotcha,” he said, reeling her into a bear hug. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, a little breathless. Their faces were inches apart, so close her eyes nearly crossed. “Guess we found the snowmobile.”

“Yup.” His arms tightened, just a tad. “This is kind of nice. You realize they can’t see us.”

Or hear them, probably. Her heart gave a little kick. “I should get the club.”

“It’s not going anywhere, and …” His sapphire-colored eyes fixed on hers. “Things have been so crazy, happened so fast, I want five seconds. Just five seconds where I’m not running or fighting or worrying and freaking out.”

She felt her body relaxing into him, just a smidge. “You never seem freaked out.”

“I am, though, all the time. About Casey, mainly. Learned how to hide it early, though, on account of my dad.” His shoulders moved in a small shrug. “Don’t show a bully how scared you are because it only makes him want to hurt you more.” His eyes drifted to the fresh bandage she’d put over her forehead. “I wouldn’t have hurt you, you know.”

It took her a second to realize what he meant. “Oh. You mean, after the crash?” From the tingle, she knew her cheeks must be red. “I know. I’m sorry I wouldn’t let you help. It’s just that I …” She hesitated, then thought, Oh, just tell him. “I have these metal plates. You know, screwed into my skull, into the bone? They’re actually pretty easy to feel, and I guess I’m kind of self-conscious about them.”

“Plates?” His eyebrows crimped. “Like for a skull fracture?”

“Yes. I mean, that’s another thing they can use them for. The plates are small, but … yeah.”

“Do they hurt?”

It was not the question she’d expected. No one at school knew, but a couple clueless security guards and TSA people wanted to know: Hey, how’d you get those? She hated their eyes most of all, the curiosity, the kind of greed for a good story about somebody else’s bad luck: So I met this kid …

“Sometimes. Mainly, the one right here.” She touched the bandage. “I get headaches. Anyway, I didn’t want you to feel them and”—think I was a freak—“get weirded out.”

“I wouldn’t have, and I’m not weirded out now. Can I feel it?” He read her hesitation and said, “Will it hurt? I don’t want to hurt you.”

She’d never allowed anyone to touch her face. Not that there’d been guys lined up, waiting their turn. “Give me your hand.” She guided his fingers. “There. That circle?”

“Yeah.” He pulled in a small breath. “Is it metal?”

“Titanium. That one’s got this lacy pattern, kind of steampunk, actually. And there’s another one”—she pulled his fingers to the back of her head—“right here.”

“Hmm.” His hand buried itself in her hair, and she could feel him probing. The pressure was … nice. “Hard to feel that one through the muscle.”

“There are new plates, ones that will absorb into the bone, but I don’t want any more operations.”

“Is it because of scars?” She saw how his eyes sharpened a bit as his fingers found a thin, firm ridge of scar. “You don’t have that many.”

“Yes, I do—tons—but they’re up here.” She pressed his hand to the crown of her head. From his expression, she knew when he found the fleshy seams. Like Lizzie’s crazy quilt. “It’s weird. They’re hidden, but I always see them anyway.”

“I don’t see anything but you.” His dark blue eyes searched hers. His hand moved to cup the back of her head. “Emma, do you … do you think that when this is over and we get out of here, we could …”

“Yes.” Her heart was a fist knocking against her ribs. This should be a dream, but it’s not. She thought of his mouth on her neck, his hands in her hair. This is like a dream I’ve been waiting to have my entire life. “I’d like—”

Their rope of linked curtains suddenly jerked hard, once, twice, three times. They jumped and looked at one another, but neither made a move to pull away. Eric gave an answering yank and turned a grin. “They probably think we’re dead.”

“Maybe we better get that gas,” she said.

“In a second. I think …” Eric brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. “Yeah, I think I definitely need to kiss you now.”

“Yes,” she said, but he was already pulling her mouth to his before she got the word out. His lips were very warm and full and as soft as she’d imagined. They were perfect and so was he. He was everything she had ever wanted or dreamed of. Her skin was electric; her eyes closed as his tongue traced her lips. There was a fluttering in her chest that had nothing to do with fear but was, instead, a sweet ache, a longing; and then she was sighing into his mouth, and they breathed into one another, moving together, her body fitting to his so perfectly that there was no space at all between them and only this moment: in the fog, on the snow, with him.

“God,” he whispered, breaking the kiss, leaning back just far enough to look into her eyes. His cheeks were stained with color. His breathing was ragged. “I’ve wanted that for … God, forever, from the first moment. When I saw you, I felt this sense of …”

“Finding.” She was close enough to see his pulse bounding in his neck. “Of finally finding something.”

“Someone.” His hands framed her face. “This is like one of those stupid books, you know? Teenage insta-love. But this is so different. It’s like I was born for you, for this. When you talk, your voice is already in my head, and I’m thinking the end of the sentence with you. Isn’t that weird?”

“No,” And then her mouth was on his throat, and she tasted the salt of his skin, heard his gasp as her lips moved on his neck, felt the hum of his blood against her tongue. Then he was saying her name and covering her mouth with his, and they were kissing again, drinking in each other.

Don’t ruin this. Emma felt her whole body give something close to a sigh, and then it was just the two of them, cupped in fog as time stilled. If she ever found a way to encase a universe within glass, this was the perfect one, the only world and moment she wished to inhabit. Right here, right now, hang on to him and remember this. Remember how he feels, his taste, his arms, his mouth. Remember this.

Remember him.

3

THERE WAS ENOUGH oil for three torches. As Casey filled the Swiss Miss can and two empty peanut butter jars, Bode and Eric tore the sheet from Lizzie’s bed into strips. “This way,” Eric said, as he knotted and cinched a strip into a belt around Emma’s middle, then slid in the chair-leg club, “our hands are free … No, you take that,” Eric said as Bode held out the Glock. “I have nothing against guns, but I never liked that thing.”

“Whatever works for you, Devil Dog,” Bode said, tucking the pistol into the small of his back. “We still got a problem, though.” Bode slipped a gurgling jar and the gas-filled Swiss Miss can into a pillowcase that he knotted to a belt loop. “There’s no way we’re gonna find enough sheets and blankets to get us through that fog and into the barn.”

“There’s got to be a way,” Casey said, tucking a pair of blunt-edged child’s scissors Bode had used to hack sheets into a hip pocket.

“There is.” Eric looked down at Emma. “Pull us through. Use the cynosure the way you did before.”

“That was different,” she said, running her hands over the beads and glass of Lizzie’s memory quilt. “I was on the other side. I knew where I was and where I wanted you to be. I was pulling you, not throwing us inside a place I’ve never been. I don’t know if it will even work in the same world,” she said, thinking, I can’t believe I just said that. “Lizzie talked me through it.”

“What did you do before?” Eric asked.

Her fingers ghosted over the beads that spelled his name. “Concentrated on all of you.” She felt the flush creeping through her cheeks and dropped her eyes to the quilt. “It was weird. You think you remember what someone looks like, but all you’ve got are outlines, a fuzzy snapshot. I just kept concentrating on filling you in, but it was really hard.” She looked up to find Eric’s eyes, intent, on her face. “Even with the cynosure, I’m not sure it would’ve worked if you hadn’t …” She slicked her lips. “If you hadn’t called me.” If you hadn’t told me to feel you. She remembered that moment so well: groping around in the dark with her mind, trying to conjure up his face or Rima’s. Then, that indescribable sensation of something flooding her brain—Eric’s voice, his … energy?—and then it was like something out of that unfinished painting of Dickens surrounded by the ill-defined outlines of his characters. Eric faded in: first a suggestion, then an outline, and finally him.

“When you did that, and I got a sense of you,” she said, “I gave you color, and then there you were.”

“So do that again,” Casey said. “Give Rima and Lizzie color.”

“But that was to bring you guys to me,” she said. “This would be going somewhere and trying to take you along.” Without dropping you on the way.

“Our only other alternative is walking into that fog, either one at a time or all together,” Bode said.

“And we know that won’t cut it,” Eric said.

“I could get us all killed.” Her hand closed over the Eric beads. “I should do this alone. If something happens, then you guys figure out something else.”

“Not a chance.” Eric cupped the back of her hand in both of his. “She brought us in combinations for a reason. We stick together.”

“Damn straight,” Bode grunted. “I don’t buy all this multiverse jazz, but if we’re all part of each other? We’re stronger together.”

“He’s right. Give Rima color.” Casey’s voice hummed with urgency. “Please.”

“Okay.” Letting go of a long breath, she searched the quilt until she found what she wanted. “Casey, let me see those scissors for a sec.”

Casey handed them over. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t think the entire quilt is necessary. Lizzie might need it because she’s only five,” she said, taking the proffered scissors, then picking at the web of thread cupping the galaxy pendant. “The beads and fabric might be prompts.”

“So you think the cynosure is the only device?” Eric asked.

“Pretty sure. It’s the only thing on this quilt that keeps popping up in everything House shows me.” Teasing the glass orb free, she watched how it shimmered in the fan of weak porch light. Now that she actually held it, she saw that its designer had done a pull loop. Clearly, the cynosure was to be worn like a pendant on a necklace. “This is exactly what I was going to make, but I’m not nearly skilled enough. It would take me years of flamework to make glass sculptures this detailed. But the urge to do it has been eating at me for a long time, like insisting it gets done, you know? Can’t be a coincidence.”

“Here, use this.” Eric reached a hand beneath his collar. There was a muted clack of metal as he reeled out a beaded chain. “Safer than your pocket.”

“Aren’t you supposed to wear them all the time?” she asked as he threaded the pendant onto the chain. The glass butted against Eric’s dog tags with a dull tick.

“In the field. Technically, I’m not supposed to wear them when I’m not in uniform, but I just like them.” His lips flickered in a brief smile. “I trust you to give them back.”

“Thank you,” she said, hoping the heat she felt at the back of her neck hadn’t crawled around to her cheeks. She let her palm linger over his dog tags, still warm from his body. This is real, too. She held out her hands. “Lizzie’s always talking about dropping people.”

“Hey, I hear that,” Bode said, taking her left hand in his rough, callused paw and reaching for Casey. “Hang on ti—” He broke off.

“Bode?” Casey turned the older boy a curious look. “You okay? You just about jumped out of your skin.”

“Yeah, I’m cool.” Yet a sudden strain arrowed through Bode’s face, and Emma saw his eyes dart a question at the younger boy. “Just …” Bode’s throat bobbed in a swallow. “Let’s go, okay? The sooner we get this over with, the better.”

“You can do this,” Eric said to her. His grip, sure and warm, tightened around her right hand.

Glad you think so. She closed her eyes. Her thoughts would not be still, flitting from one image to the next, and she felt a splinter of panic. What should she think about? Rima? Lizzie? No, this was the reverse: putting them onto and into a blank. She thought of the door down cellar; watched the memory of her hand reaching toward that inky cold; remembered the blackness dimpling as her palm pressed that odd, glassy membrane.

But the candle flame was still there. I felt it. This would be the same. The trick would be filling them in, making them visible. She let herself see the barn as Lizzie had described it: a black void into which she could drift, like slipping in on the breath of a dream. Now—she felt Eric’s hand in hers—start to fill them in; draw us onto and into the space.

There came the familiar tingle of a blink ripsawing through her skin, a lancet of white pain as the bruised lips of that spiky maw parted in the dark before her eyes. A red rose of heat bloomed on her forehead. Between her breasts, there was a sudden warm flush, and she knew the galaxy pendant must be glowing. A jolt crackled in her chest, an atomic bomb of light and heat that lashed down her arms and out her fingers. Someone gasped. Casey said, wonderingly, “Did you feel …?” But Emma barely heard, was suddenly past hearing. In the blackness of her mind, behind her eyes, she saw them all—Casey, Bode, Eric, her—as cutouts edged with the same kind of glow that had haloed Kramer. His had been the color of a sick, creeping evil, but theirs was true light spun in pulsing filaments from their fingers, knitting their hands together with …

Colors. It was Eric, not speaking but floating in her mind nonetheless. Emma, do you see this?

Man. Bode. It’s like a spider’s web, tying us together.

Eric’s light was a deep cobalt blue, a near match, although hers was edged with a golden nimbus finer than lace, as fiery as the sun’s corona. Bode’s color was very strange, deeply vermillion, but blurry and indistinct, as if whatever Bode was bled and oozed like an open wound. For a second, she could’ve sworn that Bode was not a single color but two.

But Casey … Casey was many and all colors, a nacreous, wavering shimmer that was now rose, now sapphire, sulfur, violet. Casey was anybody, anyone.

Her ears filled with the rush of a thousand birds, as the colors looped up their arms, drawing them tight, tight, and ever tighter, as woven together as the glass creatures knotted in her galaxy pendant. Then she felt a swooning, the earth dropping away, which swept through her like a chilling wind, and they were suddenly falling, their light tangling to a streaming rainbow. The galaxy pendant fired as space folded, flexed, and then …

EMMA Monsters Are Us

COLD. DARK. SHE felt the press of the black, heavy as an anvil.

She opened her eyes, then fluttered them in a rapid blink because, for a second, she wasn’t sure they were actually open; it was that dark. Then, from the nothing in front of her eyes, she teased their colors, faintly luminous, misty as frayed cobwebs. For the moment, they were still linked, their circle unbroken by their passage into whatever space she’d hurled them.

Yeah, but are we inside? Is this the barn? There was something solid beneath her feet, icier than a tombstone, and she thought, Oh crap, I dropped us in the wrong place.

Casey’s voice reached out from the dark. “Did we get in?”

A scuffling sound, and then their circle winked out as Bode let go. “Oh yeah,” Bode said. “I know inside when I feel it. Just like dropping into a black echo. Man, you don’t know what bad is until—”

A whisper of alarm sighed across her neck. Why? Something Eric had said that, now that she thought about it, echoed a blink; the way McDermott had talked about stories and how ideas were infections … And we wondered what the barn might make.

“Until you’ve run into these things,” Bode continued, “big as your—”

The monsters are us. The thought was sudden, immediate, explosive. Bode’s story is written, and the monsters are in—

“Bode!” she shouted, frantic. “Bode, no!”

RIMA Blood Have the Power

“DON’T FIGHT IT, baby. Look what you’re doing to yourself. You’re bleeding.” Anita’s skin was pasty and her breath fruity with cheap wine. “Trust your momma, honey, and this will be over quick. You’ve got a black stain on your soul, only I’ll wash it clean. Take care of that stain once and for all.”

“M-Mom,” Rima rasped. She had come back to herself as she was now: spread-eagled, on her back, in no place she recognized. The ropes around her wrists and ankles were very tight, tied off to stakes driven into rock that was strangely smooth, glassy, and very black. There was light, but it was a pallid, bony glow. The ceiling soared to some point high above, where the air was choked and clotted: a dark, shadowed space that swam with what she thought were birds. She could hear the dry, papery rustle of their feathers, and smell their wild animal stink. “Mom, please, let me go. You don’t want to do this.”

“Oh, honey.” Anita’s voice choked off in a sob, and then she was tipping the bottle to her mouth, her throat working as she took another pull. Swallowing, Anita sighed, then wiped her moist, slack mouth with the back of one hand. Her eyes were black holes on either side of her nose. “It’s been so hard. I just can’t deal with it anymore.”

“That’s why I left.” Rima felt the sob welling up in her throat and forced it back down. Crying wouldn’t help. She had to keep Anita talking, or else … Her gaze flicked to the glint of a very long, very sharp boning knife Anita had in her right fist: the same knife that had carved a red necklace the night her mother had pinned her to the bed and come within a whisper of killing her. “Mom, please, just let me go. I’ll leave and never come back, I promise.”

“Blood have the power.” The voodoo priestess was as Rima remembered her, too: hatchet-faced and hungry. The woman lit five fat yellow candles—one at each point of a pentagram—and then began to drizzle a small stream of black sand onto the rock. “Blood binds. When you ask the voodoo for something, you must make sacrifice. The spirits live in the sand. Feed the spirits, and the power come full circle.”

“So I’ll be able to kick it,” Anita said, her words beginning to slur. Her hair was plastered to her forehead in oily ropes. “I’ll get clean. Don’t you see, honey? Bringing you up has been so hard, and I’m just not that strong. I give and give, and you take and take.”

“Mom, that’s not true!” She didn’t know what she felt more, fear or rage. “I’ve done everything. I’ve cooked and cleaned, I get food, I—”

“I know,” her mother said, and her voice rode on a sudden growl, all weepy sincerity forgotten. “That’s because you’ve drawn on my strength. You’ve always taken what you wanted. What do you think a baby is? Huh? A little parasite, that’s what. You’ve got no control. The baby’s inside, growing and taking and swallowing, needing …” Her mother’s features twisted to a monstrous gorgon’s. Rima turned her face to one side, but her mother’s claw-hand shot out and clutched a handful of Rima’s hair, twisting until Rima’s scalp burned and she cried out; until she was forced to look back at her mother, and nowhere else. Anita’s face cramped with fury. “Well, what about me? Who takes care of me? Who gives me back what you’ve stolen?”

“I … I didn’t m-mean …” Rima’s voice came in a broken, hitching whisper. “Momma, I was just a baby.”

“Just a baby,” her mother spat. She fisted the knife, holding it in a perfect vertical, the point quivering an inch from Rima’s right eye. “No baby ever drew the dead.”

Rima’s mouth dried up. She went still, although her mind was gibbering: No no no no.

“You started even then, filling me up with death-whispers. I could hear them inside, like beetles scratching in a paper sack, scratch, scratch, scratch, scratch.” Anita’s face twitched as if hearing that terrible sound all over again. “Now’s the chance to let all that blackness out of you, out of me—because you’ve touched me, you’ve been inside, scratch-scratch-scratching my soul with your filth.”

“Not yet.” The priestess wrapped her skeletal fingers around Anita’s wrist. Rima drew in a sudden gasp as the knife wobbled. “Only the blood work,” the woman said. “Blood binds. Kill her too fast before the blood draw, and the blackness stay in you, stain you, doom you.” Small, straight knucklebones cored through the woman’s earlobes, and a long necklace of bird skulls chattered and clacked. “Spill the blood, and the black flow out and the spirits drink. You drink, and then the blackness leave because the girl’s blood is strong.”

There was a long, breathless moment, and then Anita wrenched free. The blade whickered, shaving air above Rima’s face, but Anita was stumbling to her feet now, and Rima remembered to breathe. The bottle winked in the candlelight as her mother drank again. Watching the white length of her mother’s throat convulse and swallow, move and slide, Rima thought back to the fight on the snow and what Tania had become: the way her throat had pulsed and heaved before that bloom of jointed legs erupted from her mouth like a gruesome black rose.

Oh my God. She felt a bubble of hysterical laughter pushing against her teeth. Tania was Anita: one and the same. Like Lizzie’s crazy quilt, names made out of letters rearranged to be both different and yet parts of a whole. Her mother was the monster. She was every monster Rima would ever fight, and always had been.

She thought of poor little Taylor—where was her parka now, anyway?—and how shocked that little girl had been when her father morphed into a monster capable of hurling his child from a balcony. Taylor blamed herself, but what had happened wasn’t her fault.

And this isn’t mine. Rima felt the sting of tears and then the slow trickle as they rolled down her temples and soaked into her hair. The real poison is if I let my mother convince me that it is.

She watched as the priestess began to dance: a slow, rhythmic shuffle. Her mother followed in a drunk-stumble, slashing the air with that knife. Have to do something. Rima’s heart battered her ribs. Can’t just lie here until Anita decides she can’t wait. But what did she have to fight with? She wasn’t stupid enough to think she could will this away; this wasn’t like the fight on the snow, and even then, once set in motion, that story would unravel to its conclusion. She suspected only Emma had the power to jump through one space and Now to another. So what could she do? All she had was a touch that soothed and took away whispers.

Wait a minute. She felt everything inside, even her breath, grow still. I take.

She had to call twice because Anita was that lost, that out of it. “What?” Anita said. Her mother’s words were mushy, and that anger, fiery and a bit insane, had died a little, but Rima knew the embers of her mother’s resentment wouldn’t need much coaxing.

So she chose her words very, very carefully. “Mom, I won’t fight you anymore. I can’t. You’re my mom, and I know you’re only trying to help.”

“Thass righhh, baby.” Anita’s slushy voice went maudlin. A rill of shiny snot slicked her upper lip. “Thass righhh.”

“I know, and I love you, and I’m scared.” She was aware of the priestess’s coin-bright eyes, and somewhere, overhead, the ceaseless churn of the birds, but Rima fixed her gaze on Anita and did not look away. “I’m scared, and I need you. So, please, would you hold me? Would you please hug me just this one last time?”

BODE Either Way, You Lose

1

BATTLE WAS GONE—and what the hell was that about?

It had happened back at the house, right before Emma did her crazy … well, whatever that was. Soon as Casey touched him, Bode felt the sergeant go, just whoosh away like Bode’d gotten a sucker punch to the gut.

That tripped him out. After, Bode had been distracted, worried about what the sudden silence in his head meant. So when they’d materialized in the dark, Bode hadn’t been on top of his game. Just said the first damn thing that came to mind. Stupid. Like popping out of a spidey hole without tossing out a rock first, seeing if anything up there took the bait and blasted that rock to itty-bitty ones. You never made that mistake twice, because after the first time, you were dead.

Emma’s shout still rang in his ears, but Bode felt the change happening a split second later. The darkness collapsed in a rush, the black slamming down, flattening the space above and all around as if the barn were being squeezed by four giant palms: above and below, right and left.

“Down, get down!” he shouted, dropping to his knees. The darkness heaved, the floor’s texture changing from something smooth—poured concrete—to the unmistakable grit of earth over rock.

No, no, no. Can I think it away? He was gasping, his chest heaving like bellows, trying to pull in air that dwindled by the second. Forests; I like trees and open sky and water.

But that’s not where his nightmares lived, and it was too late anyway. The blackness was hardening, his monsters taking their shape. He heard the others thudding to the dirt as the darkness rushed in, growing close and tight, cinching down, clenching and knotting to a fist. For a split second, Bode thought the black space meant to flatten them. Then, the sense of pressure eased as the ink of this new space stopped flowing.

Casey: “Has it … it’s over, right?”

“I think so.” Emma sounded as out of breath as Bode. “It was like the roof collapsed.”

“It’s not a roof.” Bode raised himself to a squat, relieved that his head and shoulders didn’t meet up with anything solid. Fumbling out a flashlight, he thumbed it to life. A spear of blue light pierced the black, and he saw exactly what he expected. Of course he would.

This was a nightmare he knew by heart.

2

THE TUNNEL WAS not perfectly round. No VC tunnel ever was. The spider holes where snipers and guards waited were two-foot squares cut out of camouflaged earth, wide enough for a very small guy like the average VC or a runt like Bode. Big guys only got hung up. This was good for Charlie, but bad if you were an average Joe looking to make it back to the States in something other than a pine box shoved into luggage class.

Once past the spidey holes, the tunnels opened up a little to a max width of about three or four feet, but they went on forever in a multilevel rock warren of passageways and larger rooms where up to a few hundred VC lived for months at a time. The air was normally very bad, too, smoky and stale and heavy with the odors of human waste and the stink of too many people coughing, breathing, pissing, shitting, spitting in too small a space.

Barely enough room to turn and fight. Bode felt sweat bead on his neck and face and between his shoulder blades. He was very conscious of the club stuck at a now very awkward and uncomfortable angle in his waistband. Slipping it free, he choked up on the wood, but even his reach was too long. Try to take a swing, and he’d be chunking out earth.

“This tunnel’s pretty tight,” Eric said in a tone that had about as much heat as a weatherman’s. “Are they all like this?”

“No, they get worse,” Bode said. Lucky to have that devil dog along. Guy had the temperature of a flounder, or a lot of experience roping back fear. Whatever his story, that Eric stayed calm helped Bode keep his cool. “Down deep, you’re on your belly the whole time. If this is the same, though, we’ll get to rooms, eventually, and they open right up.” He paused. “We should probably cut the lights.”

“Why?” Casey asked.

“Because they’re like wearing a sign: Shoot me.”

“How are we going to see?”

“We don’t. We go by feel.”

Eric shook his head. “I honestly don’t think a guy with a gun is the worst thing we’re going to run into down here. We’ll make better time if we leave the lights on. Besides, I’d kind of like to see what I’m up against, if you know what I mean.”

Because we will have to fight. Eric didn’t have to say it for Bode to know he was right. “But we don’t even know if Rima and Lizzie are here. This is from my head.”

“They’re here,” Casey said.

“Yeah?” Bode looked at Casey with fresh curiosity. When he took my hand; it happened when Casey touched me. “How do you know that?”

“I just know.” Casey’s face was a glimmering silver oval. “Lizzie, I can’t tell, but Rima is close by.” He fingered the scarf. “I just know,” he repeated.

Eric regarded his brother for a long moment. “Can you tell us which way, Case?”

Casey’s tongue flickered over his lips. Then he gave a jerky nod and pointed to the tunnel beyond Eric. “Down there.”

They set out, Bode in the lead with Casey on his heels, then Emma and finally Eric, bringing up the rear. They shambled like hunchbacks, their boots grinding and scuffing against the hard-packed earth; the pillowcase, with its gasoline-filled Swiss Miss can and peanut butter jar, sloshed and gurgled against Bode’s left thigh.

Emma’s voice reached him from behind. “Hey, guys, the tunnel’s getting larger. I can stand up, and it’s not really all dark. Look at the walls.”

She was right. The walls glowed: not brightly, but with a soft green luminescence that bled from the blackness itself.

“That’s so weird,” Eric said, and then gave a soft laugh. “Well, weirder. Bode, you ever seen a tunnel like this before?”

“No.” Bode thought about those muscular tentacles that coiled up from the inky snow to drag Chad to whatever lived beneath. “Is this thing going to break up? Like, are there too many of us in one spot?”

A pause. “I don’t think so,” Emma said. “You go to the trouble to take Lizzie and Rima, and then you kill us all at once? Makes no sense. This is about something else.”

“A test?” Eric said to her. “To see if you can get us here?”

“But we are here,” she said.

“Can you get us back out the way we came?” Bode asked. Stupid; he should’ve thought about that earlier. “You know, do that color thing?”

She made a face. “I don’t think so. Don’t ask me how to describe it, but this doesn’t have the same feel of … of potential. Like energy you can mold and use. I think this place is set.” She peered at him through the gloom. “Don’t beat yourself up about this, Bode. If it wasn’t you, it would’ve been one of us.”

“Then what is this?” asked Casey. “A way of picking us off one by one?”

No one answered—mostly, Bode thought, because, yes or no, either way, you lose. Although he agreed with Eric. This had the feel of a trial by fire of some sort. He wished Battle would tell him what. For a dead guy, Battle knew a great deal about life. But the sarge, who had lived inside Bode’s head for so long, was silent and had been for quite some time now, even before the barn. Yet he’d been here; Bode could always feel him, this quiet burn in his head like the flicker of a pilot light. After the fight on the snow, though, Battle had only … listened? Maybe not even that; Bode just couldn’t tell.

And then Casey touches me—and Battle’s gone. I felt him go. Bode armed sweat from his forehead. So where is he? Why did he leave? His stomach pulled to a knot of anxiety. Sarge, I need you. Please, talk to me. If he was hovering somewhere around, however, Battle remained mute.

Ahead, Bode saw that the tunnel was now very wide and much higher, enough so he had clearance for a good roundhouse swing. He’d be able to take a pretty good shot at whatever might hurl itself from the dark.

That’s all wrong. It shouldn’t be this way. This isn’t like any tunnel I’ve ever seen, or worried about.

A soft sound drifted out of the dark: a whispery rustle that was not the sharp scrape of a boot. He pulled up so suddenly that Casey smacked into him. “Hey,” Casey said.

“Quiet!” Bode held his breath, trying to listen above the boom of his heart. He probed the darkness with his light, but there was nothing in front, on the floor, or behind. Yet the sound kept on, papery and dry and somehow not only louder but larger: a scurrying, rhythmic shush that grew and grew and …

“What is that?” Emma whispered. “Where is it coming from?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t want to think about rats or snakes or …

Then his heart stuttered as he heard something new: the spatter of pebbles raining like fine hail onto rock.

Oh shit.

He aimed his light straight up.

BODE Dead End

THE ROCK DIRECTLY overhead was alive—with scorpions.

Big as rats, with bulbous black bodies and pincer-claws long as fishhooks, they seethed over the stone. Diamond teardrops of glittering poison dripped from enormous barbs at the tip of shiny, curled tails. But instead of mandibles, these scorpions’ heads were unformed and smooth as mirrors. Then, in the next instant, gashes appeared and split to become mouths.

Jesus. Bode felt the cracks in his mind widening, his thoughts splintering. The glassy surfaces peeled back to reveal eyes: dead eyes, black eyes, the eyes of cobras, the eyes of nightmares. Faces, they have faces.

“RUN!” he screamed, much too late.

As one, the scorpions dropped from the ceiling. Bode felt the hard bodies bouncing off the padded arms and shoulders and chest of his jacket. They bulleted off his scalp, then slithered over his face. One landed on his left shoulder, hooked, and held on. With a wordless screech, Bode swung the flashlight like a club. The heavy stock batted the thing from his shoulder, and it tumbled, pincers flailing. These just managed to snag his pants, and then the thing’s tail was stabbing him again and again, the pointed barb working to pierce the tough olive canvas of his fatigues. Still shouting, Bode battered at the thing with the butt of his flashlight. Losing its grip, the thing did a flip and landed on its back. Its spindly legs churned, the pincers snapping uselessly at air. Its many eyes glared up at Bode, and it let out a rasping, almost mechanical chitter that sounded eerily like an M16 cycling on full auto.

“Die!” Bode brought the sole of his boot smashing down. He felt the soft belly give as the scorpion’s body burst in a viscous spray of thick, yellow fluid. Cursing, he ground the thing into paste. The others were screaming and flailing and stamping; the floor was turning sludgy with slick, gooey, foul ichor. The only reason they weren’t dead—not yet, anyway—was their clothing. But their faces were exposed, and their hands.

“Get them off!” Emma shrieked. Her hair was a living tangle. “Get them off, get them off, get them off!”

“Emma!” Spinning her close, Eric swatted scorpions with his bare hands, crushing them like overripe grapes beneath his boots.

“Bode, we got to go!” Casey bawled. “We got to get out, we got to go, we got to go!”

Bode didn’t need convincing. “Go back, go back the way we came!”

“We can’t!” Still hugging Emma close, Eric aimed his flashlight back down the tunnel. “Look!”

Whirling round, Bode followed the light—and what he saw made his guts clench.

The floor was moving now, too. The scorpions were there, a remorseless, black, undulating river. Driving us forward, Bode thought wildly. Just like the fog, making sure we keep going this way. We should be dead by now, but we’re not. They’re herding us.

No choice but to keep going. “Move!” Bode grabbed Casey, spun him, and then gave the boy a vicious shove to send him on his way. “Go, kid, go go go!”

“Casey, wait!” Eric shouted. “Emma, quick, give me the lighter!”

“What?” Bode asked, but Emma had already tossed the lighter to Eric, who was yanking out his torch. Bode thought, Yeah. He grabbed his own unlit torch. “Emma, the matches!”

She jerked out the box; the dry chatter of wood inside cardboard was like dice on stone. She worked out a match, struck it; the match flared, and then her torch caught with a small hoosh as flames fled up the rags in liquid, orange-yellow runnels. Eric was already swinging his. The creatures didn’t like the fire; rearing on their hind legs, they hissed. Their pincers snick-snapped, the clawed jaws clashing like scissors. A few got too close, and then the air was alive with a pop-pop-pop, the scorpions bursting in sprays of stringy yellow mucus. Several tried shooting beneath the flaming arc of Eric’s torch, but then Emma was right there, by Eric’s side. Together, they swept their torches back and forth, keeping the scorpions at bay while Bode jabbed at the ceiling.

The things retreated, but Bode knew they couldn’t keep this up forever. Their torches were too weak, and the second they turned to run, the scorpions would sweep after them. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Eric strip out of his parka and shout to Emma, “Give me your coat! Take off your coat!”

“Devil Dog!” Bode bawled. “What the hell you doing?”

But it was Emma who answered. “Gas!” She yanked off her jacket. “Our parkas are still wet, and we’ve got a jar of gasoline!”

“Guys, get ready to run!” Tossing their parkas into the roiling mass, Eric threw his torch after, then spun on his heel. “All right, Bode, Casey, go, g—”

The parkas went up in a flaring yellow ball with a solid, heavy whup! The scorpions’ reaction was instantaneous. The ebony wave shied as the air filled with stuttering pops loud as gunshots. The scorpions’ screeches became a keening wail as a thick, sooty bloom pillowed through the tunnel. A second later, the jar of gas, still zipped in one pocket of Eric’s parka, erupted like a flash-bomb: a great, hard, brilliant bang.

They charged down the tunnel, Casey in the lead, boots clapping stone, running so fast the walls streamed and blurred. Their torches guttered, and Emma’s died, but no help for that. Bode’s breath tore in and out of his throat; he kept expecting the walls to sprout more of those scorpion-things at any second. The tunnel was curving right now, growing ever wider, and he thought, Got to be a room, there’s got to be a junction; that’s how these things work.

Almost before the thought was fully formed in his mind, the maw of a junction pulled apart and firmed to his right. At the same instant, he saw that the way dead ahead was blocked. Again, there was really no choice. They may have stopped the scorpions for the moment, but the tunnel itself would make sure they went in only one direction. “Casey,” he shouted, “to your right, that way!”

Cutting right, Casey darted out of sight. Bode followed, the blackness unreeling like a tongue. Room, room, there’s got to be a room; there’s got to be a way out of this ma—

Casey pulled up so fast that Bode couldn’t stop in time. He hit the kid a solid body blow, and they went down in a tangle of boots and legs. “You okay, you okay? What the hell, why did you—” The question evaporated when Bode got a good look at what lay directly ahead. A bright arrow of fresh terror pierced his heart. Behind him, over the thud of his pulse, he heard the clatter of boots and then Emma’s voice, broken and horrified: “Oh no.”

Because she now saw what he did: a rock wall, as glassy and smooth and flawless as a silvery-black diamond, not three feet away.

The tunnel was a dead end.

RIMA The Worst and Last Mistake of Her Life

“A HUG?” ANITA repeated, as if her brain was a faulty computer trying to process information in a language it had never learned. “You … you would do that?”

“Yes.” The word dribbled from Rima’s mouth, pathetic and small. “You’re my mother.”

“Oh honey.” Anita’s legs suddenly unhinged. At first, Rima thought her mother might be falling, but then she saw Anita awkwardly catch herself with the nearly empty wine bottle, the glass letting out a dull chuk as Anita knelt. “Honey,” Anita said, boozily, “you don’t know how mush I’ve wanted that. But what could I do? The stain on your soul was shhho black, I wuss always afraid you’d drag me down.”

Of all the things her mother could have said, that actually stroked a bright flare of anger. Keep it together; only got one shot at this, or it’s over. “That’s past now, Mom,” she said, not bothering to try to control the shudder in her voice. Anita was so wasted, she would hear it as fear—and oh God, yes, Rima was afraid.

“Girl lies,” the priestess said.

So did a lot of adults, mainly to themselves. With an effort, Rima kept that thought from reaching her face. Her eyes never wandered from her mother. “I know how hard it’s been,” she said to Anita. “And I’ve been so afraid.” It helped that this was true. I don’t want to die down here. Please, God, don’t let me die here. She had never been more frightened of her mother than at this very instant. But then again, this wasn’t her mother, not really. This was the mother her nightmare had made. To hell with McDermott and his stories; this is my life; I’m real. I’ve written my own mistakes, my private nightmares. What power she had was in her. If this came out of her mind, then the way out must already be inside her, too. She had to remember that. “Mom, if you’re going to do this, I think you better.”

The knife was already moving, and too late, Rima wondered if her mother understood. The blade flashed down, and then Anita was sawing at the rope tethering Rima’s right hand. At that, her heart tried to fail. I’m left-handed. It knows that’s my weaker hand. So she would have to be very quick. She watched the knife eating the rope; the tension around her wrist eased, and a second later, her hand was free.

A sudden, fierce urgency flared to snatch at her mother, made a grab, do something, and Rima had to work hard to muscle back the impulse to knot her fist in Anita’s hair. Wait, be patient. Don’t spook her, because you won’t get another chance. Wait for it.

As if sensing some danger, her mother rocked back on her heels. The muzzy look on her face sharpened a moment, and the knife she still clutched twitched, the point moving to hover over Rima’s throat.

“Careful of the knife.” Rima licked her lips. “You don’t want to cut yourself.”

For a shuddering moment, nothing happened. The bright spark that was the point of the knife ticked back and forth ever so slightly with each beat of Anita’s heart. Rima said nothing, held her breath. Then she heard the knife clatter to the rock, and Anita was leaning forward, practically falling on top of her—and Rima thought, One chance.

“Oh, my poor baby, come here,” Anita sighed, snaking her arms around Rima’s neck and shoulders. “Come to Momma, baby.”

“Oh, Mom.” Her voice broke as she carefully wound her arm around Anita’s thin shoulders. “I forgive you,” she whispered—and then she clamped down and felt for the center of her mother with all her might.

In the next instant, when Anita began to scream—when it was much too late—Rima understood: she had just made the worst and last mistake of her life.

Too late, Rima understood everything.

BODE The Shape of His Future

“NO, NO, NO, no, no!” Bode swung his torch right and left, but there were no chinks in the rock, no breaks. The rock was as smooth as a black mirror; his reflection so perfect, it was like staring through a window to a moonless night. “This can’t be right!”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Eric said. The high scream of the scorpions swelled from the mouth of the tunnel. “If the other tunnel ended, how can this be a dead end, too?”

“Because this is where we’re supposed to end up.” Casey reached for the glassy rock, and his hand’s ghostly twin floated to meet him. “This is the way it wants us to go.”

“Kid, we’re not talking fog now. This is solid rock,” Bode said. He saw the margins of Casey’s reflection smudge and blur—and then the ruddy glimmer of a face suddenly seemed to ooze from Casey’s body to appear on the rock’s mirrored surface.

Holy smoke. He knew the others couldn’t see this. The kid—

“But it’s the wrong rock.” Emma’s expression was tight, intense. “Look at it. This is almost like obsidian, volcanic glass.”

“So what?” he grated, bunching his fists. His brain was yammering, Get out, get out, get out! Despite what he saw in the rock—something that should’ve reassured him they might still have a chance—Bode was more frightened now than he’d ever been in his life. His back prickled. If you spent enough time worming on your belly through black echoes, you got a sense when there was something coming for you out of the dark, and he could feel the scorpions swarming down the tunnel. Those things would rush through the archway in a broad black river, and he would drown in a writhing sea of pincers and stingers. They would slither into his mouth, swarm down his throat, eat him from the inside out, scrape his eyeballs from their sockets. Got to get out, got to get out. “What does that matter?”

“Glass isn’t an organized solid. Light doesn’t show itself until it reflects or bounces off something. That’s why you see yourself in a mirror but not necessarily in clear glass. But look at us.” When she moved her hand from side to side, its mirror image echoed but blurred and elongated into shimmering, smeary trails. “This isn’t really reflecting. It’s as if the reflection’s being … slowed down?”

So what? His nails were slicing crescent divots from his palms. Tell me something I can use! Bode had to really work at not grabbing Emma by the shoulders and shaking her until her eyeballs jittered. “Yeah? How does that help us?”

“It’s like it … traps the light.” Casey’s hand was still pressed to his glimmering double. “As if it’s coming back to us out of tar or something.”

“Emma,” Eric said, “what if this is the same kind of energy sink that’s in the Peculiars? Wasn’t that designed as a barrier, a way of containing energy? Look at the smears. Remember what Lizzie said? Her dad said the glass makes the thought-magic slow down.”

“What does that mean?” Bode could see now that when he turned his head, his reflection lagged behind, the margins blurring into streamers. “Is that good?”

“No. It means there’s something beyond this, inside, the way the Peculiars trapped energy. Anything that can trap energy can trap us.” Emma actually backed up a step. “I’m not touching this. We can’t go through here. There’s got to be another way.”

“You know there isn’t. Emma, please, Rima’s on the other side. I feel it.” Casey’s face glistened and more tears streamed down his cheeks. “We have to help her!”

“Well, whatever you’re going to do, do it now,” Bode said. The scorpions’ squalls were much closer, no longer only echoes but a shrill of sound as focused and insistent as a drill coring through the bone of his skull. “I’ll settle for anyplace those things aren’t.”

“We got to go for it, Emma,” Eric said.

“Eric,” she said, “it’s an energy sink. That means it can steal from me, from us. You want to wake up dead inside solid rock?”

“Do you have any better ideas?” Eric said. “You have to get us through, Emma. It’s the only thing left.”

Well, Bode thought, not quite. Emma looked pretty spooked. Even if she could do it, Bode still thought it would take her much more time than they had left. But he had the gun. He had the can of gas, and their second jar besides. He had everything he needed, no more and no less.

In that moment, the shape of his future became clear. Shit, the writing really was on the damn wall now, wasn’t it?

“Get them through, Emma. You find Rima and that little girl, and then you guys clear out,” Bode said—and wheeled back the way they’d come.

“Bode!” Eric and Emma shouted. Bode saw Emma try to spurt after him, but Eric snagged her arms and held on tight. “Eric, no! Bode!” Emma cried. “Bode, stop!”

He did, but only at the bend and just for an instant. “Don’t drop them, Emma. Don’t let yourself get stuck. Get them out and get them clear, you hear?”

Then he rounded the corner and sprinted down the tunnel as the heavy pillowcase banged his thigh, as remorseless as a countdown.

BODE Into the Black

1

HE LOOKED OVER his shoulder only once, enough to satisfy himself that they weren’t following, and then he dug in, dashing down the tunnel, closing the gap. Ahead, he could hear the tidal wave of the scorpions as they came in a susurrous hiss, like the ebb and suck of waves dragging over the rubble of shattered seashells. When he thought he’d gone far enough, he swiftly untied the sack, took out both the jar and the can, and set them side by side on the rock.

Jar or can? There would be no second chance, so he had to guess right the first time. He settled on the jar; the can was thinner, and unless the glass simply melted, the shards ought to have enough punch behind them to slice through aluminum. Pulling the Glock from the small of his back, he squatted and butted the muzzle against the glass. A bullet alone wouldn’t get the job done; that only worked in movie-magic and books and television. What he needed was the muzzle flash.

Sweaty fingers gripping the Glock, he waited through a long second and then another. Maybe ten seconds left, or maybe less, but a long time to wait alone, a lot of life to try to cram into too short a span: focusing on every breath, the hum of his blood, that steady thump of his heart; paying attention to the set of his body—this body—while knowing that each sensation was possibly the last he would ever feel.

Then, in that third second, a voice he knew and had been afraid was gone forever floated through his mind: Proud of you, son.

The relief he felt was so huge he could feel his throat ball and his eyes burn with the sudden prick of tears. “Thank you, Sarge.” He swallowed against watery salt. “I thought you would stay with Casey.”

In a moment. Right now, you need me.

“I needed you before. You could’ve warned me. You had to know what would happen once I got into the barn.”

I’m a soldier, son, and a ghost—not a mind reader.

“That’s not all you are, Sarge. I feel it. That’s right, isn’t it? You l-left me for C-Casey …” Faltering, he forced his trembling lips to cooperate. “But you must have some damn good reason. Please, Sarge, help them. Help Emma. You will, won’t you?”

If I can. I am as I have been written.

“I don’t know what means.” But he thought he might. What if his life, everything he’d experienced, was in preparation for this moment? If this was why he’d been written: to help the others, give them a chance? And where will I be if—when—I wake up? If Lizzie was right, he would open his eyes, and there would be jungle and heat and bullets whizzing, the black echoes waiting, and Chad, grousing about no smokes and lousy food. Perhaps he would have no memory of this, or the others, at all. A wash of sadness filled his chest because, of all the things he wanted to forget, these people weren’t among them. Theirs was a friendship and bond forged in battle, and he was afraid for them. He was afraid for the kid, Casey, most of all.

Something even worse behind that weird rock. I feel it. They got to protect the kid; Battle must know this.

And would he find them again, somewhere else? Was there another Bode, an infinite number of Bodes, living their lives, making their mistakes, writing their own nightmares? Finding these people whose fates were woven with and into his?

Or maybe we’re each other’s salvation. This might be atonement, too, a way of making things right.

“I’m sorry, Sarge.” He didn’t bother trying to hold back the tears now. What the hell; he was dead, no matter which way you sliced it. “I’m sorry I got hung up in the tunnel; I’m sorry I was late. You should’ve left. You should’ve gone, but you were there, waiting for me.” Bode’s voice broke. “I’m so sorry I got you killed.”

We were at war. My choices were mine. I wouldn’t leave you then, and I won’t leave you now.

“Thank you.” Bode’s vision blurred. His cheeks were wet. The air was screaming now. Only a few seconds left. “It’s been an honor to serve with you.”

The honor’s mine. Go with God. Then: I think now would be a good time, Bode.

Yes, he saw them coming, almost on him now: a seething, rippling river sweeping from the dark.

Into the black, he thought, and squeezed the trigger.

2

BODE HAD LESS than an instant and barely a moment, but that was enough for him to know that he was wrong. He was not going into the black at all.

Light bloomed, orange and hot, and took him.

EMMA Push

1

“BODE, STOP!” BEYOND the tunnel, Emma heard the swell of the scorpions, very close now. She tugged against Eric, who still had her arms in an iron grip. “Eric, please, we have to go after him. We can’t let him do this.”

“Go after him for what, Emma?” Eric gave her a little shake. “Think. Bode knows that this is the only way. We don’t have a choice and there’s no more time! Now, come on! Don’t make this be for noth—”

The room lit with a sudden, brilliant flash. The air exploded with a huge roar. The concussive burst, hot and heavy with burning gasoline, blasted through the mouth of the tunnel, followed a second later by a boiling pillar of oily smoke. She felt her throat closing, the muscles knotting against the acrid sting.

“Em-Emma,” Eric choked, and then he was pulling her down. Hacking, Casey had already dropped and lay gasping like a dying fish as tears streamed down his cheeks. The air near the floor was a little better, although she could barely see through the chug of thick black smog. Emma’s head swirled, her shrieking lungs laboring to pull in breath enough to stay conscious.

“H-hurry,” Eric grunted. “Do it, Emma. Get us out!”

“C-Casey, take Eric’s hand,” she wheezed, and then she slammed her free hand against this strange black-mirror rock and thought, Push.

2

IT WAS DIFFERENT this time, and much, much more difficult.

Her head ballooned; the galaxy pendant, Lizzie’s cynosure, heated against her chest. Their chain of colors spun itself to being, and then the familiar tingle of a blink began as the earth seemed to shift and yawn. Beneath her fingers, she felt not rock but that thin rime of ice frosting her window, the liquid swirl of the bathroom mirror, that featureless black membrane in Jasper’s basement, the thick clot of that murderous fog.

Push. She narrowed her focus. At the same instant, she felt the heat from the galaxy pendant gather, build, surge, and then rocket from her mind, as bright and sizzling as a laser beam shot from the throat of an immense generator. Push, damn it, push, push.

They passed into the wall: not a plunge but a slow and torturous ooze, the bonds tethering the molecules of this strange, alien glass teasing and ripping. The black mirror—no, this Peculiar, thinned, as if the touch of her mind was a warm finger to frosted glass. Yet the way was not clear; the glass did not melt so much as give and grudgingly deform, the way a too-wet sponge dimpled.

With a stab of horror, she also realized they were slowing down. She was still pushing as hard as she could, but it was as if she were bogged down in something viscous and gluey, like a woolly mammoth caught in an infinitely deep tar pit. The energy sink was sapping them all. The chains of light linking her to Eric and Casey were beginning to fade, the colors bleaching away.

Emma! It was Casey, his thoughts stinging with red panic. Emma, I’m slipping, I can’t hold on, I can’t—

God, no! But she was tiring, fast, and the harder she fought, the less energy she had. Her mind skidded, her concentration faltering as her hold on the others slipped. The sensation was bizarre, as if her thoughts were clumsy feet trying to stay upright on glare ice.

Emma. Eric, steady and sure. Look at me. Feel me. Let me help.

Help? How? She saw the cobalt shimmer that was Eric, but that was all, and Casey had his hand so she couldn’t really feel Eric either. Casey was still there, but his touch was like smoke against her fingers. Her whole body was going numb, draining to an outline, a silhouette, as the energy sink bled her of color and life.

Eric, again: Feel me, Emma. Look for me. I’m right here.

Then she remembered. She thought of their kiss on the snow: Eric’s mouth searching hers, his hands framing her face, his body fitting to hers. Give him color; use the cynosure to fill him in. In another moment, she saw his face shimmering in the dark of her mind’s eye.

That’s it. Stay with me, Emma, Eric said, as their chain of three and many colors brightened. Hold on to me, look at me, use me, and keep going; get us through.

She didn’t know why this helped, and how any of this worked. She was only a junior in some yuppie private school, for God’s sake. There was no science she knew to explain this, but it was as if she believed Eric into being. Maybe it was his faith in her, or only the electricity between two people, the way the air thickens and crackles when they look at each other. The connection is there, and you know it.

But she hung on, and she pushed. Her ears filled with a rushing, a whirring, and then they were passing through much faster, the stubborn glue of the energy sink weakening, the bright beacon of Lizzie’s Sign of Sure as solid as any path. She felt the space of this bizarre Peculiar dilate like an immense pupil …

From beyond its margins, swelling from the dark and whatever waited, she heard a loud, long, bloody scream.

And she heard something clamor in a raucous, cawing chorus. She knew what that was, too.

Birds. Not a few. Not a couple dozen. But hundreds and hundreds of birds.

Dead ahead.

RIMA Blood Binds

1

ONCE, IN BIO, they’d sat through a gruesome video of some sadist-scientist injecting formaldehyde into a squeaking, thrashing rat. For Rima, the poor thing couldn’t die fast enough, and yet that was not what horrified her most. The worst was when the red leeched from the rat’s eyes until they were a dead, milky white.

Stealing her mother’s whisper was like that.

Anita was screeching. She tried pulling away, but Rima hung on. The sensation was agony, like a rush of liquid nitrogen churning through her body, freezing her mind, icing her heart. Anita began to jitter and twitch as her whisper—her life and what rode in her soul—oiled into Rima.

And then she knew because she felt it.

No! Her back suddenly bowing with pain, Rima let out an agonized scream, but it was already too late. This is what it wanted. She felt her body expanding and deforming as the whisper-man uncoiled, streaming through her limbs, riding her blood to plump out her fingers, her toes. She felt the bite of rope still cinched around her right wrist and both ankles as the whisper-man squirmed and wriggled and bunched, and then she cried out as the rope split and fell away. For a wild second, she felt a spurt of hope. Maybe she would live through this; maybe she might actually be able to contain the whisper-man without …

All thought whited out as a monstrous pain ripped through her chest: not a single talon but razor-claws that dragged and tore and split. Her scream choked off as blood gushed into her mouth, and then it was all she could do to grab enough air.

Can’t hold it. She sucked in a gurgling gasp. Tearing me apart.

OH, POOR LITTLE RIMA. The whisper-man’s voice crawled over her mind. DOES IT HURRRRT?

“Y-yes.” Her mouth was sour with the taste of copper and pain. “Pl-please, t-take it back. L-leave me …”

TOO LATE. YOU’RE A BRAVE GIRL, AND STRONG, BUT NOT STRONG ENOUGH TO PLAY THIS GAME. IF IT HELPS, YOU’RE NOT THE ONE I WANT ANYWAY. FOR THE MOMENT, THOUGH, YOU’LL DO. NOW, YOU JUST RELAX AND LET ME DO ALLLL THE TALKING.

She felt her consciousness compress as the whisper-man crowded in. She recoiled, tried kicking out with her will, but he was walking over her mind now, insinuating himself into the cracks and crannies and secret places, prying her apart. The whisper-man surged in a river of black through her veins; her heart shuddered with the force of it, and when she looked at her hand, what little breath she had snagged in her throat.

Her skin was moving.

No. She could feel the blackness there, worming and heaving, those dark tentacles eeling over her bones, seeping into the meat of her. This was like Tania. The same thing was inside her now, balling in her gut, ready to skitter up her throat on its spidery legs.

NO, the whisper-man crooned in her mind. YOU STOLE A WHISPER, THAT’S ALL. A BIG BAD WHISPER, BUT NO MORE THAN THAT. ONLY BLOOD BINDS. ONLY BLOOD WILL DO.

She was on her feet. When had she done that? No matter. Warm blood trickled from the corners of her mouth and down her neck to soak her chest. Her vision was muddy and her cheeks were wet; when she put a hand there, her fingers came away ruby-red.

Overhead, the birds boiled and screamed. On the rock, at her feet, Anita was as still as a discarded wax figurine. Beyond the magic circle, the voodoo priestess cowered.

“You say you let me go.” The priestess sounded both aggrieved and frightened. “You make a promise. You say once you have the power, you free me.”

Rima opened her mouth …

2

AND THE GIRL’S lips formed words, but the words were not hers, and neither was the voice.

“YES,” the whisper-man said. It twisted Rima’s lips into a bloody crack of a smile. “BUT … I LIED.”

Then, it brought down the birds.

EMMA To the End of Time

1

THE PECULIAR SPAT them out. They tumbled, not falling as much as rematerializing in a stagger, hands still linked: Emma first, then Casey, and finally Eric. A ball of sound broke over them, an echoing scream that rebounded off rock and doubled, and Emma thought, Cave. For a second, she thought they might still be in Bode’s nightmare: same story, different page. Then the floor undulated and bunched, and whatever else she might have thought after that turned to dust in her mind.

The birds spread in a roiling, living carpet. Emma smelled blood and the birds’ feral, almost metallic stink. A thousand glassy eyes glittered; black beaks gaped to reveal pink mouths and yellow tongues. Most were crows, but there were a few owls, their curved talons slick and stained with blood, stringy with dark flesh.

As if responding to some signal, the birds lifted as one in a broad, ebony curtain and shot toward some spot high above, leaving behind shredded clothing and a tumble of stained bone. The birds massed—and then seemed to melt into the ceiling. They fell utterly silent without even so much as a rustle. Yet they were there; their beetle-bright eyes studded the ceiling in an alien galaxy, a splash of eerie starlight.

That was when Emma realized something else: she could see herself. Not from their eyes; she wasn’t in the birds’ heads, thank God. But she saw herself, as well as Casey and Eric, reflected from the rock high above, at their feet, and all around. They went on and on, another Emma/Eric/Casey and yet another Emma/Eric/Casey and another and another and another: an infinite number of Emmas and Erics and Caseys marching away to the end of time.

The cave was an immense black-mirror sphere.

“Emma,” Eric said, and pointed. “Look. Inside that circle of candles.”

She followed his gaze, and a blast of horror swept through her body.

“No.” Casey’s voice was an anguished whisper. “No.”

2

RIMA SWAYED. HER body glistened, as if she’d been dipped in red paint. More blood dribbled in crimson rills from her mouth, her ears, her shredded wrists, and a thousand rips in her skin. Her shirt was a bib of purple gore, and Emma gasped as fresh blood blossomed in a dark rose over Rima’s stomach. Blood leaked through tiny fissures in her skin to form rivulets that ran down her legs and dripped from her fingers to puddle on the rock with a sodden, dull puh-puh-puh-puh. Rima looked like a porcelain doll done in a fine crackle-glaze: a leaky vessel through which her life’s blood seeped and would soon drain away completely.

“We’re too late.” Casey was trembling. “We’re too late; it’s got her.”

“Good for you, Casey!” Rima boomed, although the voice was not hers, or the whisper-man’s either, the one Emma had heard in her blinks of Madison and that asylum. Definitely a man’s voice, though.

Beside her, she heard Eric suck in a breath. “What?” she asked. Eric’s skin had gone white as salt. “Eric?”

“Oh God.” Eric’s face was a mask of horror. “God, no, please don’t do this.”

“No.” Casey tensed, and he might have sprung into the circle if Eric hadn’t snatched his brother’s arm. “No, no!” Casey was crying, trying to fight his way free. “It’s not right, it’s not right!”

“Now, Casey. Son.” The monster wearing Rima made a tsk-tsk. “Is that any way to talk to Dear Old Dad?”

ERIC My Nightmare

THIS IS MY fault. Beneath his hands, Eric could feel Casey shuddering, a vessel under pressure, ready to explode. We’re in my nightmare now.

“You’re dead!” Casey’s hands knotted to fists. “You’re dead!”

“Why, Son.” The thing in Rima, the monster with Big Earl’s voice, pulled a pout. A huge, ruby-red tear trickled down her cheek. “That hurts my feelings, it really does.”

“I’m not your son!” The cords stood out in Casey’s neck. “Don’t call me that!”

“Don’t, Casey. That’s what it wants,” Eric said. Big Earl had been a big man with a large man’s bluster, but this was like being caught in an echo chamber. His dead father’s voice battered his brain. Eric’s mouth filled with a taste of clean steel, and he grabbed onto his hate, hugged it as tightly as he held his weeping, raging brother. Good, stay angry; anger was something he could use. He willed his mind to diamond-bright clarity. This is the enemy. No matter what its face, it always has been. “Don’t give it any more power.”

“Oooh,” the whisper-man boomed in Big Earl’s voice, “you always were a smart boy, Eric. I guess Emma was a good teacher, huh?”

Emma let go of some small sound, almost the whimper of a trapped animal, but Eric kept his gaze screwed to the whisper-man. “Leave her out of this. She’s got nothing to say to you. She’s got nothing to do with you.”

“Oh now, Son, you’d be surprised.” The whisper-man threw Eric a wink. “Because she’s got everything to do with you.”

The words barely registered. This thing might have his father’s voice and Rima’s face; it might enjoy and feed upon this kind of sadistic play, but take away the bluster and it was clear: this thing needed them for something. Not only that: Eric knew, instinctively, that they must be willing to give it up. Otherwise, it would have taken what it wanted already, the same way it had snatched Rima and Lizzie.

And where is Lizzie? He risked a quick glance left and right; saw both the ravaged body of what he thought must’ve been a woman and a lumpy heap of bones, stringy flesh, and bloody clothing reduced to tatters. The skeletonized body seemed small but still too large for a little girl. What’s it done with her?

“Stop playing games. You need something from us,” Eric said. “What is it? Where’s Lizzie?”

“A boy with your gifts.” The whisper-man tut-tutted. “And you went into the Marines? Such a waste.”

“Gifts?”

“Why yes, Son. You’re a smart kid; you’ve figured it out already. Each of you has a special gift, even if you don’t know what it is just yet.”

“Stop calling him that! You’re not our father. He’s not your son and neither am I,” Casey said. “We know what you are.”

“OH, CASEY,” the whisper-man said, reverting back to its own voice, which wasn’t necessarily a relief. To Eric, it sounded like both a gargle and the scream of nails over a blackboard. It felt like knives in his brain. “YOU DON’T HAVE A CLUE, MY BOY. YOU REALLY DON’T.”

“Fine, then show yourself.” Casey scrubbed away the whisper-man’s words with an angry swipe of his hand. “Stop playing games. If this is our nightmare, you don’t need Rima. Let her go.”

“OH NOW, I COULDN’T DO THAT—NOT YET, ANYWAY,” the whisper-man said. “WE NEED TO COME TO TERMS FIRST. SO I THINK I’LL HOLD ON TO HER FOR THE TIME BEING.” A crimson spider stretched along Rima’s left side as a fresh seam opened. “A LITTLE COLLATERAL, DON’TCHA KNOW.”

“Collateral for what?” Eric said.

“A BARGAIN, OF COURSE. A NEGOTIATION.”

“What could we possibly have that you can’t already take?” Eric said. “Where can we go? We’re in your space.”

“I want to talk to Rima,” Casey said.

“I WANT TO TALK TO RIMA, PLEASE,” the whisper-man said. “CASEY, WE REALLY HAVE TO WORK ON YOUR MANNERS.”

“Where is she?” Casey shouted.

“SHE’S RIGHT HERE—SCREAMING HER HEAD OFF, I’LL GIVE YOU THAT. THIS IS THE PROBLEM WITH USING YOU WHEN YOU’RE AWAKE. EXCEPT FOR EMMA, IT’S MUCH EASIER WHEN YOU’RE ASLEEP. WHY, IF I WEREN’T SUCH A STRONG CUSS, SHE MIGHT DISTRACT ME.”

“What?” Eric heard Emma say; from her tone, he couldn’t tell if she was startled or had suddenly found the missing piece of a mental jigsaw puzzle.

“What do you mean, using us when we’re awake?” Eric said to the whisper-man. “Why is Emma different? What are you talking about?”

The thing in Rima’s body kept on as if he hadn’t spoken. “BUT RIMA’S JUST A SLIP OF A THING, AND NOT VERY STRONG. SO SENSITIVE, SO SWEET—AND I KNOW SHE LIKES YOU, CASEY. SHE WOULD DO ANYTHING TO SAVE YOU. TRUST ME ON THAT. I THINK THE TWO OF YOU WERE SOMEHOW MEANT FOR EACH OTHER.”

“Then please stop hurting her.” Casey’s lips trembled, but he shrugged out of Eric’s grasp and pulled himself up straight. The deep bruises on his translucent skin were as livid as clotted blood. “Let her go before you kill her. You have the power to do that.”

“It does, but it won’t, Casey. Not yet, anyway. It wants to play just a little longer,” Emma said. She had gone very pale. Her cobalt eyes were nearly violet in the bad light. “Where’s McDermott? Where’s Lizzie?”

“THAT BRAT?” The whisper-man spluttered a wet, horsey sound. Blood misted in a tiny cloud. “LITTLE LIZZIE WAS NEVER HERE.”

EMMA Monster-Doll

SHE HAD ALREADY half-guessed the truth. The story had spun itself out in her blinks: Lizzie’s parents, the Mirror, the panops and Peculiars, Lizzie’s dolls, the flight from the house, that crash, and that very last blink in which Meredith lay dying, with Lizzie not far behind, as the fog leaked and nosed its way inside the little girl. There had been all that talk about tangles. But the shock still hit Emma like a slap.

Lizzie had felt it with the monster-doll, which must have been some incarnation of the whisper-man. How Lizzie did it, Emma couldn’t guess, but it must be a little like any kid at play: you act out all the parts. You get into the doll’s head and lose yourself in a fantasy world. Somehow, using the galaxy pendant, Lizzie must’ve crossed into some realm. Bypassing the gateway that was the Mirror? Or had she found another machine? For that matter, maybe the cynosure had more than one function, could be used in ways Lizzie’s parents hadn’t known or understood.

Either way, Lizzie had grabbed a piece of the whisper-man—or he’d hung on to her; who knew?—and then the whisper-man talked to her in a language she could understand. They’d played. They went places; it had shown her how to do things in different Nows. Yet, with every contact, untangling who she was from it was harder. A bit of Lizzie was always left behind, and vice versa. It had sunk in its teeth, gotten a taste. So when the fog finally caught them after the crash, that enormous tangle of energy—from the Peculiars, the whisper-man, and what was left of her father—invaded the little girl, walked her brain, and became her, sliding inside Lizzie’s skin to wear her the way you did a glove. It just hadn’t done it fast enough, and Lizzie had time to finish her special forever-Now and imprison them both.

“I think she was never here, as a girl, for us,” Emma said, “but she put you here. She made this place out of her idea of a Peculiar, and then she bound you. She was bleeding, and you need that, don’t you? It’s the actual blood that matters. It’s why McDermott cut himself. It wasn’t only to activate the Mirror. It was to give you a way in that would stick.” But it must not work all at once unless there’s enough time. What was it that McDermott had said? A cumulative exposure, something he had to do over and over again. He must’ve thought that if he cut himself just every so often, took in only a little of its energy, he could use it without it having enough of a hold to use him.

So was that what London had been about? McDermott taking in too much? But there had been something wrong with Meredith McDermott, too. Scars. I remember scars on her arms. Her memory was faulty; there were holes, things she couldn’t recall. Hadn’t McDermott said that Meredith and Lizzie went away? To where?

“YOU KNOW, YOU’RE VERY SMART, A REAL CHIP OFF THE OLD LIZZIE-BLOCK.” The whisper-man gave a sly, ghastly wink. “I CAN SEE WHERE ERIC GETS IT.”

“Why do you keep saying that?” Eric asked.

Emma kept her eyes screwed to the whisper-man. “We’re not talking about that.”

“OH, BUT WE ARE. YOU ALL NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE STAKES HERE,” the whisper-man said.

“What’s to understand?” Casey said. “You’re an asshole.”

“SO ELOQUENT. EMMA’S GUESSED MOST OF IT, I’LL BET. IT’S REALLY VERY SIMPLE. AFTER THE CRASH, I GOT INTO THAT LIZZIE AND, OH BOY, WAS THAT A MISTAKE. SHE WAS MUCH STRONGER THAN EVEN I REALIZED AND SUCH A BRIGHT, CREATIVE LITTLE GIRL! YOUNGER MINDS AREN’T BOUND BY LOGIC; NOT EVERYTHING HAS TO CONFORM TO RULES. WHO KNEW SHE’D PAID SUCH CLOSE ATTENTION TO HER MOTHER AND THOSE PECULIARS? OH, I KNEW THE RISKS. SHE WASN’T A PUSHOVER LIKE DEAR OLD FRANK, WHO HAD THE KNACK BUT JUST DIDN’T KNOW WHEN TO STOP. BUT I COULDN’T RESIST. REALLY, AFTER I SAW HOW SHE COULD PULL THINGS BACK INTO HER REALITY—THAT STORM, FOR EXAMPLE; HECK OF A THING—AND WITHOUT DESTROYING THAT PARTICULAR NOW, WELL, I KNEW I JUST HAD TO GET ME MORE OF THAT.”

“Where is she?” Eric said. “Is she dead? Did you kill her?”

“SON, LIZZIE WAS GONE FROM HERE A LONG TIME AGO,” the whisper-man said. “WITHIN MINUTES OF THAT SWOOSH. OH, SHE’S ALIVE SOMEWHERE ELSE, AN INFINITE NUMBER OF VERSIONS IN ALL THOSE MULTIVERSES YOU TALKED ABOUT, ALTHOUGH THAT’S TOO NEW AGE FOR ME. CALL IT A REALM, OR A NOW. EVEN A BOOK-WORLD, WITH ITS SECRET COMPARTMENTS. IT’S ALL THE SAME IN A WAY, BECAUSE THE WORLD OF A BOOK IS SO REAL TO ITS CHARACTERS, AND THOSE WHO READ IT, TRIP INTO IT, GET LOST.”

“Where you can’t stay long,” Emma said. “Now or book-world, it doesn’t matter, because you’re bound to Lizzie’s story and she’s bound you here. You can be what you want here but nowhere else.”

“WELL, IT’S NOT AS LIMITING AS THAT. BINDING WORKS BOTH WAYS. GIVE A LITTLE, GET A LITTLE. YOU’RE RIGHT; LIZZIE AND I ARE TANGLED, THE SAME WAY THAT FRANK’S IN HERE AND, OF COURSE, ALL … WELL …” It threw Emma another wink, so eerily similar to the one McDermott had given her in that Madison-blink, she felt a swift, sharp frisson race up her neck. “MOST OF YOUR STORIES, THE ONES STORED IN THE PECULIARS.”

“What do you mean, most?” Eric said. “There are others? Ones that aren’t finished, like …” Emma felt Eric move a little closer, as if to shield her, too. “Like Emma’s?”

In reply, the thing only hunched Rima’s left shoulder, but when it did, Emma heard a distinctive riiip that made her flash to Sal tearing up old sheets for rags. “SO I CAN BREACH THE PECULIAR FOR SHORT PERIODS OF TIME, BECAUSE LIZZIE HAD THAT KNACK; JUST LONG ENOUGH TO GRAB ONE OF YOU, WHICH ONLY MEANS THAT I GRAB THAT PIECE OF HER IN YOU. I CAN VISIT ANY NOW AND PLAY WITH THE VERSION OF YOU—IN YOU—THAT EXISTS IN THAT NOW FOR A LITTLE WHILE. TRUE, EXCEPT FOR EMMA, YOU’RE ASLEEP AND YOU MISS ALL THE FUN; WELL … MOST OF YOU DO.”

All my blackouts. All those blinks. She felt the cold, keen blade of this new horror slice into her heart. They haven’t been fugues or seizures. It’s been using me, wearing me to visit versions of me in different timelines. And it could use her while she was awake. Why? Because I’m my own person: real, not set in a story with an inevitable end?

“Emma’s the key, isn’t she?” Eric said. “She’s the constant. This has all been a series of … of tests. You manufactured everything so Emma would eventually learn what to do to get you out of here and into a different Now. That’s why you kept bringing different people. You had to keep altering the mix to help her get there. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“What?” Somehow this idea was even worse. “Eric, what are you saying?”

“Think about it, Emma,” Eric said. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. If it’s tangled with Lizzie and McDermott, then it already knew you had the ability. What it had to figure out was who would help you get there. Must’ve sucked for it, constantly having to hit the reset button.”

“You’re saying I’ve … I’ve been here before?” Multiple contacts with this thing? In this place? But didn’t every contact leave a stain? How infected with it was she?

“BINGO!” The whisper-man gave Rima’s right knee an exaggerated by-golly slap that left a palm-sized splotch on her jeans that swiftly turned the color of blackberry jam. “BY GOD, YOU’RE A BRIGHT SONUVAGUN. BUT IT WASN’T AS SIMPLE AS ALL THAT. IT WAS ALSO A MATTER OF EMMA COMING INTO HER OWN, MARSHALLING THE RIGHT ABILITIES HERE AND, WELL, IN THAT LIFE SHE’S MADE FOR HERSELF. EACH OF YOU HAS A GIFT, MY BOY, WHETHER YOU KNOW IT OR NOT. BUT ONLY ONE OF YOU HAS THE GIFT I NEED.”

“What’s that?” asked Casey. “Who?”

“WHY, THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING, SON. I NEED SOMEONE WHO CAN CARRY A WHISPER, AN ENERGY AS STRONG AS MINE, WITHOUT COMING APART AT THE SEAMS. I NEED A MIND THAT CAN ABSORB ME WITHOUT GOING TOO MAD, SO WE CAN PLAY TOGETHER FOR A NICE, LONNNG TIME ACROSS THE NOWS,” the whisper-man said. When it smiled, Rima’s lower lip split in two to sag from her teeth. “I NEED THE GIFT, CASEY, OF YOU.”

ERIC Write the Person

“NO.” ERIC MOVED to put himself between Casey and the whisper-man. “You can’t have him. You can’t have any of us.”

“OH, I BEG TO DIFFER.” Rima’s clothes were drenched now, and blood painted every inch of her face. “SEEMS I ALREADY GOT LITTLE RIMA NOW, HAVEN’T I? IF YOU DON’T HURRY, YOU WON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT ME LETTING HER GO EITHER. SHE’LL JUST DIE, AND IT WON’T BE PRETTY. OH NO, IT WON’T BE PRETTY AT ALL.”

As if to put the period to that, a fresh split opened on Rima’s throat with a meaty rip to reveal a faint glimmer of tendon and red, wet muscle. Eric felt a fresh surge of anger at their helplessness—at his. No one could lose that much blood and survive. But this thing did have powers. “If you leave, will that save her? Can you heal her somehow?”

“OH, YOU BETCHA.” A tremor squirmed through Rima’s cheeks, and the whisper-man let out a sudden groan. “AHHH … WHOA, BOY, BETTER HURRY. SHE’S IN A LOT OF PAIN.”

“Eric,” Casey began.

“No. Don’t even think about it, Case.” Eric’s heart beat hard and loud in his ears. Cold sweat rimed his upper lip, and a cramp of fear grabbed his stomach. Being scared wasn’t bad, was it? His drill sergeant once said that anyone who wasn’t a little freaked out was a damn fool. The trick was not to let it paralyze you.

I can do this. I’ve been fighting one way or another for my whole life—against Big Earl, the odds. Myself. Just one last battle.

“Take me,” he said. “Use me.”

“No,” Emma said. “Eric, don’t.”

“SORRY, BOY,” the whisper-man said. “I DO SO ADMIRE YOU, BUT ONLY CASEY WILL DO.”

“It’s all right.” Except for the bruises, dread had bleached Casey’s skin until his face was nearly transparent. “I’ll do it.”

“Case, you can’t.” Eric’s hand tightened on Casey’s forearm. “I won’t let you.”

“But you heard it. I’m the only one who can save her.” Casey’s eyes were wet. “You’d do it for Emma or me. Please, Eric. Let me do this for her.”

“It’s a liar, Casey.” Emma’s tone was steely and sure. “No one can save her now, not even you.”

“But it said it would,” Casey said.

“YOU HAVE MY WORD ON THAT,” the whisper-man put in.

“Screw you,” Emma spat. “You don’t have that kind of power. If you did, Tony and Bode and Chad and Lily would be here. Lizzie died from the crash; I don’t see you healing her. Even if she’d lived, she couldn’t have held you forever. Eventually, you would’ve ripped her apart the way you’re killing Rima now. If you could heal like that, you could hop in and out of Lizzie, patch her up, wash, rinse, repeat a hundred times over. You wouldn’t need Casey.”

“I KEEP—AAHHH.” The thing grunted. Rima’s lips peeled away from teeth tinted orange with blood. Her upper lip trembled, then tore, the skin stretching and thinning and coming apart in wet threads. “I KEEP FORGETTING,” it said, using Rima’s hand to knuckle away blood, “WHAT A SMART LITTLE ORPHAN GIRL YOU ARE. WITH YOUR GIFTS, YOU AND I COULD GO FAR, BUT YOU’RE NOT STRONG ENOUGH TO HOLD ME EITHER. OURS WOULD BE A VERY SHORT UNION. LUCKY FOR ME, YOU STUMBLED ON HOW TO WRITE THE PERSON WHO COULD. OOOPS.” The whisper-man put a mangled hand to Rima’s ruined lips in mock dismay. “LET THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG. ME AND MY BIG, FAT, BLOODY MOUTH.”

“Write the person?” A feather of alarm stroked Eric’s neck. Emma, he saw, had gone very still. “Emma, what’s he talking about?”

“WHY, YOUR GIFTS, ERIC,” the whisper-man said. “HAVEN’T YOU WONDERED WHY YOU AND EMMA ARE, WELL, SUCH GOOD PALS, AND SO SOON, TOO? WHY YOU LIKE HER SO MUCH? WHY YOU ARE SO ATTRACTED, CARE SO MUCH ABOUT HER? EVEN THINK ALIKE? BET YOU COULD FINISH EACH OTHER’S SENTENCES, AM I RIGHT?”

“Eric?” he heard Casey say, but Eric couldn’t tear his eyes from the sudden anguish in Emma’s face. “Emma?” he said. “Emma, talk to me. Tell me, you can tell me.”

“Please,” Emma said—not to him, but to the whisper-man. Her voice was tiny and strained. “Please, don’t. Don’t do this.”

“Emma,” he said, a flower of dread growing in his chest. “Emma, no matter what it is, whatever this thing has to say … it won’t make any difference.”

“GOOD, LOYAL, STRONG, BRAVE, SMART ERIC,” the whisper-man said. “BUT OF COURSE, YOU’RE ALL THAT—BECAUSE THAT’S EXACTLY HOw EMMA WROTE YOU.”

ERIC The Other Shoe Drops

“WHAT?” ERIC FELT his center crumple, like bricks tumbling from rotten mortar. “What?” He looked at Emma but couldn’t grab her eyes. “Emma, what’s he saying?”

“OH, COME ON, ERIC. YOU’RE SMART ENOUGH TO FIGURE THIS OUT. IN FACT, I ALREADY TOLD YOU THAT IT WAS A MATTER OF EMMA DEVELOPING HER ABILITIES, BUT NOT ONLY HERE. REMEMBER, SHE’S BEEN WRITING HER LIFE FOR QUITE SOME TIME. SHE JUST NEEDED TO WORK UP THE COURAGE TO TAKE THAT ONE LAST, EXTRA STEP.” The whisper-man sighed. “HATE TO BE THE ONE TO BREAK IT TO YOU, BUT YOU’RE NOT MCDERMOTT’S CREATION, ERIC. YOU’RE EMMA’S.”

The words seemed to detonate in his brain. He could feel himself beginning to tremble all over from the blasts, the shock. No, no, no, that can’t be. It’s lying. But what if, what if? His fists bunched. So the hell what? I don’t care. I have a life. I feel things. He was real; he was alive. He had Casey to fight for, and now there was the promise of Emma to care about. Nothing could take any of that away, least of all this thing.

“I’m nobody’s creation.” He squared off, pulled himself that much straighter. “I’m my own person. I don’t care if I don’t remember everything. For all we know, that’s your doing. But I make choices in a world you know nothing about. You may control this space, but you have no say over me or my life, so fuck you very much.”

“BRAVE WORDS, BUT I’D EXPECT NOTHING LESS. BELIEVE WHATEVER YOU WANT, BOY—BUT I’D TAKE A VERY GOOD LOOK AT EMMA IF I WERE YOU. THAT FACE SPEAKS VOLUMES, DOESN’T IT? YOU’RE HER CREATION, ERIC, THE BOY OF HER DREAMS. THAT’S WHY YOU TWO GET ALONG SO WELL. WHY YOU’RE SO DRAWN TO HER. SHE WROTE YOU. MADE YOU JUMP RIGHT OFF THAT PAGE, TOO—AND THAT WAS WHAT I WAS WAITING FOR.”

The whisper-man was wrong; it was a liar and a cheat. Except … one look at Emma’s pale, stricken face and he knew that the whisper-man was telling at least a version of the truth.

Emma wrote me into being? The same way Lizzie used symbols and McDermott churned out novels? No, no. Despite his resolve, he was getting cold, so cold. Come on, get a hold of yourself. Think this through.

Emma could have written about a boy like him. That could be it, right? Sure, this was a place where the energy of thoughts conjured new realities.

But I am alive outside this place. I was on a snowmobile. We nearly crashed.

But what if this thing was telling the truth? Did that matter? What if things had happened the way the whisper-man said?

That can’t be right. I hope; I think about the future. When I dream of the girl I want, I see Emma. Yes, but was that because Emma made him think this way? No, that couldn’t be, because that would mean Emma had written him into a nightmare of abuse and Big Earl and murder.

No, no, that was an accident. The gun just went off. What was he thinking? Emma would never—

“But I didn’t write you!” Emma screamed at the whisper-man. “I never wrote a father … a monster like you!”

Oh God. As strong as he knew he could be, Eric felt something deep in the center of his being waver. She just admitted it. She wrote me. He felt Casey’s hand on his shoulder, but the touch was distant, nothing more than a suggestion. She wrote us. Everything I think I know, all that I am … is because of her?

“YOU WROTE HIM A FATHER WHO GOT WHAT HE DESERVED. BUT DON’T BE SO HARD ON YOURSELF, EMMA; YOU COULDN’T HELP IT. REMEMBER YOUR DEAR POPS AND HIS SET POINTS? MOMMIE DEAREST MAKING LIKE A TREE AND LEAVING HER LITTLE BUNDLE OF JOY IN A MILLION PIECES? A TRAUMATIZED, UGLY LITTLE GIRL WITH NO HOPE, NO FRIENDS? YOU CARRY THE PAST, EMMA, AND IT COLORS EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH, ANYTHING YOU DO,” the whisper-man said. “MCDERMOTT KNEW: THE MONSTERS OF THE PAST ARE BLOODSTAINS THAT ONLY FADE BUT NEVER DISAPPEAR. HE INFECTED YOU. YOU COULDN’T HELP BUT INFECT ERIC, TOO. WHY ELSE GIVE HIM AN ABUSIVE ASSHOLE OF A DAD?”

What? Through the sudden muddle in his mind, he felt the words prick like pins. What does he mean, infect?

“But I never imagined you. I never gave you a name,” she said, fiercely. “And I know that I never even thought of, much less wrote, a bro—” Her mouth clamped shut.

“WHAT WAS THAT?” The whisper-man cupped a hand to Rima’s ear, which tore, releasing a gush of fresh blood to dribble along the girl’s chin. “SAY WHAT, EMMA, DEAR?”

“Damn it, leave her alone!” Eric’s rage finally boiled over. “Just shut the fuck up! I don’t care, I don’t care! What does this have to do with her or me or Casey? Huh? If you’ve got something else to say, say it!”

“OH, ALL RIGHT. HERE’S WHERE THE OTHER SHOE DROPS.” The whisper-man paused. “OUR LITTLE EMMA DIDN’T WRITE CASEY, ERIC.”

Casey’s hand was still around his arm, and now Eric felt his brother go rigid. “What do you mean?” Casey said. “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t let it get to you,” Eric said. The icy dread in his stomach seemed to suddenly thaw. He should’ve known it was lying. Of course, Emma didn’t write Casey: because she’d never written him. Daydreaming wasn’t the same as creating, and what he felt for Casey was real and so intense he could hold it in his hand. Casey was his brother. That was a given. Nothing could undo that. “It’s just playing games, Case. This is all an illusion; it’s a lie. I’m alive. I’m real, and you’re my brother; you’ve always been my brother.”

“DID I SAY HE WASN’T? I ONLY SUGGESTED THAT YOU BOYS DON’T SHARE … WELL, THE SAME MOTHER, SO TO SPEAK,” the whisper-man said.

“Shut up,” Emma said to it. Tears streamed over her cheeks. “Just shut up, shut up!”

The whisper-man ignored her. “I SAID YOU ALL HAVE GIFTS, ERIC. NOW LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT YOURS. YOU WANTED SOMEONE TO PROTECT AND LOVE, CARE FOR, FIGHT FOR. EMMA MADE YOU THAT WAY. SHE SET YOU IN MOTION, BUT COULD NEVER BRING HERSELF TO FINISH YOUR STORY, JUST AS FRANK NEVER PENNED HER END. SO YOU’VE GOTTEN LOOSE. YOU ARE SO VERY MUCH LIKE HER IN THAT WAY, TOO: A FREE AGENT WITH FREE WILL … WELL, WITHIN LIMITS, BECAUSE, AFTER ALL, SHE’S HERE, AND SO ARE YOU. YOU ARE ALL BOUND TO MCDERMOTT AND HIS STORIES, TO LIZZIE, TO THIS PLACE, AND TO ONE ANOTHER, THROUGH THE NOWS AND ALL TIMES. THE POINT, ERIC, IS YOU CREATED THE PERFECT VESSEL FOR ME: A YOUNG MIND, A CLEAN SLATE OF A PERSONALITY WITH ONLY ENOUGH HISTORY TO ROUND YOU OUT, MAKE YOU WHOLE. YOU BROUGHT CASEY TO LIFE, ERIC … ALL BY YOURSELF.”

Eric felt his knees go watery. There was nothing inside his chest. He couldn’t speak, or move. His brain hung in an airless space, a kind of between, like the vacuum between stars.

“CHARACTERS WRITING CHARACTERS THAT BRING OTHER CHARACTERS TO LIFE…” What was left of Rima’s mouth skinned a grin that was all tattered flesh, smeary orange teeth, and purple clot. “KIND OF MAKES YOUR HEAD SPIN, DON’T IT?”

“Fuck you!” Casey screamed. He wrenched free of Eric’s slack grip and sprang for the circle. “Fuck you! I’ll kill you, I’ll fucking kill you!”

“No, Casey!” Eric and Emma shouted. They surged after, but Casey was small, fast as a whippet, and he had a head start. “Casey, no!” Eric cried, as Casey crossed into the circle. “Casey, stop, no, st—”

The air abruptly came alive and swelled with a wild rushing sound that Eric thought was like the roar of water, except it came from somewhere high above. What happened next came so fast that neither he nor Emma could do anything about it.

As one, the birds foamed from the rock and crashed down in a gale.

RIMA A Whisper, Like Blood

STARING THROUGH THE windows of her eyes, Rima watched as Casey flung himself into the circle—and all that was left of her moaned, No, Casey, no! She couldn’t help him. She wasn’t strong enough to distract the whisper-man for long; it had taken every ounce of her will just to give the lie to the whisper-man’s assurances that it could save her. Now, her own life was fading fast; she could feel her mind thinning the way a cloud dissipated under a bright sun. She couldn’t break free, but she had to do something, something.

She understood now, too, about the dolls this thing had fashioned as receptacles for what it, as Lizzie, called the “you-you.” Six dolls, not eight: there was no Eric-doll, no Casey. Neither had a place in McDermott’s book-worlds, and of the two, Casey was the cleanest, nearly a blank slate, able to absorb whispers and become with ease.

She felt the whisper-man crush Casey to her bleeding body in a tight, suffocating embrace. Casey’s warm breath slashed over her ruined face, and his own was close, just inches away. She sensed the whisper-man’s intent an instant before her own hand tightened around Anita’s boning knife, which the whisper-man had slid into the small of her back, and she thought, No no no no, please don’t, don’t hurt him, don’t!

Too late, and she had no power anyway. A quicksilver flick, and then Casey gasped as the knife sliced through his coat and slid into his left flank, just below his ribs, slipping through skin, dividing muscle. The tip drove to the artery, releasing Casey’s blood in a great, throbbing gush.

No, no, no, CASEY! But Casey was sagging against her now, his life pulsing out in a crimson river.

“OHHH, THAT’S GOOD.” The whisper-man crooned like a lover into Casey’s ear: “THAT’S GOOD, OHHH, THAT FEELS SO GOOD, DOESN’T IT? GIVE YOURSELF TO ME, BREATH OF MY BREATH. TAKE ME, FEED ME, BLOOD OF MY BLOOD, OHHH, FEEL ME.”

There was one chance, and only one—because she knew what the whisper-man had forgotten. But she must wait, wait, wait. She didn’t dare allow herself to think any further than that. If she did, it would know. She latched onto a rhyme, a meaningless tune, because she must hide, hide, quiet, quiet: Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb. Mary had a little lamb …

Beyond the circle, she heard Eric and Emma both screaming, but couldn’t see them at all because of all those hundreds and thousands of crows. The birds—beaks stabbing, slicing, ripping—boiled over their bodies. Emma and Eric would be dead, and very soon, if she couldn’t stop this.

Hurry, hurry, hurry. Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, oh, hurry hurry hurry …

“BLOOD OF MY BLOOD,” the whisper-man whispered with the ruin of her mouth, her bloody flesh pressed against Casey’s ear. “BREATH OF MY BREATH, I BIND YOU.”

Hurry hurry hurry …

“I TAKE YOU, OHHH, FEEL ME AS I FILL YOU!” It crushed her mouth to Casey’s, and then Casey was drinking the whisper-man in, binding the darkness to him.

Yes! The blackness slid away; the whisper-man flowed in a deep riptide from her body. There was no blessed wave of relief; she would not live through this. The icy slush that passed for her blood was gone, but now fire licked through her limbs, throbbing with every beat of her dying heart. The pain was a vice, crushing her chest and forcing out her breath. The cord that had held her up for so long snapped, and she began to fall. But as she did, she realized something else that the whisper-man did not know.

There was someone else—something she half knew and recognized—inside Casey.

Help him. She was sinking fast, hurtling toward that final darkness on legs suddenly no more substantial than air. Please, whoever, whatever you are, help Casey fight, help him, help …

She knew when her body thudded to that strange, smooth, and glassy rock, but she registered nothing more than a distant thump. Her mind spun. She couldn’t think, couldn’t put her finger on it. There was something important she had to do … but what? I know this … what is it … it’s import—

Then, she remembered what the whisper-man had forgotten: that a whisper, like blood, leaves a stain.

Wearing her body, the whisper-man had brought down the birds. That stain—this ability—was still there, but faint and growing fainter.

Please, God, just keep me alive a few more seconds.

With the last of her strength, she gathered her will and sent an arrow of thought, flying true.

Go. I command you now. Go.

ERIC To My Heart, Across Times, to the Death

THE MOMENT CASEY sprinted for the circle, Eric simply froze, unable to believe his eyes. What was Casey …? Then his body took over, his mind clamoring: Go go go! He lunged after his brother, Emma by his side. He was so focused on reaching Casey before his brother vaulted into the circle that it took him a few seconds to hear the change, the way the air seemed to churn with a weird, freakish rustle.

“Eric!” Emma suddenly gasped. She grabbed for his arm, and he followed her eyes to the ceiling.

Panic slammed into his chest. “Down!” he shouted. He tackled Emma, driving her to the floor, covering her with his body as the birds hurtled for them in a black rain of needle-sharp beaks and razor talons. Their bodies were everywhere: a living, ravenous tornado that flowed and whirled over and around. Beaks stabbed at his back, his neck, gouging holes in his flesh. Frantic claws raked his hair, and then he was screaming as blades of pain hacked at his scalp. His parka was gone, and so they were through his clothes in no time, their claws drawing hot lines through his flesh. The birds’ claws ticked and skittered over the glassy rock, and there were more birds scuttling over the floor, worming their way to Emma. She was shrieking, and he shouted something wordless, battering at the birds with great sweeps of his arms.

Then a very large crow clamped onto his scalp. Its talons, steely as stilettos, dug in as its beak jackhammered his neck. A red sheet of pain stole his vision. Screaming, he surged up, back arched in agony.

It was, precisely, what the birds had waited for. They swarmed for his face. Nails of pain spiked his cheeks and forehead. One bird swooped in from the side, and he turned his head just in time, as the bird’s beak laid his skin open from the corner of his right eye to his mouth.

The crow battened on his scalp was still coring the flesh of his neck, its beak driving and digging. He reached back, his fist closing over slick feathers. The crow slashed at his fingers, flaying flesh from bone. Roaring with pain, he yanked the flailing creature from his blood-soaked scalp, and then the bird was bulleting for his face, its black beak flashing right for his eye.

Gasping, he got a hand up just in time. The bird’s beak drove into the meat at the base of his thumb, a shock wave he felt all the way to his elbow. With a cry, he tumbled back as the relentless birds closed over him, ripping and pecking—

Then, as if in response to a silent signal, the birds simply stopped—a fast, abrupt hitch, like the flick of a switch—and then lifted off in a vertiginous swirl, spiraling higher and higher to mass at the ceiling.

For a second, Eric could only lie there, stunned. His body was saturated and slick. Blood ran into his eyes, coated his mouth with a taste of warm aluminum. To his right, Emma was drenched with gore. She lay on her stomach, her face hidden by the dark fan of her hair, and he thought, God, no, please. Then he saw her move, and relief surged through his body.

“YOU BITCH!” It was Casey, in the circle, bellowing in a voice that was not Rima’s or Big Earl’s or his own, but the guttural, clotted gargle that was the whisper-man’s true voice. “STOP! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”

Oh, Casey. Eric felt everything inside go dead with despair. His brother’s back bowed as if drawn by an unseen archer. Blood stained Casey’s mouth and glistened on his palms. His chest was a bib of gore. His shirt was slashed on the left; a large vermillion splash slicked his side as a crimson jet spurted from a wound right below his ribs.

“NO, STOP!” Casey shouted. “LET ME GO!”

Rima? Eric thought with stupid amazement. She was doing this? She’d called off the birds? My God, is she still inside him, too? There was no way of knowing. Rima’s body lay in a still, sodden heap where she had crumpled after the whisper-man released her. He couldn’t tell if she was still alive. But someone was fighting back. Something had saved him and Emma.

“NO, DON’T! LET ME GO!” Casey roared. “I’M NOT FINISHED!”

“Look at him.” Blood coursed from slashes on Emma’s arms and neck. A long rip, the mirror image of his, snaked down her cheek. “Eric … there’s somebody else.”

There was. Casey’s stormy eyes—eyes that could hold and be any color—were churning and changing, growing black as oil.

But now he could see that there was also another: a shadow, much larger, man-shaped, smoky and indistinct, bleeding into being, steaming from Casey himself, as if it had been hiding inside and waiting for just this moment.

The whisper-man had said it: I need someone who can carry a whisper, an energy as strong as mine, without coming apart at the seams.

There was Casey, the brother for whom Eric would give his life—and someone else, already inside his brother, fighting for him, with them. But could Casey and this other win?

We can’t take that chance. Eric got his feet under him, then grabbed Emma’s bloody hand in his. Blood binds, and I don’t think we’ve got a lot of time.

“Emma,” he said, hoarsely, “this whole room is a mirror. It’s a mirror. It can’t get completely free of the Peculiar’s energy sink for long, but you can. With the cynosure, you can go to different Nows, but you have to cross into the Dark Passages to do it, and that’s where this thing—”

“Yes.” Her eyes met his, and he read that she understood, exactly, what they had to do. “Just hang on to him long enough,” she said.

To the death, Emma. I will never let go. There was so much more to tell her, a lifetime of stories they might have written, but there was no more time. I will hold you both to my heart, across times, to the death.

Together, they charged into the circle at a dead run.

THE WHISPER-MAN There Is Another

“YOU BITCH!” THE whisper-man raged. Somehow the girl had called off the birds, not that it should have mattered. Once taken in—once invited—the boy should have been helpless, without the strength to resist. Not like Good Old Frank, who knew a trick or two, or his brat, who was more skilled even than her father.

But something was wrong.

THERE IS ANOTHER. This couldn’t be. Casey was the perfect creation: an outline waiting for color, a sponge, a tabula rasa with even less of a history; and that which Casey possessed—abuse and cruelty, rage and betrayal—was the very kind of horror it liked best. True, the boy had been infected by his brother, who had, in his turn, been tainted by Emma. Casey had morals and scruples. He could love. Yet Casey was fresh and strong. As soon as it finished taking the boy, it would bind enough of Emma to gain the one thing it lacked: access to the cynosure, a skill Lizzie had somehow denied it and Emma hadn’t possessed until it had shown her what to do. Then it would break free, away from this place. Together, it and Casey would play across the Nows.

Slipping inside the boy had been so effortless, little more than a sigh. Just like Lizzie, the boy opened himself, a willing sacrifice for his brother and the Rima-bitch, who should be dead, but she had tricked it, tricked it. Still, time should’ve been on its side.

Suddenly, it felt the red scald of an acid-burn, so stinging and harsh, it let out a howl. What was that? Something in the boy, the boy; the boy was carrying something!

WHO ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU? LEAVE! THE BOY IS MI—

Something axed Casey’s legs, and then it was toppling, crashing to the smooth, glassy black rock. Screeching, the whisper-man kicked and spit as Eric wrapped Casey up tight. Eric was alive; he had survived the birds as had Emma, and it knew what she meant to do. It could not fight them all, not at once. No, it would not go back; it would not be nothing again.

I WON’T BE LOST AGAIN, I WILL NOT! A great gust of fear, sour and strong, swept through it. The whisper-man gasped in terror, and Casey stiffened with it. LET ME GO! YOU CAN HAVE THE BOY IF YOU—

I don’t want him. I want you. The intruder battened down with a will that coiled itself in a muscular rope, tighter than any serpent. I was written for this purpose, this moment. I am your end, and we will grapple.

YOU WILL LOSE.

Probably. I can’t match evil for evil. But I have come to do battle. I can delay you, just long enough.

WE CAN SHARE, the whisper-man thought, wildly. THE BOY IS STRONG, STRONG ENOUGH FOR TWO, FOR MANY. TOGETHER, WE WILL—

Beneath Casey’s body, the mirror-rock quivered as if with a sudden earthquake. The floor of the Peculiar heaved, gave, thinned. The whisper-man felt Emma’s will surge, as strong and sure as Eric’s arms around his brother, as the intruder’s hold on it—and the way began to open.

“NO, WAIT!” it thundered. “LET ME FINISH!”

EMMA What Endures

1

ERIC CRASHED INTO Casey, smashing the smaller boy down against the rocky floor. Casey’s head struck hard; the man-shadow bleeding from his skin swirled and then draped itself over Casey’s bulging eyes. From her place by Rima’s broken body, Emma had the crazy, wild hope that this—the emergence of this other, the shadow—would be enough. But then Casey screamed again, and his voice still belonged to the whisper-man.

There was a pressure around her hand, and she looked down into Rima’s ravaged face. “D-door,” Rima whispered. Bright blood-bubbles foamed over her lips. “Make a door into … into the D-Dark Passages … Eric c-can’t … h-hurry …”

“Emma!” Eric shouted. Casey was thrashing, bucking and kicking, but both the shadow-man and Eric had the smaller boy pinned, and Eric was close enough to touch. The shadow had whatever power a whisper possessed, but Eric was real. He was solid and strong—and more: Eric was the force and the power of love. “Do it now, Emma, do it now!”

“I WON’T LET YOU!” the whisper-man boomed. “I WILL BIND YOU, BLOOD OF MY BLOOD, I WILL BIND—”

Together, then, and that was as it should be. They were linked in space and time and an eternity of words, bound in a single purpose to a solitary hope. Tightening her grip on Rima, she reached for Eric’s outstretched hand. His fingers closed around hers—

And Emma screamed. A stinging red charge, scorpion-bright and viper-quick, bit into her mind, because blood—all their mingled blood—binds.

YOU SEE? The whisper-man boomed through the cavern of her skull. You CAN’T FIGHT ME, EMMA. YOU’RE NOT STRONG ENOUGH, BLOOD OF MY BLOOD, AND I WON’T NEED YOUR BODY. I WILL TAKE WHAT I WANT; I WILL HAVE YOUR ABILITIES. I AM TAKING THEM NOW. YOU FEEL IT, DON’T YOU? MY POWER, MY STAIN SPREADING THROUGH YOUR BODY, AND YOU, BLOOD OF MY BLOOD, I WILL BIND YOU—

Go. Not Rima or even Eric, but the shadow-man, the other whisper, the one concealed in Casey’s body. Hurry, Emma.

And she thought, Push.

The cynosure fired. The purple maw gaped, and she felt the change as the rock thinned and pulled apart, and then the chains of light that were Rima and Eric and Emma and, yes, even Casey’s many colors flared to life—but there was a faint smear of red that Emma knew.

Bode? A jolt of surprise and joy. Bode! Is that—

In part. I am Battle, and what remains. His secret, and gift. The shadow-man’s thoughts were as airless as the fading images of a distant dream. Hurry, Emma. You don’t have much time.

She saw what it meant, and felt it, too. A seeping black stain was working its way through their chain, because it had Casey and so did Eric. So did they all. A whisper left a stain, and they were all bleeding, their blood mingling because they were willing to sacrifice for one another. They were willing.

Emma! It was Eric. The blue and gold of their mingled chain pulsed with urgency. Go, Emma, go! Break this place wide open, and do it now, Emma, do it now!

She pushed, and the mirror-room groaned under the effort. All of a sudden, a door blistered and broke open in a great, convulsive shudder as a glistering bolt of light, more powerful than the hottest sun, erupted from the cynosure. A nanosecond later, the Peculiar exploded, shattering in a blistering halo of energies—

2

AND THEN THEY were through and falling fast into somewhere, somewhen, completely new.

It was like nothing that had come before. There was light, not only the brilliant path laid by the cynosure but the hard, bright diamonds of a crowded galaxy. Those must be the many worlds and times of the Nows, and this, the Dark Passages, a hallway with infinite branch-points. Above, below, all around, the way spread itself in a dizzying cluster of galaxies, and they rocketed through, sweeping past worlds; past doors and realms and an infinity of Nows. Choose a door, any door, and push; pop onto the White Space of another story, a different timeline, a new—

Something nipped her skin. A needle, a sting as viper-quick as the bite of the whisper-man trying to scorch its way into her body—and yet not, because she also felt it: a tenebrous finger on her arm. She started, her focus wavering. What was that? She thought of the inky tentacles swimming up from snow as Rima’s nightmare broke apart and remembered the moment she’d pushed through that black membrane in Jasper’s basement: that hand swimming around her wrist to pull her in, just as McDermott reached through the Dickens Mirror and pulled something out. It had never occurred to her to wonder if there might be more than one monster.

But now, she remembered what Lizzie said: You don’t want them to notice you.

The cynosure was a focus and path, a lens and lighthouse … and a … a beacon?

My God. The realization broke like a wash of icy water. They’re the moths, and I’m the light.

Something shot out of the black and battened down on her wrist. An instant later, something else slinked around her waist, a third teased an ankle, a fourth curled around her right thigh. Whoever these creatures were, whatever lived in the Dark Passages swarmed. Or perhaps they were the fabric of darkness itself, the space between galaxies and all matter: a living web that grabbed and tugged and latched on like leeches; and their sound, the whispers that were a clamor and then a river swelling to a roar, crashed through her mind.

They see the cynosure. She felt the panic scrambling up her throat. That’s why it’s so dangerous to cross. They know we’re here; we’ve been seen!

YOU SEE? YOU CAN’T GET AWAY. The whisper-man was still strongest in Casey, but despite the shadow-man, its gelid fingers were surer now, beginning to creep over her thoughts, and she knew from the sudden gasp in her mind that Eric felt it, too. Of course it had been there all along; in the illusion of Lizzie, it had touched them all. In a way, it was finding bits and pieces of itself in them. Perhaps its stain—what Frank McDermott had discovered as the twin to all his horrors—was the midwife of the nightmares of all their lives.

FIGHT ME, AND YOU ONLY DRAIN YOURSELF, AND THEN THEY WILL HAVE YOU. STOP FIGHTING, AND I WILL HELP YOU ESCAPE—AND THEN YOU WILL HELP ME. The whisper-man bit down again, and she grunted, her concentration stuttering. Almost at once, the Dark Passages thickened. She was still pushing as hard as she could, but it was as if she were bogging down, as she had been in the energy sink of the Peculiar, as mired as a woolly mammoth caught in a deep pit of black tar. The light linking her to Eric and Casey and Rima was beginning to fade, the colors bleaching away as these others, whatever they were, clawed and grabbed. Her mind slid, her concentration—her hold on the others—slipping as if she’d stumbled onto a floor made of slick ball bearings.

Help us, she thought to the shadow-man. Please, if you helped Bode, help us.

I can’t do any more. The shadow-man was a sigh, and already evaporating, slipping like smoke from the chain. I belong here. You have to do the rest. The shadow-man was dwindling, fainter than a dying echo. Don’t hang on too long, Emma. Let go before the infection—

But then the shadow-man, whatever it had been, was gone.

What? Let go? What did that mean? No. If she did that, the others wouldn’t make it. They’d be stuck here. Yet where, exactly, was she going? They had no place in any world or Now, not all together. The whisper-man had Casey, and soon, it would have Eric. She would be next, and Rima, her color already so faint, would die soon. If, by some miracle, Rima lived and Emma could get them all through, no Now would be safe, not if they brought the whisper-man, too.

Even if I could get rid of him somehow, if we all end up in the same Now, wouldn’t we destroy it the way the world Rima created from that snow did when Eric and the others found them?

My God, she’d brought them to the place where they would die. Or drift forever, trapped in the Dark Passages with all these others, whatever they were.

NOT TRUE. The whisper-man pulsed in her brain. LISTEN TO ME. I ONLY WANT THE BOY. DO WHAT I ASK, AND I WILL GIVE YOU ERIC. I WILL FREE HIM; I WILL FREE YOU ALL IF—

Emma. Eric—his essence, that color—suddenly surged. We’re already free, because we can choose.

NO NO NO. The whisper-man’s panic was electric. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

Emma. The cobalt edged with a glister of gold that was Eric shone so bright he could’ve been the deep waters of Superior at sunrise, a Now, the promise of a different world—and maybe he was all those and more: not only himself but what endures in memory and across times. Emma, no matter what …

NO, I WILL GIVE BACK THE BOY! PULL ME THROUGH AND I WILL—

Keep going, Emma. Find your Now. Find a way out.

No, Eric, she thought. We can’t. It will still—

Go where you can, where you have the best shot …

NO NO NO NO—

And don’t listen to it, Emma. We have the power to choose, and this is my choice. Eric was calm, his thoughts like a long drink of cool water on a desperately hot day. I choose for you.

Eric, don’t. In that last instant, she finally sensed what he meant to do. Wait!

Don’t look back, Emma—and then …

He let go.

EMMA Where I Belong

NO! SHE MADE a grab, reaching out with her mind, her hand, her will—and missed.

That was enough to break them. Her hold on Rima slipped, and then they were all spinning away from one another in streamers of light, like falling stars. In response, the Dark Passages roiled, swelling as the darkness converged in a tidal surge over Rima, so faint, and the rainbow-swirl that was Eric locked in his fatal embrace with Casey and the whisper-man. The Dark Passages rolled over and swallowed them up, and then she just couldn’t see them anymore. The colors died and, with them, Eric’s voice. The whisper-man’s howls cut out, and then there was nothing: no Casey, no Rima. No Eric.

She tried to stop, slow down, but the cynosure wouldn’t let her. Lens and beacon, focus—and a path now, one she couldn’t leave. Later, she thought Eric himself gave her that one final push as he broke away, so she wouldn’t be able to stop even if she knew how. But she didn’t, and now these beings were swinging around. Sniffing her out. She could feel them noticing the beacon from the galaxy pendant, and knew she was almost out of time.

Got to get out. But how? Where could she go? If these really were doors to other Nows, then she—or a piece of her, another version—must exist in each. She belonged everywhere and nowhere. Would she, on her own, break a Now to pieces? What would happen if she met up with or even slipped into herself in another Now?

Can I do that? Maybe. She was different. The whisper-man said so; it had taken her while she was awake, dropping her into her many alters, because she was a creation with no set path.

Then put me where I belong, she thought fiercely. She felt the cynosure crackle with a new and vicious heat. Drop me into the Now where I’ll find them again: Eric and Casey and Rima and Bode and—