by Ilsa J. Bick
“What?” her mother says. “What?”
Riwr. “She drew adventures and she gave her dolls names and she grabbed them from her daddy’s book-worlds, and they all went away to other Nows together.” Pripper.
“My God,” her mother whispers, “you used the dolls? You switched? Lizzie, how did you do that?”
“But th-then …” Lizzie falters, the zared only halfway to being. “Then …”
“Go on,” her dad says, like a little kid. He’s much closer now. “What happens next?”
She swallows. Come on, come on, don’t stop now. She watches her hand move—down, up, cross, swizzuloo—and complete the zared. “Then, one summer, it was really hot and dry and the plants were thirsty and she wanted to help. So she did something she’d never tried before. She made a storm, a big storm, a monster storm from a different Now, and she brought it back.”
“Oh God,” her mother says.
“You did that?” Dad whispers—and is he crying? She hopes so, but she’s not sure. “Honey, it rained for three days straight. There were kayaks on Main Street.”
“Oh boy, I know.” She has stopped drawing. Her arm is tired, but her finger is fire and strange electric tingles ripple over her skin, stroking the hair on her arms and along her neck. Her brain is as white-hot as the sun. “I was really dumb. And the crazy lady in the attic: I did her, too. I made her move the block to a different story.”
“What?” her mother says.
“How?” Her dad sounds way interested now.
“You said there was a writer’s block,” Lizzie said, “and I thought, okay, I’ll just get her to suck the block out of your story and cough it up way high in the attic where you can’t see. That’s why she was all inky and dirty. She kept slurping down your block whenever it started to get bad again.”
“Oh my God,” her mother says, a touch of wonder in her voice now. “A house has stories. You took it literally. The attic is a different story.”
That’s it; that’s exactly it. Lizzie clutches the phone. “So don’t you see, Daddy? You don’t need the whisper-man anymore. You have me. I’m all the Sign of Sure you need. I’ll help you.” Her eyes brush the symbols, pulsing and swarming through the air. They are good and well-formed, and now she can see that they are beginning to go purpling mad. Good. Purpling mad is rare; purpling mad is the color of energy and power and thought-magic. “We can make book-worlds and go to other Nows together.”
“No,” her mother says.
“You will?” Dad laughs, like, Wow, there goes a butterfly! “Oh, that’s exactly what I need. Are you sure? You have to want this, sweetie. You have to be sure.”
“I’m sure.” Hot tears splash her cheeks. “I want you, Daddy. I love you. I’m so, so sorry I got you in trouble.”
“That’s okay, sweetie, I’ve got you,” he says. “Now, come home, honey. Concentrate and come to Daddy, and we’ll build great worlds.”
“I will, Daddy, I will, but you have to make the whisper-man go away. Send him back. Put his fog where it belongs and Momma will bring us home.”
“Oh, well now,” her dad says, “I can’t do that.”
She knew it. She had this really bad feeling: this story was too good to be true. Jumgit. “Why not?” she asks, not that she really wants to know. She’s got to keep her dad interested just a little while longer …
“Because I like him,” Dad says, simply, the way he says, Oh look, there’s a bug. “He’s my friend.”
“No, Daddy.” She’s running out of time. The fog is almost on them. The shapes flying from her finger are the right ones; they have to be. “No, no, Daddy, it can only be us.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, there’s plenty of room. He’s my friend and you’re my daughter and so he’s yours and you’re mine, Lizzie; you’re mine, and I see you.” His voice is changing again, crooning and thinning to a whisper: “Peekaboo, I see you, Lizzie. I see you.”
“I see you, too, Daddy,” Lizzie says, picking up the cadence, chanting the mantra. Sk’lm. “I see you—”
“I see you, so come and play, Lizzie. Come play …”
“Come …” She falters, the symbol she’s sketching only halfway to being. What was she supposed to do next? “Come play …”
“Yesss, Blood of My Blood, Breath of My Breath, come play, Lizzieee; come, let’s plaaay a game; come and—”
“Play.” What was she thinking? She gives her finger a long, stupid stare. What was she doing? “Come play,” she says, slowly. “Come—”
“Lizzie!” Her mother’s hand lashes out and smacks the phone from Lizzie’s hand. The cell flies against the dash, then tumbles to the foot well, but the voice still seeps from the speaker: “Come plaaay, Blood of My Bloood, come plaaay …”
“That’s enough. Shut that thing up,” her mother grates. When Lizzie doesn’t move, her mother’s palm flicks, quick as a whip. The slap is crisp and loud as the snap of an icicle. “Damn it, Lizzie, do what I say! Hang up now while there’s still
RIMA
Soother of the Dead
“TIME,” TONY SAID.
“Already?” Rima was practically worshipping the heater. The air dribbling from the vents wasn’t exactly toasty, but better than nothing.
“Sorry. That was fifteen minutes.” Tony turned off the Camry’s engine, and the fan cut out. “I’ll crank her up again in an hour.”
“Something to live for.” Rima tucked her hands under her arms again as another stutter-flash of lightning burst high above. She jumped, but the crow prancing on the hood didn’t flinch. That thing was seriously creeping her out, and she didn’t understand either. Yeah, there was the woman who’d died in Tony’s Camry, but her whisper was very weak and nearly gone. Lily’s body was in the van. Could it be Taylor’s death-whisper in her parka? That would be a first. Once Rima wore something—started soothing that death-whisper—the crows eventually went away.
She gasped as a cannon-roll of thunder boomed loud enough to make the car shimmy. Taylor’s death-whisper reacted, squirming over Rima’s arms. Easy, honey, Rima thought. Easy, we’re all scared. “What keeps doing that?” she asked.
Casey’s voice drifted up from the backseat: “Thunder-snow.” He’d been so quiet back there, Rima had almost forgotten about him. A relief, actually: Casey was one nasty kid. “It’s just a thunderstorm with snow instead of rain.”
“Oh.” She watched as Casey went back to reading one of Tony’s old comics by flashlight. On the lurid cover, two kids ran from some guy wearing these severed heads strung together like an ammunition belt. Rima looked away with a shudder. Read something like that and you’d guarantee nightmares for a week.
“Cold?” Tony made a move to peel out of his parka. “You can take my sweater.”
“No, don’t be crazy. I’m okay.” A lie, but she wasn’t going to take his clothes. Besides, who knew if he was the original owner? She eyed the crow. Was that because of something Tony had? Or Casey? Both?
“At least take the gloves. They’re spares.” Tony tugged a pair of brown woolen mittens from his pocket. When she still hesitated, he said, “I just bought them new a couple weeks ago.”
They were probably fine, then. She tugged on the mittens, waited a second, felt nothing except wool, and then slid her hands beneath her thighs with a sigh of relief. They could be stuck in that car for a very long time—and that made her think of something. She didn’t want to suggest it, but they had to be practical. “You know, if they don’t find anything, or we have to stay here awhile, we should check out the van. There might be food.”
“Are you volunteering?” Casey asked.
She didn’t want to go. “Sure. My idea, after all.”
“You’ll freeze before you make it five feet,” Tony said, and sighed. “It’s okay. I’ll go. I should, anyway. I’ve got a shovel in the trunk, and we need to keep the tailpipe clear.”
“You shouldn’t be out there alone.”
“Oh gee, I wonder who should go with him,” C
asey put in.
“No one’s asking you,” Tony said.
“Yeah, right.” Casey gave him the hairy eyeball. “Whatever. Give me a chance to clear the snowmobile. You want to unlock the doors?”
“Sure, sorry.” Tony stabbed at the control, and the locks thunked. Bullying open the door, Casey pushed his way out of the car on a raft of bitter wind and without a backward glance.
Tony looked over at Rima. “Is it my imagination, or is Casey getting even meaner?”
“It’s not your imagination,” she said, turtling into hunched shoulders. The outside air hacked at her face like switchblades.
“Rima, jeez,” Tony said, and then he was tugging off his scarf to twine around her neck. “Take this. My mom made it. I’ve got a hat and … Hey.” He gave her an odd look. “Rima, are you all right?”
“Yes.” Her voice sounded very tiny in her ears. The death-whisper in that scarf was very strong, swelling in her chest and boiling over in a red tide. She blurted, “I’m sorry about your mom.”
Shock flooded his face. “What?” he said. “What?”
“She knew you were scared.” A sudden tingle ran through her fingers, and before she knew what she was doing, she’d peeled off a mitten and laced her fingers around Tony’s wrist. At her touch, she heard him suck in a quick, astonished breath; felt the sting of his surprise and the keener, glassy edge of his grief. “But it didn’t matter. She loved you, Tony.”
“My … my mom …” His face was whiter than bone. “How do you …?”
“It’s kind of a long story,” she said, surprised that Tony was someone she wouldn’t mind telling. “How about we talk when we’re someplace safe?”
She would remember this moment later. By then, it would be abundantly clear that no place in this valley was truly safe. Unfortunately, she wasn’t a mind reader, only a soother of the dead.
“That better be a promise,” Tony said.
“It is. Be careful.” She released him, but she felt their connection draw itself in an invisible strand, like a spider spinning silk. “I mean it.”
“I know. You stay warm,” he said, and then he backed out of the car and was swallowed by the storm.
TONY
Maybe God’s Just a Kid
1
THEY WORKED BY flashlight, having set three flameless flares Eric had found in the Ski-Doo’s cargo bin at equally spaced intervals along the road. The flares had a weird kind of bulb Tony had never heard of—LED?—but gave off a lot of light, maybe even more than flares you lit with strikers. A good thing Eric was prepared, too. Of the two measly flares Tony had dug out of the Camry’s trunk, one was useless, the paper corroded and the powder inside dribbling out, which Eric said was probably magnesium and explosive when exposed to water. That had spooked him so bad, Tony didn’t dare strike the second flare and, instead, just tucked it in a coat pocket. Probably just as well; with all that spilled gas from the van—and how much had that thing held, anyway?—strike a match or light a flare, and they might end up barbecued.
After three minutes of shoveling, he was puffing; by ten, his muscles screamed. He kept hoping the work would dull him out, but Tony’s mind just wouldn’t quit. How had Rima known about his mother? How could she?
Almost a year gone by and his mother’s death still felt like a slow nightmare, the kind where you’re running in place from a monster with a million eyes, spiky teeth, and a zillion tentacles. Tony got so he hated mornings, because that meant one more day watching his mother get eaten up alive. Lung cancer gutted her, chewed her up inside, until she was nothing more than a papery husk of skin stitched over brittle bone. She reeked: an eye-watering fog of rot and shit and sour vomit. Whenever she coughed, he kept expecting bloody hunks of gnawed lung or liver or intestine to come flying out of her mouth. She always wanted a kiss, too. He couldn’t say no; he wasn’t a monster; he loved her. Yet no matter how much he washed his teeth afterward, her taste stayed with him. Got so bad he wanted to rip off his lips, tear out his tongue. Forget food.
Come to think of it, wasn’t that when he’d started in with the horror comics, the Lovecraft? Yeah, had to be, because that’s when he’d brought home the Twisted Tales Casey had been thumbing through, and Tony knew that because of what happened when his preacher-dad got on him to make time for God. The second story in the comic was about a platoon fighting off this giant rat, only the soldiers turned out to be toys. So when his dad started in, Tony showed him the story: Dad, you ever stop to think that maybe God’s just a kid and we’re the dolls? That shut his dad up good.
His mom finally, finally died a week before Christmas. As soon as the principal showed up in his chem class, Tony knew. He’d driven home, taking it as slowly as he could. There would be people at the house: the deacon and pastor, probably a gaggle of church auxiliary ladies trying to find room in the freezer for the ten trillion casseroles sure to turn up. Would his mother still be there? Or would they have taken her to the funeral home already? He hoped they had. He didn’t need to say good-bye. Her dying had been the longest good-bye of his life.
On the way, he passed a burger place, and he was suddenly, inexplicably starved. So he pulled in. Ten o’clock in the morning, and he couldn’t cram in the onion rings fast enough.
Three blocks from home, he pulled over just in time to vomit everything into the gutter. He vomited so hard, and for so long, that he thought his stomach would fly out of his mouth and land with a squishy splat. When he finally lurched into the house, which reeked of Kraft macaroni and cheese, his father was too deep into his own grief to ask Tony where he’d been, and Tony saw no reason to volunteer.
For the next two weeks, he endured meaningful looks, mournful sighs, and a steady stream of people who were just so sorry. The church ladies brought over so much tuna fish casserole he kept expecting his shit to squirm with cheesy noodles.
But his mother was gone. No viewing, no open casket. He never saw her again, and he was so frigging relieved, he knew God would hate him forever.
Now, here was proof. There was a dead girl out there. His car was useless. They were stuck in the snow, far away from anyone who might help them.
And now Rima had touched him and stroked the nightmare to life.
2
NEARLY AN HOUR later, they were done. Tony was drenched in sweat, but now that he’d stopped moving, he could feel his clothes stiffening as his sweat began to freeze. “Let’s go back and crank on some heat. Then we can deal with the sled.”
“Fine with me.” Steam rose from Casey’s watch cap in curls, which the wind shredded. “What about the van?”
Tony tossed a glance over his shoulder toward the general direction of the spruce grove. Maybe fifty, sixty yards, and nothing to see, not even the suggestion of trees. Slogging through the deep snow would be a complete hassle, and he was tired, scared, and not exactly thrilled with the idea of rooting around a dead girl. Yet he had promised, and it wasn’t as if Rima didn’t have a good point about food. Tony turned the flashlight back to study the trail they’d broken through the snow and all around the Camry. Their tracks were already filling, an inch of new snow dusted the hood, and the wind had thrown two or three more inches onto the trunk. If this kept up, they might be at this all night. Wait too long and digging out the van could take hours.
“I’ll check it out. Take me fifteen minutes,” he said. “You get warm.”
With the balaclava, Casey’s face held about as much expression as Jason’s, only Jason’s hockey mask was white. “If we can’t see the van, you won’t be able to see us.”
“I’ll look every couple yards and make sure I still can, okay? If I lose you, I won’t go any further.”
“Whatever,” Casey said, already turning away. “Your funeral.”
ERIC
Devil Dog
1
SHE’D LOST HER gloves somewhere along the way, so Eric had taken Emma’s icy hands and thrust them beneath his parka. Body heat, he’d explained; keep them out of the w
ind. Her hands were still there, but warm now, her long fingers laced over his stomach. Her chest spooned his back. Eric liked how that felt—as if her touch was a kind of promise.
Emma’s voice fizzed through his headset, “What are you thinking?”
About how good you feel. How I like that we kind of fit together. How I think we could talk about things. “I’m thinking it’s weird,” he said, swiping a thin rime of fresh snow from his plastic visor. Thank God, he’d found the faceplate before he and Casey ventured into the valley. With this wind and cold, driving the sled without one would’ve been impossible. At bare minimum, his nose would have fallen off, and he’d be looking at some serious frostbite.
“Yeah, me too,” she said. “Something’s … off. You know?”
She was right. The turnoff Tony and Rima described was a half mile back of the wreck. There’d been tire tracks, but the storm reduced their speed to a crawl, and eventually, the tracks were no more than suggestions. They’d been about to turn back when Emma spied a slight silver smudge in the distance that grew brighter and more distinct as they approached, still using the truck’s tracks as a guide. Fifteen miles from the turnoff, those furrows took a sharp dogleg left at a mailbox nailed to a post and so lathered with snow they couldn’t make out the name. Eric didn’t care. A mailbox meant a house, and that meant people.
The driveway was long. Two miles and change, according to Eric’s odometer, which was … a little odd, but people did like to spread out in the country. Then the silver smudge suddenly resolved to an actual light—and became a farm.
But there’s something really strange about this setup. Through a slant of driving snow, Eric eyed the truck, which had been pulled right up to the house’s front stoop. The truck was 1970s-ancient: a burnt-red Dodge D200 two-door pickup with a crew cab. Someone—two guys, judging from the size of the prints—had driven up, swung out, and taken the steps, and not all that long ago. The footprints were filling in, but Eric still made out the treads. Only a thin white mantle of snow glazed the Dodge’s windows and hood.
