O Mother of God, protect me, the pain!
thought Sister Boniface. But she was completely powerless to move her hands away from the heat of the candles, or to scream out for help. She had never known anything so agonizing. Her hands began to redden, and she began to smell a strong aroma of scorched meat. Each fingernail felt as if it were white-hot.
Please
, she begged Boofuls inside her mind.
Please release me, please! I’ll get back the key, I promise you! I’ll take it to the grave with me, just as you ask!
But all Boofuls did was to chant, ‘
Warm hands, warm, the men have gone to plough; if you want to warm your hands, warm your hands now!
’
Slowly, inch by inch, Sister Boniface found that she was lowering her hands toward the candle flames. The heat was so intense that she could scarcely feel it. The skin on the palms of her hands blackened and shriveled, and strips of it dropped off and fell onto the candle-holders, where it hung, smoking. The sleeves of her habit began to smolder; and as her hands came lower and lower, they burst into flame, so that her bare wrists were licked by the fire as well.
Tears poured from Sister Boniface’s eyes and down her wrinkled cheeks. The agony was thunderous. She wanted to do nothing but die, even though her paralysis made it impossible for her to turn and see the face of the dear Madonna.
The flesh of her hands was actually alight now, and it burned with a sputtering sizzle. Gradually the layers of skin were burned through, and the flesh charred, and the bones were exposed, her own fingerbones bared in front of her eyes.
‘
Warm hands, warm, the men have gone to plough!
’
It was just when the agony reached its greatest that Boofuls released Sister Boniface from her paralysis. She didn’t realize what had happened at first; but then she let out a scream of sheer tormented pain that pierced the chapel from end to end.
She lurched back, away from the candles, holding her blazing arms out in front of her like a sleepwalker.
The holy water
, she thought in desperation,
I can douse my hands in the holy water
.
She began to make her way step by step along the aisle. Her hands were nothing but blackened stumps now, and her sleeves were leaping with orange flame. Her wimple, incendiary with starch, suddenly flared up like a crown of fire and set light to her short-cropped hair underneath.
By the time she had managed to make her way halfway down the aisle, her habit was ablaze from hem to shoulder. She was a shuffling mass of fire, her head alight, her eyes wide with shock and terror, no longer able to scream or even to whimper.
She knew that she would never be able to reach the holy water. She twisted, collapsed, then fell onto her side. She could hear the fire roaring in her ears. She could see the flames dancing past her eyes.
In a last agonized effort, she managed to lift her head, just long enough to glimpse the stained-glass window behind the pews. The dear Madonna still smiled at her, as she had always done. Sister Boniface tried to say something, the smallest of prayers, but her habit had burned through to her underclothing now, and the skin on her legs was alight, and she died before she could whisper even one word.
Although he was patrolling the second floor, one of the hospital security officers had heard Sister Boniface screaming, and had gone to investigate. He had thought at first that it was one of the cleaners laughing or larking about. He opened a dozen office doors before he eventually reached the chapel.
‘Jesus,’ he said when he opened the doors.
The chapel was dense with smoke. In the middle of the center aisle, a blackened figure was huddled on the floor, a few last flames still flickering on its chest. The security officer felt his throat tighten with nausea, and he didn’t know whether he ought to go into the chapel or not. There was no chance at all that the figure on the floor was still alive.
Eventually, he took a deep breath, masked his nose and mouth with his padded-up handkerchief, and cautiously stepped inside. He made his way up the aisle until he reached Sister Boniface’s body. Then he just stood and stared at it in horror.
Her head had been burned so fiercely that most of her skull had collapsed into ashes. Her ribs curved up from an indistinguishable heap of burned cloth and carbonized flesh; her pelvis lay like an unwanted wash-basin.
The only way in which the security officer could tell at once that it was Sister Boniface was her crucifix, a large bronze cross, mottled with heat, from which the figure of Christ had melted into small distorted blobs of silver.
He thought he heard a rustling noise in the chapel, like somebody moving about on tiptoe, but when he peered through the smoke he saw nobody at all.
He unhitched his walkie-talkie from his belt, switched it on, and said, ‘Douglas? This is Andrej. Listen, you’d better get down to the chapel. Sister Boniface has had some kind of an accident. No, burned. I don’t know, maybe she got too close to the candles. No, dead. No,
dead
. Are you kidding? She hasn’t even got a mouth left to give the kiss of life to.’
He clipped the walkie-talkie back on his belt and then stood staring at the ashes of the woman who had made the mistake of giving away Boofuls’ key.
Eight
FATHER LUCAS HAD
sprained his ankle that weekend playing baseball with the boys of St Ignatius’ Little League team. He came heavily up the stairs to Martin’s apartment, rocking himself between the banister rails, and grunting noisily. Mr Capelli came up behind him, trying to make himself useful, but proving to be more of an irritation than a help.
‘It’s all right, Mr Capelli,’ Father Lucas insisted. ‘I’ve worked out my own rhythm. Don’t upset it, or you’ll have me falling down the stairs backward.’
‘Watch for this corner,’ fussed Mr Capelli. ‘Sometimes I trip here myself, and how long have I lived here?’
Upstairs in the sitting room Boofuls sat placidly watching
Sesame Street
. Martin stood by the window, watching Maria Bocanegra sunning herself before going off to work. She must have fallen asleep, because one of the Sno-Cones had been blown off by the morning breeze, and one nipple was bared. It looked like a soft, wrinkled prune, thought Martin. The kind you could gently sink your teeth into.
From time to time, he glanced at Boofuls. As soon as Father Lucas had visited, he was going to take Boofuls out to Sears and buy him some new clothes. T-shirts, sneakers, so that at least he
looked
like a kid from the 1980s. He thought it was extraordinary that he had come to accept Boofuls’ presence so easily. Yet if somebody’s actually
there
, he thought, talking and walking and living and breathing, what else can you do? It doesn’t matter if they came out of a mirror or down from the moon.
Father Lucas knocked at Martin’s front door. ‘Hello there! Mr Williams!’ Martin lowered the venetian blind and came away from the window. ‘This’ll be the priest,’ he told Boofuls. He had already told him that Father Lucas was coming to visit, but Boofuls had appeared to be completely uninterested. He didn’t seem to be any more interested now.
Without waiting to be shown in, Father Lucas appeared at the sitting room door. He was a barrel-chested man with a leonine head that seemed to be far too big for the rest of his body. His silver hair was combed straight back from his forehead. He wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses that reminded Martin of a pair of 1950s television sets, side by side, each showing a test transmission of a single gray eye.
Father Lucas swung himself into the room and grasped Martin’s hand. ‘Mr Capelli tells me you’ve been having some trouble, Mr Williams.’ He looked around and then he said, ‘You won’t mind if I have a seat? I was trying to show my Little Leaguers how to throw a forkball, and I got rather carried away.’
He limped across to the sofa where Boofuls was sitting watching
Sesame Street
. ‘Hello, young fellow!’ he said, beaming and ruffling Boofuls’ hair. ‘You don’t mind if I park myself next to you, do you?’
Without even looking at him, Boofuls said, ‘Yes, I
do
mind. And don’t scruff up my hair again. You’re not allowed to.’
Father Lucas stared at Boofuls in bewilderment. He had always liked to think that he was ‘pretty darn good’ with children, especially young boys.
Mr Capelli snapped, ‘Hey! You! Kid! You’re talking to a priest here! You’re talking to a holy father!’
Boofuls reluctantly took his eyes away from Kermit the Frog and looked Father Lucas up and down.
‘I’m Father Lucas. And you are –’
For one moment – so quickly that it was like a rubber glove being rolled inside out and then the right way round again – an expression rippled through Boofuls’ face which made Martin shiver. He had seen hostility in children’s faces before; but nothing like the concentrated venom which disfigured Boofuls. He scarcely looked like a child at all: more like an evil-tempered dwarf.
But then the hostility vanished, and Boofuls was smiling and pretty once more – so angelic, in fact, that Father Lucas smiled back at him with pleasure, and said, ‘Well, now, aren’t
you
the uppity one?’
All the same, he backed off, and sat down at Martin’s desk, and nodded and smiled at Boofuls almost as if he were afraid of him.
‘It’s the mirror,’ said Mr Capelli, his eyes glancing from Boofuls to Father Lucas and back again.
‘I’m sorry? The mirror?’ asked Father Lucas. He turned around in his chair and looked at himself in the mirror on the far wall. ‘Oh, yes. The mirror. Well, it’s very handsome, isn’t it?’
‘It took my grandson,’ said Mr Capelli.
‘It –?’ asked Father Lucas, lifting his spectacles, not at all sure what Mr Capelli meant.
‘It took my grandson, took him away. He’s in there now.’
Father Lucas looked at Martin for some reassurance that Mr Capelli was quite all right and not suffering from some temporary brainstorm. The heat, you know. Maybe the male menopause. Men of this particular age sometimes acted a little feverish. But Martin gave him a nod to assure him that it was true.
‘We didn’t expect for one minute that you were going to find this easy to believe,’ he told Father Lucas. ‘But this definitely isn’t your ordinary common or garden mirror. It‘s like a way through to another world.’
‘Another world?’ said Father Lucas, looking even more unsettled.
‘It’s still Hollywood in there,’ Martin told him. ‘But it’s Hollywood the other way round. And the reflections that appear in that mirror aren’t always the same as the real people and objects that are standing in front of it. Did you ever read
Alice Through the Looking-Glass
?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Father Lucas, still baffled.
‘Then that’ll give you some idea of what’s happening here. You remember in
Alice
how the looking-glass world was completely different once Alice was out of sight of the mirror. I think this mirror’s similar. Once you walk through that sitting room door in there, the whole world’s turned on its head.’
Without looking at Boofuls, Martin said, ‘I know for a fact that people can survive after death, inside that mirror.’
‘You know that for a
fact
?’ queried Father Lucas.
Martin nodded.
There was a lengthy and embarrassing silence. Boofuls continued to watch
Sesame Street
with no obvious concern at Father Lucas’ presence. Father Lucas sat on his chair with his double chins squashed up by his dog collar, his eyes fixed on the floor, his forehead furrowed like a Shar-Pei, trying to think of an appropriate response. He had known Mr Capelli for years and years, and he had never known him to be anything but sincere. Pompous, occasionally irascible; but never foolish or dishonest.
Father Lucas had never met Martin before, but Martin certainly didn’t
look
wild or eccentric; or like a malicious practical joker.
‘You’ll have to forgive me,’ he said. ‘I’m not at all sure that I understand what you’re asking; and even if I
could
understand what you’re asking, I’m not at all sure why you’re asking
me
.’
He stood up and walked toward the mirror. ‘You’re trying to tell me that people can walk in and out of this mirror?’
Martin said, ‘Sometimes. Not always.’
Father Lucas knocked on the glass with his knuckle.
‘Seems pretty solid to me. What’s behind it?’
‘An outside wall. Back of the house.’
Father Lucas breathed on the mirror’s surface and wiped it with his cuff. ‘And you say that if you
can
get into the mirror … then beyond that sitting room door, things are very different from the real world?’
Mr Capelli put in, ‘We saw a ball, yes? A child’s ball. In here it was blue and white, in there it was a tennis ball.’
He swallowed hard, and then he added, ‘I saw Emilio in there, my own flesh and blood; but here it was –’ He lifted one arm towards Boofuls, then dropped it against his side. ‘In here it was this boy.’
‘
This
boy?’ queried Father Lucas, inclining his head toward Boofuls.
Uneasy, Mr Capelli wiped his sweating palms on the sides of his pants. Father Lucas walked back toward Boofuls and hunkered down beside him, inspecting him through his television-set spectacles as if he were a doctor and Boofuls had been brought to him with suspected mumps. Boofuls completely ignored him and carried on watching television.