In the House of Mirrors

by Tim Meyer

  Geoffrey began to think everything was a hallucination, even life itself.

  After all, he was just a portal.

  5

  When Geoffrey Boone entered the door with the number seventeen on it, his father was sitting at a desk, writing or drawing, or doing something involving pen and paper. Geoffrey was excited. He held a newspaper in one hand, a cherry-iced drink in the other. “Father, look at this,” Geoffrey said, slapping the newspaper down on the desk. Geoffrey tried to mask his gleeful demeanor.

  The article was a sign of the Master. That he had returned.

  Carter Boone read the headline, then shifted his eyes to the rest of the article. His eyes grew larger with every line he read. “Dear, God,” Carter said, but to which God he addressed, only Carter knew. He had worshiped more than one in his lifetime. “Danica and Marty were good people.”

  “They were adulterers,” Geoffrey reminded him.

  “But good people nonetheless. They did not deserve to be butchered.”

  Geoffrey shrugged his shoulders casually. “This is a sign, Father.”

  “A sign of what?” Carter asked, turning back to his work.

  “We should rebuild it. The house in the woods. We should rebuild it again, only like before.” His demeanor changed. There was a hint of anger in his voice. “Before you had it destroyed. That's the way it should have been. That's the way it's always been.”

  Carter did not reply. He ignored his son, like he did on most occasions when he spewed insane babble. Actually, Geoffrey didn't need to say anything outlandish for his father to disregard him; Carter did a good job of that even when Geoffrey was acting normal.

  “Are you listening, Father?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  Geoffrey became so frustrated, so enraged, he lashed out and took the pad his father had been jotting notes on, and threw it across the room. “Listen to me!” Geoffrey barked. “We. Need. To. Rebuild. It,” he said slowly.

  Carter turned to his son, peering at him disdainfully. It hurt Carter to look at his son. Whenever he saw him, looked into his eyes, he saw nothing that reminded him of his wife. Nothing that reminded him of himself. It was as if he were left to raise someone else's child. This was the line he'd repeat to himself whenever he chose to send Geoffrey for help.

  This is not my son.

  “Listen, Geoffrey. I'm not playing these games with you anymore.” Carter strolled over to the pad of paper.

  “This is not a game, Father. This is an opportunity.” Geoffrey paced around the room. “This is a chance to make things right. We have to rebuild it, Father. We have money. I don't understand what the problem is.”

  “The problem is, Geoffrey, that there is no more money.”

  Geoffrey reacted as if he had been slapped in the face. “What?”

  “How do you think you were able to voluntarily spend time in Benton, weeks at a time? Do you think that place runs on happiness and good-spirited people? No, it runs on money. Money from the people who are not quite sick enough, or not quite poor enough to have the government pay for their visits. A lot of my money went to you and that fucking hospital.”

  “Oh, please, Father. Like you didn't treat it as a day-care for unwanted children. You were the one who wanted me to spend weeks at a time in that place. I didn't want to go! I hated that place. I hated everything about it! But you didn't know what to do with me, so you sent me there. Because I had problems. Well tell me, Father—what rejected son or daughter doesn't have problems?” There were tears in his eyes. His father did not answer. Carter simply sat back down in his chair, taking in a deep breath, and exhaling. He turned back to his work. “The least you could do is build the house the way it was. And I will forgive you for everything. I'll forgive you for the beatings. I'll forgive you for not loving me.” He paused so he could wipe away the teardrops that streamed down his face. “I'll even forgive you for Mother,” he said, but his father ignored him. “Just build it back. Our Master, he wills it.”

  Carter turned to him. “Our Master? Our Master? Let me tell you something, boy. Something it took me a good long time to learn on this planet. There. Is. No. God. Just like there is no Satan. No matter who you pray to, who you believe in, who you sacrifice things for, in the end it doesn't matter. Because they simply do not exist.” He stared at his son, unmoved. “They're all just bullshit things we make up to make us feel better about ourselves. To give us hope. Something to make us believe that after this life there is another one, better than the Hell we rot away in now.” He shook his head. “The truth is, son, we just die and rot in the ground. Or we burn up and become ash. That's all we have to look forward to. There is no life after death. Just death. No Heaven. No Hell. No other worlds waiting for us. Just us. Living today, dead tomorrow. Enjoy it while you can. And stop trying to appease the voices in your head, they're only going to want more from you and they're never going to give you a goddamn thing back. Learn to ignore them.” This statement reminded Geoffrey that he forgot to take his Clozapine today. And yesterday. And possibly the day before that. “Now get out.”

  Geoffrey shook his head. His eyes had dried.

  “You're wrong. You're so... wrong,” Geoffrey said, as he walked out of the motel room.

  6

  Enraged, Geoffrey slammed the door behind him. A headache squeezed his brain. It was a familiar sensation, one that usually proceeded a conversation no one else could hear. The current headache was the most intense he had ever experienced. There was so much pressure that a little black dot—reminiscent of those cigarette burns in old movies—appeared in front of him.

  You know what you're going to have to do, don't you? Master asked.

  “Wh-what?” Geoffrey asked. “What is it you want me to do?”

  You're father has become a greater nuisance than we suspected. You're going to have to kill him.

  Geoffrey swallowed air. His stomach turned. The notion nauseated him. However, he didn't disagree. Nor did he ever think the words, well, I really shouldn't.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  It didn't take long to concoct a plan. He had read enough newspaper articles in his time, seen enough movies, read enough books, and heard enough tales, giving him numerous ideas on how to go about it. He also knew his chances of getting away with it were pretty slim. That's okay, he thought. Just need to buy myself a little time, that's all. Won't need much!

  He planned to go through the doorway after that, to be acquainted with his Master. The Master had work for him there. So much work. He required Geoffrey's immortal devotion. But there was one problem.

  He needed the key first.

  2

  Geoffrey's plan was simple—attack the bastard while he was sleeping. The voice in his head agreed that this was the best way. He would dispatch the old man in the early hours of the morning, when shadows danced upon the walls, concealing ghastly secrets. His murder weapon would be a three-dollar pillow provided by the Moon Motel. He would plant the fluffy sack over his father's face, and press down on it until Carter stopped flailing around, until his body went limp. The voice in his head told him to do this and Geoffrey agreed wholeheartedly.

  When it came to murder, there was no margin for error. After the air had been depleted from Carter Boone's lungs, and he was no longer a member of the living, Geoffrey yanked his father across the carpet and into the bathroom where he had prepared stage two of his sinister plan.

  Geoffrey needed a plan to dispose of the body. Or at least the voice in his head told him so. Geoffrey had read a short story once about a gentleman who killed an old man in his sleep, and chopped him up into little pieces, hiding them beneath the floorboards. It was written by Edgar Allan Poe, and it was called “The Tell-Tale Heart.” When police detectives came asking questions, the murderer had trouble answering because he kept hearing the old man's beating heart blaring in his ears, which was ludicrous because the old man had been dead for quite some time. Eventually, the drumming heart drove the murderer insane. Being unable to stan
d the noise of the beating heart any longer, the murderer confessed to his heinous act.

  Geoffrey did not want to become the murderer in Poe's tale.

  He had mulled over the idea of leaving the body on the bed. The Master told him that was idiocy, that he would be surprised how quickly a dead body began to stink. Geoffrey argued that he would be through the doorway long before the body began to rot. He could leave a DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, which would probably work for a few days. It would be plenty of time to grab the key and get through the doorway. The Master didn't argue; he told Geoffrey what to do. He commanded Geoffrey to find a way to dispose of the body, because he could not guarantee that the key would be in his possession within any designated time. There was much uncertainty in their grand scheme.

  So Geoffrey put together a way to hide the body, borrowing a line from Poe's short story. He would get a saw—one that could cut through bone with relative ease—and hack his father's body into little pieces.

  He did this without throwing up once.

  3

  He hacked and sawed, until his father's body was completely eviscerated, spread across the blue tarp he bought from a hardware store down the block.

  Geoffrey never imagined that there could be so much blood in the human body. Carter's body was scattered in eight different pieces. Upon Master's wishes, Geoffrey wrapped each piece in shrink wrap. The organs that happened to fall out of the midsection went into one of two coolers. When he was finished, both coolers were full of vital organs (the stomach, the liver, intestines, etc.) and blood. Everything fit in there, except for the heart. Geoffrey had kept the heart out of the coolers for two reasons. One, being it didn't quite fit, and the other being this: as much as Poe's short story had helped him create such a macabre scenario, it had also made him paranoid. Geoffrey did not want to hear the beating heart as Poe's murderer did. Geoffrey heard a great deal of things he could not see already; he didn't want his father's beating heart to be one of them. So Geoffrey—after all the body parts were squished in their respective packaging—put the heart on a plate, took a fork and knife, and proceeded to consume the heart. It tasted awful. Its rubbery texture made it hard to chew and swallow, left a silvery aftertaste no drink could equalize. It stuck with him hours after he finished devouring it.

  Nausea set in. This time, he did throw up. The remains of his father's heart his stomach could not digest were flushed down the commode.

  4

  An hour before dawn, Geoffrey Boone drove around Red River looking for Dumpsters behind shopping centers and other places of business. He needed to find eight of them, one for each shrink-wrapped appendage. He decided to spread them out, that way the stench of decaying flesh would be minimal. There were several good hiding places he came across. Carter's severed head would rest in a Dumpster behind an Italian restaurant until the waste company claimed it later in the week. A donut shop in the south end of Red River had a cop parked out front when Geoffrey drove by it, so he opted to go to another one closer to the shore. Carter's right arm went there. Carter's left arm went into a Dumpster behind a crab shack, a perfect place because the smell of decaying human flesh blended nicely with leftover seafood. Geoffrey debated whether or not to dispose his father's remaining limbs along with the left arm, but Master told him to stick with the plan. Geoffrey obeyed. The right foot rested inside a Dumpster shared by a movie theater and a huge department store. The left went into a sewer near the Red River Mall. The right leg went into a Dumpster behind Cameraland. (Little Chris was sleeping inside, after spending many hours trying to reconstruct the Denlax). The left leg went into a Dumpster behind Red River North High School. The contents of the two coolers were dumped in two separate bodies of water; one being a lagoon near a bunch of shady-looking apartments (it was not the first time body parts had been dumped there), left for the nighttime critters to snack on; two being the Red River, adding another black mark to its already gruesome legacy.

  Nobody found the body parts that once made up Carter Boone's body.

  At least, not right away.

  5

  Three days later, a lone raccoon would be stealthily creeping around Red River at night, as raccoons often did. This particular raccoon was hungry. Really hungry. So hungry that it would dig to the bottom of every Dumpster it laid its beady little eyes upon. It would salvage what it could from these Dumpsters, devouring whatever small scraps it happen to scrounge up. Anything that the raccoon would deem worthy of sharing with its family would be dragged from the Dumpster, across the highway, and deep into the forest where three hungry kits awaited their mother's discoveries.

  The mother raccoon's snout picked up on a scent coming from a Dumpster behind Jolly Joe's Crabs and Seafood. It was really bad luck for Geoffrey Boone, because the scent the raccoon sniffed out was a bunch of leftover codfish that went bad days ago, and not Carter Boone's left arm. The raccoon dive-bombed the Dumpster, ripping open black plastic bag after black plastic bag. It ate what it could (a few scallops, some shrimp juice, and a half-eaten lobster tail), but stopped taste testing when it accidentally tore into the clear plastic bag containing the old man's arm. The raccoon lapped up some bodily fluids that oozed from the slit. It was a savory, sweet flavor it never tasted before. The raccoon immediately determined the treat delicious enough to share with its kin.

  The motherly raccoon fished the limb out of the Dumpster, and dropped it onto the blacktop below. It climbed down, grunting, excited about its find. Who wouldn't be? It was quite a discovery. Her little cubs would be very happy, for they have not eaten in days. Their mother had come up empty-handed the past few nights, leaving their little cub bellies empty as well. But mother did well that night. Very well indeed.

  The raccoon dragged Carter's arm across the parking lot, which remained empty during non-business hours. The raccoon went as fast as it could, joyously lugging the arm along. It tried several approaches, testing which method would be the fastest and most efficient. First, she tried nudging the limb along with her nose. If she continued with that approach, she would've reached her kits by dawn, which would've been much too late. She abandoned this method immediately. The good mother also tried pushing the arm with her paws, but it proved just as futile. Next, it sank its sharp teeth into the flesh, and trotted toward her destination. That seemed to be the best solution, although this method tired the raccoon quickly, forcing it to make frequent breaks, every twenty yards or so.

  One of these breaks happened to occur on a major highway, the only stretch of road that separated the raccoon from a clear path to her babies.

  Just as the raccoon stopped to reaffirm her grip on the bloody package, Cindy Ellis, a nineteen-year old girl who was heading home from her boyfriend's house party, was driving twenty miles over the speed limit, talking to her friend Charlotte about how cute her boyfriend's friends are and how Charlotte should “totally hook up with one of them.” Cindy took the bend awfully fast, and lost control of her red Mustang. The raccoon glanced up just in time to see a large rubber disk slam down on her, flattening her against the pavement. The innards of the good mother splattered across the highway, as Cindy's car did several three-sixties before colliding into a nearby tree. The tree was a part of the forest where the racoon's cubs lived, and eventually starved to death because their mother would no longer be able to bring them Dumpster scraps.

  This was the Denlax Effect, ladies and gentlemen, watch it in its finest form.

  If the raccoon would have taken one more break, or slowed down just a bit, taking five extra minutes to reach the highway, a truck driver named Dan Rivera would have crushed it, similar to the way Cindy Ellis did. One less break, maybe keeping a faster pace, Ira Bankston would have taken the raccoon out with his Jaguar, ruining a perfectly new set of tires. If the raccoon would have taken no breaks at all, Donnie Tulls would have split the helpless animal in two, driving ninety-five in a fifty mile-per-hour zone.

  No matter what, the left arm of Carter Boone would have caused the rac
coon's demise. Why? Because Boone's arm was a product of the Denlax. If I learned anything from this ordeal, it was the camera just didn't have the power to take pictures—of our world and another one similar to ours—it had the power to change things. Alter the future. Skew Fate. Create its own rules, defying the ones made by the universe from the onset of time.

  This was the Denlax Effect, ladies and gentlemen, watch as it extends its ever-so-powerful arms, embracing whoever dares to cross its path.

  6

  It would take the Red River Police Department almost a week to figure out what an old man's arm, a drunk girl heading home from a party, and roadkill had to do with each other. It would take Cindy Ellis two days alone to completely convince two detectives that the bloody limb found in the middle of the highway did not come from her car, nor had she any idea it was on the road until they presented it to her during their interrogation. The detectives would ponder how far a raccoon could physically transport a dead man's left arm. It would take them another six hours just to trace the limb to the nearby Dumpster behind Jolly Joe's.

  It would take another week for a second limb to surface, and for a full investigation to begin.

  But Geoffrey Boone would be through the portal by then.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The day after my uncle turned into a homicidal maniac, I called Sheldon Daniels to inform him I wouldn't be coming to work for at least a week, maybe longer. I needed some time to get my head right. He didn't give me any problems, but his tone suggested he wasn't too happy about it. “Sure, whatever you need,” he said, in a hurry to get back to work. No compassion in his voice. He didn't ask me how I was holding up, or if there was anything he could do to help. Just, “sure, whatever you need.” Honestly, I hadn't expected anything different.