White Space (50 page)

With a stab of horror, she also realized
they
were slowing down. She was still
pushing
as hard as she could, but it was as if she were bogged down in something viscous and gluey, like a woolly mammoth caught in an infinitely deep tar pit. The energy sink was sapping them all. The chains of light linking her to Eric and Casey were beginning to fade, the colors bleaching away.

Emma!
It was Casey, his thoughts stinging with red panic.
Emma, I’m slipping, I can’t hold on, I can’t—

God, no! But she was tiring, fast, and the harder she fought, the less energy she had. Her mind skidded, her concentration faltering as her hold on the others slipped. The sensation was bizarre, as if her thoughts were clumsy feet trying to stay upright on glare ice.

Emma
. Eric, steady and sure.
Look at me
. Feel
me. Let me help
.

Help? How? She saw the cobalt shimmer that was Eric, but that was all, and Casey had his hand so she couldn’t really feel Eric either. Casey was still there, but his touch was like smoke against her fingers. Her whole body was going numb, draining to an outline, a silhouette, as the energy sink bled her of color and life.

Eric, again:
Feel me, Emma. Look for me. I’m right here
.

Then she remembered. She thought of their kiss on the snow: Eric’s mouth searching hers, his hands framing her face, his body fitting to hers.
Give him color; use the cynosure to fill him in
. In another moment, she saw his face shimmering in the dark of her mind’s eye.

That’s it. Stay with me, Emma
, Eric said, as their chain of three and many colors brightened.
Hold on to me, look at me
, use
me, and keep going; get us through
.

She didn’t know why this helped, and how any of this worked. She was only a junior in some yuppie private school, for God’s sake. There was no science she knew to explain this, but it was as if she
believed
Eric into being. Maybe it was his faith in her, or only the electricity between two people, the way the air thickens and crackles when they look at each other. The connection is there, and you know it.

But she hung on, and she
pushed
. Her ears filled with a rushing, a whirring, and then they were passing through much faster, the stubborn glue of the energy sink weakening, the bright beacon of Lizzie’s Sign of Sure as solid as any path. She felt the space of this bizarre Peculiar dilate like an immense pupil …

From beyond its margins, swelling from the dark and whatever waited, she heard a loud, long, bloody scream.

And she heard something clamor in a raucous, cawing chorus. She knew what that was, too.

Birds. Not a few. Not a couple dozen. But hundreds and hundreds of birds.

Dead ahead.

ONCE, IN BIO
, they’d sat through a gruesome video of some sadist-scientist injecting formaldehyde into a squeaking, thrashing rat. For Rima, the poor thing couldn’t die fast enough, and yet that was not what horrified her most. The worst was when the red leeched from the rat’s eyes until they were a dead, milky white.

Stealing her mother’s whisper was like that.

Anita was screeching. She tried pulling away, but Rima hung on. The sensation was agony, like a rush of liquid nitrogen churning through her body, freezing her mind, icing her heart. Anita began to jitter and twitch as her whisper—her life and what rode in her soul—oiled into Rima.

And then she knew because she felt
it
.

No!
Her back suddenly bowing with pain, Rima let out an agonized scream, but it was already too late.
This is what it wanted
. She felt her body expanding and deforming as the whisper-man uncoiled, streaming through her limbs, riding her blood to plump out her fingers, her toes. She felt the bite
of rope still cinched around her right wrist and both ankles as the whisper-man squirmed and wriggled and bunched, and then she cried out as the rope split and fell away. For a wild second, she felt a spurt of hope. Maybe she would live through this; maybe she might actually be able to contain the whisper-man without …

All thought whited out as a monstrous pain ripped through her chest: not a single talon but razor-claws that dragged and tore and split. Her scream choked off as blood gushed into her mouth, and then it was all she could do to grab enough air.

Can’t hold it
. She sucked in a gurgling gasp.
Tearing me apart
.

O
H, POOR LITTLE
R
IMA
.
The whisper-man’s voice crawled over her mind.
D
OES IT HURRRRT?

“Y-yes.” Her mouth was sour with the taste of copper and pain. “Pl-please, t-take it back. L-leave me …”

T
OO LATE.
Y
OU’RE A BRAVE GIRL, AND STRONG, BUT NOT STRONG ENOUGH TO PLAY THIS GAME.
I
F IT HELPS, YOU’RE NOT THE ONE
I
WANT ANYWAY
. F
OR THE MOMENT, THOUGH, YOU
’
LL DO.
N
OW, YOU JUST RELAX AND LET ME DO
ALLLL
THE TALKING
.

She felt her consciousness compress as the whisper-man crowded in. She recoiled, tried kicking out with her will, but he was walking over her mind now, insinuating himself into the cracks and crannies and secret places, prying her apart. The whisper-man surged in a river of black through her veins; her heart shuddered with the force of it, and when she looked at her hand, what little breath she had snagged in her throat.

Her skin was moving.

No
. She could feel the blackness there, worming and
heaving, those dark tentacles eeling over her bones, seeping into the meat of her. This was like Tania. The same thing was inside her now, balling in her gut, ready to skitter up her throat on its spidery legs.

N
O
, the whisper-man crooned in her mind.
Y
OU
STOLE A WHISPER, THAT
’
S ALL
. A
BIG
BAD
WHISPER, BUT NO
MORE THAN THAT
. O
NLY
B
LOOD BINDS
. O
NLY
B
LOOD WILL DO
.

She was on her feet. When had she done that? No matter. Warm blood trickled from the corners of her mouth and down her neck to soak her chest. Her vision was muddy and her cheeks were wet; when she put a hand there, her fingers came away ruby-red.

Overhead, the birds boiled and screamed. On the rock, at her feet, Anita was as still as a discarded wax figurine. Beyond the magic circle, the voodoo priestess cowered.

“You say you let me go.” The priestess sounded both aggrieved and frightened. “You make a promise. You say once you have the power, you free me.”

Rima opened her mouth …

AND THE GIRL’S
lips formed words, but the words were not hers, and neither was the voice.

“Y
ES,
” the whisper-man said. It twisted Rima’s lips into a bloody crack of a smile. “B
UT …
I
LIED.
”

Then, it brought down the birds.

THE PECULIAR SPAT
them out. They tumbled, not falling as much as rematerializing in a stagger, hands still linked: Emma first, then Casey, and finally Eric. A ball of sound broke over them, an echoing scream that rebounded off rock and doubled, and Emma thought,
Cave
. For a second, she thought they might still be in Bode’s nightmare: same story, different page. Then the floor undulated and bunched, and whatever else she might have thought after that turned to dust in her mind.

The birds spread in a roiling, living carpet. Emma smelled blood and the birds’ feral, almost metallic stink. A thousand glassy eyes glittered; black beaks gaped to reveal pink mouths and yellow tongues. Most were crows, but there were a few owls, their curved talons slick and stained with blood, stringy with dark flesh.

As if responding to some signal, the birds lifted as one in a broad, ebony curtain and shot toward some spot high above, leaving behind shredded clothing and a tumble of stained bone. The birds massed—and then seemed to melt
into the ceiling. They fell utterly silent without even so much as a rustle. Yet they were there; their beetle-bright eyes studded the ceiling in an alien galaxy, a splash of eerie starlight.

That was when Emma realized something else: she could
see
herself. Not from their eyes; she wasn’t in the birds’ heads, thank God. But she saw herself, as well as Casey and Eric, reflected from the rock high above, at their feet, and all around. They went on and on, another Emma/Eric/Casey and yet another Emma/Eric/Casey and another and another and another: an infinite number of Emmas and Erics and Caseys marching away to the end of time.

The cave was an immense black-mirror sphere.

“Emma,” Eric said, and pointed. “Look. Inside that circle of candles.”

She followed his gaze, and a blast of horror swept through her body.

“No.” Casey’s voice was an anguished whisper.
“No.
”

RIMA SWAYED. HER
body glistened, as if she’d been dipped in red paint. More blood dribbled in crimson rills from her mouth, her ears, her shredded wrists, and a thousand rips in her skin. Her shirt was a bib of purple gore, and Emma gasped as fresh blood blossomed in a dark rose over Rima’s stomach. Blood leaked through tiny fissures in her skin to form rivulets that ran down her legs and dripped from her fingers to puddle on the rock with a sodden, dull
puh-puh-puh-puh
. Rima looked like a porcelain doll done in a fine crackle-glaze: a leaky vessel
through which her life’s blood seeped and would soon drain away completely.

“We’re too late.” Casey was trembling. “We’re too late; it’s
got
her.”

“Good for you, Casey!” Rima boomed, although the voice was not hers, or the whisper-man’s either, the one Emma had heard in her
blinks
of Madison and that asylum. Definitely a man’s voice, though.

Beside her, she heard Eric suck in a breath. “What?” she asked. Eric’s skin had gone white as salt. “Eric?”

“Oh God.” Eric’s face was a mask of horror. “God, no, please don’t do this.”

“No.
” Casey tensed, and he might have sprung into the circle if Eric hadn’t snatched his brother’s arm. “No,
no
!” Casey was crying, trying to fight his way free. “It’s not right, it’s not
right
!”

“Now, Casey.
Son
.” The monster wearing Rima made a
tsk-tsk
. “Is that any way to talk to Dear Old Dad?”

THIS IS MY
fault
. Beneath his hands, Eric could feel Casey shuddering, a vessel under pressure, ready to explode.
We’re in my nightmare now
.

“You’re dead!” Casey’s hands knotted to fists. “You’re
dead
!”

“Why, Son.” The thing in Rima, the monster with Big Earl’s voice, pulled a pout. A huge, ruby-red tear trickled down her cheek. “That hurts my feelings, it really does.”

“I’m not your
son
!” The cords stood out in Casey’s neck. “Don’t
call
me that!”

“Don’t, Casey. That’s what it wants,” Eric said. Big Earl had been a big man with a large man’s bluster, but this was like being caught in an echo chamber. His dead father’s voice battered his brain. Eric’s mouth filled with a taste of clean steel, and he grabbed onto his hate, hugged it as tightly as he held his weeping, raging brother. Good, stay angry; anger was something he could use. He willed his mind to diamond-bright clarity.
This is the enemy. No matter what its face, it always
has been
. “Don’t give it any more power.”

“Oooh,” the whisper-man boomed in Big Earl’s voice, “you always were a smart boy, Eric. I guess Emma was a good teacher, huh?”

Emma let go of some small sound, almost the whimper of a trapped animal, but Eric kept his gaze screwed to the whisper-man. “Leave her out of this. She’s got nothing to say to you. She’s got nothing to
do
with you.”

“Oh now, Son, you’d be surprised.” The whisper-man threw Eric a wink. “Because she’s got
everything
to do with
you
.”

The words barely registered. This thing might have his father’s voice and Rima’s face; it might enjoy and feed upon this kind of sadistic play, but take away the bluster and it was clear: this thing needed them for something. Not only that: Eric knew, instinctively, that they must be
willing
to give it up. Otherwise, it would have taken what it wanted already, the same way it had snatched Rima and Lizzie.

And where is Lizzie?
He risked a quick glance left and right; saw both the ravaged body of what he thought must’ve been a woman and a lumpy heap of bones, stringy flesh, and bloody clothing reduced to tatters. The skeletonized body seemed small but still too large for a little girl.
What’s it done with her?

“Stop playing games. You need something from us,” Eric said. “What is it? Where’s Lizzie?”

“A boy with your gifts.” The whisper-man tut-tutted. “And you went into the Marines? Such a waste.”

“Gifts?”

“Why yes, Son. You’re a smart kid; you’ve figured it out already. Each of you has a special gift, even if you don’t know what it is just yet.”

“Stop
calling
him that! You’re not our father. He’s not your son and neither am I,” Casey said. “We know what you are.”

“O
H
, C
ASEY,
” the whisper-man said, reverting back to its own voice, which wasn’t necessarily a relief. To Eric, it sounded like both a gargle and the scream of nails over a blackboard. It felt like knives in his brain. “Y
OU DON
’
T HAVE A CLUE, MY BOY
. Y
OU
REALLY
DON
’
T.
”