White Space

Frank. Mom’s face is wet. Did you just hear yourself? Don’t you understand that you are risking us by risking yourself?

Meredith. Sweetheart. Dad’s eyes are watery and red. I know you’re afraid, but I’m still here, and I would sell my soul for you, I would die for you, I would take your place and never think twice, but please, please, don’t ask me to stop. You don’t understand what could happen. I swear, Love, I’ve still got it under control—

Control? Mom screams. She pulls away from Dad, leaving him with nothing but air. You’ve got it under control? Then what the hell was that woman doing in our attic?

3

SO, IN THE end, Dad promises to stop working on the new book, not to try writing it again or even make notes to squirrel away in London. Not one word. He swears to let this story fade away. Cross his heart.

Hope to die.

4

TWO MONTHS LATER, Mom sends Lizzie to call her father for supper.

This is the first time since the crazy lady that Lizzie’s gone to Dad’s barn, which broods on a hill. Mom’s told her to stay away: Your father needs space and time to mourn. Like the book inside, Dad has to rot.

Lizzie’s missed the loft. Before, Dad let her play as he worked, and she made up tons of adventures for her dolls with all her special Lizzie-symbols: squiggles, triangles, spirals, curlicues, arrows, ziggies, zaggies, diddlyhumps, swoozels, and more things with special Lizzie-names. Just a different way of making book-worlds for her dolls, that’s all. Not that either parent knows what she can do. If her mom found out? Oh boy, watch out. So she doesn’t tell. No big deal. No one’s ever gotten hurt.

Well … not counting the monster-doll, which started out life as a daddy-doll but got left in her mom’s Kugelrohr oven too long on accident because Mom let her set the timer and Lizzie messed up. The heat was so bad the monster-doll’s glass head melted, his eyes slumping into this giant, creepy, violet third eye. Afterward, the monster-doll was really cranked, like, Hello, what were you thinking, you stupid little kid? She tried explaining it wasn’t on purpose, but oh boy, the monster-doll wasn’t having any of that. Mom said he was ruined and tossed the monster-doll into the discards bucket, but Lizzie felt guilty because the whole thing really was her fault. So, quiet as a mouse, she snuck back into Mom’s workshop and fished the monster-doll’s head from the bucket.

Problem is … her stomach gets a squiggly feeling whenever they play. The inside of the monster-doll’s head is all gluey-ooky, the thoughts sticky as spiderwebs. Every time she pulls out, she worries there’s a tiny bit of her left all tangled with him. Sometimes, she even wonders if she oughtn’t to swoosh the monster-doll to a special Now where he can’t hurt anyone. She hasn’t, though.

Because, really? Some monster-doll thoughts are … kind of exciting. He shows her how to do stuff in other Nows, too, most of which isn’t that scary. Well, except for that humongous storm this past July. Wow, it took her three whole days to figure out how to turn that thing off. But she’s got it under control.

Like Dad.

5

LIZZIE SLIPS FROM the house with Marmalade on her heels. The night is deep and dark and very cold. The stars glitter like the distant Nows of the Dark Passages. Icy gravel pops and crunches beneath her shoes.

At the barn door, though, Marmalade suddenly balks. “Oh, come on, don’t be such an old scaredy-cat.” When the orange tom only shows his needle-teeth, she says what Mom always does when Lizzie misbehaves: “My goodness, what’s gotten into you?” (Really, it’s the other way around; Mom doesn’t know the half of it.)

But then Marmalade lets go of a sudden, rumbling growl and spits and swats. Gasping, Lizzie snatches her hand back. Wow, what was that about? She watches the cat sprint into the night. She’s never heard Marmalade growl. She didn’t know cats could. She thinks about going after the tom, but Dad always says, De cat came back de very next day.

Sliding into the still, dark barn is like drifting on the breath of a dream into a black void. Ahead, a vertical shaft of thin light spills from the loft. Voices float down, too: her dad—

And someone else.

Lizzie stops dead. Holds her breath. Listens.

That other voice is bad and gargly, like screams bubbling up from deep water. This voice is wrong. Just wrong.