Her hostess saw her pass the doorway and followed her. She rapped on the bathroom door, gained admittance, and prepared to make discreet inquiries. None was necessary. Mrs. Talmadge, weeping and wringing her hands, fell upon her.
“That was a filthy trick!” she sobbed. “Coming up and sneaking in on us. The dirty louse—I admit we were doing a little smooching, but that’s all there was to it. And it isn’t as though he didn’t make enough passes at Gwen Hacker himself. What I want to know is, where did he get the beard? It frightened me out of my wits.”
“What’s all this?” she asked—knowing all the while what it was, and dreading the words to come.
“Jeff and I were in the bedroom, just standing there in the dark, I swear it, and all at once I looked up over my shoulder at the mirror because light began streaming in from the hall. Somebody had opened the door, and I could see the glass and this face. Oh, it was my husband all right, but he had a beard on and the way he came slinking in, glaring at us—”
Sobs choked off the rest. Mrs. Talmadge trembled so that she wasn’t aware of the tremors which racked the frame of her hostess. She, for her part, strained to hear the rest. “—sneaked right out again before we could do anything, but wait till I get him home—scaring the life out of me and all because he’s so crazy jealous—the look on his face in the mirror—”
She soothed Mrs. Talmadge. She comforted Mrs. Talmadge. She placated Mrs. Talmadge. And all the while there was nothing to soothe or calm or placate her own agitation.
Still, both of them had restored a semblance of sanity by the time they ventured out into the hall to join the party—just in time to hear Mr. Talmadge’s agitated voice booming out over the excited responses of the rest.
“So I’m standing there in the bathroom and this old witch comes up and starts making faces over my shoulder in the mirror. What gives here, anyway? What kind of a house you running here?”
He thought it was funny. So did the others. Most of the others. The host and hostess stood there, not daring to look at each other. Their smiles were cracking. Glass is brittle.
“I don’t believe you.” Gwen Hacker’s voice. She’d had one, or perhaps three, too many. “I’m going up right now and see for myself.” She winked at her host and moved towards the stairs.
“Hey, hold on!” He was too late. She swept, or wobbled, past him.
“Halloween pranks,” said Talmadge, nudging him. “Old babe in a fancy hairdo. Saw her plain as day. What you cook up for us here, anyhow?”
He began to stammer something, anything, to halt the flood of foolish babbling. She moved close to him, wanting to listen, wanting to believe, wanting to do anything but think of Gwen Hacker upstairs, all alone upstairs looking into a mirror and waiting to see—
The screams came then. Not sobs, not laughter, but screams. He took the stairs two at a time. Fat Mr. Hacker was right behind him, and the others straggled along, suddenly silent. There was the sound of feet clubbing the staircase, the sound of heavy breathing, and over everything the continuing high-pitched shriek of a woman confronted with terror too great to contain.
It oozed out of Gwen Hacker’s voice, oozed out of her body as she staggered and half-fell into her husband’s arms in the hall. The light was streaming out of the bathroom, and it fell upon the mirror that was empty of all reflection, fell upon her face that was empty of all expression.
They crowded around the Hackers—he and she were on either side and the others clustered in front—and they moved along the hall to her bedroom and helped Mr. Hacker stretch his wife out on the bed. She had passed out, and somebody mumbled something about a doctor, and somebody else said no, never mind, she’ll be all right in a minute, and somebody else said well, I think we’d better be getting along.
For the firsi time everybody seemed to be aware of the old house and the darkness, and the way the floors creaked and the windows rattled and the shutters banged. Everyone was suddenly sober, solicitous, and extremely anxious to leave.
Hacker bent over his wife, chafing her wrists, forcing her to swallow water, watching her whimper her way out of emptiness. The host and hostess silently procured hats and coats and listened to expressions of polite regret, hasty farewells, and poorly formulated pretenses of, “Had a marvelous time, darling.”
Teters, Valliants, Talmadges were swallowed up in the night. He and she went back upstairs, back to the bedroom and the Hackers. It was too dark in the hall, and too light in the bedroom. But there they were, waiting. And they didn’t wait long.
Mrs. Hacker sat up suddenly and began to talk. To her husband, to them.
“I saw her,” she said. “Don’t tell me I’m crazy, I saw her! Standing on tiptoe behind me, looking right into the mirror. With the same blue ribbon in her hair, the one she wore the day she—”
“Please, dear,” said Mr. Hacker.
She didn’t please. “But I saw her. Mary Lou! She made a face at me in the mirror, and she’s dead, you know she’s dead, she disappeared three years ago and they never did find the body—”
“Mary Lou Dempster.” Hacker was a fat man. He had two chins. Both of them wobbled.
“She played around here, you know she did, and Wilma Dempster told her to stay away, she knew all about this house, but she wouldn’t and now—Oh, her face!”
More sobs. Hacker patted her on the shoulder. He looked as though he could stand a little shoulder-patting himself. But nobody obliged. He stood there, she stood there, still waiting. Waiting for the rest.
“Tell them,” said Mrs. Hacker. “Tell them the truth.”
“All right, but I’d better get you home.”
“I’ll wait. I want you to tell them. You must, now.”
Hacker sat down heavily. His wife leaned against his shoulder. The two waited another moment. Then it came.
“I don’t know how to begin, how to explain,” said fat Mr. Hacker. “It’s probably my fault, of course, but I didn’t know. All this foolishness about haunted houses—nobody believes that stuff any more, and all it does is push property values down, so I didn’t say anything. Can you blame me?”
“I saw her face,” whispered Mrs. Hacker.
“I know. And I should have told you. About the house, I mean. Why it hasn’t rented for twenty years. Old story in the neighborhood, and you’d have heard it sooner or later anyway, I guess.”
“Get on with it,” said Mrs. Hacker. She was suddenly strong again and he, with his wobbling chins, was weak.
Host and hostess stood before them, brittle as glass; as the words poured out; poured out and filled them to overflowing. He and she, watching and listening, filling up with the realization, with the knowledge, with that for which they had waited.
It was the Bellman house they were living in, the house Job Bellman built for his bride back in the sixties; the house where his bride had given birth to Laura and taken death in exchange. And Job Bellman had toiled through the seventies as his daughter grew to girlhood, rested in complacent retirement during the eighties as Laura Bellman blossomed into the reigning beauty of the county—some said the state, but then flattery came quickly to men’s lips in those days.
There were men aplenty; coming and going through that decade; passing through the hall in polished boots, bowing and stroking brilliantined mustachios, smirking at old Job, grinning at the servants, and gazing in moonstruck adoration at Laura.
Laura took it all as her rightful due, but land’s sakes, she’d never think of it, no, not while Papa was still alive, and no, she couldn’t, she was much too young to marry, and why, she’d never heard of such a thing, she’d always thought it was so much nicer just being friends—
Moonlight, dances, parties, hayrides, sleighrides, candy, flowers, gifts, tokens, cotillion balls, punch, fans, beauty spots, dressmakers, curlers, mandolins, cycling, and the years that whirled away. And then, one day, old Job dead in the four-poster bed upstairs, and the Doctor came and the Minister, and then the Lawyer, hack-hack-hacking away with hi
s dry, precise little cough, and his talk of inheritance and estate and annual income.
Then she was all alone, just she and the servants and the mirrors. Laura and her mirrors. Mirrors in the morning, and the careful inspection, the scrutiny that began the day. Mirrors at night before the caller arrived, before the carriage came, before she whirled away to another triumphal entry; another fan-fluttering, pirouetting descent of the staircase. Mirrors at dawn, absorbing the smiles, listening to the secrets, the tale of the evening’s triumph.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”
Mirrors told her the truth, mirrors did not lie, mirrors did not paw or clutch or whisper or demand in return for acknowledgement of beauty.
Years passed, but mirrors did not age, did not change. And Laura did not age. The callers were fewer and some of them were oddly altered. They seemed older, somehow. And yet how could that be? For Laura Bellman was still young. The mirrors said so, and they always told the truth. Laura spent more and more time with the mirrors. Powdering, searching for wrinkles, tinting and curling her long hair. Smiling, fluttering eyelashes, making deliciously delicate little moues. Swirling daintily, posturing before her own perfection.
Sometimes, when the callers came, she sent word that she was not at home. It seemed silly, somehow, to leave the mirrors. And after a while, there weren’t many callers to worry about. Servants came and went, some of them died, but there were always new ones. Laura and the mirrors remained. The nineties were truly gay, but in a way other people wouldn’t understand. How Laura laughed, rocking back and forth on the bed, sharing her giddy secrets with the glass!
The years fairly flew by, but Laura merely laughed. She giggled and tittered when the servants spoke to her, and it was easier now to take her meals on a tray in her room. Because there was something wrong with the servants, and with Doctor Turner who came to visit her and who was always being tiresome about going away for a rest to a lovely home.
They thought she was getting old, but she wasn’t—the mirrors didn’t lie. She wore the false teeth and the wig to please the others, the outsiders, but she didn’t really need them. The mirrors told her she was unchanged. They talked to her now, the mirrors did, and she never said a word. Just sat nodding and swaying before them in the room reeking of powder and patchouli, stroking her throat and listening to the mirrors telling her how beautiful she was and what a belle she would be if she would only waste her beauty on the world. But she’d never leave here, never; she and the mirrors would always be together.
And then came the day they tried to take her away, and they actually laid hands upon her—upon her, Laura Bellman, the most exquisitely beautiful woman in the world! Was it any wonder that she fought, clawed and kicked and whined, and struck out so that one of the servants crashed headlong into the beautiful glass and struck his foolish head and died, his nasty blood staining the image of her perfection?
Of course it was all a stupid mistake and it wasn’t her fault, and Doctor Turner told the magistrate so when he came to call. Laura didn’t have to see him, and she didn’t have to leave the house. But they always locked the door to her room now, and they took away all her mirrors.
They took away all her mirrors!
They left her alone, caged up, a scrawny, wizened, wrinkled old woman with no reflection. They took the mirrors away and made her old; old, and ugly, and afraid.
The night they did it, she cried. She cried and hobbled around the room, stumbling blindly in a tearsome tour of nothingness.
That’s when she realized she was old, and nothing could save her. Because she came up against the window and leaned her wrinkled forehead against the cold, cold glass. The light came from behind her and as she drew away she could see her reflection in the window.
The window—it was a mirror, too! She gazed into it, gazed long and lovingly at the tear-streaked face of the fantastically rouged and painted old harridan, gazed at the corpse-countenance readied for the grave by a mad embalmer.
Everything whirled. It was her house, she knew every inch of it, from the day of her birth onwards the house was a part of her. It was her room, she had lived here for ever and ever. But this—this obscenity—was not her face. Only a mirror could show her that, and there would never be a mirror for her again. For an instant she gazed at the truth and then, mercifully, the gleaming glass of the window-pane altered and once again she gazed at Laura Bellman, the proudest beauty of them all. She drew herself erect, stepped back, and whirled into a dance. She danced forward, a prim self-conscious smile on her lips. Danced into the window-pane, half-through it, until razored splinters of glass tore her scrawny throat.
That’s how she died and that’s how they found her. The Doctor came, and the servants and the lawyer did what must be done. The house was sold, then sold again. It fell into the hands of a rental agency. There were tenants, but not for long. They had trouble with mirrors.
A man died—of a heart attack, they said—while adjusting his necktie before the bureau one evening. Grotesque enough, but he had complained to people in the town about strange happenings, and his wife babbled to everyone.
A school-teacher who rented the place in the twenties “passed away” in circumstances which Doctor Turner had never seen fit to relate. He had gone to the rental agency and begged them to take the place off the market; that was almost unnecessary, for the Bellman home had its reputation firmly established by now.
Whether or not Mary Lou Dempster had disappeared here would never be known. But the little girl had last been seen a year ago on the road leading to the house and although a search had been made and nothing discovered, there was talk aplenty.
Then the new heirs had stepped in, briskly, with their pooh-poohs and their harsh dismissals of advice, and the house had been cleaned and put up for rental.
So he and she had come to live here—with it. And that was the story, all of the story.
Mr. Hacker put his arm around Gwen, harrumphed, and helped her rise. He was apologetic, he was shame-faced, he was deferential. His eyes never met those of his tenant.
He barred the doorway. “We’re getting out of here, right now,” he said. “Lease or no lease.”
“That can be arranged. But—I can’t find you another place tonight, and tomorrow’s Sunday—”
“We’ll pack and get out of here tomorrow,” she spoke up. “Go to a hotel, anywhere. But we’re leaving.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” said Hacker. “I’m sure everything will be all right. After all, you’ve stayed here through the week and nothing, I mean nobody has—”
His words trailed off. There was no point in saying anymore. The Hackers left and they were all alone. Just the two of them.
Just the three of them, that is.
But now they—he and she—were too tired to care. The inevitable let-down, product of overindulgence and over-excitement was at hand.
They said nothing, for there was nothing to say. They heard nothing, for the house—and it—maintained a sombre silence.
She went to her room and undressed. He began to walk around the house. First he went to the kitchen and opened a drawer next to the sink. He took a hammer and smashed the kitchen mirror.
Tinkle-tinkle! And then a crash! That was the mirror in the hall. Then upstairs, to the bathroom. Crash and clink of broken glass in the medicine cabinet. Then a smash as he shattered the panel in his room. And now he came to her bedroom and swung the hammer against the huge oval of the vanity, shattering it to bits.
He wasn’t cut, wasn’t excited, wasn’t upset. And the mirrors were gone. Every last one of them was gone.
They looked at each other for a moment. Then he switched off the lights, tumbled into bed beside her, and sought sleep. The night wore on.
It was all a little silly in the daylight. But she looked at him again in the morning, and he went into his room and hauled out the suitcases. By the time she had breakfast ready he was already laying his clothes out on the
bed. She got up after eating and took her own clothing from the drawers and hangers and racks and hooks. Soon he’d go up to the attic and get the garment bags. The movers could be called tomorrow, or as soon as they had a destination in mind.
The house was quiet. If it knew their plans, it wasn’t acting. The day was gloomy and they kept the lights off without speaking—although both of them knew it was because of the window-panes and the story of the reflection. He could have smashed the window glass of course, but it was all a little silly. And they’d be out of here shortly.
Then they heard the noise. Trickling, burbling. A splashing sound. It came from beneath their feet. She gasped.
“Water-pipe—in the basement,” he said, smiling and taking her by the shoulders.
“Better take a look.” She moved towards the stairs.
“Why should you go down there? I’ll tend to it.”
But she shook her head and pulled away. It was her penance for gasping. She had to show she wasn’t afraid. She had to show him—and it, too.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ll get the pipe-wrench. It’s in the trunk in the car.” He went out the back door. She stood irresolute, then headed for the cellar stairs. The splashing was getting louder. The burst pipe was flooding the basement. It made a funny noise, like laughter.
He could hear it even when he walked up the driveway and opened the trunk of the car. These old houses always had something wrong with them; he might have known it. Burst pipes and—
Yes. He found the wrench. He walked back to the door, listening to the water gurgle, listening to his wife scream.
Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural Page 71