Graham Masterton - Mirror

'Can you make out what it's saying?'

'I'm not too sure that I want to.'

'Could you please try?' Martin begged him.

Homer Theobald reluctantly took off his spectacles and closed his eyes. 'I'm warning you, though, your little-boy spirit may get itself real worked up and excited by this.'

'Please,' said Martin.

'It's the way this kid keeps carrying on about the cat. The cat is real important to him for some reason. But I've never had a pet before. You had those terrapins, what was wrong with those terrapins. You can't cuddle a terrapin, they're not the same and besides they all got away. Oh sure, they got away, they were crawling all over the kitchen, cook was standing on a stool. But I love Pickle, I love him.'

Martin grabbed hold of Homer Theobald's furry bare forearm. 'Mr Theobald!'

Homer Theobald blinked open his eyes. 'What's the matter? What's wrong?'

'Pickle, that's what you said.'

Homer Theobald nodded. 'That's right. The cat's name was Pickle.'

'None of the books ever mentioned him.'

'None of what books?'

'The books about —'

'Ah —ah!' Homer Theobald interrupted. 'Don't you mention his name! I've got a pretty good idea of who he is, but I don't want to start speaking any names in my mind, you understand? No mental pictures. The mind is a mirror, too, Mr Williams.'

'You'd better call me Martin if we're going to get this damned frightened together.'

'Well, I'm Homer, but most of my friends call me Theo. You know, on account of the hair loss. Theo Bald.'

Martin said, 'I'm sorry I interrupted you. It was just that the name Pickle came as a shock. Do you think you can pick up any more?'

'I don't know,' said Theo, but he was plainly not happy.

'Just the voice — you know, the shrill voice. The voice you said sounded like it was shut up in a box.'

'Well . .. okay. But I may get nothing. And I'm sure not staying around if it begins to wake up to the fact that I'm here, and that I'm listening in.'

'All right, I understand.'

Theo closed his eyes. 'The boy's still talking. He's a real chatterbox, that boy. When he was alive, he was real popular, real sweet. But there was something which he always kept hidden. Some important part of his personality which he never showed to anybody. He's still keeping it hidden, even now, and that's very strange indeed, because once people are dead they don't keep their personalities hidden anymore. They let themselves go. That's why they take on all kinds of weird shapes. They begin to look like they actually should. They drop the sheep's clothing, if you understand what I mean, and show you the wolf. Or vice versa, of course.'

He 'listened' harder. Clear buttons of perspiration popped up on his freckled scalp and on his upper lip. He began to mutter and mumble, a higgledy-piggledy rush of conversation, pleading, argument.

'I can't, Grannie, I told you I can't. You have to. You have to give thanks. I don't want to. I can't. Well, what do you think everybody's going to say about you if you don't go.'

Theo lifted one plump hand, his eyes still tightly shut. He was indicating to Martin that he was picking up the other voice, the shrill voice. 'Don't you go, she can't tell you what to do, don't you go, Pickle will fix her if she argues, don't you go, don't you go.

'I'm not going. You can't make me. Pickle will fix you if you make me. That cat, how dare you talk to me like that. That cat is going to go out and that's all there is to it. You're a hateful child. You're a disgrace to your poor mother. And you're damned for saying that, you're damned?

While Theo was hurriedly muttering all of this argument between Boofuls and his grandmother, the latch of the sitting room door, without warning, released itself, and the door swung slowly open. Because his eyes were closed, and because he was concentrating on the voices in his head, Theo didn't realize that a sharp geometric pattern of light was gradually illuminating him brighter and brighter.

'Theo -' Martin warned him, his heart racing. 'The door."

Theo opened his eyes and stared at the door in alarm. 'Did you open it?' he asked Martin.

Martin shook his head.

'Did you touch it at all?'

'I didn't go anywhere near it.'

Theo wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 'I have to tell you, Martin, I don't know what's going on here, and I don't particularly want to know. I'll talk, yes, I'll tell you whatever I can. But I'm not staying here any longer, and I sure as hell am not going anywhere near that mirror of yours.'

'All right,' said Martin. 'Agreed. Let's go down to Butterfield's, I'll buy you a drink. You look like you could use it.'

Theo replaced his spectacles. As he did so, the sitting room door slammed so thunderously loudly that one of the panels was cracked.

'God, what was that?' Martin asked him.

Theo smiled grimly. 'That was your mirror, saying good riddance.'

Martin left a note on the door for Ramone, telling him that they had gone to Butterfield's. They drove there in Theo's Rabbit. Theo steered like a taxi driver, grinding the gears with every change, sweating, swearing under his breath, challenging every other car he encountered on the Strip, whether they were Porsches or Rolls Royces or Eldorados.

'I don't believe in being protean,' he remarked as he parked halfway up the curb outside Butterfield's. 'Sometimes it's refreshing to do something really badly.'

Butterfield's was on the south side of Sunset, with steps leading down through frondy palms and flowering shrubs to the table areas, where lean brown people in designer khaki sat under green and white umbrellas and talked about movies and other people's diets and themselves, but mostly themselves. There was plenty of fresh fruit and yogurt and Perrier water in evidence. Of all people, Morris Nathan was there, his wide backside bulging out on either side of a small white cast-iron chair. Alison was leaning against his shoulder, her face shaded by a dipping white hat, her eyes concealed by Mulberry sunglasses, her darkly suntanned breasts bulging out of a small white Fiorucci sun top. The Nabobs of Bulge, thought Martin.

'Martin!' called Morris, waving one fat arm. 'Join us!'

But Martin's need to talk to Theo was urgent: and, besides, Martin was sitting with Ahab Greene, an independent producer with wavy blond hair and protuberant eyes and white cowboy boots who always reeked of Armani after-shave, and Martin couldn't sit next to Ahab Greene for more than six and a half minutes without starting a blistering argument.

'Thanks!' he called back. 'But - you know — business!'

Morris peered suspiciously at Theo, wondering if he was another agent, but Alison whispered something in his ear and he was obviously reassured. Alison wasn't particularly bright, but she was one of those well-connected Hollywood girls who knew every modish astrologer and every up-to-the minute masseuse and every fashionable beautician; she had once been a manicurist, and she had probably come across Homer Theobald more than once. After all, Hollywood husbands were always dying, and Hollywood wives were always feeling a need to get in touch, if only to reassure their loved ones that their money was being well spent.

A pretty, disinterested waitress found them a table, and Martin ordered champagne. 'Champagne?' queried Theo, although he was obviously used to champagne.

'I feel like it,' said Martin. 'What the hell.'

Theo leaned his elbow on the table. 'Let me tell you something, Martin. When people die their spirits move on. There's no question about that. Like I said, the place they move on to - the beyond, if you want to call it that - it's totally different from the world we know here. It doesn't abide by the same rules. Morally, physiologically, or scientifically. I don't know. It's very hard to describe. You can't think of it in normal terms - left, right, top, bottom. But it's there. It's where people go when they die.'