The Medici Mirror

by Melissa Bailey

  As the word formed in my mind, the decision was made. I left the flat and began to run. As my feet hit hard against the asphalt, I thought of Ophelia. Why had she gone there without me again? I felt a surge of anger at her impetuosity. After everything we had agreed and she had promised. Perhaps she hadn’t believed that I would destroy the mirror and had taken it upon herself to do it. I bridled at the idea, felt a flush of annoyance. Then, almost simultaneously, I felt sympathy for her. After all, I had hesitated to take action. So should I leave her to it now? No, I needed to go to her. It was a dark and dangerous place.

  I turned left and the factory came into view. Just a little further and I would reach the door. Then I would be only moments away. I could find Ophelia and we could go home. As I came to a standstill, I noticed that the outer door was unlocked. So she was here. My hand reached for the handle and as it did so I heard a small voice echo inside my head: You are dark and dangerous too, it said.

  For a moment, I stood stock-still. The quietness of the night around me was profound. There was no wind, nothing fluttering in its grasp, no music or people, not even the comforting rustle of the branches of the trees. A deep stillness reigned. I listened for the voice once again, but there was nothing. Suddenly, against the silence of the night, my mobile rang, in my jacket pocket, screeching, loud. I pulled it out, nerves raw, and saw that it was Tara. The phone also showed two missed calls from her earlier in the evening. Whatever it was, whatever she wanted, I couldn’t deal with it right now. I switched the phone to silent and pocketed it again. Then I shook my aching head, pulled open the door and walked inside.

  Soft moonlight poured through the windows. Almost violet, thick and heavy around me, it spilled over the floor. I looked down the length of the factory, took in the silhouettes of shoeboxes stacked high against the walls and beyond them the shadowy masses of ancient machines receding all the way into the heeling department. In the corner, in the glowing light of the window, I could make out the stiletto machine that Tara and I had stood in front of not so long ago. I felt the invisible press of something cold and sharp at my neck and my hand reached up instinctively. Tread carefully, said another voice in my head. Then I heard a burst of laughter, loud and melodic. I spun around but there was nothing, no one, there. I pressed my fingers to my eyes and took a deep breath. Calm down, said my own voice in my head.

  I turned, making my way towards the storage cupboard, my trainers moving silently over the place where James Brimley’s body had been found. I tried not to think about what had happened there but a quiver of anxiety shot through me, followed by a sudden bombardment of images. The director, unsmiling with dark eyes. A beautiful woman gazing at him as he walked the factory floor. The tidy green script of love letters filled with longing and desire. A woman’s sated body, a velvet ribbon around her neck. The chaotic green ink of madness and decline.

  I blinked rapidly, trying to focus. I wished I hadn’t drunk so much wine, that my head wasn’t so agitated, my body so wired. No distraction, no thinking, I told myself. I had to do what I came to do. To get Ophelia and leave. Just that, nothing more. I took the last few steps to the storage cupboard and saw that the inner door was open, the unmistakable orange glow of candlelight climbing the stairs beyond. As I began to descend, a memory bloomed out of the darkness, a nursery rhyme from childhood that I had recently heard. By the time I reached the bottom of the stairs my head was filled with it. This little piggy went to market. This little piggy stayed at home. This little piggy had roast beef. This little piggy had none. And this little piggy went wee wee wee wee all the way home. I heard a child’s voice reciting the rhyme, carried as if on the sea breeze. It was followed by a woman’s. Come home, it said, come home, my darling. Then both vanished under the sound of the sea.

  I took a deep breath and tried again to still my mind. Think of nothing, I told myself, think of a deep black emptiness. I don’t know how long I stayed there trying to think of nothing. But when I felt I was ready I turned towards the underground room.

  Just as I had expected, Ophelia was standing in front of the mirror, candles on the floor at each end of it. She was staring straight ahead, unmoving, totally absorbed. In the fingers of her right hand she held the locket that had her parents’ photographs inside, sliding it up and down the silver necklace that she always wore. I looked at her bare feet, her shoes on the floor beside her and her coat slung over the white nightdress underneath. I had witnessed this scene, been a part of it, once before. It was an exact echo of the first time we had come to the underground room together. Now, the last time we would be here, I was determined it would play out differently.

  I took a couple of steps forward so that I was almost level with the edge of the mirror.

  ‘Ophelia,’ I said quietly, so as not to alarm her.

  She didn’t move, still entirely unaware of my presence.

  I looked at her face and something inside me melted. Certain now why she had come here, I could give her a little more time. Give her time to say goodbye. I looked around the room, at the bed along the far wall, the armchair at its right-hand end. I blinked away an image of Amelia’s body, her arm falling away from her onto the earth floor. But as soon as it was gone another followed. James sitting in the chair, holding a green shoe in his hand. I frowned. I still didn’t understand it. I turned to look at the shoes, hanging by the velvet ribbon over the corner of the mirror’s frame. Instinctively I reached out to touch them. The leather was soft, delicate. I unhooked them from the mirror and brought them closer to my face. I inhaled deeply. After all this time, they still possessed a faint fragrance. I slid my hand into the left shoe. Sure enough, the five-toe indentation was there. I smiled and closed my eyes. I pictured a beach, a child with her hand in the imprint of a foot, a woman turning in the distance, the smell of salt on the air. Then I saw Amelia’s feet on the bed in the underground room – and a moment later they became Ophelia’s.

  My eyes snapped open. We had to get going.

  ‘Ophelia,’ I said again, louder now.

  This time she turned towards me. But she hesitated a moment before she spoke. ‘I didn’t recognise you, Johnny. You look different somehow. What are you doing here?’

  ‘I might ask you the same question.’

  She looked back at the mirror, then down at her bare feet and the nightdress and coat. ‘I remember dreaming. The same dream . . . you know. And then I wanted to come here.’ She frowned. ‘Don’t be angry, Johnny. I just had to come.’

  I nodded. I wasn’t angry. I thought I understood. ‘It’s okay. You wanted to see them again. One last time.’ I nodded towards the mirror.

  Ophelia gazed back at it again. ‘Yes, perhaps.’

  I looked at her, still holding the locket in her right hand, running it up and down the silver chain. In spite of myself, I smiled. ‘Did you know that you always do that when you’re thinking of your parents?’

  Ophelia looked down at her hands and then back at me. ‘No, I didn’t.’ She smiled too.

  ‘I think if I’d realised it earlier I might have understood a little more. Those moments when you were so distant when I watched and wondered where you were. You were giving me clues the whole time.’ I gestured to her locket. ‘But I guess that’s what coming to know someone is all about. It takes time.’ Yes, I thought. It takes time to know someone, to know their motivations, their innermost thoughts. And who could have guessed back then that the dead were my biggest competition. I smiled again as I thought about it. But something else twisted deep down inside me.

  I looked back at Ophelia. She was scrutinising me properly, perhaps for the first time. I saw her gaze take me in: the messy hair, the dark eyes, the crumpled T-shirt and jeans. ‘Johnny, what are you doing here?’

  I stared at her, not understanding. ‘I came to get you. I didn’t like the idea of your being here on your own.’

  She nodded, looked down at my hands and then back into my eyes. ‘I thought you didn’t want us to be here together at al
l.’

  ‘Well, no, obviously.’ I felt a sudden flash of annoyance. ‘I did say that, of course. But you came here. And I thought, having weighed it up, that it was better for me to come and get you than not.’

  Ophelia looked back at the mirror once more. She was still for a long moment and then she nodded.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  She turned back in my direction, flashing another look at my hands. ‘Yes, I’m okay. I think I’m beginning to understand.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ Again I experienced a spark of anger. What was she talking about? I for one didn’t understand.

  ‘Johnny, what are you doing with the shoes?’ Pause. ‘And the ribbon?’

  Now it was my turn to look down at my hands. In my left I held the shoes by their ankle straps, in my right I held the velvet ribbon, manipulating it like a string of rosary beads. The gesture was innocuous enough and yet for some reason the question made me defensive. ‘Nothing,’ I said, sharply. ‘I’m not doing anything. What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, but I knew she was thinking something that she wasn’t saying. ‘Why don’t we go upstairs and talk about it?’

  I stared at her. All of a sudden that was the last thing I wanted to do. I ran my thumb and forefinger along the ribbon in my right hand, feeling the soft crush of the velvet. It was reassuring to the touch. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Tell me now.’

  Ophelia hesitated and I thought I saw a flash of panic cross her eyes. ‘Okay, then. Bear with me. I’m just trying to get it straight.’

  I stared at her, my irritation no doubt apparent.

  ‘Will you keep your eyes on me, Johnny, while I tell you what I’m thinking? Will you focus on me entirely?’

  I looked at her then, really looked at her, at her dark hair hanging down, at the beautiful green of her eyes. My heart softened. I smiled. ‘Of course I will.’

  ‘Good.’ She took a deep breath and exhaled. The sound was jagged, rasping. The sound of fear. ‘So you remember the dream of my parents?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And that it’s been the same since childhood.’

  I nodded.

  ‘But when I see it in the mirror, the ending is different.’

  I nodded again. None of this was new. We had talked about it before.

  ‘It bothered me from the first time I saw it. I couldn’t understand how it could be. That the dream was precisely the same but for this one crucial difference. But now I think I understand it. Like Tara said, the mirror is suggesting that a different ending is possible. That the dream it showed me could be reality.’

  Ophelia paused. I didn’t say anything, trying to understand. The silence closed around us, intense, suffocating, and I squeezed the shoes in my left hand.

  ‘Johnny, are you following?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not really. It’s a dream – different ending or not. You know it’s not real, don’t you?’

  She looked at me, her eyes glinting in the candlelight. ‘I know that it could be real, Johnny. You’ve come to realise by now, haven’t you, that sometimes dreams are more than dreams?’

  I thought about what I had seen lately – James sitting in the chair in the underground room, Amelia upon the bed or engaged in conversation with me – and I nodded. But I still wasn’t quite there.

  ‘The dream can end in one of two ways. The way it normally ends. The way I always envisage it. My parents walk away and I remain here. Or the way the mirror is suggesting. That I go to join my parents.’

  I frowned, my stomach tightening. I felt my body tense, my hands clench. ‘But then one choice is life, and the other death?’

  Ophelia nodded, glancing down at my hands.

  ‘But that’s not a real choice, Ophelia. It’s perverse.’

  ‘Yes, of course. It’s a choice that only something dark and tainted would suggest.’ She paused and looked at the mirror again.

  I turned to look at it for the first time, remembering what Tara had said. That it was evil. I looked at it closely. Yes, no doubt about it, it was dark and dangerous. You are dark and dangerous too, said that small voice in my head again. I squinted, looking into the mirror’s depths, searching for my reflection. But before I could find it I heard Ophelia’s voice calling my name.

  ‘Johnny. Johnny. Please look at me. Look at me.’ She sounded desperate and, like the voice in my head, very far away. ‘Johnny,’ she said again louder, sharply, and brought me back in an instant to her. ‘Try to concentrate on me,’ I heard her say.

  I nodded, turning to face her.

  For a moment or two there was silence between us as she stared at me. ‘Are you with me, Johnny?’ she said finally.

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Nonetheless, she continued to stare at me. Eventually she started talking again. ‘I’ve really struggled to understand it. But I think I finally get it. Like you, I felt this attraction to the mirror. But at the same time I feared it, felt that there was something menacing, something that I should stay away from. I realise that both of these sensations are generated by it. On the one hand there’s the pull of the mirror – its darkness, its power, its magic, whatever you want to call it. It seems to offer you something, the offer of the thing that perhaps you want most in the whole world. It’s mesmerising, seductive, you want to feel it, to taste it. You want to go on tasting it. You want to give in to it. But on the other hand you feel revulsion, the tug of your own instinct, the will to resist, to fight it, to remain wholly yourself, however flawed, however incomplete that might be. Because what you have is real and you want it to survive.’

  I stared back at Ophelia, thinking it through. I had been struggling for a while now to come to this realisation. But in the end this was it. And Ophelia had made the connection.

  ‘And now I fear that I’ve made my choice, by default; by coming back here, by giving way to the mirror one too many times. Perhaps I’ve chosen what the mirror wanted, the mirror’s version of events.’

  I frowned, still not understanding. ‘You’ve chosen death? How?’

  But even as I asked the question, I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. And then something twisted deep down inside me.

  Ophelia continued to stare at me for a moment. Then her gaze drifted downwards once more to my hands. ‘You know how, Johnny.’

  I thought about the dream that Ophelia had had a few nights ago. An image of her feet flashed across my mind. They were unmoving on the corner of the bed. Terrified, I tried to blink everything away, to clear my mind. But this time the images stubbornly persisted. Then I heard the small voice in my head again. This is the choice the mirror’s been guiding you to all along. Life or death, it said. She has made her choice. Now you must make yours.

  I tried to banish it, to close my ears to the sound. But the voice wouldn’t be banished this time. I heard it again, the voice that I had struggled with, small but persistent, speaking from the heart of darkness inside me. But you know what happens. You have known it all along.

  Then it waited for a moment before delivering the final blow.

  You kill her, it said.

  46

  I KNEW OPHELIA was talking, I could hear her voice, remote, in the background, speaking to me. But the sound seemed somehow to have slipped, to have become fluid, to have stopped obeying all the normal rules. I felt it slide, uncaught, around the room, whirl around me for a second and then trickle through my fingers. I looked down at my hands but I didn’t recognise them. They looked big, the fingers thick, not like my own. I wondered if I still had my own face and was just about to turn and look into the mirror when I heard Ophelia shout.

  ‘No, Johnny. Don’t do that. You promised me, remember?’ She was staring at me, her eyes wild, pleading. But her words made me think of something else.

  ‘And you promised me that you wouldn’t come down here. It seems that your promises aren’t worth much.’

  ‘I know – I’m sorry. But like you said, I was coming to say goodbye. Yo
u know that, don’t you?’

  She was looking at me intently but as I stared back at her I wondered whether she was in fact being honest.

  She took a step forwards and reached out to me. ‘Can we get out of here?’

  I looked from her hand to my own, holding the green ribbon between two fingers. ‘Why?’ The words came out of my mouth but they didn’t sound like me.

  ‘Because I choose you, Johnny. That’s my choice. Not the mirror’s choice, my own. You have a choice, too.’

  I looked at her, but I no longer saw her face. Instead I saw Amelia standing there. She was wearing her black dress. Her hair fell long and loose down her back, wild and beautiful, and her feline eyes were wide – frightened, perhaps.

  Ophelia’s voice punctured my thoughts. ‘You believe me, don’t you, Johnny?’

  ‘Stop saying my name,’ I yelled. ‘I don’t like it.’ Somehow it didn’t sound right. I raised my right hand up to my head, which was throbbing, and as I did so I saw the ribbon dangling between my fingers. For some reason, it made me remember something that had been bothering me. ‘You actually think that I could hurt you, don’t you?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ The tone was heartfelt but Ophelia’s eyes betrayed her.

  ‘You actually think that I could kill you. You think that is my choice, don’t you? Your life or your death. And you think that I’ve chosen death.’

  Ophelia shook her head but I could see the tears that had started to fall down her cheeks. Something about it made me angry and I felt a bloom of irritation burst inside me. I took a step forward towards her, dropping the shoes I’d been holding onto the floor. They hit the ground with a dull thud. The sound made me think of something but I couldn’t remember what it was.

  I took another step forwards, Ophelia crying out now, speaking to me, but I shut my ears to it all. Instead, I turned and looked into the mirror. I had been fighting this moment for so long that to surrender to it finally produced an intense release. I sought out my reflection, the darkness of my eyes, and found them almost immediately. Then I looked deeper and smiled and my grey lips curled, the gnarled leer grinning back at me, my stronger, darker, more virile self. The self I had longed for.