White Space (53 page)

Eric felt his knees go watery. There was nothing inside his chest. He couldn’t speak, or move. His brain hung in an airless space, a kind of
between
, like the vacuum between stars.

“C
HARACTERS WRITING CHARACTERS THAT BRING OTHER CHARACTERS TO LIFE
…” What was left of Rima’s mouth skinned a grin that was all tattered flesh, smeary orange teeth, and purple clot. “K
IND OF MAKES YOUR HEAD SPIN, DON
’
T IT
?”

“Fuck you!
” Casey screamed. He wrenched free of Eric’s slack grip and sprang for the circle. “
Fuck you!
I’ll
kill
you, I’ll fucking
kill you
!”

“No, Casey!” Eric and Emma shouted. They surged after, but Casey was small, fast as a whippet, and he had a head
start. “Casey, no!” Eric cried, as Casey crossed into the circle. “Casey, stop, no, st—”

The air abruptly came alive and swelled with a wild rushing sound that Eric thought was like the roar of water, except it came from somewhere high above. What happened next came so fast that neither he nor Emma could do anything about it.

As one, the birds foamed from the rock and crashed down in a gale.

STARING THROUGH THE
windows of her eyes, Rima watched as Casey flung himself into the circle—and all that was left of her moaned,
No, Casey, no!
She couldn’t help him. She wasn’t strong enough to distract the whisper-man for long; it had taken every ounce of her will just to give the lie to the whisper-man’s assurances that it could save her. Now, her own life was fading fast; she could feel her mind thinning the way a cloud dissipated under a bright sun. She couldn’t break free, but she had to do something,
something
.

She understood now, too, about the dolls this thing had fashioned as receptacles for what it, as Lizzie, called the “
you
-you.” Six dolls, not eight: there was no Eric-doll, no Casey. Neither had a place in McDermott’s book-worlds, and of the two, Casey was the
cleanest
, nearly a blank slate, able to absorb whispers and
become
with ease.

She felt the whisper-man crush Casey to her bleeding body in a tight, suffocating embrace. Casey’s warm breath slashed over her ruined face, and his own was close, just
inches away. She sensed the whisper-man’s intent an instant before her own hand tightened around Anita’s boning knife, which the whisper-man had slid into the small of her back, and she thought,
No no no no, please don’t, don’t hurt him, don’t!

Too late, and she had no power anyway. A quicksilver flick, and then Casey gasped as the knife sliced through his coat and slid into his left flank, just below his ribs, slipping through skin, dividing muscle. The tip drove to the artery, releasing Casey’s blood in a great, throbbing gush.

No
,
no, no, CASEY!
But Casey was sagging against her now, his life pulsing out in a crimson river.

“O
HHH, THAT
’
S GOOD.
” The whisper-man crooned like a lover into Casey’s ear: “T
HAT
’
S GOOD, OHHH, THAT FEELS SO GOOD, DOESN
’
T IT
? G
IVE YOURSELF TO ME
, B
REATH OF
M
Y
B
REATH
. T
AKE ME, FEED ME
, B
LOOD OF
M
Y
B
LOOD, OHHH,
FEEL
ME
.”

There was one chance, and only one—because she knew what the whisper-man had forgotten. But she must wait, wait, wait. She didn’t dare allow herself to think any further than that. If she did,
it
would know. She latched onto a rhyme, a meaningless tune, because she must hide, hide, quiet, quiet:
Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb. Mary had a little lamb …

Beyond the circle, she heard Eric and Emma both screaming, but couldn’t see them at all because of all those hundreds and thousands of crows. The birds—beaks stabbing, slicing,
ripping
—boiled over their bodies. Emma and Eric would be dead, and very soon, if she couldn’t stop this.

Hurry, hurry, hurry. Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, oh, hurry hurry hurry …

“B
LOOD OF
M
Y
B
LOOD,
” the whisper-man whispered with the ruin of her mouth, her bloody flesh pressed against Casey’s ear. “B
REATH OF
M
Y
B
REATH
, I
BIND YOU.
”

Hurry hurry hurry …

“I
TAKE YOU, OHHH, FEEL ME AS
I
FILL
YOU!
” It crushed her mouth to Casey’s, and then Casey was drinking the whisper-man in, binding the darkness to him.

Yes!
The blackness slid away; the whisper-man flowed in a deep riptide from her body. There was no blessed wave of relief; she would not live through this. The icy slush that passed for her blood was gone, but now fire licked through her limbs, throbbing with every beat of her dying heart. The pain was a vice, crushing her chest and forcing out her breath. The cord that had held her up for so long snapped, and she began to fall. But as she did, she realized something else that the whisper-man did not know.

There was someone else—something she half knew and recognized—inside Casey.

Help him
. She was sinking fast, hurtling toward that final darkness on legs suddenly no more substantial than air.
Please, whoever, whatever you are, help Casey fight, help him, help …

She knew when her body thudded to that strange, smooth, and glassy rock, but she registered nothing more than a distant thump. Her mind spun. She couldn’t think, couldn’t put her finger on it. There was something important she had to do … but what?
I know this … what is it … it’s import—

Then, she remembered what the whisper-man had forgotten: that a whisper, like blood, leaves a stain.

Wearing her body, the whisper-man had brought down
the birds. That stain—this ability—was still there, but faint and growing fainter.

Please, God, just keep me alive a few more seconds
.

With the last of her strength, she gathered her will and sent an arrow of thought, flying true.

Go
. I
command you now. Go
.

THE MOMENT CASEY
sprinted for the circle, Eric simply froze, unable to believe his eyes. What was Casey …? Then his body took over, his mind clamoring:
Go go go!
He lunged after his brother, Emma by his side. He was so focused on reaching Casey before his brother vaulted into the circle that it took him a few seconds to hear the change, the way the air seemed to churn with a weird, freakish rustle.

“Eric!” Emma suddenly gasped. She grabbed for his arm, and he followed her eyes to the ceiling.

Panic slammed into his chest.
“Down!
” he shouted. He tackled Emma, driving her to the floor, covering her with his body as the birds hurtled for them in a black rain of needle-sharp beaks and razor talons. Their bodies were everywhere: a living, ravenous tornado that flowed and whirled over and around. Beaks stabbed at his back, his neck, gouging holes in his flesh. Frantic claws raked his hair, and then he was screaming as blades of pain hacked at his scalp. His parka was
gone, and so they were through his clothes in no time, their claws drawing hot lines through his flesh. The birds’ claws ticked and skittered over the glassy rock, and there were more birds scuttling over the floor, worming their way to Emma. She was shrieking, and he shouted something wordless, battering at the birds with great sweeps of his arms.

Then a very large crow clamped onto his scalp. Its talons, steely as stilettos, dug in as its beak jackhammered his neck. A red sheet of pain stole his vision. Screaming, he surged up, back arched in agony.

It was, precisely, what the birds had waited for. They swarmed for his face. Nails of pain spiked his cheeks and forehead. One bird swooped in from the side, and he turned his head just in time, as the bird’s beak laid his skin open from the corner of his right eye to his mouth.

The crow battened on his scalp was still coring the flesh of his neck, its beak driving and digging. He reached back, his fist closing over slick feathers. The crow slashed at his fingers, flaying flesh from bone. Roaring with pain, he yanked the flailing creature from his blood-soaked scalp, and then the bird was bulleting for his face, its black beak flashing right for his eye.

Gasping, he got a hand up just in time. The bird’s beak drove into the meat at the base of his thumb, a shock wave he felt all the way to his elbow. With a cry, he tumbled back as the relentless birds closed over him, ripping and pecking—

Then, as if in response to a silent signal, the birds simply stopped—a fast, abrupt hitch, like the flick of a switch—and then lifted off in a vertiginous swirl, spiraling higher and higher to mass at the ceiling.

For a second, Eric could only lie there, stunned. His body was saturated and slick. Blood ran into his eyes, coated his mouth with a taste of warm aluminum. To his right, Emma was drenched with gore. She lay on her stomach, her face hidden by the dark fan of her hair, and he thought,
God, no, please
. Then he saw her move, and relief surged through his body.

“Y
OU
BITCH
!
” It was Casey, in the circle, bellowing in a voice that was not Rima’s or Big Earl’s or his own, but the guttural, clotted gargle that was the whisper-man’s true voice. “S
TOP!
W
HAT ARE YOU DOING?
”

Oh, Casey
. Eric felt everything inside go dead with despair. His brother’s back bowed as if drawn by an unseen archer. Blood stained Casey’s mouth and glistened on his palms. His chest was a bib of gore. His shirt was slashed on the left; a large vermillion splash slicked his side as a crimson jet spurted from a wound right below his ribs.

“N
O, STOP!
” Casey shouted. “L
ET ME GO!
”

Rima?
Eric thought with stupid amazement.
She
was doing this? She’d called off the birds?
My God, is she still inside him, too?
There was no way of knowing. Rima’s body lay in a still, sodden heap where she had crumpled after the whisper-man released her. He couldn’t tell if she was still alive. But
someone
was fighting back. Something had saved him and Emma.

“N
O, DON
’
T
! L
ET ME GO
!” Casey roared. “I’
M NOT
FINISHED
!”

“
Look
at him.” Blood coursed from slashes on Emma’s arms and neck. A long rip, the mirror image of his, snaked down her cheek. “Eric … there’s somebody
else
.”

There was. Casey’s stormy eyes—eyes that could hold and
be any color—were churning and changing, growing black as oil.

But now he could see that there was also another: a shadow, much larger, man-shaped, smoky and indistinct, bleeding into being,
steaming
from Casey himself, as if it had been hiding inside and waiting for just this moment.

The whisper-man had said it:
I need someone who can carry a whisper, an
energy
as strong as mine, without coming apart at the seams
.

There was Casey, the brother for whom Eric would give his life—and someone else, already inside his brother, fighting for him,
with
them. But could Casey and this other
win?

We can’t take that chance
. Eric got his feet under him, then grabbed Emma’s bloody hand in his.
Blood binds, and I don’t think we’ve got a lot of time
.

“Emma,” he said, hoarsely, “this whole room is a mirror. It’s a
mirror. It
can’t get completely free of the Peculiar’s energy sink for long, but
you
can. With the cynosure, you can go to different
Nows
, but you have to cross into the Dark Passages to do it, and that’s
where
this thing—”

“Yes.” Her eyes met his, and he read that she understood, exactly, what they had to do. “Just hang on to him long enough,” she said.

To the death, Emma. I will never let go
. There was so much more to tell her, a lifetime of stories they might have written, but there was no more time.
I will hold you both to my heart, across times, to the death
.

Together, they charged into the circle at a dead run.

“YOU
BITCH
!”
THE
whisper-man raged. Somehow the girl had called off the birds, not that it should have mattered. Once taken in—once invited—the boy should have been helpless, without the strength to resist. Not like Good Old Frank, who knew a trick or two, or his brat, who was more skilled even than her father.

But something was wrong.

T
HERE IS ANOTHER
.
This couldn’t be. Casey was the perfect creation: an outline waiting for color, a sponge, a
tabula rasa
with even less of a history; and that which Casey possessed—abuse and cruelty, rage and betrayal—was the very kind of horror it liked best. True, the boy had been
infected
by his brother, who had, in his turn, been tainted by Emma. Casey had morals and scruples. He could love. Yet Casey was fresh and strong. As soon as it finished taking the boy, it would bind enough of Emma to gain the one thing it lacked: access to the cynosure, a skill Lizzie had somehow denied it
and Emma hadn’t possessed until it had shown her what to do. Then it would break free, away from this place. Together, it and Casey would play across the
Nows
.

Slipping inside the boy had been so effortless, little more than a sigh. Just like Lizzie, the boy opened himself, a willing sacrifice for his brother and the Rima-bitch, who should be dead, but she had tricked it,
tricked
it. Still, time should’ve been on its side.