White Space

by Ilsa J. Bick

  I could do nothing. Eventually I’ll wake up or blink back. I always do. Yet even as she thinks this, she has the queasy sense that this would be the wrong move.

  Must go up. It isn’t just the steady throb of her headache, the burn of her titanium skull plates impelling her to go, go, move. It’s as if she’s being guided by an internal compass, an invisible hand that prods the nape of her neck to urge her on, force her up, up, up.

  God, Emma, you nut, I hope you know what you’re doing. She vaults up another flight. The hard stone is cold on her feet. Dead ahead, she can see that the layout above is identical to that below: four gated wards, two on the right and two on the left. There’s movement as the shouts trail and attendants hustle out of wardrooms, where they’ve been dozing, to see what’s going on.

  How many floors are there? From her brief glimpse of the flanking galleries, she thinks not many, maybe only four. As she pivots around another newel post for the next flight of steps, she can hear Kramer and the others now: the clap of boots on marble and men’s shouts.

  “Shit,” she breathes. They’re out. No more time. She is committed now. “Emma, you better be right.” Scrambling up this flight, she sees the same layout of wards on either side. Third floor. If it’s like this on the fourth, she’s screwed. As she bounds up the next stone staircase, however, she sees an immediate difference. Despite the gloom, it seems a little brighter up here, and then she spots the arched door at the very top of the steps. As she hits the landing, she pauses to throw looks right and left. No galleries. No wards. End of the line.

  Please, please … Leaping for the door, she slots her hand through a curved iron latch and gasps. The iron’s so frigid it burns. Good. It means this must open to the outside. But is it locked? Below, she hears distant bangs, and then Kramer’s voice, louder than before but also … stranger, more of a gargled, strangled choke, as if he’s shouting from a deep, dark well: “Emma! Emma, there’s no way out! Come back!”

  Shit. Come on. Mashing the thumb plate, she puts her weight into it, shoving, pushing with all her strength. Please, please, please, don’t be locked … A little cry jumps from her mouth as the wooden door, so warped and weighty it groans on its hinges, squawwws over stone. A gush of wintery air splashes her face, and she thinks, Roof. I’m out! She bullies through a narrow wedge between the door and wall …

  2

  AND INTO A huge, soaring space that is utterly and completely without light, as dark as a cave.

  Oh shit, where am I? In the hush, she hears her heart thud. What is this? Turning a complete circle, she strains to make out details. The darkness is close and cold, but she detects that faint silvery glimmer again: light, spilling down from somewhere high above. Tipping her head, she spots a parade of tall arched windows marching all the way around a …

  A dome?

  “Oh God.” Now other details are materializing in the dim light. On this main floor, there are rows of wooden benches. They look familiar, not because she’s necessarily seen them before here. But I know what you are. She brushes a hand over the hard back of one bench; in the well, near the floor, she spots a folded wooden bar. A kneeler, which means … Dead ahead, there is a dais on which rests a carved pulpit. Turning, she faces the door through which she’s come—through which the others will be on her in a heartbeat, because she can hear them getting closer and louder—and sees high up and just below one of those arched windows, a large, long, rectangular plaque: probably stone, and the kind of marker you’d inscribe with the names of benefactors or Bible verses.

  Pews. A pulpit. Next to the door, she now sees a low cabinet filled with books. They must be hymnals. Turning back, she lifts her eyes to a spot immediately above the pulpit on its gated dais—no, not gates; they’re communion rails—and spots the hulking saw-toothed pattern of an organ’s pipes. Of course: if you’re going to sing something from a hymnal, you’ll need something to keep the mad in tune and the lunatics on track.

  She knows now, exactly, where she is.

  She’s in a domed chapel for the insane—and trapped, like a bug under a bell jar.

  RIMA

  What She Was Made For

  THE ECHOES OF the first blast hadn’t quite died when there was another thunderous boom. Still perched on the snowmobile, Rima felt her heart give a quick, convulsive flutter, like the wings of a startled bird. From the church, another scream tore through the fog.

  I’ve got to go into the church. But why should she do that? Rima didn’t know, yet she could feel her body obeying some call she couldn’t quite hear and didn’t understand. Got to get inside.

  “Rima!” Casey said, as she swung off the sled and onto the snow. Scrambling after, he grabbed her arm. “What are you doing?” Then he seemed to realize what he’d done, because he threw a fast, nervous look at the snow. “We need to get off this stuff.”

  “No.” She stared down at the white beneath her feet. No death-whispers now. The birds are psychopomps; they must be carrying the whispers with them. Or maybe the birds were the whispers. She didn’t know. “They’re all gone. But I think …” Tugging free, she took a halting, tentative step. “I have to …”

  “Have to what? Where are you going?” Casey said. He reached for her, but she angled away and left him grabbing air. His gloved hand balled in frustration. “Rima, talk to me. We have to stay together. What are you doing?”

  “I don’t know.” She looked back at him over her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Casey, but I think”—she could feel her legs tense, and realized, with a touch of wonder, that she was getting ready for something—“I think I’m supposed to …”

  “No. Rima, no, wait!” As if sensing the danger, Casey started for her.

  He was a second too late. “I … I can’t!” And then she was suddenly darting across the snow, heading for the church, even as a small voice of sanity screamed, What are you doing, what are you doing, what are you doing?

  “Rima!” Casey cried. “Rima, stop!”

  She couldn’t. A crazy compulsion had grabbed hold, dug in its talons, and wouldn’t let go. This was her destiny, what she was made for, what she had always done. She churned over the snow. The church rushed toward her out of the fog, the distance between them collapsing, the fog folding to bring her closer as if they were points at either end of a single line now drawn together. One of the church’s heavy wooden doors was ajar; the spicy scent of incense and spent gunpowder bit her nose.

  She flattened herself against an outer wall. The brick was cold as metal. Across the snow, she could see Casey coming, and knew she was almost out of time. Casey would fight to keep her out of the church, and probably win.

  Go, before he stops you. She gathered herself. Go now, go go go!

  She vaulted for the door.

  EMMA

  This Is Your Now

  1

  SHE MIGHT HAVE stood there, dumbfounded, until they caught her, if not for the bangs and shouts. Heart leaping, Emma shoots a glance at the chapel’s door. Got to block it. Then find a way out. Not much time either, but she has to. All these windows, and she’s in a dome.

  “So outside those windows is the roof.” Saying the words out loud centers her. She can break her way out and then climb down from the roof, unless there’s a very long drop to the roof or a ledge, but she pushes that away. Her fist tightens around Jasper’s walking stick. Break a window. Climb out. But do something, anything, and do it now.

  Dropping Jasper’s walking stick on the last pew, she rushes to the door and strong-arms it shut. Eyeing the freestanding cabinet, chock-full of books and immediately to the right of the door, she thinks, Yeah. Hurrying to the far side, she wedges her shoulder against it and pushes. Jumping over stone with a loud screee, the cabinet wobbles, and for a heart-stopping instant, she thinks it’s going to fall back on her. No, no. She butts against it, digging in with her toes to stop it rocking the wrong way. Come on, come on …

  “Emma!” From where she stands, she can’t see the door, but there is
a dull yellow glow now, and she hears both the swell of Kramer’s voice and a rougher mutter of other men bunched on the opposite side of the chapel’s door, which is only just swinging in with that grating squawww. “Emma, there’s no place left to …” Whatever Kramer’s about to say ends with a yelp as the cabinet suddenly topples with a huge reverberating crash that bounces back, the echoes caught and doubling on themselves in the cup of the dome.

  Just in time. Through the three-inch gap, she can see Kramer’s face, the glistening wound where she hit him, the glint of lantern light off his panops’ brass frames—but not, she sees, mirrored in the purple lenses at all.

  “You think this is the way?” This close, she can hear the gurgle. Kramer’s voice is so thick, it sounds like he’s got terminal pneumonia. There is an enormous bang as he slams a fist against the door. “This is where you belong, Emma, whether you know it or not.”

  How about not? Hooking her hands on a pew, she drags it back with a grunt, leaning on her bare heels. If possible, the pew’s even heavier than the cabinet. Thank God they didn’t bolt these things to the floor. When she’s lined it up, she races to the opposite side, then strains on the balls of her feet. Her calf muscles cramp as she pushes and hammers the pew over stone, until the end of the pew jams against the fallen cabinet to form the long axis of a T. There.

  Another bap as Kramer thumps the door. “Emma, this is futile,” he says in his harsh, gargly croak. “You can’t get out. You don’t think we have such things as axes or even a stout log? Or manpower? Or another way in? It’s only a matter of time—”

  Yeah, yeah, resistance is futile—she tunes him out—blahdiddy-blahdiddy-blah-blah. Man, if she ever comes out of this blink, she is so dropping this class. Then, as a butterfly of a laugh flutters in her throat, she thinks, Emma, come on, don’t lose it.

  She’s only bought herself a few minutes, if that. Swallowing back that bright burn of hysteria, she turns aside from the still-fuming Kramer and tries to remember why she thought this was such a good idea. Okay, this is a chapel; it’s got an organ. Which means there has to be a way up to the organ’s console. And in the next second, she spots it: a narrow curlicue of a whitewashed spiral staircase to the right. Behind her, she hears bangs and grunts, that fingernail-over-chalkboard grate of wood against stone, and knows that despite her barricade, time’s on Kramer’s side.

  But that organ … Retrieving Jasper’s walking stick, she scuttles down the center aisle, dodges around the communion rails, and bounds onto the dais. Sweeping a hand over the low altar, she feels her fingers close around heavy velvet. Yes. Gathering the altar cloth, she jumps off the dais and heads for the spiral staircase. She takes the steps two at a time, her feet cringing away from cold iron. Ducking through a narrow trap, she pushes onto the second-floor loft, which is only long enough to accommodate the organ and, to its immediate right, another cabinet for books and music. Left of the organ are several ranks of folding chairs with cane seats and backs for the choir. If she thought it would help, she might toss chairs down the iron staircase or try barricading the trap with the cabinet, but she doesn’t have that kind of time. Besides, she wants that cabinet for something else entirely.

  Centered beneath one of the dome’s many windows, the organ’s pipes form several clusters. The thickest, largest pipes in the center are all much too tall for her to get a step up. To her right, however, a series of smaller, thinner pipes start low at the center and end higher next to that cabinet. Right there. Her eyes click to the pipes and the cabinet, and then she’s moving before she can think of all the reasons this won’t work. So long as I don’t pull it down on top of myself. But she can’t climb holding on to Jasper’s walking stick, and for this to work, she needs it. Clamping the wooden stick between her teeth, she knots the altar cloth around her waist. Then, sucking in a breath around Jasper’s stick, she climbs onto the organist’s seat and plants her left foot on the highest of the organ’s three keyboards. She expects a breathy run of notes, but nothing happens. Straddling the gap between the organ and bookshelf, she hangs on to the pipes with both hands as she reaches with her right foot, groping with her toes.

  “Emma.” Kramer’s voice is very loud now, and echoes, and she thinks they’ve nearly got that door open. “Stop. What do you think you’re doing?”

  What does it look like, asshole? With the stick wedged in her mouth, she can’t answer anyway. Instead, she spiders up, bracing herself on the pipes to her left as she scoots up the cabinet on her right. Even though she’s careful not to let her full weight drop on the shelves, there is a subtle shift under her feet, the soft rickety squeal of stressed wood. But the cabinet’s as heavy and solidly made as the one on the main floor. Lucky they didn’t have Ikea back then, or I’d be sunk. With a grunt, she hauls herself the last few inches to crouch on top of the cabinet. She can feel the outside air spilling in a frigid waterfall over the windowsill, which is less than six inches to her left. With a small flare of alarm, she realizes that she never stopped to wonder if the window’s muntins are wide enough. Jesus, if I knock out a pane, will there be enough room for me to climb through?

  Only one way to find out. Bracing the palm of her right hand on the dome’s wall, she turns her face away and whips Jasper’s walking stick around by the business end. There is a watery splash as the carved ivory head smashes a pane, breaking open a foot-wide maw bristling with glassy teeth.

  Time for one more, and then it had better be enough. Kramer is shouting again, and from the corner of her eye, she sees other men, who must’ve come in a different way, running for the spiral staircase. She swings. The remaining glass explodes, and this time the muntins surrounding this pane, as well as the ones immediately to the left and above, simply fall out. They’re wood, not metal. Through the huge gaping hole, she could hear the faint hoosh of the wind.

  Far below, the chapel door finally grinds open, and she pauses just long enough to look down as Kramer and the others clamber over the felled cabinet and scattered hymnals. She sees Kramer raise a lantern, the light cutting deep shadows over his face as he cranes a look. She doesn’t even wait for him to ask her what she’s doing before she does it.

  Unknotting the altar cloth, she snaps the heavy fabric like a sheet. The cloth snags on minute jags of glass but holds. Still clutching Jasper’s stick, she reaches with her left foot, plants it on the sill, then shifts her weight to thrust her head and shoulders through the broken glass. Easy, easy. Stabbing down, she feels the moment that the tip of the walking stick hits and steadies against stone, and then she leans into it, trusting in the sturdy wood to hold her weight as she pulls her right leg through the window.

  “Ahh!” she groans as her bare foot sinks into snow, then flinches away at a sharp bite of glass in her heel. Go, go, muscle through this. Come on! Gritting her teeth, she pulls her left leg after and clambers out of the bell jar and into the storm.

  2

  INSTANTLY, SHE SINKS to her ankles in snow. She stands on the narrow ledge that surrounds the dome. Through a wavering curtain of whirling wet flakes, she spots the curved rails of an iron ladder bolted into the stone. Must be the way down. Below, the asylum’s roof is a wide, flat, white expanse edged with a decorative marble cornice.

  So now what? Where is she supposed to go? For a stunned moment, she can only huddle against the icy dome. Snow blasts over her skin. The wind cuts, ripping the breath from her mouth, and she can feel her determination, the certainty that this was the right and only way, beginning to bleed away.

  “So now what, House?” She watches the wind fling her words into the storm. “What was the point? Why are you showing me this?”

  Only the wind answers, in a howl. A dullness settles in her chest. Either she stands here until Kramer or one of his men finds a ladder and comes through that broken window, or …

  I am insane. Floundering, her feet beginning to numb, she gropes her way to the iron ladder and carefully lowers herself a rung at a time. At the very bottom, she pauses, loo
king up at the massive bell jar of the dome hunched against a moonless night with no stars. Icy pellets of snow needle her cheeks and sting her eyes, which are starting to tear. She is here to find something; she has to believe that, because the alternative is just too awful.

  So what is it, House? What do you want me to see, to do now? Dropping into snow, sinking up to mid-calf, she grimly slogs toward the marble cornice at the front of the building. Walking against the wind is like shoving her way through pins. The dome rises off her right shoulder. Far below and across a long, very black expanse that must be the asylum’s front grounds, she can just make out the faint glow from gas lamps mounted on high iron posts to either side of a wide gate, and at ground level, the flicker of a lamp inside some kind of structure that reminds her a little bit of those ranger kiosks at park entrances. Raising a hand to shield her eyes, she squints against a pillow of wind-driven snow. Gatehouse? Beyond are other lamps, spaced at long intervals on tall posts along an empty street fronted by dark shops. Above those, lozenges of fuzzy light spill from apartment windows where anyone sane is riding out the storm. To the far right, through a distant tangle of bare tree limbs, she spots a glister of many colors, faint and fractured. Stained glass, she thinks. That’s a church. But where in England is she, exactly?