Mirror (52 page)

Martin hoarsely said, ‘Get out of my way.’

‘Oh, come on, now, Martin, you’re talking to yourself. The only person in your way is
you
.’

Martin felt the blood drain out of his head. His mouth was dry, and he was close to collapse. But something told him that his mirror image was speaking the truth. The only person standing in his way was him. His vanity, his ambition, his carelessness, his bad tempers. Indirectly,
he
had caused the deaths of all those one hundred forty-four thousand innocent people.

In the Bible, James had said, ‘
For if any man is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was
.’

Now, however, Martin knew what kind of person he was; and he knew that it wasn’t this smug, smiling character who was standing in front of him now.

‘Get out of my way,’ he repeated. He felt his strength returning. He felt his confidence surging back. ‘
Get out of my goddamned way!!
’

Instantly, as fast as a cobra, Martin’s mirror image threw back its head and stretched open its mouth. Out from its lips poured the slippery pink head with snapping teeth, its eyes blazing bright blue. Martin dodged, ducked back, but the creature’s neck swayed around and its teeth snagged at his shoulder, tearing his shirt and furrowing his skin.

Alison screamed; and Alison’s mirror image screamed, too, not in fright but in shrill triumph. But Martin scrambled back down the stairs, missing his footing and tumbling down four or five of them at once. And as the snapping head came after him, he looped the rope around its neck and yanked it viciously tight.

The head choked and gargled, its eyes bulging. At the head of the stairs, Martin’s mirror image gargled, too, and fell onto its knees. Whatever this vicious head was, it was deeply connected to the innards of Martin’s mirror image, and if he could manage to strangle it, he could strangle his mirror image, too.

Martin pulled the rope tighter and tighter. The blazing blue eyes began to dim and to milk over. Saliva ran from the sides of the creature’s lips; then bloody saliva; then blood. The head shrank and shriveled, almost like a collapsing penis, and then dropped against the stairs. Martin’s mirror image came after it, head over heels; and the hideous body lay jammed against the side of the landing.

‘Now,’ said Martin to Alison’s mirror image, looping the rope again and mounting the stairs, ‘how about you?’

But Alison’s mirror image drew back her lips and hissed at them and then ran down the stairs, pushing all three of them aside, and disappeared into the street.

Alison hugged Martin tight. ‘You did it. You’re beautiful! You did it.’

‘Come on,’ Martin urged her. ‘I’m just hoping to God that we’re not too late.’

They went into Martin’s mirror-apartment, closing the door behind them. Then, with each of them holding one of Emilio’s hands, they approached the mirror.

‘Ramone’s not there,’ Martin frowned. ‘Look – the rope’s there. But no Ramone.’

‘Let’s just get ourselves back,’ Alison begged him.

Hand in hand, they closed their eyes and pressed their foreheads against the cold glass of the mirror.
I can do it
, thought Martin.
I can step through glass. All I have to do is take one step forward, and I’ll be there, back in the real world
.

He felt that sensation of being drawn out thin; and then compressed. His ears sang, and his heart thumped; and for one long, long moment he believed that he was dead.
I’m dead
, he told himself; and then he opened his eyes and he was standing with Emilio and Alison, back in his real sitting room.

‘We made it,’ he said. ‘And, look, what did I tell you, Emilio’s fine. Boofuls was bluffing us all along.’

Alison looked around, worried. ‘No sign of Ramone. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would get up and leave us, just like that.’

‘Maybe Mr Capelli knows,’ Martin suggested.

Emilio piped up, ‘Where’s Grandpa? Where’s Grandpa? Is Grandpa here?’

Martin bent down and picked Emilio up in his arms, and together they went down to Mr Capelli’s apartment. They rang the doorbell, and Martin could feel Emilio tense up. Without saying a word, he pointed to the name card on the door.
Capelli
, not
.

Mr Capelli opened the door almost at once. He was about to say something – but then he saw Martin and Alison, and best of all, Emilio.

He couldn’t speak. He clutched Emilio close to him, and the tears ran down his cheeks. Martin and Alison waited, and all Martin could say was, ‘He’s fine, Mr Capelli. He’ll have one or two nightmares, I guess. But he’s fine.’

Mr Capelli finally put Emilio down, but still held him close. ‘I have bad news,’ he said. ‘Your friend Ramone.’

Martin felt cold. ‘What happened? Did he have to leave?’

Mr Capelli said, ‘No, I’m sorry. It was very bad, very dreadful. I heard him banging the floor upstairs, I went up as quick as I could.’

‘And?’

‘Something from the mirror, I suppose,’ said Mr Capelli. ‘His face – all of his face. It was chopped away, like
bitten
, you know. I could hardly bear to look. I think he must have died straight away. The ambulance came to take him; the police will come later. They are so busy with all of those poor people who died at the Chinese Theater.’

‘Bitten?’ said Martin; and all he could think of was the chilling pink head which had poured out of the mouth of his own mirror image, with razor-sharp teeth.

‘It was very dreadful,’ said Mr Capelli. ‘I’m sorry. It was very bad.’

Martin covered his eyes with his hand. For a moment, he felt close to crying. But no tears wanted to come. Not yet, anyway. First of all, he had to deal with Boofuls.

‘Mr Capelli,’ he said, ‘I’m going to ask you a favor.’

‘What favor?’ asked Mr Capelli, with his arm tightly around Emilio.

‘I want you to let Emilio come with us; just one last time.’

Mr Capelli slowly shook his head. ‘I may be old, my friend, but I’m certainly not stupid. This boy has been through enough.’

High above the house, thunder cracked; so violently that plaster sifted down from the ceiling.

‘Mr Capelli, if Emilio doesn’t come with us now, believe me, the sun may never rise again.’

It took Martin almost ten minutes to change Mr Capelli’s mind. Meanwhile, the storm outside rose even more violently. Two palms were uprooted, with a noise like tearing hair, and fell across the street; and the water in Maria Bocanegra’s swimming pool frothed and splashed. The wind began to pick up so much speed that it screamed through the telephone wires: a high, tortured scream like desperate souls. Lightning branched everywhere, striking the twin towers of Century City and the Bonaventure Hotel downtown.

‘Martin,’ Mr Capelli argued, ‘he’s all I have. Suppose something should go wrong?’

‘Mr Capelli,’ Martin insisted, ‘this world is all any of us have. I don’t want to risk Emilio’s life any more than you do. But the way I see it, we don’t have any choice.’

‘A curse on you for buying that mirror,’ said Mr Capelli bitterly.

‘Yes,’ said Martin. ‘A curse on me.’

Mr Capelli sat with his hands clasped together for a very long time, thinking. At last he said, ‘You can take him. All right? I agree. You can take him. But you guard him with your own life. Your own life, remember. And one thing more. You break that mirror before you go. You smash it.’

Martin said cautiously, ‘I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.’

‘Smash it,’ said Mr Capelli. ‘Otherwise, you can’t take Emilio nowhere. Do you think I’m going to sit here, while you’re gone, and any kind of monster could come jumping out? I saw what happened to your friend Ramone. You should count your lucky stars
you
didn’t see it. Half his face, chomped!’

‘Mr Capelli –’ said Martin; but Mr Capelli was adamant.

‘You smash that mirror. Otherwise, forget it. It’s brought too much trouble already. And besides, I don’t ever want Emilio going back there. Or even to
think
about going back there.’

Tired, shocked, still sick with grief for Ramone, Martin eventually nodded. ‘I’ll smash the mirror, okay? Will that make you happy?’

‘Not happy; but better.’

Alison waited with Mr Capelli while Martin went back upstairs to his apartment. Halfway up the stairs, he stopped, and leaned against the wall, and covered his eyes with his hand.
God, give me the strength to carry this through. God, help me
. He waited for a short while, to allow himself to recover, and then he climbed the last few stairs.

He opened the door of the sitting room and there was the mirror, with its gilded face of Pan, still there, still mocking him. The room felt very cold. It was like stepping into a meat market. It was so cold that the surface of the mirror was misted, almost opaque. But Martin ignored the mirror and closed the sitting room door behind him and walked across to his desk. He opened the drawer where he kept his tools and took out a hammer.

‘This is it, you bastard,’ he said out loud. ‘And Mrs Harper had better forget about her second installment.’

With one sweep of his hand, he wiped the clouded surface of the mirror and then swung back the hammer.

And stopped, frozen.

Because he wasn’t there. There was no reflection of him swinging back the hammer. The room in the mirror was empty.

He stepped up to the mirror, his heart beating in long, slow bumps. He touched it. Then he understood what he had done. He had killed his own reflection. He could never appear in a mirror again.

He stood still. He felt an extraordinary sense of loss, like the boy Daniel who stole the sacred harp and lost his shadow.

Then he heard Alison calling, ‘Martin?’ and he swung back his arm and hit the mirror dead-center.

The glass smashed explosively. Huge shards dropped from the frame and clattered onto the floor. And the face of Pan on top of the frame roared out loud, scaring Martin so much that he jumped back two or three paces and almost fell over the sofa.

‘God protect me,’ he whispered, and stepped back up to the mirror again and hammered the face right off the frame, onto the floor. He beat it and beat it until it was nothing more than a smashed-up heap of gilt and plaster.

He stood up, breathing heavily. Now it was time to go for Boofuls. And now he needed a weapon with which to kill him.
A sword blessed by the angel Michael
, Father Quinlan had told him. But where the hell was he going to find a sword? And even if he did, how was he going to get it blessed?

He was about to turn away when a flicker of lightning illuminated the room and flashed from a long shard of mirror glass. It was nearly four feet long, and slightly curved like the blade of a saber. Martin knelt down and carefully picked it up. He tested the edge with his finger and immediately cut himself, so that blood welled up and ran down his wrist. This would do. This would be his holy sword.

He rummaged in his drawer until he found a roll of insulating tape. Then he wound it around and around the end of the mirror-sword to make a safe handle. At last he lifted it up and swung it around. It made a thrilling whistle as it swept through the air. Boofuls was going to regret that he had ever stepped out of that mirror.

He held the sword by the blade, the way that he had seen knights hold their swords in storybooks, and he closed his eyes.

‘God, bless this weapon, if You can. Or at least give me the strength and the intelligence to use it well. Thank You.’

Then, with the blood that ran from his cut finger, he smeared onto the mirror-sword’s blade the letters V-O-R-P-A-L.

He walked downstairs. Alison and Emilio and Mr Capelli were waiting for him on the landing. ‘It’s broken,’ he told Mr Capelli, and he lifted up the mirror sword.

‘What in the name of God are you going to do with
that
?’ Mr Capelli demanded.

‘Make amends, I hope,’ said Martin. Then, ‘Come on, Emilio, let’s go find that playmate of yours.’

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought
–