Graham Masterton - Mirror

'Seeing your favourite cat being swallowed up is something else, too,' Ramone complained. ''And seeing your main man looking like he's just.come out of the ring with Ivan Drago. " You will lose,"' he said, imitating the Russian boxer in Rocky IV.

'Do you know anybody who's into that kind of thing?' said Martin.

Ramone shook his head. 'Not me. But I know somebody who might know. One of my customers is Elmore Sweet - you know, the pianist. Liberace without the restraint. His mother died about two or three years ago, but every time he comes in he tells me that he's been rapping with Momsy about this or that. I used to think he'd lost his marbles at first, but then Dorothy Dunkley told me that he gets in touch, you know, with seances and everything.'

'Good,' said Martin. 'So why don't you call him and ask him the name of his medium.'

'I'll try.'

There was a longer pause. Ramone checked his Spiro Agnew wristwatch. 'Guess it's time I went back to the store. Kelly's okay, but she can be kind of remote. Also, she doesn't believe in responsibility. It's something to do with this sect she's gotten into. The Maharishi Nerdbrain or something.'

'Take care,' said Martin. 'And thanks for looking after the mirror for me.'

'It's not for you, my friend. It's for Lugosi. Wherever the poor bastard may be.'

Martin spent a bad night at the hospital. The nurse had given him a sedative to help him sleep, and for three or four hours he slept as heavily as a lumberjack: but all the time his mind was alive with the most vivid and terrifying nightmares. He saw Boofuls — or something he thought was Boofuls - right at the very end of a long tunnel of mirrors. Just an arm, just a leg, just a fleeting glimpse; and then an echo of laughter that sounded melodious at first, and then rang as harshly as a butcher's knife on a butcher's steel.

' Pickle-nearest-the-wind,' somebody whispered, so close and so distinct that he opened his eyes and looked around the room. 'Pickle-nearest-the-wind.'

Then he was running across a wide, well-mowed lawn, trying to catch up with a scampering boy dressed in lemon yellow. The day was bright. The boy was laughing. But then the boy disappeared behind a long row of cypress bushes; and a cloud dragged its gray skirts over the sun; and the laughter stopped. Martin walked along the row of cypress bushes, slowly at first. 'Boofuls?' he called. 'Boofuls?'

He started to jog, and then to run. 'Boofuls, where are you? Boofuls!'

'Pickle-nearest-the-wind,' somebody whispered, and then again, faster, like a train gathering momentum. 'Pickle-nearest-the-wind.'

He ran even harder. He was terrified now. Something burst out of the cypress bushes right behind him and came running after him, just as fast, faster. He turned wild-eyed to see what it was, and it was a small boy, dressed in lemon yellow, but his face was the gilded face of Pan, snarling at him.

He stumbled, fell, rolled over; and then he woke up in bed sweating and clutching the bed rails. The nightmare garden faded; the cypresses were folded up like dark green tents and hurried away; the gilded face gleamed with momentary wickedness and then vanished.

He switched on his bedside light. Outside his door, two nurses and an orderly were loudly discussing next week's Hospital Hootenanny. Sirens wailed down by the casualty department as the victims of the night's violence were hurried in. Tragedy didn't sleep; anger didn't sleep; junkies and hookers didn't sleep; and neither did knives.

He called for the nurse. Nurse Newton opened his door; a huge black woman with an irrepressible smile who reassured him more than all the other nurses put together. 'What is it now, Mr Willy-ams?'

'Do you think you could bring me a bottle of red wine? It's the only thing that gets me to sleep.'

'Red wine, Mr Willy-ams? That's against regulations. And besides, you're up to your ears in sedatives.'

'Nurse, I need some sleep.'

Nurse Newton came over, took his temperature, and felt his pulse. 'You're cold,' she remarked, frowning. 'How come you're so cold?'

'Nightmares,' he said.

'Nightmares? Now, why should a big grown-up man like you have nightmares?'

Martin said, 'God knows. I don't.'

'Well, what are they about, these nightmares?'

'You're going to think I'm bananas.'

Nurse Newton leaned over him and examined the dressings on his ear. 'I'm a nurse, Mr Willy-ams. I'm paid to take care of people, not to make judgments about their mental health. Mind you, I might think differently about you in my spare time.'

Martin winced as she turned his head to one side. 'Did you ever hear about a little boy called Boofuls?' he asked her. 'He was a child star, back in the thirties.'

Nurse Newton stared at him in surprise. 'Why, what makes you ask that?'

'I just wanted to know, that's all.'

'Well, of course I heard about Boofuls. Everybody knows about Boofuls here at the Sisters of Mercy.'

Martin tried to sit up, but Nurse Newton pushed him back down again. 'You stay put. You're not well enough to start hopping around.'

'But what's so special about the Sisters of Mercy? How come everybody here knows about Boofuls?'

Nurse Newton took out his thermometer and frowned at it.

'There's a kind of spooky story about him, that's why. They brought his grandmother here, the evening she killed him.'

'That's right. I mean - / know that, because I've been making a special study of Boofuls. But how come you know that, too?'

Nurse Newton smiled. 'It's because of the spooky story, that's why. They tell it to all the nurses and the interns. Usually at the Christmas party, you know, at midnight, when it's all dark and there's just candles.'

Martin said, 'I thought I knew everything about Boofuls that it was possible to know. But I never heard any stories connected with the Sisters of Mercy.'

Nurse Newton lifted her head and half closed her eyes, and said, 'What was that song? "Surrr . . . wannee Song! Suwannee Song! You can blow your flute and you can bangj/oar drum and you can march along!" That always used to make me cry when I was a child.'

Martin nodded. 'He was amazing, that little boy.' 'But spooky,' Nurse Newton added, lifting one finger. 'Can you tell me about it?' Martin asked her. She winked. 'You've been having nightmares about him. Do you think I should?'

'Nurse - listen - I'm the world's expert on Boofuls. If there's something about Boofuls that I don't know —!'

Nurse Newton shook the mercury back down her thermometer with three decisive flicks of her wrist. 'Well . ..' she confessed, 'don't tell any of the hospital administrators that I told you this. I might get myself into big trouble. The board don't want the paying patients getting hysterical; and, believe me, if you told this story to some of the banana trucks on this floor, they would. Get hysterical, I mean.'

She jotted a note on Martin's chart and then sniffed and shook her head. 'Besides,' she said, 'you shouldn't speak ill of the dead, that's what my mamma always used to tell me. Someone who's dead can't defend themselves.'

'Supposing I take you to dinner,' Martin coaxed her. Nurse Newton whacked the side of her thigh in hilarity. lYou - take me for dinner! With all those bandages on your face? Talk about the Invisible Man meets Winifred Atwell! Besides, I'd eat you for dinner!'

'Supposing I arrange for you to meet Mr T, in person,' said Martin much more subtly. 'I write for the A-Team. You could meet him in person. I don't know — lunch, dinner. Maybe a little dancing later.'

Nurse Newton stared at him narrowly. 'You could do that?' 'Of course I could do that! I've known him for years. Mr T and I, we're like this!' and he held up two intertwined fingers. 'You're not fooling?' 'Cross my heart and hope to die.'