White Space

“I don’t know. I don’t think we should stay here.” Casey threw an uncertain look over both shoulders. “The problem is, without knowing where we are, I have no idea where we’d be headed. There are no landmarks, just … white. We could drive around in circles until I run out of gas, and then we’re screwed.”

“If we run out of gas.” When he turned to stare, she said, “I don’t know if regular rules still apply.”

“Like the gas from the van,” he said.

She nodded. “There was too much, and the way the snow turned to ice and that monster … None of that belongs in—”

“The real world.” He paused, then said, slowly, as if testing it out, “It’s like this valley is the fog’s world, and it wanted to make sure we left the piece we were in.” He shook his head. “That sounds pretty crazy.”

“Not to me. But assuming we could go somewhere, can you even drive in this?”

“Oh sure. How fast we go depends on how far ahead I can actually see.” Her arms were still wrapped around his middle, and now Casey put a hand over hers and squeezed. “I’m going to get off the sled and walk a little ways, take a look, see what I can see.”

“No,” she said, alarmed. She felt Taylor’s death-whisper squirm against her chest. Easy, honey, she thought to the girl. I know; we’re in trouble. To Casey: “I don’t think we should let ourselves get separated, even for something like that.”

“Don’t worry; I won’t go far. If it helps, I’ll walk backward, okay? That way, you keep me in sight, I can’t disappear, right?”

Well, unless something snakes out from the fog and grabs you. But she said, “How long?”

“The second I start to fade out, you give a shout, and I’ll stop. But I got to know how far we can actually see in this mess.”

He was right, but she didn’t have to like it. Perched on the sled’s runners, she held her breath as he backed up a step at a time. He never looked away, and she didn’t dare. The fog seemed sticky somehow, like a cloud of cobwebs, dragging over Casey in fibrous runnels and cloying tendrils.

“Burns,” he said, backhanding a clog of fog from his face. “Really cold.” His nose wrinkled. “Does it smell funny to you?”

“Yes.” She watched as more fog wreathed his chest and twined like ivy around his legs. The fog wasn’t grabbing hold so much as—okay, weird thought here—tasting Casey, the way a rattlesnake gathered information through its tongue. “Like rust.”

“No.” Working his mouth, Casey spat and made another face. “Like blood.”

She thought he might be right about that. “Okay, stop. You’re starting to gray out.”

“Yeah, you’re getting kind of fuzzy, too. So”—he cast a critical eye to the snow and then back to her—“thirty feet maybe and …”

“What?”

“This is snow, right?” He gave her a strange look. “So why am I not sinking?”

She didn’t understand at first, and then, staring down at the sled’s runners and his feet, she did. If this was snow, there should be clumps humped over the runners; Casey’s feet should break through the surface, but they hadn’t. There was no snow on his boots either. “Is it ice?”

“Nope.” Squatting, he scooped a handful and studied the white mound, tipping his glove this way and that. “Looks like snow.” He gave a cautious sniff. “Doesn’t have a smell the way the fog does. This only smells … cold. Like it’s someone’s idea of snow, know what I mean? Like a movie set.”

“Really?” She took a careful step off the sled’s runners. “Then why would the fog—”

The shock as her boot touched the snow was like the detonation of a land mine, an explosion that ripped from the snow to scorch its way up her legs and rupture her chest. Digging in, Taylor’s death-whisper shrieked against her skin, the pain like knives, and Rima let out a sudden, sharp shout.

“What?” Casey said, instantly alarmed. Five long strides and his hands were on her shoulders. “Rima, what’s wrong?”

“The snow.” Gasping, groping for the sled, she stumbled back onto the runners. Taylor’s whisper relaxed, but now that she knew what lived in this weird snow that wasn’t, Rima imagined all those death-whispers shivering up the sled to seep through the soles of her boots and into her bones. “I …” Bowing her head, she swallowed around a sudden lump of fear. “I f-feel something.”

“Feel something? In the snow?” He threw a quick glance at his feet as if expecting something to swim out and crawl up his legs. “Rima, what are you talking about?”

Now that she’d begun, she couldn’t simply brush it off. Just say it. “People.”

“People.” He waited a beat. “In the snow?”

“Yeah.” She wet her lips. “The snow’s full of dead people. I feel them.”

“You what? You feel—”