White Space
Just like Jasper. Her skin fizzed with fresh anxiety. Another echo.
“Let’s not make a scene,” Kramer continued, his lips twisting into a grimace that might have been a smile. “What say you put down that knife and we go to my office for a chat and a nice hot cup of tea?”
Knife? She stared at her right fist. The blade’s steel—six inches, wickedly sharp—was smooth and so flawless she could make out the deep blue of her eyes. What had she fallen into the middle of?
“Wh-why do you keep calling me Elizabeth?” Her voice was still rusty, as if the gears powering her mouth just didn’t want to mesh. “That’s not my name.”
“You see? This will not do, Doctor,” Gruff said, darkly. “She’s even more disordered. She’s always come back as herself before.”
“Yes, yes, Inspector, and she is herself now,” Kramer said, without taking his eyes from Emma. “But please do remember, Battle, that the girl’s endured a severe trauma.”
“Battle?” The name flew from her mouth. Knife still in hand, she took a half step forward. “Battle, it’s me, Emma. Don’t you recognize—”
And then she actually heard herself for the first time. Not only was her voice higher and lighter; she had an accent, too, as if she’d just stepped out of a Jane Austen novel. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my—
“Of course I recognize you, Miss Elizabeth.” There was no warmth in Battle’s coldly analytical stare. “We’ve spoken several times from the very first, while you were in hospital immediately after your escape. Do you”—Battle cocked his massive head as if inspecting a fascinating new species—“do you remember my man, Constable Doyle?” He hooked a beckoning finger over a shoulder, and the kid in the dark blue uniform, with that face she thought she ought to recognize, took a reluctant step forward. “You found him after clawing your way out of that warren of catacombs. He conveyed you to safety, to hospital. Do you recall that?”
“Recall …?” Murders? Catacombs? Her eyelids fluttered. What … like tunnels? The only catacombs she knew about were crypts where they put dead people. She peered into Constable Doyle’s light, slate-colored eyes … eyes that seemed to want to jitter away from hers. “We’ve … I know you? You saved me?”
“Well, no, not really. Like Inspector Battle said, you saved yourself, Miss. I just brung you to hospital is all.” Doyle had a touch of a brogue, different from Kramer or Battle, his accent like something that might’ve come from Sean Connery or Ewan McGregor. Face shiny with sweat, he slid an uncertain glance to Battle, then back. The tiny muscles around his eyes twitched. “Inspector Battle thought it might be good to have a familiar face, yes? You remember me, Miss? Conan Doyle?”
“No.” She was starting to hyperventilate; her skull was going hollow again. Slow down; can’t faint. Gulping a breath, she held it a moment, listening to the rush of blood in her ears, the banging of her heart. “I’m s-sorry,” she said, trembling all over, hearing the minute tick-tick-tick of her teeth. “But I d-d-don’t know what you’re …” She stopped.
“Elizabeth?” Kramer said.
She only half heard. Doyle. He said his name is … “You”—she swallowed—“is … is your first … is your name Arthur?”
“How do you know that?” Battle rapped, at the same moment that Doyle, startled, went a deep shade of plum and spluttered, “Sir … Inspector, I did nothing familiar; I would never presume to—”
“Oh Jesus. Where am I?” Although she thought she now knew; the city, anyway. Her weird and accented voice came out ancient and rough, like flat tires crunching gravel. “What year is this?”
She watched as Kramer and Battle exchanged glances, and then Kramer seemed to shrug an assent, because it was Battle who said, “You are in London. It is December 1880. You have been remanded to the care of Dr. Kramer and the staff of the Bethlem Royal Hospital at His Majesty’s pleasure until such time as you are sound of mind.”
London. And Bethlem Royal Hospital … they called it Bedlam. She remembered because Jasper had told her so; the article had been on a CD, a compilation of works taken from one of Dickens’s magazines. All the Year Round? Or maybe it had been Household Words. Unless this Now had no Dickens, or if it did, maybe he wasn’t a writer at all. Battle said 1880. Was Dickens still alive then? She didn’t think so. God, what if he was dead? Would there even be a Dickens Mir—
Wait just a minute. Her runaway thoughts suddenly bucked as if they’d been tethered to a galloping horse the rider had just wrestled to a halt. His Majesty. Had Battle just said there was a … a king?
She almost blurted, Where’s Victoria? but said instead, “Why am I in the hospital?” She looked to Kramer again. “I’m not sick. I’m fine. You said I got away, that I’m a witness? So why am I in an asylum? I’m not crazy. What the hell are you people talking—”
Then, everything—the words poised on her tongue, her thoughts that would not stay still—turned to dust. That was the moment she finally realized what was wrong with Kramer’s face.
Half of it wasn’t his.
3
IF SHE’D BEEN looking more carefully—if she hadn’t just popped out of the Dark Passages, lost her friends, nearly died—she might have thought he’d gotten too much Botox or plastic surgery, like Cher, who looked more like a wax mannequin or an alien than anyone real.
Kramer’s forehead was absolutely smooth. No worry lines. It didn’t wrinkle at all, and his nose didn’t move either. His left eyebrow was a thick black gash with no arch, and while Kramer’s wiry gray tangle of mustache looked normal on the right, the left half was perfectly smooth and much darker.
Not paralyzed. Not a stroke.
He’s wearing a kind of mask, like the Phantom, only painted to look like skin and hair.
Her gaze shot to Graves. Instead of panops, a pair of steel-framed spectacles perched on her knife’s-edge of a nose. The nurse’s face seemed flesh and blood, but her left eye was fish-belly white, with no tracery of thin red capillaries. A muddy gray iris floated in its center like a dirty mote.
It’s artificial. It’s glass. Oh my God. Now that she knew what she was looking for, Emma saw that one attendant held his right arm at a stiff, forty-five-degree angle. The fingers didn’t move, but they weren’t paralyzed. The arm and hand were prostheses. Another man wore an odd leather headpiece to which a pair of tin ears, gray as an elephant’s, had been nailed. A nurse was minus a hand, the sleeve of her blouse neatly sewn shut at the wrist. Still another woman’s nose had been eaten clean away until there was nothing but two black pits set in a shriveled, weathered gargoyle face marred by strange, fleshy knobs that sprouted from her skin like mushrooms.