White Space

“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.