Mirror, p.38
Mirror, page 38
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 –
They drove in Martin’s Mustang across to Vine Street. Alison held the sword while Martin drove: Emilio sat in the back. The wind was still fuming across Los Angeles, and lightning was crackling from one side of the valley to the other, like the roots of giant electrified trees. There was hardly anybody else around. A few cars crept along the freeway, but it seemed as if most people had decided to stay home. A wild, dark night, thunderous with impending doom.
They reached the Hollywood Divine hotel. Martin parked on the opposite side of the street and they all climbed out of the car. Half a dozen hookers still strutted up and down outside, but otherwise the sidewalk was deserted.
‘Hey, young boy,’ one of the hookers called to Emilio, ‘want me to pop your cherry?’
Martin pushed his way into the hotel lobby, with Emilio and Alison following. The usual collection of drunks and scarecrows were still there, but the young desk clerk was nowhere around. The lobby was gloomy and sour and smelled of urine and burned copper. Martin paused and listened, and he could hear a faint rumbling somewhere in the building, more of a deep vibration than a noise, and the sound of voices, chanting.
‘Upstairs,’ he said. ‘The Leicester Suite.’
Alison said, ‘Martin, I’m frightened. This is it, isn’t it? I mean, this is really it?’
‘Come on,’ Martin reassured her. ‘At least we’ve got God and all His angels on our side.’
‘I wish I could believe that.’
‘Martin –’ she said.
He looked at her. He had a feeling that he knew what she was going to say.
‘Not now,’ he told her gently. ‘Let’s get this done first.’
They climbed the marble stairs until they reached the mezzanine. On the far side of the landing, the double doors of the Leicester Suite were wide open; and from inside a fitful flickering of pale light illuminated the paneling and the drapes. The vibration was even stronger now, even deeper. Martin hefted the mirror-sword from one hand to the other and then said, ‘Here we go.’
They walked into the Leicester Suite. Three or four men in tuxedos were standing by the inner doors, but nobody made any attempt to stop them; or even to look at them. They were all staring in awe at the horrific spectacle which filled the high-ceilinged room.
When Martin stepped into the room and looked up at it, he almost felt like dropping to his knees. It was one thing to be told of Satan in storybooks. It was quite another to find himself standing in front of the Great Beast itself.
The room was dark, lit only by two wavering candelabra. Kneeling on the floor with their heads bowed were fifty or sixty of some of the most famous actors and actresses and directors and producers in Hollywood. Even in the darkness, Martin recognized Shany McKay and Derek Lorento and Harris Carlin and Petra Fell. Even Morris Nathan was here, at the very end of the front row, his head bandaged, leaning on the arm of his old friend Douglas Perry. It was like a Who’s Who of Hollywood, all in one room.
At the very front of the kneeling celebrities, with his back to them, stood Boofuls, quite naked, his arms outstretched. His back was narrow and white-skinned, his blond curls flew upward as if he were standing in a fierce wind. Beside him, in her swooping black cape, stood Miss Redd, her hands pressed together in prayer.
In the shadows at the very far end of the cavernous room, Martin saw something stirring. Something huge, and leathery, and inhuman. He heard its claws shuffling on the marble floor, he heard its dry dragon wings rustling. It was the color of death: yellowy gray, its skin crazed with wrinkles. Its skull was wedge-shaped, with curled horns like an aging ram, and its eyes were narrow and dull and infinitely evil.
It stood three times as tall as a man, its head swaying slowly from one side to the other, surveying without emotion those who had been vain enough and proud enough and weak enough to raise it at last from its endless sleep.
‘Is it real?’ whispered Alison. ‘It can’t be real.’
Martin swallowed. ‘It’s real,’ he said, and then swallowed again.
‘It’s the devil,’ murmured Emilio.
‘And there’s Morry,’ said Alison in disbelief. ‘Right at the front – there’s Morry!’
Martin tried to restrain her, but Alison hurried forward and took hold of Morris’ arm and shook it. ‘Douglas,’ she said, ‘why is Morry here? He should be back in the hospital!’
Martin came after her. ‘Alison, for God’s sake!’ But Miss Redd had already turned round and seen them, and she touched Boofuls with her long clawlike hand, and Boofuls turned around, too.
Deaf and blind, Morris turned his bandaged head. Douglas Perry said brusquely, ‘I asked Lejeune, and he promised that Morry would be given his sight and his hearing back if I brought him here.’
‘From him?’ Alison almost shrieked. ‘From the devil?’
It was then that Boofuls walked up to them – naked, smiling, beatific. ‘Hello, Martin. So you came to pay homage?’
‘I came to give you what you damn well deserve,’ Martin told him.
‘Too late.’ Boofuls smiled. ‘I have brought back my father from his exile, and he lives. You and Alison and young Emilio can provide him with his first feast.’
Behind him, the immense dragon-creature arched back its withered neck and let out a harsh gargling sound.
Boofuls said, ‘He is back now, to rule his rightful domain. All praise. And all praise to those who found his scattered body, piece by piece, and brought it here, so that I could breathe life back into it. These actors and directors spent millions of dollars finding the last few pieces of my father’s body … some were found in Europe, others were found in Arabia. And then all that was needed was the great sacrifice – one hundred forty-four thousand innocents, whose souls gave my father new life.’
Martin lifted the mirror-sword. ‘I’m going to do now what your grandmother should have done, all those years ago. So if you’ve got some prayers to say, you’d better say them.’
Boofuls laughed. ‘Do you think that you, of all people, can ward off the realm of endless night? The sun will refuse to rise tomorrow, my friend, and it will never rise again, and the world will die in chaos and darkness and storm and cold. The time was promised in the Bible, my friend, and the time is now!’
Behind Boofuls, the bulk of Satan suddenly and thunderously spread his wings and opened his jaws in a screech of triumphant fury. Dust and decayed fabric were stirred up into a whirlwind, and the devil clawed his way toward Martin with its eyes staring and his teeth bared. Boofuls lifted both arms, and stepped aside, and sang out, ‘A feast for my father, that’s what you’ll be!’
Martin was so frightened that he could hardly think how to make his arms move. But he managed to lift the mirror-sword and swing it around and around so that it whistled cleanly through the dust and the murk, and gleamed like a helicopter blade above his head.
Satan lunged his head forward, and the tip of one of his horns caught Martin in the chest. Martin heard two ribs crack and felt a sharp, agonizing pain. Satan’s head swayed around again and grazed against his shoulder. For a split second, he had a close-up of that watery, evil eye, and gingery fur that was thick with maggots; and when he breathed in he breathed the nauseating stench of excrement and dead meat.
Satan was playing with him, enjoying his fear, relishing his pain. Martin rolled aside and shouted out, ‘Bastard!’ and took a swing with his mirror-sword at Satan’s neck. But Satan rolled his head away, with fumes pouring from his nostrils, and Martin lost his balance, stumbled, and dropped the mirror-sword on the floor.
‘A feast for my father!’ screamed Boofuls, dancing up and down. ‘A feast for my father!’
Martin felt one broken rib grate against the other. He tried to turn himself over and pick himself up, but Satan’s wing was already flapping over him like a circus tent in a storm, and Satan’s reptilian head was already diving toward him with its fangs agape.
‘Oh, God, help me!’ he yelled.
And it was then that Emilio ducked quickly under Satan’s brushing wing and picked up the sword marked VORPAL. The glass blade was almost as tall as he was; but he grasped the insulating-tape handle in both hands and ran three or four paces forward, and just as Satan turned his head sideways to grip Martin with his teeth, Emilio jabbed it straight into the devil’s eye.
It was so sharp that it slid all the way in, and its point came gleaming out of the back of the devil’s withered neck.
Martin had his eyes shut. He didn’t see the sword run in. But he heard Miss Redd scream; and he heard Boofuls shouting in dismay; and then he opened his eyes again and saw Satan rearing up, up, up, leathery trunk on leathery pelvis, wings stretched taut in agony, dust and maggots showering down from his shaken fur.
There was a moment of deafening silence. Everybody in the room rose from their knees and stepped backward in awe. The dragon that was Satan stood immensely high, his head arched back, the mirror-sword glittering out of that one eye. Remember that only the child can destroy the parent.
Then the dragon collapsed. He literally fell apart, limb from limb, claw from finger, bone from bone. His skull dropped from his neck and rolled across the floor with a hollow sound like an empty barrel. His wings folded and dropped. Within a few minutes, there was nothing left of his leathery eminence but all the fragments that had been so painstakingly and expensively collected over so many years by the vainglorious Satan worshippers of Hollywood. A pall of stinking dust hung over him for a while, but gradually sifted and settled.
Boofuls stood quite still, with his eyes wide open.
‘What have you done?’ he said. ‘What have you done!!’
Without a word, Martin limped over to the devil’s skull, placed his foot against it, and tugged out the mirror-sword. Then he turned back to Boofuls and faced him, the sword lifted over his right shoulder, ready to strike.
‘The son of Satan,’ he whispered.
Boofuls said nothing, but continued to stare at him, wide-eyed. Miss Redd, a little farther away, weakly mouthed the word ‘no’.
Martin swung the mirror-sword with all his strength. It flashed through the air and sliced Boofuls’ head clean off his neck. The bloody blond head bounced across the floor. The small naked body stood in front of Martin for a moment, its neck pumping out squiggles of blood, and then it fell stiffly sideways, as if it were a tailor’s dummy, and dropped to the floor.
Shaking, half berserk, Martin advanced on Miss Redd.
‘You will never kill me with that,’ she spat at him, backing away. ‘I am quite different.’
‘I know that,’ said Martin. He tossed the mirror-sword aside, and it dropped to the floor and smashed into half a dozen pieces. ‘But Father Quinlan told me to read my Alice carefully, and that’s just what I did.’
