The Dickens Mirror (45 page)

They are our death
. She couldn’t move. Really, where could she run anyway? The fog, perhaps, if it would’ve taken her. Less than two seconds had passed, and they were coming for her now, hundreds of them corkscrewing, eeling, riding a seemingly endless red river of the girl’s blood. She felt the moist flick of something on her cheek and then dozens more, and all at once, they sprang for her exposed flesh and writhed over her face. As soon as she opened her mouth to scream, they leapt into her mouth and she felt them instantly swim down her throat, fan out through her lungs. Agony detonated in her chest. Her knees buckled. Somewhere, in the far distance, she heard Emma screaming and knew the squirmers had found the girl, too, and then that knowledge winked out and there was only pain and the constant burrowing, slithering, chewing.

Rima barely registered when she hit the ground, though she saw white rush for her face; felt the crawl and rapid slither up her cheeks. Black filaments swarmed before her vision, and as they reared to strike, she saw them, up close, for what they were: bristling maws and glaring red pinpricks for eyes.

She managed a single, last scream.

Way Out

FROM THE LAST
cell on the left, an arm shot out.

Shrieking, she stumbled, her boots skidding over stone as a hand wrapped itself around her left arm and gave her a single, powerful
yank
. A short distance ahead, she saw Bode begin to turn, but he wouldn’t get there in time. This thing was already reeling her in like a hooked fish.

“No!” she screamed as that churning, roiling blank of a face loomed. Elizabeth was small, and this thing was taller by a head. In her right hand, she still had the candle in its iron holder, and now she pistoned her arm in a hard punch, an uppercut to the jaw. Whatever else this man-thing was, it had skin, and she felt the moment of impact, the slight hesitation as the spike pierced and then skewered flesh and drove into denser tissue.

For a split second, there was nothing. Then, the thing’s face bloomed and became a mouth—or maybe only an opening; she couldn’t tell, and it didn’t matter. What erupted was a bristling maw. No eyes, no nose, no other features: just that mouth jammed full of spiky teeth. Clawing at its neck, the thing bawled, a loud,
guttural blast of a bellow as a torrent of black ichor, hot and sticky, spurted from beneath its jaw. It blundered back, the spike of the candle holder still jittering, and shrieked again, except the sound was multiplied, a clamor that rose and doubled on itself. Despite her terror, she looked back down the tunnel and saw why.
All
the things were screaming, each and every blank’s face peeling back like lips to reveal open mouths, sharp teeth.

“Come on! Don’t
look
!” It was Bode, face cramped with horror. Whirling her around, he jammed a hand between her shoulders and crowded her on ahead in the junction. “Go go
go
!”

“Which way, which way?” Her chest was heaving. Sweat glued hair to her forehead and cheeks. Behind, the creatures’ screams were climbing in a Doppler crescendo. As they rushed into the four-way junction, she snatched another gasping breath. “Bode, which way?” Then she stopped short as her stomach bottomed out. “Bode?”

“They’re gone.” Bode spun around so quickly he’d have fallen if she hadn’t grabbed his arm. “All the passages are gone, even the tunnel with your cell! But how can they be
gone
? We just passed them; they were just
here
!”

We’re at a dead end, just like in the valley
. She threw a wild eye over blank, glowing rock. Without the cynosure, she was certain she’d never get through this. She wasn’t sure this was even the same type of rock.
But you did it once
. She pressed her hands against a cool blank of glassy stone.
Come on, you stupid rock. You grew hands before. Now, give me …

She felt it happen: a slight push and swell. Then the rock glimmered, rippling like thick mercury under her hands as the stone wavered and began to melt.

“Christ!”
Bode stared. The entire rock was in motion,
undulating and churning in the same way as those blank creatures and Weber’s face. “How’d you do that?”

“I don’t know.”
This can’t be the Mirror or this
Now’s
version of it, can it? Or down cellar, my back door?
That felt too easy. It would mean the answer had been under Kramer’s nose the whole time—and he was part of this
Now
. This had to be like House’s library door and that bathroom mirror.
They were all illusions designed as … tests? Training? Blank faces, blank rock …
The creatures’ screams were a swarm, growing louder, bigger, swelling to fill the junction as, low to the ground, the suddenly liquid margins of the stone pulled up and apart in a black inverted grin: the mouth of a low tunnel.
If this was a test, though, that means someone’s pulling the strings
. Probably Kramer. But why? Simply to see what she could do?

Or to see what Meme—her doppelgänger—might?

The cells opened because of her. Those things came after us … because of her
.

“You understand they’re driving us.” The voice wasn’t hers, but she almost didn’t recognize Elizabeth’s either. “
She’s
driving us. Yeah, I opened that, but it might not really be
me
doing anything.”

“A trap?” Bode had already dropped into a crouch. “Don’t think it much matters. This is a way out. You want to stay here, wait for those things to catch us?”

Meme cares about Bode. She won’t hurt him
. She hoped. In the back of her too-quiet mind, she wondered if Elizabeth knew how Meme felt about the boy.
And where are you, Eric? Rima?

“Go.” She crowded in behind Bode.
“Hurry.”

Still Waters

AS SOON AS
they’d scrambled through the entrance, she felt space above them, though not that kind of expansive soaring away she’d sensed in those first few moments in the barn, before her Bode’s nightmares of VC tunnels had sprung to life, or when she’d gotten them through that energy sink into the whisper-man’s mirror-cave. This ceiling was simply higher, and her first thought:
Like a mine
. Then, a second thought:
Oh crap
. Clamping down, reining in her thoughts, she waited, skin fizzing, for the space to shift around her, but nothing happened.
Okay, so it’s not responding to me
. Or maybe it was that the whole mine thing hadn’t been that big a deal. Except for the moment that dude turned off his light and she’d almost killed herself stepping into an old flooded shaft … mostly, she’d had a good time. Hell, she’d already lived through the valley, and if that hadn’t been a nightmare, she didn’t know what was.

At least she didn’t have to keep running. She wasn’t sure how much longer she’d have lasted before Elizabeth’s body just up and quit.
Take a breath
. She backhanded sweat from her forehead and
blood from her mouth.
Take it easy and think about this a second. Whether this is Meme or you, you’re here for a reason
. That’s the way it had been with House and in the barn: every scenario designed to get her to act in a certain way—or learn a skill.
This wasn’t just good luck
. On the other hand, this really might have nothing to do with her. Then … with Bode? Did he have some ability, like Rima? Like Casey?

Behind, she felt something close down. There was no sound, nothing dramatic. It was only a feeling of the rock drawing down and in.
Shit
. Before she even turned, she knew what had happened, because she didn’t hear the creatures anymore. The entrance was gone. That diffuse glow faded, too, drawing down like the wick of a dying candle. Within seconds, it was black as pitch. They were sealed inside, like flies in amber.

For a second, neither spoke. The moist air was musty and stale, as if they’d cracked the door on a basement room no one had visited in years. She could hear the slight
plik
of water dripping onto stone and more pattering onto her hair to trickle along her scalp. Otherwise, it was so quiet she heard Bode swallow.

“What happened to the rock?” Bode’s voice spooled from the darkness. “Why’s it not glowing no more?”

“Good question.” This was as bad as when that chain-smoking miner dude switched off his lamp. Her heart kicked, and she could feel fresh sweat pop on her upper lip. Maybe she’d been wrong about the rock here. If Meme or Kramer had more control than she did … Extending a hand, she leaned left until she felt her fingertips brush stone.
Light would be nice
, she thought. But the cave stayed dark.
Why is that? This worked before
. Had this space been responding to something else going on below her awareness? Maybe … Elizabeth, deciding she needed light or a
way to see out of my head? Just because her mind was quiet didn’t mean there wasn’t an awful lot going on in there.
So those hands in the cell might have appeared because
Elizabeth
thought about touching something
. But Elizabeth couldn’t have that kind of power on her own. If she did, she’d have gotten herself out of here long ago.

Wait a second
. Her breath caught.
Meme said I brought shadows, Eric and Casey and Rima and God knows who else. I know they’re in me; Eric and Elizabeth actually
fought
for control. So what if what happened in the cell is because something touched Elizabeth?

God, could it be that this space—the rock—responded only to the shadows? Then what about Meme?
She’s my double, what I would look like if I were in my own body
. And if McDermott truly had drawn energy from the Dark Passages to craft his fictions, mold his characters … make
Emma
 … what was Meme? How close was the other girl to the shadows?

“They’s only two things scare me more than those things out there: drowning and the dark.” Bode tried a laugh that sounded strangled and too high. “Or maybe it’s only tight places. Squirmers, too, actually. You know how they punished us at Coram? If we nicked food because we were hungry, and the thing is, we was always hungry? Put us in a pit for an old privy. Damn thing filled up when it rained, and I couldn’t swim or even tread water. Never learned and—”

“Bode, stop talking.” He did, instantly, as if he’d been switched off. But she could hear him panting. “Freaking out is what they want.”

“How you know that?”

“I just do, okay? Trust me on this. Come on, stop it. You’re hyperventilating.” From the sound of his breathing, he was ahead of her and a little to her left. Shuffling toward him, she heard
the gurgle and slop as her boots splashed through standing water. “Get a grip.”

“Oh,
wonderful
,” he said, still in that strangled, half-hysterical voice. “All we need now is a flood as the topper to an already perfect day.”

“Bode, will you shut the hell up?” She tensed, half-expecting to hear the roar of floodwaters heading their way. Sloshing over to Bode, she waved a hand back and forth until her fingers brushed a sleeve. “Take it easy. Do you still have your candle?”

She had to ask the question again before he said, “Hold on.” She felt him move, and then he was wrapping his free hand around her left wrist. “You got that match safe?” he asked. “I’m afraid to go reaching around for my box. Might drop the candle.”

“Yes.” Drawing out the brass box, she carefully thumbed the hinged lid and tweezed out a single match. “How do I light it?”

“Striker. It’s a ridged groove on the bottom of the case … yeah,” he said as the match spat to life. “ ’At’s better. Here.” He touched the flame to his candle. His forehead glistened with sweat in the candlelight. “Sorry. Just … had a bad case.”

“You’re not the only one.” She’d coughed up so much blood as they’d run through tunnels, her tongue tasted as if she’d been licking the bottom of her old red Radio Flyer wagon. Her chest was one big ache, front and back.

“So what do we do? We can’t stay here.”

“Yeah.” She suspected that if they tried, something would happen to force them on. She could see about ten feet with their candle’s meager light. The water rippling around their feet was maybe a couple inches. If it didn’t get any deeper, they ought to be okay, though the rocks would be slippery. “Bode, do you know why it’s so wet?”

“Lambeth’s marshland. Flooded all the time until they built the Embankment’s what I heard.” Moving forward a few feet, he held the candle at arm’s length and pointed up at crossbeams bolted to the ceiling and at vertical timbers, bloated with water, topped with cap blocks. “Look at that, will you? Never seen anything like that.”

“I have. Old mine.” She pointed at a length of corroded metal bolted to the left wall. “Is that a ladder?”

“What’s left of one, looks like.” High-stepping over, he craned a look up. “Yeah, I see the hole. And look here, right alongside.” He peered more closely. “It’s a hole bored into the rock. Not for a bolt.” He made an
aha
noise. “I’ll bet it’s for one of those iron candle picks, so your hands’d be free. I wondered why the kitchen had them. You know,” he said as she sloshed over to join him, “I know worse than nothing when it comes to things like this, though I had chums liked to wallow through sewers looking for coins, dropped purses, combs. They used ladders to get in and out, so this makes sense if it’s one of the old drainage spillways. Don’t all of them open to the surface, though. Some go to the Thames, but others drain into underground rivers. On the south side alone, they’s”—he counted under his breath—“eight or nine, I think.”

“I don’t think I want to find more water.” She could picture them winding through endless passages, going deeper and deeper, the roar growing louder and louder.

“Well, we can’t stay here. Just got to hope we find a ladder to the surface, or maybe turn up close to the old criminal wings. Air’s cold, so might be a vent or open pocket. So long as the rock doesn’t come alive again, I’m good with that.” After a pause, Bode added, “Meme let us in here for a reason?”