Murder by Illusion

by Giles Ekins

  Charlie’s face in the mirror is all drawn and haggard, bloodshot eyes, yellowish hue to his skin, blood from the cut on his chin seeping through the toilet paper still stuck to his face. In truth he looks like a week old re-animated cadaver, green tinged and rotting from the inside, he feels like it too. ‘You know, Dor,’ he says, still staring at his face in the mirror, ‘I reckon I could sell my soul to the Devil for a trick like that.’

  Doreen stands up in horror, shock across her face, she crosses herself and then clutches at the small gold crucifix she wears about her neck on a thin gold chain, ‘Holy Mother of God, Charlie, don’t ever say a thing like that. Ever. Especially in front of a mirror like that, not even as a joke.’

  ‘Eh, why on earth not? Charlie asks, taken back by her response, ‘It’s only words, it doesn’t mean nothing.’

  ‘Because the mirror reflects your soul, Charlie, that’s why and my old Grannie, God rest her soul,’ crossing herself again, ‘she always used to say that if you stand in front of a mirror and invoke the name of the Devil five times, then he will come to you’

  ‘Gerraway, I thought you didn’t believe any more in all that superstitious garbage that the good old holy popish church tried to drum into you.’

  ‘It has got nothing to do with the Church, Charlie and it’s not superstition…Grannie way a psychic, she knew all about these things. She knew a lot about such things and she knew what she was talking about.’

  ‘Yeah, her and that black cat of hers. It’s bullshit, Dor, total and utter bullshit, you’ll be seeing demons and devils and ghoulies and ghosties and long-legged beasties crawling up out of the toilet bowl next. It’s nothing, just words. All that crap about the Devil and Satan, it’s medieval mumbo jumbo dreamed up by priests to keep the peasants down and give them an excuse to burn a few old hags when it got cold in the winter and 400 years ago they’d probably have burned your Grannie as a witch as well, just to save on heating bills.’ Aye, pop your mother on the pyre as well, while they’re at it.

  ‘It’s not bullshit, it’s not nonsense,’ she insists, fists clenched.

  ‘It is nonsense and I’ll say it again, just to prove it.’ Charlie turns and faces the mirror again. ‘I will sell my soul to Satan in return for a new act. There. Nothing. See? No Devil.’

  ‘You have to say it five times, but please Charlie, don’t. Whatever you do, please don’t say it again.’

  ‘Look,’ Charlie says, getting a little irritated, ‘It’s bullshit, total fucking bullshit and the only way to prove it to you is to go through the whole sodding rigmarole, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, don’t no,’ but Charlie carried on regardless.

  ‘I am prepared to sell my soul, which I never use and which is well pickled in scotch, in part exchange for a new act and new van. With or without a mattress in the back.’ He peers around in exaggerated pantomime fashion. ‘Come out, come out, where ever you.’

  ‘Charlie! Stop it.’ Doreen shouts, becoming slightly hysterical. ‘Stop it, it isn’t funny anymore. I’ll break the mirror before I let you say it again.’

  ‘That’s not going to do you any good, is it? ‘Cept to give you seven years bad luck.’

  ‘I don’t care about the fucking mirror!, I don’t care about bad luck, I just don’t want you to say that again and I’ll do anything to try and top you.’

  ‘Stop me saying what?’ Charlie asks innocently, but making sure he was facing the mirror, ‘Oh, you mean about me willing to sell my soul to the Devil in exchange for a new act. Whoops, sorry. I won’t say another word, honest.’ Four! he counts.

  ‘You’d better not,’ she answers sharply, only slightly mollified, she knows Charlie from old and doesn’t trust him.

  Charlie is quiet for a moment or two, his hand cupping his chin in contemplation, obviously thinking and Doreen watches him intently, clasping her dressing gown tightly about her and she can feel her heart pounding fiercely through the thin cloth, pounding in fearsome anticipation, tension racking up intensely. ‘Charlie,’ she starts to say, he’s up to something but he holds up his hand to stop her.

  ‘Tell you what, Doreen; I’ll recite a poem I’ve just made up. How ‘bout that?’

  ‘What poem?’ she asks, instantly suspicious.

  ‘It goes like this…

  I’ll sell my soul,

  Without delusion…’

  ‘No Charlie! NO!’ she screams, making a grab for the bottles of perfume, jars of makeup and petroleum jelly, shaving cream and after shave on the glass shelf above the sink and throws a heavy jar of Pond’s cold cream at the mirror as Charlie continues to recite.

  ‘Just for one…’

  ‘NO! NO! NO! NO CHARLIE, NOOO,’ as the jar smashes into the mirror. Hurled with extreme rage and fear, the heavy jar smashes the mirror into a hundred, a thousand, glittering silvery shards, splinters of glass showering across Charlie, a larger piece crashes onto the glass shelf, scattering jars and bottles before falling into the basin and breaking up further. The crash of splintering glass echoes around the tiny bathroom, glass everywhere, but Doreen was too late, a millisecond too late; one shard, the upper corner of the mirror still hangs precariously, reflecting Charlie’s haggard face as he finishes his fateful elegy.

  ‘Damned good illusion!’

  Doreen sinks to her knees in stunned horror, mindless of the broken glass all about her as Charlie sucks at a cut on the back of his hand, then wincing, plucks another sliver from his palm, looking about him in some amazement, as if not really sure what happened…’

  ‘Charlie, Charlie, what have you DONE?’ Doreen sobs.

  ‘What have I done? It’s you what smashed the bloody mirror’

  ‘Fuck the mirror,’ she screams savagely, ‘It’s you Charlie. You! You’ve invoked the Devil, brought Satan to my home. THAT’s what you’ve done.’

  For the first time Charlie seems to realise what he has done, realising just how deeply Doreen believes in this. He knew of course that she has been raised as a good Catholic girl but thought she had left all that behind her. Simply, in his stupidity, he did not appreciate how much of the Church teachings she still adhered to despite her earlier protestations that her belief in summoning the Devil was not engendered by anything the Church had imparted in her, not understanding how much the deep-rooted residual belief in God and the Devil remained within her.

  Looking contrite, feeling somewhat ashamed, he pats her clumsily on the shoulder. ‘Sorry, Dor,’ he whispers, ‘I just thought it was a bit of fun, that’s all, didn’t know you took it all so seriously.’ She brushes his hands from her shoulder and sobs silently, still on her knees, head in hands as Charlie starts to clear up some of the mess.

  EIGHT

  London, immediately after

  It’s the Devil incarnate amongst us. Sweet Mary, Mother of Jesus, protect us this day.

  THE BLOOD FROM CHARLIE’S CUTS drip into the sink, spattering the gleaming mirror shards as he gingerly picks up the razor edged fragments, one by one, and drops them into the red plastic waste paper bin. The bathroom is quiet; a lull after the tumultuous events of the last frenetic minutes, punctuated by sobs from Doreen, still kneeling amidst the debris, her head still in her hands. The jar of cold cream, destroyer of the mirror had smashed in turn, spilling out white glossy cream across the beige floor tiles, a mess of goo and broken glass. Then a tap begins to drip into the basin , plink, plink, plink , cutting runnels through the splats of blood and then stops, one globule of water hanging from the end of the tap.

  The world seems to go into suspended animation, gelatinous aspic as time crawls in slow motion. The tap, with a mind of its own, starts up again, plink, plink, plink, rattling the shards of glass still in the basin.

  Suddenly, like a clap of thunder, there is a tremendous startling crash, the noise of breaking crockery, smashing echoes reverberating around the bathroom. Charlie blanches as if struck, his heart suddenly racing, a pit of shocked alarm churning in his guts.

  Doreen screams, a h
igh pitched squeal bouncing off the white tiled walls. ‘Oh my God, he’s here, he’s here. Satan’s here!’

  ‘Nah, probably just the milkman, dropping his bottles,’ Charlie replies flippantly but with a deep underlying unease evident in his voice, ‘nothing to it, you’ll see, Happens all the time.’

  ‘No, it’s not the milkman, I tell you, it’s the Devil incarnate amongst us. Sweet Mary, Mother of Jesus, protect us this day,’ she pleads, rising to her feet and clinging tightly onto Charlie’s arm, a look of sheer terror draining all colour from her face. Charlie can feel her shaking in fear, her crucifix clutched so tightly in her so hand that it is digging into the palm of her hand, ‘Do something,’ she pleads, ‘Oh my God, do something.’

  ‘Aye, right,’ Charlie responds hesitantly, ‘you got another crucifix, big one, or something? Holy Water?’

  ‘How the fuck am I supposed to have Holy Water in here, for God’s sake’ she shouts, right on the raw edge of hysteria.

  ‘Yeah, good point. Garlic?’

  ‘It’s not fucking Dracula out there’ she snaps, on the visceral brink of panic, her hangover headache pounding fit to burst her head open.

  ‘No s’pose not. How about some of Dennis’s after shave then?’ he jokes, flippant to the last, ‘That should repel just about anything, shouldn’t it? Demons, devils, goblins. Snow White.’

  ‘Everything’s a fucking joke with you, Charlie isn’t it?’ Doreen screams, ‘Well, this isn’t a fucking joke. Something is out there, something you’ve brought in here by being such a fucking smartarse clever dick and you’ve got to do something, for God’s do something!’ She breaks down and begins to sob again, subsiding to her knees, a piece of mirror cuts her leg but in her anguish she does not even notice.

  Charlie inches towards the bathroom floor, mindful of his bare feet and the strewn mess of broken glass. He slowly opens the door an inch or two and fearfully peers through, half expecting some fiendish nightmare to leap upon him and tear out his throat, but sees nothing. ‘Hello? Hello? Is someone there? Hello?’ He turns to Doreen, ‘Nothing’ but she just gives him a sodden look of contempt.

  Charlie looks around at the devastation, all the glass, bottles, tubes, pots, vials, the plastic tumbler that housed the toothbrushes the broken jar of cold cream, dental floss, toothbrushes, flannel, bar of pink soap, shampoo, conditioner, toilet paper rolling out from the holder, spooling across the floor. Blood, blood from his hand, blood from her leg. ‘Dor, you’re cut,’ and passes her a wad of toilet paper, ‘there on your leg,’ pointing at the cut, listlessly she takes the paper and presses it against the cut, wincing.

  Breathing heavily, he carefully slides across to the other side of the bathroom and picks up the red toothbrush and looks around for the green one, finds it, picks up the packet of dental floss and crudely ties the two toothbrushes together to form a cross, a crucifix, the asinine thought in his mind that good dental hygiene was bound to keep any demons at bay, but wisely decided to keep that thought to himself, no, not funny, given the circumstances, but could not suppress a somewhat manic little giggle to himself. Get a grip, for fucks sake, but even so, despite everything, he envisages a poster on a dentist’s wall displaying crossed toothbrushes and a cowering quivering demon with the caption, ‘Dental hygiene kills 99% of all household demons’

  ‘Dor, Doreen, we got to get out of here, he says, ‘can’t stay in here all the time in this mess, but first I’ll go and see what that noise was. OK?’

  ‘You’re not leaving me here on my own. I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Good girl.’

  ‘Don’t good girl me, you bastard.’

  ‘Right. Come on then.’

  The bathroom door slowly opens and Charlie and Doreen emerge, fearfully looking around, their hearts pounding in frenzied tachycardia, tension acidic in their throats, their stomachs roiling. The bathroom leads out onto the hallway. To either side of the bathroom are the doors into the two bedrooms, one facing the front, the other to the rear. To the right is the door to the living dining room, beyond that the door to the kitchen which overlooks the external access corridor. The front door is at the far end of the hall, next to a small closet for outdoor clothes, shoes, umbrellas etc. The morning newspaper hangs out from the letter box like a protuberant tongue, two or three letters lie on the Union Jack ‘Welcome’ mat below.

  Doreen has taken off her crucifix pendant and chain from around her neck and holds it out before her in one hand, muttering prayers under her breath. She holds tightly onto Charlie‘s arm with her other hand. Charlie, still in his underpants, leads the way, toothbrush crucifix held high at arm’s length before him. ‘We’ll check the bedrooms first,’ Charlie whispers, Doreen just nods in dumb, almost comatose agreement, They creep down the hallway, Charlie reaches out and flings open the door to the spare bedroom, flinging it so hard it bounces back and almost hits him in the face. ‘Shit!’ he exclaims. He peers into the bedroom and shuffles into the room as Doreen hovers by the doorway. Charlie opens the wardrobe, peers under the un-slept in bed and shakes his head. Nothing.

  The same in the main bedroom, the rumpled bed unmade, Charlie’s trousers hanging over the back of the dressing table chair and he hurriedly slips them on. ‘Come on,’ Doreen hisses, ‘hurry up,’ still in her dressing gown, she is too distraught to think of putting on any clothes herself,

  The living dining room is also devoid of the Devil, demons or other Satanic creatures, although in passing Charlie notices that the bottle of Macallan scotch is all but empty, my own personal demon he thinks, again not voicing the thought aloud,, Doreen is clearly in no mood for his, what did she call them, stupid infantile jokes.

  The closet by the front is similarly empty of anything of a fiendish nature; the kitchen is now the only room remaining to be checked out for paranormal activity. Charlie reaches for the door handle, hearing the spindle squeak as he turns the knob and pushes the door open. From inside there is a scuttling noise, Doreen muffles a scream, clutching tightly onto Charlie’s arm, they jerk back in shock but nothing , no thing, leaps out at them and after a minute or so, Charlie cautiously peers around the door and releases a huge sigh of relief.

  ‘Jesus bloody Christ, it’s a cat, a fucking cat, that’s all.’

  ‘A cat? Oh shit, it must be Lucifer.’

  ‘LUCIFER?’

  Doreen pushes past Charlie and into the kitchen, sees a large fluffy tabby cat up on the worktop. ‘Meow,’ it says, wagging its tail in greeting. ‘Meow.’ ‘Yeah, that’s Lucifer. He belongs next door and he is called Lucifer. About five, six years ago Emma, she’s their little girl, she got a DVD of ‘Cinderella’ for Christmas, you know? Walt Disney? It was a pirate copy; somebody sent it from Hong Kong or someplace. She watched it all and every day, near drove Pauline, her Mum, mad.

  Anyway, the cat in Cinderella is called Lucifer and so when they got a cat next door, Emma called it Lucifer, Pauline wanted to call it Sammy, but Emma wouldn’t have it. Spoiled little brat she was, still is for that matter. Anyway, it’s always coming in here, leaving hairs all over the place, it comes in through the top window.’ pointing at the open top light and then shooing the cat away, clapping and waving her hands. The cat leaps across the kitchen sink, crouches briefly onto back legs and then springs up and out through the window. ‘it’s a damn nuisance, look at this, one of my best plates,’ pointing at bits of broken crockery on the tiled kitchen floor , a plate that Lucifer had knocked off the draining board as he jumped down from the window. ‘But I’ve got to have the window open, there’s no air in these flats and it gets so stuffy else.’

  Doreen stops, suddenly realising that she has been talking too much, solely as a means of releasing her tensions

  ‘Bloody thing, I damn near shit myself.’ Charlie offers as his contribution.

  ‘Make some coffee will you, while I get dressed, there’s a jar of Nescafé in the cupboard, milk in the fridge.’

  Later, they sat around the little round white Formica kitch
en table, coffee cups in hand not really talking to each other. Whatever reconciliation they had enjoyed the previous night had been swept away in a cascade of broken mirror glass and primal terror.

  Charlie takes another sip of coffee, grimaces and puts the cup down. ‘Look, Dor, I’ll finish getting dressed and get out from under your feet. I’ve been thinking…’

  ‘With your brains or your balls,’ Doreen snaps, still wrought up in her anger at him, ‘sorry, uncalled for.’

  Charlie ignores her, even though he knows the riposte was well aimed. ‘As I said, I’ve been thinking, I think I’ll go and see Michaelmas Daisy, maybe he can help out, help get an act together.’

  ‘Michaelmas Daisy? That’s a flower, isn’t it?”

  ‘Aye, Michaelmas Daisy, real name Michael O’Daly but he’s been called Michaelmas Daisy since forever, don’t ask me why. He runs the biggest and best magic shop and illusion workshop in the country. The best. He used to be on the boards, one of the very best, a genius, I remember seeing him as a kid in Newcastle, my eyes were out on stalks and that’s what led me to wanting to be a magician’ He takes another sip of coffee. ‘He did it all, top variety, world tours. Did a season or two in Las Vegas, he went down a storm and they really know their magic there. Australia. China, he was one of the first magicians ever to perform in China, before it opened up that is, clubs, his own show on television, the lot, went under the name of ‘Magic O’Daly’ awful stupid name but a brilliant act, just brilliant, the best I ever saw.