‘I was the only member of the hospital staff who stayed with Mrs Crossley from the moment she was brought into the hospital to the moment she died.’
‘And?’
‘She didn’t speak,’ said Sister Boniface. ‘But she did regain consciousness for a very short time. She lay there, staring at the ceiling, gasping for breath. Then, when she and I were alone together for a short while, she beckoned me closer. She pointed toward her bracelet, which they had taken off when they first tried to resuscitate her, but which was still lying on the table beside the bed. It was a charm bracelet, with little gold figures of cats and moons and stars on it. But there was a key attached to it, too; quite an ordinary key. She gestured that I should take the key off the bracelet, and when I had done so, she pressed it into my hand, and closed my fingers over it.’
Sister Boniface reached under the folds of her habit and took out a small leather change purse. She opened it up, and reached inside, and produced a small steel key. ‘This is the very key, Mr Williams.’
‘I see … what does it unlock?’
‘I have absolutely no idea. Mrs Crossley did nothing more than press it on me, insisting that I keep it. Her throat was almost completely closed, poor thing, and she could scarcely catch her breath, let alone speak. But it seemed as if the key were terribly important, because she kept staring at me and trying to nod, and catching at my sleeve.’
Martin said, ‘May I?’ and took the key out of Sister Boniface’s hand. It was small and plain, with the number 531 punched on it. He turned it over. The manufacturer’s name, Woods Key, was embossed on it, but that was all. There was no clue where it might have come from, or what door it might have fitted.
‘Whatever secret this key was guarding, it probably vanished years ago,’ said Dr Rice.
Martin said, ‘It looks like a suitcase key. No – maybe it’s a little too big for that. A locker room key, what do you think? Or the key to a cash box?’
‘Could be anything,’ said Dr Rice. ‘Sister Boniface showed it to us before, and we tried it on every locker and cupboard we could find. We thought we might discover a hidden fortune, I suppose. Pretty fruitless exercise. All it proved was that it didn’t fit any of the lockers in the hospital. I think Dr Weddell took it down to the bus depot one afternoon and tried locker number 531 there, but that was no use. It didn’t fit the lockers at any of the local airports, either.’
‘Well, it’s probably a bank key or a hotel safe-deposit key,’ said Martin. ‘In which case we have about as much chance of finding it as a –’ He was about to say ‘cat in hell’ but suddenly thought of that stinking brindled tomcat snatching at his eyes, and left his sentence unfinished. Despite the midday heat, he shivered, and felt uncomfortably cold.
Sister Boniface said, ‘Mr Williams, why don’t you keep that key? Perhaps you can find the lock it fits. You are the one who is closest to Boofuls now. Perhaps Boofuls will himself tell you.’
Dr Rice laid a hand on Martin’s shoulder. ‘Go on, take it,’ he said. ‘It’ll make her feel happy.’
‘Sure,’ Martin agreed, and slipped the key into his pocket.
They walked back across the hospital courtyard. Martin turned around, shielding his eyes against the sunlight. Sister Boniface had returned to her vege-burger and was placidly munching it.
‘She’s tormented, you see,’ said Dr Rice. ‘She can’t decide if she’s been blessed with a vision of heaven or cursed with a glimpse of hell.’
Martin took out the key. He felt, oddly, that he had always been meant to have it; in the same way that he had been meant to buy the mirror. He also felt that – one day soon – he was going to discover what lock it fitted, what secret it hid. The trouble was, he wasn’t at all sure that he wanted to know.
Five
HE DROVE BACK
to his apartment late that afternoon to find a rusty blue and white pickup parked outside and Ramone arguing with Mr Capelli in the front yard.
‘Hey, what’s going on?’ he asked, slamming his car door and crossing the sidewalk.
Mr Capelli immediately looked around. ‘They let you out of hospital? Look at you! You look like the curse of the mummy’s tomb!’
‘Thanks, Mr Capelli, I feel better already. What’s wrong here? Didn’t Ramone pick up the mirror?’
‘He says he can’t,’ Mr Capelli interjected before Ramone could open his mouth. ‘He says it’s too heavy, he can’t lift it, and
I
can’t help him, my doctor will do worse to me than that cat did to you.’
Ramone lit a cheroot and inhaled the smoke up his nostrils. ‘This guy thinks I’m Arnold Schwarzeneggs-benedict or something.’
‘Oh, come on, Ramone,’ said Martin. ‘The mirror’s heavy but it’s not
that
heavy. I moved it myself the other evening.’
‘Well, maybe you did, but you must have been taking some kind of evening classes in You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine.
I
can’t shift it, and that’s all there is to it, and if you want to call me Mr Weak ’n’ weedy, well, there’s nothing I can do about it, because, man, that mirror will not
move
.’
Mr Capelli tugged and twisted at the crocodile on his Lacoste T-shirt. It was a nervous habit, that was all. When he wasn’t wearing a Lacoste T-shirt, he twisted his back hair around his finger. ‘This fellow, he doesn’t even try! You and me, Martin, didn’t we carry that mirror inside the house, just you and me, and God knows what kind of a physical shape
I’m
in! I surprise myself I’m not dead!’
‘Plenty of people your age are,’ Ramone retorted. ‘And some of them
ain’t
, and should be.’
‘Come on, let’s take a look,’ said Martin. ‘Ramone and I can probably manage it between us.’
‘Thinks I’m Arnold Schwarzenfriedeggs,’ Ramone grumbled as he followed Martin and Mr Capelli upstairs.
They reached Martin’s apartment. The door was open, and they could hear singing. High, piping singing – Emilio. Martin stopped and listened, and felt a sudden surge of fear. ‘I thought I told you not to let Emilio up here, for Christ’s sake!’ he barked at Mr Capelli, and he bounded up the last flight of steps three and four at a time.
‘
Sur … wannee Song! Suwannee Song!
’ Emilio was singing.
Martin burst into the room. The door shuddered. Emilio was marching up and down in front of the mirror, his head held high, his elbows swinging, his knees prancing like a young circus horse.
‘
You can
blow
your flute and you can
bang
your drum and you can
march
along!
’
Martin turned toward the mirror. For one fraction of a fraction of an instant, he thought he glimpsed Boofuls, prancing up and down the mirrored sitting room. But then all he could see was Emilio’s own reflection, brown eyes bright, dark hair shining.
‘
Sur … wannee Song! Suwannee Song!
’
‘Emilio?’ said Martin.
Emilio stopped marching and turned around. ‘Hey, look at you!’ he gasped. ‘You look just like the mummy!’
‘Thank you,’ said Martin. ‘But didn’t I tell you not to come up here anymore?’
‘He wanted to play, that’s all,’ Emilio protested.
‘Hey, now –
who
wanted to play?’ Mr Capelli demanded. ‘There’s nobody here, just you and us.’
‘Well, Mickey Mouse, of course,’ Emilio replied, wrinkling up his nose in sarcasm. Without hesitation, Mr Capelli pushed his way past Martin and slapped Emilio hard across the side of the head.
‘You don’t talk like that to your elder-better! You dare! You want to grow up to be a deadbeat?’
‘The way he’s going, I think he’s probably going to grow up to be President,’ remarked Ramone laconically.
‘That’s what I mean!’ Mr Capelli retorted.
Emilio’s eyes were wet with tears. He rubbed his head and said, ‘I’m sorry Grandpa. But he was here. That boy, Boofuls. He learned me that song.’
Mr Capelli clutched Emilio close and affectionately scruffed his hair. ‘Eh … I’m sorry, too. It’s my fault. Martin told me not to let you come up here. Eh, no crying, unh? I’m just your silly old grandpa.’
But Emilio struggled free from his grandpa’s embrace and turned toward the mirror. ‘He’s gone,’ he said sadly. ‘You frightened him away.’
Mr Capelli chuckled and shook his head. ‘Some imagination, hunh?’ But he looked toward Martin, and Martin could see the anxiety in his eyes. Mr Capelli believed in things that lived in mirrors; and Mr Capelli was afraid of them.
‘Now, then, let’s get this mirror out of here, hey?’ Mr Capelli suggested. ‘You can take one end, Ramone; and you can take the other end, Martin; and lift; and then I can direct you down the stairs.’
Ramone said, ‘I’ve got a better idea. You carry it downstairs on your own and we’ll just sit here and watch you.’
Nonetheless, Ramone and Martin bent down on each side of the mirror and prepared to lift it up. Ramone had already taken out the screws and laid a blanket on the floor to protect the gilt frame, and so all they had to do was pick up the mirror and carry it down to the street.
‘When I say three!’ announced Mr Capelli.
He counted three, and they lifted. Or they tried to lift. But they couldn’t budge the mirror even half an inch off the floor. It felt as if it had been nailed down.
‘Come on, Ramone, let’s try it again,’ said Martin; and they grunted and heaved; but still the mirror refused to move.
Martin propped his elbow against the mirror and puffed out his cheeks in exhaustion. ‘I don’t understand this. I mean, this is ridiculous. If Mr Capelli and I could carry it up three flights of stairs and screw it up on the wall, then you’d think that you and I could lift it between us – I mean, easily.’
‘You’re out of shape, that’s all,’ said Mr Capelli.
‘Who’s out of shape?’ Ramone demanded. ‘I play two hours of squash every afternoon, and I don’t even get out of breath!’
‘Sure, but what do you have to lift in squash? Just that little racket. That doesn’t weigh nothing at all.’
Ramone lifted up his arms in resignation, then dropped them again, like one of the crows in
Dumbo
flapping its wings. ‘
Me duele!
What can you do with a man who thinks like this?’
‘Come on, Ramone, let’s give it another try,’ Martin suggested.
‘You don’t get that mirror out of here, I’m going to call professional removers, and charge you what it costs,
and
throw you out, too!’ Mr Capelli yelled at him.
‘Come on, Ramone,’ Martin urged him. ‘He’s getting into one of his Don Corleone moods.’
‘Schwarzeneggburger,’ Ramone growled under his breath.
They took hold of the mirror. Mr Capelli chanted, ‘One-a, two-a, three-a –’
Without a word, both Martin and Ramone released their grip, and stood up, and stepped away. They looked into each other’s eyes; and each of them knew that the other had shared his experience.
When they had tried to lift the mirror, a strong dark wave had gone through each of their minds, black and inhuman but undeniably alive, like centipede legs rippling, or the cilia of some soulless sea creature, cold, pressurized, an intelligence without emotion and without remorse and with no interest in anything at all but its own supremacy and its own survival.
For the first time, Martin felt that he had touched the very core of the mirror’s existence, and it was more pitiless than anything he could have imagined
.
Martin and Ramone stood facing each other, as stunned and subdued as if they had experienced an unexpected electric shock. But there was no question in either of their minds what that wave of feeling had been intended to tell them. They had been categorically ordered by whatever lived in the mirror to leave it where it was.
Mr Capelli was not so insensitive that he couldn’t appreciate that something had gone badly wrong – that some feeling of hostility had suddenly caused them to back away.
‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘Martin – what is it?’
‘I don’t know,’ Martin told him. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Capelli, I don’t know. But I’m not touching that mirror again, not just now.’
‘Well, what?’ Mr Capelli shouted. ‘What do you mean, you’re not touching it again? Why? What’s the reason? Why don’t you touch it again?’
Ramone said plainly, ‘This mirror, Mr Caparooparelli – this mirror wants to stay right here. This mirror does not plan to be moved. Not that we
can
move it. I mean, we’re too weak, right? We can only lift squash rackets, and suchlike. We can only lift stuff that is seriously deficient in avoirdupois.’
Mr Capelli stood rigid, his hands by his sides, the blood draining from his face so that he looked quite waxy, and his head too big for his body.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘You brought this mirror here, what are you going to do?’
‘I don’t know,’ Martin confessed. ‘If I
could
get rid of it, right now I believe that I would. Boofuls or not.’
‘Boofuls,’ said Mr Capelli, keeping his false teeth clenched close together. ‘That’s the problem, right? Boofuls. That woman, she killed that little boy, she chopped him into millions of pieces –’
‘Two hundred eleven, I’m reliably informed,’ put in Martin, but he wasn’t joking.
Mr Capelli spat out of the side of his mouth. ‘How many exactly, who cares? But his spirit is here! His ghost! You found him a home, and now he doesn’t want to go! And so what do I have? I have a house that’s haunted, that’s what! A haunted house with a ghost!’