Mirror Image

by Michael Scott

  Frazer tried to scream, but his cry caught in his throat. There was a suggestion of movement in front of his face before the night exploded into light and pain. He sailed backwards into the bushes and sprawled on the grass. Rolling on his side, he was vividly aware of the wetness on his face, running down his nose, tasting the copper in his mouth. Then, a booted foot landed beside his head, inches from crushing his skull, and he attempted to cover his head from the kick. But it never came, and he heard the squeak of rubber soles on wet grass as the intruder disappeared into the night.

  8

  DEATH.

  Violent bloody death.

  Color in the Otherworld, the soul of a creature ripped from life. It experienced the creature’s confusion, pain, anguish … and then the immediate fading of consciousness, of awareness.

  An animal then.

  The little soul of an animal.

  Nothing more than a morsel.

  But enough.

  The memories were returning …

  9

  IT WAS dawn by the time the police and the paramedics had left.

  Frazer sat in the kitchen, his head cradled in his hands, an enormous bandage around his skull, a thick pad, already faintly stained, in the center of his forehead. He stared blankly at the two painkillers Celia had offered him, moving them to and fro with his forefinger. He disliked taking pills, but he knew if he didn’t take something for this headache soon he would be sick for the rest of the day.

  Celia moved quietly around the kitchen, wan and shaken after the night’s events. She had awakened to hear screaming coming from the guesthouse, and she’d been horrified when she rolled over and discovered that Jonathan was missing. She was actually phoning for the police when the sirens had woken up the whole neighborhood: blue, red, and white flashing lights pulsing in the darkness beyond the window.

  However, by the time Jonathan had been carried in, stunned and bleeding from a gashed forehead, her initial fear had turned to anger. Why hadn’t he let the police handle it? That’s what they were there for. Of course this was typical of him: hire someone to do a job and then do it himself anyway. Stupid bastard could have been killed! Anyway, maybe now he’d think about moving the contents of the guesthouse into some sort of secure storage, and she could turn the building into the home gym she’d wanted when they had first moved in. She sat down across the table from her dazed husband and pushed a mug of coffee over in front of him.

  “How do you feel?”

  Jonathan attempted a smile. “How do I look?”

  “You look like shit.”

  “That’s how I feel.”

  “Do the police know what happened?”

  He shrugged, and then winced as his shoulder and neck muscles protested. “It was an attempted break-in … or maybe they actually stole something, I don’t know, I haven’t been back to the guesthouse yet. The police want to go over it for fingerprints first. The alarm went off…”

  “You should have waited for the police,” she said coolly.

  He started to nod, then stopped, blinking with darts of pain.

  “You could have been killed.”

  “I know. Anyway … and this is the scary part: when I went into the guesthouse, there was someone in there, watching me, waiting.” He shivered, and then wrapped both hands around the mug to steady them. “I was in the guesthouse when the two cops arrived, one with a German shepherd; they were here pretty quickly. They thought I was the intruder and cuffed me until they saw my ID. They went in, and told me to go back to the house.”

  Celia nodded.

  “There’s some confusion about what happened next.” Frazer drank quickly, trying to take the sour taste from his mouth. “Whoever was in the guesthouse killed the dog.”

  “I heard the scream,” Celia whispered.

  “It was awful,” Frazer muttered.

  “But there were two screams.”

  “Do you want to hear this?”

  “Tell me.”

  Staring into the cup, he continued, his voice devoid of emotion. “From what I can gather, the dog was shot through the back of the head with a nail gun. And then its throat was sliced open with a box cutter. The police think it was still alive when its neck was snapped back. The head was almost twisted off.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “So whoever did it was obviously immensely powerful.”

  Celia pushed her mug away.

  “The second officer was not far behind. Somehow the intruder slipped past him and ran into me outside. He struck me once just here.” He touched his forehead tentatively. “The police say it was probably with the heel of his hand or some sort of martial arts punch. I don’t remember anything else.”

  “You could have been killed,” Celia repeated.

  “I could,” Jonathan said quietly, the realization only beginning to sink in. He barely made it to the bathroom before he began to throw up.

  10

  “JESUS CHRIST Almighty, place looks like a fuc … like a slaughterhouse.” Diane Williams ran her fingers through her shaggy blond hair, pushing it back off her face.

  Frazer glanced sidelong at her. “It’s a bit of a mess,” he agreed. There were glass fragments from the shattered lights everywhere, covering everything in a fine glittering white sand, crunching underfoot as they moved.

  Diane smiled. She was wearing purple-black lipstick to match her eye shadow, and he found the whole effect rather startling. “That’s a bit of an understatement.”

  Where the dog had been butchered was a bloody mess. Long tendrils of thick-crusted brown gore were spattered high on the walls, speckling the ceiling, dappling every single object within a six-foot radius. There was a large dark brown stain on the concrete floor where the carcass had continued to bleed.

  Jonathan and Diane stood looking at the floor for a few moments and then they both turned away without a word, each absorbed in their own thoughts. Looking at the bloody pool made Jonathan realize that could very easily be his blood on the floor.

  Diane was beginning to have second thoughts about working here. She turned suddenly; she had seen something moving from the corner of her eye. But when she looked there was nothing.

  Christ, but she was on edge!

  Hardly surprising was it? Some madman wandering around butchering animals. The police were treating it very seriously, it could just as easily have been one of the officers. She glanced quickly at Frazer: could just as easily have been her boss.

  Diane Williams turned slowly, eyes drawn to stare at the mirror, hands on her hips. She was wearing all black today, partially in mourning for Tony, whom she genuinely liked, though he could be an irritating old bastard, but principally because she usually wore black. She could just about make out her reflection in the warped glass. The young woman turned her head to one side, staring hard at the glass. There was something …

  “What’s wrong?” Jonathan asked quietly, startling her.

  “Nothing, nothing really. Have you made any decision about the mirror, Jonathan?”

  “No, not really. I haven’t had a chance to even think about it.”

  “I’d like to work on it.”

  Frazer blinked at her in astonishment. “But I thought you said…?”

  “That was then and this is now. I was upset, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’d like to work on it as a sort of a tribute to Tony. Putting everything he taught me into practice, completing the last piece he worked upon. Do you think he’d like that?”

  Jonathan swallowed away the sudden swelling at the back of his throat. “I think … I think he would have liked that very much.”

  Diane stepped forward and rubbed her hand down the length of the mirror; it came away covered in thick grimy soot. “Hey, I cleaned this mirror before I left the other day.”

  “I’ve noticed that about it too. It seems to attract every particle of dirt and dust.”

  “I’ll see what I can do about it,” she murmured. “I can put some anti-static polish on it, but l
et me start with the mess in here first though.”

  “I can call a cleaning company, you know, people who specialize in taking care of this kind of thing.”

  “No, it’s OK. I’d rather do it myself. I was born and raised on a farm, blood doesn’t bother me.”

  Jonathan looked around the room again, trying to put the pieces together in his mind from the moment the alarm had gone off, to the death of the dog and the attack on himself. Someone had been here last night, someone strong enough and brutal enough to kill the dog. And, whoever had done this had possessed tremendous strength. But what had they been looking for? Granted there were a lot of valuable objets d’art and antiques around, but disposing of them would have been particularly difficult and a cursory examination seemed to suggest that nothing had been taken. The police had dusted for fingerprints but had found none. Jonathan briefly wondered if it might have been some local kids breaking in just for the hell of it, but the police had said that was unlikely; if had been full of electronics, then it might have been something to consider. And they would have run scared from the dog.

  He stood up and dusted off his hands. He could understand killing the dog—if he’d had a weapon to hand when he’d first seen the creature, he’d have taken a swing at it himself. But slicing open its throat and breaking its neck was … what? Unnecessary?

  And that reminded him …

  He returned to the mirror and looked deeply into its grimy surface. When he’d been standing with his back to it he could have sworn he’d felt a hand on his shoulder: ridiculous, of course, but it had been so real. Real enough to make him jump with fright. He touched his left shoulder, wincing as his fingers touched bruising. He was almost tempted to push down his shirt to examine his flesh. Would he find the impression of fingers?

  Maybe it had been a real hand. Maybe the intruder had crept up behind him and had been preparing to grab him or attack him when the police had walked in and ruined his plan.

  “It’s only since that mirror arrived,” Diane Williams said quietly, coming up to stand beside Frazer.

  That thought had already crossed his mind.

  “It could be cursed,” she said dramatically.

  He attempted a laugh, but the sound caught in his throat. He was glad he was disposing of it. It made him—in some vague way—uncomfortable.

  “Yes, can I help you?”

  He turned at the sound of Diane’s voice, the strident quality in it bringing him back to the present. There was a figure standing in the doorway, one of the biggest men Frazer had ever seen, though with the sun behind him, it was almost impossible to make out his features.

  “I’m looking for Jonathan Frazer.” There was a curious accent, a lilt to his voice: English, Australian, South African perhaps?

  “I am Jonathan Frazer.” He stepped forward, his sense of unease growing. No one was allowed down to the guesthouse. “Can I help you? Can I ask how you managed to make your way back here?”

  “I was given your name,” the man said, not answering the question. “I understand you have a mirror here for sale, Mister Frazer,” he said directly, stepping into the room and looking around. And Jonathan knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this was the same man who’d been in the guesthouse the previous night. He looked at the man’s size and obvious strength, and his unease turned to fear.

  “I’m afraid you’re wrong, nothing here is for sale, it is all under … repair. However if you would care to visit our retail store, I’m sure we…”

  “I was told you had a mirror here for sale,” the man repeated doggedly. He took another step into the room, looming larger over Frazer. Now that he no longer had the sun at his back, not only his size, but also his physical appearance was intimidating. His cheeks were deeply scarred, his nose had been broken and badly set, long horizontal lines cut into his forehead. His eyes were coal-black and penetrating, and his mane of pure white hair seemed to make the disfigurement all the more shocking.

  “May I … may I ask who told you?” Jonathan asked, turning the tremor in his voice into a cough.

  “Anthony Farren.”

  And Jonathan immediately knew he was lying. Tony had never been known as anything other than “Tony.”

  “It is a family heirloom,” the man continued inexorably, and Frazer was beginning to wonder what was going to happen when he refused him. “It should never have gone up to the auction in London.”

  “I’m afraid the mirror is not for sale.”

  The big man leaned forward. “Make it for sale, Mister Frazer.” The threat was unmistakable.

  “I must ask you to leave now,” Jonathan said, as quietly as possible, attempting to keep his voice from shaking.

  Diane Williams appeared by his side with a hammer in her hand. The big man looked at the hammer and laughed quietly.

  “If you don’t go now, I shall be forced to call the police,” Jonathan said more forcefully, encouraged by her presence. “You are trespassing.”

  The big man glared at Frazer and then stared long and hard at Diane, his dark eyes moving slowly over her face as if committing it to memory. He turned and left, moving surprisingly quickly for such a big man. Jonathan and Diane turned to look at one another: they both knew that this was the intruder from the previous night.

  And they both knew he would be back.

  11

  DIANE WALKED the length of the guesthouse, glass fragments rasping beneath her sneakers—she thought she’d cleaned them all up—checking that all the windows were locked. Frazer had gone back to the house, scampering along the graveled path like a frightened rabbit to phone the police. The phone in the guesthouse no longer worked for some reason. She’d locked the heavy door behind him and ensured that all the skylights were sealed.

  Maybe she’d ask Jonathan Frazer for a few days off. She could go away, she had some savings put aside. She’d been wanting to buy a red Vespa Scooter she’d found at a nearby dealership, but she thought that a little vacation right now might be a much better idea.

  The way that guy had just looked at her!

  The scarred man had scared the shit out of her. The size of his hands, and he hadn’t got those scars on his face playing chess. Give him the fucking mirror if that’s what he wanted. Gift wrap it too with a big bow.

  But it looked like Frazer was going to try and play cute with him; the only problem was, people like the scarred man didn’t know how to play cute.

  No, she’d take a couple of weeks off and maybe by the time she got back, this mess would have sorted itself out. And what would have happened if she’d been here on her own, she wondered. Her eyes scanned the workbench looking for something that she could use as a weapon. The hammer was too cumbersome. Rummaging through the clutter she eventually found a long crosshead screwdriver and a needle-pointed awl. She tucked them both in the back pocket of her jeans, one to the left and one on the right. So what if she felt ridiculous: she felt a little safer.

  Diane moved the heavier items of furniture away from where the dog had been killed so she could bleach the floor. She carefully removed some of the antiques that Tony was working on before his death. A lot of them were in a poor state of repair—which is why they had been here in the first place—but she was wondering if there was anything more useful than a screwdriver and awl, like a .45 magnum for example.

  Then she remembered Tony had once kept a BB gun in the guesthouse. He had demonstrated for her how accurately he could fire the weapon by taking the flower heads off a hibiscus plant in the garden. She smiled, remembering his delight and Frazer’s horrified expression when he saw the devastation and knowing he would have to explain it to Celia. Jonathan had then banned guns of any sort, antique or modern, from the property.

  Tony had known so much and yet there had still been a playfulness in his character. What a waste. What a way to die: killed by a fucking mirror.

  Diane walked back down the room to stand before the huge slab of glass, staring at its grubby surface. She pulled a cloth from
the workbench and worked it in a circle, grimacing at the amount of grime that came off the glass. She knew she must have cleaned this mirror every day since it had arrived: where did all this shit come from?

  A glint of silver on the floor suddenly caught her eye. Squinting, she bent down and just underneath a small round side table she found a butcher’s knife. This must be the knife Jonathan said he’d been carrying the night before. “Now that’s more like it.”

  Carefully placing the knife on the ground within easy reach, she lifted a bottle of cleaning fluid from the top shelf. Starting at eye level, she rubbed furiously at the grime on the glass. Ten minutes later, with a fine sheen of sweat on her forehead and an aching arm, she stepped back to examine her handiwork. There seemed precious little result for so much effort. Bringing her face close to the glass, she rubbed at a patch she’d just cleaned with her fingertip. The glass was slightly greasy, clammy to her touch.

  Movement caught her completely unawares, sending her stumbling backwards with a scream. She whirled around, swiftly picking up the knife and holding it before her with both hands. The room was empty. The door was still closed and bolted, while dust motes spiraled undisturbed in the air.

  “Fucking hell…” she breathed. “Scared the shit out of me.”

  Feeling slightly foolish, she lowered the long blade and turned back to the mirror, grinning at the unexpected picture that presented itself: faded black jeans, blond hair, white face, the purple-black lipstick and eye shadow lending her a skull-like appearance. She laughed shakily; Tony’s crazy death, the funeral—she hadn’t been to a funeral in years—and now this strange business had her on edge.