The Dickens Mirror Read online

  Beyond, the blackness seemed to breathe, the air to fizzle with a sound that was like bits of ice crunched under a boot, and she thought, Voices? On an impulse, not even understanding why she was doing it, she extended her arms, thrusting the candle before her. The blackness ate the light. She couldn’t see inside at all. Dropping to a crouch, she played the light back and forth over the floor. The demarcation between this room and the one beyond was stark: one side grainy but gray with reflected light, the other completely dark as if veiled in black velvet.

  What if there is no floor? With her free hand, she reached into the dark: first a finger, just the tip—the air was cold but not so bad she couldn’t stand it—and then the first knuckle and then all the way up to the third.

  “Oh God,” she said, almost without inflection. Her finger just … disappeared. She could feel it and, beneath, some sort of surface that was not the same as this gritty stone floor. No, this was smoother, like glass. She let her entire hand drift in, watching as the darkness beyond closed around it. For a giddy moment, she imagined something might make a grab, but nothing happened. Exhaling, she retrieved her hand and thought about it a moment longer. This space was now here where it hadn’t been before. Would she be able to find her way out once she was inside? What if this is a trap? Somehow she didn’t think Emma was that skilled. She might not be that devious either.

  But this was here because Emma wished it so. If she was going to beat her, she had to know all Emma’s secrets. Carefully, she placed the candle on the floor as a beacon, something to keep an eye on so she could find her way back.

  “Go on now, Elizabeth,” she whispered, “before you lose your nerve.”

  She stepped …

  2

  … AND ALL at once, the black rushed for her face. There was no transition. One moment, she was in that first room; the next, she was muffled in a thick stygian mantle.

  Can’t see a thing. This was like stumbling into a cave and then losing the guide. Panic filled her chest, and she could hear herself starting to gasp. Slow. Slow down. Clamping her lips tight, she forced even, steady breaths. The darkness felt … crowded.

  Someone in here? God, now she wished she’d taken the candle. Craning a look back tugged a gasp from her throat. That wavering flame was still there, but only as a thin yellow sliver she could barely see. She had taken a single step and gone miles.

  What was this place? Why was it so important to Emma? Should she go back for the candle? But I’m here now, and Emma’s responded before. I think way out, and this place conjures a room.

  “If only it wasn’t quite so dark,” she said, raising her voice a little. “A lamp would do. Or some way of letting light in. Something with a view to the outside world. A window, perha—” The rest dissolved in her mouth.

  All of a sudden, the blackness before her eyes clenched. It was a sensation more than anything else, but just as the room felt so crowded, something shifted and pulled together. And was that … she squinted … no, it wasn’t her imagination: the darkness was graying ever so slightly, as if what lay before her was a … yes, a window, so sooty with grime and grease as to be completely blacked over until someone thought to give it a good scrub. The black faded by degrees, brightening in first a very narrow sliver before widening to a long oval, pointed at both ends like a diamond fashioned in a marquise cut.

  It’s an eye standing on end. Or the slit of a lizard’s pupil. Reaching out, she felt the glide of smooth glass. “My God, it’s a window,” she said aloud, and then let out a breathy laugh. “It’s a mind’s eye.”

  Yet the eye seemed to function only one-way. Virtually no light at all leaked through, other than a weak, faint, yellow-green wash. So long as she pressed it to this barrier, she saw her hand as a black daguerreotype: the shape of her hand, but nothing more—no nails, no knuckles. Take her hand away from the window, this mind’s eye, and her hand seemed to dissolve.

  Then it occurred to her: this room was hidden. Yes, remember where you are; this is a place Emma needs to keep in the dark? Not let herself see? Or … “Forget?” she whispered. “Is that it, Emma? Is this a place you’ve tried very hard to forget but can’t? Somewhere you hide your deepest secrets, even from yourself?”

  And what was she looking at? Beyond her body, out there, the world was pitch. But there was something happening. Was Emma reaching for …

  A hand slid to her shoulder.

  EMMA

  Hands

  EMMA SCREAMED AS cold fingers wound around either wrist. “No!” Tearing free, she stumbled back. Her left boot banged something heavy that she could’ve sworn wasn’t there five seconds before. She heard a sloshing gurgle and then a crisper clang as metal banged against metal. What the hell, what the hell … Swaying backward, she kept her eyes fixed on the darkness. “Who’s there? Who are you?”

  Nothing answered. Other than her own ragged breaths and the faraway shouts of the mad, there was no other sound. She heard herself whimper; the screams she would not let go stacked one on top of the other, from her gut all the way to the back of her tongue like candy in a PEZ. She ached to let a few good shrieks go, but that was a terrible idea. Start screaming and she probably wouldn’t stop. Worse, she might provoke another coughing jag or burst an artery or something, and then she’d bleed out and die here, trapped in Elizabeth’s body. Or whatever was in the room might just eat her and call it a day.

  Stop it. You felt hands. She thrust her own under her arms and squeezed herself smaller. Every muscle felt as coiled as a spring under too much pressure. When she was a kid and school was just so much Chinese water torture, she sometimes daydreamed about what Lara Croft might do, most of which revolved around beating the snot out of that day’s bully. She was always more afraid for her face, though, and so didn’t get into many fights. If she was truthful, she also worried that if she did, the monster under her skin would show itself and not stop pounding until the other kid was jelly. Now, though, she wished she’d gotten into a few more brawls. A weapon would be good, too. That metal bang … that almost felt like she’d put her boot down on a plate. The gurgle might be a water jug.

  “Come on,” she said. “I know you’re there. You grabbed me, you asshole.”

  Seconds passed. Nothing came slavering out of the dark. Because there’s no one. There can’t be. Maybe this was a hallucination. Crap. So not only was she physically ill, but now Elizabeth’s mental problems were leaking out? She couldn’t stand here forever. If only there was a little light.

  At that, the darkness seemed to ease. Not a lot, but the air above her head went a little murky, as if all this was really black fog now beginning to dissipate. Her eyes tracked up to a ceiling that … was glowing? Yes, with a weak, greenish-yellow light. Like that dead end we ran into back in the valley. That had been an energy sink and the outside of the whisper-man’s black-mirror cave. She didn’t think this was the same, though.

  I think about light and the ceiling glows. Her gaze swept down. The light was still very dim, diffuse, and grainy. It reminded her of twilight, just before the day disintegrated.

  Still, she could see well enough. No one here. Not ahead or to either side or behind. No slavering monster, no one with grasping hands. No observer equipped with funky panops or night-vision goggles. She was alone, and there was enough light to see that the cell was about the size of a large bedroom. What was more, the air really did waver. Her first thought: Heat shimmers. Like what radiated from a highway on a really hot day.

  Huh. Her gaze dropped to the floor and a metal plate half-covered with a cloth napkin and a corked, narrow-necked jug. Well, that solved the mystery about what had made such a racket, but … She frowned. Had this been here all along? Possibly; she couldn’t be sure she’d walked a straight line.

  “This makes no sense,” she muttered. I think about a light and the cave starts to glow. She’d wondered about food, and now there it was. She lifted her eyes to the far wall directly before her. I think there might be someone here and I
reach and …

  And through the shimmering dark, she saw the mattress suddenly wobble and ripple. A second later, first the tips of fingers and then a forest of hands sprouted.

  Crying out, she blundered across the room until she felt the opposite wall, and its squirming mattress, jam her shoulders. On the far wall, the hands spread and waggled their fingers like a carpet of flowers or bizarre anemones, and then arms appeared, unspooling in spindly stalks. They began to snake toward her face at the same time that, against her back, the mattress and the rock beneath swelled and then deflated as if something had just blown out a breath. A second later, she felt the creep of fingers along the back of her neck and in her hair. Something spidered onto her shoulder.

  “No! Stop!” Shrieking, she stumbled to the middle of the room. On the wall she’d just left, more hands swayed, like top-heavy tulips, on arms thin as stalks. The cell wasn’t large, and ebony fingers swept through her hair and tugged at snarls. A hand slithered over her shoulder, and then all the hands grabbed to stroke her face, creep over her arms, twine round her waist and legs.

  “Please.” She was gasping. “Go away, go back to wherever you came from.”

  The room shuddered. The many hands undulated like seaweed in a slow tide, keeping time with the ebb and flow of this uncertain air—and then, with a shiver, they drew back the way chameleons recall their tongues, to melt back into the walls.

  “Ohhh.” Whatever string had held her up seemed to snap, and she sank to the floor. Propping herself up on her hands, she focused on simply breathing for a few seconds. What had that been about? That was too damned bizarre. Eyeing the way the walls and this entire space glimmered and heaved, she thought, It’s energy for sure. Energy that … responded to her? Was that why Kramer put her down here, to see what would happen?

  Her eyes fell again to that platter and jug. “To see what I could make?” But why? It wasn’t as if those hands had truly responded to her. She eyed the glowing walls, that swell as wave upon wave of energy flowed through this space. This is like the barn, taking what scares me and making it real. It’s all potential energy, waiting for a strong enough … what? Mind? Organizing principle?

  Her ears pricked to a new sound, not one in her head or in this room. In fact, it was very far away but distinctive enough: a long, metallic creeee.

  What was that? She held herself very still. God, it had gotten so quiet all of a sudden, too. No shouts or bellows. Like someone muted the soundtrack.

  Then, again: creeee …

  Hinges. A door? Images from dozens of horror movies flashed. The grate of iron on stone, the creeeak of rusty hinges. And now, you watch, there’ll be …

  A clop.

  God. She balled her fists. If she was making this happen, she had to cut it—

  Clop-clop-clop.

  Footsteps. With echoes. She sure as hell didn’t just ask for someone to come on down and keep her company, had she? Wait, I wondered about doing nothing until someone came. I thought about whether or not someone would check up on me. “Okay, then you can go away,” she whispered.

  The footsteps only grew louder, which meant they were also closer. Hell, I think someone’s coming for real. That background clamor had also started up again, too.

  A flicker of something to her left. Her head snapped that way, and then she sucked in a breath as a bar of light suddenly appeared under the cell’s door. Oh boy. A yellow glow bobbed and brightened over uneven stone. She could hear the clap of shoes as the long tongue of a shadow dragged from right to left—and she had the queerest sense of déjà vu: I’ve seen this before. When?

  The shadow stopped moving. Silence. Someone listening out there. Checking if she was awake, probably. Should she say something? No, let whoever’s out there make a move. Someone with a legitimate reason to be here would say something. Maybe.

  Boy, I could really use a bat about now. She pitched the thought at the rock. Sawed-off shotgun? But nothing glimmered into existence, and she thought that probably the rock itself might morph, but she couldn’t simply will something to appear. Then what about the plate of food, that jug? Could’ve been here all along, and I just missed it.

  A loud rasp of metal against metal. At the center of the cell door, a small pinprick of yellow-orange light appeared and then blacked out as whoever was there put his eye to the peephole. A scrape of iron as the cover dropped back over the peephole.

  Come on. Emma bit her tongue to corral a shout. All the tiny hairs on her arms and neck stood on end. Elizabeth’s body was weak. If Emma fought, she’d be put down again, given more drug, made to go nighty-night. The footing here was crap, too. Oh yeah, and you’re just so coordinated. A real Lara Croft. But she had to do something.

  Slowly, she dropped to a crouch and made her way to that jug, the plate. Brushing aside the napkin, she saw only a heel of bread and some petrified-looking cheese. No utensils. Of course not; no one gives a lunatic a knife either. She hefted the jug. It was good and heavy. Have to time it just right. If she even got that chance. As quietly as she could, she pulled the jug and plate behind her: jug on the right, plate on the left. For an absurd moment, she wondered if Elizabeth was a righty and then thought, Screw that. I’m in charge.

  A brassy jingle. Keys. Her calves tensed at the scrape of metal as a key socked into place. A crisp, loud, ka-thunk as the lock was disengaged. Then that iron groooannn, a dungeonlike squawww of hinges, as the door swung open and light bloomed. So she got a really good look.

  And thought, Oh shit.

  ELIZABETH

  Shadow

  1

  AT THE TOUCH of that hand, Elizabeth shrieked. Spinning, she tried to run, but her long skirt grabbed her ankles. As she began to fall, something swarmed from the black. She felt strong hands snatch her arms and wrest her upright.

  “Stop. Relax.” A voice, young and male, but very strange, the tones overlapping and buzzing like the notes of a Jew’s harp. “Don’t be afraid, I’m not going to—”

  “Let me go, let me go!” Frantic, she tried wrenching free, but whoever this was, he was tall and his grip was sure. “What are you? Who?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing. Look, I’ll let you go, all right? Just …” The hands relaxed but didn’t release her completely. “Just calm down, okay?”

  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 ba
lcony. 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.