by Ilsa J. Bick
By day, Jasper piloted charters and wandered around in a ratty cardigan and muttered to himself. Nights, he tossed back a couple belts, cranked up a wheezy old cassette recorder, and slathered canvasses with eerie, surreal landscapes choked with bizarre creatures, as Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin burbled, or Bleak House or The Old Curiosity Shop or a dozen other Dickens novels and stories spun themselves out on the air. Some of the creatures Jasper painted, she recognized: woolly mammoths, dinosaurs, prehistoric benthic creatures, weird insects with three-foot wingspans. Others—the ones with stalk-eyes and tentacles and screaming needle-toothed navels—were so Lovecraft, they looked like they’d slithered from the deep wells of inky nightmares.
What Emma never did understand was that when he finished, Jasper pulled a Jackson Pollock, slopping thick white paint onto each and every canvas. When she complained there was nothing left to see—and what was the point?—Jasper would toss back another shot and explain that the creatures, which existed in the Dark Passages between all the Nows, were too powerful to let out: Every time you pull them onto White Space, you risk breaking that Now. (And oh well, when he put it that way, it all became so clear. So much for a straight answer.)
With a story as Harry Potter as this, Jasper ought to have been a wizard. She should have had strange powers. But no, Jasper was just odd; a small army of surgeons stenciled a road map of skillfully hidden scars onto her scalp and gave her a normal, if titanium-enriched, skull; and she loved Jasper so much that seeing him as he was now hurt like nails hammered into her heart.
9
AND NOTHING BAD happened once she was with Jasper. Summers, she biked around Madeline or kayaked over to Devils Island with Jasper, slipping in and out of sandstone sea caves or wandering the forested sandstone while her guardian sketched. Jasper said the island got its name from the old Ojibwe legend that Matchi-Manitou, some honking huge evil spirit, was imprisoned in a giant underground cave at the entrance to the spirit worlds, and only the bravest warriors could pass through the black well at the center of the island to fight the thing, blah, blah. Some vision quest crap like that. The only well she knew on that island was near an old lighthouse and keeper’s cottage. Still, whenever there was a really big blow, the roar and boom of the sea caves—of big, bad Matchi-Manitou—carried clear to Jasper’s cottage.
Still, nothing horrible happened. Okay, she was lonely. No friends. Maybe it was crusty, tipsy, bizarre Jasper, who would scare a sane kid, but no matter how hard she tried … she was a dweeb. Smart, but still inept and weird.
Whatever. Really, everything was good.
Well … until the year she turned twelve and went downstairs into the cellar to look for a book and where … where …
Well, where something happened down cellar that she’d really decided not to think about, or remember.
Really.
10
THE BLACKOUTS—THE BLINKS—STARTED a week after the incident down cellar. Each began the same way: a swarming tingle like the scurry of ants over her skin; the boil of an inky dread in her chest. The world thinned; her brain superheated. Then that purple-edged maw opened before her eyes and she would swoon into an airless darkness, tripping into the space between one breath and the next.
And then—blink-blink—she was back.
Often, she retained glimpses: the ooze of fog over slick cobblestones; a string of gaslights marching over a faraway bridge and a huge clock face that she almost recognized. A long hallway and rough carpet against her feet. A white nightgown that whispered around her legs. A huge red barn. A deep valley ringed by craggy, snow-covered mountains.
Sometimes—the worst times—she remembered things: bulbous monsters with tentacles and a patchwork of eyes; creatures that lived someplace dark, far away, and very, very cold. Or, come to think of it, that lurked behind the white paint of Jasper’s canvases.
Mostly, though, there was nothing. She would simply blink awake with a sizzling headache arcing from the plate between her eyes to another at the very base of her skull, as if a switch had been thrown and a circuit completed: zzzttt! The blinks lasted anywhere from a few seconds or minutes to a good long while, but she apparently functioned: got to class, turned in papers, took tests, worked glass, drank Starbucks. Clearly, even in a blackout, she was a girl with priorities.
The doctors said her migraines were to blame for these pesky little episodes. Her symptoms even had a name: the Alice in Wonderland syndrome. Of course the darned thing would be rare as hen’s teeth, but they assured her that she would outgrow it: don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.
She told none of the doctors the full story, how long she was gone, or what she saw. The meds she already took were bad enough. With her history—the jigsaw puzzle that was her skull, her headaches, that spiky purple mouth—they’d think her wires had gotten totally crossed and drug her so thoroughly she’d never find her way out of the fog.
She read scads about the syndrome and other, stranger cases of people almost like her: the lawyer who suddenly disappeared and turned up six months later; the schoolteacher picked up on the streets with no memory of who she was. Problem was, Emma didn’t wander or end up as a bum. Well, so far as she could remember. But she definitely went places, that inner third eye channel-surfing through movies she never followed to a conclusion. Maybe that was lucky. What would happen if the tether on her life snapped? Would she die? Float around in limbo? Remain stuck forever on the other side of the looking glass?
Well, yeah. She thought she might.
11
NOW, THE DAY was gone, the storm had them, and she and Lily were lost, no question. After her little sit-me-down with Kramer, she’d snagged Lily, rented the van, and skedaddled. No one would even know to start looking for them for a week, easy.
“Try the radio,” she said to Lily. “Maybe we can pick up a station.” She didn’t really believe they’d get anything; it was just a way to keep Lily from freaking out completely and give her some space to think about what to do next. She listened as Lily patiently feathered the knob. FM was nothing but fizzles and pops, which figured. AM wasn’t much better, just static from which only a few broken words surfaced: police … brutal … killings …
“God, I can’t turn on the radio without hearing about that poor little girl. Can you imagine what it was like to find all those bodies? In the basement of her own house?” Lily said.
Murders? Emma had no idea what Lily was talking about. “Anything?”
“No.” Sighing, Lily threw up her hands. “Any other suggestions?”
“Try the weather bands,” Emma said. “Different bands are assigned to different regions. Might give us an idea of where we are.”
There was nothing between channels one to five, but as Lily clicked to channel six, the radio cleared its throat with a loud pffssstt. “There, right there, hold it,” Emma said. She listened as the steel wool of a voice fuzzed: … extremely dangerous storm. Once again, the National Weather Service has issued a severe weather advisory for the following counties: Bayfield, Ashland …
Okay, that was good. Those counties were northwest, which meant—
Taylor, the radio voice said. And peekaboo, I see you, Emma. I’ve got you …
What? Emma gasped. Her heart turned over in her chest. What?
“Emma?” asked Lily.
Emma couldn’t answer. The radio kept jabbering: I’ve got you, so let’s play, Emma. Come down and plaaay, Blood of My Blood, Breath of My Breath, come and plaaay …
The hairs on her neck prickled. Oh my God, that almost sounded like … like Kramer? Yes, she would know that tight-ass Brit’s voice anywhere. But how could that be? And he sounded close, too: not just a sputter seeping from the dashboard radio but coming from directly behind her.
Like the voice is whispering into my right ear. But that’s nuts. There’s no speaker in the ceiling or the headrest. She flicked a glance at her rearview. You’re losing it, kid; you’ve lost it, you’re as crazy as they say you—
Her heart slammed into her throat.
Because, in the mirror, there were …
LIZZIE
Save Dad
HER FATHER TURNS.…
“Ah!” Lizzie flinches, and then her left foot isn’t on the rung anymore. Gasping, she lunges forward, wrapping her arms around the ladder. Her heart thump-thump-thumps so hard she feels it in her throat. She wants to wait, not try getting down until the shakes go away—but she mustn’t, she mustn’t, she mustn’t!
Oh Dad, Dad, Daddy!
Somehow she gets down, half tripping, half slithering, and then she is pelting out of the barn and over the slippery gravel drive. The rock snatches her shoes, and she falls, ripping the knees from her jeans. The pain is strangely good, quick and bright as a firecracker and much better than the acid fear on her tongue. She claws her way up, shivering so hard her teeth go clickity-clickity-clickity-click. But now there is the kitchen and a square of warm yellow light and her mother, framed like an angel in a painting. Lizzie bursts through the kitchen door, the door going bam so the windowpanes complain and the glasses chatter in the cabinets. “Mom, Mom!”
“Lizzie?” Her mother’s eyes probe Lizzie’s face and then she gasps at whatever she’s read. “Stay here, Lizzie, stay right here!” Quick as a whip, Mom is out the door and sprinting for the barn. She doesn’t even bother with a coat.
A stiletto of terror pierces her heart, and Lizzie thinks, Oh, Momma, Momma, be careful, be careful, be careful! Face pressed to the glass, she waits and waits and waits, scrubbing away breath-fog so she can see the moment her parents emerge from the barn, the very second her mother rescues her father.
Hurry, Mom, hurry. The windowpane is going all wobbly, as if her house is starting to melt. Lizzie’s eyes burn, the tears chasing each other down her cheeks so fast they drip-drip-drip from her jaw. “Hurry, Mom,” Lizzie whispers, her voice thinning to a watery squeak. “Save Dad. Pull him out before the whisper-man slides all the way inside and fills him up. Hurry, hurry, hurry.”
But Lizzie, you saw. This is not the monster-doll, but a voice that is calm and reasonable and centered in a clear patch of the storm in her mind. The voice is, in fact, a little like Mom’s that last time Lizzie raised a fuss about lima beans on a Try-It Tuesday: Just try one little no-thank-you bite.
Now, Lizzie, this calm little voice says, you saw, honey, how far he reached? And when he turned?
“No, you’re wrong! I’m not listening to you.” Lizzie presses her hands over her ears. “La-la-la, I can’t hear you. Mom is strong and smart, you’ll see. Mom will beat him, Mom will—”
All of a sudden, across the yard, the barn door crashes open with so much force, the muted smash of wood and metal seeps through the window and into the kitchen. “Yes!” Lizzie’s heart, full to bursting with fear and worry, seems to rocket out of her chest. She is dancing on tiptoe, bouncing up and down. “Yes, Mom, yes, you got him, you …”
But then Lizzie’s voice dies on her tongue, because all she sees
EMMA
Eyes, and Nothing Else
ALL EMMA SAW in the rearview mirror were eyes, and nothing else. The eyes weren’t hers, which were a deep, rich cobalt: an unearthly, glittering blue that almost didn’t look real. Her right eye, with its tiny golden flaw in the iris, was especially strange. A birthmark, the doctors said, but get a few drinks into Jasper and he’d say it was her third eye, which made about as much sense as all his wild talk of Nows and Dark Passages.
These things in the mirror … she’d never seen anything like them. Two were black as stones and smooth as glass, with no whites, no pupils. The third eye was a mercury swirl floating in midair, suspended in a milky cloud. No face, at all, stared back.
No, Emma’s mind gabbled. No, no, no, no! This was worse than a blink. This was like the barrier between her life and someone else’s was breaking down, some freaky parallel universe leaking into hers. I should do what the doctors want. I should take the pills. Dimly, she was aware that the radio was still sputtering about a manhunt: … so far authorities believe at least eight children may have met—
She watched, paralyzed, as that milky cloud in the mirror gathered itself, folded—and then the silvered glass moved.
“Ah!” Emma flinched, her hands jerked the wheel, and then the van shimmied, first right and then left. Emma fought the impulse to slam on the brakes. The snow was deep and very wet, with a thick layer of compressed ice beneath. The van wallowed, the heavier rear trying to swing past and outrun the front. Oh no no no, God, God, don’t lose it!
“Emma!” Lily screeched. “Look out, look out, look out!”
Emma’s eyes snapped to the road just in time to see a flash, dead ahead: a sudden bright pop like the death of a light bulb after a blown fuse.
“Shit!” Emma jinked right, much too sharply. Already skidding on a knife’s edge of control, the van’s wheels locked, the rear slewed, and Emma felt the van begin to spin at the same moment she realized that this was not lightning dead ahead but a light: a single bald eye, bouncing and bright and very large—and growing.
“NO!” Lily screamed.
ERIC
Poof
1
SNOW BLASTED HIS helmet. The west wind screeched like a cat. Eric wrestled the Skandic Ski-Doo back on course, leaning and carving through deep snow as the sky flared with a flash of lightning. The storm’s fingers pried and tugged at the loose folds of his jacket, slipping in through minute gaps in the zipper, chilling him to the bone. He couldn’t feel his face and, worse, the shakes had him now: one part cold, three parts shock. Fear kept slithering up his throat, trying to suffocate him.
What have I done? What am I going to do now?
A crisp click in his helmet and then a voice sizzled through the tiny speaker: “Eric?”
“Yeah, Case.” His voice came out strained, a little breathless. Come on, get a grip. You’ll just freak him out more than he is already. “What’s up?”
“Do you know where we are?”
“Sure, we’re—” He stopped. They were on a road.
A road?
Whoa, wait, that wasn’t right. When had they left the trail? His eyes flicked left, then right. The sled’s sole headlight was good but not great, and it was like trying to look beyond the limits of a silver fishbowl. He made out a forested hill on the left: a black-on-white expanse that rose beyond the limits of his headlight, the snow-shrouded trees slipping away as he passed. The hill felt large, too high, a little unreal.
Mountains. There were mountains? Actual high peaks? In Wisconsin? Swallowed by dark and snow, he couldn’t see to the very tops, but he just had this feeling that it was true. To his right was a black chasm of a valley, its drop-off outlined in the intermittent wink of green reflectors along a guardrail.
What was going on? His eyes fell to the Skandic’s odometer, his brows knotting to a frown. The gauge said they’d already gone sixty miles. That far? In the storm, their speed hovered around fifteen. Do the math, and they’d been on their sleds for four hours.
That had to be wrong. They ought to be home by now. He tried to recall if they’d passed a single town. There were three on the way to the cabin, seen from the trails as glittering strings laced through the trees like Christmas decorations, but he didn’t remember having seen any towns or lights at all, and now they were on a road curling around a mountain that shouldn’t exist, not in Wisconsin. When had they left the snowmobile trail?
He said, “Case, how long have we been on this road?”
“I don’t …” Whatever Casey said next was garbled by static.
“Say again, Case.”
More static. “I … ember. It …”
Interference from the storm, he guessed, which made some sense. Their system was old and hardwired into each sled’s battery, with headsets plugged into jacks. Eric did a quick peek and tapped the side of his helmet to signal Case to say again. A second later, there was more fuzz, and then Casey’s voice stuttered through th
e hash: “… said I don’t remember. I’ve been following you and … peekaboo, I see you. You can’t run, you can’t hide, and it’s time, boy, time to come down and play, come and plaaay, come …”
Jesus. “Case?” Eric twisted to look back at his brother. “What are you—”
Whatever had his throat cinched down tight.
Because Big Earl was there, right behind him, slouched in the rumble seat.
Big Earl, who was …
2
“IS HE DEAD?” Casey’s cheeks are streaked with tears; a slick of snot smears his upper lip. His jeans puddle around his ankles. The whippy wood switch has slashed right through Casey’s flannel shirt, scoring the boy’s skin with angry red wheals and splashes of blood. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“I don’t know.” But that’s a lie. In the space of eight months, the Marines have turned him from a gawky eighteen-year-old kid into a very fine killing machine. So he knows. His right hand cramps, and he forces his fingers to relax. The empty bottle of Miller Lite—Great Taste! Less Filling!—thuds to the cabin’s rough floorboards. Eric watches the bottle roll a halfturn, then another, and butt his father’s left leg.
Big Earl doesn’t flinch, and is beyond telling Eric just how badly he’s going to hurt him. Instead, Eric’s father stares up at the bare rafters, his muddy brown eyes at half-mast, his liverish lips sagging in a slack O. There is something off about Big Earl’s head. That dent in his left temple, mainly. A thick red tongue leaks from the split in his father’s scalp. More blood dribbles from his left ear to soak into a tired braid rug.
A blast of wind buffets the cabin. The windows rattle in their frames with a sound like bones. That breaks the spell. Blinking away from the body, Eric looks up. The afternoon is nearly gone, dark only a couple hours away.
