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White Space

In the tradition ofMementoandInceptioncomes a thrilling and scary young adult novel about blurred reality where characters in a story find that a deadly and horrifying world exists in the space between the written lines.Seventeen-year-old Emma Lindsay has problems: a head full of metal, no parents, a crazy artist for a guardian whom a stroke has turned into a vegetable, and all those times when she blinks away, dropping into other lives so ghostly and surreal it's as if the story of her life bleeds into theirs. But one thing Emma has never doubted is that she's real.Then she writes "White Space," a story about these kids stranded in a spooky house during a blizzard.Unfortunately, "White Space" turns out to be a dead ringer for part of an unfinished novel by a long-dead writer. The manuscript, which she's never seen, is a loopyMatrixmeetsInkheartstory in which characters fall out of different books and jump off the page. Thing is, when Emma blinks, she might be doing the same and, before long, she's dropped into the very story she thought she'd written. Trapped in a weird, snow-choked valley, Emma meets other kids with dark secrets and strange abilities: Eric, Casey, Bode, Rima, and a very special little girl, Lizzie. What they discover is that they--and Emma--may be nothing more than characters written into being from an alternative universe for a very specific purpose.Now what they must uncover is why they've been brought to this place--a world between the lines where parallel realities are created and destroyed and nightmares are written--before someone pens their end.

Ильза Джей Бик

Любовное фэнтези, любовно-фантастические романы18+

White Space Dark Passages - 1byIlsa J. Bick

For Sarah:

This time, you live.

Father, this thick air is murderous.

—SYLVIA PLATH

Contents

Part One: Come And Play

Lizzie: Uh-Oh

Emma: Blink

Lizzie: Save Dad

Emma: Eyes, and Nothing Else

Eric: Poof

Eric: A Gasp in Time

Rima: So Never Digging Around a Goodwill Ghost-Bin

Part Two: The Valley

Lizzie: Whisper-Man Black

Emma: Not the Way I’m Made

Casey: Dead Man’s Shirt

Lizzie: I Want to Tell You a Story

Rima: Soother of the Dead

Tony: Maybe God’s Just a Kid

Eric: Devil Dog

Tony: It’s a Mirror

Casey: This Is Creepy

Tony: She Has to Be Here

Tony: Get Up, or You’re Dead

Casey: Full Fathom Five

Eric: A Night Coming On Fast

Casey: Where’s His Tongue?

Tony: A Thing with Eyes

Rima: Don’t Look Back

Part Three: The Fog

Lizzie: Wear Me

Emma: A Choice Between Red and Blue

Lizzie: Mom Makes Her Mistake

Emma: Between the Lines

Emma: As He Will Be

Emma: What the Cat Already Sees

Rima: That’s No Cloud

Bode: A Real Long Way from Jasper

Eric: One Step Away From Dead

Rima: No Time

Emma: Black Dagger

Emma: Them Dark Ones Is Cagey

Rima: Where the Dead Live

Rima: Tell Me You See That

Emma: A Bug Under a Bell Jar

Rima: What She Was Made For

Emma: This Is Your Now

Emma: The Opposite Ends to a Single Sentence

Emma: Space Tears

Rima: Something Inside

Emma: Just One Piece

Rima: I Don’t Know Who You Are

Emma: Find Your Story

Casey: What Killed Tony

Emma: All I Am

Rima: The Thing That Had Been Father Preston

Emma: Whatever They Make Will Be Real

Casey and Rima: Fight

Bode: Whatever This Place Makes Next

Casey and Rima: Look at Her Face

Rima: Doomsday Sky

Rima: Think My Hand

Rima: The Thickness of a Single Molecule

Part Four: Hell Is Cold

Emma: Outside of Time

Emma: Down Cellar

Emma: All Me

Emma: Tangled

Eric: What Does That Make Us?

Rima: A Safe Place

Part Five: Whisper-Man

Emma: Remember Him

Emma: Monsters Are Us

Rima: Blood Have the Power

Bode: Either Way, You Lose

Bode: Dead End

Rima: The Worst and Last Mistake of Her Life

Bode: The Shape of His Future

Bode: Into the Black

Emma: Push

Rima: Blood Binds

Emma: To the End of Time

Eric: My Nightmare

Emma: Monster-Doll

Eric: Write the Person

Eric: The Other Shoe Drops

Rima: A Whisper, Like Blood

Eric: To My Heart, Across Times, to the Death

The Whisper-Man: There Is Another

Emma: What Endures

Emma: Where I Belong

Part Six: The Sign of Sure

Emma: Elizabeth

Acknowledgments

PART ONE COME AND PLAYLIZZIEUh-Oh

AT FIRST, MOM thinks there are mice because of that scritch-scritch-scritching in the walls. This is very weird. Marmalade, the orange tom, is such a good mouser. But then Mom spies a dirty footprint high up on the wall of her walk-in closet.

A footprint. On the wall.

That’s when Mom feels someone watching, too. So she turns her head real slow, her gaze inching up to the ceiling vent—and there they are: two glittery violet eyes pressed against the grate like an animal’s at the zoo.

A crazy lady is in the attic. The attic.

The sheriff thinks she’s been hiding since fall and sneaking out for food at night: She coulda slipped in when the contractors were here. It happens.

Well yeah, okay, that might happen to normal people who live in towns and cities and don’t know how to reach through to the Dark Passages and pull things onto White Space, or travel between Nows. But Lizzie knows better. The crazy lady is something out of a bad dream: a rat’s nest of greasy hair; skin all smeary like she’s taken a bath in oozy old blood. Her hands, sooty and man-sized, are hard with callus, the cracked nails rimed with grime. She smells really bad, too, like someone raised by mole rats or bears. When the sheriff tries asking questions, the crazy lady only stares and stares. She doesn’t utter one single, solitary peep.

Because she can’t. She has no tongue. No teeth. Not a thing, except this gluey, gucky, purple maw, as if the crazy lady spends all her time slurping blood jelly.

So, really, she’s just about what Lizzie expects. Which is kind of bad, considering.

Like … uh-oh.

DAD SWEARS UP and down that he didn’t have anything to do with it: I told you, Meredith. After what happened in London, I’m done.

Mom isn’t having any of that. Really? Pulling out her panops, she extends the temple arms, flips out the two extra side lenses, and then hooks the spectacles behind her ears. Show me your hands, Frank.

Oh, for God’s … Sighing, Dad lets Mom get a good look, front and back. See? Not a scratch.

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