Graham Masterton - Mirror

He saw Emilio's eyes widen; as if the Hershey chocolate of his irises had melted into larger pools. But he winked at Emilio behind the upraised cloth, and he could see that Emilio understood.

'He's here now?' asked Mrs Capelli, beaming. 'I love boys! Always rough-and-tumble.'

'Well, he - er — he's running an errand for me - down at the supermarket.'

'You send a little boy all on his own to the supermarket? Ralph's, you mean?'

'Oh, no, no, just to Hughes, on the corner.'

'Still,' said Mrs Capelli disapprovingly. 'That's a bad road to cross, Highland Avenue.'

'Oh, he's okay, he walks to school in New York City, crosses Fifty-seventh Street every morning, hasn't been squished yet.'

Mrs Capelli's forehead furrowed. 'I thought you said he lived in Indianapolis.'

'Sure, yes, Indianapolis! But that was a couple of years ago. Now he lives in New York.'

Slowly, Mrs Capelli turned to leave, her eyes still restlessly looking around the apartment as if she expected 'Petey' to come popping out from behind a chair. Martin knew that she kept a constant watch on the landing from her chair in the parlor downstairs, and since she hadn't seen Petey go out, she was obviously suspicious that Martin was keeping him hidden. Maybe he had measles, this Petey, and Martin didn't want her to know, because Emilio may catch them.

'You do me a favor,' she said at last as she went out through the door. 'You bring your Petey down to see me when he gets back. I give him chocolate cake.'

'Sure thing, Mrs Capelli,' Martin told her, and opened the door for her. She eased herself down the stairs, one stair at a time, holding on to the banister. When she reached the door of her apartment, Martin gave her a little finger-wave, and said, 'Don't you worry, I'll bring him down. He'll feed your canary for you. If there's anything he likes better than pasta, it's chocolate cake.'

Mrs Capelli paused, and then nodded, and then disappeared into her apartment, leaving the door slightly ajar.

Martin came back to Emilio and stood in front of him with his arms folded.

'You believe me,' said Emilio. 'You believe there's a boy.' 'Did I say that?' 'But you said "Petey".'

'Emilio, there is no boy. I said that just to get you out of trouble. What do you think your grandmother would have said if I had totally denied it? She would have thought you were some kind of juvenile fruitcake. She would have had you locked up, or worse.'

Emilio looked bewildered. 'There is a boy,' he insisted. 'Come and see him.'

'All right,' said Martin, 'let's take a look at him; even if we can't shake him by the hand.'

Emilio ran into the sitting room and stood right in front of the mirror, impatient to prove that he was right. Martin followed him more slowly, checking the details of the real room against the reflected room. Two realities, side by side, but which one was real?

He checked everything carefully, but there were no obvious discrepancies. The screenplay of Eoofuh! lay on his desk at corresponding angles in each room; one of his shoes lay tilted over, under the chair. The Venetian blinds shivered in the sunlight.

Emilio pressed the palms of his hands against the glass. 'Boy!' he called loudly. 'Boy, are you there? Come out and play, boy! Come say hello to Martin!'

Martin, in spite of himself, found his attention fixed on the doorway in the mirror. It didn't move; not even a fraction; and no boy appeared.

'Boy!' Emilio demanded. 'Come out and play!' They watched and waited. Nothing happened. No blue and white ball, no laughter, no boy. Martin was seriously beginning to believe that this was all a hallucination.

'Maybe he doesn't feel like playing anymore,' Martin suggested.

'He does, too!' Emilio protested. 'He said he always wants to play. The trouble is, they make him work, even when he's tired, and they always make him wear clothes he doesn't like, and he has to sing when he doesn't want to and dance when he doesn't want to.'

'Did he tell you what his name was?' asked Martin.

Emilio said nothing.

'Emilio, listen to me, this is important, did he tell you what his name was? He didn't call himself Boofuls, did he? Or Walter maybe? Or just Walt?'

Emilio shook his head.

'Well, what did he do? Did he play ball? Did he dance? Did he sing?'

Emilio stared at Martin but remained silent.

'Listen,' said Martin, turning back toward the mirror, 'maybe he doesn't want to play right now. Maybe it's — I don't know, bathtime or something. Even boys who live in mirrors have to take baths, right? Why don't you come back tomorrow and we'll try again?'

Emilio banged both hands on the mirror. 'Boy!' he shouted, his voice more high-pitched and panicky. 'Boy! Come out and play!'

Martin hunkered down beside him. 'I really don't think he wants to come out, Emilio. Come back tomorrow morning, okay, and we'll call him again.'

Emilio suddenly turned on him. His voice was a sharp little bark. 'You don't want me to see him, do you? You don't want me to play with him! You think he belongs to you! It's not your mirror! It's not your mirror! It's his mirror! He lives in it! And you can't tell him what to do, so there!'

Martin had never heard Emilio screaming like this before, and he was mildly shocked. He took hold of Emilio's shoulder and said, 'Listen .. . this may be a story that you've made up

to impress me, and on the other hand it may not. But either way, I'm on your side. If there is a boy in that mirror, I want to find him.'

'And let him out?' asked Emilio.

Martin made a face. 'I don't know. Maybe there just isn't any way of getting him out.'

'There's a way,' Emilio told him quite firmly. 'Well, how do you know?' 'Because the boy told me, there's a way.' 'All right, as long as it doesn't involve breaking the mirror — I just paid seven hundred fifty dollars for that thing.'

'We won't break the mirror,' Emilio assured him with unsettling maturity.

Martin leaned back against the peach-painted landing wall and looked down at this self-confident little child with his chocolate-brown eyes and his tousled hair and the catsup stains on his T-shirt, and he didn't know whether to feel amused or frightened.

After all, the likelihood was that this was the biggest leg-pull ever. Either that, or Emilio was simply making it all up. After all, there were pictures of Boofuls all over Martin's apartment. If he was going to pretend that he had played with an imaginary boy there, what could be more natural than pretending he looked like him?

He closed the apartment door and walked back into his bedroom. The soulful eyes of little Boofuls stared at him from the Whistlin' Dixie poster. He reached up and touched with his fingertips the golden curls, the pale, heart-shaped face.

'You don't scare me, little boy,' he said out loud. 'You don't scare me at all.'

But he gave the poster a quick backward look as he left the room, and went back to work on the A-Team.

He awoke abruptly at three o'clock in the morning, his eyes wide, his ears singing with alertness. He hesitated for a moment, then he sat up in his futon so that he could hear better. He was quite sure that he could hear somebody crying, a child.

The sound was muffled by the raiding of the yuccas in the street outside, and by the steady warbling of the wind through the crack at the side of his bedroom window. But it was a child, all right, a boy, keening and crying as if his heart were going to break.

Shivering with apprehension, and with the chill of the night, Martin reached across the floor and dragged his red flannel bathrobe toward him. He wrapped himself up in it and tied the belt tight, and then he climbed out of his futon and tiptoed across the bedroom and opened the door.