She understood now, too, about the dolls this thing had fashioned as receptacles for what it, as Lizzie, called the “you-you.” Six dolls, not eight: there was no Eric-doll, no Casey. Neither had a place in McDermott’s book-worlds, and of the two, Casey was the cleanest, nearly a blank slate, able to absorb whispers and become with ease.
She felt the whisper-man crush Casey to her bleeding body in a tight, suffocating embrace. Casey’s warm breath slashed over her ruined face, and his own was close, just inches away. She sensed the whisper-man’s intent an instant before her own hand tightened around Anita’s boning knife, which the whisper-man had slid into the small of her back, and she thought, No no no no, please don’t, don’t hurt him, don’t!
Too late, and she had no power anyway. A quicksilver flick, and then Casey gasped as the knife sliced through his coat and slid into his left flank, just below his ribs, slipping through skin, dividing muscle. The tip drove to the artery, releasing Casey’s blood in a great, throbbing gush.
No, no, no, CASEY! But Casey was sagging against her now, his life pulsing out in a crimson river.
“OHHH, THAT’S GOOD.” The whisper-man crooned like a lover into Casey’s ear: “THAT’S GOOD, OHHH, THAT FEELS SO GOOD, DOESN’T IT? GIVE YOURSELF TO ME, BREATH OF MY BREATH. TAKE ME, FEED ME, BLOOD OF MY BLOOD, OHHH, FEEL ME.”
There was one chance, and only one—because she knew what the whisper-man had forgotten. But she must wait, wait, wait. She didn’t dare allow herself to think any further than that. If she did, it would know. She latched onto a rhyme, a meaningless tune, because she must hide, hide, quiet, quiet: Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb. Mary had a little lamb …
Beyond the circle, she heard Eric and Emma both screaming, but couldn’t see them at all because of all those hundreds and thousands of crows. The birds—beaks stabbing, slicing, ripping—boiled over their bodies. Emma and Eric would be dead, and very soon, if she couldn’t stop this.
Hurry, hurry, hurry. Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, oh, hurry hurry hurry …
“BLOOD OF MY BLOOD,” the whisper-man whispered with the ruin of her mouth, her bloody flesh pressed against Casey’s ear. “BREATH OF MY BREATH, I BIND YOU.”
Hurry hurry hurry …
“I TAKE YOU, OHHH, FEEL ME AS I FILL YOU!” It crushed her mouth to Casey’s, and then Casey was drinking the whisper-man in, binding the darkness to him.
Yes! The blackness slid away; the whisper-man flowed in a deep riptide from her body. There was no blessed wave of relief; she would not live through this. The icy slush that passed for her blood was gone, but now fire licked through her limbs, throbbing with every beat of her dying heart. The pain was a vice, crushing her chest and forcing out her breath. The cord that had held her up for so long snapped, and she began to fall. But as she did, she realized something else that the whisper-man did not know.
There was someone else—something she half knew and recognized—inside Casey.
Help him. She was sinking fast, hurtling toward that final darkness on legs suddenly no more substantial than air. Please, whoever, whatever you are, help Casey fight, help him, help …
She knew when her body thudded to that strange, smooth, and glassy rock, but she registered nothing more than a distant thump. Her mind spun. She couldn’t think, couldn’t put her finger on it. There was something important she had to do … but what? I know this … what is it … it’s import—
Then, she remembered what the whisper-man had forgotten: that a whisper, like blood, leaves a stain.
Wearing her body, the whisper-man had brought down the birds. That stain—this ability—was still there, but faint and growing fainter.
Please, God, just keep me alive a few more seconds.
With the last of her strength, she gathered her will and sent an arrow of thought, flying true.
Go. I command you now. Go.
ERIC
To My Heart, Across Times, to the Death
THE MOMENT CASEY sprinted for the circle, Eric simply froze, unable to believe his eyes. What was Casey …? Then his body took over, his mind clamoring: Go go go! He lunged after his brother, Emma by his side. He was so focused on reaching Casey before his brother vaulted into the circle that it took him a few seconds to hear the change, the way the air seemed to churn with a weird, freakish rustle.
“Eric!” Emma suddenly gasped. She grabbed for his arm, and he followed her eyes to the ceiling.
Panic slammed into his chest. “Down!” he shouted. He tackled Emma, driving her to the floor, covering her with his body as the birds hurtled for them in a black rain of needle-sharp beaks and razor talons. Their bodies were everywhere: a living, ravenous tornado that flowed and whirled over and around. Beaks stabbed at his back, his neck, gouging holes in his flesh. Frantic claws raked his hair, and then he was screaming as blades of pain hacked at his scalp. His parka was gone, and so they were through his clothes in no time, their claws drawing hot lines through his flesh. The birds’ claws ticked and skittered over the glassy rock, and there were more birds scuttling over the floor, worming their way to Emma. She was shrieking, and he shouted something wordless, battering at the birds with great sweeps of his arms.
Then a very large crow clamped onto his scalp. Its talons, steely as stilettos, dug in as its beak jackhammered his neck. A red sheet of pain stole his vision. Screaming, he surged up, back arched in agony.
It was, precisely, what the birds had waited for. They swarmed for his face. Nails of pain spiked his cheeks and forehead. One bird swooped in from the side, and he turned his head just in time, as the bird’s beak laid his skin open from the corner of his right eye to his mouth.
The crow battened on his scalp was still coring the flesh of his neck, its beak driving and digging. He reached back, his fist closing over slick feathers. The crow slashed at his fingers, flaying flesh from bone. Roaring with pain, he yanked the flailing creature from his blood-soaked scalp, and then the bird was bulleting for his face, its black beak flashing right for his eye.
Gasping, he got a hand up just in time. The bird’s beak drove into the meat at the base of his thumb, a shock wave he felt all the way to his elbow. With a cry, he tumbled back as the relentless birds closed over him, ripping and pecking—
Then, as if in response to a silent signal, the birds simply stopped—a fast, abrupt hitch, like the flick of a switch—and then lifted off in a vertiginous swirl, spiraling higher and higher to mass at the ceiling.
For a second, Eric could only lie there, stunned. His body was saturated and slick. Blood ran into his eyes, coated his mouth with a taste of warm aluminum. To his right, Emma was drenched with gore. She lay on her stomach, her face hidden by the dark fan of her hair, and he thought, God, no, please. Then he saw her move, and relief surged through his body.
“YOU BITCH!” It was Casey, in the circle, bellowing in a voice that was not Rima’s or Big Earl’s or his own, but the guttural, clotted gargle that was the whisper-man’s true voice. “STOP! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”