Crossroads (29 page)

Stomper and the other boy bowed themselves out of the room as the Elder slipped through a veil of giant fronds, bringing Kira a small bit of greenery that held some of the fruity smelling gelatinous concoction and a bell-like cup containing what appeared to be clear stream water.

"Eat," said the Elder. "And drink. This will help you sleep."

"I don’t want to sleep," insisted Kira. "I want to get back to my friends."

"And how will you do so without my help?" asked the old woman, raising one eyebrow.

Kira sighed, dipping her fingers in the gluey paste. It tasted of berries and something chocolatey, but the sweet flavor had a fresh aftertaste like mint that disappeared completely with one sip of the cool water. The food also turned out to be very rich, and by the time she was done with the small helping she felt filled to bursting, and her eyelids drooped. She lay her head back upon the Whinegrass pillow, drifting.

"I have to get to my friends," she insisted.

But her strength was quickly fading.

The old woman nodded, and passing a hand across Kira’s eyes the lights seemed to dim.

"Mayhap your friends will come to you," said the old woman, as Kira drifted down into sleep.

Sheila crept stealthily through the aisles, watching for movement, listening, hoping to hear Max or his wife somewhere up ahead, but all she heard was her own thundering heart and the evil clicking sound the Grigs made, on either side of her, and slightly ahead. She glared at Jen and her mother, nodding them back toward the door, but Marguerite ignored her, and Sheila was sure there was no sense arguing with Jen, either. To hell with it. The Grigs had to know they were all here, now. No sense wasting time on stealth any longer. She strode ahead, flimsy sword at the ready, heading toward the light.

A crash off to her right caused her to whirl, and she caught a glimpse of a Grig flashing past into the next aisle. Suddenly Max’s quavering voice rattled around the shop.

"Cynthia?

"Max? Are you all right?" called his wife.

Sheila heard pattering feet. Cynthia running to Max. Would she make it?

"Go back upstairs and lock the door!" shouted Max. "Call the police."

"Honey, what’s the matter?"

Sheila bit her lip. She figured the Grigs were just waiting for them all to be together now to attack, but she didn’t know what else to do but to rush to Max’s side. Better all of them against the Grigs than to be caught alone in the aisles. As she raced past a big wall-mounted mirror leaning against one of the shelves she thought she saw a still figure-trapped in the glass-and she stumbled. But stopping to peer at the
reflection
all she could see was her own image. Behind her a sudden click warned her, and she spun, slashing with the sharp edge of the metal frame.

Kira dreamt of a world of glass where she was surrounded by glittering crystals opening out onto myriad other alien worlds. Some were dark, others so brightly lit by strange and colorful suns that she could barely make them out. Some were not worlds at all but openings into weird closed in areas some of which
might
have been rooms, in the strange sort of way in which the living vault into which the Elder had brought her was a
room.

She walked along in silence trying to make sense of her surroundings, knowing that what she saw was not just images, that she might easily escape from where she was to where they were simply by touching the glass. But there seemed no reason to move from one nightmare into another since all of the mirror shards emitted the same sense of gloom. When she spotted movement in one mirror she stopped finding herself staring into a long endless corridor and finally realizing that what she was viewing was another mirror in the room within the mirror she was facing. Then three balls with gleaming teeth bounced across her view and her breath caught in her throat.

Grigs.

Glancing around the corridor she noticed wooden shelving holding what appeared to be stacks of glass and maybe automobile winshields, and it occurred to her that in none of the other mirrors had she seen anything that vaguely reminded her of earth. She took a step closer so that she could see more of the periphery of the room, and as she did a woman backed into view. When the woman glanced nervously over her shoulder Kira was stunned to realize that it was Sheila and even more stunned when she spotted the Grig peeping down at her friend from above.

"Sheila!" screamed Kira, watching helplessly as the Grig launched itself off the upper shelf.

But Sheila sidestepped, swinging something long and narrow, like a sword. She caught the Grig a glancing blow with the sharp point, and it made a louder clicking sound-like a yelp-as it struck the mirror directly in front of Kira. Then it spun on Sheila again. Another Grig slipped up behind her, and Kira yelled again, even though she was certain now that Sheila couldn’t hear.

Suddenly a small, older man, stepped between the second Grig and Sheila. He had a hammer in his hands, and when the creature leapt at him he swung it hard, bringing it down between the Grig’s eyes. The Grig fell to one side-looking shaken but not grievously wounded-and the little man backed toward Sheila. Both Grigs edged toward them with open mouths, clicking low in their throats, and Kira knew that the hammer and sword weren’t going to be enough. Soon the man or Sheila would get dragged to the floor or have an arm or leg ripped off, and then they would be completely at the mercy of the Grigs. She wondered where Jen was, why she wasn’t helping.

Sheila pointed the sharp corner of her weapon into one Grig’s face, threatening his eyes with each jab, but the creature bobbed and weaved, looking for an opening. Kira could see saliva dripping from it’s needle-sharp teeth in anticipation. She couldn’t believe that she was going to be forced to watch her friends die at the hands of the hated Grigs. She tried to imagine a wall between Sheila and the creature. To create one. But, although she sensed the power within her, she still did not know how to control it, and the dream seemed to hold her power at bay just as it locked her motionless within the invisible web. Then-as she saw both the Grigs tensing to spring-another thought occurred to her, and she released it like a wish with wings of steel.

Sheila felt suddenly giddy. Then sharp pain ripped through her as though she were on fire from the inside out. Pressure pulsed within her skin until she felt ready to explode like an erupting volcano. She lurched, dropping the frame, watching the Grig bending it’s short legs to leap.

As it did she slapped at it and felt her fingertips rip through its flesh like daggers, the torn skin of the beast flapping, black blood spurting in her face. The Grig let out a roar of agonized clicks, falling beside her, then staggering to its feet with more blood pouring out onto the concrete floor. The other Grig that menaced Max raced past him to attack her even as she stood staring at her hands that were now boney claws with talons even longer and more hideous than those of the Grigs.

"No!" she screamed, backing away from the charging creature as terrified of the sudden weird transformation within herself as she was of it. "No."

But she instinctively defended herself, swiping at the charging creature as it leapt in and then out, clicking wildly.      

"Sheila?" called her mother.

Marguerite and Max’s wife had taken refuge behind one of the shelves, and they stared at Sheila through a skein of plexiglass, their faces masks of horror. Jen stood to one side, regarding her with that blank look she most often wore, and Sheila wondered if that was because she’d seen so many monsters before.

The wounded Grig at her feet-sensing her confusion-leapt again. A claw razored along her ribcage slashing through the other pain that was slowly subsiding, and Sheila gasped, backing against the mirror. Without thinking she caught the Grig in both hands, and as it struggled in her grasp, she dug her claws deeper and deeper into its flesh, then finally jerked the beast against her chest and ripped through it to the core, dropping it at her feet where it expired beside its partner.

She leaned against the mirror, shaking, staring once again at her grotesque, steel tendoned arms, her skeletal fingers and bayonet-like nails.

"Stay away," she muttered, waving one
hand
to ward off the others.

Max’s wife slipped between her and the shelf, giving Sheila a lot of room, racing to Max who wrapped her in his arms.

Kira stared at Sheila’s back, pressed into what she now understood was the mirror in her dream. Bony ribs and small arcs of vertebrae projected through Sheila’s blouse, and the flesh on the back of her neck looked hard as black iron. Kira concentrated on turning her back into Sheila, just as she had managed to turn the raped girl back into a girl. But it seemed as though there was more resistance within Sheila, as though her body struggled against the command, and Kira worried that she might really have created a monster this time.

Finally Sheila jerked as though she’d bumped up against an electrical wire. She gasped in pain. Then again. Kira felt terrible that she was the cause of Sheila’s hurt, but what else could she do? In the end she concentrated on simply returning Sheila to Sheila  and in so doing, healing the gash in her side.

Sheila sagged slowly against the mirror, and Kira was glad to see her leathery flesh turning back to soft white skin again, the muscles shrinking, the protruding bones disappearing. Sheila sagged like a discarded puppet, and Jen caught her before she could fall. The man and woman approached then, standing over the two dead Grigs, looking from them to Sheila and back.

"She saved our lives," said Max.

"She must have brought those things," said Cynthia, looking sicker and paler than ever.

"Doesn’t matter who brought them," said Max, turning to Sheila. "You saved our lives. What are you people?"

"Just people, like you," said Sheila.

But then she let out a laugh that sounded more like a sob. There
were
no people like her. Other people didn’t turn into monsters. Other people didn’t have claws like crocodiles or talons like grizzly bears.

"Them things came right out of the mirrors," said Max, pointing toward a pair of plastic wrapped mirrors beside Sheila’s car.

Sheila shoved herself off the glass behind her and spun, staring at her own reflection, wondering if another Grig was just about to leap out at her. None did, but there was the oddest glaze to the mirror, as though the glass were not as clean or as clear as it should have been. Against her better judgement she leaned closer to inspect it. Instead of a film on the glass, there seemed to be a mist within it, a shifting fog that obscured... something she could almost see.

"I’ll call the cops," said Max, leading his wife away. 

"No!" said Sheila.

She couldn’t take her eyes away from the glass. It was as though she could almost see a face.

Kira breathed a sigh of relief when the last Grig was killed, and she finally managed to get Sheila back to being Sheila again. But what were they all going to do now? She was here inside the mirror world where her intuition kept telling her she belonged, and they were there, soon to have to explain everything to the cops or to make a run for it all again because of her. They were paying a penance for things they had not done.

Suddenly another face appeared beside Sheila’s and Kira smiled. Jen was staring into the mirror, and unlike Sheila, Kira knew instantly that Jen could see her.

"Kira," said Jen, nodding.

"Jen!" said Kira.

And suddenly the view changed.

It was like being sucked through the crystal in reverse. She watched as Jen, then Sheila and finally the bald-headed man and his wife were drawn through the glass like colored smoke and they were all sucked away with her into a great darkness.

Chapter 38

Silky handed Clem one of the smaller foundation stones, and Clem lugged it to the corner to add to the growing pile there. Then he went back to helping the old man prying away at a much larger rock in the heap. They worked between fallen floor beams and other timbers which still sagged dangerously overhead. The visible dust had long settled, but invisible particles still saturated the cellar, parching their throats and clogging their nostrils.

"Tell me again what it is we’re looking for," said Clem, wiping gritty sweat off his brow with the back of his sleeve.

"The mirror," said Silky, spreading his hands to show the width, then holding one up to head height. "It’s under there."

"If it is, it’s smashed to bits," said Clem.

But Silky shook his head. "I don’t believe that."

"How could it not be? Look at that pile of rocks."

"Because it can’t be. That’s all. It just can’t..."

"Silky, you don’t make any sense. What’s this mirror in your basement got to do with Shandan Graves?"

"You could say that Shandan lives in the mirror."

Silky leaned on the heavy bar, staring. Clem stared back, gapemouthed.

"How crazy do you think I am, now?" asked Silky.

Clem nodded. "Pretty crazy."

"Even after what I showed you?"

"What? A pile of money? What does that have to do with someone living inside a mirror?"

"The mirror is where the money came from. Now you’re going to tell me that I’m not making any sense again."

"Well, you’re not, Silky. Listen to yourself."

"I been listening to myself for forty years. Reminding myself that what I know is the truth is what everyone else knows is just a nightmare. You’ve been one of the lucky ones all that time. I’m sorry you dragged yourself into this, but here you are. You still got time maybe to climb onto the
Mary O
and hightail it out of here, but realistically I’m afraid that wouldn’t help you much for long."