Graham Masterton - Mirror

Ramone, fighting, kicking, opened his eyes. He stared for one terrified second, and then he let out a bellow of desperation.

Martin's second head stretched its mouth open with a sickening gagging noise and bit into Ramone's face. The lower teeth buried themselves in his open mouth; the upper teeth crunched into his eyebrows. The creature's jaws had a grip like a steel hunting trap; and when Ramone tried to force his hands into its mouth to prise it loose, its teeth were so sharp that his fingers were cut right down to the bare bone.

In a final convulsive effort to break free, Ramone twisted his body first one way and then the other. He couldn't see what effect this had - the creature's gaping mouth completely covered his eyes - but this twisting did nothing but drag the head further and further out of Martin's mouth, on a long slippery pinkish neck that seemed to disgorge forever.

Ramone dropped to the floor, rolling wildly from side to side, but the snakelike head refused to release its grip. Instead, it began to ripple all the way along the length of its neck as if its muscles were building up strength for one last terrible bite.

Ramone thumped on the wood-block floor, like a wrestler pleading for mercy. One thump — two, three — and then the creature's neck bulged once, in a hideous muscular spasm, and its teeth crunched through flesh and bone, right into Ramone's sinus cavities, biting his tongue through at the root, chopping his optic nerves; and then tugging backward, taking the whole of his face with it.

The creature began almost immediately to slither back into Martin's open mouth. Within six seconds, only the top of its head showed. Within seven, Martin's mouth had closed and returned to its normal size.

Within fifteen seconds — by the time Mr Capelli had puffed his way up the stairs to find out what all the thumping and the thrashing was about - Martin had disappeared.

Mr Capelli knelt slowly down beside Ramone's savaged body. There was extraordinarily little blood; but the bite in his face was so terrible that Mr Capelli could do nothing at all but cross himself, and cross himself again, and then turn to stare at the mirror.

Martin rang the doorbell again. At last, they heard footsteps and a muffled voice called out, 'Who is it?'

'It's me, Martin, from upstairs. I was wondering if Emilio was home.'

There was a pause, and then bolts were slid back, and the door was opened. At first it was difficult to see who was standing inside. The hallway was very dark and there didn't seem to be any lights anywhere. Martin was aware of something huge and nodding and draped in black. It looked almost like a large parrot cage covered with a black cloth.

'Emilio went out,' the muffled voice told him.

It was then that the lightning flickered again, and Martin realized with a thrill of dread what he was looking at. It was Mrs Capelli, wearing a black mantilla on her head. But her head was huge, a cartoon head; like the drawings of the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland. Her face was enormous and waxy-colored; the face of a long-suffering Italian matriarch. Her mantilla was decorated with thousands of jet beads; and she was draped with jet necklaces and pinned with jet brooches; a mother in mourning for the old country, and for lost innocence, and for long-buried relatives.

This nodding huge-headed monster was Mrs Capelli amplified five-hundredfold. Her physical appearance exaggerated by her inner self.

Martin heard Alison gasp just behind him. But he was determined to find Emilio. He was determined to destroy Boofuls. And even though his voice was shaking, he managed to ask, 'Do you know — do you know where he went?'

Mrs Capelli shook her huge birdcage head. Her jet jewelry dattered.

'It's important,' Martin insisted. 'I really have to find him.'

Mrs Capelli stood silently for a moment and then turned back into her apartment. However, she left the door open, as if Martin should wait for a reply. Martin stepped gingerly into the apartment after her, following the huge swaying bulk of her mantilla.

She went into her parlor, across the patterned carpet. As she passed in front of the mirror on top of the chest of drawers, she changed, without warning - her huge swaying head dissolving like a conjuring trick back to its usual size, her mantilla swallowed up like smoke. It was only when she reached the far corner of the parlor, out of sight of the mirror, that her head expanded, and her black-bedecked mantilla returned.

Martin reached back and grasped Alison's hand. 'You see that? When she walks in front of a mirror, she's normal.'

Alison said. 'Yes, you're right. I get it now. Anybody looking into the mirror from the real world — they wouldn't see anything strange.'

They followed Mrs Capelli to the kitchen. It was there that they saw another apparition, even stranger. A bloated white-faced man - more like a huge jellyish egg than a human being — sitting at the kitchen table.

Martin was reminded of Humpty-Dumpty in Through the Looking-Glass: 'The egg got larger and larger, and more and more human. When she had come within a few yards of it, she saw that it had eyes and a nose and a mouth.'

There was no nursery-rhyme amusement in this creature, however. Illuminated only by intermittent flickers of lightning, he was soft and bulging, with black, glittering eyes, and he breathed harshly and softly, as if his lungs were clogged. He turned and stared at Martin with suspicion and contempt.

'Whaddya wan'?' he demanded in a thick stage-Italian accent.

'Mr Capelli?' said Martin. Tm looking for Emilio.'

'Why for?' Mr Capelli wanted to know. 'He's-a play someplace.'

'Mr Capelli, it's crucial. I have to find him.'

'Do I know you?' the egg-shaped creature wheezed. Something approaching recognition glittered in one of the eyes which swam on his featureless face.

'Martin, Mr Capelli. Martin Williams. Emilio and I have always been friends.'

'Martin Williams?'

'That's right, Mr Capelli, Martin Williams. I live upstairs.'

'Ah . ..' said Mr Capelli. He thought for a moment, his eyes opening and closing like mollusks. Then he coughed, cleared his throat, and flapped one pale flipperlike hand toward the door. 'He went to the market. Maybe with one of his friends. To buy coffee and candy. Now, leave me alone.'

Mrs Capelli stood silently in the corner, watching them with a face as huge as a white upholstered chair. Martin said nothing, but took hold of Alison's arm and piloted her back out of the apartment. He closed the door behind him and stood on the landing trembling, taking deep breaths, one hand against the wall to steady himself.

'Do we really have to go outside?' Alison asked him.

Martin said. 'There's no alternative.'

'But if the Capellis look like that -'

'There's no alternative, we have to find Emilio.'

Paying out their rope behind them, they went downstairs to the front of the building. The sky was inky black now; the wind was up; and the palms were rustling and rattling. 'The market's this way,' said Martin. 'I think we're going to have to get rid of this rope. Maybe I'll tug it a couple of times, just to let Ramone know that we're okay.'

He yanked at the rope twice and waited; but there was no answering pull from Ramone. Martin hesitated for a moment, wondering if he ought to go back and tell Ramone that they were venturing out without the rope, but then a deafening barrage of thunder changed his mind. This was the night that Satan was coming. There was no time to spare.

Quickly, they untied the knots around their belts, leaving the rope lying coiled on Mr Capelli's driveway. Then they hurried along Franklin Avenue toward the market, crossing La Brea and heading toward Highland. Martin found himself wildly disoriented, because the glittering lights of Los Angeles were on his left side now, instead of his right, and traffic was driving on the wrong side of the street. Neither of them looked too closely, but the drivers and passengers of some of the passing cars appeared to be peculiarly deformed, hunched figures in silently rolling vehicles.