No. Now it’s her dad who shakes his head. No, Lizzie, you don’t know what you’re saying. This is not for you. It’s too dangerous.
Frank. Mom’s face is wet. Did you just hear yourself? Don’t you understand that you are risking us by risking yourself?
Meredith. Sweetheart. Dad’s eyes are watery and red. I know you’re afraid, but I’m still here, and I would sell my soul for you, I would die for you, I would take your place and never think twice, but please, please, don’t ask me to stop. You don’t understand what could happen. I swear, Love, I’ve still got it under control—
Control? Mom screams. She pulls away from Dad, leaving him with nothing but air. You’ve got it under control? Then what the hell was that woman doing in our attic?
3
SO, IN THE end, Dad promises to stop working on the new book, not to try writing it again or even make notes to squirrel away in London. Not one word. He swears to let this story fade away. Cross his heart.
Hope to die.
4
TWO MONTHS LATER, Mom sends Lizzie to call her father for supper.
This is the first time since the crazy lady that Lizzie’s gone to Dad’s barn, which broods on a hill. Mom’s told her to stay away: Your father needs space and time to mourn. Like the book inside, Dad has to rot.
Lizzie’s missed the loft. Before, Dad let her play as he worked, and she made up tons of adventures for her dolls with all her special Lizzie-symbols: squiggles, triangles, spirals, curlicues, arrows, ziggies, zaggies, diddlyhumps, swoozels, and more things with special Lizzie-names. Just a different way of making book-worlds for her dolls, that’s all. Not that either parent knows what she can do. If her mom found out? Oh boy, watch out. So she doesn’t tell. No big deal. No one’s ever gotten hurt.
Well … not counting the monster-doll, which started out life as a daddy-doll but got left in her mom’s Kugelrohr oven too long on accident because Mom let her set the timer and Lizzie messed up. The heat was so bad the monster-doll’s glass head melted, his eyes slumping into this giant, creepy, violet third eye. Afterward, the monster-doll was really cranked, like, Hello, what were you thinking, you stupid little kid? She tried explaining it wasn’t on purpose, but oh boy, the monster-doll wasn’t having any of that. Mom said he was ruined and tossed the monster-doll into the discards bucket, but Lizzie felt guilty because the whole thing really was her fault. So, quiet as a mouse, she snuck back into Mom’s workshop and fished the monster-doll’s head from the bucket.
Problem is … her stomach gets a squiggly feeling whenever they play. The inside of the monster-doll’s head is all gluey-ooky, the thoughts sticky as spiderwebs. Every time she pulls out, she worries there’s a tiny bit of her left all tangled with him. Sometimes, she even wonders if she oughtn’t to swoosh the monster-doll to a special Now where he can’t hurt anyone. She hasn’t, though.
Because, really? Some monster-doll thoughts are … kind of exciting. He shows her how to do stuff in other Nows, too, most of which isn’t that scary. Well, except for that humongous storm this past July. Wow, it took her three whole days to figure out how to turn that thing off. But she’s got it under control.
Like Dad.
5
LIZZIE SLIPS FROM the house with Marmalade on her heels. The night is deep and dark and very cold. The stars glitter like the distant Nows of the Dark Passages. Icy gravel pops and crunches beneath her shoes.
At the barn door, though, Marmalade suddenly balks. “Oh, come on, don’t be such an old scaredy-cat.” When the orange tom only shows his needle-teeth, she says what Mom always does when Lizzie misbehaves: “My goodness, what’s gotten into you?” (Really, it’s the other way around; Mom doesn’t know the half of it.)
But then Marmalade lets go of a sudden, rumbling growl and spits and swats. Gasping, Lizzie snatches her hand back. Wow, what was that about? She watches the cat sprint into the night. She’s never heard Marmalade growl. She didn’t know cats could. She thinks about going after the tom, but Dad always says, De cat came back de very next day.
Sliding into the still, dark barn is like drifting on the breath of a dream into a black void. Ahead, a vertical shaft of thin light spills from the loft. Voices float down, too: her dad—
And someone else.
Lizzie stops dead. Holds her breath. Listens.
That other voice is bad and gargly, like screams bubbling up from deep water. This voice is wrong. Just wrong.
Uh-oh. Her skin goes creepy-crawly. If Dad’s doom-voice could be a feeling, that’s what drapes itself over her now, like when she gets a high fever and the blankets are too hot and heavy. Only she can’t kick this off. She remembers how Marmalade didn’t want to come inside. How Marmalade sometimes stares, not at birds or bright coins of sunlight but the space between, while his tail goes twitch-swish. The cat sees something Lizzie doesn’t. So maybe Marmalade knows something now, too.
Lizzie chews the side of her thumb. She has a couple choices here. She can pretend nothing’s happened. She can run right back to her nice, safe house where her mother waits and there is hot chocolate and supper, warm on the table. Or she can lie and say Dad wasn’t hungry. Or she could sing, La-la-la, hello, it’s Lizzie, Daddy; I’m coming up now! Yeah, she likes that one. Make a noise; give Dad a chance to pull himself together so he can keep his promise to Mom, and it will be their pinky-swear secret.
But wait, Lizzie. The whisper-voice—she knows it’s not her—is teeny-tiny but drippy and gooey somehow, like mist blown from a straw filled with India ink. Don’t you want to see how he really uses the Mirror? He’s never let you watch. Go out and play, he says. That’s what adults always say when what they mean is, Get lost, you stupid little kid.
This, she considers, is true.
Oh, come onnn, Lizzieee, the voice coaxes. Thisss is your big chance for something really gooood.
The tug of that voice is the set of a fishhook in her brain. It is, she thinks, a little bit like the monster-doll’s voice. But so what? She’s played with the monster-doll in lots of times and Nows, and no big deal. Besides, wouldn’t she like to know about the mirror?
You bet I do. Her tongue goes puckery, and her heart gives a little jump of excitement. So she decides, Just a peek.
Lizzie creeps up the ladder, oh-so-carefully, quietly. Three more steps … two … Then, she hesitates. Lizzie might be just a kid, but she’s no dummy. The gargly voice reminds her of when she’s stayed too long in her monster-doll’s head: a feeling that is sticky and gucky and thick.
Oh, go on, you old scaredy-cat, the whisper-voice says. You’ve come this far.
So Lizzie watches her fingers wrap themselves around the last rung, and then she’s easing herself up on tiptoe—
6
THE LOFT IS one big space. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves line the north and west walls. Feeble light fans from table lamps. The only picture, a copy of Dickens’ Dream, hangs on one wall. Dad says what makes Dickens’ Dream so interesting is that the painter died before he could finish, and that guy had taken over for another artist who blew his brains out after working on a couple of Dickens’ books. (Which kind of makes you think, Whoa, who got inside his head?)