Mirrorman

by Trevor Hoyle

  ‘Cat?’

  ‘Your cat. What’s it called?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. My cat. Schrödinger.’

  Cawdor relaxed. ‘That’s right. Schrödinger. For a minute I thought you’d forgotten.’

  Gribble shook his head and chuckled.

  Gribble was perspiring heavily, Cawdor noticed, glistening brown beads of sweat trickling down his face; but then it was hot out here in the sun. In fact, so hot that Cawdor felt drowsy. The heat was pleasant on his eyelids. His limbs were aching and he’d like nothing better than to just sit here on the terrace and bask, recover his strength.

  Gribble was doing something with the tubular metal arms of the chair. Cawdor opened his eyes to find Gribble fastening leather straps to his wrists. He had no idea where the straps had come from, but there they were. And Gribble’s face is now a wet brown mask. His gingerish mop of hair has receded across his skull, vanished in fact, leaving a lumpy cranium. Brown fluid is seeping out of him and dripping sluggishly to the floor. He’s shrunk, too, become low and squat, no more than waist height, and he’s fastening the straps with feelers ending in little curved claws, six on each extension.

  Cawdor tries to move and finds he can’t. The thing that was Gribble, transformed into this disgusting creature, is squatting at his feet on a rubber mat, busily securing his ankles to the chair. Why a rubber mat? Cawdor wonders. Because, he realises, the floor has to be insulated from the power surge when they throw the switch.

  ‘Take it easy,’ the creature says in a squeaky voice as Cawdor starts to struggle. ‘All you’ll feel is a little tickle. It ain’t nothin’.’

  The electric chair. Another Kershian memory, stored in that demented brain. Why hadn’t he known that Kersh would try something like this? Cawdor curses himself for a fool and an idiot. Hadn’t he warned himself to be ready for the worst Kersh could do to him? Of course (glaringly obvious to him now) Doctor Khuman and Gil Gribble – the real Gribble – hadn’t received his message. Kersh has fooled him into believing they had, let him build up his hopes, all the while toying with him, then setting a trap that Cawdor had walked blindly into like an innocent child.

  There is no help from outside. Nothing has changed. He’s still trapped inside Kersh’s crazed imagination.

  The creature has crawled up the back of the chair. Clinging on with its lower extensions, the creature is fastening the strap round Cawdor’s neck. It is necessary to do this first, in order to fit the electrodes to Cawdor’s temples. ‘We’re gonna burn your ass,’ the creature squeaks in his ear. ‘After all the fuckin’ trouble you caused Frank, it’s only what you deserve. Frazzle you to a cinder. Render you down to a grease spot. Nobody messes with Frank and gets away with it.’

  It flops to the floor, excreting more brown liquid, and squirms away. Wires trail from the back of the chair. Cawdor is bound tight, locked to the chair, straining impotently against the straps. The sun that was in his eyes, its heat pressing down languorously on his eyelids, has turned into a bright cowled lamp. There is nothing around it or beyond it but blackness.

  ‘This is neat,’ the creature giggles from the surrounding darkness. ‘I guess it’s what they call “poetic justice”. You takin’ Frank’s place in the chair, I mean. He lives. You fry. Hee-hee.’

  He will be annihilated. Obliterated. Cawdor knows that. Not killed in any conventional sense, because in a place of no-time such a thing cannot happen. But all the endless possibilities which he is capable of inhabiting will cease to be. He will become null and void, without past, present, or future. Kersh will continue. Grace MediaCorp will continue. The Beamers will continue. There is nothing to stop them.

  ‘Got a last request?’ inquires the creature gleefully. ‘Any little ole thing I can do for you? Better make it snappy.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cawdor says dully. ‘Promise me something.’

  ‘Promise you what?’ The creature is instantly suspicious.

  ‘That you’ll let my wife and daughter rest in peace.’

  ‘Not up to me. Frank calls the shots around here.’

  ‘Talk to him then. Persuade him to leave them be. You can do that, can’t you?’

  ‘I dunno. Frank likes his fun. That’s how he gets his rocks off, replaying the golden oldies. Whoosh! Out through the side of that airplane at fifteen thousand feet in mangled bits and pieces. He loves that one.’

  ‘You can at least try,’ Cawdor pleads.

  ‘Naw, he’ll go apeshit. Frank don’t like interference.’

  ‘You scared of him?’ Cawdor says tauntingly.

  The creature bristles. ‘Listen, asshole, without me ya know where Frank Kersh would be? Nowhere. He needs me.’

  ‘So how come he treats you like a bag of shit? You deserve some respect, don’t you, for everything you’ve done? You’re the walking asshole, not me.’

  The creature’s red-rimmed eyes stare up at Cawdor. ‘How come ya know about that?’

  ‘I saw it all.’ Cawdor smiles. ‘In the mirror.’

  ‘Huh? What mirror?’

  ‘If Frank Kersh is so smart, he’d know about it, wouldn’t he? He doesn’t – and now you do. You’re one up on him for a change.’

  The creature is still suspicious, but also intrigued.

  ‘You see stuff in this mirror, that what you’re saying? Like what, for instance?’

  ‘Past and future times. Like what’s going to happen to you, for instance.’ Cawdor nods down to the breast pocket of his shirt. ‘Take a look.’

  The creature slithers forward and strains up curiously on its globular body. ‘You kiddin’ me?’

  ‘See for yourself. Then you’ll know something Frank Kersh doesn’t. A lot of things he doesn’t. Then he’ll have to give you respect, because you’re the smart one, not him.’

  All eager now, the creature clambers up, its clawed feelers reaching for the breast pocket, salivating brown goo in its excitement. Cawdor waits, letting the creature get near – right up close where he wants it. As the creature stretches up, Cawdor squirms his wrist inside the strap. His hand shoots out and closes round the flabby fold of skin that passes for a neck. Fingers digging deep, he increases the pressure until blood vessels start to burst in the bulging eyes. The lipless mouth yawns emptily and soundlessly, exposing the bloated tongue writhing like a fat blue worm.

  ‘Good boy,’ Cawdor croons. ‘Undo the strap.’ The feelers twitch, claws feebly scratching the leather thong. ‘Oh, come on,’ Cawdor chides, ‘you can do better than that. If you can’t, you’re a dead white slug. In ten seconds from now!’

  As Cawdor feels the strap slacken and fall away he straightens his arm, lifting the creature off the floor. The tips of his fingers are almost touching through the pouchy neck. The creature gurgles, but not from his throat. Watery brown fluid glugs from every orifice in its head and body. The thing is being squeezed dry, like a dirty dish rag. Cawdor shakes the carcass to and fro and the sloshing liquid spills over the floor in a stinking brown tide of untreated sewage. Finally he lets the wrung-out, empty sagging sack of skin drop.

  Two red eyeballs, like burst tomatoes, stare up at Cawdor from the swilling mess that was the contents of their own body.

  ‘One thing I forgot to mention,’ Cawdor says, releasing himself from the chair. ‘The mirror broke. And broken mirrors sometimes bring bad luck.’

  * * *

  There’s a lesson to be learnt, Cawdor knows, and if he doesn’t learn it now he’s finished. Kersh had sent that thing to stop him. It had assumed Gribble’s shape. It had even re-created a location, a landscape, that was familiar and reassuring to him. And, after vowing never to be taken off his guard, he’d fallen for it, straight off, without a twinge of foreboding or a moment’s hesitation.

  From now on, Cawdor tells himself savagely, don’t trust anybody or anything. No matter who, no matter what.

  And don’t expect any help from outside. There’s none coming.

  He wipes some glutinous residue from the fingertips of his left hand and turn
s to look through the window. The buildings of the city are dark and silent under the starry sky of perpetual night. The pale slice of moon still hasn’t moved. As he stares out, Cawdor is struck by a thought – a revelation – that sets his heart pounding. He must be getting nearer to Kersh than he had imagined. Because Kersh’s sending that disgusting creature to destroy him is an act born of desperation; of fear that his sanctuary in the tower is in danger of being violated. And Cawdor realises something else: a sudden startling insight that causes hope to surge through him like a rush of pure oxygen. Up until this encounter on the terrace, the events he has witnessed were from the past. The poor wretch in the hold of the ship, the red-haired kid gunned down in the lonely gas station, even the image of himself lying in the hospital bed – all had come from the store of memories inside Kersh’s head.

  This encounter was different, indeed unique, because it hadn’t happened before. Within Kersh’s unchanging world, an event had taken place, and therefore change had occurred where nothing ever changed.

  In itself so tiny and insignificant, to Cawdor this knowledge is momentous. It means that, at some point he passed through, and without being aware of it, he has entered the continuum that Kersh inhabits. This puzzles him deeply. What brought it about? He sought help from the world outside and no help was forthcoming. Unless…

  Unless Gribble received his message.

  Cawdor can think of no other explanation than that Gribble received the message and acted upon it. He activated the Zone program, providing Cawdor with the means to focus and direct the power of his thoughts. While his body lies in a room at the Troth Foundation, his mind has been liberated and given the freedom to seek out Kersh on his own territory. He’s made it, finally, into the mirror world where Kersh is living out his eternal last second, suspended in the limbo between life and death.

  Whatever he’s got planned, Cawdor resolves, I’ll be ready. No matter what. Come on, Frank, give it your best shot. Let’s see how you do without a gun in your hand and some innocent kid behind the cash desk of a gas station to blast apart.

  Gribble rose quickly and went over to the bed. For several moments he had been observing the spasmodic tremor in Cawdor’s right hand, the fingers suddenly clenching tight. He didn’t know what it signified, and the monitoring displays hadn’t indicated there was anything amiss; but he wanted to make sure that Jeff was OK. If he was in distress – or maybe trying to communicate – Gribble was anxious to know about it.

  The hand lay open now, fingers gently curled, trembling just very slightly. Gribble squeezed it.

  ‘You need help, or you want out,’ he muttered under his breath, ‘all you gotta do is give me a sign. I’m here and I ain’t movin’.’

  Anxiously, he gazed at the black bulbous headpiece, as if in forlorn hope that he might gauge how Cawdor was feeling from its smooth, shiny, blankly anonymous exterior. He couldn’t, of course, and knew it was futile. Still, there was no doubting the strain Cawdor was under: tension exuded from his body almost like a powerful scent, was physically evident in the rigid set of his shoulders, the stiffness in his spine.

  Maybe these external signals are Jeff’s only way of communicating distress, Gribble thought, and I’m just too dumb to recognise a cry for help when I see one. He agonised with himself, uncertain what to do. It would take less than five seconds to break the circuit and bring him out of the Zone. The worst-case scenario was that Cawdor might be at a crucial stage and didn’t want to exit the system; but that couldn’t be any worse than his being helplessly trapped in there, desperate to get out and unable to do so. While he dithered and did nothing.

  Gribble made up his mind. He turned resolutely towards the keyboard. It was then he became aware of the woman standing just inside the open door: short and ample in all departments, a nervous, almost pleading smile on her round face. She wore a navy-blue jacket with gilt buttons over a cashmere sweater, a pleated skirt, and low-heeled shoes that didn’t disguise but drew attention to her thick ankles.

  ‘Yes?’ Gribble said. He sounded sharp because he thought she might be a member of staff he’d never seen before who only worked nights. He wondered nervously whether Mrs Brandt had sent her.

  ‘You’re Mr Gribble, aren’t you?’

  He nodded warily.

  ‘I’m Phyllis Keets,’ the woman said shyly.

  The name didn’t register with Gil Gribble, though she announced it as though it should.

  ‘We’ve spoken on the phone, Mr Gribble. I work for Jeff – Mr Cawdor,’ she informed him, ‘as his personal assistant.’ Her eyes strayed to the figure in the bed. Some small bright object inside her open jacket flared in the light from the lamp as she came further into the room. Her shy smile flickered briefly once again, meant for him, though her gaze didn’t move from Cawdor.

  Oh, that Phyllis, Gribble was thinking. His jaw nearly dropped then, remembering that this was the woman who had accused Jeff of sexually molesting her. So what the hell was she doing here? And less important, but just as puzzling, how had she known where to find her boss? Gribble’s natural inclination was to be polite, but he couldn’t quell a lurking sense of suspicion, if not downright unease. Something didn’t add up.

  Phyllis Keets said, ‘I hope you don’t mind my showing up out of the blue like this, but I was so concerned when I heard Jeff had been moved from the hospital in New York. I mean, really anxious to learn whether he’d recovered from his injuries or had relapsed.’ She stepped nearer the bed, frowning. ‘Is this … some form of treatment he’s receiving?’ she asked, indicating the black headpiece.

  Gribble’s nod was guarded. ‘Yeah.’ Several days had passed since Cawdor left Mount Sinai Hospital, that’s how concerned she was. He stared at her for a long moment. ‘Jeff’s coming along just fine, Miss Keets. Healed up pretty good.’

  ‘I’m so relieved, I can’t tell you,’ Phyllis murmured, her black eyelashes fluttering, putting her hand to her heart. ‘Poor man, all he’s suffered, it’s terrible.’

  ‘We’re relieved too, now he’s on the mend. He’s getting the best of care here, so there’s no cause to fret.’ Gribble, ever courteous, tentatively waved an arm towards the door. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, Miss Keets, this is kind of a delicate part of the recuperation process. I don’t want Jeff disturbed at this point in time. You with me?’ he said more insistently when she remained standing there, fingers spread over her upper breast, her eyes fixed on Cawdor. ‘Miss Keets?’

  She came out of her trance, blinking rapidly.

  ‘Oh, yes. Sorry to intrude. I just wanted to make sure he was OK.’

  ‘Well, now you seen for yourself he is. You come all the way up here on your own?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Helluva long drive.’

  Phyllis nodded and yet still lingered, which pushed Gribble’s irritation very quickly to real pissed off.

  Something about the woman that gave him the shivers. A sort of deadness inside, as if she had been programmed, her expressed concern and sympathy rather cold and automatic. He’d formed a mental picture of the Phyllis who accused Cawdor as being jittery and highly strung, wild gestures and hysterical outbursts. He couldn’t have been more wrong: shy and demure on the outside, pure ice maiden inside.

  He said through tight lips, ‘Forgive me, I don’t mean to be rude, Miss Keets, but I have work to do.’

  Now she was leaning forward, hand on her breast, peering into the helmet’s mirrored visor, which revealed nothing except her own distorted image reflected back at her like a bloated balloon, dark eyes and snub nose fringed by tight curls.

  ‘Does he know I’m here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is he sedated?’

  ‘No,’ Gribble said again, grinding it out. His natural gentle politeness wearing mighty thin.

  ‘I’m sure Jeff knows,’ Phyllis persisted. ‘I can feel his eyes on me.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t – he ain’t aware of anythin’ here in this room. It don’t exist for him.’
>
  ‘You mean he’s in his own private world, cut off from the outside?’ Phyllis said. ‘How strange.’

  Gribble stared at the carpet, fists bunched impotently. How in hell – apart from bodily throwing her out of the room – was he ever going to get rid of this damn infuriating woman? Dropping heavy hints and pointedly asking her to leave didn’t work, which left Gribble at a loss about what to do next.

  He sighed and glared at her. Maybe throwing her out was the only –

  In the mirrored visor Gribble saw a blur of movement. It was Phyllis’s hand looming large as it reached towards Cawdor. Her fingertips were pinched together, holding something that flashed in the lamplight. Staring into the helmet’s reflecting curvature, he saw a gleaming golden point aimed at the side of Cawdor’s exposed neck. The needle’s tip was barely a couple of inches away when the swinging blow caught Phyllis on the upper arm, knocking her hand aside and sending her staggering off balance to land heavily on her knees, one hand at full stretch to save herself toppling over, the other clutching the pin. Gribble had acted instinctively, in a split second, even though he didn’t have a clue what was wrong. He still didn’t know, couldn’t figure it out. Had Phyllis attacked Jeff? Meant to do him harm – with that gold pin she was holding?

  Was the woman crazy or what?

  Still confused, he craned his neck towards the crouching figure as Phyllis straightened up. Her face was round and bland, her eyes flat and without expression. Again he sensed that emptiness inside her, a vacuity of feeling. She squirmed sideways, and from a kneeling position made a lunging dive towards the bed, aiming the pin like a dart at Cawdor’s shoulder under its loose white shift. Taken by surprise, Gribble kicked out erratically. His foot missed her hand, and instead connected with the point of her elbow. There was a sharp crack of bone. Phyllis gave a shrill yelp, like that of an animal in pain, and jerked her arm protectively towards herself. The hand holding the gold pin tightened in a convulsive grip as she rolled on to her side, her full body weight pressing down on the carpet, her clenched hand underneath. At once she heaved herself over, straining to get up. Phyllis herself didn’t appear to notice anything wrong, but Gribble could clearly see blood oozing from between her fingers. Oblivious to her injury, she tried another feeble lunge with her bloody hand, and then, it seemed to Gribble, she suddenly lost interest. Shoulders bowed, she sat rocking slightly, her clenched hand with blood oozing out resting limply in her lap.