Mirror Image

by Michael Scott

  And the pain. A starburst of pure agony.

  And silence.

  Blessed silence.

  88

  AND SILENCE.

  Blessed silence.

  The screaming had finally stopped and the silence brought her from her sleep. She’d dreamt of a gray landscape and a whirlpool of faces, of mouths opening and closing, their howling like that of the wind through stone, relentless, incessant.

  And then silence.

  Blessed silence.

  * * *

  WHEN SHE AWOKE Kelley was bending over her, a large hand pressed to her mouth, a forefinger pressed to his lips. His bright green eyes were dancing in the light from the fire which had been built up to keep the winter chill away.

  “It’s time,” he murmured, his Irish accent pronounced now, betraying his nervousness.

  “Dee?” she murmured.

  Kelley grinned. “Asleep, a little tincture in his ale to ensure he remains that way for a while.”

  The woman came up out of the bed, only the heaviness in her breasts betraying the fact that she’d given birth in the past three months.

  Kelley caught her up in his arms, pressed her naked body against his. “Tonight, I will make you immortal,” he whispered. He released her and she went to the cot and lifted out the sleeping form of the baby girl Dee had named Madimi. She looked at the girl without interest: the child had been necessary for the completion of tonight’s exercise. Nothing more. She felt nothing for it; she had deliberately prevented herself from developing feelings for it.

  Even though the fire had been kept lit in the tower room, it was still cold, a bone-chill emanating from the mirror. She hung back, loath to approach the slab of glass, touching her face where the thing had spat at her the night the child was born … or had that been a dream? Sometimes it was hard to tell reality from the dream. Certainly her face had been dappled with a red burn mark the following morning.

  She had described the creature, the golden woman she had briefly glimpsed in the glass, but Kelley had dismissed her fears; he knew the history and lore surrounding the glass—after all his family had been its guardians down through the ages—and he had never heard of anything like that in the mirror. He reminded her that she had just given birth to a child and that the body’s humors needed time to settle and, he reminded her, she had just consumed a glass of brandy, which had been laced with a soporific to ease the labor, so that it was only natural that she should see something. His words held a ring of truth to them, and he dismissed the mark on her face as nothing more than the blood, which had been excited and agitated by the birth settling close to the skin. It had faded before the day was out as he promised, and she had eventually forgotten about it.

  Until now.

  She looked at the glass again, and abruptly found she could remember the creature in the glass in perfect detail. She looked at Kelley again, but he was moving around the mirror, preparing for the ceremony that would give him ultimate power, and give her life eternal. He felt her scrutiny and glanced back over his shoulder, brows creased in concentration.

  “Second thoughts?”

  “None.”

  “You know what has to be done?”

  “Yes.”

  “You will have to be strong.” He turned away and picked up the deep copper bowl, in which was lying a long razor-edged sliver of flint, one end of which had been wrapped in thread coated with tar to form a handle.

  “Will there be pain?”

  “An instant. Nothing more. Followed by an eternity of bliss.” He turned back to the mirror. A deep purplish pulse had already begun deep in the core of the glass. “You see, it knows, it senses our presence. Come, come, bring the child. It is nearly time.”

  There was an astrological chart spread out on the floor, its edges held down by small copper pots. Months of careful calculation had gone into it to create a web of interconnecting circles with their lines of relevance and reference bisected into neat arcs. The chart had led him to the inescapable conclusion that tonight was propitious. Kelley had been working towards this moment for so long now … for most of his adult life, in fact.

  And now only seconds separated him from power, incredible occult and magical power.

  Edward Kelley stepped back from the mirror and began to strip off his clothing: this ceremony must be performed skyclad, to allow the body’s aura to be washed in the mirror’s energies. When he was naked, he took the flint knife and scored the palms of both hands in two long crosses, hissing slightly with the pain. Placing the knife back in the copper bowl, he pressed his bloody palms against the glass.

  The rippling in the mirror warped and abruptly coalesced into a series of twisting colors, vibrant and vital. There were hints of faces, features, eyes, mouths in the glass.

  Kelley stepped back from the mirror, the two bloody crosses on the glass fading, drying to a brownish flake. The woman had come up behind him, placing both hands on his shoulders, her breasts brushing his bare back, nipples hard against his skin.

  “It’s coming,” he whispered. “Get the sacrifice.”

  The woman turned away and lifted the child from its swaddling clothes, dropping them to the floor. She walked around in front of Kelley, holding the still sleeping child in both hands, offering it to the glass.

  The multitude of features on the glass had begun to coalesce, to form hideous masks, with multiple eyes, numerous mouths, teeth, and ears.

  She continued to hold the child as Kelley came around and crouched before her, sitting cross-legged on the ground. He placed the copper bowl directly before him and placed the flint knife carefully on the ground to the right of the bowl.

  The woman handed the babe down to him. When he placed it in the bowl, the coldness of the metal brought the baby girl wide awake. Bright blue eyes regarded Kelley expressionlessly. Kelley lifted the stone knife. This was the ultimate sacrifice, an unbaptized virginal female, and while it would have been preferable to find a pubescent virgin on the cusp of menses, where the energies of woman and girl were still in flux and all the more powerful because of that, the sacrifice of the baby was the next best thing.

  With his eyes fixed on the center of the mirror, Kelley called the image forth. He lifted the knife and placed it against the child’s throat.

  “For you,” he promised the image.

  The mirror came to a blazing, vivid life.

  “And what will you give us in return, for this gift, daughters of Phorkys?”

  89

  THEY WERE the daughters of Phorkys, the third son of Pontos.

  Theirs was a terrible power, theirs was an elemental strength. With no conception of time, they had ruled this world before the creature known as man had crawled down from the trees. They had watched it shed its hair, watched it walk upright. They had been old when the first villages had been built, ancient when the first of what the soft-skinned mankind would call civilization arose around the Middle Sea.

  The soft-skinned ones knew them and the rest of their kind that the humans called gods, and they offered sacrifice to the Triad as was their due. It amused the daughters of Phorkys to allow the humankind to hunt for them, to feed and honor them, with flesh and blood and seed.

  In time, the humankind grew envious of their powers. They turned away from the old gods and began to worship gods created in their own image. And the ancient ones, who had come to depend on the humankind for sacrifice and worship, and who fed off the petty fire of human emotions and the blood of their sacrifices, had felt their powers wane.

  This was a Time of Fear.

  The mankind had grown strong by then. They had perfected weapon-craft and metal-working, they had mastered the secrets of fire and they knew some of the secret lore.

  So the Triad and the others like them, the Ancient Ones, had moved on, leaving the world of men, going into the secret places, the hidden valleys, the floating isles and the barren lands. There they would conserve their waning powers, and wait for the world to change, as it ha
d before and would again.

  But still some of the humankind pursued them, drawn by lust or envy, anger or hate. So the Triad created a legend of terror to keep the man-creatures away, but even this failed. The legend drew the foolhardy and the brave, and occasionally, the cunning.

  Once there had been three daughters of Phorkys: Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa.

  And then the mankind, Perseus, had come and slew Medusa with cunning and a weapon of metal.

  The two remaining sisters grew frightened then. They were three, and the three were one, and even though a part of them was gone, they could still survive. But if another part of the Triad were to be slain then they would be lost forever, for all time. So the two creatures the mankind called Gorgons created a vessel that would carry them through time, rightly guessing that with sophistication would come ignorance. And with ignorance, they could become whole again, for within them both, they held the seeds of their sister, Medusa.

  But what would entice the mankind, and yet remain unsuspected in their world?

  The Gorgons noted that the humans were vain, and liked to admire their reflections, and so they conceived of a huge mirror, a gateway to the Otherworld, where their kind, the Ancient Ones still reigned.

  Stheno sacrificed her sister, Euryale, and set her spirit into the glass to prepare the way, and then she flayed the flesh from her sister’s bones and spread it out behind the great mirror to keep the magic alive, to allow it to become active when blood was spread onto the glass. The blood—or any human secretion—would seep through the glass and soak into the skin, bringing forth the ancient magic. Stheno then took her own life, spread-eagled across the mirror, allowing her own thin ichor to seep into the mirror, allowing herself to become absorbed. And the two became one.

  Then came the Time of Waiting.

  In the beginning, they had come close to escape on many occasions. The men beasts were controllable. They needed two: the male to supply the blood to soak the skin, to bring the magic to life. The female was the sacrifice, and the host for Stheno. And once they had the host, once Stheno could come forth, she would raise Euryale and together they would be able to bring forth the Medusa.

  But they hadn’t counted on the wiles of the humankind. The beasts had always had their magicians, their mages, sorcerers, and witches. Often these were primitives with only the merest trace of power, and of no account. But some had skills or learned fragments and they recorded this knowledge in their grimoires. In time, knowledge of the Otherworld and the astral grew and, in time, some of the human magicians became aware of the mirror with its deadly secret and terrible threat. Too afraid to break the glass, they eventually banished it to a land at the edge of the world, and a single clan was chosen to guard and protect the glass.

  So the three who had become two, who was now one—Stheno, alive, alert within the glass—was patient, because she knew that humankind was weak and arrogant.

  The passage of years suited it. They lost their faith, they forgot their history, they became arrogant and gullible. They who had once ruled nations, realized they could conquer the entire world. A world of flesh and blood.

  All they needed was a host …

  90

  “IT’S TIME,” Kelley turned to look up at the woman. He came smoothly to his feet. “You understand what needs to be done? You will die first, then the child. All your blood must leave your body, for blood carries the corruptions which bring age.”

  She nodded. She stepped over to the copper basin with its pitiful wriggling bundle and pressed herself against the mirror. The glass was cold against her naked flesh.

  She turned her face slightly, pressing her cheek against its coolness, feeling its sensuous touch against her breasts, belly, and thighs. She shuddered, spreading her arms to clutch the edge of the plain wooden frame, opening her legs to the touch of the mirror’s moist surface.

  She felt her nipples hardening, her breathing quickening.

  “Forever and ever?” she whispered. The shadowy figure behind her—barely glimpsed in the mirror’s dull surface—moved closer.

  “Forever and ever, unchanging, unchanged.”

  “Yessss,” she hissed. Closing her eyes, she visualized herself spread-eagled up against the mirror, face to face, breast to breast, belly to belly with her own image. Her heart began pounding with ever-increasing force, almost as if it were pressing against the glass. Sudden heat bloomed between her legs.

  And at the very moment her orgasm took her, wracking through her body, the thin sliver of sharpened stone ripped through her throat.

  Ultimate pleasure became absolute pain.

  Blood hissed and steamed on the glass. Her mouth opened in a soundless scream and as Kelley’s shadowy figure moved closer, bending his head to her face, her lips moved, words forming, bloody froth bubbling on them. “Thank you.”

  “I love you,” he said and, for the first time in his life, he meant the words.

  Kelley held her against the mirror as her blood poured onto the surface of the glass, quickly disappearing into the greasy interior of the mirror.

  He could barely contain his elation. He knew the secret of the glass. Maybe he could try to remove the back of the mirror to allow him access to the hide of the Gorgon. Though, on second thought, perhaps that might not be such a good idea. Kelley looked at the glass again, a frown creasing his brow. According to his studies, once the blood had drained from the woman’s body, the corpse should become animated by the image.

  He took his hand away from the corpse and stepped back. The body crashed to the ground, though its reflection remained in the glass. Where was the golden woman?

  But this was no reflection, this was the image, naked and complete, its hair waving around its head in a parody of the legend of the Gorgon. He looked at the corpse on the ground and frowned in puzzlement. What had happened? What had gone wrong? Why had the image not stepped through from the Otherworld into the corpse of the just slain woman?

  The creature in the glass, the image of the woman he had just slain was mouthing words, repeating them over and over again, until he finally understood their meaning. “The body was impure, diseased. The body must be virginal in every way. We have taken its soul, its reflection, but we cannot use its physical form.”

  It reached for him, arms outstretched, palms flat against the glass. Kelley pressed himself against the mirror, almost feeling the woman’s warm flesh against his. He pressed his lips to hers, feeling her breath, warm and moist against his cheek, her tongue against his lips, probing, opening them.

  And then she whispered, “You have failed us!”

  The tongue that broke through the surface of the glass and shot into his mouth was rasping, hooked, and forked. It filled his mouth, insinuated itself down his throat. He attempted to scream, but his mouth was full. He attempted to pull away, but couldn’t. The foul tongue moved down his throat, deeper, deeper, into his stomach. He could feel it squirming, coiling, moving.

  And he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even vomit.

  Couldn’t breathe.

  And now the image’s hair was changing, twisting, turning, coiling, melding together, tiny heads forming, black polished eyes, tiny darting tongues amongst the strands. The rest of the image was changing also, twisting, altering, her features running, melding together, elongating, a beast-like snout forming, long tusks digging into its own flesh.

  It opened its mouth, wider, wider, wider, its tongue still lodged deep in Kelley’s throat, its fangs growing, great slab-like teeth coming up from the lower jaw, snapping at his face, scraping against the glass, threatening to break through.

  With a final convulsive agonizing effort, Edward Kelley wrenched himself away from the mirror, stumbling backwards across the woman’s body. Blood streamed from his mouth and the sounds he uttered were bestial.

  In the mirror, the beast devoured his tongue with great relish. “Now, give us the babe,” it demanded.

  Kelley gathered up the baby in the copper bowl … and th
en turned and ran from the room.

  91

  SO, THE body had to be pure and virginal in every respect. He’d known that, his instincts had been right all along.

  Jonathan Frazer crouched before the mirror in the guesthouse, watching the images slowly fading from the glass. He’d been feeding the image with his own blood for most of the evening, and he was dizzy and faint, but now he knew the secret of the mirror.

  But even though he had fed her, he could still hear the plaintive cry of hunger, like a distant keening in the back of his mind. His mistress hungered. And he was going to feed her, and at least now he knew just what she wanted, what she needed. She needed a virgin’s blood and she needed a virginal body as a host.

  He tried to think, but his thoughts had been so confused over the past few days. Which of his friends had teenage daughters and which of them were still virginal? Weren’t teenagers supposed to be much more promiscuous these days in any case? How was he going to find a young virgin?

  Well now let’s see, who says it had to be young? Maybe the image would prefer an older, stronger body when it came back to this world: he just had to ensure that it was still a virgin.

  He curled his legs up under him until he was sitting cross-legged. He dropped his head onto his clenched fist, his elbow resting on his knee, and closed his eyes, considering. Maybe someone unmarried, a spinster …

  Moments later, his head snapped up, his deep brown eyes bright, glittering. He began to chuckle and then laugh, the sound coming from deep within his body. But when it reached his throat it was high-pitched and maniacal. Maybe he might get to kill two birds with one stone. This time the laughter left him convulsed, rolling around on the floor, clutching his sides.

  92

  IN THE silence of the hospital room, the regular blipping of the monitors and the gentle susurration of the ventilator sounded very loud indeed.

  Officer Carole Morrow looked up as the door opened and then straightened as Margaret Haaren stepped into the room. The detective raised her eyebrows questioningly and the young officer shook her head. Standing at the end of the bed, the woman sighed, looking down at the bandaged form of Emmanuelle Frazer.