Monster of My Mind
EMMA CAME TO consciousness with a glassy smash, as if brought to life on a surge of electricity like Frankenstein’s monster.
And that’s what you are. You’re a monster of my mind. Why can’t you die DIE—
What? That wasn’t her thought, not even her voice. She wanted to ask, out loud, Who are you? But she was afraid to talk to it, worried that would mean the voice was real, and it couldn’t be, it just couldn’t.
Yes, but I remember the valley, pushing into the Dark Passages, and then landing in … Her throat worked. Beneath her still tightly shut lids, her eyes burned hot. Landing in an asylum. God, maybe she was insane. Was that what everything had been about? Her madness? Eric and everything else only a hallucination? The valley had never happened and neither had her life: Jasper, Madeline Island, Sal, Holten Prep … all of it?
No. It’s all been so real. So … a dream, maybe? Like A Nightmare on Elm Street or something?
Nightmare. The voice was back, and now it paused, as if rolling an unfamiliar word around its mouth, tasting it with a tongue. Dream?
Oh, she was so not answering, no matter how clearly the words reverberated in her skull. Where was she, anyway? Eyes still closed, she turned her head ever so slightly, her senses quivering like a bat’s. Her ears pricked to a crackly rustle beneath her belly. Paper? Or perhaps that was cellophane. From a distance came a different sound: hollow and irregular and more formless than a moan or cry. More like a lot of … noise. Clamor? Voices? Other people?
Yes. A hiss. Thanks to you, they’ve put me with the rest of the nutters.
Nutters. She knew that word. You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that.
Rocket scientist? What are you babbling about?
She didn’t know this voice, didn’t understand why it was there. Screw you. She gave the voice a mental shove. I’m going to wake up. She would open her eyes—
Don’t ignore me! The voice was an angry red clot. I’m speaking to you!
and there’d be her roommate, Marianne, sleeping it off in a tangle of sheets—
Who?
across the room. It would be noon and Christmas break and—
Answer me! A kick to her skull, and then an explosive ker-POW as the voice boomed, I WILL NOT BE IGNORED!
“Uh!” Emma’s head rocked back. Her teeth clashed together with an audible click, snagging her right cheek. Bright orange spangles burst over her vision. Her spit was coppery, and she could feel a slow trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth.
YOU THINK YOU CAN BANISH ME WITH A THOUGHT? YOU THINK IT’S THAT EASY?
“Jesus, would you shut the hell up?” Her voice came as a low, animal croak, and the effort cost her. A knifing pain scraped her ribs. Hurt. She thought she was sick, too. When she swallowed, her throat convulsed around a clog of what felt like broken glass. Yet she still heard the difference: that lighter tone that was a touch more musical—and that accent.
At that, it all came rushing back, the images tumbling one after the other through her mind: losing Eric and Casey and Rima in the Dark Passages, her command to the cynosure, and then blinking onto the ward. Racing away from Kramer and that inspector and Doyle … yes, Arthur Conan Doyle … only to smash into that mirror from which loomed a face, large as life: the delicate oval of a much smaller girl with wild blonde hair and yet one with her eyes, that golden birthmark …
No, my eyes, my face!
that belonged not to her then but little Lizzie, all grown up.
Oh crap. Emma’s eyes snapped open, and her heart turned over in her chest.
She was in blackness.