“What’s ‘too much’?” Trix asked.
“I don’t know,” Sally said. “ I’ve never done this before.”
“Will we be able to lose them afterward?” Jim asked.
“You will,” Sally said. “I’ll tell you how. Show you.” She was vague, and quiet.
“All right,” Trix said. She looked at Anne and they squeezed each other’s hands. “If we’re going, let’s get going. Me first.”
Sally shifted her hand by her side, and a No-Face Man came forward, a shadow floating through pools of artificial light. “Try and keep still,” Sally said. “And don’t fight it.”
Trix nodded, then let go of Anne’s hand and crossed her arms on her chest.
Jim’s first impulse was to shout out and help his friend because he could see that she was in pain. Her face screwed up-but she uttered no sound-as Sally grasped at the amorphous No-Face Man and pressed him to Trix’s side. Trix did not move or flinch, but her expression betrayed the discomfort she was feeling as Sally kneaded and pressed, clasping handfuls of shadow and pressing it against her clothing, her skin. The little girl’s face was set in concentration, and her lips moved as she muttered some unheard incantation, eyes fluttering, cheeks flushing. She grasped and pushed, and it was almost as if she was trying to mold Trix and the No-Face Man together. As the wraith reduced, so Trix’s discomfort seemed to grow.
“You’re hurting her,” Jim said, but it was Holly’s hand squeezing his that silenced him. My little girl’s giving me comfort, he thought, and a darkness opened in him because of things she had already seen. He hated the idea of Holly becoming as unnaturally precocious as Sally.
Perhaps something about what she was doing became easier, because Sally seemed to speed up. Her hands grasped and pressed, her arms windmilled, and soon she was snatching at the air to retrieve the few dregs of the No-Face Man that remained. At last she stood back, breathing heavily and yet seemingly invigorated by what she had done-eyes glinting, skin flushed and shining.
Trix opened her eyes and looked around. Her pupils were darker than Jim had ever seen them, like pits into nothing.
“Trix?” he asked. She blinked a few times, gathering her personality back to her, finding herself again.
“Fucking hell,” she said.
“Okay,” Sally said, waving her hand and calling forth another. “Who’s next?”
Trix watched Anne, Jennifer, and then Jim go through the process, and all the time she was coming to terms with what she had become. Memories flitted at her like vague recollections of long-ago dreams, and even this distant there was a terrifying alienness to them. She often could not remember what she had dreamed the night before, but a nightmare from when she was four years old-falling from a cliff with her mother, Trix flying, her mother striking the ground and dying-was etched on her memory. These memories felt like secondhand dreams remembered by someone else. They were not only memories that did not belong, but the way they were remembered was all wrong as well. She was recalling someone else’s life, long lost to the In-Between.
Trix supposed she should have felt pity, but she was too scared for that. And too determined.
As each of the other three were merged with a No-Face Man, she witnessed them going through the same strange, disconcerting experience. Jennifer cried, reaching for Jim’s hand. Anne stood strong, her gaze never diverting from Trix’s eyes. And Jim barely seemed to flinch. He’d go through hell to get his Jenny back, Trix thought, and she glanced at Anne, thinking that fate had changed everything.
Finally they stood there, altered and yet the same.
“I still see Jim,” Trix said. “And Jennifer, and Anne. I see that they’re different, but-”
“The In-Between needs no eyes,” Sally said. “I can see…” She closed her eyes, frowned, and opened them again, muttering under her breath. “I see you all faded away.”
Trix shivered and looked down at her hands, turning them over. She knew the backs of her hands, and yet the nails now seemed to seep something blank, like an invisible mist that wiped shreds of reality from view. She blew, but the mist did not disperse.
“Trust me,” Sally said. “Don’t concern yourself with what’s happened, or how different you might be or feel. It’s worked, and it’ll protect you. And you’ll be too busy in there to try to understand.”
“Bugs the crap out of me,” Anne said, wringing her hands together and then pulling them slowly apart. Trix smiled, her heart quickening.
“Go fast,” Holly said. She was holding on to Jim and looking at the other three. “Please go fast.”
“We’ll be faster than fast,” Trix said.
“One more thing,” Sally said. “Pass by me; I can do this while you go.” She held on to Holly’s other hand, and they looked nothing like two little girls.
Jim went first, and Sally muttered strange words as she reached up and touched his face with her free hand. Jennifer and Anne followed, and then Trix grasped the Oracle’s hand and gasped softly. For a moment Holly was a part of her-laughing in her mind, giggling as they walked together through Boston, hugged together on a sofa watching her favorite movie, Lilo amp; Stitch. And as Sally let go and her eyes widened just a little, Trix smiled at Holly. “Our bond is already strong,” she said. “I’ll never let you down, Holly.”
“Thanks, Auntie Trix,” the girl said.
They stood at the wall, and Trix looked back at the two girls in the center of the ruined room, with blood spattered all about and bodies against the far wall. But she knew more than to ask if they would be all right. “See you soon,” she said to both of them, and she was the first to reach for the door handle.
As the door opened, there was a gasp. Trix thought it had come from the other three, but then a waft of air passed her, seemingly drifting both ways, and for a moment she became utterly disoriented. She smelled something old and base, her ears sang with unknown whispers, and she was not sure whether her eyes were open or closed.
At first glance, the room around her-the Reflection Room beyond the door-looked quite normal, not part of another world at all. And then she realized that there was something strange about it. She stared, closed her eyes and smelled, then tried to just listen, and it took a while to identify what was wrong. This room is dead, she thought, and the idea chilled her. Even the wood in the floor had never been part of a living thing. The room was paused, not frozen like a picture, but caught in a gap between moments. It was nowhere a living thing could feel at home.
She walked quickly toward the opposite wall, and before she reached it her surroundings misted away to nothing. As she took several more steps, the floor beneath her changed to something softer. She looked down and saw an uncertain surface, her feet suspended on a vaporous layer. Stamping, she felt no reverberation, and very little impact.
“We’re in the In-Between,” she said, and though it was muffled, she was pleased that she could hear her own voice. She turned around to see the others coming through the door, and the wall behind her had vanished.
Everything behind her had vanished.
There was mist. Up and down were dictated only by the way she stood, but there was little else to distinguish it. And yet there must have been a firm ground, and some rule of three-dimensional order, because she could see Anne, Jennifer, and Jim, all of them standing in the same plane. They were shadows in the mist, vague shapes that she saw better when she looked to their left or right.
“Trix?” she heard, unsure who was calling.
“Here!” She waved her arms. It felt like someone else waved with her, a shadow echoing her movements. A shape came closer, and Jim emerged from the mist, moisture speckling his unshaven face. Jennifer came next, then Anne hurried to them, footfalls silent, her fearful expression shocking as she emerged into view.