White Space (26 page)

“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—”

“Yes, Casey, I know it sounds crazy, but the dead live in the snow. I feel their …” She broke off, remembering how Casey had
been
Big Earl, shedding his father’s death-whisper as easily as shucking the man’s shirt.
He must not know; can’t sense the change much at all and only half-remembers. He just becomes
. She gasped.
And if the snow’s where the dead live
 … “Casey.” She snatched his jacket and yanked. “Casey, get off the snow, get off
now
!”

“Wuh—” Off-balance, Casey reeled and lurched forward, his hands shooting out to grab the sled’s handlebars. “Okay, okay, I’m coming,
relax
.” She wouldn’t let go until he was straddling the seat so they faced one another. “All right, I’m on,” he said. “What’s the matter with you? What do you mean, you
feel
people?” Then his brows wrinkled, and he glanced away, his mouth working the way it had when he tasted the fog on his tongue. “You know, I … I remember something you said. It’s … 
foggy
.” He let out a breathy laugh. “Which fits, I guess. But I
do
remember a little. In the car … I wouldn’t let you in … and I started hurting …” He raised a hand to that livid, swollen splash of purple-black bruise. “You said I needed to fight—”

“I remember what I said.” She took his gloved hand in both of hers. “It’s something I’m … I’m able to do. I know you’ll think I’m crazy, but just listen.” As she talked, she saw the growing doubt and disbelief. Well, she knew how to fix that. “So,” she said, “that’s how I know about Big Earl: that
he’s dead. That’s why I told you to fight him.”

Yup, that did it. An expression first of blank surprise and then a swell of shock, hot and scarlet, flooded his face. “What?”

“You heard me.” She paused, then added, softly, “I know what Big Earl did to you. I know Eric didn’t mean for it to happen, but he had no choice. He was protecting you. If he hadn’t swung that bottle and put Big Earl down, I think you’d both be dead.”

“How?” The question came as a harsh, hoarse whisper. “How can you
know
all that?”

“Your shirt. It was your dad’s. That’s why I didn’t want you to touch me, Casey. Because whenever you did, I felt it,
him
, Big Earl’s death-whisper … and you, when you were wearing the shirt, you were different. You were mean. Didn’t you feel it? You feel the difference
now
, right?”

His eyes faltered, his gaze sliding from her face to the snow. Some part of his mind
must
register the change. Perhaps he even knew but tucked that knowledge away in some dim corner where he would have little excuse to look.

“Yes,” he said, finally. When his eyes again met hers, they were much too bright and pooled. “Before, when I looked at you and the others? I heard
him
talking to me, telling me what to think. But now I … I see
you
, like there’s no fog, nothing of Big Earl between us. It’s like I’m meeting you for the very first time.”

She opened her mouth to say … something, she didn’t remember what. The words slipped right off her tongue, because that was when she got her first good look at Casey’s eyes as they were now. They weren’t just bright with tears.
They were
different
. When he had worn Big Earl’s shirt, Casey’s eyes were a muddy brown. Now they were stormy. Not gray, exactly, or blue or brown or green. His eyes were all colors, and no color, nothing fixed. His were the kind of eyes that, depending on the light, were green one moment and hazel the next. Even blue.

What does that mean?
Another thought:
My God, maybe he could get to the point where the change would be permanent and he’d never find himself again
.

“How did you feel then?” she asked. “When you had that shirt? Do you remember?”

“Angry,” he whispered. “Mad at everybody, everything, even Eric. I didn’t like the feeling, and I heard Big Earl in my head and it … 
he
was bad. Evil. Remembering him crawling around like this black spider, it makes me feel dirty. That’s never happened before either. I’d never had him in my head. Hell, I used to think someone had made a mistake. How could Eric and I
have
a father like that? It never felt like my dad belonged in our lives; he was a mistake, an outsider. Like … like this
virus
you just couldn’t shake and …” Casey let out a trembling breath. “
Ohhh-kay
, that sounds pretty crazy.”

She shook her head. “You’ve never met my mother. She and I don’t look at all like we belong to each other. Sometimes I think I popped out of nowhere or someone switched me at birth and my real mom’s got this awful kid. I don’t even like touching my mom. She feels”—she hugged herself—“like there’s something rotting inside. All the drugs she does, that’s probably pretty close.”

“So if
you
feel dead people, their … 
whispers
, like the little girl in your parka, Taylor? Is that what
I’m
doing?”

“I don’t know.” She bent her head to study the snow. “Whatever it is, you seem okay now, but I think you should stay off this stuff until we can—”

When she didn’t continue, Casey said, “Rima, what … oh, Jesus.”

“Uh-huh.” She tried to say more, but all the words balled in her throat. In her parka, Taylor’s whisper tightened in alarm.
I don’t know, honey; I have no idea
.

But she thought they better figure this out, and fast.

AT THEIR FEET
and all around the snowmobile, the snow suddenly bloomed with oily splotches.
Like something’s leaking up from deep underground—or we’re on top of something and the snow’s melting, giving way
. Her eyes ticked from the snow immediately around their runners to as far as she could see.
It’s everywhere
.

“Rima.” Casey’s voice was library-quiet. “Tell me you see that.”

“I see it.” The splotches stretched, seeming to sprout legs to creep over the snow.
Like what happens when ink drips onto white paper
, Rima thought.
It seeps along the fibers
. The spiderstains stretched and lengthened and merged. The fog was no longer gelid and still but swirling now, the turgid scent of blood-rust growing stronger. The snow began to shift and hump as black waves rippled all around the snowmobile.

Then, with a monstrous scream, the ebony snow broke, splintering in a shuddering convulsion—

“Ah!” Shrieking, she threw her arms around Casey as
hundreds and hundreds,
thousands
, of crows bulleted from the snow: pulling together out of that weird oil, spinning in a screeching black funnel cloud, hurtling into that blister of a glare-white sky.

“Where did they come from?” Casey shouted over the screams. His storm-gray eyes were jammed wide with shock. “What do they
mean
?”

Death
. Stunned, she followed the scrolling tangle of birds as they drew their black calligraphy onto the sky: arabesques and whorls and swoops and slashes and arcs.
Crows are death, and there is so much here, more than we can imagine
. Tightening her arms around Casey, she felt his slip about her waist, and wasn’t sure if the shudder working its way through her arms and into her chest was only hers. Yet, as frightened as she was, she was suddenly more afraid for him. It was crazy, stupid, something you did if you were major crushing on someone.
But this is so dangerous for you, Casey; there is something here that wants you, will
take
you, if it can. I feel it
.

She had to get him out of here. Now that the birds had cracked out of their icy shell in their mad flight, the snow—if that’s really what it was—was pristine and white once more.
All right; that’s a start
. Maybe slide onto the snow, see if she felt anything now. If not, they needed to move, get out from under these birds if they could, put some distance between them. But what if the birds followed?

One step at a time
. She tipped her head back to that roiling sky. “I can still see them,” she said. The birds’ ebb and flow was almost as hypnotic as the sea, or like staring into the swirl of an ebony whirlpool that endlessly circled round and round and round.
Like a black hole, the kind that ought to
exist in outer space: you could trip over the edge and fall forever
. “So maybe the fog’s burning off. Casey, you think you can drive the sled—”

“Rima.” At his tone, she pulled her gaze from the sky. Casey was staring over her shoulder. “Behind you,” he said.

She craned a look. A slit had appeared in the thick mist, as if someone had drawn a very sharp knife through taut white fabric. The lips of the cut drew back, and then this rent widened as the fog retreated. When she stopped to think about it later, the effect was like the parting of a curtain on some bizarre stage. Beyond the mist lay a thick forest, dark and very dense, that hemmed the snowfield on three sides.

“Like walls,” Casey said. “Like we’re looking into a room.”

That was exactly right. She watched as the fog wavered and glimmered—and then another shape pulled together, the fog sewing itself into something solid and blocky: red brick capped with a spire. A rosette window blossomed above a set of thick wooden double doors.

“It’s a
church
,” Casey breathed. “And look, there, to the left.”

“Cemetery.” The tombstones were a jostle of rectangles and squares, listing like broken teeth. Beyond, she spotted … was that a snowplow? No, that wasn’t right. The blocky vehicle was outfitted with treads, like a tank, and the discharge chute of a snowblower reared like an orange smokestack to the left of the cab. Instead of a blade, the huge, sharp corkscrew of an auger was mounted at the front of the vehicle.

I know this
. The certainty was so bright, it was like a searchlight had flared to life in the center of her brain.
The church, the cemetery, and that thing with the auger is a snowcat, and it’s all important. But why? Why do I recognize thi—