Mirror (30 page)

Tears welled up in Mr Capelli’s eyes, too, and he patted Boofuls’ narrow back. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he replied thickly. ‘I don’t know what to say. How can a man and a grandfather turn away somebody like this, some little boy who needs his help?’

‘Mr Capelli,’ said Martin, ‘doesn’t Emilio have any kind of say in this?’

‘Well, sure he does,’ agreed Mr Capelli. ‘But if Boofuls is telling us the truth, then Emilio
wanted
to go play in the mirror. He
wanted
to.’

‘Couldn’t we ask Emilio for ourselves?’ Martin suggested.

‘Can we do that?’ Mr Capelli asked Boofuls.

Boofuls nodded. ‘We can ask him, yes. But you mustn’t try to get him out of the mirror. Until I’m ready, it could be very dangerous. He could die.’

‘Let’s just go and see him, shall we?’ said Martin.

They went through to the sitting room. The sunlight was very bright in here, and Mr Capelli shielded his eyes with his hand. The mirror seemed larger than it had before: larger and clearer. Anybody who hadn’t known that there was a mirror there might have been forgiven for thinking that it was nothing more than a gilded archway through to another identical room.

As they approached the mirror, Martin saw with a prickle of surprise that he and Mr Capelli were accompanied not by a reflection of Boofuls, but by a reflection of Emilio. The two boys stood in perfectly matching positions, and if one of them nodded his head, then the other one nodded, too.

‘Emilio …’ whispered Mr Capelli. Then, rushing up to the mirror, ‘
Emilio!
’

But of course all that Mr Capelli managed to do was to press himself against his own reflection. Emilio stood
behind
Mr Capelli’s reflection, just as Boofuls was standing behind him in the real room. Mr Capelli hesitated and then stepped back again, so that he could see Emilio more clearly.

‘Emilio?’ asked Martin. ‘Are you okay?’

Emilio was wearing a
Star Trek
T-shirt and red shorts and scruffy red and white trainers. He looked a little pale and tired, but otherwise well. The lick of black hair which usually fell across the left side of his forehead fell across the right side instead, and his wristwatch was on his right wrist. His face had an oddly asymmetrical appearance, simply because Martin was used to seeing it the other way around.

Emilio called, ‘I’m fine, I’m okay. I’m having fun.’

‘Who’s taking care of you?’ Mr Capelli asked him. Emilio held hands with the reflected Mr Capelli, and Boofuls held hands with the real Mr Capelli. Both of them smiled.

‘
You’re
looking after me, of course,’ said Emilio.

‘Me?’ asked Mr Capelli, mystified.

‘You and Grandma. ‘You’re in here, too. So’s Martin; so’s everybody. It’s just like home.’

Mr Capelli pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. He couldn’t understand this at all. ‘All I want to know is, are you okay? Me and Grandma, we’re taking care of you okay? Feeding you good? Nobody’s hurting you, nothing like that? Nobody’s telling you that you
have
to stay there?’

‘Grandpa, I like it here. I’m happy.’

Mr Capelli looked toward Martin for support; but Martin was too busy examining their reflections in the mirror for something which gave him a clue to how this apparent hallucination actually worked. Yet there seemed to be nothing, no tricks at all. He was seeing a blond-haired motion-picture star of the late 1930s whose reflection in the mirror was a dark-haired Italian boy of the late 1980s, and that was all there was to it.

‘Emilio,’ Martin said, ‘if I told you that you could come back over here, right now, right this second, what would you say to me?’

‘I like it here,’ Emilio repeated. ‘I’m happy.’

But there was an edginess in Emilio’s voice that made Martin feel that he wasn’t telling the whole truth.

‘Emilio,’ he asked, ‘what’s it
like
in there? Is it really like home? Boofuls said it was different.’

‘Well, sure, it’s
different
,’ said Emilio. He wasn’t smiling at all.

‘Listen, I have a suggestion,’ said Martin to Boofuls. Boofuls wasn’t smiling either. ‘Why don’t you get back into the mirror while I start putting your movie package together? It’s going to take months before anybody’s going to tell us yes or no; and months more to rewrite and cast the picture; and even more months before they can get around to set building and costumes. We’ll be lucky to have this production finished in eighteen months, two years. And Emilio can’t stay behind that mirror for two years.’

Boofuls’ eyes tightened and darkened. ‘I was trapped in the mirror for fifty years, Martin. Fifty! If I don’t get out now, I’m never going to get out, ever.’

‘But you can’t possibly expect Emilio to stay in that mirror-world until he’s seven!’

‘The picture won’t take two years to make,’ said Boofuls.

‘Oh, yes, and how can you be so sure about that?’

‘I’m sure, that’s all. Once it starts production, it’ll be easy. None of the sets were destroyed; none of the costumes were spoiled.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I
know
, that’s all. They’re all at a warehouse in Long Beach.’

‘Well, well,’ Martin replied, trying not to sound too bitter about it, ‘we’re all ready to roll, then. We’ve got the star, we’ve got the screenplay, we’ve got the costumes, we’ve got the sets. All we seem to have forgotten is that minor detail called finance. Twenty-five million dollars for a full-scale musical, and that’s the bottom line.’

Boofuls didn’t respond to Martin’s sarcasm, but smiled and said, ‘We’ll see.’

Mr Capelli, confused, called out to Emilio. ‘Emilio, hey, I love you?’

‘I know, Grandpa,’ said Emilio. ‘But Boofuls can’t rest if I come back now.’

‘Emilio, listen –’

‘You must help him,’ little Emilio insisted in a tone far graver than any that Martin had heard him adopt before.

‘Martin,’ begged Mr Capelli, ‘what can I do?’

‘Quite seriously, Mr Capelli,’ said Martin, ‘if I were you I’d
demand
–’

But Mr Capelli’s dilemma was settled for him; because at that moment a cat’s tail swished black and gingery from behind the door in the reflected sitting room, and Emilio immediately darted after it, out of the door, and disappeared. Martin turned around. Boofuls had run out of the room too. They heard him giggling in the kitchen, as if he were playing with a pet.

‘
What
can we believe?’ asked Mr Capelli, stretching his arms out wide. Martin could see that he was very close to collapse; and the shock of this morning’s events was beginning to make
him
feel swimmy and light-headed, too. Too much caffeine, not enough sleep, not enough to eat.

Martin said, ‘I don’t know, Mr Capelli. I really don’t know. Maybe your Father Lucas will tell us what to believe.’

Sister Boniface was kneeling at early prayer in the chapel of Sisters of Mercy Hospital; her head bowed; her eyes tightly closed; her mind very close to God.

The chapel was modern and very simple. Plain oak pews, plain oak floor, an altar of polished gray marble.

Its richest feature was its stained-glass window, depicting the Madonna holding the naked Christ-child, with rays of multicolored light transporting her up to the clouds. Sister Boniface adored this window. The light strained through it differently at different times of the day. Sometimes it looked peaceful and slightly melancholy: at other times, when the sun shone fully, it blazed with holy glory.

Today Sister Boniface was praying in particular for the soul of Homer Theobald. She had learned through the hospital grapevine that he had died; and she had learned from Sister Michael that Martin and Ramone had been with him. However, she had been afraid to call Martin to confirm her deepest anxiety – that the key which she had given him had attracted the attention of a vengeful Satan. She was mortified that she believed in evil spirits; and she was wracked with guilt for having given Martin the key.

When she met him last week, it had seemed to Sister Boniface that Martin could well be the messenger for whom she had been waiting for fifty years: the man who would settle her torment once and for all, and give her peace. She had sensed an aura of honesty about him; an aura of blessed destiny. But now she was beginning to suspect that Satan might have been deceiving her, and that all he wanted to do was to relieve her of the key which she had guarded for so long.

She had no idea what the key unlocked, but she knew that it was more terrible than anybody could imagine.

She prayed for her fellow sisters, she prayed for the hospital, she prayed for a small boy in St Francis of Assisi ward who was dying of AIDS from a contaminated blood transfusion. She prayed for peace and fulfillment, and that Homer Theobald had found his place in the Kingdom of Heaven.

She was finishing her prayers when a voice whispered, ‘
Sister Boniface
’.

She looked up; looked around. There was nobody there. The chapel was deserted.

‘
Sister Boniface
.’

She listened. At last, she stood up, brushing down her white habit, and said in a quavering voice, ‘Who’s there? Is anybody there?’

‘
Sister Boniface, you betrayed me
,’ the voice said.

‘I betrayed no one,’ said Sister Boniface. ‘I have always kept my word and my sacred trust.’

‘
You gave away the key, Sister Boniface
.’

Sister Boniface stepped out into the aisle and walked toward the altar, looking from left to right for any sign of the whisperer hiding behind the pews or the pillars.

‘
You betrayed me, Sister Boniface, now you will have to be punished
.’

Sister Boniface stopped in front of the altar. On her right, beside one of the smooth Italian-marble pillars, scores of votive candles burned brightly and were reflected in her eyes. The dear Madonna smiled down at her from the stained-glass window. She knew that nothing terrible could happen to her in the sight of the dear Madonna.

‘
Nobody can betray me and go unpunished
,’ the voice said, just as close to her ear as it had been before. ‘
Warm hands, warm, the men have gone to plough; if you want to warm your hands, warm your hands now
.’

Sister Boniface said, ‘Who are you?
What
are you? What do you want?’

‘
She gave you the key to keep
,’ whispered the voice. ‘
She gave you the key to keep. Not to lose, not to give away. To keep forever, and to take with you to your grave
.’

Sister Boniface whirled around, but there was nobody behind her, nobody anywhere to be seen. Her mouth felt suddenly parched, and she started to tremble. ‘O Holy Mother, protect me,’ she prayed. But she was beginning to feel that prayer alone was not going to be enough. ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit …’

‘
Warm hands, warm
,’ murmured the voice. ‘
The men have gone to plough. If you want to warm your hands, warm your hands now
.’

It was then that she caught sight of his face; and she screamed out loud. Her scream echoed in the chapel, but there was nobody there to hear her.

He was smiling at her from the small mirror just above the banks of votive candles – childish, white-faced. The same boy who had floated over his grandmother’s bed all those years ago. The same boy whose unearthly appearance had tormented Sister Boniface for the rest of her life
.

‘
Ah
,’ whispered Boofuls, ‘
you’ve seen me
.’

Sister Boniface walked towards the mirror, her left foot dragging slightly, her habit rustling on the marble floor. Boofuls watched her approach and his eyes were tiny piercing lights.

‘I never betrayed you,’ said Sister Boniface, her voice shaking.

‘
You were supposed to take that key to your grave, you miserable old witch
,’ Boofuls spat back at her. ‘
When you gave that key away, you gave away part of my secret. You should have known better than that, witch, even you
.’

Then, in a slow, measured rhythm, he sang, ‘
Warm hands, warm; the men have gone to plough; if you want to warm your hands, warm your hands now
.’

Sister Boniface shuddered. ‘You are Satan,’ she declared, ‘I know you now! You are Satan!’

Boofuls laughed. He laughed and laughed. He laughed so much that – for one peculiar second – his face in the mirror almost seemed to turn itself inside out, and reveal something dark and gristly and insectlike. Sister Boniface cried out ‘
Satan!
’ and reached up over the banks of votive candles to take the mirror down.

It was then that she felt every muscle in her body lock tight. She was paralyzed, with her arms held over the candles. She tried to move, tried to cry out, but her nervous system simply refused to obey her.

Satan
, she thought wildly. Satan!

There were more than seventy candles burning just below her outstretched hands. What at first had felt like a wave of warmth now began to feel like a furnace. The boy’s face in the mirror watched her in delight as Sister Boniface gradually began to realize what was going to happen to her.