by Robert Bloch
The first drops spattered the windshield as he turned onto the canyon side-road, and by the time he parked in the driveway a flicker of lightning heralded the downpour that followed. Dale hurried into the cottage beneath the wind-tossed trees. Once inside he flipped the light-switches as he moved from room to room. It was only upon reaching the bedroom that he halted when its overhead light came on.
Standing in the doorway he stared at the open makeup box on the table, forehead furrowed in doubt.
Hadn’t he closed the lid before he left? Dale shrugged in uncertainty. Perhaps the loose catch was the culprit once again; he’d better examine it and put his mind to rest.
Rain drummed the rooftop in a faster tempo and lightning flashed outside the window as he crossed to the table. Then, as he reached it, a clap of thunder shook the walls and the lights went off, overhead and throughout the cottage.
Power-outages were not uncommon hereabouts during a storm and Dale wasn’t alarmed; perhaps the lights would come back on in a moment. He waited, but the darkness persisted and prevailed. Maybe he’d better look for his flashlight.
Then its illumination was unnecessary as the lightning-bolt struck somewhere close outside the window, filling the bedroom with a greenish glare. As it did so Dale peered down at the mirror inside the lid of the makeup kit and froze.
The reflection peering up at him was not his own.
It was the face of Singapore Joe—the role Chaney played in The Road to Mandalay—the half-blind man whose left eye was covered with a ghastly white cast.
But the image seemed strangely blurred; Dale blinked to clear his vision as lightning faded and the room plunged into darkness again.
Dale’s shudder wasn’t prompted by the roar of thunder. It was what he’d seen that traumatized him. The Road to Mandalay was one of the lost films; he knew of no print in existence. But Singapore Joe existed, in the mirror, existed in an indelible image leering up at him through the dark.
And the dark must be dispelled. Dale turned and blundered his way into the hall. Reaching the kitchen he stooped and opened the cabinet beneath the sink. Lightning outside the kitchen window came to his aid and in its moment of livid life he found and grasped the flashlight. It was not just an ordinary cylinder-type but one which terminated in a square base, projecting a strong beam of almost lantern-like intensity.
Dale switched it on, and the ray guided him back to the bedroom. As he walked his relief faded with the realization that his vision had faded too.
He was seeing only with his right eye now. The left was blind. Blind—like the eye of Singapore Joe.
You’re having a nightmare, he told himself. But he wasn’t asleep, and if there was a nightmare it had to be in the mirror of the makeup kit. Unless, of course, he was hallucinating.
There was only one way to find out, and Dale knew what he must do. Rain swept across the rooftop above, doors creaked and groaned against the onslaught of the wind, lightning glimmered, thunder growled. Only the light he gripped in his hand was reassurance; a magic lantern to protect him on his way. Magic lantern—that’s what they called the movies in the old days. Was there such a thing as magic?
Forcing himself toward the bedroom table, he gazed down at the glass reflected in the lantern-light.
Half-blind he stared, but what he saw with his right eye was just a mirror after all. A shining surface reflecting his own familiar face.
And now his left eye cleared and he could see again. Dale took a deep breath, then expelled it hastily—for now the mirror blurred and a piercing pain shot through his lower limbs, causing him to crouch. Something pressed heavily against his spine, bowing his back.
He was changing, and the image in the mirror was changing too. He saw the tousled hair, the gargoyle grimace, the twisted limbs, the body bent beneath the hideous hump. No need to ask the identity of this image—he was gazing at Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame.
It was Chaney he saw in the glass but he himself felt the weight of the hump, the constriction of the harness binding it to his body, the pain inflicted by the mass of makeup covering his face, the jagged teeth wired into his mouth, the mortician’s wax masking his right eye.
Realization brought relief. It was makeup, and only makeup after all. Gradually the image diffused and Dale’s feeling of physical restraint faded until once again he stood erect.
Thunder rolled as the image dispelled. Dale sighed with relief; now was the time to slam down the lid of the kit once and for all.
He started to reach for it, but his hands were gone.
His hands—and his arms.
Illusion, of course, like the illusion of Chaney’s face and form coming into focus beneath the mirror’s shiny surface. Dale’s eyes met those of the visage peering out at him from under the broad brim of a Spanish sombrero. Chaney was armless, and now Dale felt the agony of numbed circulation, the constriction of his own arms bound against his body by a tight, concealing corset. That, he remembered, had been Chaney’s device when portraying the armless knife-thrower in The Unknown.
With the recollection his panic ebbed, and once more features and form receded into the mirror’s depths. The numbness was gone from his arms now; he could lift his hands and close the lid.
Then he fell.
His legs gave way and he slumped to the floor, sprawling helplessly, the box on the table beyond his reach. All he could do was elevate his gaze, see the shaven-headed creature crawling across the glass, dead legs dragging behind him. It was Phroso, the paralyzed cripple in West of Zanzibar.
No makeup had been involved in the simulation of the man who had lost the use of his lower limbs; it had been Chaney’s artistry which made the role seem reality.
Knowing that, Dale strove to rise, but there was no feeling in his legs—he couldn’t command them. The face in the mirror glowered at him in the lamplight, bursting into brightness as lightning flashed outside the window. The eyes were mocking him, mocking his plight, and now Dale realized that the mirror’s monsters sensed his purpose and were summoned to prevent it. Their appearance in the mirror gave them life, his awareness gave them strength to survive, and that strength was growing. Closing the kit would condemn them to darkness and it was this they fought against. They know he couldn’t close the lid, not if he were blind, armless, or paralyzed.
Frantically Dale balanced himself on the palm of his left hand, extending his right arm upward, inching to the table-top. Then his fingers gripped the lid of the makeup kit, wrenching it down. With a rasp of rusty hinges the box slammed shut.
The mirror disappeared from view, but Dale’s paralysis persisted. Try as he would, he couldn’t raise himself. All he could do was wriggle, wriggle across the floor like a snake with a broken back, and lever his arms against the side of the bed. Pulling his body upward, he lifted himself, gasping with effort, then collapsed upon the cool sheets which dampened with the sweat of fear pouring from his fevered forehead.
Fever. That was the answer; it had to be. The doctor was wrong in his diagnosis. Dale was coming down with something, something that twisted mind and body. Labeling it psychosomatic brought no relief.
Dale rolled over to face the telephone resting on the night-stand beside the bed. If he could reach it he could call the paramedics. But as his hand moved forward he felt a sudden tingling in his legs, then kicked out with both feet. The paralysis, real or imaginary, was gone.
No reason to summon paramedics now, but he still needed help. In the dim light cast by the flash-lantern standing on the table across the room he dialed Dr. Pendleton’s number. The ringing on the line gave way to the mechanical message of an answering-service.
“Dr. Pendleton is not in. Please leave your name and number and he will get back to you—”
Dale cradled the receiver, frowning in frustration. Sure, the doctor would get back to him, perhaps in an hour, maybe two or three. And then what?
How could he explain all this? If he minimized his condition he’d get that take-two-a
spirins-and-call-me-in-the-morning routine. And if he came on too strong the doctor would probably order up an ambulance on his own. Pendleton was a practitioner of modern medicine; he wouldn’t come out in the storm to make a house-call merely to humor a hysterical patient with his presence.
But Dale had to have someone’s presence here, someone to talk to, someone like—
“Debbie?”
He’d dialed her number automatically, and now the very sound of her voice brought relief.
“Dale! I was hoping you’d call.”
Then she did care. Thank God for that! He listened intently as the warmth of her response gave way to concern.
“What’s wrong? Are you sick or something?”
“Something,” Dale said. “That is, I’m not sure. No, I can’t explain it on the phone. If you could just come over—”
“Tonight? In all this rain?”
“Debbie, please. I know it’s asking a lot, but I need you. I need you now—”
“And I need you.” Debbie sighed. “All right. Give me half an hour.”
The phone went dead, but as he replaced the receiver Dale came alive again. She was coming and he’d told the truth; he did need her, needed her desperately.
Listening, he realized the rain was slowing. It was a good sign. Perhaps by the time she arrived the storm would be over and they could talk without the punctuation of thunder. He’d tell her what had happened, make her understand.
But just what had happened—and why?
Dale rolled over on his back, staring at the shadows on the ceiling, facing up to the shadows surrounding the question in his own mind.
And the answer came.
He’d found it today at the Academy, found it when he read the actress’s description of Bela Lugosi preparing for his portrayal.
“He psyched himself up.” That was her explanation of how Lugosi became Dracula, and that was what Lon Chaney must have done.
No wonder he’d established a secret hideaway! Here, in this very room, he did more than experiment with physical disguise. Dale pictured him sitting alone on a night like this, creating contrivances to deform his body, refashioning his face, staring into the mirror at the creature reflected there. And then, the final transformation.
“Make up your mind.” A figure of speech, but Chaney had given it a literal application, one beyond the mere application of makeup from his kit. Seated here in the shadowed silence, this man of mystery—this son of deaf-mute parents whom he communicated with through the power of pantomime—confronted the reflections of monsters in the mirror and whispered the words. “I am the Frog. I am Blizzard. I am Dr. Ziska, Sergei, Alonzo the Armless, the Blackbird, Mr. Wu.” Each time a different incarnation, each time a new persona, each time a litany repeated hour after hour from midnight to dawn, willing himself into the role until the role became reality.
And psyching himself up, he’d psyched-up the mirror too. The intensity of total concentration had been captured in the glass forever, just as it was later captured on the blank surface of nitrate film used for silent pictures. The filmed images decayed in time but the makeup kit mirror preserved Chaney’s psychic power forever—a long-latent power revived by Dale’s own glimpses into the glass, a power that grew greater with each succeeding gaze.
Dale remembered the first apparitions—how fleetingly they appeared and how little effect they had beyond the initial shock of recognition. It was his repeated viewing which gave strength to the shifting shapes until they transformed his body into a semblance of what he saw.
But he wouldn’t repeat the mistake. From now on the makeup kit would remain closed and he’d never look into that mirror again.
The rain had ended now and so had his fear. Thunder and lightning gave way to a calm matching his own. Knowing the truth was enough; he wouldn’t repeat all this to Debbie or try to convince her. Instead he’d just tell how much he needed her, and that was true too.
But first he must dispose of the kit.
Dale shifted himself over to the side of the bed, sitting up and swinging his feet to the floor. The power-outage hadn’t ended; he’d shut the kit away in the closet, then take the flash-lantern with him and guide Debbie up the path when she arrived.
All was quiet as he crossed the room to the table where the lantern-light shone on the closed box beside it. That’s what the kit was, really; just a battered old box. Lon Chaney’s box—Pandora’s box, which opened for evils to emerge. But not to worry; the lid was down and it would stay down forever.
His hand went to the flash-lantern.
At least that was his intention, until he felt the chill of cold metal at his finger-tips and found them fixed upon the lid of the makeup kit.
He tried to pull away but his hand remained fixed, fixed by a force commanding his movement and his mind, a power he could not control.
It was the power that raised the lid of the box, a power that seethed and surged, and in the uptilted mirror he saw its source.
Two eyes blazed from a face surmounted by a beaver hat and framed by matted hair; a face that grinned to display the cruel, serrated teeth. But it was from the cruel eyes that the power poured—the burning eyes of the vampire in London After Midnight. Dale knew the film, though he’d never seen a print; knew its original title was The Hypnotist. And it was a hypnotist who glared up at him, a hypnotist’s power which had compelled him to open the box and stand transfixed now by the vision in the glass.
Then suddenly the face was fading and for a moment Dale felt a glimmer of hope. But as the face disappeared into the mirror’s distorted depths, another face took form.
It was a face Dale knew only too well, one which had lain buried in his brain since childhood when he’d first seen it fill the screen from behind a ripped-away mask. The face of madness, the face of Death incarnate, the face of Chaney’s supreme horror; the face of Erik in The Phantom of the Opera.
No wonder he’d blotted out all memory of the terror which tormented his nightmares as a child, the terror he’d hidden away in adulthood but which still survived in his unconscious. It was suppressed fear that lay behind his inexplicable interest in Lon Chaney, a fright disguised as fascination which guided him to this ultimate, inevitable confrontation with the gaping fangs, the flaring nostrils, the bulging eyes of a living skull.
The Phantom stared and Dale felt the flooding force of the death’s-head’s overwhelming power, to which he responded with a power of his own, born of utter dread.
For an instant, for an eternity, his gaze locked with that of the monster and he realized a final fear. The face was looming larger, moving forward—attempting to emerge from the mirror!
And then, with savage strength, Dale gripped the box in both hands, raising it high; panting, he dashed it down upon the floor. The makeup kit landed with a crash as the Phantom’s image shattered into shards of splintered glass glinting up in the lantern-light.
Chaney’s power was broken at last, and with it the power of the Phantom. Dale gasped, shuddering in relief as he felt full control return.
As the knocking sounded its summons he picked up the flash-lantern and carried it with him down the hall to the front door. Debbie was here now, his hope, his angel of salvation. And he went to her proudly and unafraid because he was free of Chaney, free of the mirror’s magic, free of the Phantom forever. This was the beginning of a new life, a life of love and beauty.
Dale opened the door and saw her standing there, smiling up at him. It was only when he lifted the lantern and Debbie saw his face that she began to scream.
Floral Tribute
They always had fresh flowers on the table at Grandma’s house. That’s because Grandma lived right in back of the cemetery.
“Nothing like flowers to brighten up a room,” Grandma used to say. “Ed, be a good boy and take a run over. Fetch me back something pretty. Seems to me there was doings yesterday afternoon near the big Weaver Vault—you know where I mean. Pick out some nice ones and, mind you, no lilies.�
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So Ed would scamper off, climbing the fence in the back yard and jumping down over the old Putnam grave and its leaning headstone. He’d race down the paths, taking shortcuts through bushes and behind statues. Ed knew every inch of the cemetery long before he was seven—he learned it playing hide-and-seek there with the gang, after dark.
Ed liked the cemetery. It was better than the back yard, better than the rickety old house where Grandma and he lived; and by the time he was four, he played among the tombs every day. There were big trees and bushes everywhere; lots of nice green grass, and fascinating paths that wound off endlessly into a maze of mounds and white stones. Birds were forever singing or darting down over the flowers. It was pretty there, and quiet, and there was nobody to watch, or bother, or scold—as long as Ed remembered to stay out of the way of Old Sourpuss, the caretaker. But Old Sourpuss lived in another house; a big stone one, over on the other end, at the big cemetery entrance.
Grandma told Ed all about Old Sourpuss, and warned him against letting the caretaker catch him inside the grounds.
“He doesn’t like to have little boys playing in there,” she said. “Especially when there’s a funeral going on. Way he acts, a body’d think he owned the place. Where’s nobody’s got a better right to use it as they see fit than we have, if the truth were known.
“So you go ahead and play there all you want, Ed, only don’t let him see you. After all, a body’s only young once, I always say.”
Grandma was swell. Just plain swell. She even let him stay up late at night, and play hide-and-seek with Susie and Joe, behind the headstones.
Of course, she didn’t really care, because at night was when Grandma had her company over.
Almost nobody came to see Grandma in the daytime any more. There was only the ice-man and the grocery boy and sometimes the mailman—usually he just came about once a month with Grandma’s pension check. Most days there was nobody in the house except Grandma and Ed.