‘Mr Stavanger! Ms Thomas! This is Mrs Gustaffson! Will you please open the door for me?’
There was still no reply, but a chilly draft blew out of the apartment with a hollow, sorrowful moaning, and it carried with it a stench like nothing that Mrs Gustaffson had ever smelled before. She pressed her hand over her nose and mouth and took a step back.
‘Do you think they’re dead?’ asked Mr Kasabian. ‘We should call the cops, I think so.’
‘I agree,’ said Mrs Gustaffson. She opened her large black crocodile purse and took out her cellphone. Just as she flipped it open, however, they heard a bumping sound from inside the apartment, and then a clang, as if somebody had dropped a saucepan on the kitchen floor.
‘They’re inside,’ said Mrs Gustaffson. ‘They’re hiding for some reason. Mr Stavanger! Do you hear me! Ms Thomas! Open the door! I have to talk to you!’
No response. Mrs Gustaffson knocked and rattled the door handle, but she couldn’t open the door any wider and even if David and Melanie were inside the apartment, they obviously had no intention of answering.
Mrs Gustaffson went along the hallway to the back of the house, closely followed by Mr Kasabian. She unlocked the back door and carefully climbed down the icy steps outside. ‘I told you to put salt on these steps, Mr Kasabian, didn’t I? Somebody could have a very nasty accident.’
‘I did, last week only. Then it snow again and freeze over again.’
Mrs Gustaffson made her way along the back of the house. There were no lights in any of the downstairs windows, and a long icicle hung from the bathroom overflow pipe, which showed that the bathroom hadn’t been used for days.
At last she reached the kitchen window. The sill was too high for her to reach, so Mr Kasabian dragged over a small wooden trough in which he usually planted herbs, so that she could climb up on it. She wiped the frosty window with her glove, and peered inside.
At first she could see nothing but shadows, and the faint whiteness of the icebox door. But then something moved across the kitchen, very slowly. Something bulky, with arms that swung limply at its side, and a strangely small head. Mrs Gustaffson stared at it for one baffled moment, and then she stepped down.
‘Somebody’s in there,’ she said, and her usually strident voice was like the croak of a child who has seen something in the darkness of her bedroom that is far too frightening to put into words.
‘They’re dead?’ asked Mrs Kasabian.
‘No, not dead. I don’t know what.’
‘We should call the cops.’
‘I have to see what that is.’
‘That’s not a good idea, Mrs Gustaffson. Who knows who that is? Maybe it’s a murdering murderer.’
‘I have to know what I saw. Come with me.’
‘Mrs Gustaffson, I’m an old man.’
‘And I’m an old woman. What difference does that make?’
She climbed back up the steps to the back door, gripping the handrail. She went back inside and Mr Kasabian followed her to David and Melanie’s door. She put her shoulder against it and pushed, and it began to give a little. Mr Kasabian pushed, too. It felt as if the couch had been wedged against the door, but as they kept on pushing they managed to inch it further and further away. At last the door was open wide enough for them to step into the living room.
‘This is dead smell, no question,’ said Mr Kasabian. The living room was dark and bitterly cold, and there were books and magazines and clothes strewn everywhere. There were marks on the wallpaper, too, like handprints.
‘I think seriously this is time for cops.’
They were halfway across the living room when they heard another bump, and a shuffling sound.
‘Oh holy Jesus what is that?’ whispered Mr Kasabian.
Mrs Gustaffson said nothing, but took two or three more steps toward the kitchen door, which was slightly ajar.
Together they approached the kitchen until they were standing right outside the door. Mrs Gustaffson cocked her head to one side and said, ‘I can hear – what is that? – crying?’
But it was more like somebody struggling for breath, as if they were carrying a very heavy weight.
‘Mr Stavanger?’ called Mrs Gustaffson, with as much authority as she could manage. ‘I need to talk to you, Mr Stavanger.’
She pushed the kitchen door open a little further, and then she pushed it wide. Mr Kasabian let out an involuntary mewl of dread.
There was a figure standing in the kitchen. It was silhouetted against the window, an extraordinary bulky creature with a small head and massive shoulders, and arms that swung uselessly down at its sides. As Mrs Gustaffson stepped into the room, it staggered as if it were almost on the point of collapse. Mr Kasabian switched on the light.
The stripped-pine kitchen looked like an abattoir. There were wild smears of dried blood all across the floor, bloody handprints on every work surface, and the sink was heaped with black and clotted lumps of flesh. The smell was so acrid that Mrs Gustaffson’s eyes filled with tears.
The bulky figure that swayed in front of them was David . . . but a David who was long dead. His skin was white, and tinged in places with green. His arms hung down and his legs buckled at the knees, so that his feet trailed on the linoleum. He had no head, but out of his neck cavity rose Melanie’s head, her hair caked with dried blood, her eyes staring.
It took Mrs Gustaffson and Mr Kasabian ten long heartbeats to understand what they were looking at. Melanie had opened up David’s body, from his chest to his groin, and emptied it of most of his viscera. Then she had cut off his head and widened his throat, so that she could climb inside his ribcage and force her own head through. She was actually wearing David’s body like a heavy, decaying cloak.
She had made up David’s severed head with foundation and lipstick, and decorated his hair with dried chrysanthemums. Then she had put it into a string bag along with Echo’s head, and hung the two of them around her neck. She had inserted Echo’s bedraggled tail into her vagina, so that it hung down between her thighs.
‘Melanie,’ said Mr Kasabian, in total shock. ‘Melanie, what happened?’
Melanie tried to take a step forward, but David’s body was far too heavy for her, and all she could manage was a sideways lurch.
‘We’re one person,’ she said, and there was such joy and excitement in her voice that Mrs Gustaffson had to cover her ears. ‘We’re one person!’
Camelot
Jack was scraping finely chopped garlic into the skillet when he heard somebody banging at the restaurant door.
‘Shit,’ he breathed. He took the skillet off the gas and wiped his hands on his apron. The banging was repeated, more forcefully this time, and the door handle was rattled.
‘OK, OK! I hear you!’
He wove his way between the circular tables and the bentwood chairs. The yellow linen blinds were drawn right down over the windows, so that all he could see were two shadows. The early-morning sun distorted them, hunched them up and gave them pointed ears, so that they looked like wolves.
He shot the bolts and unlocked the door. Two men in putty-colored raincoats were standing outside. One was dark and unshaven, with greased-back hair and a broken nose. The other was sandy and overweight, with clear beads of perspiration on his upper lip.
‘Yes?’
The dark man held out a gilded badge. ‘Sergeant Eli Waxman, San Francisco Police Department. Are you Mr Jack Keller?’
‘That’s me. Is anything wrong?’
Sergeant Waxman flipped open his notebook and peered at it as if he couldn’t read his own handwriting. ‘You live at three-six-six-three Heliograph Street, apartment two?’
‘Yes, I do. For Christ’s sake, tell me what’s happened.’
‘Your partner is Ms Jacqueline Fronsart, twenty-four, a student in Baltic singing at The Institute of Baltic Singing?’
‘That’s right.’
Sergeant Waxman closed his notebook. ‘I’m sorry to tell you, Mr Keller, but Ms Fronsart
has been mirrorized.’
‘What?’
‘Your neighbors heard her screaming round about nine thirty this morning. One of them broke into your apartment and found her. They tried to get her out but there was nothing they could do.’
‘Oh, God.’ Jack couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘Which – what – which mirror was it?’
‘Big tilting mirror, in the bedroom.’
‘Oh, God. Where is it now? It didn’t get broken, did it?’
‘No, it’s still intact. We left it where it was. The coroner can remove it for you, if that’s what you want. It’s entirely up to you.’
Jack covered his eyes with his hand and kept them covered. Maybe, if he blacked out the world for long enough, the detectives would vanish and this wouldn’t have happened. But even in the darkness behind his fingers he could hear their raincoats rustling, and their shoes shifting uncomfortably on the polished wood floor. Eventually he looked up at them and said, ‘I bought that mirror about six months ago. The owner swore to me that it was docile.’
‘You want to tell me where you got it?’
‘Loculus Antiques, in Sonoma. I have their card someplace.’
‘Don’t worry, we can find it if we need to. I’ll be straight with you, though – I don’t hold out much hope of any restitution.’
‘Jesus. I’m not interested in restitution. I just want—’
He thought of Jacqueline, standing on his balcony, naked except for a large straw hat piled ridiculously high with peaches and pears and bananas. He could see her turning her face toward him in slo-mo. Those liquid brown eyes, so wide apart that she looked more like a beautiful salmon than a woman. Those brown shoulders, patterned with henna. Those enormous breasts, with nipples that shone like plums.
‘Desire, I can see it in your every looking,’ she had whispered. She always whispered, to save her larynx for her Baltic singing.
She had pushed him back on to the violently patterned durry, and knelt astride his chest. Then she had displayed herself to him, her smooth hairless vulva, and she had pulled open her lips with her fingers to show him the green canary-feather that she had inserted into her urethra.
‘The plumage of vanity,’ she had whispered.
Sergeant Waxman took hold of Jack’s upper arm and gave him a comforting squeeze. ‘I’m real sorry for your loss, Mr Keller. I saw her myself and – well, she was something, wasn’t she?’
‘What am I supposed to do?’ asked Jack. For the first time in his life he felt totally detached, and adrift, like a man in a rowboat with only one oar, circling around and around, out of reach of anybody.
‘Different people make different decisions, sir,’ said the sandy-haired detective.
‘Decisions? Decisions about what?’
‘About their mirrors, sir. Some folks store them away in their basements, or their attics, hoping that a time is going to come when we know how to get their loved ones back out of them. Some folks – well, they bury them, and have proper funerals.’
‘They bury them? I didn’t know that.’
‘It’s unusual, sir, but not unknown. Other folks just cover up their mirrors with sheets or blankets, and leave them where they are, but some doctors think this could amount to cruelty, on account of the person in the mirror still being able to hear what’s going on and everything.’
‘Oh, God,’ said Jack.
The sandy-haired detective took out a folded handkerchief and dabbed his forehead ‘Most folks, though—’
‘Most folks what?’
‘Most folks break their mirrors, sooner or later. I guess it’s like taking their loved ones off life support.’
Jack stared at him. ‘But if you break a mirror – what about the person inside it? Are they still trapped in some kind of mirror-world? Or do they get broken, too?’
Sergeant Waxman said, solemnly, ‘We don’t know the answer to that, Mr Keller, and I very much doubt if we ever will.’
When the detectives had left, Jack locked the restaurant door and stood with his back against it, with tears streaming down his cheeks, as warm and sticky as if he had poked his eyes out. ‘Jacqueline,’ he moaned. ‘Jacqueline, why you? Why you, of all people? Why you?’
He knelt down on the waxed oak floor, doubled-up with the physical pain of losing her, and sobbed between gritted teeth. ‘Why you, Jacqueline? Why you? You’re so beautiful, why you?’
He cried for almost ten minutes and then he couldn’t cry any more. He stood up, wiped his eyes on one of the table napkins, and blew his nose. He looked around at all the empty tables. He doubted if he would ever be able to open again. Keller’s Far-Flung Food would become a memory, just like Jacqueline.
God, he thought. Every morning you wake up, and you climb out of bed, but you never know when life is going to punch you straight in the face.
He went back into the kitchen, turned off all the hobs and ovens, and hung up his apron. There were half a dozen Inuit moccasins lying on the chopping board, ready for unstitching and marinating; and yew branches for yew branch soup. He picked up a fresh, furry moose antler. That was supposed to be today’s special. He put it down again, his throat so tight that he could hardly breathe.
He was almost ready to leave when the back door was flung open, and Punipuni Puu-suke appeared, in his black Richard Nixon T-shirt and his flappy white linen pants. Jack didn’t know exactly how old Punipuni was, but his crew-cut hair looked like one of those wire brushes you use for getting rust off the fenders of 1963 pick-up trucks, and his eyes were so pouchy that Jack could never tell if they were open or not. All the same, he was one of the most experienced bone chefs in San Francisco, as well as being an acknowledged Oriental philosopher. He had written a slim, papery book called Do Not Ask A Fish The Way Across the Desert.
Punipuni took off his red leather shoulder bag and then he looked around the kitchen. ‘Mr German-cellar?’ (He always believed that people should acknowledge the ethnic origins of their names, but translate them into English so that others could share their meaning.) ‘Mr German-cellar, is something wrong?’
‘I’m sorry, Pu, I didn’t have time to call you. I’m not opening today. In fact I think I’m closing for good. Jacqueline was mirrorized.’
Punipuni came across the kitchen and took hold of his hands. ‘Mr German-cellar, my heart is inside your chest. When did this tragedy occur?’
‘This morning. Just now. The police were here. I have to go home and see what I can do.’
‘She was so wonderful, Mr German-cellar. I don’t know what I can say to console you.’
Jack shook his head. ‘There’s nothing. Not yet. You can go home if you like.’
‘Maybe I come along too. Sometimes a shoulder to weep on is better than money discovered in a sycamore tree.’
‘OK. I’d appreciate it.’
He lived up on Russian Hill, in a small pink Victorian house in the English Quarter. It was so steep here that he had to park his Ford Peacock with its front wheels cramped against the curb, and its gearbox in reverse. It was a sunny day, and far below them the Bay was sparkling like shattered glass; but there was a thin cold breeze blowing which smelled of a fisherman’s dying breath.
‘Jack!’
A maroon-faced man with white whiskers was trudging up the hill with a bull mastiff on a short choke-chain. He was dressed in yellowish-brown tweeds, with the cuffs of his pants tucked into his stockings.
‘I say, Jack!’ he repeated, and raised his arm in salute.
‘Major,’ Jack acknowledged him, and then looked up to his second-story apartment. Somebody had left the windows wide open, Jacqueline probably, and the white drapes were curling in the breeze.
‘Dreadfully sorry to hear what happened, old boy! The Nemesis and I are awfully cut up about it. Such a splendid young girl!’
‘Thank you,’ said Jack.
‘Buggers, some of these mirrors, aren’t they? Can’t trust them an inch.’
‘I thought this one was safe.’
‘Well, none of them are safe, are they, when it comes down to it? Same as these perishing dogs. They behave themselves perfectly, for years, and then suddenly, for no reason that you can think of, snap! They bite some kiddie’s nose off, or some such. The Nemesis won’t have a mirror in the house. Just as well, I suppose. With a dial like hers, she’d crack it as soon as look at it – what!’
Jack tried to smile, but all he could manage was a painful smirk. He let himself into the front door and climbed the narrow stairs, closely followed by Punipuni. Inside, the hallway was very quiet, and smelled of overripe melons. Halfway up the stairs there was a stained-glass window with a picture of a blindfolded woman on it, and a distant castle with thick black smoke pouring out of it, and rooks circling.
Punipuni caught hold of his sleeve. ‘Your God does not require you to do this, Mr German-cellar.’
‘No,’ said Jack. ‘But my heart does. Do you think I’m just going to hire some removal guy and have her carted away? I love her, Pu. I always will. Forever.’
‘Forever is not a straight line,’ said Punipuni. ‘Remember that your favorite carpet store may not always be visible from your front doorstep.’
They reached the upstairs landing. Jack went across to his front door and took out his key. His heart was thumping like an Irish drum and he wasn’t at all sure that he was going to be able to do this. But there was a brass ankh on the door, where Jacqueline had nailed it, and he could see her kissing her fingertips and pressing it against the ankh, and saying, ‘This is the symbol of life everlasting that will never die.’
She had been naked at the time, except for a deerstalker hat like Sherlock Holmes. She loved Sherlock Holmes, and she often called Jack ‘Watson’. Without warning she would take out her violin and play a few scraping notes of Cajun music on it and proclaim, ‘The game is afoot!’
Festival of Fear Page 14