Graham Masterton - Mirror

Til get him back,' said Boofuls.

'Well, then, go on then, what are you waiting for?' Mr Capelli demanded.

But Boofuls shook his pretty little head. 'All in good time, sir. All in good time.'

Mr Capelli reared up; and Martin had to grab hold of his shoulders to make him sit down again. 'What's this, "all in good time"? You go in there, and you go get my grandson for me, and if he isn't here in five minutes, five minutes, I'm going to give you the hiding of your life whether you're a dead person or not, do you get me?'

Boofuls stared at Mr Capelli in surprise, and then lowered his head and covered his face with his hands.

Mr Capelli said with less confidence. 'What're you doing? You go get Emilio, do you hear me?'

Boofuls' face remained concealed. Martin stepped toward him, but he sidestepped away, without lowering his hands. For a moment, Martin had the disturbing feeling that if he tried to prize Boofuls' hands away, he would uncover not the pretty pale features of Boofuls, but the gilded sardonic face of Pan. He hesitated, glanced back at Mr Capelli, then shrugged. He didn't know what he ought to do.

It was then that Mr Capelli saw the tears that were squeezing out between Boofuls' fingers. The boy's shoulders were trembling; and it was clear that he was deeply upset. Mr Capelli frowned and reached one hand forward.

'Listen, young man . ..'

'It's Boofuls, Mr Capelli,' said Martin. 'It really is. And that's what he likes to be called.'

Mr Capelli cleared his throat. 'Well, here, listen, Boofuls. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to yell like that. But the truth is, I'm real worried about Emilio. I don't like that mirror at all, and I don't want him wandering around in there, it's not healthy, do you know what I mean by healthy?'

Boofuls hands remained closed over his face. Mr Capelli looked anxious now and shifted his chair a little closer. Boofuls, in response, stepped back another pace.

'Listen to me,' said Mr Capelli, 'I'm a grandfather. I love children. I don't know where you've come from, I don't know how you can be dead but still walking around and talking, but I'm willing to accept that maybe I don't understand absolutely everything in this universe. I don't understand accumulated earnings tax, does that make me a bad person? But I love Emilio. Emilio is all I've got. And even if he's safe wherever he is, I need to have him back.'

Boofuls at last lowered his hands. His face was stained with tears. He looked utterly bereft and miserable.

'Oh, Mr Capelli,' he said, 'I'm so unhappy.'

'Hey, come on,' said Mr Capelli, and held out his arms. Boofuls hesitated for a moment and then came up to Mr Capelli and hugged him as if he were his own grandfather.

'Do you know something, you're right,' said Mr Capelli, beginning to smile. 'You don't look dead at all. You sure don't feel dead. I don't know how it happened, but you're a live boy!'

Martin watched all this with caution. There was no doubt at all that Boofuls was a most appealing child, yet he couldn't rid himself of that feeling he always had when he watched a Boofuls musical: that here was a grown-up man, a cunning grown-up man, masquerading as a small boy. Boofuls was just a little too clever; just a little too calculating. Seeing him win over Mr Capelli was almost like watching a skillfully written scene in a movie, specifically aimed at tugging at the audience's heartstrings.

'Oh, aunt,' Freddie Bartholomew had wept in David Cop-perfield, 'I'm so unhappy.' And Boofuls had used the same line in exactly the same way. A last desperate tug at a grandfather's heartstrings. David Copperfield had been released in 1935, so Boofuls could easily have seen it.

'Mr Capelli -' warned Martin.

But Mr Capelli said, 'Shush now, Martin. I'm a grandfather. Besides, what have we got here? A famous movie star.'

'Mr Capelli -' Martin repeated, but there was little that he could do. Boofuls shot him a quick hostile look that Mr Capelli didn't see: a look which meant you stay out of this, or you'll never see Emilia again.

'Emilio's safe, sir,' he told Mr Capelli, wiping his tears with the back of his hand. 'There are plenty of people who are going to take care of him. But the moment Emilio comes back, then I have to go back into the mirror, I have to.'

'But inside the mirror,' said Mr Capelli, 'that's where you really live, right? You don't truly belong in this world anymore.'

Boofuls swallowed miserably, and tears began to fill up his eyes again. 'I don't live there, sir, nobody lives there. It's a kind of a place where you go if you can't get to heaven.'

'Purgatory,' put in Martin.

'Well, some people call it that,' said Boofuls. 'But you can get to heaven if you fulfill your life's work, the work that God intended you to do.'

'And making Sweet Chariot, that was the work that God intended you to do?'

Boofuls nodded. 'If I can make that picture, then I can rest.'

'What's this Sweet Chariot? Mr Capelli wanted to know.

Martin said nothing for a moment, watching Boofuls. Then he poured out coffee, and passed a cup to Mr Capelli, and explained, 'It was Boofuls' last picture, wasn't it, Boofuls, before his grandmother murdered him. Or thought she'd murdered him. It was about a street urchin who becomes an angel, and who flies around doing good deeds in order to meet with the Almighty's approval. A musical; something of a tearjerker, believe me.'

Boofuls clung to Mr Capelli's neck. 'I never finished the picture, I never managed to finish it, and if I don't finish the picture I'm going to have to stay in the mirror forever and ever, and never get out.'

Martin sipped his coffee. 'You see what he's asking, Mr Capelli? He's asking if you'll allow Emilio to stay in the mirror so that he can make his picture and fulfill his life's destiny and go to meet his Maker.'

Boofuls sobbed, 'I know it's an awful lot to ask you, sir. I know it is. And I know how much Emilio means to you. But please, I beg of you. Otherwise I can never sleep for all eternity. And I'm so tired, sir. So terribly, terribly, tired.'

Tears welled up in Mr Capelli's eyes, too, and he patted Boofuls' narrow back. 'I don't know what to say,' he replied thickly. 'I don't know what to say. How can a man and a grandfather turn away somebody like this, some little boy who needs his help?'

'Mr Capelli,' said Martin, 'doesn't Emilio have any kind of say in this?'

'Well, sure he does,' agreed Mr Capelli. 'But if Boofuls is telling us the truth, then Emilio wanted to go play in the mirror. He wanted to.'

'Couldn't we ask Emilio for ourselves?' Martin suggested.

'Can we do that?' Mr Capelli asked Boofuls.

Boofuls nodded. 'We can ask him, yes. But you mustn't try to get him out of the mirror. Until I'm ready, it could be very dangerous. He could die.'

'Let's just go and see him, shall we?' said Martin.

They went through to the sitting room. The sunlight was very bright in here, and Mr Capelli shielded his eyes with his hand. The mirror seemed larger than it had before: larger and clearer. Anybody who hadn't known that there was a mirror there might have been forgiven for thinking that it was nothing more than a gilded archway through to another identical

room.

As they approached the mirror, Martin saw with a prickle of surprise that he and Mr Capelli were accompanied not by a reflection of Boofuls, but by a reflection of Emilio. The two boys stood in perfectly matching positions, and if one of them nodded his head, then the other one nodded, too.

'Emilio . . .' whispered Mr Capelli. Then, rushing up to the mirror, 'Emilio!'

But of course all that Mr Capelli managed to do was to press himself against his own reflection. Emilio stood behind Mr Capelli's reflection, just as Boofuls was standing behind him in the real room. Mr Capelli hesitated and then stepped back again, so that he could see Emilio more clearly.