Graham Masterton - Mirror

The sitting room began to fill with the suffocating smell of burned fur and burned flesh. As Martin held the cat-snake up in front of him, like a torchbearer, the creature's head blazed and crackled, fur and skin and muscle. It was still staring at him as its yellow eyes milked over, its optic fluid cooked. Its mouth was still gasping that khakkk-khakkk-khakkk! as fire began to lick out of its throat and between its needle-sharp teeth, and the skin of its tongue frizzled and charred.

At last, it died, and Martin was left gripping a snake with a smoking head, its jawbones showing yellowish-brown through its incinerated cheeks, its mouth stretched wide in a hideous snarl.

Martin dropped it, and the head broke off and lay smoldering in a corner. The rest of the body shrank and dwindled and thickened, and even while Martin and Ramone watched it, it took on the shape of a normal tabby cat.

'Lugosi,' Ramone whispered. 'I just killed Lugosi. I wanted to save him, man, and I killed him.'

Martin walked stiffly to the window and opened it, so that some of the sour-smelling smoke could eddy out of the room. He retched once, then again, then pressed his fist against his mouth and managed to steady himself.

'That wasn't Lugosi,' he managed to say with a dry mouth.

'You think I don't know my own cat?' Ramone protested. 'Look at him!'

Martin took a deep breath. Below the window, next door, Maria Bocanegra was strutting out on a date with her bodybuilder boyfriend. Tight white skirt, dagger-sharp white stiletto heels that made her totter along with her hips swaying from side to side, tight white T-shirt through which her nubby Sno-Cone-protected nipples were startlingly obvious, even to those who didn't particularly want to see them.

God, thought Martin, normality.

They heard loud footsteps clattering up the stairs. An imperious banging on the apartment door. 'More noise!' shouted Mrs Capelli. 'What's that noise? And smoke? Is something burning? No fires allowed!'

'It's okay, Mrs Capelli, no problem. Just a cigarette butt, dropped on the couch.'

Martin sat unsteadily down at his desk, and dry-washed his face with his hands.

Ramone kept shaking his head and saying, 'I killed him, man! You told me to do it, and I did! I can't believe it! I killed him!'

'No,' said Martin. 'You didn't kill him. It wasn't your fault. But we've learned something - or at least, I think we have.'

'What? What? What have we learned?' grieved Ramone, his face wet with tears.

'Well, for beginners, we learned that if something comes out of that mirror, something else has to go in. And vice versa, get it? Kind of a trade. I mean it may be weird but it has a certain kind of logic to it, like Isaac Newton saying that for every action there has to be an equal and opposite reaction.'

'All right,' said Ramone suspiciously, keeping his eyes averted from Lugosi's body.

'There's something else, too,' said Martin. 'The way it looks now - what happened to Lugosi — whatever happens inside that mirror, it changes things. Look - it changed Lugosi into God knows what. A snake? A cat? Some kind of mirage? I don't know what it was, but it damn near killed me. So — can you imagine what would have happened if Emilio had gotten sucked in? What would have happened to him? A boy-snake? It doesn't even bear thinking about.'

Ramone said nothing, but jammed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, and flared his nostrils, and paced up and down with his sneakers ferociously squeaking.

'I'd better get a trash bag,' said Martin.

'An eye for an eye,' Ramone remarked with vehemence. 'We kill the mirror-cat; the mirror kills my cat. But whatever it is, that's only some jive mirror, that's all. Nothing else. It's a piece of glass.'

Martin didn't say anything. He knew that Ramone had experienced just as acutely as he had the wave of darkness that had flowed out of the mirror. He knew that Ramone wouldn't attempt to move it or break it, no matter how bitter he felt about what had happened to Lugosi.

He also knew that, however much Ramone dismissed the mirror as 'a piece of glass', it was time for them to seek the help of people who knew about such things. A priest or a spiritualist. Someone who could tell them exactly what kind of souvenir Martin had bought for himself; and what influences were at work behind its shining surface; whether they were holy or whether they were evil; and what they could do to protect themselves against it.

He opened the door, and the smoke from Lugosi's charred head swirled and eddied in the draft.

Homer Theobald arrived that Sunday morning in a bright yellow Volkswagen Rabbit and parked it right in Mr Capelli's driveway. Mr and Mrs Capelli had taken Emilio to church — to pray for his immortal soul, and to keep him away from the mirror while Homer Theobald came to see it.

Martin let Homer in. Homer Theobald was plump and hairless like Uncle Fester in the Addams Family, with hornrimmed spectacles and a splashy red and green Waikiki shirt. He smiled like a visiting doctor and held out his plump, damp hand.

'Mr Williams? I'm Homer Theobald. Your friend Ramone Perez called me?'

'That's right, come on in. Ramone isn't here yet, but you can take a look at the mirror if you want to.'

'Well, yes,' Homer Theobald beamed. 'He told me it was something to do with a mirror. That's not unusual, you know? Mirrors reflect the soul, don't they, as well as the face?'

Martin led the way upstairs. Homer Theobald sniffed and said, 'Italian?'

'I'm sorry?'

'I was just wondering if you were Italian.'

'Oh, no. But my landlord is. First-generation.'

Homer Theobald giggled. 'I didn't divine that by psychic means, I'm afraid. It's just that I have a keen nose for aromas. I can smell bolognese sauce simmering.'

'Mrs Capelli's a wonderful cook,' Martin told him. 'Maybe we can settle your fee in pizzas.'

'Well,' giggled Homer Theobald, 'I'm not so sure about that. Did Ramone tell you that I do for Elmore Sweet? Well, and lots of other stars besides. Jocelyn Grice, Nahum Ferris, the Polo Sisters. We all like to keep in touch with our loved ones, don't we, the rich and the poor, the famous and the faces in the crowd?'

Martin stopped on the landing and Homer Theobald almost collided with him.

'You can really do that?' Martin asked. 'I mean — you can really get in touch?'

Homer Theobald's smile lost something of its scoutmaster brightness. 'I hope you're not questioning my psychic credentials, Mr Williams. I'm known throughout Southern California as the Maestro of Mediums. I once talked to Will Rogers.'

Martin said, 'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to suggest -'

'No, no, not at all,' said Homer Theobald, patting Martin's arm and immediately regaining his cheerfulness. 'Most people are skeptical at first, even though they want to believe. It's only natural. But once they realize that they can speak to their lost loved ones as easily as making a long-distance telephone call - well, that skepticism just melts away!'

Martin opened the door of his apartment and let Homer Theobold in.

'You don't mind if I just stand here a moment and take in the atmosphere?' asked Homer Theobald.

Martin shrugged. 'Go ahead. This is all new to me. I never came across anything psychic in my life. Not until this, anyway.'

Homer Theobald suddenly looked at him more acutely. 'Those cuts —' he said, indicating the bandages around Martin's neck and the dressings on his cheeks and ears. 'If you don't mind my asking you a personal question — did you sustain those cuts in an auto accident, or are they anything to do with this mirror business?'

'I don't think you'd believe me if I told you.'

'Mr Williams,' said Homer Theobald, suddenly testy, 'you may think that I do nothing more for my considerable income than kid movie stars that I'm talking to their dead relatives. I told you, most people think that at first. But the fact remains that I have a gift of sensitivity that extends beyond the normal range of human faculties.'