Mirror (51 page)

The creature began almost immediately to slither back into Martin’s open mouth. Within six seconds, only the top of its head showed. Within seven, Martin’s mouth had closed and returned to its normal size.

Within fifteen seconds – by the time Mr Capelli had puffed his way up the stairs to find out what all the thumping and the thrashing was about – Martin had disappeared.

Mr Capelli knelt slowly down beside Ramone’s savaged body. There was extraordinarily little blood; but the bite in his face was so terrible that Mr Capelli could do nothing at all but cross himself, and cross himself again, and then turn to stare at the mirror.

Martin rang the doorbell again. At last, they heard footsteps and a muffled voice called out, ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s me, Martin, from upstairs. I was wondering if Emilio was home.’

There was a pause, and then bolts were slid back, and the door was opened. At first it was difficult to see who was standing inside. The hallway was very dark and there didn’t seem to be any lights anywhere. Martin was aware of something huge and nodding and draped in black. It looked almost like a large parrot cage covered with a black cloth.

‘Emilio went out,’ the muffled voice told him.

It was then that the lightning flickered again, and Martin realized with a thrill of dread what he was looking at. It was Mrs Capelli, wearing a black mantilla on her head. But her head was huge, a cartoon head; like the drawings of the Duchess in
Alice in Wonderland
. Her face was enormous and waxy-colored; the face of a long-suffering Italian matriarch. Her mantilla was decorated with thousands of jet beads; and she was draped with jet necklaces and pinned with jet brooches; a mother in mourning for the old country, and for lost innocence, and for long-buried relatives.

This nodding huge-headed monster was Mrs Capelli amplified five-hundredfold. Her physical appearance exaggerated by her inner self.

Martin heard Alison gasp just behind him. But he was determined to find Emilio. He was determined to destroy Boofuls. And even though his voice was shaking, he managed to ask, ‘Do you know – do you know where he went?’

Mrs Capelli shook her huge birdcage head. Her jet jewelry clattered.

‘It’s important,’ Martin insisted. ‘I really have to find him.’

Mrs Capelli stood silently for a moment and then turned back into her apartment. However, she left the door open, as if Martin should wait for a reply. Martin stepped gingerly into the apartment after her, following the huge swaying bulk of her mantilla.

She went into her parlor, across the patterned carpet. As she passed in front of the mirror on top of the chest of drawers, she changed, without warning – her huge swaying head dissolving like a conjuring trick back to its usual size, her mantilla swallowed up like smoke. It was only when she reached the far corner of the parlor, out of sight of the mirror, that her head expanded, and her black-bedecked mantilla returned.

Martin reached back and grasped Alison’s hand. ‘You see that? When she walks in front of a mirror, she’s normal.’

Alison said. ‘Yes, you’re right. I get it now. Anybody looking into the mirror from the real world – they wouldn’t see anything strange.’

They followed Mrs Capelli to the kitchen. It was there that they saw another apparition, even stranger. A bloated white-faced man – more like a huge jellyish egg than a human being – sitting at the kitchen table.

Martin was reminded of Humpty-Dumpty in
Through the Looking-Glass
: ‘The egg got larger and larger, and more and more human. When she had come within a few yards of it, she saw that it had eyes and a nose and a mouth.’

There was no nursery-rhyme amusement in this creature, however. Illuminated only by intermittent flickers of lightning, he was soft and bulging, with black, glittering eyes, and he breathed harshly and softly, as if his lungs were clogged. He turned and stared at Martin with suspicion and contempt.

‘Whaddya wan’?’ he demanded in a thick stage-Italian accent.

‘Mr Capelli?’ said Martin. ‘I’m looking for Emilio.’

‘Why for?’ Mr Capelli wanted to know. ‘He’s-a play someplace.’

‘Mr Capelli, it’s crucial. I have to find him.’

‘Do I know you?’ the egg-shaped creature wheezed. Something approaching recognition glittered in one of the eyes which swam on his featureless face.

‘Martin, Mr Capelli. Martin Williams. Emilio and I have always been friends.’

‘Martin Williams?’

‘That’s right, Mr Capelli, Martin Williams. I live upstairs.’

‘Ah …’ said Mr Capelli. He thought for a moment, his eyes opening and closing like mollusks. Then he coughed, cleared his throat, and flapped one pale flipperlike hand toward the door. ‘He went to the market. Maybe with one of his friends. To buy coffee and candy. Now, leave me alone.’

Mrs Capelli stood silently in the corner, watching them with a face as huge as a white upholstered chair. Martin said nothing, but took hold of Alison’s arm and piloted her back out of the apartment. He closed the door behind him and stood on the landing trembling, taking deep breaths, one hand against the wall to steady himself.

‘Do we really have to go outside?’ Alison asked him.

Martin said, ‘There’s no alternative.’

‘But if the Capellis look like
that
–’

‘There’s no alternative, we have to find Emilio.’

Paying out their rope behind them, they went downstairs to the front of the building. The sky was inky black now; the wind was up; and the palms were rustling and rattling. ‘The market’s this way,’ said Martin. ‘I think we’re going to have to get rid of this rope. Maybe I’ll tug it a couple of times, just to let Ramone know that we’re okay.’

He yanked at the rope twice and waited; but there was no answering pull from Ramone. Martin hesitated for a moment, wondering if he ought to go back and tell Ramone that they were venturing out without the rope, but then a deafening barrage of thunder changed his mind. This was the night that Satan was coming. There was no time to spare.

Quickly, they untied the knots around their belts, leaving the rope lying coiled on Mr Capelli’s driveway. Then they hurried along Franklin Avenue toward the market, crossing La Brea and heading toward Highland. Martin found himself wildly disoriented, because the glittering lights of Los Angeles were on his left side now, instead of his right, and traffic was driving on the wrong side of the street. Neither of them looked too closely, but the drivers and passengers of some of the passing cars appeared to be peculiarly deformed, hunched figures in silently rolling vehicles.

The wind blew stronger. They felt rain on their faces. Across the street, a tall man with a head like a sheep hurried home with armfuls of groceries. His yellow eyes gleamed at them furtively, then turned away.

The market was right on the intersection of Franklin and Highland, its windows brightly lit. Martin began to jog as they approached, and Alison jogged to keep up with him. Even before Martin had crossed the street, he had glimpsed Emilio at one of the checkout counters, waiting to pay. That dark, tousled head; that small, pale face.

‘There!’ Martin exclaimed in relief. ‘Look, there he is!’

Emilio wasn’t difficult to pick out. He was the only person in the market who wasn’t distorted. The cashier behind the register had a long rodentlike face with the skin texture of a withered carrot, and was tapping at the keys of the cash register with a long claw. Right behind Emilio waited a woman with a tiny head and a vastly swollen body, her small face nothing but a tight cluster of scarlet spots. As Martin and Alison reached the window and looked around the market, they saw nightmarish creatures moving up and down the aisles, some of them crawling like spiders, others with huge nodding heads like Mrs Capelli, others who were more like dogs. They were seeing firsthand the world that Lewis Carroll had written about in
Through the Looking-Glass
– the world which he had been able to describe only in a children’s fantasy, because of its unbelievable horror. It was the world in which people appeared as they really are; and that was more than the Victorian imagination would have been able to accept.

As the creatures in the market passed the curved security mirrors at the far corners of the aisles, their appearance momentarily changed, and they took on a semblance of their everyday selves, except that their faces were swollen by the distortion of the mirrors, and their bodies and legs were shrunken like dwarves.

‘Oh, my God,’ murmured Alison. ‘It’s like some terrible kind of zoo.’

But Martin was set on getting hold of Emilio. He banged on the window; and banged again; and at last Emilio looked up and saw him. The little boy’s face – at first despondent – broke into a wide smile. Martin beckoned him frantically to leave the market and come on outside.

Emilio dropped all of his groceries and came running out of the store and into the street. Martin opened his arms for him, and they hugged each other tight.

‘You came!’ sobbed Emilio. ‘I didn’t think you ever would! I thought I was stuck here forever and ever!’

Martin wiped Emilio’s tears away, and affectionately ruffled his hair, and then stood up. ‘It’s time to go back,’ he said. ‘I don’t think anything bad is going to happen to you if you step back through the mirror. But we have something important to do. Something dangerous.’

Emilio trotted along beside him as they made their way back toward the Capellis’ house.

‘Will you do it?’ Martin asked him. ‘You’re the only one who can.’

‘I’ll try,’ Emilio panted.

The wind was howling so strongly by the time they reached the house that they could scarcely walk against it. Sheets of newspaper tangled around their ankles and dry palm leaves whipped at their faces. The streets were almost deserted; but Martin could hear the howling of the fire sirens over the wind, and the distant shouting of a huge crowd, like a distant ocean lashing against the shore.

Martin picked up the loose end of the rope that they had left lying in Mr Capelli’s driveway and wound it over his elbow as they went back into the house. Emilio tugged at Martin’s sleeve and said, ‘I don’t have to go back to
them
, do I?’ – meaning the mirror-Capellis. Alison put her arm around him and smiled. ‘No way, José. You’re staying with us.’

They climbed the stairs, with Martin still winding in the rope. The door marked
was slightly ajar, and the sound of extraordinary garbled opera music was coming out of it, like a record being played backward. Alison ushered Emilio quickly past the door, although Emilio couldn’t keep his eyes off it. God only knew what grotesque memories he would retain of what had happened there; of what distorted monstrosities he had seen; man in all his glory.

Martin had almost reached the head of the stairs when his own apartment door opened. He stopped, his heart bumping. Alison said fearfully, ‘Who is it?’

The door hesitated, then opened a little wider.

‘Who is that?’ called Martin.

His question was answered almost at once. Out of the door came Martin himself, followed by Alison. Their own reflections, identical in every way, but somehow invested with an independent life of their own. They stood at the head of the stairs side by side and looked down at Martin and smiled benignly.

Martin felt a terror unequaled by almost anything he had experienced in the days since he had first opened his eyes and seen Boofuls standing over him. If he had encountered Boofuls at the head of the stairs, or Miss Redd, or that vicious cat Pickle, then he probably could have coped. But to come face-to-face with himself, smiling so blandly, that was more than his nervous system could cope with. ‘Oh, God,’ he whispered. ‘Oh, God, that’s the end of it.’

Alison stood white-faced, paralyzed with fear.

‘What’s wrong, Alison?’ taunted her mirror image. ‘Don’t tell me that
you
, of all people, are afraid to look at yourself?’

Martin’s mirror image smiled, and took the hand of Alison’s mirror image as if they had been secret friends for years. ‘What a daring fellow you are, Martin! Into the world of mirrors, just to save your five-year-old friend.’

Martin’s mirror image came down two or three stairs, until he was standing directly in front of him. ‘You always had big ideas, didn’t you? Little man, big ideas. Well, I guess that we can forgive you. Every man’s entitled to dream. And your best dream was Boofuls.
Boofuls!
, a musical by Martin Williams. Look what it led to! It changed the world, didn’t it?’