Graham Masterton - Mirror

He unhitched his walkie-talkie from his belt, switched it on, and said, 'Douglas? This is Andrej. Listen, you'd better get down to the chapel. Sister Boniface has had some kind of an accident. No, burned. I don't know, maybe she got too close to the candles. No, dead. No, dead. Are you kidding? She hasn't even got a mouth left to give the kiss of life to.'

He clipped the walkie-talkie back on his belt and then stood staring at the ashes of the woman who had made the mistake of giving away Boofuls' key.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Father Lucas had sprained his ankle that weekend playing baseball with the boys of St Ignatius' Little League team. He came heavily up the stairs to Martin's apartment, rocking himself between the banister rails, and grunting noisily. Mr Capelli came up behind him, trying to make himself useful, but proving to be more of an irritation than a help.

'It's all right, Mr Capelli,' Father Lucas insisted. 'I've worked out my own rhythm. Don't upset it, or you'll have me falling down the stairs backward.'

'Watch for this corner,' fussed Mr Capelli. 'Sometimes I trip here myself, and how long have I lived here?'

Upstairs in the sitting room Boofuls sat placidly watching Sesame Street. Martin stood by the window, watching Maria Bocanegra sunning herself before going off to work. She must have fallen asleep, because one of the Sno-Cones had been blown off by the morning breeze, and one nipple was bared. It looked like a soft, wrinkled prune, thought Martin. The kind you could gently sink your teeth into.

From time to time, he glanced at Boofuls. As soon as Father Lucas had visited, he was going to take Boofuls out to Sears and buy him some new clothes. T-shirts, sneakers, so that at least he looked like a kid from the 1980s. He thought it was extraordinary that he had come to accept Booful's presence so easily. Yet if somebody's actually there, he thought, talking and walking and living and breathing, what else can you do? It doesn't matter if they came out of a mirror or down from the moon.

Father Lucas knocked at Martin's front door. 'Hello there! Mr Williams!' Martin lowered the Venetian blind and came away from the window. 'This'll be the priest,' he told Boofuls. He had already told him that Father Lucas was coming to visit, but Boofuls had appeared to be completely uninterested. He didn't seem to be any more interested now.

Without waiting to be shown in, Father Lucas appeared at the sitting room door. He was a barrel-chested man with a leonine head that seemed to be far too big for the rest of his body. His silver hair was combed straight back from his forehead. He wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses that reminded Martin of a pair of 1950s television sets, side by side, each showing a test transmission of a single gray eye.

Father Lucas swung himself into the room and grasped Martin's hand. 'Mr Capelli tells me you've been having some trouble, Mr Williams.' He looked around and then he said, 'You won't mind if I have a seat? I was trying to show my Little Leaguers how to throw a forkball, and I got rather carried away.'

He limped across to the sofa where Boofuls was sitting watching Sesame Street. 'Hello, young fellow!' he said, beaming and ruffling Booful's hair. 'You don't mind if I park myself next to you, do you?'

Without even looking at him, Boofuls said, 'Yes, I do mind. And don't scruff up my hair again. You're not allowed to.'

Father Lucas stared at Boofuls in bewilderment. He had always liked to think that he was 'pretty darn good' with children, especially young boys.

Mr Capelli snapped, 'Hey! You! Kid! You're talking to a priest here! You're talking to a holy father!'

Boofuls reluctantly took his eyes away from Kermit the Frog and looked Father Lucas up and down.

'I'm Father Lucas. And you are -'

For one moment - so quickly that it was like a rubber glove being rolled inside out and then the right way round again -an expression rippled through Boofuls' face which made Martin shiver. He had seen hostility in children's faces before; but nothing like the concentrated venom which disfigured Boofuls. He scarcely looked like a child at all: more like an evil-tempered dwarf.

But then the hostility vanished, and Boofuls was smiling and pretty once more - so angelic, in fact, that Father Lucas smiled back at him with pleasure, and said, 'Well, now, aren't you the uppity one?'

All the same, he backed off, and sat down at Martin's desk, and nodded and smiled at Boofuls almost as if he were afraid of him.

'It's the mirror,' said Mr Capelli, his eyes glancing from Boofuls to Father Lucas and back again.

Tm sorry? The mirror?' asked Father Lucas. He turned around in his chair and looked at himself in the mirror on the far wall. 'Oh, yes. The mirror. Well, it's very handsome, isn't it?'

'It took my grandson,' said Mr Capelli.

'It -?' asked Father Lucas, lifting his spectacles, not at all sure what Mr Capelli meant.

'It took my grandson, took him away. He's in there now.'

Father Lucas looked at Martin for some reassurance that Mr Capelli was quite all right and not suffering from some temporary brainstorm. The heat, you know. Maybe the male menopause. Men of this particular age sometimes acted a little feverish. But Martin gave him a nod to assure him that it was true.

'We didn't expect for one minute that you were going to find this easy to believe,' he told Father Lucas. 'But this definitely isn't your ordinary common or garden mirror. It's like a way through to another world.'

'Another world?' said Father Lucas, looking even more unsettled.

'It's still Hollywood in there,' Martin told him. 'But it's Hollywood the other way round. And the reflections that appear in that mirror aren't always the same as the real people and objects that are standing in front of it. Did you ever read Alice Through the Looking-Glass?

'Yes, of course,' said Father Lucas, still baffled.

'Then that'll give you some idea of what's happening here. You remember in Alice how the looking-glass world was completely different once Alice was out of sight of the mirror. I think this mirror's similar. Once you walk through that sitting room door in there, the whole world's turned on its head.'

Without looking at Boofuls, Martin said, 'I know for a fact that people can survive after death, inside that mirror.'

'You know that for zfact? queried Father Lucas.

Martin nodded.

There was a lengthy and embarrassing silence. Boofuls continued to watch Sesame Street with no obvious concern at Father Lucas' presence. Father Lucas sat on his chair with his double chins squashed up by his dog collar, his eyes fixed on the floor, his forehead furrowed like a Shar-Pei, trying to think of an appropriate response. He had known Mr Capelli for years and years, and he had never known him to be anything but sincere. Pompous, occasionally irascible; but never foolish or dishonest.

Father Lucas had never met Martin before, but Martin certainly didn't look wild or eccentric; or like a malicious practical joker.

'You'll have to forgive me,' he said. 'I'm not at all sure that I understand what you're asking; and even if I could understand what you're asking, I'm not at all sure why you're asking me.'

He stood up and walked toward the mirror. 'You're trying to tell me that people can walk in and out of this mirror?'

Martin said, 'Sometimes. Not always.'

Father Lucas knocked on the glass with his knuckle.

'Seems pretty solid to me. What's behind it?'

'An outside wall. Back of the house.'

Father Lucas breathed on the mirror's surface and wiped it with his cuff. 'And you say that if you can get into the mirror ... then beyond that sitting room door, things are very different from the real world?'