In the House of Mirrors (18 page)

“
Relax. Just... you'll be fine. It hurts at first, but as time goes on... you'll get over it,” I told him.

Aurelia looked at me, rolling her eyes, in a playful manner, not a bitchy one. I put a finger up, asking for one more minute, pretending to beg. She nodded, smiling.

“Ritchie... I can't believe she'd do this to me...”

“
I know...” I said.

I mailed my Uncle Bernie the pictures shortly after Little Chris had developed them. That was a few days ago. They came in the mail two days later. I pictured my uncle sitting on the couch, cocooned in a blanket with a half-used box of tissues, the wet ones strewn on the floor before him. It would probably take many more days like this to get passed this stage.
Many
more. But in truth, he asked for this. He wanted a picture of his wife cheating on him, and I delivered it.

The photographs did, however, come with a slight blemish; a little black spot over the heads of his wife and lover. I chose the one that hindered the picture the least. There were copies that showed their entire bodies in little black marks. Little Chris still did not know what to make of them. It didn't matter. The picture I selected to ship off to my uncle clearly revealed that his wife had been unfaithful.

Job well done.

“
She's... gonna... pay...” he said. He had become belligerent. His voice was raised. His sorrow turned to anger instantly. “They'll... both... pay...”

“
Stop it, Uncle Bernie. You said this was going to be a clean break. You knew this was going on for a while. Don't act like this.”

“
It's different suspecting than it is knowing!”
he snapped. My uncle did not sound like himself. “I'm going to do it, Ritchie,” he muttered, surprisingly coherent. “I'm going to make them pay.”

“
What are you talking about?” I asked. I suddenly became frightened. Something on my face must have given it away, because Aurelia mouthed the words, “what's the matter?” and appeared concerned.

“
I'm going inside now. It's been fun, Ritchie. Have a nice l-life.”

“
Where are you going? Bernard, where are you going?”

“
I followed her... I followed the b-bitch, and now it's time to make her pay the price.”

“
Where?”
I snapped. “Where are you?”

But there was no answer.

The bastard hung up on me.

4

I told Aurelia that I had to go, that a family emergency had come up. I left her with my credit card to pay for the bill whenever it arrived. I gave her a brief explanation, and she said she understood. She knew about my uncle's unfortunate situation when I told her about how I ended up at the first cult meeting. I strolled out of the restaurant, but not before kissing Aurelia on the forehead, and telling her that we could meet up later if she liked.

She liked.

She liked very much.

Unfortunately for me, I would not be in the mood for company.

5

I knew if something was going down, it would be at Olberstad's apartment. There was a chance my uncle followed her to the nail salon, or the place where she gets her hair done, or even the movies, but I knew better than that. I knew where Uncle Bernie would go.

I pulled into Olberstad's apartment complex about twenty minutes after my uncle's phone call. I drove as fast as I could, hitting the gas rather than breaking through every questionable yellow light. Only one light went red on me before I sped past.

I couldn't shake the awful feeling that something bad had happened. I realized that Uncle Bernie was not the violent type, that he was not capable of hurting another human being, but I forgot to take into account that everybody has a breaking point, and if any single situation was more likely to make a man reach that point, it was catching his wife with another man.

I parked in the same space as I had on the night I followed Olberstad to Boone's house, a night that changed the course of my life forever. Actually, accepting my uncle's offer had changed everything. Scratch that; moving back to New-Fucking-Jersey altered my life in ways I never would've believed. No, that's not right either. It all stemmed from the day I left my wallet on the dresser, and walked in on Lynne getting butt-fucked by a three-hundred pound gorilla. If only I had taken my wallet to work that day, things would have turned out very different. I'd probably still be living there, working for the paper I loved to write for, clueless that my long-time girlfriend was fucking professional football players behind my back, in my bed, where
we
slept. It made me sick to think that one silly event, one stupid wallet, had caused so much grief and so many calamities. If that day had gone down like any other, I never would have come back to Jersey. Never would have taken a job at some rundown paper as a photographer. Never would have borrowed the hell-spawned camera bent on ruining my life. Never would have been sent on a detective mission for my uncle. And I never would have had to break my poor uncle's heart, exposing his wife and her dirty little secret. Who knew a forgotten wallet could cause such a chain of events?

I got out of my car and scurried across the parking lot. It was well lit, and so was Olberstad's front door. I saw a recognizable car parked—askew, but parked nonetheless—out front. It was Uncle Bernie's shitbox all right, I remembered it from the night we had our little meeting, the first night I was introduced to the man who was banging my aunt.

There were two kids, no older than seventeen, smoking cigarettes in the walkway leading to Olberstad's front door. They must have belonged to the apartment next to his. They were dressed like skateboarders; the snapback hats, unzipped hoodies, and jeans so tight they cut off the circulation from the waist down. I jogged by them and headed to Marty's front door, painted the same ugly shade of maroon as all the others. 

“
I wouldn't go in there, man,” one of the teenagers said. He took a drag from his cigarette when I turned to him.

“
And why is that?” I asked.

“
The couple inside was having a hell of a fight,” he replied. “Sounded pretty bad.”

“
How long ago?”

“
We came out here about five minutes ago,” the other one said. “We heard someone scream... or at least
I
thought I did.”

“
For the record, I heard nothing,” the other one said, still smoking his cigarette down to the filter.

The three of us grew silent; we listened for any voices coming from within the apartment. There was nothing, except for a hooting owl, who called to us from a distance, along with other moonlight creatures.

I crept toward the door, moving slowly, still trying to keep an ear open, hoping I'd catch something being said from within the apartment. However, only the night critters could be heard.

“
You have a cell phone?” I asked the teenagers, not looking at any one in particular.

“
Dude, it's 2013. Who doesn't?”

“
Get ready to call the police.” A bad feeling lingered in my stomach, making my internal organs knot.

“
Mr. Olberstad is a nice guy. He's lived next door to my mom for years—”

I waved him off. “Just be ready.”

I reached for the knob and turned it.

It was unlocked and I pushed the door open, hesitant to step inside. But I couldn't help it. I'd come this far. There was no turning back. Just like with the Denlax, I knew no boundaries. I did not know when to stop. 

I stepped inside Olberstad's apartment, and shut the door behind me.

6

Something bad had happened here. A lamp had been knocked over, the bulb inside shattered across the beige carpet. A few boxes and other items of unimportance were dispersed across the apartment. I moved toward the kitchen, carefully stepping over the debris that littered the floor. The place was much smaller than it looked from the outside.

As I entered the kitchen, I called out my uncle's name. No answer. Could he have left? Slipped out the window? Had Olberstad and Aunt Danica not been home when he arrived? No, he said he followed her here. They were here all right. All three of them.

But why were they not responding?

The panic-induced pang drummed within me once again, attacking my chest. Luckily I had remembered to take my medicine that morning.

Speckles of red on the kitchen counter.
Blood
. It had to be blood.

“
Bernie?” I called out. “Marty? Danica? Anyone?” 

There was really only one place they could have been.

The bedroom.

I shifted down the hallway, overstepping a few items which had been tossed to the floor during an angry fit. I reached the end of the hallway and saw two doors. One was wide open, but there was nothing but darkness inside. It was the bathroom. The bedroom door was slightly cracked, the light shining into the hallway where I was standing. “Hello?” I asked, as I pushed open the door.

According to the two skateboarding teenagers outside, I screamed when I saw the scene that a local newspaper would describe as one of the “most grisly murders this town has ever seen” although I don't remember screaming at all.

7

Aunt Danica was propped on the bed, her back resting against the headboard, sitting as if she were a doll on a little girl's bed. Her eyes had been popped out of her skull, and they were dangling past her chin from two strands that looked like red licorice. Blood continued to seep from the dark cavities that used to contain her eyeballs. Her throat had been slashed, a thick gash that had finished bleeding out. Her clothes were soaked in blood, and so was Olberstad's comforter. Blood speckled the walls.

Marty suffered a similar fate. His naked body was stretched out on the floor. His head was also on the floor, only it was on the other side of the room. Marty's vertebrae protruded from his severed neck. An ocean of blood soaked into the carpet.

I stumbled backwards.

Uncle Bernard was staring out of the window, a long, bloody butcher's knife in his right hand. He stared at the stars motionlessly.

“What did you do?” I muttered.
“What the fuck did you do?”

“
I showed them...” he spoke softly. “I showed them...”

He turned. I stepped to him, blind to what was coming next. The only thing I had on my mind was beating my uncle to a pulp for what he did. No one deserved this.
No one
. Not even them. There was so much blood in the room I could smell it. Before I reached my uncle and attempted to take the murder weapon from his clutches, I felt whatever had been in my stomach enter my throat. I bent over and fired out a whole pile of puke, which only added to the disgusting display the police would see later. Uncle Bernie did not comment. He stared at me, blankly, as if he no longer had human emotions. Who knew? Maybe he didn't. I had a tough time classifying anyone capable of butchering their fellow man human anyway.

“
All can see, Ritchie,” he said. “All can see in the House of Mirrors...”

On my knees in front of the small pile of vomit, I watched as he took the knife and stuck it into his own throat, cutting from under his chin and down into his Adam's Apple. Rivulets of blood gushed from the wound.

He did not make a sound the entire time he carved himself.

8

The cops would later find a photograph in Bernard's pocket. It was of Marty Olberstad and Danica. They were kissing, and although two black spots covered most of their faces, their identities were unmistakable.

Two black spots...

Two black spots...

Two. Black. Spots.

All can see in the House of Mirrors,
he had said.

PART THREE

THE DENLAX EFFECT

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

He walked to a nearby convenience store from the Moon Motel, less than a mile away. He intended to buy coffee and smokes, but decided on a flavored slushy over coffee on the way there. His preferred choice was blueberry, but the store was out of it, so he settled for cherry instead. This agitated him. When he arrived at the cash register he asked the Indian fellow behind the counter for his brand of smokes. The Indian fellow complied with his wishes and put the cigarettes on the counter, accompanied by matches. “The next time I come in here,” the man said, “you better fucking have blueberry, or I'm going to cut off your balls with a butter knife.”

The Indian man behind the counter glared at him, like nothing had been said at all. “Good day, sir,” the clerk said.

“Eat shit,” the man muttered, and drifted toward the door. Before he left, his eyes caught the attention of a newspaper headline. BRUTAL SLAYING IN RED RIVER APARTMENT.
Murder?
the man thought. Murders happened frequently in Red River, not an every day occurrence, but they did happen. What made this one so special? Something about the headline grabbed him, made him stop to pick up the paper, and skim over the article.

Something made him do it all.

That was always Geoffrey Boone's excuse.

Something made me do it.

It had been hard to read since the voices took over his mind. At first, the voices came and went, spotty occurrences, even when they were at their loudest. Sometimes it sounded like a bunch of birds chirping through the bedroom window one spring morning. Sometimes it sounded like a crowded restaurant. Sometimes it was difficult to make out what they were saying, sometimes it was easy. Sometimes only one voice spoke.
The Master
. Sometimes he would tell Geoffrey to do things. Things that were inappropriate for this world. But from the world where the Master came from, it was anything goes. Anything could be done. Magic existed.
Dark
magic. Light magic too, but that was not practiced by
the
Elduronds
. The Elduronds practiced Dark magic, and Geoffrey knew this the same way he knew most things about other worlds; because his Master told him.

On his way back to the Moon Motel, the Master was quite talkative. Geoffrey was trying his best not to listen. Nothing good ever came from the Master's wishes and commands. Geoffrey never got what
he
wanted. Eyes and ears, that's all he was to the Master. Insignificant. The Master could always find more eyes and ears. There were plenty of both in this world. But Geoffrey was easy to control. Geoffrey did what he wanted.

Most of the time.

Recently, Geoffrey had been disobedient. He'd been able to block out all communication with the other world, especially from his Master. It was mostly due to a little tiny pill called Clozapine. The small football-shaped pill closed the portal to the other world, much to Geoffrey's surprise. The voices of the Elduronds had been minimal since taking the medication. Geoffrey knew he wasn't mentally ill. He knew he wasn't schizophrenic. He was just a portal. Geoffrey often debated whether the people who created Clozapine knew that their drug had the ability to sever the link between worlds. He almost sent the drug company a letter once, praising them on their discovery. Before he could mail it, however, he decided it was a letter only a crazy person would write, and it would undoubtedly earn him another trip to Benton.

Geoffrey thought a lot about Benton. He'd been there enough over the years that it was practically a second home to him. Although, looking back on things, Geoffrey never really had a first home. His first home had been ruined by the untimely death of his mother. His father moved them because he “couldn't live in the same place she died.” So the old man quit (or got fired, Geoffrey never really knew for sure) his job, and moved around for a long time, before settling down in New Jersey. Geoffrey was in high school at the time. Some might say that's when Geoffrey started to fall off his rocker, but if you go back a little further, the evidence of his insanity started before that. When he was seven, Geoffrey Boone captured a squirrel in a cardboard box. The squirrel was only a little baby, lost and confused, separated from its mother. It did not run from Geoffrey. It glanced up at him, seeking guidance.

Geoffrey brought his foot down on the innocent animal's head, squishing it like a piece of rotten fruit.

After his mother passed, Geoffrey became too much for Carter to handle. Carter Boone was not blind to his son's erratic, and sometimes disturbing behavior. He chose to ignore the warning signs, thus making him every bit responsible for Geoffrey's behavior as Geoffrey. Maybe more so.

But none of this concerned Geoffrey, because he was just a portal.

2

Geoffrey remembered the first time he saw his father conduct a black mass. It was when his mother was still alive, and before he left the Catholic Church. Carter Boone delivered the Eucharist to churchgoers on Sundays, and taught Catechism to Geoffrey and his friends on Tuesday nights. But on Saturday nights, he and his mother held “parties” in the basement of their home, “parties” which Geoffrey was not allowed to attend, nor was he to spy on. If he was caught trying to sneak a peek of what went on down there, Carter promised his son that his ass would be redder than his Radio Flyer.

Of course, when Carter told his son what
not
to do, Geoffrey started thinking up ways
to
do it, and debated if it was worth a ferocious spanking, were he to be caught. Of course it was worth it, he deduced. He was damn curious! That, and an absent voice, one that did not need to rely on words to get what it wanted, beckoned him to infiltrate the basement one Saturday night. There was no inkling of doubt, there never really was, and this was perhaps what made Geoffrey Boone so dangerous to those around him. Geoffrey never saw an angel on his shoulder, always two devils.

Geoffrey waited at the top of the stairs for almost an hour. He knew from previous weeks that the party wasn't going to go on much longer. He crept down the stairs when the group was the loudest, chanting in some language that Geoffrey had not learned in grade school, and never would. He was careful not to put too much pressure on the old wooden steps; they creaked loudly when he did that. One step at a time, he methodically descended toward the cellar floor. In a few short minutes, the cold of the concrete could be felt on the bottom of his bare feet. He hid behind an old painted hutch from the small group that had gathered before his father. The shadows helped shield him. The only light in the room came from a few wax candles resting on a small altar.

The group continued their mantra. It appeared they were having a mass, like the one he always attended on Sundays, only different. Everyone wore robes. Black ones. There was a statue on the altar of a half-man, half-goat. It looked like...

Geoffrey didn't want to think what it looked like.

It looks like the Devil's work.

It sure did.

Geoffrey couldn't keep his eyes off the statue. He stared at it. The Goat-God stared back. The two of them were locked in a battle of who-blinked-first. The statue won. Still, Geoffrey did not look away. He did not take his eyes off of it until after the ceremony had reached its end. The finale concluded with something that would haunt Geoffrey for quite some time. He'd never forget it. He'd understand it when he got older, but vowed to never tell anybody.

His mother stood before the crowd. She took off her robe and exposed her naked body. Some of the others did the same. Some of them were women, some of them were men. One of them was their neighbor, Mr. Howard. Another was his Catechism teacher from last year, Mrs. Blount. Mr. Howard and Mrs. Blount began to touch his mother in places he knew only his father was allowed to touch. It nauseated him. His mother didn't seem to mind. She smiled as they ran their fingers and hands up and down her body. His father joined in. They did some other disgusting things before Geoffrey couldn't take anymore and forced himself to look away.

Carefully, using the shadows as a blanket, Geoffrey crept back up the stairs.

Geoffrey wasn't careful enough. Although he didn't say anything right away, Carter Boone saw his son moving about in the shadows, trying to make his way up the stairs unnoticed. Instead of causing a scene, he kept on caressing his wife's body along with his friends.

3

A few days later, Carter came to visit Geoffrey in his son's room. Geoffrey was reading a comic book while snacking on some potato chips. Snacking on potato chips in bed was a big no-no in his mother's book, but Carter taught from different parenting literature than she did. Carter's pages were mostly blank.

Geoffrey put the comic book down when his father asked him if there was anything that he'd like to tell him. This was a parenting technique where the child would get a chance to own up to his own mistakes, thus teaching them the valuable lesson of not lying. But Geoffrey knew if he told the truth, he'd catch a beating. His ass would resemble his toy wagon. If he lied, maybe he'd have half a chance of getting away with it. He'd have to be pretty convincing. Unless, his father already knew the truth, which Geoffrey assumed he did. So it didn't matter. Either way, his ass was going to look like an over-sized apple.

“
No,” was Geoffrey's response.

“
If you tell me the truth, it will be easier, I promise,” Carter said to his son. This was always the promise that was made to be broken.

“
I don't know what you want to me to tell you,” Geoffrey said, tears stinging his eyes.

“
all right then.”

Carter took his son over his knee, and while Geoffrey was screaming, Carter took his belt to his bare ass, over and over again, until it bled.

4

Geoffrey hated his father for most of his life. Carter was wealthy, for unknown reasons he would never speak of. Geoffrey assumed it had something to do with his mother's unexpected demise. According to his father, the doctors killed his mother. When Geoffrey was old enough, he learned about malpractice lawsuits. Geoffrey assumed his father had won one, and that's where their income came from. It was the same income that helped Geoffrey stay in all those fancy facilities, the ones that gave him drugs like Clozapine. Drugs that helped close portals. It was also the same income that helped them buy the property in the middle of the woods. Geoffrey discovered it himself. Actually, another man discovered it, another man who had the same Master as Geoffrey. His name was Lyle, or Lester, or Lennehan. He wasn't sure. Names were hard to learn when there were so many others spoken in your head, over and over again, from morning until night. Anyway, this L character showed Geoffrey the land. On it, was a house. A decrepit, old, rundown house that was practically uninhabitable. The front door was boarded up. No grass grew out front, just a sea of dirt. Windows were smashed. The porch was covered in mold and mildew. The siding was falling off.

It was a real fixer-upper.

“
We can fix it. It's perfect for our Saturday nights. Don't you think?” Geoffrey asked his father.

The old man nodded. For the first time in a long time, perhaps ever, Carter agreed with his son.

So they purchased the house and the property around it.

The house. Or,
the door
, as L had put it.
The house is the door.

And the camera?

The camera is the key,
L had said.

5

Two years ago, L spent two full days in the Benton Mental Facility. Although his check in was voluntary, someone else had told him to. That someone was different than the voice who made Geoffrey run naked through a public park, telling him his clothes were infested with little bugs that had escaped through the portal. These little bugs supposedly would get into his clothes and cause a nasty infection, causing his penis to fall off. The two voices were different, but they served the same Master. The Master who told Marty Olberstad to pork Bernard Friedman's wife. The Master who told Danica Friedman to pork Marty Olberstad. After that, Marty and Danica porked each other on their own freewill. When Bernard found out about it, the Master hinted at the very good idea to butcher the both of them.

All can see in the House of Mirrors.

Aurelia burned down the house in the woods on her own freewill. She did this because of her hatred for Geoffrey Boone. But the Master had suggested she stay put and watch the house burn down from inside.