Read The Dickens Mirror Online

Authors: Ilsa J. Bick

The Dickens Mirror (4 page)

There’s a slight crunch and pop as the woman’s boots grind broken glass.
Wonder how come she hasn’t turned on the light?
Maybe she can’t find it, but that’s dumb. The switch is right … Then Emma thinks,
What are you doing, you nut? Don’t jinx

There’s a distinctive
snap
. Flat yellow light flows into the gloom.

Stupid, Emma, you’re so stupid
. Emma’s insides go all loose, like she might fall down in the next second. She’s
always
jinxing herself.
You think too much
.

Another
snap
. The light goes out. “This is fascinating.” The woman
snicks
the light on a second time, and then a third. “Worthy of study.”

Worthy of study?
What, she’s never seen a light before? Still, the woman’s done her a favor. To the left, Jasper’s hulking old secretary looms, and she can see a larger, long wedge of shadow where the desk isn’t completely snugged to the wall. The opening’s just wide enough for a thin and wiry twelve-year-old kid. So she’s got a choice. She could hide behind the Victorian, quiet quiet quiet as a mouse—maybe even do a Lara or something
and jam herself into the crack, tuck and plant her feet like a rock climber so that crazy lady won’t be able to see her feet. If Emma’s
really
lucky (hah!), the crazy lady will look around and kind of scratch her head—
Huh, where’s Waldo?
—and go back upstairs. Or Emma could do the same move and shove the desk really hard until it falls over. The desk isn’t wide enough to completely block the way, but it would certainly slow this woman down.

Emma doesn’t have that kind of time, though, and knows it. There’s only one way out of here.
Should’ve bolted out the front door, taken my chances outside
. At least there would be room to run. But the fog was so thick, she’d get lost. She
even
might have—and this is a weird thought—run to another place and time.

Yet there is also Jack, who could have chosen anywhere else to go in the house but has taken himself down cellar and led her to this back room. The cat’s long shadow dances up the wall as he bounds atop the boxes she wedged against white-painted cinderblock only a week before, as if he’s pointing:
This way, Emma, move your butt!

Oh boy
. Should she? Because she knows what the cat wants her to do. Those tiny panic-gerbils in her brain shrill,
Are you crazy? Are you nuts?

No, mainly she’s desperate. Plowing across the room, she horses aside boxes.
Please be what I think you are
. Which is what, exactly? A tunnel? A door to another dimension or time?
I don’t care, I don’t care, just
be
there
. She is gasping again, and her heart is beating so hard that the harsh grind and hollow baps of the woman kicking aside glass and tin cans seem far away. A few seconds later, she feels a gush of very cold air around her ankles and she falls to her knees before painted cinderblock—

And the cinderblock is a white blank. Biting her lower lip, she corrals a small cry. That’s not right. Last week, there was a pull-ring.
I couldn’t have imagined it
. Could she?
But I opened this; I know I did …

Oh!
She sucks in a breath as that brass pull, just so right for her hand, sprouts like a mushroom, as if it’s been waiting for her to get on with it already; to really, truly want this.

As if this is the pivot, the
now
, around which her life turns: the end in which she’ll find her beginning.

9

EXCEPT FOR THE
fact that she has no birthday candle now, everything’s the same: that frigid wash of air, that flawlessly perfect black square, the icy burn when she touches it. Beneath her fingers, the dark square gives like thick cellophane, and sounds dribble out: a static-y
psst-spiss-spiss-psst
like Rice Krispies, or a big, whispering crowd. Then, a tiny
click
and her hand plunges into the dark. The last time, that’s when something hooked her wrist. When she’d finally tugged free, her fingers were sickly white with cold and her blue birthday candle was frozen. Now, nothing snatches at her. Maybe going the whole hog is what the darkness has wanted all along.

Then Emma thinks,
What are you doing?
She wasn’t really thinking of crawling inside, was she? There are
things
in there that might be just as bad as what’s followed her down cellar.
Stay here, though

I’ll get killed. But go in there and maybe, just maybe …

By her side, the cat is shifting from side to side, like a stallion at a starting gate. “Jack?” Her whisper’s as quivery as half-set Jell-O. Her lips have drawn back in a terrified rictus, and big tears roll
down her cheeks. The tang of iron’s on her tongue. “Jack, do you know where …?”

A knife blade of shadow slashes up the far wall. “Emma.”

Emma screams and whirls around. By her side, Jack springs about a foot straight up, the way cats do. Yet when he lands, he stays. He’s not leaving her. She doesn’t know if she likes that or not. What if this kook kills her cat, too?

“Emma.” The woman steps to the threshold of this second room. “There’s nowhere left to run. Let’s not make a fuss.”

“Not make a f-fuss?” Emma’s chest is boiling over with fear. “Wh-who
are
y-you? What do you
w-want
?”

“Why, you, child. Although …” The woman’s head suddenly cocks as she stares through those weird purple glasses. “What
is
that?” Her smooth, buttery caramel tone has gone brittle. “Is that another device? Or a back door? Have you accessed it? Where does it go?”

Access? Back door?
“I … I don’t …” It hits her then:
She can’t tell I’ve opened it. Even with those funky glasses, she doesn’t know
. From the woman’s question, Emma thinks this nut will be on her in a second if she gets even the slightest whiff that it’s open.
But she asked where it went
. That must mean the woman’s seen this or something like it before and knows that it’s an escape route, a tunnel, a door, and not just some black hole filled with stuff that’ll have her for lunch.
If she doesn’t know it’s open … does that mean she can’t follow?
The door opened for her; the pull-ring sprouted at Emma’s touch.
So what if it closes up right after I go through?

What is she saying? What is she thinking? She’s not going in there. But Jack wants her to; Jack knows.
And the crazy lady can’t get it open?

“Emma.” The woman moves into the room. “Come away,
now
.”

Go on go on, do it, you big fraidy-cat, go!
“O-okay.” She sets her toes, tenses her thighs. “Okay, I … I’m c-coming, I give up; just p-please don’t h-hurt me, d-don’t …”

Then she shouts to the cat,
“Go, Jack!”

And launches herself into the square.

10

LARA CROFT’S GOT
nothing on a cat. Hurtling ahead, Jack’s gone in an instant, lost to the dark. She is a split second behind. The transition’s abrupt; the cold grabs her throat, and there is a rushing around her ears, as if a huge flock of blackbirds has suddenly startled. That static wash of whispers swells.

Maybe, if she hadn’t hesitated so long, she’d have made it, too.

A pair of strong hands clamps her ankles. She bucks, trying to kick her way free.
No, NO!
Jack is probably safe
somewhere
, but she’s been too scared, too slow, so stupid. No one will ever know. Sal and Jasper will find an empty house and a wrecked basement reeking of vinegar and smooshed pickles. But they also might see the square or, at the very least, that the boxes have been moved. Jasper might put it together. Will he come after her?
Can
he?

Help me
, she thinks, furiously, to the dark and whatever lives here
. You were here before; you grabbed me before, so help me now!
Squirming deeper, she realizes that while there is
nothing
under her chest now—no floor, no concrete—she’s not falling either. She also can’t be quite certain, but are those lights? Stars? Open doorways?

Behind, the woman is hauling her back. Emma’s shirt rucks over her tummy. In seconds, she’ll be right back where she started, at this nightmare turn her life has taken.

Please
. She grabs for the dark.
If you’re here, please, I want this! Find me!

And then comes the strangest thought of all:
Put me where I belong
.

That idea … is hers, and it is not. It feels far ahead and in the future and as distant as one of those bright lights, and yet the thought is immediate, present,
now
. Along with this, there is a sudden
blooming
in her head and a lurch, a tug like the set of a fishhook. Deep in her center, she knows: this is her chance.

Tearing a foot from the woman’s grasp, she pistons her leg back with all her might. Her foot connects with a solid bang she feels in her knee. The woman lets out a screech of pain. Her grip on Emma slackens—and that’s enough.

Emma launches herself into this black tide, and now she’s moving, fast, fast, faster, the sensation the same as in the moment she angles her kayak in a swift stream churning through rocks, slipping into exactly the right shoot at exactly the right time. Emma hurtles through the cold and dark, the current sweeping her to …

PART ONE

AWAKENINGS

1

SNAPPING BOLT UPRIGHT
, he jolts awake with a scream perched on his tongue.

Jesus
. Swallowing the shout, he grimaces at … 
gasoline
? His mouth tastes like he’s been sucking on an exhaust pipe. Or that could be left over from his nightmare: something about a car or maybe a truck that jumped a guardrail and landed in a splinter of trees and … and snow?
Yeah, that’s right
. What else, what else? A girl. Yeah, there was a girl he … he
liked
? Yes. A girl he
trusted
. To whom he felt a connection. He wanted to protect her. She was sad and … and
haunted
, like him. What was her name? Come
on …
But no face wavers up from memory. Shit,
shit
. It’s all starting to drift away, like soap bubbles on a strong breeze. Yet what remains in his chest is a clot of deep, icy dread—and pain.

Because I got hurt. This
thing
appeared all of a sudden, out of the dark
. Shivering, he hunches his shoulders and folds in on himself.
Cold
. In the dream, there was snow, a real blizzard. Then, from the dark, this big
something
came and … 
pain. Blood. And I got hurt, I got really, really hurt
. An explosion next? He thinks so.

And then I died
. The words are the mental moan of a kid ready to puke his guts out. God, this makes no sense. He took psych. You can be scared to death in a dream. You can think you’re running like crazy but really in slo-mo, even though the slavering thing chasing you is a whisper away, a hair’s breadth. In a
nightmare, you might even see the knife or ax or claw. But you shouldn’t die. At the moment the ax whizzes down or the monster opens its mouth, you ought to wake up.

Only I didn’t. I died in my dream. I
felt
it happen. I-I f-felt …

He has to stop this. He’s fine. He’s awake now and in bed, in his own room, not out on the ice watching his life drain away in a hot, steaming red pool to mingle with gasoline.
Gasoline, what the hell … Come on
. He puts a hand to his chest.
Just calm

His thoughts stumble.
What?
Hair rising on his scalp, he mashes his hand to his ribs, right below his left collarbone.
What, WHAT?
No, that’s not possible! He’s sitting up. He’s in
bed
. He’s not
dead
.

So then where the hell is his heart?

2

IT’S AS IF
he just has to think the word. Because, all at once, a knot swells behind his ribs. His chest heaves as if what’s inside is just now shaking awake. A second later, he feels a knocking in his throat as his heart vaults to life.

Okay
. His lips throb with the wild gallop of his pulse.
You’re fine. Relax
. He … he was just freaked out. Anyone would be after a dream like that. He shivers again, the tiny hairs prickling on his neck. Best not to think about it.
Maybe sit up, read …

Wait a second. Leaning forward, he sweeps blindly with outstretched hands. Where are his covers? He’s
freezing
, and it’s so
dark
—blacker than pitch—but he has no blankets. There are no sheets puddled around his waist. He shuffles his ankles but feels no spaghetti twist of a top sheet or rumpled wool.
What?
Stretching, he gropes but feels only the icy knobs of his bare toes.
Hunh
. Probably kicked off the blanket, or maybe it’s balled up with his
top sheet. And why the hell is it so dark? Twisting to his left, he drops a hand for his night table.
Has it ever been this dark

It is then that he realizes: his hand is still falling. Because there is no night table.

What?
He goes rigid as a post. That can’t be right. But there’s no mistake: his hand is lower than his left thigh, and
that’s
when he figures out that there’s no mattress either. His palm’s simply hanging there.
But there’s got to be a mattress. I’m
sitting
on it. What’s going on?

The scream that followed him out of the nightmare and which he hasn’t let go of is a knuckle in his throat. There is something beneath his legs; he
feels
it … but is it really his bed? Cautiously, he shuffles his legs, listening hard for a squeal of box springs, feeling for the mattress’s many small dimples and quilted hillocks. The blackness beneath him is perfectly smooth, like … 
ice, I remember ice and gasoline
 … and there is no sound, no whisper of skin over a sheet or even a mattress pad.

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