Mirror (37 page)
Martin raised his eyebrows. ‘Pretty hard to massacre that many people in this day and age.’
‘Hard, yes,’ Father Quinlan agreed. ‘But not impossible.’
Afterward, Father Lucas walked Martin out to his car. The night was warm. Martin couldn’t help thinking of the Walrus and the Carpenter. ‘
The night is fine,’ the Walrus said. ‘Do you admire the view
?’
Martin opened his car door. A police siren echoed high over Mulholland, where it twisted through the hills. Mulholland’s hair-raising curves always attracted coked-up young drivers who believed they could fly.
‘What do you think?’ asked Father Lucas.
‘I don’t know,’ said Martin. ‘I’m pretty confused, to tell you the truth.’
‘Father Quinlan is probably the country’s greatest expert on theological legend. I know he rambles – but his research is quite extraordinary.’
Martin started up his engine. ‘The question is, can anybody believe what he’s saying?’
Father Lucas shrugged and smiled. ‘That, of course, is a question of faith.’
‘Let me think about this,’ Martin told him. ‘Call me tomorrow; maybe we can talk some more.’
‘Before you go,’ said Father Lucas, holding on to the car door, ‘there’s one question I have to ask you.’
Martin made a face. ‘I think I know what it is.’
‘Lejeune … that boy I met at your apartment. He does look awfully like Boofuls.’
‘That’s why I chose him.’
‘It isn’t remotely possible that when your young friend Emilio went
into
the mirror –?’
Martin cut him short. ‘Father, anything’s possible.’
‘Well,’ replied Father Lucas. He made the sign of the cross over Martin’s head. ‘If it
is
Boofuls, please take extraordinary care.’
‘Lejeune is –’ Martin began; and then he said, ‘Lejeune is Lejeune, that’s all. He’s just a boy.’
‘Perhaps you should study your Bible better,’ smiled Father Lucas. ‘Mark 5, Chapter 5.
“And when He had come out of the boat, immediately a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met Him. And Jesus was saying, ‘Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!’ and He was asking him, ‘What is your name?’ And the unclean spirit said to Him, ‘My name is Legion; for we are many
.’”’
Although the night was so warm, Martin shivered. Through the oyster-shaped lenses of his spectacles, Father Lucas looked down at him with magnified, serious eyes. ‘He is having a little joke with us, Mr Williams. I only wish it were funny.’
Ten
BOOFULS WAS STILL
asleep when Martin returned to Franklin Avenue. Mrs Capelli said she hadn’t heard a sound. ‘There was some scratching, that’s all, but it was probably the squirrels, burrowing through the trash.’
Martin went quietly upstairs, let himself in, and then tiptoed along the hallway to the sitting room door. Boofuls was still huddled up on the sofa, breathing deeply, although there was an odd burning smell in the room, as if somebody had been trying to set fire to feathers or horsehair.
Boofuls was breathing deeply and regularly, and when Martin came up close to tuck him in, he remained pale-faced and still, sleeping a dreamless sleep; the sleep of those for whom reality is back to front, and who are ultimately damned.
‘
My name is Legion; for we are many
.’
Martin looked at the mirror. He could see himself standing in the narrow band of light that crossed the room from the open door. He looked sweaty and exhausted. He wondered how the hell he had managed to get himself into all this.
He went up close to the mirror and leaned to one side, still trying to see through the sitting room door to the world where everything was different. He wondered how much of Father Quinlan’s theories he ought to believe. A musty manuscript by Lewis Carroll proved nothing at all. Yet it was remarkable how closely Carroll’s description of the life after death matched that of Homer Theobald, who had described ‘talking turtles’ and people with elongated heads.
At last, Martin closed the sitting room door and went to take a shower. As he soaped himself under the hot, prickling water he almost fell asleep. He was too tired to make coffee, so he drank three cold mouthfuls of milk straight out of the carton.
In his bedroom, on the wall, the poster of Boofuls stared at him and smiled. He stood looking at it for a long time; then he reached up and ripped it right off the wall, crumpling it up and tossing it across the room.
Breathing a little too quickly, he climbed into his crumpled futon, covered up his head, and made a determined effort to go to sleep.
He dreamed of claws, scratching on polished wood-block floors. He dreamed of cats, sliding between impossible railings. He dreamed of hot breath, and flaring blue eyes, and furry things that were as long as hosepipes. He sweated, and cried out, and clutched at his bedcover, but he didn’t wake up.
‘
Pickle-nearest-the-wind
,’ somebody whispered. ‘
Pickle-nearest-the-wind
.’
Two things happened while he slept.
The first was that Boofuls suddenly sat up in bed, his small figure lit by the early moonlight. He stayed quite still for a long time, listening. On the far side of the room against the wall, the mirror was cold and clear.
After three or four minutes, Boofuls climbed out of bed and padded on bare feet across to the mirror and stood in front of it with his hands by his sides.
In the mirror, the sitting room door opened, and another boy appeared, wearing striped cotton pajamas. It was Emilio. He looked white and distressed, and he couldn’t stop fidgeting.
‘Where’s Pickle?’ whispered Boofuls. ‘I told you to bring Pickle.’
‘Pickle didn’t want to come.’
‘Pickle has
got
to come.’
‘Well, I can bring her in the morning.’
Boofuls’ eyes flared. ‘You’d better, otherwise you can stay in that mirror forever and ever and ever!’
Emilio said, ‘Please.’
‘Please, what?’
‘Please let me out. I want to get out.’
‘What’s the matter? You’ve got your grandpa and grandma, haven’t you?’
Emilio’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Yes, but they’re not the same. They’re
different
.’
‘Everything’s different in the mirror.’
‘Boofuls, please let me out. Please.’
Boofuls let out a little hissing laugh. ‘You’ll get out when the time comes. And
if
I feel like letting you out.’
‘But I hate it here. It’s frightening!’
Boofuls leaned close to the mirror, puckered his lips, and blew Emilio a kiss. ‘You’ll get used to it. You can get used to anything if you try hard enough!’
‘Please,’ begged Emilio.
‘Bring Pickle in the morning,’ Boofuls insisted. ‘If you don’t, you can stay there forever and ever, amen!’
Emilio covered his face with his hands and began to sob quietly. Boofuls watched him for a moment with a malicious look on his face and then went back to bed. When he looked around, Emilio had gone, and the sitting room in the mirror was empty. He smiled to himself and slept.
The second thing was that Father Lucas finished one last glass of wine with Father Quinlan and then prepared to leave.
‘You have a safe at St Theresa’s, don’t you?’ Father Quinlan asked him. ‘Perhaps you’d better take these relics and lock them safely away. I don’t altogether trust the cleaners here at St Patrick’s. I lost a fine briar pipe once and a walking stick with a silver top.’
‘That’s not a very good advertisement, is it?’ Father Lucas smiled. “Theological College Is Den of Thieves, Claims Holy Father.” ‘
Father Quinlan laughed, and wrapped up the claws and the hair, and carefully slid them into a padded envelope. ‘Here’s the key, too. We don’t want to lose that.’
Father Lucas opened the study door. ‘I’m not altogether sure that Mr Williams believes in the Book of Revelation,’ he remarked.
Father Quinlan shrugged. ‘It’s rather lurid, I suppose, as prophecies go.’
‘That boy at his apartment … I’m ninety-nine percent certain that it’s Boofuls.’
‘Yes,’ said Father Quinlan. ‘It’s a pity that Mr Williams doesn’t yet feel able to take us into his confidence. Still – it’s a lot to swallow, all in one go. The Revelation and Lewis Carroll all tied up together. I found it quite difficult to believe myself when I first looked into it.’
‘But you have no doubts now?’ asked Father Lucas.
Father Quinlan shook his head. ‘None at all.’
Father Lucas said good night and left the college by the side door. He had left his dented red Datsun parked in the shadow of the chapel. He climbed in, and the suspension groaned like a dying pig. He started up the engine and was just about to back out of his parking space when he happened to glance at the padded envelope lying on the seat beside him.
Supposing he drove down to the Hollywood Divine and opened up the second safe-deposit box? The sooner he did it – the sooner he locked the relics in his safe at St Theresa – the less risk there would be of somebody else locating them first and trying to reassemble the scattered body of Satan.
He checked his watch. It was twenty after eleven, but he was pretty sure that there would be somebody on the desk at the Hollywood Divine. After all, most of its customers didn’t know day from night.
He drove eastwards on Santa Monica. From time to time, he glanced at his eyes in the rearview mirror. They looked a little glassy and bloodshot, although he didn’t know why. Too much of Father Quinlan’s Pinot chardonnay, probably. He wasn’t used to drinking. But, all the same, he was surprised how strange he felt; how detached; as if his body were taking him to the Hollywood Divine even though his mind wasn’t too keen on coming along.
Father Lucas had always liked to think of himself as traditional and pragmatic. He believed in the forces of darkness; and he believed that people could be possessed by evil spirits. He even believed that Boofuls had somehow reappeared through the mirror in Martin’s sitting room – like a sort of living hologram. But it hadn’t been easy for him to accept Father Quinlan’s theories about the second coming of Satan. To think that Satan the king of all chaos might actually appear in Hollywood in the late 1980s
in the flesh
– well, that was one of those concepts that his well-disciplined mind was unable to encompass.
He drove along Hollywood Boulevard. At this time of night, it was at its sleaziest – the sidewalks crowded with punks and weirdos and junkies and strutting streetwalkers. One immaculately dressed black man drew up alongside Father Lucas in a white Eldorado convertible and raised his leopard-spotted fedora. ‘Good evening to you, your reverence. What’s going down in heaven these days?’
‘Good evening, Perry,’ Father Lucas replied. ‘I’ll tell you when I get there.’
‘Don’t you worry, your reverence, I’ll be there first.’
Father Lucas smiled. ‘I’m sure you will, Perry, I’m sure you will.’
He turned into Vine and parked outside the Hollywood Divine. A small Mexican boy no older than eight came up to him and offered to protect his car radio. ‘Long gone, I’m afraid,’ Father Lucas told him.
‘Then what about your hubcaps?’
‘Take them, if you think they’re going to be more use to you than they are to me.’
‘I don’t want your hubcaps. If I was going to take anything, I’d take your whole crapping car.’
Father Lucas bent down over the boy, his hands on his knees, so that he could look him straight in the eye. ‘If you so much as lay one greasy finger on my crapping car, I’ll tear your crapping head off. And don’t ever use language like that to a priest ever again; or to anyone; ever.’
The boy stared at him, wide-eyed. ‘No, sir. Sorry, sir. I’ll take care of your car, sir.’
Father Lucas made his way past the hookers and the hustlers to the steps of the Hollywood Divine. Somebody had vomited tides of something raspberry-colored all over the side of the steps, and hundreds of shoes had trampled it everywhere.
Father Lucas pushed his way through the shuddering revolving doors and crossed the dimly lit lobby. One of the Hollywood Divine scarecrows was shuffling around the perimeter of the lobby with a bottle in a brown paper bag, singing, ‘
You play
…
such shweet mushic
…
how can
…
I resish
…
every shong
…
from your heartshtrings
…
makes me feel I’ve
…
jush been kissh
.’
Boofuls
, thought Father Lucas.
It seems like he’s everywhere. Like a storm that’s brewing, and everybody can feel it in the air
.
The desk clerk was sitting with his feet on the counter reading an
Elf Quest
comic and smoking a cigarette. A half-empty bottle of Gatorade and a half-chewed hot dog showed that he was halfway through dinner. He glanced up when Father Lucas approached the desk and sniffed loudly.
‘How’re you doing, Father?’ he asked. ‘Come to save our souls?’
‘Would that I could,’ said Father Lucas.
The young man flipped away his comic and swung his feet off the counter. ‘Okay, then, what’s it to be? Half an hour with Viva and Louise? For an extra ten bucks, they can dress up in nun costumes. Or how about a short time with Wladislaw? He’s been doing great business dressing up like the Pope. The Catholic guys love it. He balls them, and then he forgives them, all included in the one price.’