The Dickens Mirror

by Ilsa J. Bick

  And then he pauses.

  4

  SAY HE’S THE cat or a character or a boy or whatever the hell he is. The second he pushes from this bathroom—cracks this particular box or book—a reality will assert itself. His life will be what he forces.

  Or … he’s the reflection, and what passes for his life will happen to the boy behind the mirror as he emerges into whatever world lies beyond the looking glass.

  It really comes down to which of them is the boy in a box.

  “Or you might just be kind of insane,” he says, and twists the knob. The tongue slips back with a click. The hinges let out a very soft and mousy squeee. A balloon of cooler air pillows into the room, chilling his face. Condensed steam rains, falling in a gentle patter onto his head and shoulders. The mirror instantly fogs again, leaving only a narrow strip of silvered glass low down near the faucet. The staring boy disappears.

  Teetering on the brink between this box and what lies beyond, he waits. For a split second, there’s nothing. No kak-kak-kak at all. And he thinks, God, what if it’s really true? What if this is a different Merit where my mom isn’t—

  “Honey?” His mother’s voice is as faint as a cloud dissolving under a hot sun. “Is that you, sweetheart?”

  For a second, he feels an absurd sweep of disappointment. Shit. It’s the same. His mom’s dying. God’s an asshole. Nothing has changed. So much for reality.

  “Coming, Mom,” he calls. “Just a sec.”

  5

  IF THIS WERE a book, this would be the moment he wakes for real and the clockwork of his life resumes ticking. At that second, in fact, the name of the phenomenon he’s been searching for comes to him: false awakening. Or double dream. And of the two types he’s learned in abnormal psych, he’s having a Type 2: things are eerie, uncanny, terribly out of whack.

  But his eyes don’t snap open for the third time. He doesn’t awake in bed with his covers bunched around his ankles, sheet creases stenciled in the drool on his cheek, and his hair in corkscrews. Yet what he does is kind of what you might expect, given the situation. Given that mirror he’s cleared for the very first time that he can recall.

  Even so, he hesitates. Thinks about the ramifications and the reality he might be forcing if he does this. Because what if …

  If I see something weird, I’ll just close my eyes. It’ll be like the book where that black guy, the cook, tells the kid to shut his eyes and whatever he sees in that spooky hotel’ll go away.

  So, he snatches a look back at the mirror.

  6

  BIG MISTAKE.

  Because you know what they say about curiosity, and the cat.

  TONY

  His Side of the Glass

  1

  THE ENTIRE BATHROOM, from the walls to the ceiling to the floor, wavers. The room ripples and shimmies as if he’s standing atop a pond, still as a mirror, into which someone’s just dropped a stone. God. Poised on the threshold, he feels the wobble in his chest. His eyes drop to his hands, where wave after wave chases over his skin and deep in his bones, through his mind. The air crinkles with odd glimmers that, if he didn’t know better, actually might rip and pull apart to allow something on the other side

  (other side of what? what’s going on?)

  to crawl through,

  (crack the lid, take a peek)

  and suddenly, he’s not sure he’s even real anymore.

  By the time he registers all this, everything has firmed up again. It’s taken only the blink of an eye. He is solid and so is the room …

  In which he now sees something he shouldn’t.

  2

  THE SHOWER STALL’S tucked in a far corner to his right, with the toilet squatting beside it, closer to the door. His sink is kitty-corner to the left. This means that the mirror offers a partial view of the shower stall, and a nice full frontal of the commode. This new scrim of fog hasn’t lifted quite yet, although that narrow ribbon of silver is wider now, slowly peeling back like an eyelid reluctant to admit, Yeah, crap, another damn day. A third of the mirror is clear. He can see the entire toilet and that he hasn’t put down the lid, but screw it: this is his bathroom, and he’s got decent aim. Half the shower stall is visible; if he were standing inside, you would see up to his knees. Of course, he sees the reflection of the chromed faucet and even the strangled, half-used tube of Crest he’s forgotten to cap …

  Oh.

  His lungs squeeze down. Every molecule of air drains away. His heart stills into that dead space between beats, and that high whine, the peculiar sound that only silence possesses, is loud as a pneumatic drill. He closes his eyes, thinks he ought to count to ten, but loses track somewhere around four. Honestly, he doubts making it all the way would do him a whit of good, because anything—a hand or bit of hip, an arm—would’ve been bad.

  And the woman with the purple eyes is so much worse.

  3

  NO. THE WORD is tiny, nothing more than a squeaky, mousy mental eep. His lungs shrivel. He’s not sure he’s even breathing. He’s very nearly back to the moment this all began: when he woke after a nightmare of fire and terror and cold and death to find that he had no name, no face. If he could turn to look, he’s not sure his house would even be there. Because there is only now: this moment, the mirror, that woman, that woman …

  With something close to awe, he watches as her hands spider up the glass. From his vantage point, he sees the pads actually blanch and flatten. For a wild second, he thinks, She can’t get out. She’s trapped. She’s …

  The woman’s fingers press—and then curl to hook the mirror’s edge.

  “Guh … uh …” This choking little cry is as close to a scream as he can manage. A tidal wave of dread struggles up his chest, but nothing else comes out. In the bathroom—this box he’s opened—the woman’s fingers crawl over the lip of that mirror, and now there is a boot: old-fashioned, with buttons and a blocky heel. A leg, clad in black stockings and draped in folds of a jet-black skirt, kinks, and then this woman is clambering out of the mirror. She swarms over the counter, knocking Snoopy, who clatters to the bathroom floor hard enough to crack off that black plastic nose. Twisted Tales spins off in a flutter of cheap paper, and now there she is, balanced on the edge of his sink, leering like a hungry, long-limbed tarantula that’s decided this juicy little fly will make for quite the snack.

  No! Paralyzed, he can’t scream, doesn’t move, can only watch as the woman scurries off the counter, drops to the floor, and scuttles for him, nails tick-tick-ticking on tile. Go, go, run! But he can’t, and now she’s crawling up his bare legs and her lips, blue as death, peel from her teeth and her clawed hands reach for his face and then his eyes his eyes his eyes …

  TONY

  The Other Tony

  “NUH!” HE JOLTED awake, eyes snapping open. For a fraction of an instant, the space around him seemed to tremble, and he thought he was right back where that awful dream had begun: floating in midair, surrounded by nothing. Then in the desert of his chest, his heart convulsed with a great shiver. But what surged through his veins was icy and black as a remorseless tide, and he thought, God, it’s the rot; it’s the squirmers; I’m infected; they’re eating me alive!

  “Tony?” A hand, wet and dripping, spidered over his face. “Tony, what …?”

  With a strangled sob, he lashed out, sweeping a wild fist. He felt the moment of impact and heard a gasp, the sound of something—someone—falling. The darkness before his eyes dissolved to a ruddy, pulsing glow, and in the dim and unnatural light, he saw a shape—girl … no, the woman!—in a tangle of worn cotton ticking. Kill her, stop her! Swarming over rags and burlap and rough brick, he pinned her, facedown. She let out a pained gasp and then a small cry as he knotted a fist in her hair.

  No more nightmares. Baring his teeth, cocking a fist, he flipped her onto her back. No more black visits, no more infection; kill her before she kills me, kill her before—

  “T-Tony.” Her hands closed over his balled knuckles. “Tony, d-
don’t. Wake up. It’s me, it’s …”

  “Rima?” Stupefied, he stared. Loosed from its braid, her hair was a tangled cloud around her head, and her eyes, so dark, were huge in her thin, pinched face. Through the gloom—because it’s night; we’re above the retort; everyone’s asleep—he saw the darker blush of a new bruise on her cheek. A second later, he felt the warm seep over his lips and down his chin and realized he was bleeding from his nose again, too.

  “Oh God.” Shame swept his chest. Moaning, he sagged from her body, suddenly weaker than a kitten, his eyes springing hot. He cupped a hand to his streaming nose. The taste, brackish and dank, coated his throat. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I never …”

  “Shhh, shhh, Tony, it’s fine. I startled you. Of course you’d lash out. It’s my fault. Here, let’s stop that bleeding.” Pinching the bridge of his nose with one hand, she pressed a rough cloth to his streaming nostrils. “Relax, Tony, the nightmare’s over.”

  “Leave it.” His voice was nasal and stuffed. He brushed her hand aside. “I can do this.” He was getting worse. So were the dreams, each nightmare building on the other, growing more detailed and ever more horrifying. His eyes drifted right to a dull orange gleam of reflected light: a squared-off and wicked-sharp ten-inch steel blade set in a worn bone mount, dangling from its peg. He’d hung it that way on purpose, so there would always be that split second where he would have to sit up and reach for the blade—and thank God. If he hadn’t, he might have buried his chopper in her skull.

  “Rima, I’m sorry.” I’m a monster. Might have killed her. Gulping around a stone of fear, he said, “I d-didn’t know …”

  “Shhh, Tony, you’ll wake the others. It’s all right. Let’s just … hold on.” She ducked around a ramshackle barrier he’d constructed of the broken slates of a rotted crate. With no privacy other than what he could make, he’d used these as a screen between him and the hundred other children crammed, cheek by jowl, like pilchards in a tin. Rima slept alongside in her own nest of threadbare burlap. He heard a slight rasp of metal, followed by a muted gurgle. In another moment, she was back, a small, sloshing cast-iron Dutch pot scavenged from a dustheap hooked over one hand.

  “Here.” Kneeling, she wrung out a cloth and began cleaning blood from his face and neck. “Let’s put you to rights.”

  He forced even, methodical breaths, one after the other, through his mouth as she worked. The air was a mélange, heavy with the odor of soot, hot brick, musty burlap, clothes that hadn’t seen a proper wash in months—and another, more peculiar, almost sweet aroma that anyone, if he didn’t know better, might mistake for a roast pig on a spit, dripping molten fat. But he did know better.

  “Try to relax.” Laying a gentle hand over the fist bunched at his chest, she swabbed at his bloodstained palm. Wringing out her cloth, she touched the back of the hand that still held pressure on his nose. “Let’s have this one now.”

  He let her. “What happened?” he asked, still in a whisper. Although this room above the retort was warm enough for them all to shed coats and mittens for sleeping, he was shivering. His skin was clammy with fear-sweat. His heart boomed in his chest, muting the chuff of a persistent roar from the furnace below. The gasworks had several retorts—gargantuan iron vessels in which coal or other fuels were carbonized to release gas—although only two furnaces still operated this side of the Thames because there were no more shipments of coal. No trains either, for that matter, and what this part of the city had left had to last until … well, no one was exactly sure. So they were forced to use a very different species of fuel now. “Did I shout?”

  “No. I heard you moaning. When I checked, you were burning up, so I got a wet cloth for your forehead and …”

  “Wait.” He snagged her wrist. “You touched me? You didn’t try to …”

  “Quiet. Not so loud.” She half-turned as, from beyond Tony’s nook and the murky depths of the room, someone shifted in a rustle of burlap and straw. This place, with its demon’s light and heat, was where he and the other rats—children with nowhere to go, who were desperate enough to do a job no one else would—lived when they weren’t out collecting bodies to strip bare and then feed to the furnace as fuel. After another moment, there was a small mewling noise, like a contented kitten, and then a mutter as whoever that was settled back into sleep. Looking back, Rima gave the wrist he still held a pointed look. “No, I didn’t. You made me promise, remember? I only felt for a fever. Now, if I might have my hand back?”

  He wasn’t sure he believed her, but he did as she asked. Did she try? Pressing a palm to his chest, he tried to reach beyond the thump of his heart. Normally, he could tell when she drew out sickness. Hard to describe, but the sensation was like a clearing in his soul, as if this black blight in his center was only soot that could be scrubbed clean with the right hand and good soap. For a little while at least, when Rima drew from him, he was stronger, stable, and more himself.

  Now, though, he simply couldn’t tell if she had, most likely because he was still so unsettled, his mind mired in the thick mud of that dream. That other boy—himself—had appeared in other nightmares, but only fleetingly. This time, though …

  Bathroom. Was that a kind of indoor privy? The sink and spigot, he recognized; when the toffs cleared out of London months before, him and the others had ransacked their houses. Being rich, the high-class types had taken their nice threads and jewels. (Stupid. You couldn’t eat diamonds, and how many clothes did one body need?) Furniture and paintings made for very good fuel, though. But he remembered the first couple houses he went through, round Regent’s Park and further north in the very posh Crouch End. There, the houses had indoor plumbing, which meant sinks and spigots and separate water closets. Nothing worked, of course; without a reliable source of fuel, the pumping stations couldn’t function. Light was much more important than being able to flush a toilet. There were plenty of public privies. Or you just dropped your drawers wherever. No one was paying much attention to the niceties these days.

  So if he’d seen a sink and spigot in his nightmare, then this other Tony must be rich, a real toff. Indoor plumbing, toilet in the same room, and a shower, too. What else? Crest. What was that? Surely not the crest of a wave; he hadn’t heard water running. And a comic book? Hadn’t looked like any volume he’d ever seen. What wavered before his mind’s eye was closer to a pamphlet but smaller, with odd writing that didn’t look like proper printing. The drawings were wrong, too: in color and very crude, nothing as fine as anything by Doré or Cruikshank. In the drawing, the lieutenant? Or sergeant? He couldn’t remember, but what the figure wore looked like a kind of bowler. The soldier had a rifle, too, though it wasn’t a Henry; he was pretty certain of that. And foxhole? What’s that? Why would soldiers be out on a foxhunt?

  There was something else, too, that was very strange. An animal … come on, what was it? Right. He felt that muzzy sense dissipate, and now the image firmed. That queer red-roofed house with a gigantic dog and … what’s an electric toothbrush? He knew what a toothbrush was, but his had a bone handle and the bristles were a threadbare splay of macerated hog’s hair. But electric? Like lightning?

  “What?” Rima said. “Electric toothbrush? What’s that?”

  Startled—he hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud—he said, “Something I saw in the nightmare. In that other T-Tony’s bathroom.” God, that felt so strange in his mouth. She listened as he stammered out the rest, the entire sequence from beginning to end, and then she said, “So you got a good look this time.”

  “At him? Yes. I think it’s because something happened to really scare him.”

  “Like what?”

  “Not sure. I want to say”—he could feel the word poised on the tip of his tongue—“that he had a nightmare, too. As if we both had one at the same time. He just felt different this time.”

  “Not like someone you’d read about,” she said. They’d talked about this before, when the dreams had begun. Back then, the other Tony ha
d seemed like a boy in a fairy tale or serial: something flat as paper, with no more substance than a thin character in a bad novel. Yet with each dream, this other Tony had drawn closer, in the same way that the fog, so relentless, crept ever nearer. “He was fleshed out. A person.”

  “Yeah, and I think he noticed it, too, because he did something. Changed things up somehow.” Mirror—the word popped into his brain on a thrill—that’s it. “He’s always been hazy; can’t quite ever make him out. But this time, he wiped away mist or fog or something like that from a mirror, and then, all of a sudden, I could see out of his eyes. I wasn’t able to do that before and …”

  “What?” she said when he broke off. “Tony?”

  “What in God’s name are we talking about?” I’m sick; I’m going mad, that’s it. He pressed the heel of a hand to his forehead. “Rima, there is no other Tony. This has to be the rot. I’m infected. It’s burrowed into my brain.”

  “No. Tony, the last time you let me draw, I could tell. Rot feels different.”

  “How many rotters you actually drawn from? Two? Three? No more than a half dozen before you realized you couldn’t help. Checking for squirmers doesn’t count.” So far, they’d been lucky enough to avoid a rotter with a bellyful. Oh, but the day is coming. Eventually, our luck’s going to run out. “Maybe, in me, the rot’s up to something new.”

  Perhaps the rot had taken root in his brain, and this was how it would be: he going slowly insane as squirmers wriggled and munched and hollowed him at his core. Even worse, what if he didn’t snap out of it next time? He might kill her without meaning to. I should leave, take myself away while there’s still time.

  He felt movement, heard the Dutch pot slosh, and then she was stretching out alongside, careful not to touch. Eyes still shuttered, arm over his face, he said, “You shouldn’t.”