White Space

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AT FIRST, MOM thinks there are mice because of that scritch-scritch-scritching in the walls. This is very weird. Marmalade, the orange tom, is such a good mouser. But then Mom spies a dirty footprint high up on the wall of her walk-in closet.

A footprint. On the wall.

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 attic.

The sheriff thinks she’s been hiding since fall and sneaking out for food at night: She coulda slipped in when the contractors were here. It happens.

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 Nows. But Lizzie knows better. The crazy lady is something out of a bad dream: a rat’s nest of greasy hair; skin all smeary like she’s taken a bath in oozy old blood. Her hands, sooty and man-sized, are hard with callus, the cracked nails rimed with grime. She smells really bad, too, like someone raised by mole rats or bears. When the sheriff tries asking questions, the crazy lady only stares and stares. She doesn’t utter one single, solitary peep.

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