by Dean Koontz
Grinning, Naomi patted the mirror a third time, longer than before: pat-pat-pat-pat-pat-pat-pat. “Maybe there’s a shark swimming in there, looking for more grapes to eat, and it’ll come up and bite off my fingers.”
“Something a whole lot worse than any shark,” Minnie declared. “It’ll bite off your head, and then what am I gonna tell Mommy and Daddy?”
Instead of patting the mirror again, Naomi pressed her right hand flat against the shiny surface and held it there.
Suddenly her hand went cold, and the mirror spoke or something within the mirror spoke, its voice ragged, wet, ferocious, sharp with hatred: “I know you now, my ignorant little bitch.”
The words literally stung Naomi, a volley of hot needles lancing out of the mirror, swiftly sewing through her arm, into her shoulder, up her neck, stitching across her scalp. She cried out, snatched her hand away, and fell backward on the floor.
Minnie scrambled to her—“Your hand, your hand!”—certain there must be fingers missing, torn flesh and bristling bones, but Naomi remained whole: no blood, no burn, not even so much as needle pricks stippling the palm of her hand.
The sting was emotional as well as physical, because Naomi had never before been the recipient or the dispenser of such rage and hatred. She loved the world and the world loved her, and all anger was but a momentary irritation, a fleeting exasperation, one petty vexation or another that evaporated soon after being expressed. Until the voice spoke of her with such fury and contempt, she had not fully comprehended that someone might exist who ardently desired that she should suffer humiliation, great pain, and even death. She didn’t need to infer those ill wishes in the voice of the unknown speaker, for they were implicit in the viciousness with which he had spoken.
She and Minnie sat on the floor, hugging each other, reassuring each other that they were all right, untouched and undaunted, and only gradually did Naomi come to realize that her sister hadn’t heard the voice. The man spoke only to her, through her contact with the mirror, and somehow the intimacy of this communication made it worse, creepier, more threatening.
Minnie expressed no doubt that the voice had been real or that it had said to Naomi exactly what she reported that it said. For her part, Naomi no longer questioned that the mirror must be a portal to some kind of hell rather than a door to Narnia, and she was as eager as Minnie to get it out of their room. In the rush of daily life, they were eight and eleven years old, they were as different from each other as salt from pepper, but in either a pinch or a serious crisis, they were sisters first and last.
Again Naomi wanted to tell their folks, but Minnie said, “It’ll sound like a big steaming bowl of the usual Naomi. Besides, I’ve got my own reason for not running around yelling about ghosts and stuff.”
Naomi was about to take offense, but the second thing Minnie said was more interesting. “What reason?”
“You can’t waterboard it out of me. And you know that’s true.”
The mirror had a smooth wooden back, and the girls agreed to lay it flat and slide it along the carpet rather than carry it, in part because it was heavy but also because they could push it with the toes of their shoes, with less need to touch it.
When they got to the storage room, however, they would have to lift it in order to tuck it away behind a bunch of other junk, where no one would notice it. They had no work gloves, but they did have white gloves for special occasions, like church at Easter, and they put those on before proceeding with the task, to avoid accidentally touching bare fingers to the mirror.
Daddy was at work. Mom was in her studio. Mr. and Mrs. Nash were finishing their lunch or cleaning up the kitchen.
Only Zach might step out of his room and see them toeing the mirror along the hallway, but Naomi was confident they could handle Zach with one fib or another. Fibbing wasn’t like telling whoppers that could land you in Hell. Fibbing was lying lite, sort of like the caffeine-free diet cola of lying, so your soul didn’t gain any serious weight of sin from it. They would have to fib, because Zach would never believe that grapes had fallen through a mirror or that something in the mirror had threatened Naomi. Zach liked to keep things real; now and then, when Naomi was particularly enthralled with some fabulous new idea or possibility, when she was compelled to share every detail of it with everyone, Zach sometimes said, “Let’s keep it real, Naomi, let’s get it earthbound.”
After Minnie opened the door, scoped the hallway, and found it deserted, they slid the mirror out of their room. Using only their feet, they worked it quickly to the east end—the back—of the house. The reflection of the ceiling sliding ahead of them made Naomi a bit dizzy. Minnie said, “Don’t look at it.” But Naomi continued to look, because the more she thought about the voice from the mirror—I know you now, my ignorant little bitch—the more she worried that by pressing her hand to the looking glass and defying Minnie’s plea to be cautious, she had invited the mirror man to cross over from his side to theirs, that now he might rise out of the silvery glass.
She had thought of herself as a girl absolutely loaded with perspicacity; but now it didn’t seem very perspicacious of her to have done what she had done.
The storage room was the smaller of two guest bedrooms. It was three-quarters full of boxes and small items of furniture in rows with passageways between them. The end tables and chairs and chests and lamps, used in a previous house, were out of style in this one, but Mother was reluctant to dispose of them because they were still things that she liked and about which she was nostalgic.
They stood the long mirror on its side. Naomi pulling, Minnie pushing, hands protected by Easter Sunday church gloves, they slid this door-to-a-not-so-magical-kingdom past all the other junk and hid it behind the final row of boxes.
Mission accomplished, they returned to their room, examined their gloves to be sure they weren’t soiled, and put them away.
Professor Sinyavski would arrive in little more than an hour to torture them with math.
“I’m too emotionally wrung out for math,” Naomi declared. “I’m exhausted, the strain has just been too severe, my strength has been utterly consumed. I’m fatigued, there’s nothing left in me for math.”
“Eat your sandwich,” Minnie said, pointing to the lunch plate on Naomi’s desk. “You’ll feel better.”
They had left the closet door open. The absence of the mirror now posed a problem for Naomi.
“I won’t know how I look. I won’t know if my clothes match, if my hair’s properly combed, if some outfit makes me look fat. I could have a smudge of something on my face and not know and make a fool of myself in public.”
“But without a mirror,” Minnie said, “you gain like three hours a day to do something else.”
“Very funny. Hilarious. Yes, giggle yourself sick, go on, give yourself a massive hernia. But a mirror is absolutely essential to a civilized life.”
Giggles spent, Minnie said, “There’s mirrors in the bathrooms, and there’s one in the hall, and there’s a big one down in the living room. There’s lots of mirrors.”
Naomi was about to explain that the other mirrors were much less convenient, but another and troubling thought struck her. “How do we know the mirror man isn’t in those other mirrors?”
“We don’t know,” Minnie said, and this was clearly not a new idea to her.
“He couldn’t be.”
“Maybe he could. Maybe he couldn’t.”
Naomi shook her head emphatically. “No. Not every mirror can be an enchanted doorway to wherever. Magical things are magical because they’re rare. If everything was magical, magic would be ordinary.”
“You’re right,” Minnie said.
“If every mirror was a doorway to someplace fantastic … well, then there’d be confusion, chaos, pandemonium! The sky would be full of flying horses, and trolls would be running wild in the streets.”
“You’re right,” Minnie said. “It’s only that one mirror.”
“You really think so?”<
br />
“Yeah. And it’s gone, so now it’s safe to sleep at night.”
“I hope so. But what if I’m wrong?”
“Eat your sandwich,” Minnie said.
“Can I have your pickle?”
“No. You have a pickle already.”
“I wish I would’ve asked for two.”
“You already ate one of my grapes, and the mirror ate two,” Minnie said. “Nobody gets my pickle.”
“So keep it. I don’t want your crummy pickle anyway.”
“Yes, you do,” Minnie said, and ate her gherkin with much crunching and lip smacking.
24
HAVING RETURNED TO THE CITY FROM THE STATE HOSPITAL, John parked in front of a store on Fourth Avenue. Above the entrance, silver script on the sign matched the script on the green box that contained the calla-lily bells: Piper’s Gallery.
These two blocks of quaint brick buildings offered specialty shops of many kinds. The caliber of the vehicles snugged against the curbs suggested an upscale clientele.
Shagbark hickories lined the street, trunks gray and flaking. Their dark-green leaves would be deep yellow in a few weeks, and when they shed, the pavement would appear to be paved with gold.
Three customers were browsing in the store, two forty-something women in stylish pantsuits and a young man whose face seemed to be set in a perpetual dreamy smile.
John expected a gift shop, and it was that, but it was something else as well—though he could not quite define its retail niche. The merchandise seemed to be an incoherent mix, yet he suspected that a theme must connect each line of goods to the others. Although the regular customers appeared to understand that leitmotif, to John it became increasingly elusive the more he browsed through the store.
The items on the display tables were of high quality. Exquisite crystal animals: bears, elephants, horses. Coiled crystal snakes, lizards, tortoises. Cats outnumbered other mammals. There were many owls, as well. Goats, foxes, wolves. Another table presented clear and colored crystal forms: obelisks, pyramids, spheres, octagons.…
Past a table of magnificent geodes stood a collection of gold-plated and silver bells, small and superbly detailed. All were shaped as flowers, not just calla lilies but also tulips, foxgloves, fuchsias, daffodils.… Some were single bells, others triune, and the foxglove was a seven-bloom spill along a gracefully curved stem.
There were soaps, candles, oils of numerous scents, and the walls were lined with shelves holding thousands of small green jars of dried herbs. Angelica, arrowroot, caraway, basil, borage. Figwort and fever root. Marjoram and mayapple. Rosemary, sage, sweet cicely. Some jars contained powdered weeds: burdock, creeping buttercup, fireweed, nettle, shepherd’s purse, and thistle. Others had stranger names: wonder of the world, High John the Conqueror, mombin franc.
As he familiarized himself with the store, he became aware that the two women in pantsuits were intrigued by him and curious about what items attracted him. They watched surreptitiously, conversing in murmurs and whispers, not realizing he was alert to their interest.
He was not a man whose looks turned women’s heads. Furthermore, he lacked the aura of authority and the air of perpetual suspicion that made so many cops recognizable to one another and that common citizens often perceived at least unconsciously. His ordinariness in fact gave him an advantage as a detective, especially if he needed to conduct surveillance.
When John looked up from a display of silver jewelry featuring animals, he saw the young man watching him from another aisle, that abiding half-smile reminiscent of a porpoise.
He supposed Piper’s Gallery might be one of those stores that fostered a sense of community among its regular customers. Certain specialty merchants had a knack for making their patrons feel like members of an extended family. In which case, these three sensed that he was unfamiliar with the store, and like any group of insiders in a world of outsiders, they were entertained by his reactions.
After circling the premises, he came to a cashier’s station at the back, opposite the front door, where a clerk sat on a stool. She was reading a slim volume of poetry, and she finished a quatrain before closing the book and smiling at him. “May I help you?”
An attractive, freckle-faced brunette of about fifty, she wore no makeup. Her lustrous hair was drawn into a ponytail that looked as if it might reach to her waist. Hanging on a short chain, a silver ring encircling a silver sphere nestled in the hollow of her throat.
Police ID usually elicited a subtle reaction that John could read as easily as a newspaper headline. In this case, he could tell nothing from the woman’s response; she seemed as indifferent to the sight of a badge as she might have been to a library card.
“Is Mr. or Mrs. Piper available? Or is Piper a first name?”
Her smile was as fresh and wholesome as her appearance. But John thought he detected smugness in it, a faint trace of haughtiness, a discreet disdain closer to pity than to dislike.
Or perhaps his paranoid mood shaded her smile with a quality it did not contain. To have any success as a detective, he must remember that what was perceived was not always what had been seen, that an observer was part of the scene he observed. Only a perfect lens did not distort, and no human being could achieve perfection.
“Piper,” said the clerk, “isn’t anyone’s name in this case. It’s a title. I’m Annalena Waters. I own the place.”
From a coat pocket, John produced the box containing the calla-lily bells. He had cleaned the blood from the silver stem, though the tarnish remained.
“I see by the display, it’s a regular item in your inventory. Do you sell many of it?”
“Quite a few of the entire line, but not that many of any one flower. There are seventeen different kinds. And the calla lily is the most expensive.”
“If you sold a set of bells like these to someone recently, might you be able to describe him?”
“This is about the Lucases, isn’t it?” asked Annalena Waters.
“Then you recognize this particular set? The bells were found in the girl’s room. I believe the boy carried them with him from murder to murder.”
Her face seemed unaccustomed to a frown and aged with the strain of it. “How strange. Why do you believe he did such a thing?”
“I’m not free to discuss evidence in the case. But you do recall selling these bells to him?”
“Not to him. To Sandy. His mother.”
John had assumed the boy bought the bells under the influence of Blackwood’s invading spirit. They had been circumstantial evidence of a supernatural aspect to the case. Now they were just bells.
Annalena said, “Sandy was my customer ever since the accident that put her in the wheelchair. She was such a lovely person. What happened to the family—it’s too awful to think about.”
“Were you surprised that Billy could do such a thing?”
“I’m still not sure he did.”
“He confessed.”
“But he was such a kind and thoughtful boy. There wasn’t any violence in him, not any anger. He usually came with his mother. He was so attentive to her, so caring. He adored her.”
“When did she buy the bells? Recently?”
“Oh, no. Maybe two, three months ago.”
Returning the bells to the box, John said, “Why would Sandra Lucas buy a set of bells?”
“For one thing, they’re beautiful. The artist does fine work. And they produce such a sweet sound. Some people call them fairy bells. We call them reminder bells. They remind us that Nature is beautiful and sweet, that life will be more beautiful and that we will be healthier when we live in harmony with her.”
“The dried herbs, weeds,” John said, “are they for homeopathic remedies?”
“Not primarily homeopathic,” Annalena said. “They’re useful in all forms of alternative medicine.”
“That’s what the store is about, huh? Alternative medicine.”
“Natural therapies,” she explained. “Fill your home—yo
ur life—with the beauty, the aromas, the sights and sounds of nature, and you will prosper in all ways. Or is that too New Age for you, Detective?”
“I keep an open mind, Ms. Waters. I keep a wide-open mind.”
In spite of the sincerity of his answer, he thought he saw again that most gentle arrogance in her smile, that disdain akin to pity.
Outside, as John opened the driver’s door of his car, he looked at the shop and, through the large windows, saw the women customers and the young man with the dreamy smile gathered at the cashier’s station, not as if lined up to make purchases, but as if consulting with Annalena Waters.
The rain clouds had mostly unraveled. The sun ruled the sky, but shadows gathered under the shagbark hickories, and the afternoon seemed darker than it was.
25
NICOLETTE WOKE FROM A DEEP DARKNESS IN WHICH LESSER darknesses moved, and she found herself alone at the bottom of a well, light high overhead but shadows here, and cold stone for a bed.
As her disorientation passed, she realized the light came from the clerestory windows that faced away from the westering sun of the afternoon. She remembered the exploding bathroom mirror.
Wary of the danger of shattered glass, she moved circumspectly, anticipating the brittle notes of shards falling from her onto the limestone floor. There was no such glassy music, and when she touched her face, she found no embedded splinters, no wounds, no blood.
No debris crackled underfoot as Nicky rose. She discovered the mirror intact.
The undiminished memory of the looming figure, the strange and shadowed face where her reflection should have been, chilled her now just as the blast of arctic air, out of the disintegrating mirror, chilled her then.
On the black-granite counter lay the loop of waxed floss with which she had cleaned her teeth, and beside it stood the tumbler of water with which she had rinsed her mouth. The scarecrow figure had seemed as real as these everyday objects.
She switched on the lights. In the clear depths of the mirror, she was the sole presence.
When she consulted her wristwatch, she realized that she had been lying on the floor for longer than an hour.