The Dickens Mirror (36 page)

Calm down?
That voice gave her chills.
But think
. Her own good common sense was sometimes a godsend.
Remember where you are. This is a secret place
. People hid their true natures all the time. Her father had used the conceit more than once. She couldn’t quite remember the name of the book—something to
do with battles and tunnels in some endless jungle war—but she did recall that a character had been haunted by a ghost, a kind of shadow-man.
Emma might not know it’s even here
.

She squared her shoulders. “Who are you? Where did you come from?”

“That’s just it.” The boy sounded confused and, she thought, a little frightened. “I-I don’t remember. I know I was falling …” The boy seemed to swallow that back. “Your accent. You’re English.”

“Yes.” Was that disappointment in his voice? She thought so.
Was he hoping I was someone else?
“We’re in London.”

“London? This? Here? H-how …”

“In a manner of speaking.” Now that her fright was past, she was losing patience. “Do you understand
where
you are?”

“You said London.”

“Does this
look
like London to you? And don’t say you don’t know because you’ve never been.”

“Well, I haven’t.” The boy sounded a little angry now. She could tell from the direction of his voice that they faced one another, but he was too far away for her to make out much more than the faint oval of a face. Those eyes were queer, though. They glittered like a raven’s. A little unnerving. Was he more fleshed out, or simply an idea?

Then she noticed something else: an impression of a
group
, a
gathering
of others behind the boy, but far away and indistinct, like spectators in the very last seats of the very highest balcony.
Who are they? What has he brought with him?
Another thought:
Dear God … what has Emma done?

“Listen, I’ve been here in the dark for … for …” That strangely burring voice wavered. “That’s just it. I don’t
know
how long. It
feels like forever and only a second. I know that sounds crazy.”

Not really
. She stepped closer to the mind’s eye she’d fashioned, this one-way mirror into the real world. “Come over here. I don’t like talking to a shadow.” When the boy didn’t move, she said, exasperated, “For God’s sake, I’m not going to bite. May I remind you that
you
grabbed me?”

“That’s not … it’s not what you think.” The overlapping tones of his voice roughened with emotion. “I thought you might be a … a friend. Someone I …”

“A friend.” She played a hunch. “Emma?”

“Yes,”
and she thought he might be working very hard to rein back hope. He seemed on the point of grabbing her again—just a feeling; she couldn’t see him well enough to note every flicker—so she slid back a step. “Do you know her?” he said. “Have you seen her? Is she all right? Is she here?”

Well, that depends
. It hit her then, too:
He cares for her
. So perhaps this really
did
belong to Emma. Could that girl have constructed something all on her own? How had she managed that?
Only my father has that skill
.

Yes, but think. I’m the original. I’m the template after which Emma’s fashioned
. Theoretically, this boy must also be a piece of
her
. She cast a quick, appraising glance at those faraway others, so many anonymous blanks, clustered in the background. So must they, more or less. Could this shadow have become manifest only because Emma was so much stronger? The thought was chilling. First this basement; a secret room … and now this creature, with its faceless companions hovering at the margins.

“Come here,” she said again. “I’d like to see to whom I’m speaking.”

She read that instant’s hesitation again. “I don’t know what I
look like,” he said. “
Now
, I mean. Last I remember, things were pretty bad. I might be kind of … torn up.”

What an odd expression. “Do you mean hurt?” This was getting more and more interesting. She’d always imagined that the various pieces spent the whole of their miserable little lives in her father’s books; that what crowded her mind were only afterimages. Unpleasant, of course. Taking inspiration from her meant her father reached inside, and that always left a stain.

But this is a secret space in Emma’s mind. So … is this boy a subplot? Something fallen between the lines? A chapter in Emma’s life? Or something else altogether?
She eyed the blanks. How many more characters in Emma’s little drama were down here anyway?

The boy gave a humorless grunt. “That’s one way of looking at it, I guess. Before I blacked out, I know it got into me. Really hurt. Started ripping me apart.” He paused. “I don’t think I let go soon enough. I think some … some leaked into Emma.”

She didn’t like the sound of that. “It?”

“Yeah. This … 
thing
from the Dark Passages. Lizzie called it the whisper-man.” He gave a strangled laugh. “Sounds crazy even to me.”

Oh, not necessarily
. At the mention of Lizzie, her stomach tightened. This shadow knew that piece? While she knew her father fashioned worlds and characters from energy stolen out of the Dark Passages, she’d always imagined them as separate. Now
this
creature made it sound as if it and Lizzie might have been in league.
Can’t fight them all, and certainly not here, where I’m not in charge
. She caught movement behind the boy, very slight, as the blanks shifted and one, smaller than the rest, seemed to ooze that much closer.
God. If it takes on a shape, definite features …
Yet
that
shadow might not be all bad; she thought about the symbols
scarred into her arms. If this new shadow
was
Lizzie, then
she
might use the girl to her advantage..

“What happened?” she asked.

“Long story. Emma got us out and into the Dark Passages, but the whisper-man was in … in my brother, Casey. It had already pretty much torn Rima apart. I let go to save Emma, but …”

“Casey,” she repeated. “Rima?” She realized her mistake only after. Again, more movement, a kind of milling behind this shadow-boy, as two more silhouettes oozed closer.
Naming gives them substance. Telling his story brings them into the light
. The thought sent a jitter of alarm through her chest.
Can’t let them take over
. She sensed it already might be too late. While still mostly shadow,
this
thing was very detailed, already well formed. It had
personality
, like Emma.

He said the whisper-man got into her
. That had to be it.
Emma carries the stain of the Dark Passages; she’s more powerful than she knows. I probably couldn’t have stopped this even if I wanted to
. Did Kramer have an inkling? Given the fact that the man had panops, she thought he might.

“Yeah, my brother and this girl we met. Casey … he really liked Rima,” the shadow-boy said, and now, behind it (soon to be a
him
at this rate), she could make out the slope of a head, a froth of hair, the humps of shoulders, as those other shadows—the brother and this Rima—took on substance. “We were in this weird valley. Lizzie called it part of her special forever-
Now
. Emma and I think it was an energy sink. Lizzie’s idea of a Peculiar, really, designed to contain the whisper-man and …” Another desolate, burring laugh. “Sounds nuts, and I lived through it.”

“A valley.” Didn’t ring a bell; her father likely hadn’t written that. “And before that?”

“Wisconsin.”

Wisconsin?
The word felt both odd and somehow familiar. Perhaps a place in Emma’s imaginings? And
energy sink
? The shadow-boy had called
where
they’d been a Peculiar. So, not the same as London’s?
Sounds like a structure
. “Are you hurt now?”

“I don’t know. Until you showed up, there was no light. But when I feel my arms and legs, my chest … my hands tell me I’m messed up.”

“Look, I know you don’t understand this”—actually, she wasn’t sure she did either; here she was, an essence, talking to a shadow—“but I think what you’re feeling is the … the
memory
of where you’ve been.”

“You mean, like post-traumatic stress? A flashback?”

“Yes,” she said, having absolutely no idea what he was talking about. “It’s like they say about rose-colored glasses? Memories are the same. Strong ones color what you see and feel. I’m sure that
here
, in this place, you’re right as rain.”

“How can you know that?”

“My father. When my mother was sick, he tried explaining that what she’d experienced tainted her feelings and perceptions, what she saw, and where she … she could
go
.”

“Where she could go? You mean, in the future? From that time forward?”

“I’m not sure.” She really wasn’t. Why had she even brought it up? She hated those memories of her mother, lethargic one moment, hysterical

(Meredith, no, stop)

the next. What her mother had done to herself with knives and

(please, put it down, sweetheart, don’t … DON’T)

broken glass. She wasn’t even sure
where
she’d been or lived when those memories were formed.

“Come into the light,” she said. “I want to see you.”

“Okay. Just …” He inched closer. Darkness peeled from his features. He must’ve heard her gasp, because he stopped short. “What?” His voice was tight with dread. “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

“No,” she lied.
Steady
. To her relief, the blanks hadn’t moved with him.
Not yet, but now that
he’s
in the light, they will
. “Not at all.”

HOW TO DESCRIBE
this? For better or worse, what her mind jumped to was a person seen through a veil of swirling mist and dense shadow: a cloudy silhouette with blurred margins, whose contours shifted and eddied, came together and then drifted apart. As if what was being drawn here was indefinite and still in the process of becoming and as likely to dissolve under a strong bolt of sun as to cohere into something solid.

This creature was like that: fog and shadow and incomplete. A suggestion of a boy. What she could see of his shifting, blurred body was tall, lean, and taut. A knife’s edge of shadow cut across his forehead, yet she could see that the face, though muzzy and shimmery, was relatively well defined: high cheekbones, a strong jaw, a careless tumble of very dark hair that she thought must be black.

But his eyes were what transfixed her. It might have been a trick of this bizarre greenish light, but she didn’t think so.

In the glimmer and waver of that face, his eyes were gleaming ebony stones. Completely and utterly. As in no whites at all. They
were dead eyes, the glittery glass eyes you gave to a doll. These were eyes that stared back at you from the abyss.

He’s infected, half himself—or what Emma’s spun—and half shadow
.

“You’re not …” She paused and cleared away the wobble. “You’re not
torn up
at all.”
No, you’re a monster from the Dark Passages
.

And what about Emma? If she’d traversed the Dark Passages and the infection spread from this creature’s brother—
brother? how many of these things has Emma created?
—she had both her innate strength and this boy’s now, and that of any other shadows she’d pulled with her: the boy’s brother, Casey; that girl, Rima. That shadow-Lizzie.

Even without the stain of the Dark Passages, these must all be very powerful pieces. Her father had always said a name separated a true character from an anonymous blank:
Honey, have you noticed that only the important characters get names and descriptions so you know what they look like? Same thing with places
. It was the detail. Otherwise, the world between the covers of a book was vague.
Tree, house, building
: all convenient shorthand. Streets might be
teeming
, but the people themselves were ciphers.

“I’m Elizabeth,” she said. “And you …?”

“Me?” The margins of the boy’s head clenched and then frayed as he pulled a frown. The effect reminded her of a spider frantically trying to reel in and repair the torn strands of a fragile web. “My name?”

“Yes.”
Come on, you’re so detailed; you’ve got to know who you are. You have a brother. You know where you lived. You care for Emma
. “What’s your name?”

“Name.” Turning it over the way you might look under a
rock, and then his tone brightened. “Right. My name’s—” He suddenly broke off, and when his head moved and his face tilted up to stare at a point over her head, his contours lagged behind, pulling apart only to reform once he stilled, like vapor from a block of black ice. “Jesus, what is that place? Who the hell is
that
?”

Damn, just give me a name
. “I made it.” Turning, she said, “I think of it as my mind’s eye, a kind of window—”

And then she froze. For a second, she truly didn’t understand what she was seeing. But then, she did.

“Oh, dear God,” she said, “that’s …”

Weber

THE OIL LAMP
was what farmers or railroad conductors had in movies: a squat glass globe in a metal basket frame with a reservoir for oil at the bottom and a carry handle at the top. The flame smelled bad, like the goo they used to pave roads in summer.

“Oh.” Surprise in the man’s voice. When he held the lamp a little higher, she saw that the entire left side of his face was visibly swollen and painted with vivid splashes of purple and blue. All except his eyes, that is, which the light turned into yellow sparks. “You’ve come out of it,” Weber said.

She kept quiet. What was there to say anyway?
Yeah, I’m awake. And?
She wasn’t stupid either. Weber shouldn’t be here without Graves or some other female chaperone. Which meant he knew he wouldn’t be disturbed. Question now, though: what the hell was she going to do? Scream her lungs out, no one would hear. Weber must know that, too.