Graham Masterton - Mirror

'Pickle-nearest-the-wind,' somebody whispered. 'Pickle-nearest-the-rpind.'

Two things happened while he slept.

The first was that Boofuls suddenly sat up in bed, his small figure lit by the early moonlight. He stayed quite still for a long time, listening. On the far side of the room against the wall, the mirror was cold and clear.

After three or four minutes, Boofuls climbed out of bed and padded on bare feet across to the mirror and stood in front of it with his hands by his sides.

In the mirror, the sitting room door opened, and another boy appeared, wearing striped cotton pajamas. It was Emilio. He looked white and distressed, and he couldn't stop fidgeting.

'Where's Pickle?' whispered Boofuls. 'I told you to bring Pickle.'

'Pickle didn't want to come.'

'Pickle has got to come.'

'Well, I can bring her in the morning.'

Boofuls' eyes flared. 'You'd better, otherwise you can stay in that mirror forever and ever and ever!'

Emilio said, 'Please.'

'Please, what?'

'Please let me out. I want to get out.'

'What's the matter? You've got your grandpa and grandma, haven't you?'

Emilio's eyes filled with tears. 'Yes, but they're not the same. They're different.'1

'Everything's different in the mirror.'

'Boofuls, please let me out. Please.'

Boofuls let out a little hissing laugh. 'You'll get out when the time comes. And if I feel like letting you out.'

'But I hate it here. It's frightening!'

Boofuls leaned close to the mirror, puckered his lips, and blew Emilio a kiss. 'You'll get used to it. You can get used to anything if you try hard enough!'

'Please,' begged Emilio.

'Bring Pickle in the morning,' Boofuls insisted. 'If you j don't, you can stay there forever and ever, amen!' i

Emilio covered his face with his hands and began to sob quietly. Boofuls watched him for a moment with a malicious look on his face and then went back to bed. When he looked around, Emilio had gone, and the sitting room in the mirror was empty. He smiled to himself and slept. i

The second thing was that Father Lucas finished one last glass of wine with Father Quinlan and then prepared to leave.

'You have a safe at St Theresa's, don't you?' Father Quinlan asked him. 'Perhaps you'd better take these relics and lock ' them safely away. I don't altogether trust the cleaners here at St Patrick's. I lost a fine briar pipe once and a walking stick with a silver top.'

'That's not a very good advertisement, is it?' Father Lucas smiled. 'Theological College Is Den of Thieves, Claims Holy Father.' ;

Father Quinlan laughed, and wrapped up the claws and the ! hair, and carefully slid them into a padded envelope. 'Here's j the key, too. We don't want to lose that.'

Father Lucas opened the study door. 'I'm not altogether sure that Mr Williams believes in the Book of Revelation,' he remarked. !

Father Quinlan shrugged. 'It's rather lurid, I suppose, as prophesies go.'

'That boy at his apartment .. . I'm ninety-nine percent j certain that it's Boofuls.'

'Yes,' said Father Quinlan. 'It's a pity that Mr Williams doesn't yet feel able to take us into his confidence. Still — it's a lot to swallow, all in one go. The Revelation and Lewis Carroll all tied up together. I found it quite difficult to believe myself when I first looked into it.'

'But you have no doubts now?' asked Father Lucas.

Father Quinlan shook his head. 'None at all.'

Father Lucas said good night and left the college by the side door. He had left his dented red Datsun parked in the shadow of the chapel. He climbed in, and the suspension groaned like a dying pig. He started up the engine and was just about to back out of his parking space when he happened to glance at the padded envelope lying on the seat beside him.

Supposing he drove down to the Hollywood Divine and opened up the second safe-deposit box? The sooner he did it — the sooner he locked the relics in his safe at St Theresa - the less risk there would be of somebody else locating them first and trying to reassemble the scattered body of Satan.

He checked his watch. It was twenty after eleven, but he was pretty sure that there would be somebody on the desk at the Hollywood Divine. After all, most of its customers didn't know day from night.

He drove eastwards on Santa Monica. From time to time, he glanced at his eyes in the rearview mirror. They looked a little glassy and bloodshot, although he didn't know why. Too much of Father Quinlan's Pinot chardonnay, probably. He wasn't used to drinking. But, all the same, he was surprised how strange he felt; how detached; as if his body were taking him to the Hollywood Divine even though his mind wasn't too keen on coming along.

Father Lucas had always liked to think of himself as traditional and pragmatic. He believed in the forces of darkness; and he believed that people could be possessed by evil spirits. He even believed that Boofuls had somehow reappeared through the mirror in Martin's sitting room - like a sort of living hologram. But it hadn't been easy for him to accept Father Quinlan's theories about the second coming of Satan. To think that Satan the king of all chaos might actually appear in Hollywood in the late 1980s in the flesh — well, that was one of those concepts that his well-disciplined mind was unable to encompass.

He drove along Hollywood Boulevard. At this time of night, it was at its sleaziest — the sidewalks crowded with punks and weirdos and junkies and strutting streetwalkers. One immaculately dressed black man drew up alongside Father Lucas in a white Eldorado convertible and raised his leopard-spotted fedora. 'Good evening to you, your reverence. What's going down in heaven these days?'

'Good evening, Perry,' Father Lucas replied. 'I'll tell you when I get there.'

'Don't you worry, your reverence, I'll be there first.' Father Lucas smiled. 'I'm sure you will, Perry, I'm sure you will.'

He turned into Vine and parked outside the Hollywood Divine. A small Mexican boy no older than eight came up to him and offered to protect his car radio. 'Long gone, I'm afraid,' Father Lucas told him. 'Then what about your hubcaps?'

'Take them, if you think they're going to be more use to you than they are to me.'

'I don't want your hubcaps. If I was going to take anything, I'd take your whole crapping car.'

Father Lucas bent down over the boy, his hands on his knees, so that he could look him straight in the eye. 'If you so much as lay one greasy finger on my crapping car, I'll tear your crapping head off. And don't ever use language like that to a priest ever again; or to anyone; ever.'

The boy stared at him, wide-eyed. 'No, sir. Sorry, sir. I'll take care of your car, sir.'

Father Lucas made his way past the hookers and the hustlers to the steps of the Hollywood Divine. Somebody had vomited tides of something raspberry-colored all over the side of the steps, and hundreds of shoes had trampled it everywhere.

Father Lucas pushed his way through the shuddering revolving doors and crossed the dimly lit lobby. One of the Hollywood Divine scarecrows was shuffling around the perimeter of the lobby with a bottle in a brown paper bag, singing,' You play . . . such shweet mushic . .. how can . . . I resish ... every shong . . .from your heartshtrings . .. makes mefeelFve .. .jush been kissh.'

Boofuls, thought Father Lucas. It seems like he's everywhere. Like a storm that's brewing, and everybody can feel it in the air.

The desk clerk was sitting with his feet on the counter reading an Elf Quest comic and smoking a cigarette. A half-empty bottle of Gatorade and a half-chewed hot dog showed that he was halfway through dinner. He glanced up when Father Lucas approached the desk and sniffed loudly.