His eyes faltered, his gaze sliding from her face to the snow. Some part of his mind must register the change. Perhaps he even knew but tucked that knowledge away in some dim corner where he would have little excuse to look.
“Yes,” he said, finally. When his eyes again met hers, they were much too bright and pooled. “Before, when I looked at you and the others? I heard him talking to me, telling me what to think. But now I … I see you, like there’s no fog, nothing of Big Earl between us. It’s like I’m meeting you for the very first time.”
She opened her mouth to say … something, she didn’t remember what. The words slipped right off her tongue, because that was when she got her first good look at Casey’s eyes as they were now. They weren’t just bright with tears. They were different. When he had worn Big Earl’s shirt, Casey’s eyes were a muddy brown. Now they were stormy. Not gray, exactly, or blue or brown or green. His eyes were all colors, and no color, nothing fixed. His were the kind of eyes that, depending on the light, were green one moment and hazel the next. Even blue.
What does that mean? Another thought: My God, maybe he could get to the point where the change would be permanent and he’d never find himself again.
“How did you feel then?” she asked. “When you had that shirt? Do you remember?”
“Angry,” he whispered. “Mad at everybody, everything, even Eric. I didn’t like the feeling, and I heard Big Earl in my head and it … he was bad. Evil. Remembering him crawling around like this black spider, it makes me feel dirty. That’s never happened before either. I’d never had him in my head. Hell, I used to think someone had made a mistake. How could Eric and I have a father like that? It never felt like my dad belonged in our lives; he was a mistake, an outsider. Like … like this virus you just couldn’t shake and …” Casey let out a trembling breath. “Ohhh-kay, that sounds pretty crazy.”
She shook her head. “You’ve never met my mother. She and I don’t look at all like we belong to each other. Sometimes I think I popped out of nowhere or someone switched me at birth and my real mom’s got this awful kid. I don’t even like touching my mom. She feels”—she hugged herself—“like there’s something rotting inside. All the drugs she does, that’s probably pretty close.”
“So if you feel dead people, their … whispers, like the little girl in your parka, Taylor? Is that what I’m doing?”
“I don’t know.” She bent her head to study the snow. “Whatever it is, you seem okay now, but I think you should stay off this stuff until we can—”
When she didn’t continue, Casey said, “Rima, what … oh, Jesus.”
“Uh-huh.” She tried to say more, but all the words balled in her throat. In her parka, Taylor’s whisper tightened in alarm. I don’t know, honey; I have no idea.
But she thought they better figure this out, and fast.
RIMA
Tell Me You See That
AT THEIR FEET and all around the snowmobile, the snow suddenly bloomed with oily splotches. Like something’s leaking up from deep underground—or we’re on top of something and the snow’s melting, giving way. Her eyes ticked from the snow immediately around their runners to as far as she could see. It’s everywhere.
“Rima.” Casey’s voice was library-quiet. “Tell me you see that.”
“I see it.” The splotches stretched, seeming to sprout legs to creep over the snow. Like what happens when ink drips onto white paper, Rima thought. It seeps along the fibers. The spiderstains stretched and lengthened and merged. The fog was no longer gelid and still but swirling now, the turgid scent of blood-rust growing stronger. The snow began to shift and hump as black waves rippled all around the snowmobile.
Then, with a monstrous scream, the ebony snow broke, splintering in a shuddering convulsion—
“Ah!” Shrieking, she threw her arms around Casey as hundreds and hundreds, thousands, of crows bulleted from the snow: pulling together out of that weird oil, spinning in a screeching black funnel cloud, hurtling into that blister of a glare-white sky.
“Where did they come from?” Casey shouted over the screams. His storm-gray eyes were jammed wide with shock. “What do they mean?”
Death. Stunned, she followed the scrolling tangle of birds as they drew their black calligraphy onto the sky: arabesques and whorls and swoops and slashes and arcs. Crows are death, and there is so much here, more than we can imagine. Tightening her arms around Casey, she felt his slip about her waist, and wasn’t sure if the shudder working its way through her arms and into her chest was only hers. Yet, as frightened as she was, she was suddenly more afraid for him. It was crazy, stupid, something you did if you were major crushing on someone. But this is so dangerous for you, Casey; there is something here that wants you, will take you, if it can. I feel it.
She had to get him out of here. Now that the birds had cracked out of their icy shell in their mad flight, the snow—if that’s really what it was—was pristine and white once more. All right; that’s a start. Maybe slide onto the snow, see if she felt anything now. If not, they needed to move, get out from under these birds if they could, put some distance between them. But what if the birds followed?
One step at a time. She tipped her head back to that roiling sky. “I can still see them,” she said. The birds’ ebb and flow was almost as hypnotic as the sea, or like staring into the swirl of an ebony whirlpool that endlessly circled round and round and round. Like a black hole, the kind that ought to exist in outer space: you could trip over the edge and fall forever. “So maybe the fog’s burning off. Casey, you think you can drive the sled—”
“Rima.” At his tone, she pulled her gaze from the sky. Casey was staring over her shoulder. “Behind you,” he said.
She craned a look. A slit had appeared in the thick mist, as if someone had drawn a very sharp knife through taut white fabric. The lips of the cut drew back, and then this rent widened as the fog retreated. When she stopped to think about it later, the effect was like the parting of a curtain on some bizarre stage. Beyond the mist lay a thick forest, dark and very dense, that hemmed the snowfield on three sides.
“Like walls,” Casey said. “Like we’re looking into a room.”
That was exactly right. She watched as the fog wavered and glimmered—and then another shape pulled together, the fog sewing itself into something solid and blocky: red brick capped with a spire. A rosette window blossomed above a set of thick wooden double doors.