White Space (15 page)

SPLASH-SLOSH-SPLASH …

“No!” Tony shouted. He stared in horror as the blackness gathered and folded and formed shadows in the dark: something monstrous and denser than the night, and it was right there, it was
right there, it was right—

“HELP ME!”
Tony shrieked.
“HELP ME, SOMEBODY HELP—”

“CASEY!” RIMA GASPED
. “That was Tony!”

“I know.” The words felt thin in his mouth, like flat letters on white paper. “I can’t see …”

“HELLLP!”
Tony’s shriek tore through the night.
“PLEASE HELP ME!”

“Tony!” Rima floundered around the hood, and that was when Casey heard not the
shush
of snow but a
splash
.

Water? He sniffed, and then his eyes widened. “Hey, do you
smell
that?”

“What are you …” She stopped moving and looked down, then shuffled her feet. Casey heard the slap and gurgle of liquid against the Camry’s metal chassis. “Gasoline?” she said. “But where did it come from? The van? How? The van couldn’t possibly hold that much.”

“I don’t know,” he said. Even if you factored in a rupture in the Camry’s tank, that wouldn’t explain this. “Look, I think we need to take a second here and …”

Another shriek from Tony, agonized and shrill, and then
Rima was sloshing away from the car: “Tony! Tony, we’re—”

“No!” Casey’s arm pistoned out; his fist closed around her arm. “Don’t! Wait!” He heard her gasp and felt her go rigid. “What?” he said.

“Let me go!” And then she was shrieking, batting at him, like she’d completely lost it: “Let me go, let me
go
!” Flailing wildly, she tried twisting away. “Don’t
touch
me!”

“Rima!”
Jesus, what was
wrong
with her? The girl was still screaming, and from across the ice, in the dark, Tony shrieked again: a drill bit of sound that cored into the meat of his brain, and
God
, all Casey wanted was for Tony to stop screaming and for this nutcase to stop hitting him. “Rima, stop,
be quiet
! You want whatever’s out there to find us, too?”

“Let go, let
go
!” In the light from his flashlight, he could see the cords standing in her neck and the glitter of an animal fear in her eyes. “Take your hands
off
!”

“Fine! Okay! There, you stupid …” As soon as he released her, she staggered, her feet tangling and slip-sliding. Without thinking, he reached for her again—to steady her, give her a hand; he was just trying to
help
, for God’s sake—but she aimed a kick, a goddamned
kick
.

“Don’t touch me!” she shrieked. “I told you not to touch me!”

“All right! Fine! Fall on your ass; I don’t give a shit!” Another blood-curdling scream from Tony set his teeth. “Just get back in the goddamned car!”

“What?” Rima was wild-eyed, her face drained of color. “No! Are you crazy? We have to
help
him!”

Was
he
crazy? “We
can’t
! What’s already happened has happened! We have to get inside, get off the snow!” Casey
was already splashing back to the car. The gasoline fumes were starting to get to him; he could feel the burn in his throat. Breathing was hard, and his head ached. Lurching for the back door, he felt his boot suddenly skate, and he thought,
Ice? Wait, what happened to the snow?

Another scream boiled from the darkness, but the sound was now much different: formless and queerly garbled, a drowning kid’s gurgle, and as liquid as this improbable lake of gasoline.

I don’t want to know, I don’t want to see this
. Desperate now: “Rima, we can’t help him. We can’t even
see
him!”

She still wasn’t moving, the idiot. “But we can’t just
leave
him.”

“Yes, we can, and I’m going,” Casey said, and then he was grabbing the handle of the back door before he remembered:
locked
. Damn stupid … He was shaking so bad he couldn’t sock the key into the lock, had to hold it with both hands.
Come on, come on
. He felt the key ram home, and then he was twisting the key, hauling back on the handle. The door opened with a shriek, the hinges crying out. He practically dove into the car. Craning round, he saw that Rima hadn’t moved.

Well, screw this shit, and screw her
. He dragged the door closed with a hard
thunk
. The locks socked home, and only then did he allow himself a relieved sigh.
Safe
. Or as safe as he could be in this nightmare. Of course, if whatever was out there came for them, he wasn’t so sure about that either. Car windows broke, didn’t they? You’d have to be one strong mother to do it, but a rock, a hammer, a stout piece of pipe, and then he was screwed. Man, what he wouldn’t give for a weapon.

Outside, Rima was a murky silhouette, still as a statue.
Fine, let her die out here; he wasn’t risking his ass for a guy he’d just met. What was he supposed to do, anyway? Throw snowballs?
Spit?
God, his head was killing him from all those fumes. The metal box of the car muted Tony’s screams, so they were only bad and not bone-chilling, as if he were listening to a horror movie leaking from a distant television—but that was still plenty horrible enough.

Shut up, Tony
. Casey squeezed his eyes tight. The taste of gasoline furred his tongue. Swallowing made him gag. Saliva pooled, and he spat, trying to rid himself of the taste.
Shut up, Tony. Shut up, and die already if you’re going to, but shut the f—
He let out a startled yelp at a sharp
bap
on the window behind his head. Turning, he saw Rima at the door.
“What?”
he shouted. “What do you want now?”

“Open up!” Rima’s fist hammered the window again. Even in the gloom, her eyes were bright and raw with terror. “Casey, please, open the door! Something’s coming! Quick, open the
door
!”

Oh, so
now
she wanted in. Fine, fine, crazy stupid bitch … Still fuming, he reached for the lock, no real thought behind it at all, only reflex, and then Big Earl, who’d been so quiet, boomed,
What the
hell
you doing, boy?

“What?” He hesitated, his fingers hovering in midair, twitching a little like the legs of a spider. “I’m … I’m letting her in.” Thinking,
I’m talking to a dead man. I’m having an argument with a ghost
.

What the hell for? You lost what little sense you had?
It wasn’t just that Big Earl was huge in his head. Casey felt the big man’s phantom arms crush his ribs, drive the breath from his chest.
She made her bed. She had her chance
.

“Casey!” Rima slammed both palms against the window, hard enough that he felt the jolt in his legs. “
Please!
Don’t leave me out here!”

“I … Dad, no … I have to h-help …” His hand wouldn’t obey. What was wrong with him? It was as if he were a robot whose circuits had frozen. “Can’t l-leave her to d-die out there. What if there really is s-something …?”

This is your problem. You think Eric thought about anything other than getting rid of me? You think he didn’t
mean
it?
Big Earl oozed contempt.
He might have killed me, but at least he had the guts to do what needed doing
.

“S-stop comparing me to him.” A lick of anger, but his skin was suddenly pebbly with gooseflesh as a dark chill rippled through his veins.
What’s wrong with my hand?
Then, another and much stranger thought:
Is it mine?
“I’m my own p-person. I can handle m-myself.”

“Casey!” Rima pounded again. “Open the door!”

Then be a man
.

This was the problem with being Big Earl’s son: you hop-skipped right over being a kid. True, he didn’t particularly like Rima; he wasn’t going to put himself on the line for her. But opening the door was so simple.
And it
is
the right thing to do. A man makes his own decisions, too
. So why did his hand refuse to move? “Dad, she just n-needs to—”

You giving me lip? You saying no to
me?

“N-no, sir … I m-mean …”

Spit it out, boy
.

“You’re … you’re
d-dead
,” Casey stammered. Whatever held him in place, was wrapped around his body, tightened its grip, like the muscular arms of a gigantic octopus. His
ribs felt brittle as crackle-ice. His chest didn’t want to move. “Why … h-how can I still be h-hearing you? P-please, I h-have to open the d-door, just l-let me …”

You have to listen to me, boy
.

“Casey!” Rima pleaded. “Please, listen, Casey,
please
!”

“I …” He couldn’t make his lungs work. “Dad, n-no, I n-need …”

I’ll show you what you need
. His father’s voice sizzled in his blood.
Take you down a peg
.

“N-no, Dad,” he gasped, thinking to his hand:
Move
, move!
Hurry, unlock the door, unlock the door!
“S-stop. Just l-let me …”

And that was when he saw his hand … 
glimmer
.

“Ah!” he screamed as the skin rippled and wavered as if underwater. Everything around him—the sense of the car seat beneath him, Rima’s terrified shouts, even the numbing cold—suddenly dropped out, as if the soundtrack to this movie had hit a glitch. There was only his hand, which was trying to deform and shift, growing larger, rougher, thicker, and cracked with calluses. Tufts of hair sprouted over the knuckles. It was as if his hand had slid into Big Earl’s skin. Or maybe Big Earl was only turning him inside out the way you shucked a messy glove and what he now saw was what lay beneath.

Or he’s in my blood, eating his way out
. This couldn’t be real. Dizzy with horror, he watched as Big Earl’s hand jerked away from the lock.

“N-no.” A sudden cold sweat slimed his neck and upper lip. “Puh-please, d-don’t. Stop,
s-stop
!” He could hear his breath hissing from between clenched teeth, feel the shudder in his biceps as he tried fighting back, to make Big Earl’s hand obey, to stop moving, to
stop
 …

Casey slapped himself, very hard: a stunning blow, an open-palm
crack
as sharp as a gunshot. A cry jumped off his tongue. There was a wink of pain as his teeth cut his cheek. Very faintly, above the thunder of his blood, he heard Rima shout: “No, Casey,
stop!
Don’t let him—”

“H-help,” he panted, his mouth filling with salt and rust. His voice sounded so small, almost not there at all. “E-Eric, help, someone, please …” And then his hand—his
father’s
hand—was a fist, and Casey couldn’t fight it. He could feel his will draining away, the numb acceptance of a beaten dog, which he knew too well because he’d been here so many times before: kneeling, watching Big Earl advance with that switch, his fist, a belt, and knowing that running only made things a hundred times worse.

He hit himself again and again and again, and all those books had it totally wrong: there was no numbing, no going away, no mental
click
so he could float above and let this happen to that boy-shaped punching bag. He felt this, each and every blow, right into his teeth, his bones. With every punch, he heard his breath come in a grunt—
ugh, ugh, ugh—
as his head whipped to the side, snapping on the stalk of his neck. He could feel the skin tear over his cheek, and there was now blood on his chin, down his throat, and then his vision was blacking as he kept beating himself, Big Earl bellowing with every blow:
You want help, you want
help,
you want—

“Listen to me! You’re
Casey!
” Rima was right up against the glass, even as Big Earl was still raging, but—impossibly—it was the arrow of her voice, sharp and true, that pierced his terror. “You are Eric’s
brother
; you are
yourself
; you are Casey,
and
Casey
would open the door! Do it, Casey! Please, don’t let me die out here. Open the door, Casey;
fight
him and do it now, do it now, do it—”

I’m Casey
. He grabbed desperately at the thought.
I’m Eric’s brother—

No, you are
mine,
boy
. Big Earl was huge in his head.
You are
my
blood, you are—

“Casey, fight this!” Rima shouted through glass. “You are your own person!”

Mine, boy! You’re mine and I’ll make a man of you—

“No one
makes
me! I’m
Casey
!” Roaring, he drove his fist forward, hard and fast, throwing all his weight into a blow he aimed not for his face but the window. Through a haze of pain and tears, he saw Rima start back, and then he screamed as a bomb of white-hot pain erupted at the moment of impact, streaming through his bones to ball in his shoulder. He felt the skin over his knuckles tear, and now there was blood smeared on the window, and more dripping from his hand—but, he saw, it was
his
hand once more,
his
.

And Rima knew … Somehow she knew, but how? No time to wonder. In a few moments, he thought he might not care, because he could feel that one weird rocket of strength ebbing and Big Earl still there, this hulking presence at the edge of his mind, withdrawing, yes, but only as a grudging wave does from the shore: so far, and no further, because the ocean is remorseless and eternal—and it would be easy, so easy to stop fighting, to let Earl swamp him, drown him. It was only a matter of time anyway, wasn’t it? Big Earl was strong—he always had been—and Casey was nothing but a
kid, a runt, another mouth to feed, a miserable excuse for a son who would never amount to—

Do it, Casey
. Already, he could feel the silver sliver of himself, a Casey that he recognized, going dark, starting to slide away, being pulled under full fathom five.
Do it, Casey! Do it now, open the door, save her while you still can and before he comes back, before …

“Do it.” The words were clumsy in his torn mouth. Swallowing back blood, he pawed at the locks, his bloody fingers awkward, but the pain kept him focused a few seconds more. There was a
thunk
as the locks disengaged. In the next second, Rima was scrambling inside on a wash of frigid air, another scream from Tony, and the stink of gasoline.