Authors: Ilsa J. Bick
“He’s got a point.” Casey lay on a sofa as Eric knelt
alongside, gently finger-walking the patchwork of ugly bruises on his brother’s chest. “How does some weird theory explain …
Ow
.” Casey fired a glare at Eric. “That
hurt
.”
“Sorry, Case.” Eric made a face. “I think maybe two, three breaks? Or only cracks … I learned battlefield stuff, the basics, but I’m no medic.”
“It jab when you breathe?” When Casey nodded, Bode said, “Yeah, they’re probably broke. Not a whole bunch you can do, and they’ll heal up on their own okay. If they got tape in this place, I can show you how to splint them, maybe make you a little more comfortable. Duct tape’d be good.” Bode’s eyes drifted over to Lizzie. “I don’t suppose you’re smart enough to whip up a little first aid kit?”
“Don’t be such an asshole,” Emma said.
“I don’t know if there’s a kit, or …
duck
tape, whatever that is.” Lizzie’s arms tightened around her knees. “I’ve never needed any band-aids or iodine or stuff. Maybe there’s something in one of the bathrooms, or kitchen.”
“I’ll be okay.” Grimacing, Casey slid his arms into a faded denim shirt Eric had unearthed from an upstairs bedroom. “But I’m with Bode,” he said, gingerly touching a large purple splotch of bruise splashed over his jaw. He hadn’t said how that had happened, but the way he and Rima had glanced at one another when Eric asked made Emma wonder. “My bruises feel pretty real,” Casey said as he flexed the swollen, split knuckles of his right hand.
“And see, that’s just wrong.” Bode struck another match. “The kid’s all beat up. Pain and getting hurt and
dying
kind of go against this whole we’re outta some book shit.”
“Not just
some
book.” Emma pulled
Echo Rats
from the
McDermott novels she’d taken from the library that had just … appeared? Been behind that slit-door all along? Or was the library made as this family room had been: when House decided she needed it? The slit-door was also gone, replaced by an ordinary wooden door with an ordinary knob. Inside was a normal, ordinary library with floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with books. Only one detail in that room gave her pause: a copy of some painting of Dickens, mounted next to shelves crammed with the writer’s works. The only picture in House she’d seen so far, the painting featured Dickens, napping, in his library. Floating all around were various characters from his novels and stories, but the piece looked unfinished. Only a portion had any color: Dickens, a few of the characters, some of the books. The rest was nothing more than an outline, a compositional rendering. She really recognized only one character hovering above Dickens’s right hand, because it was one of the most famous: Little Nell on her deathbed.
So what … this was a clue? No Mirror in the background that she could see. Perhaps one of Dickens’s own books was important? Or a character? Well, hell if she knew, and they had bigger problems.
But she’d also noticed something else: no radio in that library, or anywhere. In fact, she hadn’t heard that scratchy static-filled broadcast about murders since she’d pulled the others into House. Didn’t know what to think about that either, or why that broadcast, so constant across situations—whether it was with Lily or in House, or way back, down cellar—had dogged her in the first place.
“
This
book,” she said now, holding up the novel. Two red
eyes, with slits for pupils, stared out from the center of a pitch-black cover. “
Your
story.”
“We don’t
know
that,” Bode snorted. “So the guy used my name. Big deal. Don’t tell me you never saw your name in a book and didn’t get a little weirded out.”
She knew what Bode was saying. The effect was jarring, a mental hitch, like blundering over an exposed root. The paper she’d written for the Jane Austen unit in English last year was torture, like analyzing a weird, alien twin. “This is different, Bode. You must feel it, even if you don’t want to believe it. What other explanation is there? And don’t say drugs or you’re drunk or something. This would have to be the most detailed bad trip of all time, and you know it.”
“I don’t know anything, and neither do you. You’re spouting theories.” Bode’s jaw set. “Point is
I’m
me, right here, flesh and blood. You read that book? Is this crazy valley in there, or you guys? This house?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t go over
Echo Rats
in class. But I doubt
we’re
in there, or this situation. The jacket says the novel takes place in Vietnam and Wyoming.”
“Where you said you and Chad were this morning,” Eric put in.
“And still could be now,” Bode said.
“No,” Lizzie said. “We’re not anywhere, really, or any-when.”
“What does that mean, Lizzie?” Rima asked, at the same time that Bode rolled his eyes and drawled, “Oh yeah, that’s
so
clear.”
God, the way certain things kept repeating and echoing was starting to weird her out. “What about this?” Flipping the
book over, Emma quickly jumped her gaze from that black-and-white photo to the blurb. She doubted any scaly-armed monsters would suddenly corkscrew free, but you couldn’t be too careful. “The blurb
says
1967, Vietnam, Seventh Cav, C company, black echoes …”
“Black echoes?” Casey asked.
“VC tunnels.” When Casey looked blank, Bode amplified. “Vietcong?”
“Who?”
“Guerrilla force for the North Vietnamese Army,” Eric said. “It’s, like, ancient history.”
“Not to me. Echo Sector’s lousy with tunnels. Blacker than pitch,” Bode said. “Just like on the cover.”
“You
crawl
through enemy tunnels?” Casey said. “In the
dark
?”
“Get shot if you use a flashlight.”
Flashlights. Getting shot
. Emma felt that queer mental jolt.
That’s exactly what I was thinking earlier. What does that mean? That we’re really all linked because of Lizzie?
“Yeah, tunnel rats,” Eric said. “I read about you guys.”
“That’s us. Dropping into a black echo’s the only way to kill Charlie before he kills us.” Bode’s tone was matter-of-fact. “Look, for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right. Well, why can’t that book be from one of those … those universe things? Like
it
came
here
to us? Know what I’m saying?”
“Well—” Emma began, and stopped. That all these books existed in an alternative timeline had never occurred to her.
“Ah.
Ah
.” With a wiggle of his eyebrows, Bode used a thumbnail to scratch a flame from another match. “See? Gotcha.”
“It’s not a contest,” she said, although she felt as if she’d lost a point. Why hadn’t she considered that? Bode was absolutely …
“He’s right.” When she turned to look, Eric shrugged. “Well, he is. Why can’t someone have written about us in one timeline and painted us onto canvases in another, or … I don’t know … made us into toys, or something? I can buy multiverses. The theory’s there. I’ve read enough science fiction. For all we know, this could be a simulation, too, right? Like
The Matrix
?”
Yet one more echo, but Eric, she almost understood. Didn’t like that she did either. “Yes, but …”
“So leaving aside the
how
of getting here for a second, Lizzie finds and then brings us”—Eric looked over to Lizzie—“through these, ah, Dark Passages?”
“No, Eric, I
told
you,” Lizzie said. “Except for Emma, you guys came from book-worlds. The Dark Passages are what’s between the
Nows
.”
“See?” Bode threw up his hands. “This is exactly what I’m saying. The Dark Passages are between
Nows
, and what’s between
Nows
are the Dark Passages … That’s like saying something’s a cat because it’s a cat, but it doesn’t tell you
anything
about what a cat really is.”
“Tautology,” Eric said, then waved that away. To Emma: “My point is that there are a lot of possibilities, but let’s just go with what you’re proposing, okay? In that case, what Bode said could be true. Why
couldn’t
we be
ideas
in one alternative universe or timeline and real people in another?”
“Like the soldiers in one of Tony’s comics.” At Eric’s puzzled look, Casey said, “They were in his car. There was this
Twisted Tales
about soldiers fighting giant rats. The soldiers turn out to be toys, but
they
think they’re real.” When Bode opened his mouth, Case said, “Yes, I know. You’re real. I got that, but get
this
. The comic was
new
, like he’d just pulled it off the rack, only the date was April. Last time I looked, it was December.”
“So? Big deal.” Bode blew a raspberry. “It’s a real nice drugstore. They take good care of their merchandise. April was only a couple months ago.”
“Only if this is 1983. I read the date.” Casey frowned. “Come to think of it, Tony’s car was
really
old, and he played cassette tapes, not CDs.”
“CDs?” Bode asked.
“A compact disc, for digital data … You can put music … Never mind.” Emma waved the explanation away. “It’s not important. What he’s saying is, Tony was from the past.” She paused. “Well, okay,
our
past, same as you.”
“Or you’re all from my future.”
“Whatever. I’m not sold we’re in a specific time,” Eric said.
“He’s right. You’re not.” Lizzie laid her cheek on her knees with a sigh. “You’re outside of a regular Now. You know, where there are things you guys call today and tomorrow and next week.” It might have been the dance of shadow from the fire, but for a brief moment, the little girl’s eyes did their odd glimmering shift again. Emma couldn’t tell if Lizzie was only tired, or depressed. Or—here was a crazy thought
—bored
and a little exasperated, as if she’d seen this play a thousand times before and was simply waiting for the characters of this particular drama to get it out of their systems, think it through, and catch up already.
“There’s just this special forever
-Now
,” Lizzie said. “And it’s like this big house, with a lot of rooms and no hallways in between.”
“Separate … rooms?” Rima said. “You mean, where things happen depending on who’s there?”
Lizzie nodded. “That’s the way it is here because of all the thought-magic. And it’s always night and really cold.”
“Hell is cold,” Eric muttered, and when Bode gave him a look, he added: “Dante. We read
Inferno
in school. The ninth circle of hell is a frozen lake.”
“I remember that,” Emma said. “Lucifer’s trapped in ice up to his waist.”
“And shrouded in a thick fog.” After a pause, Rima continued, faintly, “We read it, too.”
“Dad liked that book,” Lizzie said. “Not the God stuff, but he and Mom said the ice was close to what it was like in a Peculiar: really, really,
really
cold.”
“Yeah, that explains a lot.” Grunting, Bode scraped another match to life. “Thought-magic.”
“Bode, all she’s talking about is
energy
,” Eric said. “You took high school science, right? Heat is energy. Those matches? Friction on red phosphorus is enough to turn it, chemically, into white phosphorus, which ignites in air and releases heat. Take away heat, you bleed energy, which means that things cool down. You ever seen ice?”
“Of course. So?”
“Ice is solid because it’s been cooled,” Casey said. “Energy’s been taken away. Add energy,
heat
, the molecules speed up and ice melts. It becomes liquid. Heat it enough, it turns to steam. It just depends on how much energy you add. If I know
that much science, Bode, so do you. I think what Lizzie’s saying is that the inside of a … a
Peculiar
? This kind of special container? It’s cold for a reason.”
“That’s right. All the thought-magic slows down. It still
does
things, but it can’t get out.” Lizzie looked at Rima. “Like what happened to you guys. I know that was really bad, but not as terrible as it could’ve been. In a Peculiar, the thought-magic’s not as strong.”
Oh my God
. Emma felt a flutter, like the wings of a trapped butterfly, in her throat. She’d spouted the same thing to Kramer.
Drop the temperature enough … She’s saying that a Peculiar creates the conditions for a Bose-Einstein condensate
.
“So after Mom blew up the barn and everything,” Lizzie said, “all that thought-magic from the whisper-man and my dad and all those Peculiars, which were full of extra thought-magic left over from your book-worlds—”
“Stop, stop,” Bode said. “What do you mean, extra?”
“I mean …
extra
. Leftovers. Like, you know, you made too much macaroni and cheese.” When Bode looked blank, Lizzie said, impatiently, “Well, you don’t just leave leftovers out on the table or the floor, right? You put leftovers away,
into
something. Mom did the same thing with the thought-magic that Dad used to pull stories onto White Space. She had to, or the stories wouldn’t stay on the page. So all that extra thought-magic in the Peculiars got loose and tangled up, all mixed together, with my dad and the whisper-man and became, you know, the
fog
.”
There was a moment’s silence. Emma didn’t know about the others, but her head was crammed with so many questions, she wasn’t sure in which order to ask or even think
them. Having skimmed shelves of McDermott novels, she knew this much: there was a Bode novel, a Rima book.
Now Done Darkness
was Tony’s story, and she’d counted twenty-two other novels. If he’d kept it up, McDermott might be into Stephen King territory by now.
But in all of that, there wasn’t one completed book about—
“Why isn’t there a book about us?” Casey suddenly asked. “We’re here, but there’s no Eric book, no Casey book.”
“Terrific.” Bode snorted. “Which means you guys are the only
real
people?”
“I
told
you, I don’t know anything about that,” Lizzie said.
“There’s no Emma book either,” Eric said.
“Not exactly,” Emma said, and gestured at the parchment she’d brought down from Lizzie’s room. She’d half-expected that red spidery scrawl to have disappeared, but it hadn’t:
One June afternoon …