White Space Read Online Free Page A

bunch more. Whenever Dad finishes a scary book—one so frightening that Mom would absolutely and positively have a stroke if she knew Dad’s read a single word to Lizzie or, worse yet, that Lizzie’s
visited
—Mom slips on her special panops, which help her see all the thought-magic of the book-world: the energy of real life mixed with make-believe. Like when her dad says,
Oh sure, honey, let’s give that brave, smart girl your eyes
. Or,
Hmm, how about we take a couple letters from your name and put them riiight here?
If you know how to look, there’s her whole life, all these Lizzie bits and pieces, tucked in her dad’s books: the orange tom here, the squiggle-monsters there, Dad’s big red barn.
    Mom draws out a bit of all that thought-magic to seal in a Peculiar, because it’s already way too easy to slip into one of her dad’s books. It’s why Dad’s famous, a
bestseller
. People are always
dying
for him to hurry up and write the next book already. They love that feeling of being lost somewhere and somewhen else. Sometimes Lizzie doesn’t want to pull herselfout of a book-world at all, just like kids who pretend to be superheroes and run around in costumes.
    As her eyes slide from the Peculiars to Dad’s desk, Lizzie’s throat suddenly squeezes down to a straw. She’d hoped that Dad would be there, looking at the night through a big picture window facing the high heifer pasture. Lots of times he’ll just sit there, and Lizzie swears he’s watching something play itself out, as if on a big television tuned to a secret channel. Mom says Dad
flashes back
, kind of like visiting a very special, private
Now
. Not for real; he doesn’t go anywhere or slip through any other Dark Passages than the black basement of his brain, where there are whispers from
waaay
back, when he was a boy and lived in this creepy old farmhouse at the very bottom of a deep, cold valley surrounded by high, snowy mountains in a very bad Wyoming.
    But right this second, Dad’s not flashing back to that valley. He’s not at his desk, and Lizzie feels that awful, heavy blanket weigh her down just a little bit more. She thinks,
No, Dad, no. You
promised.
You crossed your heart
. But he must’ve been dying inside, the story in his blood hotter than the highest fever, burning him up.
    Dad has been a busy, busy bee. A new skin-scroll is unfurled over his desk. What he’s already pulled onto the scroll’s White Space with special ink is a bright red spidery splash: letters and words and whole paragraphs. A heavy scent, one that is like a crushed tin can left out in a storm, fogs the air.
    Dad stands at the Dickens Mirror, which is not an oval but a slit, like the pupil of a lizard’s or cat’s eye, with all sorts of squiggle-monsters and arguses and typhons andspider-swoozels and winged cobcraas squirming through its wood frame. The glass isn’t normal either but smoky-black, like old char left from a great big bonfire.
    And Dad … he’s not acting like Dad. What he’s doing doesn’t even seem human. Because Dad is
growling
, like something’s waking up in his chest, raking curved claws over his insides, trying to break his bones and bust from his skin, just like the mom’s cancer in
Now Done Darkness
, or the million creepy, furry spithres that tremble like spiky petals from that girl’s mouth in
Whispers
. Dad’s face is all twisted and crooked, as if his head got ruined in Mom’s Kugelrohr oven.
    In his right hand is his wicked-sharp lunellum. Normally, Dad only uses the knife, which is decorated with special symbols, when he makes his White Space skin-paper. Not tonight, though, and Lizzie knows doom when she feels it. The person in front of that Mirror is in the middle of becoming a thing she’s never seen before.
    So make a sound!
A tiny panic-mouse claws her brain.
Sing a song! Do something to save him! Do something, Lizzie, do
anything,
before it’s TOO LATE!
    But then
too late
happens.
    The blade kisses her