“We can’t save your dad.”
“But Mom!” Lizzie’s frantic. Why doesn’t her mother understand? “Daddy needs us!”
“No, he needs it, Lizzie. He hangs on, takes it inside, and the horrible, awful things it asks in return …” Her mother’s voice falters, then firms. “Lizzie, why do you think we came here after London? Why do you think we live so far away from other people?”
So no one gets hurt. She thinks of the terrible things in her father’s books: squiggle-monsters and spider-things growing in people’s chests and crawly things in tunnels and parents eating their kids. What Mom says is true.
Because when her father turned from that mirror … his face was gone. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. Nothing but a shuddering, churning blank.
Then this thing with no face raised her dad’s hands like a policeman stopping traffic. The cuts were gone. Her father’s palms were smooth—until the skin split and lids peeled back and there were eyes, one on each palm. They were not her father’s eyes, because they were not hers. Like father, like daughter, their eyes are identical: a deep indigo with a tiny fleck of gold on one iris. Lizzie’s birthmark floats in her right eye and is the mirror image to her father’s on his left.
But the eyes that stared from her father’s palms were whisper-man black. The whisper-man was in there, and her dad was the glove, just as Mom said he’d been, years back and before Lizzie, in the other London.
But what if I can make the whisper-man want me instead? This is a new thought, and so stunning Lizzie’s chest empties of air. If I can get it to leave Dad and slip into me—
There is a sudden, massive flash. The light is so bright the inside of the car fires the color of hot gold. A split second later, Lizzie hears the rolling thunder of an explosion.
“Oh God,” Mom says. In that molten glow, Lizzie sees the shine of her mother’s tears. “Oh God, forgive me.”
“No, Momma, no!” She could’ve fixed it; she could’ve made it better. “Why did you do that?”
“You don’t understand.” He mother drags a hand across her eyes like a weary child. “It was the only thing left.”
“No, it wasn’t! I could’ve fixed things, I could’ve helped—”
From the backseat comes a flat, mechanical beep. Her mother gasps. The sound is so jarring and out of place it seems to come from the deep, dark valley of a dream.
“It’s your phone,” Lizzie says.
“I know that,” Mom says.
Beep.
“Should I answer?” Lizzie asks.
Beep.
“No,” her mother says.
“But what if …” Like a birthday wish, Lizzie’s afraid to say it out loud. “Mom, what if it’s Dad?”
Beep.
“It might be his voice, but it wouldn’t be him, Lizzie. Your father’s gone.”
Beep.
“But what if—”
“I said no!” her mother snapped. “Sit down and—”
No, Lizzie thinks, furiously. Against her palms, she feels the sudden tingling surge as the Sign of Sure, sewn on her memory quilt, feeds on her thoughts: all that energy stored up in her brain that wants to whisk her through the Dark Passages, that must find a way out. No, Momma’s wrong; I can fix this. I’ll make it want me. I’ll build a forever-Now and swoosh the whisper-man there with the Sign of Sure.
She unbuckles her belt.
“What are you doing?” her mother raps. “Sit down, young lady.”
“I don’t have to listen to you,” Lizzie spits, and then she is scrambling up, twisting around in her seat, reaching for her mother’s purse. Through the rear window, she can see the forest’s black walls squeezing the road, as if her past is a book whose covers are slowly, inexorably closing. Then, in the sky, she sees something else, and for a second, her heart forgets how to beat.
“M-Mom?” The word comes out in a rusty whisper. Her throat clenches as tight as a fist. “M-Mom, the s-sky … i-it’s …”
“Oh no.” Her mother’s eyes flick to the rearview, and then she cups a hand to her mouth as if she might be sick. “Oh my God, what have I done?”
“Mom?” Lizzie can’t look away. “Mom, what is that?”
“The Peculiars … all that stored energy, I’d hoped it would be enough to take out the Mirror, but I didn’t stop to think that your father had already opened the gateway; he’d bound that thing and … My God, I’ve only given it more fuel.” Mom sounds as broken as the Peculiars and the Mirror. “What did I do?”
Behind them, the sky is moving. High above the trees, something steams across the night: a boiling wall of white so dense that the stars are winking out, one by one.
Something has bled into this world, all right. Something is storming after them. Something is running them down.
Not an aurora.
Not clouds.
What is coming for them is the fog.
EMMA
Not the Way I’m Made
“EMMA.” PAUSE. “EMMA.”
A voice, very distant, as tinny as a radio. For a horrible second, her ears heard that weird hiss—peekaboo, I see you—and she thought, Kramer?
“Emma?”
She didn’t answer. Wouldn’t. Couldn’t. God, she was freezing. She hurt. The cold was intense, the snow burning across her skin like a blowtorch. When she pulled in a breath, she heard a jerky little cry jump out of her mouth as something with claws grabbed her ribs and ripped her chest.
“Emma?” The voice was closer now, on her right, and it wasn’t the radio or Kramer at all. Why would she even think that? “Emma, come on, wake up.”
A … a boy? Where? Emma tried moving her head. There was a liquid sound, and then a thick, choking chemical funk.
“Emma, can you hear me?”
Her neck screamed. So did her back. Her forehead throbbed, a lancet of pain stabbing right between her eyes, not only from the blink but …
We crashed. I’m still in the van, but I saw that little girl again, too, and someone or something was … chasing her? But what? She couldn’t remember. The threads of the vision were fraying, unraveling. Didn’t matter. She dragged a hand to her aching forehead. She felt the familiar nubbins and that bigger circle of her skull plate just beneath her skin, but also something wet and sticky that was not gasoline.
Blood. Cut. How deep? Her fingers slid over torn flesh but not metal. She must’ve hit pretty hard. Her head was swimmy and she was already dizzy from gas fumes. Her stomach did a long, slow roll. No, please, I don’t want to puke.