The Dickens Mirror Read online

  No. It’s only that I don’t understand which symbols I need to make the right Now. I might not even require the Mirror.

  All right, that could be. Little Lizzie used symbols to create new realities, and hadn’t used the Mirror at all.

  Whoa, wait a second … Until this instant, Emma had thought Lizzie was a real kid. Yet Elizabeth was obsessed with symbols as the way out of this Now, carving them into her arms—and so far as she knew, only Lizzie could use symbols that way.

  So does that mean a piece of Lizzie’s in Elizabeth? And if that was true … Lizzie was a creation, too? Everything—the explosion, McDermott’s death, Meredith crashing the car—hadn’t happened in the real world, but in a book? As part of … what … her story?

  Jesus, that can’t be right. Because what could it mean? That this, a London where people fell apart … this was the only real place?

  Wait, wait, slow down. Lizzie had died still trapped in her forever-Now, the Peculiar in which she’d imprisoned the whisper-man. But did that mean that what happened to little Lizzie then was the same as when Tony had died, or Chad? Back in the valley, Lizzie said that Tony wasn’t really dead and neither was Chad; that if you died in a Now that wasn’t yours, you went back to the one in which you belonged. Or maybe the whisper-man, who’d inhabited Lizzie all along, had been lying. Honestly, keeping all this straight was giving her a headache.

  Headache. A ping. She gasped. Jesus. “That would prove it.”

  What? What proves what?

  She’d forgotten all about them. But they were there. She’d felt them. Graves asked if I had a headache. Trembling, she walked careful fingers to the ache at the center of her forehead. She felt stitches, regular as a train track, but … No. Panicked, she pressed harder, ignoring the protests from her freshly stitched flesh. But there was nothing.

  Of course not. What else should there be?

  Nothing. No metal, no lacy filigree. Maybe she was wrong about this, the whole direction her thoughts were tending to here. But if that was true, she was really screwed, because then she had no idea what Kramer could possibly want from her.

  “They were there,” she said fiercely. “Damn it, they were!”

  All at once, under her probing fingers, she felt a firm and familiar edge surfacing from beneath those fresh stitches. It was just suddenly there, like one of those stop-action films where a tulip

  How are you doing that?

  goes from a tiny green nubbin to full flower in the blink of an eye.

  “Ohhh.” The word came in a dribbling little moan that was equal parts relief and awe. Oh, thank you, God. She moved her quaking hand to explore Elizabeth’s scalp, which was smooth. But I have plates and screws and scars. She’d let Eric feel them, and she never let anyone do that, but Eric, she trusted.

  Who is Eric? Is that another monster my father created, another piece? I don’t recognize the name.

  She paid Elizabeth no mind. Beneath her hand, her scalp wriggled. “Oh, holy shit!” All the tiny hairs on her neck went stiff as spikes. “Please, make this be real, please.” Yes, beneath her fingers, her scalp was squirming, actually writhing and clenching and heaving

  How are you doing that?

  as her many scars wormed to life,

  Stop.

  tunneling from deep burrows to the surface,

  STOP STOP THIS STOP!

  where, an instant later, they knit into a familiar quilt of healed skin.

  HOW DID YOU DO THAT?

  Because of who I am; because I am stronger. Her scars were like her skull plates. They can’t really be there. But she felt them. And this is proof. She traced an index finger over a fibrous filament on the crown of her head, then walked her fingers to the base of her skull. The mate to the titanium plate screwed to the bone between her eyes was there, too. I was right about why Kramer took the cynosure.

  STOP! A mental punch to the jaw. Stop trying to change me into YOU!

  “S-stop! L-listen to me. I don’t want to be you.” Another kick between the eyes, and now there was blood in her mouth from where she’d bitten herself. “I’m only t-trying to show you why Kramer—”

  You’ve nothing to show me! Get out of my body! Just DIE! Another mental slam, and now there was blood streaming from her nose. DIE!

  No! Shut UP! Emma hurled the thought, heard it actually snap, a very hard stinging sound, like the smart crack of whip. Inside, deep in her head, she felt a kind of stutter step on an icy mental slick as Elizabeth faltered, and Emma thought, Can’t give her a second chance. She snapped off two more, like a boxer throwing a left jab and then an uppercut with his right. “Stop it, Elizabeth. Go away! Go away!”

  No. But there was another of those strange mental staggers. I w-won’t …

  “Yes, you will! You won’t help? Fine. Then leave me the hell alone! Go away, go away!” She was bellowing now. Anger helped, and so did her fear, because this could not go on—and she’d just proven something to herself, too. It’s me; it’s the essence of who I am. I’m the one—the piece—the devices will recognize. I am the power, the key Kramer was talking about.

  And she thought: Key.

  2

  SHE’D ONCE READ a book where some psychic kid put all the monsters that scared him into mental lockboxes, turned the key, and shelved them in a back closet of his mind. They weren’t real boxes, just as the closet was only in his imagination. But the point was to build it all in his head, to give it a reality there.

  Down cellar. It was the first thing that occurred to her, and the image came fast, down cellar unfurling in a rush from some dark vault of memory: the long wooden stairs, concrete floor, whitewashed cinderblock. That second room, where secrets and all things best forgotten hid. To all that, she added a single change: instead of a wooden door at the top of the stairs, she made one of iron.

  No, please, don’t don’t lock me in there let me out this is my body this is my …

  She was right again: to the Elizabeth that existed in her mind, this would be a real prison. “No,” she shouted, “I’m in charge now!” But she was getting tired. Pushing against a formless presence was very difficult, like bullying fog that clotted to soft sponge before dissipating in the next second. That bizarre knee-and-elbow sensation intensified as Elizabeth flailed, and Emma thought she would lose this fight if she didn’t think of something, and fast. Have to hurry. What if she locks me away?

  I won’t. Still frothing and kicking. You’re right. Let’s work together.

  “Forget it.” Then Emma did the only thing she could that would help her end this. This all existed only in her mind, but she had to give herself something solid to push against. So she gave the Elizabeth in her mind a body, her body: same blonde hair, same delicate oval of a face, and eyes that were also Emma’s, dark blue with that golden flaw—

  “No, they are mine,” Elizabeth snarled, “and you’ve just made a fatal error.” Features twisted into a mask of hate, Elizabeth flew at her with a screech.

  The mental impact—the force that was Elizabeth plowing into her—slammed the breath from Emma’s lungs. Anyone looking at her from the outside would’ve seen only Emma, in her cell, eyes tightly shut, body quivering and straining, fighting a battle that was going on in her mind.

  Rocked onto her heels, Emma grabbed the shrieking girl by her blouse and bullied her in a blundering backward stagger for that open cellar door. It was then that Emma realized that she’d made herself a mental body, too, as she was: taller and stronger, and back in clothes she recognized. Jeans, the turquoise turtleneck she’d found in House, and boots, because it had been snowing when she and Lily climbed into that van just that morning … or more than a hundred years from now, take your pick. She’d even given herself back her own face. Felt it mold to her skull like cling wrap. Maybe, in this instant, she’d finally grown into herself.

  “Please,” Elizabeth said. “Don’t lock me away, please.” Her smaller hands clung to Emma’s wrists. “I’ll die in there. I can help you. I kn
ow the asylum. I know London. You won’t know where to start.”

  This was true. Could they work together? All Emma wanted was a way out of Elizabeth’s body. If Kramer was looking for the Mirror, then didn’t it follow that it existed in this Now? Maybe not; lost artifacts were the stuff of legends and stories. But even if it isn’t here, could there be another way? She felt that snag, a little tug, as if she might be onto something. Jasper had down cellar, which she thought must be another way into the Dark Passages, or something close. So what if there’s a back door here?

  Maybe her mental grip—her fists knotted in Elizabeth’s blouse—loosened because she was distracted. As it was, she almost missed it: the moment that Elizabeth’s lips skinned from her teeth.

  “No!” she shouted, a second too late.

  In the next instant, Elizabeth drove for her neck.

  EMMA

  Mistake

  1

  THIS WAS LIKE the valley; at the moment it was all happening, illusion or not, mental image or not, it was real and she had no choice but to react that way.

  As Elizabeth lunged for her throat, Emma got an elbow up just in time. The point caught Elizabeth in the mouth. There was dull chuck as the other girl’s teeth clashed. Elizabeth’s head rocked as blood leaked from her mouth. Her eyes, darkly blue and glittery, rolled in their sockets.

  Emma was no fighter, had never taken kickboxing, but she liked books, and the zombie apocalypse was big. So she knew: Go for the hair.

  With one hand still firmly clutching Elizabeth’s blouse, Emma knotted her other fist in blonde curls. Elizabeth screamed. Body bowed, she tried locking her fingers around Emma’s wrist, but Emma pushed the girl back, and then there was the iron door.

  “You’ll never get out without me.” At the very brink, Elizabeth scrabbled for purchase, her hands flailing for the jamb, heels digging in for all she was worth, like a struggling cat fighting against being shoved into that carrier. Beyond, the basement steps seemed to plunge down a dark throat. “You’re trapped,” Elizabeth said. “You need me, you need—”

  “Shut up!” Planting her feet, Emma shoved, hard. Wailing, Elizabeth stumbled but didn’t tumble out of sight, and Emma saw why. She’d made down cellar too perfect; had even included handrails. Before she could think, Go away, and erase them, something happened outside her head.

  In the real world, there was an enormous buck and then a heave as the earth trembled.

  2

  The feeling was like the time she’d been stupid enough to stand on the flatbed of Jasper’s truck when he’d started rolling without shouting a warning first. The sudden jerk had sent her off-balance. She’d nearly jackknifed over the side.

  The lurch now was strong and immediate, a kick she felt in her knees and hips. In the formless space, right above that open door, she felt a hard twitch and shimmy under her feet. On the steps, Elizabeth suddenly fell backward, arms windmilling.

  All at once, the space deformed in a wrinkle, as if puckering its lips to spit her out. In the blink of an eye, the door to down cellar vanished, and Emma was outside her head again, in her cell, sprawled on her lumpy mattress. What the hell? The earth vibrated and quivered beneath her hands as the cell’s walls rumbled. There was a pop, like the bang of a cork shooting from a bottle under pressure. Something cleaved the air above her head with a fast whirr. Bits of rock or maybe brick showered all around with a sound like rice on stone.

  An earthquake? Above, there was more cracking and smashing of rock. Teeth bared, she threw her arms over her head and waited for the ceiling to come down. Under her belly, the earth rose and then dropped, shivered—and went still.

  What’s going on? The air tasted of cold grit. She couldn’t hear anything above the roar of her pulse.

  Then, she became aware of a jostle in her skull and thought, Oh shit.

  3

  IT WASN’T CONSCIOUS so much as reflex, a snapping of her attention the way you might jerk your head to catch movement at the corner of your eye. A quick wink and she’d returned to that formless space, the open cellar door. Less than three feet away, the iron door gaped, and there was Elizabeth: storming up the cellar steps, her face distorted with rage, her hair a gorgon’s wild cloud.

  “No!” Springing back, Emma hooked both hands around the iron door and heaved it to. The door was only a construction, a mental barricade, and yet she slammed it so hard she felt the ghostly clang in her teeth. An instant later, there was a thud as Elizabeth bulled into iron.

  The door to the down cellar prison she’d built in her mind held.

  4

  ALMOST GOT PAST me. With a sliver of her consciousness, she knew that, outside her head, she still lay on her stomach, gripping a mattress in a cell choked with grit and rubble. Yet, inside her head, Emma stood in the formless space on her side of a mental door. In the past, when she’d blinked, she still carried on with her life: went to school, turned in homework, hung with friends. The doctors had called them dissociative episodes and fugue states, but the principle was the same. You could look completely normal, order a mocha Frappuccino even while, beyond your awareness, there was an awful lot of drama going on in your head.

  Pressing her fingers to the cold, unyielding iron door she’d manufactured in her mind, she now thought, That was cutting it pretty damn close.

  That quake had been so strange, too. It reminded her of what had happened to Rima and the others and that fight where the snow broke apart: too many book-people in one space, and the world disintegrated. But that can’t be right. This wasn’t a book-world or some weird construction like Lizzie’s forever-Now, but a real place, an alternative London. She just couldn’t be strong enough to cause all this.

  But I am strong enough to change some things, even if they’re only in my own head. She eyed that door floating in midair. “Build me a floor,” she murmured. “Give me walls.” Almost instantly, the old pine floor unfurled like a carpet under her feet. Walls glimmered into existence. Probably build the whole kitchen if she wanted, maybe even the cottage.

  Another thud and then a hard thump as Elizabeth either kicked or used her fist. Seems solid enough. Then thought, You nut, this whole place exists in your head. It’s as solid as you want and need it to be. But she couldn’t leave Elizabeth here forever. If she left Elizabeth’s body—God, how? and go where?—this down cellar prison should disappear, right? Only what if it doesn’t? I can’t do that to her.

  As if conjured from thin air, Elizabeth’s voice drifted through iron. “Please. Don’t leave me here in the dark. At least give me light.”

  A thought: No one gives a lunatic a candle. It felt like a kind of warning.

  “Emma?”

  “Hold on.” No matter what Elizabeth thought, Emma wasn’t a monster. She thought about it for a second, letting the image coalesce in her mind, and then put that image where she thought it ought to go. “There.” She waited a second. “Do you see it?”

  “Yes.” Elizabeth snuffled. “Thank you. It’s … it’s blue.”

  “It’s from my birthday.” When I turned twelve, and a week before I went down cellar and found … She closed her mind to that memory. “Normal rules don’t apply in a place like this. So it shouldn’t burn out. You’ll have plenty of light, Elizabeth, for as long as …” She let that go. No telling how long Elizabeth might have to remain under lock and key. But she should leave this place. In her psych course, her teacher—a real film nut—said that basements were metaphors for all that was dark and deep and scary. Basements were where the monsters lived. Now that she thought about it, hadn’t the psychiatrist she’d seen before her reconstruction said the same thing?

  “Emma?” It was Elizabeth, behind her prison door. “What did you mean by proof? Your scars, those … plates? They’re not really there, but I felt them.”

  But they’re me, part of who I am, how I think of myself. Lizzie would’ve called it an essence. No matter the name, it was the power Emma had brought with her, something Elizabeth didn’t seem
to have. But why not? Because Elizabeth didn’t really know who she was? Had no true sense of herself, or spent all of her energy at war with the voices in her head? But that didn’t make sense, especially if she was based on Elizabeth. They were all tangled together, right? So why didn’t the devices know Elizabeth? Why didn’t that glass bauble become the cynosure for her?

  Unless it’s no more complicated than that, for whatever reason, I’m the battery, the power source, stronger than the others because I’ve got that little extra something that lets me jump off the page. It’s the only explanation for why Kramer took an otherwise worthless hunk of junk. If she was a book-person, that was—and Jesus, did it matter? It all felt like semantics, and who the hell cared at this moment? She only wanted to go home.

  “Emma?”

  “I’m sorry, Elizabeth,” she said, “but I have to go.”

  “Wait!” Elizabeth said something else, but Emma closed her mind. I’m not hearing you, and I am getting out of here right now. Working fast, she scrubbed at the seams and jamb with the flat of a mental hand. Just like that, the door itself went away and only iron remained. If Elizabeth screamed, she didn’t hear.

  Emma left and didn’t look back.

  5

  SHE HAD, HOWEVER, just made a very big mistake.

  ELIZABETH

  Down Cellar

  STAY CALM. HUDDLED in this bizarre mental trap, Elizabeth stared at that strange little candle Emma had made for her. Every box has a lid and every cell a door. She’d only need to find the key to this place, this down cellar, that was all.

  This place didn’t feel like a cell. There was a scent, however. Paper? She couldn’t tell. Although a tiny circlet of light wavered from that one feeble candle, its glow petered out after a few feet. It wasn’t completely silent down here either. There was something beyond the walls, though not the hollow cries of the mad she knew. The sound was a little bouncy, even jaunty, falling in tiny drops from above … and was that a man’s voice?