Mirrorman

by Trevor Hoyle

  ‘As you desired the deaths of my wife and daughter,’ Cawdor says bitterly.

  Kersh is hurt. ‘Hell, no, Jeff, that wasn’t me! That was them other guys. I didn’t mean you no harm – you or your family. It was them religious nuts did all that stuff, the Messengers. Nothin’ to do with me.’

  If that’s true, Cawdor thinks, why did I see Kersh’s face in the fragments of mirror? How come I knew about the penthouse, the tower? He stares out dizzily at the millions of lights twinkling below. What if Kersh is the wrong man? Not really to blame? This isn’t how Cawdor imagined it would be. Fact is, Kersh doesn’t seem such a bad guy after all. He’s free with his liquor. He’s not bad company. Cawdor might even get to like him.

  ‘Just between the two of us, Jeff, I never could understand what all that religious crap was about.’ Kersh leans nearer, confiding. ‘See, they never explained it to me. Them guys is weird people – and I mean weird – believe you me. Give me the creeps.’ Kersh shivers and takes a deep gulp.

  ‘Could be I made a mistake,’ Cawdor says in a small voice.

  ‘Well,’ says Kersh charitably, ‘we all of us do that. Hell, have I made mistakes! I’d rewrite the book if I could. Start over. But that’s life, I guess.’

  Cawdor is totally confused. Even his own thoughts don’t seem to belong to him any more. He’s thinking things that seem alien to him. Why has he come here, seeking out Kersh, if Kersh isn’t to blame?

  He blinks and stares out at the lights, swirling all around, above, below, from horizon to horizon.

  Is it the drink that’s affecting him? What has Kersh put in it?

  He glances up muzzily as a flash of blue lightning flickers distantly across the sky. Even Kersh has electrical storms. Like the spectacular one Cawdor remembers watching from his office window in New York –

  ‘Yeah, that was me.’ Kersh grins, boasting again. ‘I can play around with electricity. It’s the juice in the chair. It feeds me. I tap into it and –’

  He stops dead as Cawdor turns to stare at him.

  ‘How did you know what I was thinking?’

  ‘Huh?’ Kersh swallows nervously.

  ‘You read my mind.’

  ‘I did?’ Kersh gives a rapid shake of the head. ‘Naw, don’t think so, Jeff. Coincidence, that’s all. Let’s have another drink.’

  The lightning crackles like small brittle bones being crushed in a huge fist.

  ‘You got me all wrong, Jeff.’ Kersh pats his arm. ‘We’re buddies, ain’t we? I’m not such a bad guy after all. I’m free with my liquor. I’m not bad company. You might even get to like me.’

  No wonder these thoughts seem strange, Cawdor thinks. They’re not mine. They’re his. Kersh is thinking me. Putting these thoughts inside my head. The bastard’s to blame all right.

  ‘Naw, it wasn’t me.’ Kersh’s tone becomes wheedling. ‘It was the Messengers all along, like I told you. They used me to get at you. That’s the truth, Jeff, I swear.’

  Underneath the good-buddy act Cawdor sees that the man is trembling. The good eye rolls up, showing white. His face twitches.

  ‘You’re innocent, right, Frank?’

  ‘Yeah … Yeah, sure I am. It’s them guys you want, not me.’ His voice strains with pleading. ‘I got nothing against you, Jeff – or your wife and kid. What happened to them was out of my control.’

  ‘It was out of your control when you raped my daughter. Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘Not me, man, I never did such a thing. Never.’

  ‘You raped her in front of me. That was your mistake, Frank. I saw you do it.’

  ‘But listen, hey listen. They made me do it. I had no choice. It was the Messengers, they forced me to rape her –’

  Kersh clamps his mouth tight, as if he could have bitten off his tongue. He grips the rail in both hands, then casts a crafty look in Cawdor’s direction. ‘Anyway, you ain’t no fuckin’ angel.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You didn’t do a fat lot to protect them.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know damn well what I mean. That night on the ship. Out in the middle of the ocean. Your wife and kid paid the price while you were too busy getting laid. Remember?’ Kersh shakes his head, clucking his tongue. ‘Talk about fall from grace, Jeff. You fell way down, you can’t deny it.’

  Cawdor doesn’t try to deny it, even to himself, because he knows it’s true. Inside he burns with shame. And with shame comes a mountain weight of guilt, crushing him, crippling his resolve. Frank is right. He left his family unprotected. He was tempted and led away from the straight and narrow. What right has he to pass judgement on anyone else? OK, so Frank made a few mistakes. But who hasn’t, for chrissakes? Hell, Cawdor thinks, have I made mistakes! I’d rewrite the book if I could. Start over. But that’s life, I guess.

  It’s happening again.

  He’s thinking Kersh’s thoughts.

  No – Kersh is thinking him.

  Snap out of it!

  Savagely, Cawdor shoves himself away from the rail and straightens up to his full height. He’s losing control, becoming confused and lost in the dizzying swirl of lights. His purpose in being here is floating away on the night air. One minute he reckons Kersh might be a decent enough guy who’s been misjudged; the next he’s stricken helpless with guilt over what he himself did – or rather failed to do. He has to fight these crippling thoughts; he has to beat Kersh at his own game, break out of this mental prison and find the strength to make the evil bastard pay for what he did.

  That night on the ship. Out in the middle of the ocean. That’s what Kersh had said. Cawdor snatches the image away from Kersh and seizes on it. He sees Kersh and his brat of an accomplice on the deck of the ship under a moonless sky. A boy in a billowing nightshirt appears. There’s a struggle. Then they’re lowering a soggy, trussedup bundle into the ocean, followed by the unconscious young boy. His wife and son had been murdered by this swine Kersh, just as Kersh had returned to repeat the act with Sarah and Daniella. Again and again, the endless cycle repeating itself. How many times had it happened, the same scenario re-enacted? How many lives had he himself lived, and in each one lost a wife, a son, a daughter?

  The lightning is moving across the starscape in jagged streaks, coming closer. There are no storm clouds: the brilliant flashes of blue light appear out of nowhere, out of nothing. Cawdor turns, fists clenched by his sides, his lust for revenge restored, pure and distilled. Kersh has retreated along the balcony. His good eye gleams, bright with fear and hatred.

  I can play around with electricity. It’s the juice in the chair. It feeds me.

  He means to fry me, Cawdor thinks. It’s the only way he can destroy me. If he fails, he will lose everything. His tower will fall; the universe he has created will collapse in ruins. Nothing will remain.

  ‘Know something, Frank? I’ve only just realised. Behind the bullshit you’re nothing but a big fat zero. A cheap petty hoodlum. Mr Three-Times-Loser himself. To think that all along I built you up in my mind as some kind of masterbrain, a Mr Big with balls and brains pulling the strings. And look what I find. It’s sad. In fact, it’s pathetic. All you really are is a no-count two-bit hustler, a piece of Southern white trash I’d scrape off my shoe as I would a dog turd, and not think twice about it.’

  Kersh glances up to the sky, then back to Cawdor. ‘You think so, huh? Reckon you’re so goddamn smart, don’t you, you stuck-up sonofabitch with your “principles” and your “ideals” and your happy-families crap. You ain’t no better’n me, Jeff. You just had the breaks is all.’

  Cawdor smiles, and a nervous spasm twitches in Kersh’s cheek.

  ‘There’s only one thing you haven’t got, Frank,’ Cawdor says quietly. ‘And that’s guts.’

  Kersh gapes at him. ‘What?’

  ‘You’re yellow. I can see the streak down your back from here. Women and children, fat simpletons with toy guns in gas stations. That’s just about your mark.’

  ‘
Oh yeah?’ Kersh squares his narrow shoulders. ‘You think I’m trash, right? And you’re the guy with right on his side. OK, we’ll see who’s got balls around here.’ He curls his finger. ‘Come with me, cocksucker.’

  Cawdor follows him through the glass doors, back into the penthouse suite. He feels stronger now, more confident, having steeled himself to reject those insidious thoughts creeping into his mind. Keep up your guard, Cawdor tells himself. Never forget for a single instant that this is Kersh’s world: he can conjure up dream phantoms any time and in any place he wishes. Take nothing on trust. Believe half of what you hear and nothing of what you see. The guy is a sewer rat: liar, cheat, murderer, rapist.

  Kersh goes past the bar to the bedroom door. He halts there, his hand on the doorknob, and glances back over his shoulder. There’s a slight curl to his lip that Cawdor doesn’t like.

  ‘Not sure you oughta see this. Might stunt your growth.’

  ‘You’re a joke, Frank. A bad one. Nobody ever told you that?’

  Kersh’s expression tightens for a second. The dead eye flares drably with dull fire. If I’m a joke, then get a barrel of laughs outta this, fella.’

  The door swings open and Kersh steps through, standing to one side so that Cawdor has a view of the bedroom, which is bathed in pink light, like a room in a high-class whorehouse, dominated by a king-size bed with black silk sheets and matching pillows. Cawdor stands on the threshold. He hasn’t prepared himself because he isn’t afraid; he’s been through the very worst of it with the deaths of his wife and daughter, so whatever else Kersh’s sick brain can conjure up will amount to nothing more than a feeble shadow of the horrors he has endured. After that, he can endure anything.

  Anything at all.

  Any … thing.

  Sarah lies on the bed. She wears a satin negligée cut low at the front, trimmed with lace that barely covers her breasts. The negligée is slit up to the thigh, revealing creamy flesh above the stocking tops and a red suspender belt. Her lovely grey-blue eyes are thickly made up with mascara and purple eye shadow, her lips painted a glossy, garish vermilion. Her hair is dyed platinum blonde and brushed in shining waves that curl over her shoulders. She looks … grotesque, artificial, a wooden doll, her delicate features and fine bones hidden behind the hideous daub of a mask.

  ‘Hi, babe. Get some rest like I told you?’ Kersh floats out a casual wave. ‘Never guess who’s here.’

  Sarah sleepily raises her head. She looks up, one eye hidden by a sweep of blonde hair. ‘Don’t fuck around, Frank. Come back to bed.’

  ‘Horny as a bitch in heat,’ Kersh says, giving Cawdor a private wink. ‘These highfalutin broads all the same. Ice maidens on top; dirty sluts with filthy minds underneath. Honest truth, Jeff, this cock-happy chick damn near wore me out.’ He sniggers down his nose, enjoying the look on Cawdor’s face, that of a man who has been kicked in the belly by a mule. ‘What was it you said, Jeff? Somethin’ about a bad joke? This takes first prize, I reckon, and the joke’s on you, you pompous prick!’

  Cawdor shuts his eyes, fighting to obliterate the image from his mind, pitting his willpower against Kersh’s. He opens his eyes and the image is still there. Kersh is grinning at him. The illusion won’t go away; doesn’t even fade a little around the edges. It stays hard and solid and real – this horrible parody of Sarah stretched out languorously on the bed, a secret plea in her eyes as she gives a sidelong glance to Kersh, her tongue sliding out to moisten her lower lip. Watching her, the woman he loves, Cawdor feels the spirit within him shrivel up and wither; he feels empty and inert, as if the lifeforce has drained out of him. He has no strength to resist. He can’t fight any more. He has failed his wife. She has been sucked into the dark, twisted spiral of Kersh’s endless fantasy. Kersh can make of her anything he desires, his eternal plaything, a captive in his tower of granite and glass until the stars never fade from the sky.

  Cawdor stands there helplessly while Kersh stands there grinning. He can’t even summon up the will or the strength to strike out at Kersh – he feels so scoured raw and empty inside, the purpose and resolution that sustained him and drove him on crushed under a mountain of guilt for having failed, so pitifully, to protect his loved ones.

  ‘I did say, didn’t I?’ Kersh sits on the bed, absently tracing a finger down the contour of Sarah’s leg under the sheer negligée. That you ain’t no fucking angel yourself. Me, I admit my mistakes. Then I bury ’em.’ He giggles like a naughty child. ‘Or slide ’em into the swamp so the ‘gators can have a midnight snack. But that’s always been your problem, Jeff. Denial.’ He shakes his head sadly and sighs. ‘Don’t pay in the long run, fella, believe you me.’

  ‘Sarah!’ Cawdor finds his voice at last. It sounds cracked and hoarse. She swings the curtain of hair back, her expression lazy and indolent. He stumbles half a step forward. Kersh’s hand moves up to stroke her exposed thigh. Reclining side by side, the pair of them observe Cawdor as he sinks slowly to his knees. He presents a pathetic figure, kneeling at the foot of the bed with shoulders hunched and head bowed. Kersh wears a cloudy half-frown, as if trying to figure out what new gimmick Cawdor has come up with. Sarah seems hardly to notice him, as a vague other presence in the room. Or perhaps a dream phantom on the edge of a nightmare.

  ‘Sarah,’ Cawdor says again, brokenly. He can’t look at her, he’s so ashamed, staring down at his clenched white fists. ‘I did this to you. I stood against them because I knew they were evil and had to be stopped. Me with my precious cast-iron soul, fighting the good fight against the Shouters, the Beamers – the Messengers in all their guises. But it wasn’t me who suffered their wrath, not directly. Their retribution fell upon you. And when you needed me, God curse me, I wasn’t there. I was tempted; I was weak; I was led astray.’ Tears splash down on his bunched fists. The words are strangled in his throat. ‘Forgive me.’

  ‘Bit late in the day, buddy, wouldn’t you say?’ Kersh sneers at him. ‘You had your chance and blew it. Tough titty.’

  Cawdor raises his head and stares mutely at his wife. Or rather at the travesty that Kersh has made of her; the apparition he has manufactured to satisfy his lusts and at the same time to extinguish the last spark of any hope Cawdor might have. Because Kersh has hit on the one thing against which Cawdor has no defence. His rat’s cunning has located the chink in his armour. That’s why Sarah is here – to confront him with the physical manifestation of his own guilt. Guilt as corrosive as acid, eating him away from the inside, destroying his will to survive.

  He doesn’t expect a response to his plea, and God knows he doesn’t deserve one. The brainless painted doll on the bed can’t absolve him from his sins or bestow her forgiveness. Not when she’s been moulded by Kersh’s slimy fingers and shaped into his compliant whore. That’s all she is. An image seen in a distorting mirror. Not his wife. Not Sarah.

  The doll, the image – the distortion of Sarah – is leaning on one elbow. She is smiling at him, and there are tears in her eyes.

  ‘Kumar was right and I was wrong,’ she says.

  Kersh violently pulls away from her. ‘What the fuck?’

  ‘Sarah?’ Cawdor unclenches his fists. ‘Sarah?’

  Her gaze is straight and clear, unwavering.

  ‘Good, noble and brave. What you did was all of those things.’

  The mountain weight turns into a feather and floats away. Cawdor smiles but is unable to speak. His heart is too full.

  ‘I can’t forgive you,’ his wife says, ‘because there is nothing to forgive. If you hadn’t done what you did you wouldn’t be the man I loved.’

  Kersh jerks up off the bed. His face is white and taut, his good eye staring in disbelief. From above comes the crack of lightning and the rumbling cascade of thunder; the storm is directly over the tower.

  The heavens are in turmoil.

  The vast dome of sky is seething with electrical activity. Flashing with a billion sparks like the impulses of a psychotic brain. Synapses connecting and interacting
in a gigantic network of frenzied dementia.

  The spectacle is both awesome and terrifying to Cawdor as he stands at the balcony rail. Awesome in its ferocious and abundant energy; terrifying because he knows he is witnessing the mad chaos of Kersh’s brain in the jagged arcs of blue lightning. This is Kersh’s brain. These are his thought waves, flashing across the dark universe of his conscious mind.

  Knowing he ought to be afraid, instead Cawdor feels a strange kind of peace. When the mountain weight of guilt was lifted from him, fear went away also, and with it the desire for revenge. Now his mind is free and unburdened, and his spirit is liberated. Strangest of all, he cannot find it in his heart to hate Frank Kersh any longer. This is very curious, beyond his understanding, and Cawdor is lost for a reason to explain it. Perhaps Kumar would know why. Though perhaps not – Kumar wasn’t the infallible fount of all wisdom. He spoke of the circle being broken but was unable to say how it might be achieved. He had expressed his faith in the possibility, that was all, leaving the rest for Cawdor to figure out. Yet in his present state of mind, of restful calm, this doesn’t have the same burning importance either. It’s as if, Cawdor reflects, he has come to accept with equanimity the path of his own fate. That comes pretty near to describing how he feels. Describes it exactly, in fact. Acceptance. Allowing events to unfold as they will, cause and effect to follow its immutable course.

  And so he feels no concern or alarm at the sight of Kersh leaning back with folded arms against the granite balustrade, head sunk low on his shoulders. His face flares up, a drab ghastly white, in the flicker of lightning playing around the tower. Malevolence surrounds him like a black aura.

  ‘You and your slut bitch of a wife are trapped in here, you know that, don’t you? No way out, except down there.’ He waggles his thumb over the balustrade. ‘You wanna try it? Maybe you can fly – or fry.’ Kersh is actually smiling at the feeble joke. ‘Don’t say I didn’t give you a choice.’