Mirror Image

by Michael Scott

  But these were better times, more complex times, and that suited it. The belief in its kind and its sisters had faded, they had been relegated to petty tales used to frighten children.

  Ignorance now was its greatest weapon.

  It had grown in strength since it had been uncovered and had started to drink of the myriad complex emotions of the humankind. And whereas before it had been a shadow in the Otherworld, a fetch, now it was an elemental force that swept all before it. The souls of the newly dead were sustenance to it, the dreams of the innocent and the insane fed its hunger, but its thirst could only be fed with blood and tears and semen.

  It had started to extend its influence into the world of men, to hunt, taking those closest to its core, calling them with images from their own minds. It relished their fear, their terror, it clutched them to its bosom, draining their lost souls of all emotion, leaving the husks to be twisted on the whirlwind of its power.

  But there were irritations.

  The last scion of the old enemy was at large, it had felt his presence on the very edges of the Otherworld, a thin, cold spark of hatred, carefully shielded from all influences. But as its powers increased, then so too did his vulnerability, and soon, soon, it would reach out and snatch his immortal soul from its cowering place, and that was a morsel it would enjoy.

  But now it thirsted. It needed blood and sweat and semen to satisfy its craving.

  The trap had been baited with subtle and beguiling images. Soon it would drink its fill.

  Soon.

  57

  MARGARET HAAREN walked away from the graveside and picked her way through the headstones to where Jonathan Frazer was standing sheltering beneath a large black umbrella. She was wearing her full uniform and Frazer thought this lent her a dignity which her otherwise rather matronly figure denied her.

  “I’m surprised to see you here, Mr. Frazer,” she said quietly, stepping under the umbrella, deliberately bringing herself close to him.

  From a distance, the minister’s voice carried through the still wet air. “Ashes to ashes…” The thud of wet clay onto the wooden coffin sounded like a gunshot across the bleak rain-swept cemetery.

  He looked past her, his soft brown eyes unfocused. “I suppose I felt I had to come. I felt responsible.”

  The detective said nothing. She was a great believer in allowing people to talk themselves into trouble.

  “I mean it happened on my property … and he was investigating a crime that had happened in my…” he trailed off, realizing he was talking nonsense.

  “I’m going straight on to another funeral, Mr. Frazer. Another officer killed on your property. And tomorrow I’m attending the funeral of the officer slain in the library. I didn’t really know those men, but they were police officers under my command, and I have a duty to find their killer.” Margaret Haaren glanced back over her shoulder. Without turning her head, she continued. “But José Pérez was a friend, a very good friend. He was twenty-five years a policeman. That’s his wife and two daughters over there. They married the year he joined the force: they would have been twenty-five years married this year … next month in fact. He was going to take her to Hawaii for their anniversary. The tickets are in the top right hand drawer of his desk.” When she turned back to Frazer, her face was a hard mask. “I don’t have a duty to find José’s murderer. I have an obligation. I want the man who killed him, and my other two officers. I know you know this scarred man Mr. Frazer; I know you know more than you’re telling me. But unfortunately I cannot prove it—yet.” Her voice was now little more than a whisper. “I’m going to catch the man responsible and he’s going to jail … and I’ve a feeling you’re going along with him. Accessory to murder, Mr. Frazer, is a very serious charge and doubly so when the victims are police officers. Remember that, Mr. Frazer, the next time you meet your scarred friend.”

  “Aunt Margaret?”

  With a hiss of anger, Margaret Haaren turned around, and Frazer looked over her shoulder at a tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed beauty. “I’ll be with you in a moment, Helen,” she snapped. “My niece,” she explained to Frazer.

  “I don’t blame you for your suspicions,” he said tiredly. “But I am the innocent here. I am truly sorry for the deaths of your officers, but I can assure you that I had absolutely nothing to do with them, nor did I know anything about them. If I knew where this scarred man was I would tell you; remember, I’m the one he’s been threatening.”

  “Perhaps you should surrender the mirror into our keeping until he is caught: at least then you can tell him the police have it.” She was watching him closely as she made the suggestion, and she’d already guessed the answer before he spoke slowly, obviously picking his words carefully.

  “I’m not sure if I could do that. I already have some interest in it … from collectors of glass…” he added absently, and then he abruptly wished her a good day, turned and walked away.

  Margaret Haaren nodded slowly. The mirror was the key. It linked the scarred man and Frazer. Frazer had lied about the mirror when he said he had purchased it in London; the company there had denied all knowledge of it. It was time to take a closer look at this mirror. She wondered if she’d be able to confiscate it as evidence? She watched the man disappear through the trees, head bent, umbrella low on his head. He was in this up to his neck … the only problem was she wasn’t sure what he was up to his neck in. Extortion? Smuggling? Theft? And murder … don’t forget murder. But whatever it was, Jonathan Frazer was making her life miserable. Maybe it was about time she returned the compliment.

  * * *

  JONATHAN FRAZER SAT in the Volvo parked across from the graveyard, his hands locked in a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. Through the ornamental iron rail surrounding the cemetery, he could see the mourners beginning to drift away from the graveside in ones and twos. He did regret the policemen’s deaths, but there was nothing he could have done about it, was there?

  Was there? He could have given the mirror back to Talbott when he had first asked for it. He could have done that … and Tony and Diane and Robert and those three police officers would still be alive.

  And why was he now protecting Talbott? The man was a murderer, a cold and callous killer with some sort of occult power. Why didn’t he tell the police what he knew?

  And what was he going to tell them: the man appeared to me in a dream; I saw the man in the mirror of my car and when I turned around, he was gone? Oh, and by the way, he tells me my mirror is haunted?

  Yes, he could see them believing that! He was already in enough trouble as it was. They believed he was involved with Talbott, and Detective Haaren had accused him of being implicated in the death of the police officers. He wondered if she had enough evidence to hold him for questioning or, even worse, to confiscate the mirror. That thought filled him with a strange—almost overpowering—terror.

  He savagely turned the key in the ignition, the engine screeching, then slammed the car into gear and took off with a squeak of rubber just as the last of the mourners left the graveyard.

  Margaret Haaren stood at the gate of the graveyard and watched the Volvo exceed the speed limit as it disappeared down the road. She wondered where he was going in such a hurry. She turned in time to see the black and white Chevrolet Caprice pull out from the curb and take off after him. She nodded in satisfaction: she’d read the report later on.

  58

  THE DRY dust and leather smell of the guesthouse was overlain with a sharper, bitter odor, a rich metallic copper tang. In the silence, the maddened buzzing of a fly sounded unnaturally loud. And then another sound broke the silence, a sharp hiss of pain.

  Jonathan Frazer knelt on the floor before the mirror. He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, his jacket flung carelessly on the floor behind him. He had used a surgical scalpel, which he’d disinfected in alcohol beforehand, to open one of the small veins in his wrist, and blood was dribbling onto the thick bath sponge he held in his right hand. He didn’t even wan
t to think too closely about what he was doing; he preferred to regard it as a scientific experiment, and if it failed then nothing would have been lost and he’d review his alternatives. But if it succeeded … well, he preferred not to think about that, either.

  When the sponge was sodden with his blood, he reached out and rubbed it across the mirror. The grime wiped away cleanly and he was able to see himself clearly in the mirror for the first time.

  He grinned at his reflection. He looked ridiculous: no, worse, he looked like a junkie who’d just shot up, kneeling here on the floor, blood snaking along his arm. He reached out and rubbed at the glass again, squeezing the sponge, blood trickling through his fingers and running down the glass, cutting through the filth.

  So, that part of the experiment had been successful: blood did clear the glass. Must be something in the liquid …

  But Talbott had also said that the mirror showed images. He stared into the glass, wondering what it would show. He had seen things in it before, dreamt dreams, seen faces …

  He blinked as his vision blurred, or maybe it was a distortion in the glass. He rubbed at it again with the blood-soaked sponge, but the ghosting around his features remained, the planes of his face, the curve of his chin, the shadows of his eyes seeming to shift, to move, to blur.

  To change.

  There was shadow and shape and finally, a face.

  A woman looked out of the mirror at him!

  A dominant, powerful face, strong cheekbones, slightly up-tilted black eyes beneath curving eyebrows, full lips, a thick mass of hair.

  The image moved.

  Jonathan Frazer fell backwards onto the floor, supporting himself on his arms, as he stared horrified at the moving shapes.

  The woman was moving, drawing away from him even as the background behind her became clearer, like a stage set coming to life. The image of the woman was combing her thick luxuriant hair, staring into the mirror while behind her a man, bald, short, corpulent with a huge hook of a nose, sat naked sat on the edge of an enormous drapery-hung bed. The room was magnificent, the walls frescoed, hung with ornate tapestries and there were numerous rugs on the marbled floor. Two tall bronze doors, each one worked in fabulous detail, were barely visible at the far end of the room.

  The woman walked away from the mirror, and Frazer could see that she, too, was naked, and he watched the sway of her buttocks, the trembling of her mass of hair as she approached the fat man. His arms went out to encircle her as she spread her legs and climbed onto his lap, deftly working him inside her.

  Aware of his own arousal, Frazer watched as she moved swiftly on top of him, her hands clasped on either side of his head, her mouth locked on his with a savage passion. And then the man’s hands—heavily beringed, Frazer suddenly noticed—began to tighten on the woman’s back, clutching at her flesh, leaving red weals in their wake. They scored long lines down her back as he gripped her buttocks, fingers digging into the soft flesh.

  Frazer saw the woman moving more quickly now, pounding up and down on the man. And then she stopped. She stretched her hands out and her back arched, her head tilting upwards, face to the ceiling, the long mass of her hair falling almost to the floor behind her. Frazer saw that the fat man’s eyes were squeezed shut, tears squeezing out from beneath the lids.

  And then the woman’s hands were at her hair. Frazer saw the pin—at least eight inches long, tipped with what looked like a single ruby. He saw her hands come back around the man’s head, brushing past his jowls, his tightly cropped gray hair, cupping his ears. She bent her head to kiss him, her mouth opening wide, fixing onto his, and Frazer saw her left hand move away from the man’s head—and then back in again, plunging the pin deep into the man’s ear. He thrashed in agony, but the woman still clung to him, holding the pin firmly in place, her mouth still locked over his—preventing him from crying out, Frazer suddenly realized. The fat man’s struggles abruptly weakened and the woman, who was still astride him, pushed him back, forcing him down onto the bed. His hands beat feebly at her, but she kept twisting the pin, turning it, forcing it in deeper. There was a sudden spasm and the fat man’s struggles ceased.

  When she was sure he was dead, the woman climbed off him, and hurried to the low marble-topped table. There was a heavy goblet and two glasses standing on the table, and Frazer immediately identified them as fifteenth century Venetian glass. Dashing the wine from one of the goblets she hurried back to the corpse. Dragging the bloody pin from his ear, she plunged into the jugular, twisting and turning the pin to enlarge the opening. Blood spurted and then almost immediately died to a trickle. Holding the man’s head, she tilted it to one side, catching the trickling blood in the goblet. When she had collected enough of the sluggish liquid, she walked slowly back to the mirror.

  Toward Frazer.

  Jonathan Frazer felt his mouth go dry, his breath catch in his throat. He had become aroused as she had made love with the man, but that arousal had passed as he watched in horrified fascination while she killed the old man and collected his blood in the goblet. Now he felt himself becoming aroused again as she walked towards him and he saw her fully exposed for the first time: the large and heavy breasts, the small nipples puckered and erect. Her belly was smoothly rounded, her navel deeply indented, and the hair between her thighs was as thick and dark as the hair on her head.

  The image crouched before the mirror, seemingly no more than a foot away from Frazer. She clutched the goblet in both hands and her lips were moving as if in prayer. Dipping a hand in the liquid, she rubbed it across her breasts and down over her belly. When her hand touched her groin she shuddered in sudden orgasm. Then, she looked up, straight into Frazer’s eyes—and threw the contents of the goblet directly into his face.

  He shrieked aloud and fell backwards, his arm across his face. When he opened his eyes and looked at the mirror, he saw that the mirror was clouding over from the other side. The greasy grime had returned and there was no sign of the image in the glass.

  It was only when he sat up that he realized his white T-shirt was speckled in blood.

  59

  THERE WAS too much glass, too many mirrors around for him to be comfortable, and bitter experience had taught him that as the image gained strength, it could work through any reflective surface.

  House music throbbed, a deep base vibrating through the walls, pulsing in the air and the arched ceiling and orange glow from the lights gave the nightclub interior an eerie inferno feel. As the music intensified the lights flashed intermittently from blue to orange along with the beat. Edmund Talbott reckoned that hell had a chamber very much like this. Scantily clad, sweaty bodies gyrated to the beat of the deafening music.

  He had initially thought he was going to be very much out of place, but he was surprised by the number of older men cruising the nightclub, lounging at the bar, obviously watching the women. He was even more surprised at the number of young women who were dancing, drinking, and flirting with them.

  He shouldered his way through the crowd, making for the bar, already regretting coming in. He reckoned his chances of finding Manny Frazer here were slim indeed.

  He’d spent the day sitting in a stolen blue Toyota Corolla, watching the Frazer house through binoculars. He had seen Jonathan Frazer drive up in the Volvo and hurry into the house at around one, but there had been no activity since then, and Frazer was still in the house … or was he in the guesthouse?

  He needed to get to Frazer, but with the police surveillance outside the house he couldn’t simply walk up to the front door, and he was too close to the mirror to even think about using astral projection. Even this far from the glass, he could feel the coldly pulsating core of the whirlpool battering against his unconscious.

  He was going to have to get into the house. He knew that the mirror was already exerting its influence over Frazer. He had seen it in his eyes, had felt it, and he knew he couldn’t count on Frazer to cover the glass with a black cloth. But he had two cans of aerosol black lacque
r paint in his pockets and if at all possible he was going to spray the surface of the glass. He wasn’t sure how effective that would be, but it should cut down the mirror’s ability to show the images it used to entice its victims.

  And Jonathan Frazer was an obvious target.

  Edmund Talbott was becoming concerned for Frazer’s mental health. He had encountered disturbing signs on the astral that someone was feeding the mirror with blood, and yet Talbott hadn’t heard of any deaths, hadn’t felt any souls entering the Otherworld. So that meant the feeding was deliberate. Was the mirror more powerful than he’d thought: had it taken Frazer several steps further than he imagined? If he discovered that Frazer was feeding the mirror with blood then Talbott would kill him with no more compunction than he would a dangerous insect.

  Day turned to evening and fell into night and, around ten, just when he was contemplating giving up, a yellow cab arrived. Talbott saw a brief flurry of activity in the unmarked police car as the cab drove up the driveway to the Frazer house. The door opened almost immediately and light shafted out into the mild night air. Manny Frazer appeared, wearing a long loose coat, and climbed into the cab. Talbott immediately started up the Corolla and drove out onto the main road, timing it so that the cab ended up directly behind him. The light turned red and he used the opportunity to glance around—he had removed the rearview and side mirrors—and saw Manny pulling off her coat. He pulled in to the curbside, allowing the cab to move past him, and then pulled out behind it. He had followed it through the busy evening streets as it cut across Barham Boulevard, the Hollywood Freeway, Highland Avenue and then down onto Sunset Boulevard, eventually pulling outside a nightclub close to Crescent Heights. Talbott saw the brake lights flare and immediately turned right into a side street. The cab stopped outside what looked like a minimalist stone storefront with a single wooden door and Manny Frazer stepped out—and he immediately knew why she’d been wearing a coat when she left the house. She was wearing a tiny black dress. It barely covered her buttocks, a scooped neckline exposed most of her breasts, and when she turned her back, Talbott saw that most of her back was bare.