White Space

’Orrible murder. She could hear the Kramer of her Now in an exaggerated Cockney: ’orrible murders and ghastly crimes fit for a Victorian tabloid.

My God. She was shaking so hard, it was a wonder her body didn’t break into a million pieces. This Now … this is my reality? The rest was a … a delusion? A hallucination?

“Would you like to know how many children your father murdered, Miss Elizabeth?” Battle asked.

No, she didn’t need him to tell her, because she knew, exactly: There will be—

“Eight bodies,” Battle intoned, in his heavy doom-voice. “Eight children. Five boys, three girls. You’d have been the ninth.”

The same number I put in my story, the one I wrote for Kramer; the one he accused me of stealing from a dead man. Her heart boomed. Her skull was breaking apart. This was like when she’d perched on the other side of White Space, watching Lizzie crash, her mind so tangled in the little girl’s she’d felt Lizzie’s terror, known her thoughts. But that was House …

—no, this house, an asylum with its stark walls and many rooms and whispers issuing up from grates and the dark.

That was the whisper-man

—Kramer, with his lisp and snaky hiss—

manipulating me, showing me what to do until I understood enough to use the cyn—

Wait a minute; wait just a goddamned minute. Her free hand crept to her neck. The galaxy pendant, the cynosure, was a dead cinder, a chill ball of lifeless glass on a beaded chain, but the relief that washed over her mind made her want to cry out. That was real. Her fingers traced the edges of Eric’s dog tags. Eric had been real; everything in that valley happened.

“You’re trying to trick me,” she said, and thought, Shit, I sound paranoid. “I know what happened. You can’t take that away—”

From the corner of her left eye, Emma caught a sudden flurry of movement and jerked her head around just as Weber passed off that sack of a strong dress to the boy behind him, and charged. As Weber danced forward, she threw the knife, not with the intention of hitting anything, but she needed Weber to look at something else for a split second. He did, batting the knife to one side with his arm, and in that instant, she whirled, snatched up the cockatoo’s bell jar in a one-handed grab, and hurled it as hard as she could. There was a dull bock as the heavy jar struck Weber above his nose, right between the eyes. Bellowing, Weller staggered back against Kramer and Battle, and all three men crashed to the floor.

“Elizabeth!” Kramer managed to get to one knee. “What are you—”

“Doyle!” Battle shouted, struggling to extricate himself from the bawling, bleeding Weber. “Stop her! Don’t let her—”

She didn’t stay to hear more. Turning, she vaulted in a bloom of white down the hall and saw, instantly, that there was no iron gate, no inset door, but only another T junction. Shit. The layout was different. She dug in and ran as fast as she could. So, which way: right or left?

This is no way out. It was the spidery voice again, and nothing hesitant about it this time around. They’ll trap you the way you’ve trapped me.

No, no! Air tore in and out of her lungs. She was Emma Lindsay; she didn’t belong here. She had a life elsewhere, else-when. And Eric, I remember Eric, how he felt, his voice, his eyes, how he smelled and tasted, and I remember Casey. She could hear them coming now, as she had before, the heavy footfalls. They’d be on her soon. Think, Emma, think; there has to be a way.

At the T, she doglegged a sharp right, and then she saw it at the end of yet another very long, very stark corridor: an oval flash.

A mirror. The Mirror. Yes. She forced her legs to go fast, faster. I’ll go there, I’ll go through!

“Emma!” It was Kramer, behind her. “Don’t! You can’t. It’s not what you think!”

How could he know what I— That made her falter, but for only a moment. Emma, he called me Emma. He knows I’m telling the truth. Or maybe he was only humoring her, trying to get her to hesitate just long enough for them to catch up. No, not going to fall for that. The way out was right in front of her. All she had to do was run, and then she would be through, falling to some other—

“Don’t do it, Emma!” Kramer cried. “That’s not—”