“Sorry, Case.” Eric made a face. “I think maybe two, three breaks? Or only cracks … I learned battlefield stuff, the basics, but I’m no medic.”
“It jab when you breathe?” When Casey nodded, Bode said, “Yeah, they’re probably broke. Not a whole bunch you can do, and they’ll heal up on their own okay. If they got tape in this place, I can show you how to splint them, maybe make you a little more comfortable. Duct tape’d be good.” Bode’s eyes drifted over to Lizzie. “I don’t suppose you’re smart enough to whip up a little first aid kit?”
“Don’t be such an asshole,” Emma said.
“I don’t know if there’s a kit, or … duck tape, whatever that is.” Lizzie’s arms tightened around her knees. “I’ve never needed any band-aids or iodine or stuff. Maybe there’s something in one of the bathrooms, or kitchen.”
“I’ll be okay.” Grimacing, Casey slid his arms into a faded denim shirt Eric had unearthed from an upstairs bedroom. “But I’m with Bode,” he said, gingerly touching a large purple splotch of bruise splashed over his jaw. He hadn’t said how that had happened, but the way he and Rima had glanced at one another when Eric asked made Emma wonder. “My bruises feel pretty real,” Casey said as he flexed the swollen, split knuckles of his right hand.
“And see, that’s just wrong.” Bode struck another match. “The kid’s all beat up. Pain and getting hurt and dying kind of go against this whole we’re outta some book shit.”
“Not just some book.” Emma pulled Echo Rats from the McDermott novels she’d taken from the library that had just … appeared? Been behind that slit-door all along? Or was the library made as this family room had been: when House decided she needed it? The slit-door was also gone, replaced by an ordinary wooden door with an ordinary knob. Inside was a normal, ordinary library with floor-to-ceiling shelves crammed with books. Only one detail in that room gave her pause: a copy of some painting of Dickens, mounted next to shelves crammed with the writer’s works. The only picture in House she’d seen so far, the painting featured Dickens, napping, in his library. Floating all around were various characters from his novels and stories, but the piece looked unfinished. Only a portion had any color: Dickens, a few of the characters, some of the books. The rest was nothing more than an outline, a compositional rendering. She really recognized only one character hovering above Dickens’s right hand, because it was one of the most famous: Little Nell on her deathbed.
So what … this was a clue? No Mirror in the background that she could see. Perhaps one of Dickens’s own books was important? Or a character? Well, hell if she knew, and they had bigger problems.
But she’d also noticed something else: no radio in that library, or anywhere. In fact, she hadn’t heard that scratchy static-filled broadcast about murders since she’d pulled the others into House. Didn’t know what to think about that either, or why that broadcast, so constant across situations—whether it was with Lily or in House, or way back, down cellar—had dogged her in the first place.
“This book,” she said now, holding up the novel. Two red eyes, with slits for pupils, stared out from the center of a pitch-black cover. “Your story.”
“We don’t know that,” Bode snorted. “So the guy used my name. Big deal. Don’t tell me you never saw your name in a book and didn’t get a little weirded out.”
She knew what Bode was saying. The effect was jarring, a mental hitch, like blundering over an exposed root. The paper she’d written for the Jane Austen unit in English last year was torture, like analyzing a weird, alien twin. “This is different, Bode. You must feel it, even if you don’t want to believe it. What other explanation is there? And don’t say drugs or you’re drunk or something. This would have to be the most detailed bad trip of all time, and you know it.”
“I don’t know anything, and neither do you. You’re spouting theories.” Bode’s jaw set. “Point is I’m me, right here, flesh and blood. You read that book? Is this crazy valley in there, or you guys? This house?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t go over Echo Rats in class. But I doubt we’re in there, or this situation. The jacket says the novel takes place in Vietnam and Wyoming.”
“Where you said you and Chad were this morning,” Eric put in.
“And still could be now,” Bode said.
“No,” Lizzie said. “We’re not anywhere, really, or any-when.”
“What does that mean, Lizzie?” Rima asked, at the same time that Bode rolled his eyes and drawled, “Oh yeah, that’s so clear.”
God, the way certain things kept repeating and echoing was starting to weird her out. “What about this?” Flipping the book over, Emma quickly jumped her gaze from that black-and-white photo to the blurb. She doubted any scaly-armed monsters would suddenly corkscrew free, but you couldn’t be too careful. “The blurb says 1967, Vietnam, Seventh Cav, C company, black echoes …”
“Black echoes?” Casey asked.
“VC tunnels.” When Casey looked blank, Bode amplified. “Vietcong?”
“Who?”
“Guerrilla force for the North Vietnamese Army,” Eric said. “It’s, like, ancient history.”
“Not to me. Echo Sector’s lousy with tunnels. Blacker than pitch,” Bode said. “Just like on the cover.”
“You crawl through enemy tunnels?” Casey said. “In the dark?”
“Get shot if you use a flashlight.”
Flashlights. Getting shot. Emma felt that queer mental jolt. That’s exactly what I was thinking earlier. What does that mean? That we’re really all linked because of Lizzie?
“Yeah, tunnel rats,” Eric said. “I read about you guys.”
“That’s us. Dropping into a black echo’s the only way to kill Charlie before he kills us.” Bode’s tone was matter-of-fact. “Look, for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right. Well, why can’t that book be from one of those … those universe things? Like it came here to us? Know what I’m saying?”
“Well—” Emma began, and stopped. That all these books existed in an alternative timeline had never occurred to her.
“Ah. Ah.” With a wiggle of his eyebrows, Bode used a thumbnail to scratch a flame from another match. “See? Gotcha.”
“It’s not a contest,” she said, although she felt as if she’d lost a point. Why hadn’t she considered that? Bode was absolutely …
“He’s right.” When she turned to look, Eric shrugged. “Well, he is. Why can’t someone have written about us in one timeline and painted us onto canvases in another, or … I don’t know … made us into toys, or something? I can buy multiverses. The theory’s there. I’ve read enough science fiction. For all we know, this could be a simulation, too, right? Like The Matrix?”
Yet one more echo, but Eric, she almost understood. Didn’t like that she did either. “Yes, but …”
“So leaving aside the how of getting here for a second, Lizzie finds and then brings us”—Eric looked over to Lizzie—“through these, ah, Dark Passages?”
“No, Eric, I told you,” Lizzie said. “Except for Emma, you guys came from book-worlds. The Dark Passages are what’s between the Nows.”