Mirror, p.22
Mirror, page 22
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.
‘Emilio?’ asked Martin. ‘Are you okay?’
Emilio was wearing a Star Trek T-shirt and red shorts and scruffy red and white trainers. He looked a little pale and tired, but otherwise well. The lick of black hair which usually fell across the left side of his forehead fell across the right side instead, and his wristwatch was on his right wrist. His face had an oddly asymmetrical appearance, simply because Martin was used to seeing it the other way around.
Emilio called, ‘I’m fine, I’m okay. I’m having fun.’
‘Who’s taking care of you?’ Mr Capelli asked him. Emilio held hands with the reflected Mr Capelli, and Boofuls held hands with the real Mr Capelli. Both of them smiled.
‘You’re looking after me, of course,’ said Emilio.
‘Me?’ asked Mr Capelli, mystified.
‘You and Grandma. ‘You’re in here, too. So’s Martin; so’s everybody. It’s just like home.’
Mr Capelli pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. He couldn’t understand this at all. ‘All I want to know is, are you okay? Me and Grandma, we’re taking care of you okay? Feeding you good? Nobody’s hurting you, nothing like that? Nobody’s telling you that you have to stay there?’
‘Grandpa, I like it here. I’m happy.’
Mr Capelli looked toward Martin for support; but Martin was too busy examining their reflections in the mirror for something which gave him a clue to how this apparent hallucination actually worked. Yet there seemed to be nothing, no tricks at all. He was seeing a blond-haired motion-picture star of the late 1930s whose reflection in the mirror was a dark-haired Italian boy of the late 1980s, and that was all there was to it.
‘Emilio,’ Martin said, ‘if I told you that you could come back over here, right now, right this second, what would you say to me?’
‘I like it here,’ Emilio repeated. ‘I’m happy.’
But there was an edginess in Emilio’s voice that made Martin feel that he wasn’t telling the whole truth.
‘Emilio,’ he asked, ‘what’s it like in there? Is it really like home? Boofuls said it was different.’
‘Well, sure, it’s different,’ said Emilio. He wasn’t smiling at all.
‘Listen, I have a suggestion,’ said Martin to Boofuls. Boofuls wasn’t smiling either. ‘Why don’t you get back into the mirror while I start putting your movie package together? It’s going to take months before anybody’s going to tell us yes or no; and months more to rewrite and cast the picture; and even more months before they can get around to set building and costumes. We’ll be lucky to have this production finished in eighteen months, two years. And Emilio can’t stay behind that mirror for two years.’
Boofuls’ eyes tightened and darkened. ‘I was trapped in the mirror for fifty years, Martin. Fifty! If I don’t get out now, I’m never going to get out, ever.’
‘But you can’t possibly expect Emilio to stay in that mirror-world until he’s seven!’
‘The picture won’t take two years to make,’ said Boofuls.
‘Oh, yes, and how can you be so sure about that?’
‘I’m sure, that’s all. Once it starts production, it’ll be easy. None of the sets were destroyed; none of the costumes were spoiled.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I know, that’s all. They’re all at a warehouse in Long Beach.’
‘Well, well,’ Martin replied, trying not to sound too bitter about it, ‘we’re all ready to roll, then. We’ve got the star, we’ve got the screenplay, we’ve got the costumes, we’ve got the sets. All we seem to have forgotten is that minor detail called finance. Twenty-five million dollars for a full-scale musical, and that’s the bottom line.’
Boofuls didn’t respond to Martin’s sarcasm, but smiled and said, ‘We’ll see.’
Mr Capelli, confused, called out to Emilio. ‘Emilio, hey, I love you?’
‘I know, Grandpa,’ said Emilio. ‘But Boofuls can’t rest if I come back now.’
‘Emilio, listen –’
‘You must help him,’ little Emilio insisted in a tone far graver than any that Martin had heard him adopt before.
‘Martin,’ begged Mr Capelli, ‘what can I do?’
‘Quite seriously, Mr Capelli,’ said Martin, ‘if I were you I’d demand –’
But Mr Capelli’s dilemma was settled for him; because at that moment a cat’s tail swished black and gingery from behind the door in the reflected sitting room, and Emilio immediately darted after it, out of the door, and disappeared. Martin turned around. Boofuls had run out of the room too. They heard him giggling in the kitchen, as if he were playing with a pet.
‘What can we believe?’ asked Mr Capelli, stretching his arms out wide. Martin could see that he was very close to collapse; and the shock of this morning’s events was beginning to make him feel swimmy and light-headed, too. Too much caffeine, not enough sleep, not enough to eat.
Martin said, ‘I don’t know, Mr Capelli. I really don’t know. Maybe your Father Lucas will tell us what to believe.’
Sister Boniface was kneeling at early prayer in the chapel of Sisters of Mercy Hospital; her head bowed; her eyes tightly closed; her mind very close to God.
The chapel was modern and very simple. Plain oak pews, plain oak floor, an altar of polished gray marble.
Its richest feature was its stained-glass window, depicting the Madonna holding the naked Christ-child, with rays of multicolored light transporting her up to the clouds. Sister Boniface adored this window. The light strained through it differently at different times of the day. Sometimes it looked peaceful and slightly melancholy: at other times, when the sun shone fully, it blazed with holy glory.
Today Sister Boniface was praying in particular for the soul of Homer Theobald. She had learned through the hospital grapevine that he had died; and she had learned from Sister Michael that Martin and Ramone had been with him. However, she had been afraid to call Martin to confirm her deepest anxiety – that the key which she had given him had attracted the attention of a vengeful Satan. She was mortified that she believed in evil spirits; and she was wracked with guilt for having given Martin the key.
When she met him last week, it had seemed to Sister Boniface that Martin could well be the messenger for whom she had been waiting for fifty years: the man who would settle her torment once and for all, and give her peace. She had sensed an aura of honesty about him; an aura of blessed destiny. But now she was beginning to suspect that Satan might have been deceiving her, and that all he wanted to do was to relieve her of the key which she had guarded for so long.
She had no idea what the key unlocked, but she knew that it was more terrible than anybody could imagine.
She prayed for her fellow sisters, she prayed for the hospital, she prayed for a small boy in St Francis of Assisi ward who was dying of AIDS from a contaminated blood transfusion. She prayed for peace and fulfillment, and that Homer Theobald had found his place in the Kingdom of Heaven.
She was finishing her prayers when a voice whispered, ‘Sister Boniface’.
She looked up; looked around. There was nobody there. The chapel was deserted.
‘Sister Boniface.’
She listened. At last, she stood up, brushing down her white habit, and said in a quavering voice, ‘Who’s there? Is anybody there?’
‘Sister Boniface, you betrayed me,’ the voice said.
‘I betrayed no one,’ said Sister Boniface. ‘I have always kept my word and my sacred trust.’
‘You gave away the key, Sister Boniface.’
Sister Boniface stepped out into the aisle and walked toward the altar, looking from left to right for any sign of the whisperer hiding behind the pews or the pillars.
‘You betrayed me, Sister Boniface, now you will have to be punished.’
Sister Boniface stopped in front of the altar. On her right, beside one of the smooth Italian-marble pillars, scores of votive candles burned brightly and were reflected in her eyes. The dear Madonna smiled down at her from the stained-glass window. She knew that nothing terrible could happen to her in the sight of the dear Madonna.
‘Nobody can betray me and go unpunished,’ the voice said, just as close to her ear as it had been before. ‘Warm hands, warm, the men have gone to plough; if you want to warm your hands, warm your hands now.’
Sister Boniface said, ‘Who are you? What are you? What do you want?’
‘She gave you the key to keep,’ whispered the voice. ‘She gave you the key to keep. Not to lose, not to give away. To keep forever, and to take with you to your grave.’
Sister Boniface whirled around, but there was nobody behind her, nobody anywhere to be seen. Her mouth felt suddenly parched, and she started to tremble. ‘O Holy Mother, protect me,’ she prayed. But she was beginning to feel that prayer alone was not going to be enough. ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit …’
‘Warm hands, warm,’ murmured the voice. ‘The men have gone to plough. If you want to warm your hands, warm your hands now.’
It was then that she caught sight of his face; and she screamed out loud. Her scream echoed in the chapel, but there was nobody there to hear her.
He was smiling at her from the small mirror just above the banks of votive candles – childish, white-faced. The same boy who had floated over his grandmother’s bed all those years ago. The same boy whose unearthly appearance had tormented Sister Boniface for the rest of her life.
‘Ah,’ whispered Boofuls, ‘you’ve seen me.’
Sister Boniface walked towards the mirror, her left foot dragging slightly, her habit rustling on the marble floor. Boofuls watched her approach and his eyes were tiny piercing lights.
‘I never betrayed you,’ said Sister Boniface, her voice shaking.
‘You were supposed to take that key to your grave, you miserable old witch,’ Boofuls spat back at her. ‘When you gave that key away, you gave away part of my secret. You should have known better than that, witch, even you.’
Then, in a slow, measured rhythm, he sang, ‘Warm hands, warm; the men have gone to plough; if you want to warm your hands, warm your hands now.’
Sister Boniface shuddered. ‘You are Satan,’ she declared, ‘I know you now! You are Satan!’
Boofuls laughed. He laughed and laughed. He laughed so much that – for one peculiar second – his face in the mirror almost seemed to turn itself inside out, and reveal something dark and gristly and insectlike. Sister Boniface cried out ‘Satan!’ and reached up over the banks of votive candles to take the mirror down.
It was then that she felt every muscle in her body lock tight. She was paralyzed, with her arms held over the candles. She tried to move, tried to cry out, but her nervous system simply refused to obey her.
Satan, she thought wildly. Satan!
There were more than seventy candles burning just below her outstretched hands. What at first had felt like a wave of warmth now began to feel like a furnace. The boy’s face in the mirror watched her in delight as Sister Boniface gradually began to realize what was going to happen to her.
O Mother of God, protect me, the pain! thought Sister Boniface. But she was completely powerless to move her hands away from the heat of the candles, or to scream out for help. She had never known anything so agonizing. Her hands began to redden, and she began to smell a strong aroma of scorched meat. Each fingernail felt as if it were white-hot.
Please, she begged Boofuls inside her mind. Please release me, please! I’ll get back the key, I promise you! I’ll take it to the grave with me, just as you ask!
But all Boofuls did was to chant, ‘Warm hands, warm, the men have gone to plough; if you want to warm your hands, warm your hands now!’
Slowly, inch by inch, Sister Boniface found that she was lowering her hands toward the candle flames. The heat was so intense that she could scarcely feel it. The skin on the palms of her hands blackened and shriveled, and strips of it dropped off and fell onto the candle-holders, where it hung, smoking. The sleeves of her habit began to smolder; and as her hands came lower and lower, they burst into flame, so that her bare wrists were licked by the fire as well.
Tears poured from Sister Boniface’s eyes and down her wrinkled cheeks. The agony was thunderous. She wanted to do nothing but die, even though her paralysis made it impossible for her to turn and see the face of the dear Madonna.
The flesh of her hands was actually alight now, and it burned with a sputtering sizzle. Gradually the layers of skin were burned through, and the flesh charred, and the bones were exposed, her own fingerbones bared in front of her eyes.
‘Warm hands, warm, the men have gone to plough!’
It was just when the agony reached its greatest that Boofuls released Sister Boniface from her paralysis. She didn’t realize what had happened at first; but then she let out a scream of sheer tormented pain that pierced the chapel from end to end.
She lurched back, away from the candles, holding her blazing arms out in front of her like a sleepwalker. The holy water, she thought in desperation, I can douse my hands in the holy water.
She began to make her way step by step along the aisle. Her hands were nothing but blackened stumps now, and her sleeves were leaping with orange flame. Her wimple, incendiary with starch, suddenly flared up like a crown of fire and set light to her short-cropped hair underneath.
By the time she had managed to make her way halfway down the aisle, her habit was ablaze from hem to shoulder. She was a shuffling mass of fire, her head alight, her eyes wide with shock and terror, no longer able to scream or even to whimper.
She knew that she would never be able to reach the holy water. She twisted, collapsed, then fell onto her side. She could hear the fire roaring in her ears. She could see the flames dancing past her eyes.
In a last agonized effort, she managed to lift her head, just long enough to glimpse the stained-glass window behind the pews. The dear Madonna still smiled at her, as she had always done. Sister Boniface tried to say something, the smallest of prayers, but her habit had burned through to her underclothing now, and the skin on her legs was alight, and she died before she could whisper even one word.
Although he was patrolling the second floor, one of the hospital security officers had heard Sister Boniface screaming, and had gone to investigate. He had thought at first that it was one of the cleaners laughing or larking about. He opened a dozen office doors before he eventually reached the chapel.
‘Jesus,’ he said when he opened the doors.
The chapel was dense with smoke. In the middle of the center aisle, a blackened figure was huddled on the floor, a few last flames still flickering on its chest. The security officer felt his throat tighten with nausea, and he didn’t know whether he ought to go into the chapel or not. There was no chance at all that the figure on the floor was still alive.
Eventually, he took a deep breath, masked his nose and mouth with his padded-up handkerchief, and cautiously stepped inside. He made his way up the aisle until he reached Sister Boniface’s body. Then he just stood and stared at it in horror.
Her head had been burned so fiercely that most of her skull had collapsed into ashes. Her ribs curved up from an indistinguishable heap of burned cloth and carbonized flesh; her pelvis lay like an unwanted wash-basin.
The only way in which the security officer could tell at once that it was Sister Boniface was her crucifix, a large bronze cross, mottled with heat, from which the figure of Christ had melted into small distorted blobs of silver.
He thought he heard a rustling noise in the chapel, like somebody moving about on tiptoe, but when he peered through the smoke he saw nobody at all.
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.
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.
