Yet Lily was dead. That was no dream. And her forehead hurt. Squinting at her reflection, she gingerly finger-walked the wound. The ragged edges were raw, and a purplish lump bulged like a unicorn’s horn. Touching it sent off a sparkle of pain.
“So this is real.” At the wave of relief, she gave a tremulous laugh. “Of course it is. I’ve been scared in dreams, but I’ve never gotten all banged up or cut, and if I have, I don’t remember, and I’ve never felt pain.” Lucky I didn’t crack my skull either. Can that happen if you’ve already got plates—
She never finished that thought. She felt the words curl in on themselves as tightly as snails withdrawing into their shells.
Because that was when her brain finally caught up to what was going on with that mirror—and, more to the point, what was happening in it.
“Oh, holy shit,” she said.
4
LOOK IN A mirror, any mirror, even the goofy ones at the county fair. Raise your right hand. From your reflection’s perspective, you’re raising your left hand, so your reflection raises its left. Equal but opposite. Put your right hand on the glass and your reflection’s left hand floats to meet you.
But when Emma raised her right hand, her reflection lifted its right. Equal … but not opposite.
“What?” Startled, she took a step back—
And watched her reflection take a step forward.
“Oh God.” A sudden cold sweat started on her upper lip. That can’t be happening. I hit my head. That’s what this is. I’ve been blinking a lot. I’m seeing things. “It’s all head trauma,” she said, and let her right hand drift up again. “This is nothing but—”
The rest wouldn’t come, because, this time, her reflection did nothing. Not a thing. Didn’t move its hand. Didn’t step back either.
“Stop that,” she said to her reflection. “What’s—” Ohhh, God. She heard her breath gush from her mouth. She was talking. Her mouth had moved.
But her reflection’s hadn’t. That thing with her face hadn’t matched her words at all but only stared, mute and waxen as a doll, as soulless as a mannequin.
Get out. Her knees were beginning to shake. In another second, if she didn’t get moving, her legs would give out and she’d fall, maybe faint. Get out of this house while you still can. Run, ru—
Her reflection moved toward her.
“Oh shit.” Emma breathed. Rooted to the spot, she watched as her reflection took a step and then another and another until it was plastered against the glass, its features flattening like those of a kid peering into the darkened front of a candy store. Run, you nut, run. But she couldn’t make herself move. It was as if she’d turned to stone.
Something tugged her wrist.
“What?” She stared at her right hand, which was starting to jitter. Her fingers twitched. “Stop that,” she said to her hand. “Cut that out. Stop!”
Her hand … moved. On its own. Without her telling it to.
No. Stop, she thought to her hand. Stop what you’re doing. “Don’t, Emma,” she said, hoarsely, as her fingers floated for the mirror. “Don’t, don’t!”
Her hand didn’t care. She watched herself reach for the glass and thought back to earlier that day: that strange compulsion to push through her driver’s side window—where the barrier’s thinnest—and bleed to some other time and place.
“Bleed,” she said, and felt her heart give a tremendous lurch. In my blink, Lizzie’s dad cut himself. When his blood touched that weird mirror, the glass began to change.
“Don’t touch it,” she quavered. All the tiny hairs on her neck and arms bristled. This wasn’t the same mirror; she hadn’t cut herself. But then why wasn’t her hand obeying? Whoever heard of a reflection that acted more like a double trapped on the other side of the glass? Alice in Wonderland syndrome is right. “Emma, don’t do this.”
But her hand just wouldn’t listen. As her fingers met the bathroom mirror’s silvered glass, a startled cry tore from her lips. The icy mirror burned; her fingers instantly numbed, and yet she was still reaching, pressing, pushing …
This is like when I was twelve and wandered down into Jasper’s cellar to find a book, she thought with stupefied horror. I couldn’t stop myself back then either. This was a nightmare, like Neo at the mirror, after he’d swallowed the red pill. Stop, I want the blue pill, she thought, crazily, as she kept pushing. “Help,” she panted, “somebody, help, he—”
Now, the glass dimpled. It rippled and swam. It opened itself like a mouth.
“No!” Her heart smashed against her ribs. Wrapping her free hand around her forearm, she braced her feet and tried pulling her hand free, but her arm only kept going as first her fingers and then her hand sank into the glass …
And met the flesh of her reflection.
“God … House, stop!” she shouted. In the mirror, her reflection was still rigid and unmoving. The space on its side of the mirror was icy cold and felt … Dead. It feels dead, like a corpse, like Lily. It was as if her hand didn’t belong to her anymore, or that the lines between her brain and her hand had been cut. Instead, she could only watch as her fingers spidered over her reflection: its cheeks, its nose, its jaw. Dark—this is what dark feels like.
“I don’t even know what that means,” she said, her voice breaking with terror. And dark … in her blinks, Lizzie knew about the Dark Passages. Was this what she was talking about? Had this been what Jasper meant?
But this is just a bathroom. Jasper was a lush. It’s the wrong mirror. It’s not the mirror I saw in a blink; it’s not even close to the Dickens Mirror—
“Dickens Mirror?” Where did that come from? She watched her thumb skim her reflection’s lower lip. “House, what the hell is the Dickens Mi—” She shrieked as a phantom finger ghosted over her lower lip. What she was doing to that reflection, she felt: her touch over her skin, on her side of the glass.
“Ahhh … God,” she moaned. She couldn’t even turn her head away. Her whole body crawled as if she’d thrust her arms up to the elbows in a vat of decaying flesh and slick, gooey pus. If she could’ve unzipped and shrugged out of her skin, she would’ve. I am crazy. “Please, House,” she gasped, “please, God, let this be a dream! I promise, I’ll take my meds. I don’t care if I walk around in a fog for the rest of my life; I don’t want to see this or be here! I only want to wake—”
Quick as a snake, her reflection seized her hand, still buried on its side of the mirror, by the wrist.
“AH!” Emma tried shrinking back but couldn’t break her reflection’s grip. It pulled, yanking Emma in a stumbling lurch toward the glass. She was aware, but only vaguely, that there was now no sink in her way. There seemed, in fact—and for the briefest of moments—to be no bathroom at alclass="underline" the walls, the floor, the ceiling wrinkling to nothing, evaporating in a glimmer.