Mirror (49 page)

‘Mr Capelli,’ said Martin, ‘we’ll do our best.’

He opened his apartment door and went inside, with Ramone following. Alison was in the bathroom, and she called out, ‘Martin? Is that you?’

‘In here,’ Martin called back.

Ramone breathed out and said, ‘Man, those people … all those dead people … that had to be worse than Hiroshima or something.’ He sat down on the sofa and held his head in his hands. ‘Man, that was the worst thing I ever saw.’

‘Are you okay?’ Martin asked him.

‘What do you think?’ Ramone retorted. ‘Okay? How can I be okay? I’m going to have nightmares about that for the rest of my life.’

Martin went across to the windowsill and opened the bottle of red wine. He poured Ramone a generous glassful, and then one for himself. Then he sat on the edge of the desk staring at the mirror at the opposite end of the room.

‘That’s one son of a bitch,’ Ramone remarked, staring at the mirror, too.

‘But not unbeatable,’ Martin told him.

‘Oh, no?’ said Ramone. ‘We can’t move it, we can’t break it, we can’t do nothing except sit here like the Two Stooges and wait for it to ruin our lives.’

‘We can go into it,’ said Martin with determination. ‘We can go into it, and we can get Emilio back. And then, by God, we can use Emilio to get rid of Boofuls once and for all.’

‘You’re really going to try?’ asked Ramone.

‘Yes,’ said Martin, although he was almost frightened to hear himself say the words out loud, ‘I’m really going to try.’

He stood up, and at that moment Alison came into the room, white-faced. ‘Martin? Ramone? Thank goodness you’re all right! We were watching the premiere on television and when they said that everybody was getting killed –!’

Martin held her in his arms for a moment. ‘It’s okay; we’re fine. Well, fine isn’t the word for it, but we’re still alive.’

‘What
happened
? They were saying on the news that everybody just went crazy.’

Martin nodded. ‘That’s just about what happened, yes. But I have the feeling that something even worse is about to happen. It’s pretty hard to explain, but Emilio is the key to it. We have to get Emilio back.’

Alison slowly turned and stared at the mirror. ‘When you say something worse –?’

‘I mean much worse. Like the sun never coming up, ever. Not in our lifetime, anyway.’

‘And we have to get Emilio out?’

‘That’s right. We have to go into the mirror, if we can, and find out where he is, and bring him home.’

Alison hesitated for a moment, but then she said, ‘Let me come with you.’

‘Hey, come on, you’re loco,’ said Ramone.

‘But I have
some
psychic sensitivity, don’t I? I mean, not very much. But maybe it could help.’

Martin shook his head. ‘I can’t let you take the risk.’

‘Then what are you going to do? Go on your own?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Martin. ‘I guess I am.’ He reached out and touched the surface of the mirror. It was cold, hard, as impenetrable as real glass; but he had the feeling that if he closed his eyes and simply
walked right through it
that it would dissolve, just as the looking-glass in
Alice
had dissolved.

‘Well, I think two heads are better than one,’ Alison argued, ‘especially when it comes to anything occult.’

‘For instance?’ asked Ramone.

‘For instance, if you manage to get into the mirror, how are you going to get out again? Have you thought about that? Emilio can’t get out. How will
you
be able to?’

Martin said, ‘Trust to luck, I guess.’

‘Oh, yes, and be trapped in the mirror forever, just the way that Boofuls was?’

‘Well, do you have any bright suggestions?’ asked Martin.

‘I don’t know. It may not be foolproof, but you could use a rope when you go into the mirror, just like they did when they went through the spirit-world in
Poltergeist
, because let’s face it, that mirror is a spirit-world, right? And if you have a rope, somebody on this side can haul you back onto this side of the mirror if you get into any kind of trouble.’

‘Well … that kind of
sounds
like some kind of sense,’ Ramone admitted. ‘Nutty, but sense.’

‘Oh, sure,’ said Martin, who was still uneasy about the idea of taking Alison with him into the mirror. ‘And where do we find enough rope?’

‘No problem,’ said Ramone. ‘I have about a thousand feet of nylon diving rope in the back of my store. I can go get it, easy.’

Martin thought for a while and then nodded. He couldn’t think of any other way to guarantee their safe return to the real world. ‘Okay, then. If you can go get the rope.’

‘You’ll be just like divers,’ said Ramone. ‘I’ll stay here, holding on to the other end of the rope, and if you get into any kind of trouble, you can tug on it, and I can haul you in.’

Ramone went off to find his diving rope. Meanwhile Martin poured Alison a glass of wine. ‘Maybe I should change into something more practical,’ she said. She was still wearing her tight white elasticated suntop and a wide 1950s-style skirt. ‘Do you have a jogging suit I could borrow, something like that?’

Martin took her into the bedroom and rummaged through his closet until he found her a loose gray sweatshirt with a pull-cord neck and pair of white cotton shorts that had shrunk the last time he washed them.

She crossed her arms and tugged off her suntop, baring the largest breasts that Martin had ever seen. They bounced independently, as if they had a life of their own. Then she stepped out of her skirt; under which she wore a plain white thong. Martin watched her as she buttoned up his shorts and slipped on his sweatshirt, and knew exactly what it was that Morris had seen in her. The tragic part about it was, Morris would never see her again.

‘Something’s happening, isn’t it?’ asked Alison as she brushed her hair in front of the mirror. ‘Something really serious?’

Martin swallowed wine. ‘Yes. I guess you could call it Armageddon.’

‘That’s the end of the world, isn’t it?’

‘Just about. It could be worse than the end of the world.’

‘Worse?’ frowned Alison.

Martin shrugged. ‘Somebody once defined Armageddon as all the most distressing things that you can imagine happening to you, all at once, forever. To me, that sounds worse than the end of the world.’

Outside, the sky crackled with fibers of lightning, and there was a smell of burned oxygen on the wind. Dogs began to bark, all over the neighborhood, and cats yowled and howled as if they were in heat. Down on Hollywood Boulevard, the klieg lights had been doused, but the ambulance lights still flashed and the sirens still wailed, and the desperate shouting of medics and firemen echoed from one side of the street to the other. Martin turned away from the window and tried not to think about the heaps of mutilated dead he had seen in Mann’s Theater.

Martin switched on the television. There was a special report from London, showing fleets of ambulances outside the Empire, Leicester Square, ferrying bodies to hospitals. Sandy Gall the newscaster was saying, ‘– already laying blame on the highly emotional content of the film. Dr Kenneth Palmer of the Institute of Social Studies drew parallels with the mass suicide in Jonestown of the followers of religious fanatic James Jones; and with incidents in Africa in the 1880s when whole tribes battered themselves to death in the belief that it was the only way for them to get to heaven. The Home Secretary, however –’

‘Look at that,’ said Martin. ‘One hundred forty-four thousand people have killed themselves, all at the same time, all watching the same movie, and the news media are trying to rationalize it already. If you ask me, being rational is going to be the death of the human race. It’s about time we started believing in the inexplicable. Or maybe it’s already too late.’

It took Ramone almost twenty minutes to come back with the rope. He was sweating and out of breath. ‘It’s like a riot down there. Thousands of ambulances, thousands of police cars, TV trucks, you name it. And thousands of sightseers, too. People who get a kick out of seeing their fellow citizens lying dead.’

A police helicopter flew low overhead, followed by another, and then by a deep, reverberating grumble of thunder. ‘I think we’d better hurry,’ said Martin. ‘We may not have too much time left. In fact, we may be too late already.’

They tied one end of the rope around the steel window frame opposite the mirror. ‘I just hope this damn window holds,’ Martin remarked. ‘I don’t want to yank on the rope when I’m in mirrorland and end up with a six-foot window in my lap.’

While Martin and Ramone prepared the rope, Alison stood in front of the mirror and called softly and coaxingly to Emilio. If she could persuade him actually to come into the sitting room, that would make their bizarre task a hundred times easier. But the door of the reflected room remained closed, and no Emilio peeped through it, and there was nobody in the mirror except themselves – Martin, Ramone and Alison.

At last, Ramone was satisfied that the rope would hold. ‘Believe me, an elephant couldn’t pull this free.’

‘Thanks a lot,’ Alison retorted with a nervous laugh. ‘I’ve been trying to lose weight.’

Martin and Alison looped the rope around their waists, as if they were mountain climbers. ‘Just remember,’ Ramone reminded them, tugging at the knots to make sure they were firm, ‘any trouble and I’ll pull you back. All you have to do is yank on the rope.’

Martin took a deep breath and glanced toward the mirror. ‘All this is supposing we can get into the mirror in the first place.’

‘Faith, man,’ said Ramone, laying a hand on his shoulder. ‘Everything in this whole wide world requires faith.’

Martin nodded. He reached out and grasped Alison’s hand. ‘Let’s do it,’ he said, and together they stepped toward their own reflections in the mirror.

They waited. They felt none of the irresistible suction that had pulled Lugosi into the minor, and which had almost taken Emilio and Martin and Ramone all at once. Martin looked at Alison and said, ‘I hope to God we’re not making fools of ourselves.’

‘Faith,’ Ramone exhorted them.

‘What good will that do?’ asked Alison.

‘I don’t know, but why don’t you close your eyes and kind of
imagine
you can walk through the mirror. Then, when I count to three, take a step forward and just keep on walking.’

Martin gripped Alison’s hand tight and closed his eyes. He tried to remember the words in
Through the Looking-Glass:
‘And certainly the glass was beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist.’

‘Are you okay?’ he asked Alison without opening his eyes.

‘I’m fine,’ said Alison.

‘I’m leaning forward,’ said Martin. ‘I’m going to press my forehead against the glass. You try doing the same.’

The glass felt flat and cold against his forehead and pressed his spectacles against the bridge of his nose. But he tried to use its coldness to imagine mist, instead of glass.
It’s possible
, he told himself, you’ve seen it happen for yourself. A ball can bounce in and out of mirrorland. A cat can jump through. Even a boy can walk into a reflected room and out again. If all that can happen, you can step through, too.

Lewis Carroll had done it – ‘
it seems to me now like a nightmare
…
the land beyond the looking-glass, in which each man takes on his true form
.’ It’s possible, it’s been done, I’ve seen it done, and now I’m going to do it.

He thought he heard Ramone saying, ‘One …’ But then Ramone’s voice slurred and twisted, and Martin was being wrenched forward, toward the mirror, headfirst, so violently and so suddenly that he lost his grip on Alison’s hand.

He tried to reach her, he tried to cry out, but it was impossible. He was being pulled forward so strongly that he couldn’t do anything at all but squeeze his eyes tight shut and contract his muscles and pray that he wasn’t going to be pressed to death.

He knew, however, that he was being pulled through the mirror into the reflected room beyond.

It was the strangest experience. One moment he felt as if he were being stretched out, impossibly thin. Then he felt as if he were being compressed, impossibly squat. And all the time he could feel the mirror’s surface drawing him in, as if it were mercury – a deep liquid chill that swallowed first his head and then his body and then gradually enveloped his legs.

He believed for one whole second that he was dead; that the mirror had killed him. But then he opened his eyes and he was standing in his own sitting room with Alison beside him. The only difference was that he was now facing the window, instead of the mirror. And when he turned round, to look at the mirror, there was no reflection either of him or of Alison. Only Ramone now existed both in reality and as a reflection.

‘
Madre mia
, you did it,’ Ramone exclaimed. ‘You walked right through the mirror. You walked right through it, just like it was a door.’

Martin looked down at the rope that was attached to his waist. Instead of appearing through the mirror behind him, it was now fastened to the reflected window in front of him. ‘Is the rope following us?’ he asked, turning around to face the real Ramone.