White Space

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—