White Space

It can’t be. All the air whistled from her lungs. She hadn’t written herself into her story. All she’d done was dream up the characters. McDermott’s novel fragment, Satan’s Skin, is a about a demon-book written on demon-skin. Kramer said the gist of the plot is that characters don’t stay put in their own stories. They keep jumping out. Then: That’s what worried McDermott. He said that if the characters’ stories didn’t resolve—

“I remember when Dad said he’d give you my eyes.” Lizzie’s voice reached her from what seemed like another planet. “If you know where to look, you’ll find my whole life in Daddy’s books.”

But not my life. She smoothed the scroll to bring the words into greater clarity, her clumsy fingers fumbling as the White Space resolved into crimson blocks of text:

Cue ten years of Child Protective Services and a parade of foster parents, group homes, doctors, staring shrinks, clucking social workers. Her headaches got worse, thanks to Dear Old Dad …

Jasper said the island got its name from the old Ojibwe legend that Matchi-Manitou, some honking huge evil spirit, was imprisoned in a giant underground cave at the entrance to the spirit worlds, and only the bravest warriors could pass through the black well at the center of the island to fight the thing, blah, blah. Some vision quest crap like that. The only well she knew on that island was near an old lighthouse and keeper’s cottage. Still, whenever there was a really big blow, the roar and boom of the sea caves—of big, bad Matchi-Manitou …

She felt her knees trying to buckle. This is like that John Cusak movie where the characters are nothing but alters, hallucinations. But my life is mine, I’m me, I’m real.

And then her gaze snagged on this line, floating on its own like a crimson banner dragged by an airplane:

One June afternoon, Emma wandered down cellar for a book and

3

AND. SHE WAS panting now, chest heaving. She stared so intently at that parchment, the scroll should’ve burst into flames. And? “And what?” she said, and shook the parchment as if she could dislodge the words stuck between the lines. “And WHAT?”

“Emma?” Lizzie’s voice filtered through a high burr. “Are you okay?”

No, I’m nuts. I’m insane, and this is about down cellar. Her hands shook. This is about when I was twelve and found that door. No one knows about that. But there it was, in screaming red calligraphy spidering over white parchment.

“Where’s the rest?” Her voice grated like an engine that just wouldn’t turn over. “The sentence just stops. Why is that? What happens next?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Yes. I mean … I don’t like thinking about it, but …” She clamped her lips together, willed herself to get out a complete sentence. “Why isn’t it here? How can it just stop like that?”

“Because that’s where our dad stopped. It’s as far as he got before Mom …” Lizzie’s eyes pooled again. “Before she did what she did.”

“Where he …” The memory quilt slipped in a muted tinkle of glass from her trembling hand, followed a moment later by the flutter of the parchment scroll filled with that bloody scrawl. She put a trembling hand to her mouth. “I thought your dad’s notes and unfinished novels were locked up somewhere.”