by Ilsa J. Bick
“Eric?” he heard Casey say, but Eric couldn’t tear his eyes from the sudden anguish in Emma’s face. “Emma?” he said. “Emma, talk to me. Tell me, you can tell me.”
“Please,” Emma said—not to him, but to the whisper-man. Her voice was tiny and strained. “Please, don’t. Don’t do this.”
“Emma,” he said, a flower of dread growing in his chest. “Emma, no matter what it is, whatever this thing has to say … it won’t make any difference.”
“GOOD, LOYAL, STRONG, BRAVE, SMART ERIC,” the whisper-man said. “BUT OF COURSE, YOU’RE ALL THAT—BECAUSE THAT’S EXACTLY HOw EMMA WROTE YOU.”
ERIC
The Other Shoe Drops
“WHAT?” ERIC FELT his center crumple, like bricks tumbling from rotten mortar. “What?” He looked at Emma but couldn’t grab her eyes. “Emma, what’s he saying?”
“OH, COME ON, ERIC. YOU’RE SMART ENOUGH TO FIGURE THIS OUT. IN FACT, I ALREADY TOLD YOU THAT IT WAS A MATTER OF EMMA DEVELOPING HER ABILITIES, BUT NOT ONLY HERE. REMEMBER, SHE’S BEEN WRITING HER LIFE FOR QUITE SOME TIME. SHE JUST NEEDED TO WORK UP THE COURAGE TO TAKE THAT ONE LAST, EXTRA STEP.” The whisper-man sighed. “HATE TO BE THE ONE TO BREAK IT TO YOU, BUT YOU’RE NOT MCDERMOTT’S CREATION, ERIC. YOU’RE EMMA’S.”
The words seemed to detonate in his brain. He could feel himself beginning to tremble all over from the blasts, the shock. No, no, no, that can’t be. It’s lying. But what if, what if? His fists bunched. So the hell what? I don’t care. I have a life. I feel things. He was real; he was alive. He had Casey to fight for, and now there was the promise of Emma to care about. Nothing could take any of that away, least of all this thing.
“I’m nobody’s creation.” He squared off, pulled himself that much straighter. “I’m my own person. I don’t care if I don’t remember everything. For all we know, that’s your doing. But I make choices in a world you know nothing about. You may control this space, but you have no say over me or my life, so fuck you very much.”
“BRAVE WORDS, BUT I’D EXPECT NOTHING LESS. BELIEVE WHATEVER YOU WANT, BOY—BUT I’D TAKE A VERY GOOD LOOK AT EMMA IF I WERE YOU. THAT FACE SPEAKS VOLUMES, DOESN’T IT? YOU’RE HER CREATION, ERIC, THE BOY OF HER DREAMS. THAT’S WHY YOU TWO GET ALONG SO WELL. WHY YOU’RE SO DRAWN TO HER. SHE WROTE YOU. MADE YOU JUMP RIGHT OFF THAT PAGE, TOO—AND THAT WAS WHAT I WAS WAITING FOR.”
The whisper-man was wrong; it was a liar and a cheat. Except … one look at Emma’s pale, stricken face and he knew that the whisper-man was telling at least a version of the truth.
Emma wrote me into being? The same way Lizzie used symbols and McDermott churned out novels? No, no. Despite his resolve, he was getting cold, so cold. Come on, get a hold of yourself. Think this through.
Emma could have written about a boy like him. That could be it, right? Sure, this was a place where the energy of thoughts conjured new realities.
But I am alive outside this place. I was on a snowmobile. We nearly crashed.
But what if this thing was telling the truth? Did that matter? What if things had happened the way the whisper-man said?
That can’t be right. I hope; I think about the future. When I dream of the girl I want, I see Emma. Yes, but was that because Emma made him think this way? No, that couldn’t be, because that would mean Emma had written him into a nightmare of abuse and Big Earl and murder.
No, no, that was an accident. The gun just went off. What was he thinking? Emma would never—
“But I didn’t write you!” Emma screamed at the whisper-man. “I never wrote a father … a monster like you!”
Oh God. As strong as he knew he could be, Eric felt something deep in the center of his being waver. She just admitted it. She wrote me. He felt Casey’s hand on his shoulder, but the touch was distant, nothing more than a suggestion. She wrote us. Everything I think I know, all that I am … is because of her?
“YOU WROTE HIM A FATHER WHO GOT WHAT HE DESERVED. BUT DON’T BE SO HARD ON YOURSELF, EMMA; YOU COULDN’T HELP IT. REMEMBER YOUR DEAR POPS AND HIS SET POINTS? MOMMIE DEAREST MAKING LIKE A TREE AND LEAVING HER LITTLE BUNDLE OF JOY IN A MILLION PIECES? A TRAUMATIZED, UGLY LITTLE GIRL WITH NO HOPE, NO FRIENDS? YOU CARRY THE PAST, EMMA, AND IT COLORS EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH, ANYTHING YOU DO,” the whisper-man said. “MCDERMOTT KNEW: THE MONSTERS OF THE PAST ARE BLOODSTAINS THAT ONLY FADE BUT NEVER DISAPPEAR. HE INFECTED YOU. YOU COULDN’T HELP BUT INFECT ERIC, TOO. WHY ELSE GIVE HIM AN ABUSIVE ASSHOLE OF A DAD?”
What? Through the sudden muddle in his mind, he felt the words prick like pins. What does he mean, infect?
“But I never imagined you. I never gave you a name,” she said, fiercely. “And I know that I never even thought of, much less wrote, a bro—” Her mouth clamped shut.
“WHAT WAS THAT?” The whisper-man cupped a hand to Rima’s ear, which tore, releasing a gush of fresh blood to dribble along the girl’s chin. “SAY WHAT, EMMA, DEAR?”
“Damn it, leave her alone!” Eric’s rage finally boiled over. “Just shut the fuck up! I don’t care, I don’t care! What does this have to do with her or me or Casey? Huh? If you’ve got something else to say, say it!”
“OH, ALL RIGHT. HERE’S WHERE THE OTHER SHOE DROPS.” The whisper-man paused. “OUR LITTLE EMMA DIDN’T WRITE CASEY, ERIC.”
Casey’s hand was still around his arm, and now Eric felt his brother go rigid. “What do you mean?” Casey said. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t let it get to you,” Eric said. The icy dread in his stomach seemed to suddenly thaw. He should’ve known it was lying. Of course, Emma didn’t write Casey: because she’d never written him. Daydreaming wasn’t the same as creating, and what he felt for Casey was real and so intense he could hold it in his hand. Casey was his brother. That was a given. Nothing could undo that. “It’s just playing games, Case. This is all an illusion; it’s a lie. I’m alive. I’m real, and you’re my brother; you’ve always been my brother.”
“DID I SAY HE WASN’T? I ONLY SUGGESTED THAT YOU BOYS DON’T SHARE … WELL, THE SAME MOTHER, SO TO SPEAK,” the whisper-man said.
“Shut up,” Emma said to it. Tears streamed over her cheeks. “Just shut up, shut up!”
The whisper-man ignored her. “I SAID YOU ALL HAVE GIFTS, ERIC. NOW LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT YOURS. YOU WANTED SOMEONE TO PROTECT AND LOVE, CARE FOR, FIGHT FOR. EMMA MADE YOU THAT WAY. SHE SET YOU IN MOTION, BUT COULD NEVER BRING HERSELF TO FINISH YOUR STORY, JUST AS FRANK NEVER PENNED HER END. SO YOU’VE GOTTEN LOOSE. YOU ARE SO VERY MUCH LIKE HER IN THAT WAY, TOO: A FREE AGENT WITH FREE WILL … WELL, WITHIN LIMITS, BECAUSE, AFTER ALL, SHE’S HERE, AND SO ARE YOU. YOU ARE ALL BOUND TO MCDERMOTT AND HIS STORIES, TO LIZZIE, TO THIS PLACE, AND TO ONE ANOTHER, THROUGH THE NOWS AND ALL TIMES. THE POINT, ERIC, IS YOU CREATED THE PERFECT VESSEL FOR ME: A YOUNG MIND, A CLEAN SLATE OF A PERSONALITY WITH ONLY ENOUGH HISTORY TO ROUND YOU OUT, MAKE YOU WHOLE. YOU BROUGHT CASEY TO LIFE, ERIC … ALL BY YOURSELF.”
Eric felt his knees go watery. There was nothing inside his chest. He couldn’t speak, or move. His brain hung in an airless space, a kind of between, like the vacuum between stars.
“CHARACTERS WRITING CHARACTERS THAT BRING OTHER CHARACTERS TO LIFE…” What was left of Rima’s mouth skinned a grin that was all tattered flesh, smeary orange teeth, and purple clot. “KIND OF MAKES YOUR HEAD SPIN, DON’T IT?”
“Fuck you!” Casey screamed. He wrenched free of Eric’s slack grip and sprang for the circle. “Fuck you! I’ll kill you, I’ll fucking kill you!”
“No, Casey!” Eric and Emma shouted. They surged after, but Casey was small, fast as a whippet, and he had a head start. “Casey, no!” Eric cried, as Casey crossed into the circle. “Casey, stop, no, st—”
The air abruptly came alive and swelled with a wild rushing sound that Eric thought was like the roar of water, except it came from somewhere high above. What happened next came so fast that neither he nor Emma could do anything about it.
As one, the birds foamed from the rock and crashed down in a gale.
&nb
sp; RIMA
A Whisper, Like Blood
STARING THROUGH THE windows of her eyes, Rima watched as Casey flung himself into the circle—and all that was left of her moaned, No, Casey, no! She couldn’t help him. She wasn’t strong enough to distract the whisper-man for long; it had taken every ounce of her will just to give the lie to the whisper-man’s assurances that it could save her. Now, her own life was fading fast; she could feel her mind thinning the way a cloud dissipated under a bright sun. She couldn’t break free, but she had to do something, something.
She understood now, too, about the dolls this thing had fashioned as receptacles for what it, as Lizzie, called the “you-you.” Six dolls, not eight: there was no Eric-doll, no Casey. Neither had a place in McDermott’s book-worlds, and of the two, Casey was the cleanest, nearly a blank slate, able to absorb whispers and become with ease.
She felt the whisper-man crush Casey to her bleeding body in a tight, suffocating embrace. Casey’s warm breath slashed over her ruined face, and his own was close, just inches away. She sensed the whisper-man’s intent an instant before her own hand tightened around Anita’s boning knife, which the whisper-man had slid into the small of her back, and she thought, No no no no, please don’t, don’t hurt him, don’t!
Too late, and she had no power anyway. A quicksilver flick, and then Casey gasped as the knife sliced through his coat and slid into his left flank, just below his ribs, slipping through skin, dividing muscle. The tip drove to the artery, releasing Casey’s blood in a great, throbbing gush.
No, no, no, CASEY! But Casey was sagging against her now, his life pulsing out in a crimson river.
“OHHH, THAT’S GOOD.” The whisper-man crooned like a lover into Casey’s ear: “THAT’S GOOD, OHHH, THAT FEELS SO GOOD, DOESN’T IT? GIVE YOURSELF TO ME, BREATH OF MY BREATH. TAKE ME, FEED ME, BLOOD OF MY BLOOD, OHHH, FEEL ME.”
There was one chance, and only one—because she knew what the whisper-man had forgotten. But she must wait, wait, wait. She didn’t dare allow herself to think any further than that. If she did, it would know. She latched onto a rhyme, a meaningless tune, because she must hide, hide, quiet, quiet: Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb. Mary had a little lamb …
Beyond the circle, she heard Eric and Emma both screaming, but couldn’t see them at all because of all those hundreds and thousands of crows. The birds—beaks stabbing, slicing, ripping—boiled over their bodies. Emma and Eric would be dead, and very soon, if she couldn’t stop this.
Hurry, hurry, hurry. Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, oh, hurry hurry hurry …
“BLOOD OF MY BLOOD,” the whisper-man whispered with the ruin of her mouth, her bloody flesh pressed against Casey’s ear. “BREATH OF MY BREATH, I BIND YOU.”
Hurry hurry hurry …
“I TAKE YOU, OHHH, FEEL ME AS I FILL YOU!” It crushed her mouth to Casey’s, and then Casey was drinking the whisper-man in, binding the darkness to him.
Yes! The blackness slid away; the whisper-man flowed in a deep riptide from her body. There was no blessed wave of relief; she would not live through this. The icy slush that passed for her blood was gone, but now fire licked through her limbs, throbbing with every beat of her dying heart. The pain was a vice, crushing her chest and forcing out her breath. The cord that had held her up for so long snapped, and she began to fall. But as she did, she realized something else that the whisper-man did not know.
There was someone else—something she half knew and recognized—inside Casey.
Help him. She was sinking fast, hurtling toward that final darkness on legs suddenly no more substantial than air. Please, whoever, whatever you are, help Casey fight, help him, help …
She knew when her body thudded to that strange, smooth, and glassy rock, but she registered nothing more than a distant thump. Her mind spun. She couldn’t think, couldn’t put her finger on it. There was something important she had to do … but what? I know this … what is it … it’s import—
Then, she remembered what the whisper-man had forgotten: that a whisper, like blood, leaves a stain.
Wearing her body, the whisper-man had brought down the birds. That stain—this ability—was still there, but faint and growing fainter.
Please, God, just keep me alive a few more seconds.
With the last of her strength, she gathered her will and sent an arrow of thought, flying true.
Go. I command you now. Go.
ERIC
To My Heart, Across Times, to the Death
THE MOMENT CASEY sprinted for the circle, Eric simply froze, unable to believe his eyes. What was Casey …? Then his body took over, his mind clamoring: Go go go! He lunged after his brother, Emma by his side. He was so focused on reaching Casey before his brother vaulted into the circle that it took him a few seconds to hear the change, the way the air seemed to churn with a weird, freakish rustle.
“Eric!” Emma suddenly gasped. She grabbed for his arm, and he followed her eyes to the ceiling.
Panic slammed into his chest. “Down!” he shouted. He tackled Emma, driving her to the floor, covering her with his body as the birds hurtled for them in a black rain of needle-sharp beaks and razor talons. Their bodies were everywhere: a living, ravenous tornado that flowed and whirled over and around. Beaks stabbed at his back, his neck, gouging holes in his flesh. Frantic claws raked his hair, and then he was screaming as blades of pain hacked at his scalp. His parka was gone, and so they were through his clothes in no time, their claws drawing hot lines through his flesh. The birds’ claws ticked and skittered over the glassy rock, and there were more birds scuttling over the floor, worming their way to Emma. She was shrieking, and he shouted something wordless, battering at the birds with great sweeps of his arms.
Then a very large crow clamped onto his scalp. Its talons, steely as stilettos, dug in as its beak jackhammered his neck. A red sheet of pain stole his vision. Screaming, he surged up, back arched in agony.
It was, precisely, what the birds had waited for. They swarmed for his face. Nails of pain spiked his cheeks and forehead. One bird swooped in from the side, and he turned his head just in time, as the bird’s beak laid his skin open from the corner of his right eye to his mouth.
The crow battened on his scalp was still coring the flesh of his neck, its beak driving and digging. He reached back, his fist closing over slick feathers. The crow slashed at his fingers, flaying flesh from bone. Roaring with pain, he yanked the flailing creature from his blood-soaked scalp, and then the bird was bulleting for his face, its black beak flashing right for his eye.
Gasping, he got a hand up just in time. The bird’s beak drove into the meat at the base of his thumb, a shock wave he felt all the way to his elbow. With a cry, he tumbled back as the relentless birds closed over him, ripping and pecking—
Then, as if in response to a silent signal, the birds simply stopped—a fast, abrupt hitch, like the flick of a switch—and then lifted off in a vertiginous swirl, spiraling higher and higher to mass at the ceiling.
For a second, Eric could only lie there, stunned. His body was saturated and slick. Blood ran into his eyes, coated his mouth with a taste of warm aluminum. To his right, Emma was drenched with gore. She lay on her stomach, her face hidden by the dark fan of her hair, and he thought, God, no, please. Then he saw her move, and relief surged through his body.
“YOU BITCH!” It was Casey, in the circle, bellowing in a voice that was not Rima’s or Big Earl’s or his own, but the guttural, clotted gargle that was the whisper-man’s true voice. “STOP! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
Oh, Casey. Eric felt everything inside go dead with despair. His brother’s back bowed as if drawn by an unseen archer. Blood stained Casey’s mouth and glistened on his palms. His chest was a bib of gore. His shirt was slashed on the left; a large vermillion splash slicked his side as a crimson jet spurted from a wound right below his ribs.
“NO, STOP!” Casey shouted. “LET ME GO!”
Rima? Eric thought with stupid amazement
. She was doing this? She’d called off the birds? My God, is she still inside him, too? There was no way of knowing. Rima’s body lay in a still, sodden heap where she had crumpled after the whisper-man released her. He couldn’t tell if she was still alive. But someone was fighting back. Something had saved him and Emma.
“NO, DON’T! LET ME GO!” Casey roared. “I’M NOT FINISHED!”
“Look at him.” Blood coursed from slashes on Emma’s arms and neck. A long rip, the mirror image of his, snaked down her cheek. “Eric … there’s somebody else.”
There was. Casey’s stormy eyes—eyes that could hold and be any color—were churning and changing, growing black as oil.
But now he could see that there was also another: a shadow, much larger, man-shaped, smoky and indistinct, bleeding into being, steaming from Casey himself, as if it had been hiding inside and waiting for just this moment.
The whisper-man had said it: I need someone who can carry a whisper, an energy as strong as mine, without coming apart at the seams.
There was Casey, the brother for whom Eric would give his life—and someone else, already inside his brother, fighting for him, with them. But could Casey and this other win?
We can’t take that chance. Eric got his feet under him, then grabbed Emma’s bloody hand in his. Blood binds, and I don’t think we’ve got a lot of time.
“Emma,” he said, hoarsely, “this whole room is a mirror. It’s a mirror. It can’t get completely free of the Peculiar’s energy sink for long, but you can. With the cynosure, you can go to different Nows, but you have to cross into the Dark Passages to do it, and that’s where this thing—”
“Yes.” Her eyes met his, and he read that she understood, exactly, what they had to do. “Just hang on to him long enough,” she said.
