Mirror Image (34 page)

It was a miserable evening; colder than usual for this time of year and quiet, the sounds of the city a very distant hum, and the sunlight coming in over the tops of the trees was a rich warm gold, deepening to purple. The garden had taken quite a beating over the past weeks, with all the police activity: turf was shredded, plants and bushes crushed and broken. With Dad gone and Mom still in Lake Tahoe, she supposed she'd better speak to the gardener …

Manny stopped. She found herself standing in front of the guesthouse. And the door was ajar.

Her heart was pounding as she pushed it open, slowly. There was no sign of the heavy lock—perhaps the police had it—and the bolt had been neatly folded back. Just the way her father did it. She stopped. And then a broad smile spread across her face. Of course, where else would he go? She stepped into the room and called, “Dad?”

The heat and musty closeness took her breath away. The skylights were washed with light, diffusing gently into the room, and the air was alive with swarming motes and spots of dust.

“Dad?” The room swallowed her voice.

Maybe she'd been wrong or maybe he had been here and slipped out, and of course he wouldn't necessarily know that she'd be back so soon. Manny made her way into the room, breathing in the dry air. She shared some of her father's interest and enthusiasm in antiques and, like him, she had often found peace of mind in this place. Some of the objects had been here for as long as she could remember. They were always going to be fixed
tomorrow.

In the center of the room, in the middle of a veritable maze of furniture and artifacts, was the mirror. It had taken the late evening sunlight and darkened it, turning it a deep, iridescent purple, the same shade as a bruise. She stopped before the glass, squinting against the glare from the sunlight, barely able to make out her reflection.

Talbott believed that this was responsible for everything, and she couldn't help but think that maybe he was right. He'd talked a lot of nonsense, asking her all sorts of strange questions about her own feelings towards the mirror, about what she'd seen there …

The face.

She remembered the face. A woman's face.

He'd said the mirror controlled people, using them to feed its appetite. She'd half believed him then, but now, standing before the glass, she wasn't quite so sure. She reached out, rubbing her finger along the dirty surface.

“The glass is dirty, grimy, greasy. Only blood will clean the glass, only blood will fire the images. Blood and sex. The intense emotion of orgasm can also fire the mirror.”

And she remembered her own dreams, the erotic dreams that left her exhausted.

But it was only a mirror—wasn't it? She desperately wanted to believe that it was just a mirror, just an ugly antique mirror and she was crazy to even think about that madman's words. He'd been insane, he'd killed people, he'd raped her … and he'd died with his back cut to shreds protecting her.

She closed her eyes, remembering him crouching before her, both hands clutched to his throat, his face purpling, eyes bulging. She'd been facing him, both hands pressed to her mouth, desperately resisting the urge to throw up. He'd been looking at her, and then
past
her. She'd heard it too, a snapping, popping, cracking sound. She remembered the look on his face, that look of horror, and then he'd thrown himself forward on top of her, covering her entire body with his, his arms cradled around her head.

She'd struggled violently, as she felt him shuddering, gasping, twitching, grunting. She'd thought he was in the throes of orgasm, until she felt the liquid running down her body, down her face, her arms, her legs. And Talbott was unmoving. With one violent heave, she managed to roll him off her, and that was when she saw the blood, the glass …

Manny Frazer opened her eyes.

And the mirror image looked back.

Unblinking, dark-eyed, solemn, the woman in the mirror regarded her impassively.

Manny looked at the face and recognized it. No, that wasn't true; she didn't recognize it: she
knew
it. Only the face was visible, the body was in shadow. She knew the face, the lines, the wrinkles around the eyes and lips, the curve of the nose, the point of the chin, the way the teeth indented the bottom lip, the weight of the hair on her head. She knew that face as well as she knew her own.

Manny was surprised that she felt no fear. But looking into those wide unblinking eyes, she immediately knew that there was no evil in them. She reached out, touching the glass, tracing the lines of the woman's face. She wasn't beautiful, but that was part of her allure. Manny would have found it easier to believe that a beautiful creature was evil: surely something powerful would create for itself a beautiful image. Wasn't the devil supposed to be handsome? But this woman, this image, was so ordinary, only the eyes, the extraordinary eyes, uptilted, wide, quizzical, lent it a mystery. And the hair. Yes, the hair was very beautiful: thick, dark, moving slightly in some unfelt breeze. Manny Frazer reached up and ran both hands through her own short hair, pulling her fingers through its sudden thickness.

Why had Talbott hated this woman so? Why had he wanted to cover the surface of the mirror with black paint?

Why did he fear her?

Because he could not possess me.

Manny looked at the face, stark and white, hair black and solid against the grayness. She felt no fear, merely a sense of wonder, of curiosity. She looked deep into the mirror and spoke aloud, “Why did Talbott fear you?”

Because he could not possess me.

“Who are you?” The image closed her eyes, shaking her head slightly, almost sorrowfully.

“Can I help you?”

Feed me … Free me.

“How?”

But the image was fading, moving away from Manny, hair swirling around its face as if blown from behind. She touched the glass, feeling a sting as something snapped from the mirror to her fingers, like static, but the image had vanished.

Manny crouched before the glass for the best part of an hour, staring at it, but no further images came. When she began to nod off, she came slowly to her feet and made her way back up to the house, careful to leave the guesthouse door ajar, the way she had found it.

She would see the image again. She was sure of it.

Feed me … Free me.

Hadn't Talbott said that the mirror fed on blood and emotion?

Feed me … Free me.

Manny fell into bed, still wrapped in her bathrobe, the words running around her head in a monotonous refrain.

Feed me … Free me.

Feed …

Free …

 

77

C
OLD, DETACHED,
Jonathan Frazer stood in front of the full-length mirror and watched the reflection of the woman behind him undressing. Moonlight streaming in through the skylights turned her hair silver and black, and washed the color from her skin, leaving it alabaster, flawless. Her nipples were dark coins against her flesh, her groin in shadow.

Frazer reached out and touched the glass, tracing his fingers over the reflection of her breasts. The surface of the mirror felt slick, greasy. He spread his hands on the glass, splaying his fingers, and for a single moment he imagined he felt the surface of the glass shift, soften, meld beneath his clammy palms. When he took his hand off the glass, he found no sweaty print on the surface.

The woman—he suddenly realized he had forgotten her name, but no matter, she was cattle—was standing naked with her hands on her hips, watching him, her whole stance suggestive, aggressive.

“What's wrong? Shy?”

“No … yes … I mean this is the first time…”

“It's OK, take your time. You're paying for it.” She wandered around the huge room, peering at the numerous pieces of furniture and artifacts that clustered along the shelves, touching the leather of the dining room chairs, running the tips of her fingers along some side tables and then glancing at the workbench, humming tunelessly to herself.

“You could do with a light in here,” she said suddenly, reaching for the light switch beside the door.

“DON'T. Don't,” he repeated more gently, “I prefer the dark. It's much more romantic, don't you think?”

The woman looked at him, nodding slightly, a smile on her red painted lips. She was twenty-two years old and had been on the streets since she was sixteen: she didn't know the meaning of the word romantic. She had also done it in some strange places, but never in what looked like a converted guesthouse, at the back of some expensive house. It was filled with junk. She wasn't sure if the john worked at the house she'd briefly glimpsed as they'd made their way down through the garden and along the path, or if he rented it out. But he acted like a married guy—you could always tell—and he was used to money, she was sure of that. He'd agreed to the fifty dollars she'd asked without even blinking, even though it had been a slow night, and she'd have taken thirty. Shit, she had done it for ten dollars. He'd also agreed to an extra ten bucks for the inconvenience of taking her off her patch.

All in all, it was going to be a good night.

Frazer watched her in the mirror as he slowly undressed. The moonlight slid off her body, touching it with mystery, lending it a grace it didn't possess, hiding the bruises along her upper arms, the puncture marks behind her knees. She was heavy breasted, no longer slender, and even the makeup didn't disguise the haggard lines in her face. But Frazer wasn't interested in how she looked. He had deliberately chosen one of the more common-looking hookers, the one who didn't have a pimp to look over her shoulder, figuring that it might take a little longer for someone to come looking for her.

He knew what to do. He had done this before: picked a desperate woman, someone who wanted to make a quick buck or two, the raddled, the drunken, the debauched, those who would not be missed, and even if they were, who would care about a whore? He saw her stop before a sixteenth century Venetian goblet, reach out and touch it with a tentative fingertip.

In the mirror the goblet slowly rotated.

Frazer spun around—the goblet was part of a pair and priceless—but the woman hadn't lifted the glass, merely touched it.

His heart began to trip.

She
was here.

He swung back around to the mirror, staring hard at the vague reflection of the goblet in the glass. It
was
moving. As he watched, fingers—pale, golden, perfect fingers—appeared around the stem of the glass. The wrist and arm that flowed into the air were also flawless, so detailed he could see the tiny fuzz of hair on the skin. Shoulders, breasts: the image of the body flowing downwards, like frost on a windowpane. The long slender column of a neck and then, finally, the head.

Vaguely transparent, black-eyed and raven-haired, the image raised her head and looked at him. Her long-nailed hand lifted the goblet in a parody of a toast, while her left hand moved lasciviously down the length of her body, caressing her heavy breasts, the palm of her hand moving across one nipple, and then continuing downwards, across her slightly rounded belly, into the coarse dark hair between her thighs. Her mouth opened, teeth strong and yellow against a glistening tongue. She was speaking to him, but he heard nothing, the only sound now the thundering of his heart, the harsh rasp of his breath. The image lifted the goblet, mouthing the words slowly,
“Feed me.”

Ice cold hands wrapped around his body, folding on his stomach and he yelped with surprise.

“I should have guessed you'd be a watcher.” The woman—Susan, no
Suzee,
that was it—rested her chin on his shoulder and stared into the mirror.

“What, what do you mean?” he whispered hoarsely.

“You've spent all your time looking into that old mirror. I bet you like to look at yourself. Watch yourself while you do it.” She indicated the shadowy room with a jerk of her head. “You've got all these fancy bits of furniture, I bet you've got some fancy clothes, too. I'll bet you like to dress up in them and look at yourself in this old mirror.” She looked disdainfully at the plain ugly frame, the slightly warped, speckled glass. Frazer said nothing. Standing directly before them, he could see the shimmering image, the goblet raised in its hands.

“Look, if you want this to be an all-nighter, we can negotiate a new price…”

“No.” Frazer spun the woman around so that she was facing the mirror, her arms limp by her sides. Standing behind her now, he moved his hands across her stomach, up beneath her breasts, cupping them.

“I knew you'd be a looker,” Suzee said, smiling tightly. He was a weird one all right, but harmless.

Frazer pressed his cold lips to the back of her neck, slowly working around to the side of her throat. She tilted her head to one side, closing her eyes, leaning back into him. She could feel the dull pounding of his heart against her back. At least he was gentle. Maybe she'd convince him to fork out for an all-nighter. She'd exhaust him in the first hour and then have a comfortable night's nap.

“Keep your eyes closed,” he murmured. His fingers gently pulled at her nipples, stroking, twisting, tugging.

Suzee began to relax. This guy was taking his time: she'd get an all-nighter out of him, maybe even breakfast. Might even enjoy it, too. Been a long time since she'd enjoyed it.

His right hand moved away and she could feel him stretching out. Probably got one of those fancy sex toys. And that meant he had money. Maybe if she was extra nice to him, he'd become a regular, maybe put her up in a little apartment somewhere …

“Hey,” she began huskily, opening her eyes, “how about…?”

The knife was eight inches of razor sharp steel, double-edged, needle-pointed. As Frazer's left arm locked around her body, holding her upright, the blade tore into the left side of her throat, and then ripped across. Hot dark blood spurted across the mirror, hissing on the greasy glass.