Odds Are Good

by Bruce Coville

  A touch of coldness seized my chest when I saw the red streak that marred the surface of the mirror.

  “I would have sworn I wiped this off yesterday,” said Mr. Colella. He turned and handed me the rag. “Here. You take care of it. And do it right this time!”

  He stomped off, banging his leg on an old oak dresser.

  I studied the mirror. The red streak was longer than I remembered.

  As I reached forward to rub it with the rag, the stain disappeared.

  I flinched back as if I had been burned. I stared at the mirror, then focused on my own reflection. The spot I had noticed the day before had erupted into an ugly pimple after all.

  I put my finger to my face.

  The skin was smooth.

  I dropped the rag and grabbed both edges of the mirror, as if I could anchor it into reality. I don’t know how long I stood there.

  Mr. Colella’s voice wrenched me from my trance. “Come on, glamour boy. That mirror’s not the only thing in the shop. Get to work!”

  I turned away from the mirror. I. thought about quickly turning back, to see if it still showed the pimple, and realized I was afraid to do so. I hurried over to Mr. Colella, grateful for an excuse not to have to face myself again.

  I avoided the mirror throughout the afternoon.

  But if I could avoid it physically, I couldn’t keep it out of my thoughts. I tried and discarded a dozen different explanations for the altered reflection: a flaw in the glass, a trick of light, a momentary daydream. Finally I told myself it had simply been an unlikely combination of all of those things, and that I was getting myself wound up over nothing.

  My mother met me at the door with a worried look on her face. “Jon, I’m sorry . . .”

  I knew that tone. Something had happened that was going to make me angry, and she was trying to avert the explosion.

  “What is it?” I asked tensely.

  “Beau . . .” She waved her hands helplessly. “Well, you should have put it away when you were done last night!”

  A sick feeling grabbed me. Pushing past my mother, I ran to my room. I saw the mess with my eyes, but I felt it with my stomach, as solidly as if someone had landed a punch right below my ribs. The miniature room—the five pieces of oak furniture I’d so lovingly crafted, the walls I’d so carefully measured and papered—lay in the center of the rug, reduced to nothing more than a pile of wet splinters and dog slobber.

  Beau slunk in, drooping his tail and looking guilty.

  “You stupid dog!” I shrieked, raising my hand.

  “Jonathan!” cried my mother, as Beau whimpered and cowered away.

  To my surprise, the storm of anger passed as quickly as it had come. I lowered my hand. Filled with sorrow, I knelt to gather the sodden remains of three months of work. They felt slimy in my hands.

  “I’d like to be alone for a little while,” I said softly.

  Looking at me in astonishment, my mother grabbed Beau by the collar. “I’ll call you when supper is ready.” But instead of leaving the room, she pushed Beau out, closed the door, and put her arms around me. “It’s just that you look so much like your father when you get mad,” she whispered.

  I laid my head on her shoulder. We both cried.

  Monday afternoon Mr. Colella asked if I could stay late to close the shop while he went to an auction. I said I would have to check with my mother. I called, half hoping she would say no. But she okayed the extra hours, and even said she would pick me up after work.

  After Mr. Colella left, I found myself glancing uneasily toward the mirror. I shook my head and busied myself with other chores. It was a quiet night; I didn’t have a single customer until nearly eight, when Mrs. Hubbard hobbled in. She was one of Mr. Colella’s best customers, and it was a relief to see her—though at that point I would have been glad to see anyone.

  “Hi, Mrs. Hubbard,” I said cheerfully. “Can I help you?”

  “Just looking tonight, Jonathan,” she replied. But a few minutes later she called me over to the mirror.

  Reluctantly I crossed to join her.

  “This is an interesting piece,” she said. “What can you tell me about it?”

  “It was made in Japan, about three hundred years ago,” I said, trying to remember everything Mr. Colella had told me. “We don’t know the name of the craftsman, but from the style it appears to have been made in . . .”

  I caught my breath. Couldn’t she see it?

  “Made in Kyoto?” Mrs. Hubbard prompted, obviously thinking I had forgotten the name of the city.

  I hadn’t forgotten anything. I was simply too frightened to speak. An inch-wide streak of red had slashed its way across the center of the mirror. That would have been bad enough. But it was the image in the glass that truly terrified me. Two people looked out at me, one a kindly looking elderly woman, the other a strangely altered version of myself. A scattering of open sores stretched from my nose across my right cheek to my hairy, pointed ear.

  I glanced at Mrs. Hubbard. She was staring at me expectantly.

  I looked back at the mirror.

  My reflection smiled at me.

  Mrs. Hubbard shook my arm. “Jonathan, are you all right?”

  “Don’t you see?” I whispered, my voice trembling.

  “See what?” she asked, taking a step away from me.

  “Nothing. I’m sorry!”

  I put my hands over my eyes and pressed them into my face.

  She took another step back. “I’ll come to see Mr. Colella about the mirror tomorrow.” She paused, then looked at me with concern. “Listen to an old woman, Jonathan. I’ve had my time with mirrors. Don’t let them get to you. They’re useful, but the truth is, they always lie. Everything is backwards in a mirror. And whatever you see is never more than just a part of you.”

  I nodded, unable to speak.

  She looked at me more closely, then furrowed her brow and said again, “I’ll talk to Mr. Colella about the mirror tomorrow.”

  “No, wait!” But it was too late. She had scurried from the shop, leaving me alone with the mirror.

  I sidled back to the counter, unwilling to turn my back on the mirror, equally unwilling to look at it. I considered calling my mother and asking her to pick me up early, but couldn’t figure out what to give as a reason.

  When nine o’clock came I was standing by the door with my hand on the light switch, ready to scoot out as soon as I saw Mom’s car.

  Tuesday was a good day. Not having to go to the shop, I found myself at peace with the world. Things seemed to be on track with Gina, and the minor annoyances that normally would have made my temper flare seemed unable to affect my good mood.

  Wednesday afternoon I went to work determined to confront the mirror.

  It was gone.

  “Mrs. Hubbard bought it yesterday morning,” said Mr. Colella. “Said she was going to put it in her front hall. She has a lot of oriental stuff, you know. She and her husband used to live in Japan, before he died. Anyway, I thought you’d be glad it was gone, since it seemed to make you nervous.” He paused and looked at me quizzically. “Don’t know why. You’re a good-looking kid. You shouldn’t worry about that kind of thing.”

  I nodded and set to work, uncertain whether I was relieved or disappointed that the mirror was gone.

  Over the next few months I forced myself to forget the mirror. The forgetting was made easier by the fact that my life was taking a turn for the better, as Jonathan the Wild and Temperamental was slowly replaced by Jonathan the Calm and Strong.

  “A pleasure to be with” was the way people spoke of me now—the same people who had once avoided me because of my temper. I felt more able to focus on things. My schoolwork improved, and my grades went up. I had more friends.

  When I started volunteering at the hospital Gina nicknamed me Saint Jonathan. At first it was a joke, but after a while she began saying it seriously, and I sensed that my unswerving calm was actually beginning to worry her.

  A month
later she broke up with me. Though she wouldn’t say why, I had a feeling that I was boring her. I should have been upset, but I wasn’t. For one thing, half a dozen girls had made it obvious that they would be available if Gina dropped out of the picture. I didn’t call any of them, though. Somehow I wasn’t that interested.

  The horror started in school, oddly enough, where normality seemed to be embedded in the very walls. I was looking in the rest room mirror to adjust my hair when I saw a twisted, evil version of my own face staring back at me.

  The image lasted for only a moment. But it left me gasping. Had I really seen it? Or was I having a nervous breakdown?

  When I was preparing to go to upstairs to bed that night, my mother put a hand on my shoulder and said, “I see such a change in you, Jonathan.”

  I flinched. Had the evil I had seen in the mirror started to show on my face? My mother misread my reaction. “Don’t be upset. I was trying to tell you how pleased I am. I used to worry you were going to turn out like your father.”

  I twisted away, started up the stairs.

  “Jonathan, I’m sorry! That wasn’t fair. Your father had his good qualities. What I meant . . . What I was trying to say . . . was that I was afraid you would have his temper. That it would do to your life what it did to his.”

  I paused on the stairs but didn’t speak.

  “Anyway, you seem to be getting a handle on that. I’m pleased. And very proud.” She was silent for a moment. “Well, I just wanted to let you know I noticed,” she said at last. “Good night, son.”

  “Good night,” I whispered.

  Upstairs, I lay staring into the darkness, shaking with terror as I remembered what had happened earlier that day. Finally I climbed out of bed and turned on the light. Whirling around, I saw it again in the mirror over my dresser: a horrifying version of my own face. Though it disappeared almost instantly, I no longer had any doubt that it was real.

  Mirrors became my enemy. Though most of the time they were safe, I never knew when I would look into one and see the horrible face that was so much like my own, yet so filled with evil, leering out at me.

  It grew worse—uglier and angrier—each time I saw it.

  I prayed someone else would see it, so I would know I was not going mad. I also prayed that no one else would see it, for it was far too humiliating.

  I stayed away from mirrors as much as possible, even cut my hair short so I wouldn’t have to worry about combing it.

  “I’m worried about you, Jonathan,” said my mother, late that spring. “You seem a little . . . I don’t know, a little thin around the edges. Maybe you’re working too hard.”

  “I’m fine,” I said, kissing her on the forehead.

  It was a lie, and we both knew it.

  “We’ve got a big house sale,” Mr. Colella told me one Friday afternoon. “Former customer passed away and left a huge collection of stuff. No kids. The nieces and nephews live a thousand miles away and all they want is the money. Anyway, I’ll need some extra help for the next few days. I want you to come with me.”

  So the following morning Mr. Colella picked me up in the shop truck and we drove to a large old house. When I saw the mailbox, I caught my breath.

  Mrs. Hubbard had lived there.

  The Japanese mirror stood in the foyer, right where the old woman had told Mr. Colella she was planning to put it all those months ago.

  I averted my head as we walked past.

  Though I kept myself busy in other parts of the house, the mirror was on my mind all morning. When Mr. Colella left me to continue the inventory while he went to pick up lunch, I found myself drawn irresistibly back to the foyer. I hesitated to enter, but finally a curiosity stronger than terror drove me on—curiosity . . . and the hope that perhaps here I could find the answer to the strangeness that had overtaken my life.

  I walked slowly toward the mirror. From the angle of my approach I could see the opposite wall reflected in its smooth surface. Everything seemed normal.

  I stopped and took a deep breath, then stepped forward and planted myself in front of the mirror.

  I screamed.

  The wall in the mirror was the same wall that stood behind me. The pictures, the coat rack, and the umbrella stand were all the same. But where I should have seen myself crouched a creature more hideous than anything I had ever imagined.

  Blood began to seep down from the top of the mirror. The creature raised its hands and reached forward, reached toward me, as if it wanted to snatch me through the glass.

  I ran.

  In the garden behind the house I threw myself to the ground and sobbed. What made the thing in the mirror so horrible was not horns or scales or anything demonic. What made it horrible was the smoldering rage twisting the features that were all too clearly my own. That, and the understanding that the anger I thought I had escaped for the last six months had been coming here. All my darkness—every vile thought, every angry moment, every instant since October when I had been less than my best—had collected in the mirror, slowly creating a beast that was now nearly strong enough to break out. It was a repository for all that was bad about myself, and what I had seen there was not merely terrifying, it was disgusting.

  My mother had said I looked “thin around the edges.” Now I understood why: Too much of me had gone into the mirror.

  I thought back to the bits of information Mr. Colella had dropped in his usual terse way as we were working. “She died of a heart attack,” he had said at one point, for no reason that I could make out. “They found her body in the foyer,” he had commented later.

  A chill ran over me as I concluded that my other self had scared Mrs. Hubbard to death.

  I sat up and wiped my face.

  “All right, Saint Jonathan. Now what do you do?”

  The answer was simple. The creature had to be destroyed.

  But what would that mean to me? The creature was part of me, was me, in a way. If I killed it, would I die, too?

  Well, saints never hesitated to die for a good cause. Or would this be like committing suicide?

  “Jonathan?”

  It was Mr. Colella, back with lunch. I took a breath and forced myself to be calm. “Be right there,” I called.

  I found a hose and washed the tears and dirt from my face.

  “What were you doing?” asked Mr. Colella sharply, when I appeared at the door of the kitchen.

  I felt an instant of anger at Mr. Colella’s tone, then felt the anger disappear. This was a sensation I had experienced often over the last several months. At first I had welcomed it. After a while the feeling had become so familiar that I usually ignored it. Now, though, it horrified me, for I finally understood that it meant I had just fed my terrible alter ego.

  No more free ride, I thought. I’ve got to teach myself to be calm for real.

  Doing so took most of my energy for the rest of the day. By the time I went to bed I was exhausted from trying to control my anger. Even so, sleep would not come, and when the alarm I had set to go off at two began to beep, I was still wide awake.

  I reached out and snapped it off. Moving slowly, I climbed from my bed and dressed.

  Half an hour later I pulled my bike to a halt in front of the Hubbard house. A cool wind whispered around me, making leaves rustle in the darkness. As I traveled up the sidewalk, the nearly full moon sent a long shadow stretching ahead of me.

  I fumbled in my pocket for the key Mr. Colella had given me earlier that day. Once I had it, I paused. It wasn’t too late to turn back.

  But the thing waiting inside belonged to me.

  So I unlocked the door and stepped into the foyer.

  “Hello, brother.”

  I caught my breath. The voice came from the mirror. Had the creature known I was coming? Could it read my mind?

  I turned on the light and it appeared immediately, a ravaged parody of my own face staring out from the mirror.

  “I’ve been waiting for you, Saint Jonathan,” it hissed.
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  I took a step backward.

  The image should have moved back as well, away from me. It didn’t. It stayed exactly where it was.

  “It’s too late for that kind of game, Saint Jonathan. I have a life of my own now. Your mother was right, you know. You are getting thinner. Soon there won’t be anything left of you. All that goodness will vanish like a puff of smoke in the wind.” It laughed. “That’s when I’ll come back and take over your body. It won’t be like dying, not at all like dying. I’m too much a part of you for that, the biggest part of you. Just a few more days—a few more days and we’ll be together again.”

  The eyes looking out at me glowed with an unholy fire.

  “Oh, the things we’ll do then, Jonathan! We’ll start with your sister, probably. Or maybe your mother. Yes, maybe your mother. That would be nice, don’t you think?”

  “Stop!” I shouted. I felt the surge of my anger flow into the thing in the mirror and suddenly realized it was goading me, pushing me to give it more strength, more power.

  I did the only thing I could think of. Moving as slowly and calmly as I could manage, I turned to the umbrella stand behind me.

  I picked it up.

  Then I threw it into the mirror.

  The glass shattered. The pieces crashed and tinkled to the floor.

  My sense of triumph lasted only a second. With a sudden hiss a flare of blue light crackled around the black lacquer frame.

  A moment later my other self came crawling over the edge.

  “How kind of you to set me free. Earlier than I expected. But not unwelcome. No, not unwelcome at all.”

  It lunged at me. I screamed and jumped back as my own face, burning with hatred, riddled with oozing sores, surged up at me. I dodged to the right, racing around the creature. It clutched at me. I jumped forward, tripped over the black lacquer frame—and fell into the world of the mirror.

  The creature followed close behind me. I could hear it scrabbling on the floor, panting, not from exertion, but from a lust to possess me.