White Space

Where and in which Now? Having rested long enough—allowing her to see what it is that House wants her to know—the greedy wind starts up again to grab her gown, snatch at her hair. Glancing back over her shoulder at the hovering slit-mirror, she feels that familiar burn in her forehead, which had ebbed as soon as she bashed out that window, beginning to brighten and sting, coring like a laser through her brain.

“I’m not going anywhere with you.” She eases back a slow step and then another, her bare soles digging troughs in the snow. “Just let me go. I want to go home. I want out of this valley and this creepy house with its weird doors and rooms. I only want to wake up.”

“Emma, this is your home and where you belong,” Kramer says. “This is your Now.”

“I don’t believe you.” Between her breasts, the galaxy pendant on its crimson silk ribbon smolders and heats. I have plates that haven’t been invented; I carry the memory of the future. “If I’m only crazy, how come you know about Nows? You’re a liar. I’m still in the valley. I’m in House.”

“Touché. But did I really say something just now?” Kramer cocks his head. “Are you sure you’re not imagining that I said something you’d like to hear? Even if I did speak, it is my word against your very intriguing delusion. Tell you what: if I’m not real, come to me.” Arms spread wide, Kramer starts toward her. Where she’s struggled and slipped on fresh-fallen snow, he seems to glide, and that is when she sees that his shoes aren’t sinking. She isn’t altogether sure his shoes even touch the snow at all. Something is also gathering … behind him? No, Kramer is shifting, going fuzzy at the edges, his body beginning to steam. “Come,” he says, skimming over snow. “Come with me.”

Her voice locks in her throat. She is too frightened to scream. Her heart is thrashing in her chest, and the pendant is a scorching, calescent blaze.

Run. Run now. Go through the Mirror before he—

A blackness darker than night swarms over Kramer’s body, knitting itself into a tangle of scaly arms and spindle legs; into the thing that pulled itself from the book on the street she’s just left. Peekaboo, I see you. Its voice, whisper-man black, sweeps through her mind, working its fingers into the folds and crannies of her brain. Stay, Breath of My Breath. Drink, Blood of My Blood. Stay and plaaay through tiiime—

“Get out of my head, get out of my head, get out of my head!” With a shriek, she whirls around and pelts across the roof, slip-sliding on ice and slick slate. She feels the whisper-man fling itself after, but she is running, running, running, and there is the black mirror, rushing for her face as the pain flares between her eyes and the galaxy pendant seems to explode against her chest, as hot and dazzling as a nova—and there is light, a wide blinding bolt that shoots from the pendant, unfurling itself in a path: light that is so strong and steady and sure, it’s as if she’s running on a bright, unerring seam.

Forget what Einstein said about light. It’s not solid; you can’t run on light. It isn’t there and neither is the Mirror, a tiny panicked voice jabbers in her mind. Follow this and you’re dead. You’ll go over the edge, because you’re crazy; the doctors were right, Kramer’s right, and this path is not there, it doesn’t exist, it isn’t—

Screaming, Emma plants both hands on icy marble, swings her legs, and then she is sailing for the mirror, following that ribbon of light, and crashing through in a hail of jagged black glass, and then she is falling, screaming, falling …

EMMA The Opposite Ends to a Single Sentence

ONTO A ROAD.

London is gone. Her clothes are … regular clothes. Normal jeans, although she’s now wearing the turquoise turtleneck House let her find. Her head kills; that metal plate is gnawing a hole in her skull. She has brought nothing from the past except the galaxy pendant, which is, weirdly, still there and warm against her chest. Otherwise, she’s fine.

Well, considering all this fog.

Oh shit. Her eyes lock on the wreck of a car, crumpled against a sturdy tree, and then she knows exactly where—and when—she is. No, this is Lizzie’s life, her past, not mine; this has nothing to do with me.