White Space

“No! No, you’re not real! This isn’t right!” Emma flinches away. She turns, her treacherous feet trying to tangle, trip her up, spill her to the sidewalk. “Get away from me, get away, don—” Backpedaling, she blunders from the curb into oncoming traffic on East Washington. A horn blasts as a car churns past, its hot breath swirling around her bare legs, snatching at her sundress. She can hear the sputter of the car’s radio through an open window: Investigators continue the grisly task of removing the remains of at least eight children believed to be the latest victims of—

“No, stop, I’m not listening, I don’t hear you, I don’t hear you!” She takes a lurching stutter-step and tumbles to rough asphalt. As she hits, the fingers of her right hand reflexively close around something hard and jagged.

She looks—and every molecule in her body stills. Everything stops.

The dagger of glass is absolutely flawless and wickedly sharp—and she knows this shape. It is nearly identical to the shard she will fish from that discards bucket and turn over and over on that afternoon when she feels Plath’s bell jar descending to engulf her mind in a dense, deathless fog. When she will think, I didn’t see anything, there was nothing down in Jasper’s cellar; it was just a crawl space, there was nothing inside, I didn’t find …

But there is a difference. This dagger isn’t clear but smoky and black, polished to a mirror’s high gloss. Her reflection within this black dagger is so crisp she can make out the terror in her eyes, the curve of her jaw, every glister and sparkle of that galaxy pendant.

It’s a piece of the Mirror. She is jittering so badly her breaths come in herky-jerky gasps, and she thinks she might be one second away from passing out. It’s from the Dickens—

A sudden bite of pain sinks into her left wrist, bad enough to make her cry out. What was that? God, that hurt. Her eyes shift from the black dagger to her wrist—and then a scream blasts from her throat.

A thick, stingingly bright bracelet of blood has drawn—no, no, is drawing itself, inch by inch, across the skin of her left wrist.

“N-no,” she says. It’s like watching someone unzip her. She still clutches the black dagger in her right hand, and a single glance is enough to show her that the glass is pristine, not a splash of blood on it at all. And anyway, I didn’t, I didn’t, I don’t do it! I only thought about cutting my …

“Aahhh!” Another slash of pain, on her right wrist this time, the lips of yet another slice gaping open. She shrieks as the moist tissues pull apart to reveal a silvery glint of tendon and deeply red meat. Blood instantly surges into the belly of the wound, pumping and slopping from slit arteries, splish-splish-splish-splish, surging with her heart. A nail of panic spikes her throat. The warmth drains from her face, her lips, and her guts are ice. Her vision’s going muzzy, and in the black dagger, her reflection’s turned runny, the features shifting and melting as a new and different face knits together: same eyes, same golden flaw in the right iris. Same jaw and chin. Only the hair, wavy and golden blonde, is different. Still, she knows who this is.

I’m Lizzie? A violent shudder makes the reflection jitter. We’re the same person?

“NO!” A shriek scrambles past her teeth. “No, I’m me, I’m Emma!” Still screaming, she hurls the black dagger away. It cuts the air, flashing end over end like a scimitar. Both her arms are spewing blood now, and as Emma scuttles back on her hands like a crab, vivid red smears paint the road, marking her path. There is blood everywhere, too much, a whole lake of it. Anyone who’s bled this much ought to have fainted—hell, ought to be dead. For that matter, she’s landed in the middle of a busy street. She should be squashed under a bus by now, or flattened by a car.

But there are, suddenly, no cars, no people. No taunts from a radio. When she glances back at the bookstore, she sees that Eric and Lily are gone, too.