Graham Masterton - Mirror

Ramone said, 'I've got a better idea. You carry it downstairs on your own and we'll just sit here and watch you.'

Nonetheless, Ramone and Martin bent down on each side of the mirror and prepared to lift it up. Ramone had already taken out the screws and laid a blanket on the floor to protect the gilt frame, and so all they had to do was pick up the mirror and carry it down to the street.

'When I say three!' announced Mr Capelli.

He counted three, and they lifted. Or they tried to lift. But they couldn't budge the mirror even half an inch off the floor. It felt as if it had been nailed down.

'Come on, Ramone, let's try it again,' said Martin; and they grunted and heaved; but still the mirror refused to move.

Martin propped his elbow against the mirror and puffed out his cheeks in exhaustion. 'I don't understand this. I mean, this is ridiculous. If Mr Capelli and I could carry it up three flights of stairs and screw it up on the wall, then you'd think that you and I could lift it between us — I mean, easily.'

"5

'You're out of shape, that's all,' said Mr Capelli.

'Who's out of shape?' Ramone demanded. 'I play two hours of squash every afternoon, and I don't even get out of breath!'

'Sure, but what do you have to lift in squash? Just that little racket. That doesn't weigh nothing at all.'

Ramone lifted up his arms in resignation, then dropped them again, like one of the crows in Dumbo flapping its wings. lMe duels! What can you do with a man who thinks like this?'

'Come on, Ramone, let's give it another try,' Martin suggested.

'You don't get that mirror out of here, I'm going to call professional removers, and charge you what it costs, and throw you out, too!' Mr Capelli yelled at him.

'Come on, Ramone,' Martin urged him. 'He's getting into one of his Don Corleone moods.'

'Schwarzeneggburger,' Ramone growled under his breath.

They took hold of the mirror. Mr Capelli chanted, 'One-a, two-a, three-a -'

Without a word, both Martin and Ramone released their grip, and stood up, and stepped away. They looked into each other's eyes; and each of them knew that the other had shared his experience.

When they had tried to lift the mirror, a strong dark wave had gone through each of their minds, black and inhuman but undeniably alive, like centipede legs rippling, or the cilia of some soulless sea creature, cold, pressurized, an intelligence without emotion and without remorse and with no interest in anything at all but its own supremacy and its own survival.

For the first time, Martin felt that he had touched the very core of the mirror's existence, and it was more pitiless than anything he could have imagined.

Martin and Ramone stood facing each other, as stunned and subdued as if they had experienced an unexpected electric shock. But there was no question in either of their minds what that wave of feeling had been intended to tell them. They had been categorically ordered by whatever lived in the mirror to leave it where it was.

Mr Capelli was not so insensitive that he couldn't appreciate that something had gone badly wrong — that some feeling of

hostility had suddenly caused them to back away. 'What is it?' he demanded. 'Martin — what is it?' 'I don't know,' Martin told him. 'I'm sorry, Mr Capelli, I

don't know. But I'm not touching that mirror again, not just

now.'

'Well, what?' Mr Capelli shouted. 'What do you mean, you're not touching it again? Why? What's the reason? Why don't you touch it again?'

Ramone said plainly, 'This mirror, Mr Caparooparelli -this mirror wants to stay right here. This mirror does not plan to be moved. Not that we can move it. I mean, we're too weak, right? We can only lift squash rackets, and suchlike. We can only lift stuff that is seriously deficient in avoirdupois.'

Mr Capelli stood rigid, his hands by his sides, the blood draining from his face so that he looked quite waxy, and his head too big for his body.

'All right,' he said. 'You brought this mirror here, what are you going to do?'

'I don't know,' Martin confessed. 'If I could get rid of it, right now I believe that I would. Boofuls or not.'

'Boofuls,' said Mr Capelli, keeping his false teeth clenched close together. 'That's the problem, right? Boofuls. That woman, she killed that little boy, she chopped him into millions of pieces-'

'Two hundred eleven, I'm reliably informed,' put in Martin, but he wasn't joking.

Mr Capelli spat out of the side of his mouth. 'How many exactly, who cares? But his spirit is here! His ghost! You found him a home, and now he doesn't want to go! And so what do I have? I have a house that's haunted, that's what! A haunted house with a ghost!'

'Maybe we should go get ourselves a priest,' Ramone suggested.

'I thought you were looking for a medium,' Martin reminded him.

'A priest, yes!' Mr Capelli enthused. 'A priest!'

'We could get both,' said Ramone. 'A priest and a medium.'

'Oh, God, this is ridiculous,' Martin told him. 'I don't know what to do. Maybe the best thing we can do is do nothing. Just wait it out, see what the mirror wants.'

It was then that — without warning — the blue and white ball dropped off Martin's desk and bounced onto the woodblock floor — once, twice, three times. Then it rolled toward the mirror, almost as if the floor were tilting, like the deck of a ship. At the same time, the dirty gray tennis ball dropped off the desk in the mirror and came rolling to meet it.

'Something's happening, man,' warned Ramone. 'Something's happening. I can feel it.'

None of them knew what to do. But they could all feel the air in the sitting room warping almost; like ripples of heat rising from a hot blacktop; or the distortion of a highly polished sheet of thin steel. Their voices sounded strange, too — muffled and indistinct.

'It's pulling? said Martin. 'Can you feel that? It's pulling things toward it.'

They didn't notice Emilio at first. He had been standing two or three feet behind his grandfather, staring at the mirror wide-eyed. Gradually, however, he began to move forward, his arms by his sides; and as he passed them by he started to laugh, an extraordinary high pitched laugh just like Boofuls. At once, Martin turned around. 'Emilio?' he said. Then,

'Emilio!'

'Holy God!' Mr Capelli cried out.

Emilio was sliding toward the mirror without even moving his feet. He was being drawn toward it as if it were an irresistible magnet.

'Emilio!' Mr Capelli shouted, and tried to snatch him.

Emilio threw both his arms wide and tossed back his head, and his laugh was loud and metallic like garden shears. In the mirror, his reflection slid toward him just as irresistibly, but there was something in his reflected face that didn't match his real face. Something different, something whiter, something smaller-eyed, piggy, untrustworthy, something that jumped and smirked like a face from a long-forgotten movie.

'Ramone!' Martin yelled; and Ramone dodged, and feinted, and caught hold of Emilio's arm at the very moment that Emilio collided with the surface of the mirror. Emilio screamed: a hideous piercing scream that went through Martin's head like a chisel. He thrashed and clawed and kicked at Ramone, and it took all of Ramone's strength to hold him.

'Bastard!' Emilio screamed. 'Bastard!'

'Emilio, what are you doing! Emilio!' Mr Capelli quivered and tried to snatch Emilio's flailing arm. But Emilio screamed 'Bastard!' at him, too, and kicked him first in the stomach and then between the legs. Mr Capelli coughed, gasped, and dropped to the floor.

'Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!' Emilio screeched. He threw himself from side to side like a wild animal, hair flying, spit spraying.