Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Terror

“So what do you suggest? We call the police?”

“We have to!”

“Oh, yes? And what do we tell them? ‘Well, officer, it was like this. We took a thirteenth-century mirror that didn’t belong to us and The Lady of Shalott came out of it in the middle of the night and tore Nigel’s throat out?’ They’ll send us to Broadmoor, Katie! They’ll put us in the funny farm for life!”

“Mark, listen, this is real.”

“It’s only a story, Katie. It’s only a legend.”

“But think of the poem, The Lady of Shalott. Think of what it says. ‘ Moving thro ’ a mirror char, that hangs before her all the year, shadows of the world appear’ Don’t you get it? Tennyson specifically wrote through a mirror, not in it. The Lady of Shalott wasn’t looking at her mirror, she was inside it, looking out!”

“This gets better.”

“But it all fits together. She was Lamia. A blood-sucker, a vampire! Like all vampires, she could only come out at night. But she didn’t hide inside a coffin all day . . . she hid inside a mirror! Daylight can’t penetrate a mirror, any more than it can penetrate a closed coffin!”

“I don’t know much about vampires, Katie, but I do know that you can’t see them in mirrors.”

“Of course not. And this is the reason why! Lamia and her reflection are one and the same. When she steps out of the mirror, she’s no longer inside it, so she doesn’t appear to have a reflection. And the curse on her must be that she can only come out of the mirror at night, like all vampires.”

“Katie, for Christ’s sake . . . you’re getting completely carried away.”

“But it’s the only answer that makes any sense! Why did they lock up the Lady of Shalott on an island, in a stream? Because vampires can’t cross running water. Why did they carve a crucifix and a skull on the stones outside? The words said, God save us from the pestilence within these walls. They didn’t mean the Black Death . . . they meant her ! The Lady of Shalott, Lamia, she was the pestilence!”

Mark sat down. He looked at Nigel and then he looked away again. He had never seen a dead body before, but the dead were so totally dead that you could quickly lose interest in them, after a while. They didn’t talk. They didn’t even breathe. He could understand why morticians were so blasé.

“So?” he asked Katie, at last. “What do you think we ought to do?”

“Let’s draw the curtains,” she said. “Let’s shut out all the daylight. If you sit here, perhaps she’ll be tempted to come out again. After all, she’s been seven hundred years without fresh blood, hasn’t she? She must be thirsty.”

Mark stared at her. “You’re having a laugh, aren’t you? You want me to sit here in the dark, hoping that some mythical woman is going to step out of a dirty old mirror and try to suck all the blood out of me?”

He was trying to show Katie that wasn’t afraid, and that her vampire idea was nonsense, but all the time Nigel was lying on the couch, silently shouting at the ceiling. And there was so much blood, and so many footprints. What else could have happened in this room last night?

Katie said, “It’s up to you. If you think I’m being ridiculous, let’s forget it. Let’s call the police and tell them exactly what happened. I’m sure that forensics will prove that we didn’t kill him.”

“I wouldn’t count on it, myself.”

Mark stood up again and went over to the mirror. He peered into the polished circle, but all he could see was his own face, dimly haloed.

“All right, then,” he said. “Let’s give it a try, just to put your mind at rest. Then we call the police.”

Katie drew the brown velvet curtains and tucked them in at the bottom to keep out the tiniest chink of daylight. It was well past eight o’clock now, but it was still pouring with rain outside and the morning was so gloomy that she need hardly have bothered. Mark pulled one of the armchairs up in front of the mirror and sat facing it.

“I feel like one of those goats they tie up, to catch tigers.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry. I’m probably wrong.”

Mark took out a crumpled Kleenex and blew his nose, and then sniffed. “God, what a terrible smell.”

“That’s the blood,” said Katie. Adding, after a moment, “My uncle used to be a butcher. He always said that bad blood is the worst smell in the world.”

They satin silence for awhile. The smell of blood seemed to be growing thicker, and riper, and it was all Mark could do not to gag. His throat was dry, too, and he wished he had drunk some orange juice before starting this vigil.

“You couldn’t fetch me a drink, could you?” he asked Katie.

“Ssh,” said Katie. “I think I can see something.”

“What? Where?”

“Look at the mirror, in the middle. Like a very faint light.”

Mark stared toward the mirror in the darkness. At first he couldn’t see anything but overwhelming blackness. But then he saw a flicker, like somebody waving a white scarf, and then another.

Very gradually, a face began to appear in the polished circle. Mark felt a slow crawling sensation down his back, and his lower jaw began to judder so much that he had to clench his teeth to stop it. The face was pale and bland but strangely beautiful, and it was staring straight at him, unblinking, and smiling. It looked more like the face of a marble statue than a human being. Mark tried to look away, but he couldn’t. Every time he turned his head toward Katie he was compelled to turn back again.

The darkened living-room seemed to grow even more airless and suffocating, and when he said, “ Katie . . . can you see what I see ?” his voice sounded muffled, as if he had a pillow over his face.

Soundlessly, the pale woman took one step out of the surface of the mirror. She was naked, and her skin was the color of the moon. The black tarnish clung to her for a moment, like oily cobwebs, but as she took another step forward they slid away from her, leaving her luminous and pristine.

Mark could do nothing but stare at her. She came closer and closer, until he could have reached up and touched her. She had a high forehead, and her hair was braided in strange, elaborate loops. She had no eyebrows, which made her face expressionless. But her eyes were extraordinary. Her eyes were like looking at death.

She raised her right hand and lightly kissed her fingertips. He could feel her aura, both electrical and freezing cold, as if somebody had left a fridge door wide open. She whispered something, but it sounded more French than English – very soft and elided – and he could only understand a few words of it.

“ My sweet love, ” she said. “ Come to me, give me your very life. ”

There were dried runnels of blood on her breasts and down her slightly-bulging stomach, and down her thighs. Her feet were spattered in blood, too. Mark looked up at her, and he couldn’t think what to say or what to do. He felt as if all of the energy had drained out of him, and he couldn’t even speak.

We all have to die one day , he thought. But to die now, today, in this naked woman’s arms . . . what an adventure that would be.

“Mark!” shouted Katie. “Grab her, Mark! Hold on to her!”

The woman twisted around and hissed at Katie, as furiously as a snake. Mark heaved himself out of his chair and tried to seize the woman’s arm, but she was cold and slippery, like half-melted ice, and her wrist slithered out of his grasp.

“ Now , Katie!” he yelled at her.

Katie threw herself at the curtains, and dragged them down, the curtain-hooks popping like firecrackers. The woman went for her, and she had almost reached the window when the last curtain-hook popped and the living-room was drowned with grey, drained daylight. She whipped around again and stared at Mark, and the expression on her face almost stopped his heart.