White Space

“Lizzie, you write on paper. There’s nothing magical about that, and no matter how special your dad’s parchment or ink, there are no words in this thing.”

“Yes, there are. You’ve just never thought of building a story this way before, that’s all.”

“But—”

“Emma, will you stop thinking so much?” Lizzie rapped, with an air of angry impatience that was, eerily, a bit like Kramer’s: I didn’t say steal. “The others are in trouble, and you’re wasting time! Now shut up and find your story.”

She gave up. The kid was nuttier than she was. No, no, the kid wasn’t real. This was a dream, a blink, or just another illusion conjured up by House. Eventually, she’d pop back into her life, and this would all be nothing more than a hazy memory, a vague uneasiness. She could live with that. Swear to God, she’d take the damn meds, too.

For something that wasn’t real, the scroll freaked her out. That velvety white was the color of the snow and the fog. It was the same color of white that hid Jasper-nightmares. Wait, was white a color? Yes and no: visible light was all wavelengths, all colors, combined. To see them, you had to use a prism, a specially fabricated piece of glass, to separate them into their component parts. Otherwise, white light was … white. It was nothing.

But still full of color, just waiting for you to use a special tool to pull them out. Then: Stop it. White light is white. Jasper slathered his paintings with white paint. This is only a blank parchment scroll. She studied the quilt. And this thing is only bits of cloth and glass sewn into pretty pat—

“Patterns,” she said, her breath suddenly balling midway between her chest and mouth as her eye fell on something she recognized and knew she shouldn’t. This was a quilt that belonged to a strange little girl stuck in an even odder house at the bottom of a valley Emma had the feeling didn’t exist anywhere on earth.

Yet there was no mistaking that glass sphere sparkling in the center of an elaborately embroidered spiderweb.

There, stitched into Lizzie’s memories, was her galaxy pendant.

CASEY What Killed Tony

CASEY’S BREATH CLAWED in and out of his throat as he staggered and lurched over the snow and away from the ruined church toward the waiting snowcat. His left hand was clamped to Tania’s right arm; in his right, he gripped the shotgun. God, he wished Eric was here. His brother knew weapons; Casey knew … well, the theory. Rack the pump, point, shoot. Pray you hit something. Hope to hell you don’t run out of cartridges before you do.

Rima didn’t recognize him. But how could that be? High above, the roiling sky was still black with crows. This new girl, Tania, someone Rima knew and had a history with, was moaning, nearly doubled over. Rima was murmuring encouragement, telling Tania, Hang on, almost there.

Rima knows her but not me. He had the disorienting sense of walking into a movie already half over. Rima knew what was happening before we even got here. No, that was wrong: before this place made itself out of the fog. Could Rima be doing that? No, that was crazy.

Or was it? This was the nightmare of Tony on the snow, déjà vu all over again. Casey hadn’t told Rima—there’d been no time—but he’d recognized that thing, with its bulbous body of writhing tentacles, that bristly maw, those myriad mad eyes. He had glimpsed it only moments before, not as a living thing but a drawing: a creature that existed on the cover of a paperback. Something by Lovecraft, wasn’t it? Yes. Tony had tossed the well-thumbed novel onto the Camry’s backseat, where Casey had also found some very old vintage comic books.

The reality was this: what had torn Tony apart was something Tony knew well, because he’d read about it, over and over again if that dog-eared paperback was any indication. What killed Tony was a monster that leapt off the pages of a book.