White Space (45 page)

Fatigues
. Rima felt the blood drain from her cheeks, and her arms prickle with a forest of gooseflesh.
Bode’s wearing olive-green fatigues. So was Chad. Tony’s hair was curly and brown. Bode’s hair is dark brown
. Her eyes zeroed in on the girls. The
copper color was right. She hadn’t gotten a good look at Lily, but she’d bet the girl had been a blonde.
And
my
hair …
The trembling had moved from her legs to her chest and arms … 
I never can get those curls to behave
.

The fingers of a shiver tripped up her spine. Casey said the soldiers in the comic were toys. This wasn’t a coincidence, but still her mind insisted:
No, no, don’t be stupid. It can’t be
. But Lizzie had said it:
I always put most of
you
-you in a safe place
.

And then, through the swell of her horror, she realized who
wasn’t
there.
My God, where’s—

“So, Rima.” And then she was staring into Lizzie’s eyes, or they hooked hers, because Rima could feel the
grip
, the
dig
. The beginnings of the
pain
, like a thousand sharp pincers biting her brain. That odd glimmer spread from Lizzie’s eyes and overflowed, rippling through the little girl’s features, which began to shimmer, to smoke. To run together. Lizzie’s cobalt eyes shifted, darkened, deepened,
oiled
 …

Get out
, Rima thought. Her mind was racing; she could hear the shriek in her bones, feel the twitch of her muscles trying to obey, but she couldn’t move.
Run, Rima, run. Get out while you still can. Get out before her eyes change, before they change all the way!

“So,” Lizzie—or whatever this thing really was—said in a whispery voice from a faraway place Rima was certain she had never been, “what game should we play next?”

“IS ANYONE ELSE
freaked out?” Bode’s voice was hushed, as if they’d crept into a cemetery or haunted house instead of onto the porch. The big boy hefted a stout leg from one of the kitchen chairs he and Eric had broken up for clubs. “Because I’m completely there, man,” he said.

“I hear that.” Letting out a long breath, Eric peered over at Emma. “You have any ideas?”

“Other than
everything’s
been swallowed up?” Huddled in her still-damp parka, Emma hunched her shoulders against a shiver of dread. “Not a clue.”

After storming upstairs and finding nothing in Lizzie’s room but the dollhouse and that scatter of toys, they’d swarmed out of the house to find that, once again, everything had changed. Now, the fog was everywhere: a solid white wall that hemmed the house in all the way around. No breaks. No thin spots at all.

She was also bothered by something else she
hadn’t
seen. Earlier, as the others bolted from Lizzie’s room, she’d paused,
her eye falling on that box of porcelain dolls and the pile of six set off to one side.
If we’re book-world characters, this almost makes sense
. It would be like playing with Ariel from
The Little Mermaid
, or Frodo. Or a Captain Kirk action figure. At Holten Prep, there was this one guy who was so seriously obsessed with Stephen King, he snapped up a pair of Carrie action figures for a couple hundred bucks just this past year. She bet there were McDermott fans who did the same. So the dolls weren’t
awful
. What made them unusual was that they were porcelain. Glass.

And if she
was
right about what they were and represented … two were missing. Two dolls that should be there weren’t.

“What do you mean, it’s disappeared?” Casey’s skin was drawn down tight over his skull. Purple smudges formed half-moons in the hollows beneath his stormy eyes. Wound around his neck like a talisman was Rima’s scarf, which she’d left in the downstairs family room. “The barn’s got to be there. We’ve searched the whole house. The barn’s the only place left to look.”

“Then we got this huge problem, don’t we?” Bode waved his club at the fog, which hadn’t spilled onto the porch but simply
stopped
at the very edge. “That stuff’s pea soup. You could wander out five feet and get lost.”

Walling us in
. The air was rich with that same metallic stink, too: crushed aluminum and wet copper. It was the smell of blood and this weird snow and the blackness down cellar.
Everything that’s happened before keeps happening over and over again
. Clamping her hands under her arms, she shivered, hugging herself harder.
But I don’t understand what the point is
.

“It’s daring us to come and get them,” Eric said, and she
had the weirdest sense he’d somehow provided her with an answer. “Rima and Lizzie are insurance, that’s all.”

“Then why cover up the barn?” Bode asked. “Why make the fog worse?”

“Upping the ante. It’s another test.” Eric looked at her. “You said that everything you’ve done is preparation for the next step. What if this is it?”

“Crossing through the fog?” She frowned. “What kind of test would
that
be?” What he’d said also made her think of something else: what if House
wasn’t
all Lizzie’s mom, or even a healthy chunk? They’d assumed House was a safe haven.
I’m missing something
. “I guess I could try finding them with the cynosure and pulling them through?” She heard the question and made a face. “Somehow I don’t think that will work. I really think we’re supposed to do exactly what Lizzie wanted: go over there.”

“So can we stop talking and spouting theories that get us nowhere and just
do
something here for a change?” Casey’s voice hummed with frustration. “God, Lizzie was right. You guys are overthinking this! Come on, let’s just
go
!”

“Not so fast, kid.” Bode reached for Casey’s arm, but a single black glare from the younger boy, and Bode thrust his hand into a jacket pocket. “I know you’re hot to trot, and I don’t blame you. But we got to think this through. Remember: other characters … other
people
, have been here before,” Bode said, grimly. “Things haven’t turned out so great for them. If we’re walking into a fight, we need more and better weapons than the crap we’ve found so far.”

Crap
was right. While the boys had been dismantling kitchen chairs for clubs, Emma had unearthed three
flashlights, a lighter, and a packet of birthday candles (blue, of course). Toss in the box of fireplace matches and Eric’s Glock, and that was it for weapons. All the long guns—Bode’s rifle and shotgun, the shotgun Casey had retrieved from that church—were gone, left behind in the doomed truck. Not that it would’ve mattered, anyway, because they had no ammunition.

Emma watched as Eric stepped to the edge of the porch and looked down to where his snowmobile ought to be. A thoughtful expression drifted over his face. “What?” she asked.

“Got an idea. Wait a second.” Darting back into the house, he returned a few moments later with a can of Swiss Miss in one hand and the lacy curtains that had hung from the kitchen window bunched in the other.

“Hey, you want to kill someone,” Bode said, “you go for the Nestlé Quik.”

“Ha-ha.” But Eric was grinning.

“What’s the can for?” Casey asked.

“Gas,” Eric said. “There’s a siphon and an empty can in the rumble seat of the Skandic. Big Earl used to …” He stopped, his jaw hardening. “
We
always carry them, just in case. And there’s a whole quart of oil, too.”

“So what?”

“So we fill up this Swiss Miss can and maybe a couple more. The gas might come in handy.”

“Well, you and Emma are kind of walking gas tanks already,” Bode observed. “But yeah, I see where you’re going.”

“
I
don’t,” Casey said.

She did. “Fire. Bombs.”

“Bombs?”
Casey gaped. “You mean, like Molotov cocktails?”

“Well, not exactly,” Eric said. “We don’t have the right bottles.”

“What about the peanut butter?” Emma said. “We could empty the jars.”

“For a Molotov?” Bode made a face. “Might work, but the mouths are really wide and you have to score the glass to get it to blow up right. We don’t have that kind of time anyway.”

“How do you guys
know
these things?” Casey asked.

“Books,” Eric and Emma said together.

“ ’Nam,” Bode said.

“Gas burns and so does oil.” Eric cocked his head back at the house. “Grab a couple sheets from the beds upstairs, tear some into strips to wind around these chair legs, soak ’em in oil, and then we have torches.”

“But we can’t see the snowmobile,” Bode pointed out. “The same thing you’re worried about with the barn could happen here. Get yourself turned around, might not find your way back.” He paused. “Or it could be like what went down in the truck.”

“The fog swallowing and then taking me somewhere? Possible, but I have a feeling this is the end of the line. Anyway, we know where the snowmobile
was
.” Eric held up the curtains. “Tie these together, make ourselves a rope, I’m good to go.”

“Not alone, you’re not. I’m coming with you.” When Eric opened his mouth to protest, Emma put up a warning hand.
“Don’t even start. We’ve already seen what the fog can throw at us. There’s no telling what could come out of it. You can’t siphon and watch your back at the same time.”

“Emma, the chances of anything bad happening to me are small,” Eric argued. “I’m not trying to leave. I only want another weapon.”

“Which it may not want you to have.”

“You popping off shots in a whiteout—”

“Is a terrible idea,” she finished for him. “Promise, I won’t do that.”

“But I thought you didn’t like guns,” Bode said.

“And I still don’t.” She hefted a chair leg. “Let’s go.”

“KEEP TALKING.” ERIC
was looping a last knot of lacy curtain around his middle. “It’ll keep me oriented. If I don’t answer, give me a chance to tug or something. If you don’t get anything, then you guys pull us back. Whatever you do”—he gave the knot a final yank—“for God’s sake, don’t let go.”

Bode tightened his grip on the very end of the makeshift rope. “We’re on it.”

“What do you want me to say?” Casey said, paying out lacy curtain from the coils in his hands.

“I don’t care.” Eric shuffled to the first step with Emma, one hand hooked into his waistband, a half step behind. “Sing. Tell jokes. Whatever.”

“La-la-la-la,” Bode droned.

“Something with a beat would be nice,” Eric said.

“Row, row, row your boat …” Bode might be a decent soldier, but his voice made Emma’s brain hurt.

“Oh, that’s much better,” she said.

“MERRILY, MERRILY, MERRILY,
MERRILY
,” Bode boomed. “Life is but a—”

“Shut up.” Casey’s skin was white as salt. “Just shut the hell up. This isn’t funny.”

“Easy, Case,” Eric said.

“You shut up, too,” Casey said. “If it was Emma, you’d be the same way.”

Despite everything, her neck heated and she was grateful that Eric didn’t look her way. After a small silence, Bode said, “I’m sorry, kid. I was just blowing off some steam.”

“Yeah.” Doubling up on the makeshift rope, Casey set his feet and lifted his chin at Eric. “Go. And be careful.” He looked at Emma. “Don’t let anything happen to him.”

She only nodded, then looked to Eric, who stood to her left, and raised her eyebrows. “Ready?”

“Uh-huh.” Eric’s mouth had set in a determined line. “You stay close.”

“Don’t worry about that.” Her fist tightened around the chair leg. “Any closer, I’ll be on
your
left.”

At the edge of the porch, Eric hesitated, then put out a gloved hand. Emma watched the fog swirl and then cinch down around Eric’s wrist as if Eric had stuck his hand into a vat of whipped cream. “What’s it feel like?” she asked. “Is it cold?”

“Not really.” Eric’s eyebrows tented in a bemused frown. “Kind of thick, though. Almost … molten.”

“Can’t see your hand from here, man. It’s like it got
amputated,” Bode said, passing Emma a flashlight. “I don’t think the light’s going to do you any good. That stuff’s too soupy and the light will scatter. But I’m curious how far you can go before
we
lose it.”

The answer was about five feet. On the first step, Emma could still look back and see two hazy shadows. By the second step, Casey and Bode had disappeared.

“It’s totally weird.” Casey’s voice was flatter than paper and as insubstantial as mist. “We see the rope, but it looks like it’s holding itself up.”

With Eric’s left hand wrapped tightly around the porch railing, they eased to the third step and then the fourth; at their feet, the fresh-fallen snow humped and sifted. Yet the snow made absolutely no sound at all. The air was still and silent. Eric was right, too; she felt the fog as something turgid, like tepid Jell-O just beginning to set.

Or blood on the verge of clotting
. The hairs on her neck prickled; a scrape of fear dragged over her chest.
What are you doing?
Annoyed, she clamped her jaws until the small muscles complained.
Stop it, you nut
.

“Guys.” Casey’s voice reached them from what sounded like very far away: “Found it yet?”

“Not yet,” Eric said.

“Eric?” A beat, and then they heard Casey call again: “Eric?”

“I said, not
yet
!” Eric called.

Bode: “Barely hear you, man. You guys sure you’re still by the house?”

“About as sure as I can be.” Eric stretched his right hand, groped through the white muck, and shouted: “I feel the
hedges. The sled’s got to be maybe ten feet in front of me.”

“What if it’s not here?” She thought she saw something flit past to her right, but when she darted a look, there was nothing but the fog. Weird. She was certain she’d seen a figure. A man? Rima?

No
. She reined in on the images that tried forming right behind her eyes.
Don’t do that. Don’t think of a specific person or try to pull meaning out of this stuff. That’s what it wants. Remember what happened to Rima and Casey
.