In the tradition ofMementoandInceptioncomes a thrilling and scary young adult novel about blurred reality where characters in a story find that a deadly and horrifying world exists in the space between the written lines.Seventeen-year-old Emma Lindsay has problems: a head full of metal, no parents, a crazy artist for a guardian whom a stroke has turned into a vegetable, and all those times when she blinks away, dropping into other lives so ghostly and surreal it's as if the story of her life bleeds into theirs. But one thing Emma has never doubted is that she's real.Then she writes "White Space," a story about these kids stranded in a spooky house during a blizzard.Unfortunately, "White Space" turns out to be a dead ringer for part of an unfinished novel by a long-dead writer. The manuscript, which she's never seen, is a loopyMatrixmeetsInkheartstory in which characters fall out of different books and jump off the page. Thing is, when Emma blinks, she might be doing the same and, before long, she's dropped into the very story she thought she'd written. Trapped in a weird, snow-choked valley, Emma meets other kids with dark secrets and strange abilities: Eric, Casey, Bode, Rima, and a very special little girl, Lizzie. What they discover is that they--and Emma--may be nothing more than characters written into being from an alternative universe for a very specific purpose.Now what they must uncover is why they've been brought to this place--a world between the lines where parallel realities are created and destroyed and nightmares are written--before someone pens their end.
For Sarah:
This time, you live.
Father, this thick air is murderous.
Part One: Come And Play
Lizzie: Uh-Oh
Emma: Blink
Lizzie: Save Dad
Emma: Eyes, and Nothing Else
Eric: Poof
Eric: A Gasp in Time
Rima: So Never Digging Around a Goodwill Ghost-Bin
Part Two: The Valley
Lizzie: Whisper-Man Black
Emma: Not the Way I’m Made
Casey: Dead Man’s Shirt
Lizzie: I Want to Tell You a Story
Rima: Soother of the Dead
Tony: Maybe God’s Just a Kid
Eric: Devil Dog
Tony: It’s a Mirror
Casey: This Is Creepy
Tony: She Has to Be Here
Tony: Get Up, or You’re Dead
Casey: Full Fathom Five
Eric: A Night Coming On Fast
Casey: Where’s His Tongue?
Tony: A Thing with Eyes
Rima: Don’t Look Back
Part Three: The Fog
Lizzie: Wear Me
Emma: A Choice Between Red and Blue
Lizzie: Mom Makes Her Mistake
Emma: Between the Lines
Emma: As He Will Be
Emma: What the Cat Already Sees
Rima: That’s No Cloud
Bode: A Real Long Way from Jasper
Eric: One Step Away From Dead
Rima: No Time
Emma: Black Dagger
Emma: Them Dark Ones Is Cagey
Rima: Where the Dead Live
Rima: Tell Me You See That
Emma: A Bug Under a Bell Jar
Rima: What She Was Made For
Emma: This Is Your Now
Emma: The Opposite Ends to a Single Sentence
Emma: Space Tears
Rima: Something Inside
Emma: Just One Piece
Rima: I Don’t Know Who You Are
Emma: Find Your Story
Casey: What Killed Tony
Emma: All I Am
Rima: The Thing That Had Been Father Preston
Emma: Whatever They Make Will Be Real
Casey and Rima: Fight
Bode: Whatever This Place Makes Next
Casey and Rima: Look at Her Face
Rima: Doomsday Sky
Rima: Think My Hand
Rima: The Thickness of a Single Molecule
Part Four: Hell Is Cold
Emma: Outside of Time
Emma: Down Cellar
Emma: All Me
Emma: Tangled
Eric: What Does That Make Us?
Rima: A Safe Place
Part Five: Whisper-Man
Emma: Remember Him
Emma: Monsters Are Us
Rima: Blood Have the Power
Bode: Either Way, You Lose
Bode: Dead End
Rima: The Worst and Last Mistake of Her Life
Bode: The Shape of His Future
Bode: Into the Black
Emma: Push
Rima: Blood Binds
Emma: To the End of Time
Eric: My Nightmare
Emma: Monster-Doll
Eric: Write the Person
Eric: The Other Shoe Drops
Rima: A Whisper, Like Blood
Eric: To My Heart, Across Times, to the Death
The Whisper-Man: There Is Another
Emma: What Endures
Emma: Where I Belong
Part Six: The Sign of Sure
Emma: Elizabeth
1
AT FIRST, MOM thinks there are mice because of that
A footprint. On the
That’s when Mom feels someone watching, too. So she turns her head real slow, her gaze inching up to the ceiling vent—and there they are: two glittery violet eyes pressed against the grate like an animal’s at the zoo.
A crazy lady is in the attic. The
The sheriff thinks she’s been hiding since fall and sneaking out for food at night:
Well yeah, okay, that might happen to normal people who live in towns and cities and don’t know how to reach through to the Dark Passages and pull things onto White Space, or travel between
Because she can’t. She has no tongue. No teeth. Not a thing, except this gluey, gucky, purple maw, as if the crazy lady spends all her time slurping blood jelly.
So, really, she’s just about what Lizzie expects. Which is kind of bad, considering.
Like …
2
DAD SWEARS UP and down that he didn’t have anything to do with it:
Mom isn’t having any of that.
