The City of Mirrors

by Justin Cronin

  Hollis was already out cold. The man slept like a fallen giant; his head hit the pillow, and soon he was snoring away. Sara extinguished the candle and slid beneath the covers. She wondered if Marie had delivered her baby yet, and if she was still yelling at her husband; she thought of the Jiménez family and the look on Carlos’s face as he lifted baby Grace into his arms. Maybe grace was the word she was looking for. It was possible they’d still get flagged by the census office, but Sara didn’t think so. Not with so many babies being born. Which was the thing. That was the heart of the matter. A new world was coming; a new world was already here. Maybe that was what getting older taught you, when you looked in the mirror and saw the passage of time in your face, when you looked at your sleeping daughter and saw the girl you once were and would never be again. The world was real and you were in it, a brief part but still a part, and if you were lucky, and maybe even if you weren’t, the things you’d done for love would be remembered.

  6

  The sky over Houston released the night slowly, darkness easing to gray. Greer made his way into the city. Where the Katy Freeway met the 610 in a tangle of collapsed ramps and overpasses, he arced north, away from the bayous and swamps, with their sucking mud and impenetrable foliage, bypassing the liquefied inner neighborhoods for higher ground, then followed a wide avenue of junked cars south to the downtown lagoon.

  The rowboat was where he’d left it two months ago. Greer tied up his horse, dumped out the mosquito-infested rainwater, and dragged the craft to the water’s edge. Across the lagoon, the Chevron Mariner lay at its improbable angle, a great temple of rust and rot lodged among the listing towers of the city’s central core. He laid his supplies in the bottom of the boat, set it afloat, and rowed away from shore.

  In the lobby of One Allen Center, he tied off at the base of the escalators and ascended, the duffel bag with its sloshing contents slung over his shoulder. The ten-story climb through mold-befouled air left him dizzy and short of breath. In the empty office, he pulled up the rope he’d left in place and lowered the bag to the deck of the Mariner, then climbed down behind it.

  He always fed Carter first.

  On the port side, just about amidships, a hatch lay flush with the deck. Greer knelt beside it and removed the jugs of blood from the bag. He tied three together by their handles with one of the ropes. The sun was angled behind him, raking the deck with light. With a heavy wrench he unscrewed the safety bolts, turned the handle, and opened the hatch.

  A shaft of sunshine spilled into the space below. Carter lay curled in a fetal position near the forward bulkhead, his body in shadow, away from the light. Old jugs and coils of rope were piled in a heap on the floor. Hand over hand, Greer lowered the jugs. Only when they reached bottom did Carter stir. As he scuttled on all fours toward the blood, Greer released the rope, closed the hatch, and replaced the safety bolts.

  Now, Amy.

  Greer moved to the second hatch. The trick was to move fast but not with panicked recklessness. The scent of blood: for Amy, it could not be contained by something as meager as the thin plastic membrane of the jugs; her hunger was too strong. Greer set his supplies within quick reach, unwrenched the bolts, and placed them to the side. A deep breath to calm his nerves; then he opened the hatch.

  Blood.

  She leapt. Lucius dropped the jugs, slammed the hatch, and shoved the first bolt into place as Amy’s body made contact. The metal clanged as if hit by a giant hammer. He threw his body across it; another blow came, knocking the wind from his chest. The hinges were bending; unless he could get the remaining bolts in place, the hatch wouldn’t hold. He’d managed to get two more into their holes when Amy struck again; Greer watched helplessly as one of the bolts jogged free and rolled across the deck. His hand stabbed outward and seized it at the very edge of his reach.

  “Amy,” he yelled, “it’s me! It’s Lucius!” He shoved the bolt into place and smacked it with the head of the wrench, driving it home. “The blood is there! Follow the scent of the blood!”

  Three turns on the wrench and the bolt locked down, bringing the fourth hole back into alignment. He rammed its bolt into place. One last pound on the underside of the hatch, halfhearted; then it was over.

  Lucius, I didn’t mean it …

  “It’s all right,” he said.

  I’m sorry …

  He picked up his tools and put them in the empty duffel. Below him, in the hold of the Chevron Mariner, Amy and Carter were drinking their fills. It always happened like this; Greer should have been used to it by now. Yet his heart was pounding, his mind and body flying with adrenaline.

  “I’m yours, Amy,” he said. “I always will be. Whatever comes, you know that.”

  And with these words, Lucius made his way across the deck of the Mariner and climbed back through the window.

  7

  Amy returned to awareness to find herself on all fours in the dirt. Her hands were gloved; a plastic flat of impatiens rested on the ground close by and, beside it, a rusty trowel.

  “You all right there, Miss Amy?”

  Carter was sitting on the patio, legs akimbo beneath the wrought-iron table, fanning his face with his big straw hat. On the table were two glasses of iced tea.

  “That man takes good care of us,” he said, and sighed with satisfaction. “Haven’t eaten my fill like that since I don’t remember when.”

  Amy rose unsteadily to her feet. A deep lassitude enveloped her, as if she had just awoken from a long nap.

  “Come and sit a minute,” Carter said. “Give the body a chance to digest. Feeding day like a day off round here. Them flowers can wait.”

  Which was true; there were always more flowers. As soon as Amy finished planting a flat, a new one would appear by the gate. It was the same with the tea: one minute the table was bare; in the next, two sweating glasses awaited. By what unseen agency these things arrived, Amy did not know. It was all part of this place and its own particular logic. Every day a season, every season a year.

  She removed her gloves and crossed the lawn to sit across from Carter. The greasy taste of blood lingered in her mouth. She sipped the tea to clear it away.

  “It’s good to keep your strength up, Miss Amy,” Carter said. “Ain’t no prize for starving yourself.”

  “I just don’t … like it.” She looked at Carter, who was still fanning himself with his hat. “I tried to kill him again.”

  “Lucius knows the situation well enough. I doubt he takes it personal.”

  “That’s not the point, Anthony. I need to learn to control it the way you do.”

  Carter frowned. He was a man of compact expression, small gestures, thoughtful pauses. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. You ain’t had but three years to get used to things. You still just a baby in the way of being what we are.”

  “I don’t feel like a baby.”

  “What you feel like then?”

  “A monster.”

  She’d spoken too sharply; she glanced away, feeling ashamed. After feeding, she always passed through a period of doubt. How strange it all was: she was a body in a ship, but her mind lived here, with Carter, among the plants and flowers. Only when Lucius brought the blood did these two worlds touch each other, and the contrast was disorienting. Carter had explained that this place was nothing particular to the two of them; the difference was that they could see it. There was one world, of flesh and blood and bone, but also another—a deeper reality that ordinary people could glimpse only fleetingly, if at all. A world of souls, both the living and the dead, in which time and space, memory and desire, existed in a purely fluid state, the way they did in dreams.

  Amy knew this to be so. She felt as if she’d always known it—that even as a little girl, a purely human girl, she had sensed the existence of this other realm, this world-behind-the-world, as she had come to call it. She supposed that many children did the same. What was childhood if not a passage from light to dark, of the soul’s slow drowning in an ocean of ordina
ry matter? During her time in the Chevron Mariner, a great deal of the past had become clear. Vivid recollections had inched their way back to her, approaching on memory’s delicate feet, until things that had happened ages past felt like recent occurrences. She recalled a time, long ago, in the innocent period she thought of as “before”—before Lacey and Wolgast, before Project NOAH, before the Oregon mountaintop where they had made their home and then her long, solo wanderings in a peopleless world with only the virals for company—when animals had spoken to her. Larger animals, like dogs, but also smaller ones that nobody paid attention to—birds and even insects. She’d thought nothing of this at the time; it was simply the way things were. Nor did it trouble her that nobody else seemed to hear them; it was part of the world’s arrangement that the animals spoke only to her, always addressing her by name, as if they were old friends, telling her stories about their lives, and it made her happy to be the recipient of the special gift of their attention when so much else in her life seemed to make no sense at all: her mother’s lurching emotions and long absences, their drifting from place to place, the strangers that came and went with no apparent purpose.

  All this had gone on without repercussion until the day Lacey had taken her to the zoo. At the time, Amy did not yet fully comprehend that her mother had deserted her—that she would never see the woman again—and she’d welcomed the invitation; she’d heard of zoos but had never been to one. She entered the grounds to an animal buzz of welcome. After the confusing events of the previous day—her mother’s abrupt departure and the presence of the nuns, who were nice but in slightly stilted way, as if they were reciting their kindnesses off a card of instructions—here was a familiar comfort. In a burst of energy, she broke away from Lacey and dashed to the polar bear tank. Three were basking in the sun; a fourth was swimming under the water. How magnificent they were, how amazing! Even now, so many years later, it gave her pleasure to remember them, their wonderful white fur and great muscular bodies and expressive faces, which seemed to contain all the wisdom of the universe. As Amy approached the glass, the one in the water paddled toward her. Though she knew that her communication with the creatures of the natural world was best conducted in private, her excitement could not be contained. She felt suddenly sorry that such a stately creature should be forced to live like a prisoner, sunning himself on phony rocks and being gawked at by people who did not appreciate him. “What’s your name?” she asked the bear. “I’m Amy.”

  His answer was a collision of incompatible consonants, as were the names of the other bears, which he courteously offered. Were these things real? Had she, a little girl, simply imagined them? But no; all of it had happened, she believed, precisely as she recalled. As she stood at the glass, Lacey came up beside her. She was wearing a look of deep concern. “There now, Amy,” Lacey advised. “Not so close.” To put her unease at bay, and because Amy had detected in this kindly woman with her melodious accent an openness to extraordinary phenomena—the zoo, after all, had been her idea—she explained the situation as simply as she knew how. “He has a bear name,” she told Lacey. “It’s something I can’t pronounce.”

  Lacey frowned. “The bear has a name?”

  “Of course he does,” said Amy.

  She returned her attention to her new friend, who was bumping his nose against the glass. Amy was about to ask him about his life, if he missed his Arctic home, when the water was rocked by a tremendous splash. A second bear had leapt into the tank. With paws big as hubcaps he swam toward her, taking his place beside the first bear, who was licking the glass with his immense pink tongue. A collective exhalation of oohs and aahs ascended from the crowd; people began to snap pictures. Amy placed her hand against the glass in greeting, but something felt wrong. Something was different, and it wasn’t very good. The bear’s great black eyes seemed to be looking not at her but through her, with a gaze of such intensity that she could not look away. She felt herself dissolving into it, as if she were melting, and with this came a falling sensation, like putting her foot on a step that wasn’t there.

  Amy, the bears were saying. You’re Amy Amy Amy Amy Amy …

  Things were happening. Some sort of commotion. As Amy’s awareness widened, she became conscious of other sounds, other voices, coming from all around—not human but animal. The hoots of monkeys. The shrieks of birds. The roars of jungle cats and the concussing hooves of elephants and rhinoceroses stamping the ground in panic. As the third and then the fourth bear leapt into the tank, displacing its contents with their white-furred tonnage, a wall of frigid water bulged over the lip. It crashed down upon the crowd, unleashing mayhem.

  It’s her, it’s her, it’s her, it’s her …

  She was kneeling by the glass, soaked to the bone, her head bowed to its slick surface. Her mind swirled with the voices, a chorus of black dread. She felt as if the universe were bending around her, swathing her in darkness. They would die, all these animals. That is what her presence meant to them. The bears and monkeys and birds and elephants: all of them. Some would starve in their cages; others would perish by more violent means. Death would take them all, and not just the animals. The people, too. The world would die around her, and she would be left standing at the center, alone.

  It’s coming, death is coming, you’re Amy, Amy, Amy …

  “You remembering, ain’t you?”

  Amy’s mind returned to the patio. Carter was looking at her pointedly.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

  “’Sall right. I felt the same, there at the beginning. Took some getting used to.”

  The feeling of summer had faded; autumn would soon come. In the blue-green water of the pool, the body of Rachel Wood would rise. Sometimes, when Amy was tending flowers near the gate, she would see the woman’s black Denali slowly cruising past. Through the tinted windows she could make out Rachel in her tennis clothes, staring at the house. But the car never stopped, and when Amy waved at her, the woman never waved back.

  “How much longer do you think we have to wait?”

  “That depends on Zero. Man got to show his hand sooner or later. So far as he knows, I’m gone with the rest of them.”

  It was the water, Carter had explained, that protected them. Its cold embrace was nothing Fanning’s mind could penetrate. As long as they stayed where they were, Fanning couldn’t find them.

  “But he’ll come,” said Amy.

  Carter nodded. “He’s bided his time a good while, but the man wants this thing done. It’s what he’s wanted from the start. Everything over.”

  The wind was picking up—an autumn wind, damp and raw. Clouds had moved in, denuding the light. It was the time of day when a certain silence always fell.

  “We’re quite a pair, aren’t we?”

  “That we are, Miss Amy.”

  “I was wondering if maybe you could drop the ‘miss.’ I should have said that long ago.”

  “I just meant it respectful. But as long as you’re asking, I’d like that.”

  The leaves were spinning down. They fluttered across the lawn, the patio, the pool deck, tossing in the wind like skeletal hands. Amy thought of Peter, how she missed him. Wherever he was now, she hoped that happiness would find him in his life. That was the price she’d paid; she had given him up.

  She took a last sip of tea to clear the blood taste from her mouth and drew on her gloves. “Ready?”

  “Right you are.” Carter donned his hat. “We best get to work on them leaves.”

  8

  “Michael!”

  His sister took her last two steps at a jog and wrapped him in a hug that made his ribs crunch.

  “Whoa. I’m glad to see you, too.”

  The nurse at the desk was staring at them, but Sara couldn’t be contained. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “What are you doing here?” She stepped back and looked him over with a motherly eye. One part of him felt embarrassed; another part would have been disappointed if she
hadn’t. “God, you’re thin. When did you get here? Kate will be thrilled.” She glanced at the nurse, an older woman in a boiled smock. “Wendy, this is my brother, Michael.”

  “The one with the sailboat?”

  He laughed. “That’s me.”

  “Please tell me you’re staying,” Sara said.

  “Just a couple of days.”

  She shook her head and sighed. “I guess I’ll have to take what I can get.” She was clutching his upper arm as if he might float away. “I’m off in an hour. Don’t go anywhere, okay? I know you, Michael. I mean it.”

  He waited for her, and together they walked to the apartment. How odd it was to be back on dry land, with its disconcerting stillness underfoot. After three years mostly alone, the hum of so much packed humanity felt like something scraping his skin. He did his best to conceal his agitation, believing it would pass, though he also wondered if his time at sea had wrought a fundamental change in his temperament that would bar him from ever living among people again.

  With a stab of guilt, he noted how much Kate had changed. The baby in her was gone; even her curls had straightened. The two of them played go-to with Hollis while Sara made supper; when dinner was over, Michael got into bed with her to tell her a story. Not a story from a book: Kate demanded something from real life, a tale of his adventures at sea.

  He chose the story of the whale. This was something that had happened about six months before, far out in the Gulf. It was late at night, the water calm and gleaming beneath a full moon, when his boat began to lift, as if the sea were rising. A dark bulge emerged off his port side. At first he didn’t know what it was. He had read about whales but never seen one, and his sense of such a creature’s dimensions was vague, even disbelieving. How could something so big be alive? As the whale slowly breeched the surface, a spout of water shot from its head; the creature rolled lazily onto its side, one massive flipper lifting clear. Its flanks, shiny and black, were encrusted with barnacles. Michael was too amazed to be afraid; only later did it occur to him that with one slap of its tail, the whale could have shattered his boat to pieces.