White Space

THE GALLERY WAS both the same and very different. Above, the whitewashed iron plates of that strange ceiling stretched not to a dead end but a T junction. Ceiling-mounted gas lamps hissed, and the light from wall sconces, mounted high on dingy, soot-stained walls, was yellow and too bright. The hall itself was long and very stark, with no pictures, bric-a-brac, or floral arrangements, and only a few stuffed birds, like the snowy, still cockatoo poised on a branch made of wire and covered with coarse brown cloth, trapped under a bell jar on a small table to her right. Every door was closed and locked, but she could hear the muffled cries and shouts of the others on this and every floor, a continual background yammer that steamed through iron grilles set low. The smell was right, but much stronger: a choking fug of overflowing toilets, unwashed skin, and old vomit.

They ranged before her as they had when House whisked her here, but with a few differences. While Nurse Graves, rigid as a post and decked out in her navy blue uniform, seemed unchanged, neither she nor Kramer wore panops this time around. A long white doctor’s smock hung from Kramer’s bony frame instead of a suit coat. Jasper was nowhere to be seen, although Weber, the blunt-faced attendant, held a strong dress clutched in one huge fist and seemed poised for a grab. She caught only a brief glimpse of another ward attendant—younger, with muddy brown hair—in a slant of shadow just behind Weber, and felt her attention sharpen. That kid … I know him.

She thought the same about a young man to her far right: not much older than a boy, really; tall and lean and a little hungry looking, although his face was square and his neck thick, like he’d once been a linebacker in high school and then decided working out was too much trouble. His skin, pallid and pinched, tented over his cheekbones. A brushy moustache drooped from his upper lip. His hair, a lank mousy brown, was slicked back from a broad forehead and plastered to his scalp with a pomade or oil that gave off a slightly rancid odor, like he might not have washed his hair for several days. He wore some sort of military-looking uniform, navy blue with big buttons and numbers done in tarnished brass on a high collar.

Towering over them all was a much older man. Burly and thick-necked, Gruff was a study in gray: dark gray checked flannel trousers, with a matching vest and jacket and a light gray houndstooth coat. A steel-colored bowler firmly planted atop a thick mass of salt-and-pepper hair made him seem much taller than he already was. But it was his eyes, piercing and bright, that drew her most: so light blue they were nearly as silver as bits of mica.

“Elizabeth.” Her eyes ticked back to Kramer. She couldn’t shake the feeling that Kramer was, somehow, even more different than before. His face was … off, a little out-of-kilter and unnatural. She couldn’t put her finger on what was wrong. Hand outstretched, Kramer eased toward her. “Come now. You’re back with us, Elizabeth.”

Why does he keep saying that? And Jasper, where was … Still staring in wonder at Kramer, that’s when she saw. That’s when she understood why his voice was so odd.

When Kramer spoke, only the right half of his face actually moved. She saw now that the entire left side of his face, from forehead to jaw, was waxen and immobile, and there was something wrong with his nose, too. He looked, she thought, as if he’d had a stroke.

Just like Jasper. Her skin fizzed with fresh anxiety. Another echo.

“Let’s not make a scene,” Kramer continued, his lips twisting into a grimace that might have been a smile. “What say you put down that knife and we go to my office for a chat and a nice hot cup of tea?”

Knife? She stared at her right fist. The blade’s steel—six inches, wickedly sharp—was smooth and so flawless she could make out the deep blue of her eyes. What had she fallen into the middle of?

“Wh-why do you keep calling me Elizabeth?” Her voice was still rusty, as if the gears powering her mouth just didn’t want to mesh. “That’s not my name.”

“You see? This will not do, Doctor,” Gruff said, darkly. “She’s even more disordered. She’s always come back as herself before.”

“Yes, yes, Inspector, and she is herself now,” Kramer said, without taking his eyes from Emma. “But please do remember, Battle, that the girl’s endured a severe trauma.”

“Battle?” The name flew from her mouth. Knife still in hand, she took a half step forward. “Battle, it’s me, Emma. Don’t you recognize—”

And then she actually heard herself for the first time. Not only was her voice higher and lighter; she had an accent, too, as if she’d just stepped out of a Jane Austen novel. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my—