She tugged again. This time the window raised a good six inches and then something slipped. The window came down like the blade of a guillotine, and she got her hands out just in time. She bit her lip, sent strength through her shoulders, raised the window once more.
And this time she stared into the pane. The gla.s.s was transparent, ordinary window gla.s.s. She"d washed it just yesterday and she knew it was clean. There had been no blur, no shadow, and certainly no movement.
But there was movement now. Something cloudy, something obscenely opaque, peered out of the window, peered out of itself and pressed the window down against her. Something matched her strength to shut her out.
Suddenly, hysterically, she realized that she was staring at her own reflection through the shadows of the trees. Of course, it had to be her own reflection. And there was no reason for her to close her eyes and sob as she tugged the window up and half-tumbled her way into the kitchen.
She was inside, and alone. Quite alone. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry him about. She wouldn"t tell him.
He wouldn"t tell her, either. Friday afternoon, when she took the car and went into town for groceries and liquor in preparation for tomorrow"s party, he stayed home from the office and arranged the final details of settling down.
That"s why he carried up all the garment bags to the attic to store the summer clothes, get them out of the way. And that"s how he happened to open the little cubicle under the front gable. He was looking for the attic closet; he"d put down the bags and started to work along the wall with a flashlight. Then he noticed the door and the padlock.
Dust and rust told their own story; n.o.body had come this way for a long, long time. He thought again of Hacker, the glib real-estate agent who"d handled the rental of the place. "Been vacant several years and needs a little fixing up," Hacker had said. From the looks of it, n.o.body had lived here for a c.o.o.n"s age. All the better, he could force the lock with a common file.
He went downstairs for the file and returned quickly, noting as he did so the heavy attic dust. Apparently the former occupants had left in something of a hurry debris was scattered everywhere, and swaths and swirls scored the dust to indicate that belongings had been dragged and hauled and swept along in a haphazard fashion.
Well, he had all winter to straighten things out, and right now he"d settle for storing the garment bags. Clipping the flashlight to his belt, he bent over the lock, file in hand, and tried his skill at breaking and entering.
The lock sprung. He tugged at the door, opened it, inhaled a gust of mouldy dampness, then raised the flash and directed the beam into the long, narrow closet.
A thousand silver slivers stabbed at his eyeb.a.l.l.s. Golden, gleaming fire seared his pupils. He jerked the flashlight back, sent the beam upwards. Again, lances of light entered his eyes.
Suddenly he adjusted his vision and comprehension. He stood peering into a room full of mirrors. They hung from cords, lay in corners, stood along the walls in rows.
There was a tall, stately full-length mirror, set in a door; a pair of plate-gla.s.s ovals, inset in old-fashioned dresser-tops; a panel gla.s.s, and even a complete, dismantled bathroom medicine cabinet similar to the one they had just installed. And the floor was lined with hand-mirrors of all sizes and shapes. He noted an ornate silver-handled mirror straight from a woman"s dressing table; behind it stood the vanity-mirror removed from the table itself. And there were pocket mirrors, mirrors from purse-compacts, mirrors of every size and shape. Against the far wall stood a whole series of looking-gla.s.s slabs that appeared to have been mounted at one time in a bedroom wall.
He gazed at half a hundred silvered surfaces, gazed at a half a hundred reflections of his own bewildered face.
And he thought again of Hacker, of their inspection of the house. He had noted the absence of a medicine cabinet at the time, but Hacker had glossed over it. Somehow he hadn"t realized that there were no mirrors of any sort in the house of course, there was no furniture, but still one might expect a door panel in a place this old.
No mirrors? Why? And why were they all stacked away up here, under lock and key?
It was interesting. His wife might like some of these that silver-handled beauty mirror, for example. He"d have to tell her about this.
He stepped cautiously into the closet, dragging the garment bags after him. There didn"t seem to be any clothes-pole here, or any hooks. He could put some up in a jiffy, though. He piled the bags in a heap, stooping, and the flashlight glittered on a thousand surfaces, sent facets of fire into his face.
Then the fire faded. The silver surfaces darkened oddly. Of course, his reflection covered them now. His reflection, and something darker. Something smoky and swirling, something that was a part of the mouldy dampness, something that choked the closet with its presence. It was behind him no, at one side no, in front of him all around him it was growing and growing and blotting him out it was making him sweat and tremble and now it was making him gasp and scuttle out of the closet and slam the door and press against it with all his waning strength, and its name was Claustrophobia. That was it. Just claustrophobia, a fancy name for nerves. A man gets nervous when he"s cooped up in a small s.p.a.ce. For that matter, a man gets nervous when he looks at himself too long in a mirror. Let alone fifty mirrors!
He stood there, shaking, and to keep his mind occupied, keep his mind off what he had just half-seen, half-felt, half-known, he thought about mirrors for a moment. About looking into mirrors. Women did it all the time. Men were different.
Men, himself included, seemed to be self-conscious about mirrors. He could remember going into a clothing-store and seeing himself in one of the complicated arrangements that afforded a side and rear view. What a shock that had been, the first time and every time, for that matter! A man looks different in a mirror. Not the way he imagines himself to be, knows himself to be. A mirror distorts. That"s why men hum and sing and whistle while they shave. To keep their minds off their reflections. Otherwise they"d go crazy. What was the name of that Greek mythological character who was in love with his own image? Narcissus, that was it. Staring into a pool for hours.
Women could do it, though. Because women never saw themselves, actually. They saw an idealization, a vision. Powder, rouge, lipstick, mascara, eye-shadow, brilliantine, or merely an emptiness to which these elements must be applied. Women were a little crazy to begin with, anyway. Hadn"t she said something the other night about seeing him in her mirror when he wasn"t there?
Perhaps he"d better not tell her, after all. At least, not until he checked with the real-estate agent, Hacker. He wanted to find out about this business, anyway. Something was wrong, somewhere. Why had the previous owners stored all the mirrors up here?
He began to walk back through the attic, forcing himself to go slowly, forcing himself to think of something, anything, except the fright he"d had in the room of reflections.
Reflect on something. Reflections. Who"s afraid of the big bad reflection? Another myth, wasn"t it?
Vampires. They had no reflections. "Tell me the truth now, Hacker. The people who built this house were they vampires?"
That was a pleasant thought. That was a pleasant thought to carry downstairs in the afternoon twilight, to hug to your bosom in the gloom while the floors creaked and the shutters banged and the night came down in the house of shadows where something peered around the corners and grinned at you in the mirrors on the walls.
He sat there waiting for her to come home, and he switched on all the lights, and he put the radio on too and thanked G.o.d he didn"t have a television set because there was a screen and the screen made a reflection and the reflection might be something he didn"t want to see.
But there was no more trouble that evening, and by the time she came home with her packages he had himself under control. So they ate and talked quite naturally oh, quite naturally, and if it was listening it wouldn"t know they were both afraid.
They made their preparations for the party, and called up a few people on the phone, and just on the spur of the moment he suggested inviting Hacker, too. So that was done and they went to bed. The lights were all out and that meant the mirrors were dark, and he could sleep.
Only in the morning it was difficult to shave. And he caught her, yes he caught her, putting on her makeup in the kitchen, using the little compact from her purse and carefully cupping her hands against reflections.
But he didn"t tell her and she didn"t tell him, and if it guessed their secrets, it kept silent.
He drove off to work and she made canapes, and if at times during the long, dark, dreary Sat.u.r.day the house groaned and creaked and whispered, that was only to be expected.
The house was quiet enough by the time he came home again, and somehow, that was worse. It was as though something were waiting for night to fall. That"s why she dressed early, humming all the while she powdered and primped, swirling around in front of the mirror (you couldn"t see too clearly if you swirled). That"s why he mixed drinks before their hasty meal and saw to it that they both had several stiff ones (you couldn"t see too clearly if you drank).
And then the guests tumbled in. The Teters, complaining about the winding back road through the hills. The Valliants, exclaiming over the antique panelling and the high ceilings. The Ehrs, whooping and laughing, with Vic remarking that the place looked like something designed by Charles Addams. That was a signal for a drink, and by the time Hacker and his wife arrived the blaring radio found ample compet.i.tion from the voices of the guests.
He drank, and she drank, but they couldn"t shut it out altogether. That remark about Charles Addams was bad, and there were other things. Little things. The Talmadges had brought flowers, and she went out to the kitchen to arrange them in a cut-gla.s.s vase. There were facets in the gla.s.s, and as she stood in the kitchen, momentarily alone, and filled the vase with water from the tap, the crystal darkened beneath her fingers, and something peered, reflected from the facets. She turned quickly, and she was all alone. All alone, holding a hundred naked eyes in her hands.
So she dropped the vase, and the Ehrs and Talmadges and Hackers and Valliants trooped out to the kitchen, and he came too. Talmadge accused her of drinking and that was reason enough for another round. He said nothing, but got another vase for the flowers. And yet he must have known, because when somebody suggested a tour of the house, he put them off: "We haven"t straightened things out upstairs yet," he said. "It"s a mess, and you"d be knocking into crates and stuff."
"Who"s up there now?" asked Mrs. Teters, coming into the kitchen with her husband. "We just heard an awful crash."
"Something must have fallen over," the host suggested. But he didn"t look at his wife as he spoke, and she didn"t look at him.
"How about another drink?" she asked. She mixed and poured hurriedly, and before the gla.s.ses were half empty, he took over and fixed another round. Liquor helped to keep people talking and if they talked it would drown out other sounds.
The stratagem worked. Gradually the group trickled back into the living room in twos and threes, and the radio blared and the laughter rose and the voices babbled to blot out the noises of the night.
He poured and she served, and both of them drank, but the alcohol had no effect. They moved carefully, as though their bodies were brittle gla.s.ses gla.s.ses without bottom waiting to be shattered by some sudden strident sound. Gla.s.ses hold liquor, but they never get drunk.
Their guests were not gla.s.ses, they drank and feared nothing, and the drinks took hold. People moved about, and in and out, and pretty soon Mr. Valliant and Mrs. Talmadge embarked on their own private tour of the house upstairs. It was irregular and unescorted, but fortunately n.o.body noticed either their departure or their absence. At least, not until Mrs. Talmadge came running downstairs and locked herself in the bathroom.
Her hostess saw her pa.s.s the doorway. She rapped on the bathroom door, gained admittance, and prepared to make discreet inquiries. None was necessary. Mrs. Talmadge, weeping and wringing her hands, fell upon her.
"That was a filthy trick!" she sobbed. "Coming up and sneaking in on us. The dirty louse I admit we were doing a little smooching, but that"s all there was to it. And it isn"t as though he didn"t make enough pa.s.ses at Gwen Hacker himself. What I want to know is, where did he get the beard? It frightened me out of my wits."
"What"s all this?" she asked knowing all the while what it was, and dreading the words to come.
"Jeff and I were in the bedroom, just standing there in the dark, I swear it, and all at once I looked up over my shoulder at the mirror because light began streaming in from the hall. Somebody had opened the door, and I could see the gla.s.s and this face. Oh, it was my husband all right, but he had a beard on and the way he came slinking in, glaring at us"
Sobs choked off the rest. Mrs. Talmadge trembled so that she wasn"t aware of the tremors which racked the frame of her hostess. She, for her part, strained to hear the rest. "sneaked right out again before we could do anything, but wait till I get him home scaring the life out of me and all because he"s so crazy jealous the look on his face in the mirror"
She soothed Mrs. Talmadge. She comforted Mrs. Talmadge. She placated Mrs. Talmadge. And all the while there was nothing to soothe or calm or placate her own agitation.
Still, both of them had restored a semblance of sanity by the time they ventured out into the hall to join the party just in time to hear Mr. Talmadge"s agitated voice booming out over the excited responses of the rest.
"So I"m standing there in the bathroom and this old witch comes up and starts making faces over my shoulder in the mirror. What gives here, anyway? What kind of a house you running here?"
He thought it was funny. So did the others. Most of the others. The host and hostess stood there, not daring to look at each other. Their smiles were cracking. Gla.s.s is brittle.
"I don"t believe you." Gwen Hacker"s voice. She"d had one, or perhaps three, too many. "I"m going up right now and see for myself." She winked at her host and moved towards the stairs.
"Hey, hold on!" He was too late. She swept, or wobbled, past him.
"Halloween pranks," said Talmadge, nudging him. "Old babe in a fancy hairdo. Saw her plain as day. What you cook up for us here, anyhow?"
He began to stammer something, anything, to halt the flood of foolish babbling. She moved close to him, wanting to listen, wanting to believe, wanting to do anything but think of Gwen Hacker upstairs, all alone upstairs looking into a mirror and waiting to see The screams came then. Not sobs, not laughter, but screams. He took the stairs two at a time. Fat Mr. Hacker was right behind him, and the others straggled along, suddenly silent. There was the sound of feet clubbing the staircase, the sound of heavy breathing, and over everything the continuing high-pitched shriek of a woman confronted with terror too great to contain.
It oozed out of Gwen Hacker"s voice, oozed out of her body as she staggered and half-fell into her husband"s arms in the hall. The light was streaming out of the bathroom, and it fell upon the mirror that was empty of all reflection, fell upon her face that was empty of all expression.
They crowded around the Hackers he and she were on either side and the others cl.u.s.tered in front and they moved along the hall to her bedroom and helped Mr. Hacker stretch his wife out on the bed. She had pa.s.sed out, and somebody mumbled something about a doctor, and somebody else said no, never mind, she"ll be all right in a minute, and somebody else said well, I think we"d better be getting along.
For the first time everybody seemed to be aware of the old house and the darkness, and the way the floors creaked and the windows rattled and the shutters banged. Everyone was suddenly sober, solicitous, and extremely anxious to leave.
Hacker bent over his wife, chafing her wrists, forcing her to swallow water, watching her whimper her way out of emptiness. The host and hostess silently procured hats and coats and listened to expressions of polite regret, hasty farewells, and poorly formulated pretenses of, "Had a marvelous time, darling."
Teters, Valliants, Talmadges were swallowed up in the night. He and she went back upstairs, back to the bedroom and the Hackers. It was too dark in the hall, and too light in the bedroom. But there they were, waiting. And they didn"t wait long.
Mrs. Hacker sat up suddenly and began to talk. To her husband, to them.
"I saw her," she said. "Don"t tell me I"m crazy, I saw her! Standing on tiptoe behind me, looking right into the mirror. With the same blue ribbon in her hair, the one she wore the day she"
"Please, dear," said Mr. Hacker.
She didn"t please. "But I saw her. Mary Lou! She made a face at me in the mirror, and she"s dead, you know she"s dead, she disappeared three years ago and they never did find the body"
"Mary Lou Dempster." Hacker was a fat man. He had two chins. Both of them wobbled.
"She played around here, you know she did, and Wilma Dempster told her to stay away, she knew all about this house, but she wouldn"t and now oh, her face!"
More sobs. Hacker patted her on the shoulder. He looked as though he could stand a little shoulder-patting himself. But n.o.body obliged. He stood there, she stood there, still waiting. Waiting for the rest.
"Tell them," said Mrs. Hacker. "Tell them the truth."
"All right, but I"d better get you home."
"I"ll wait. I want you to tell them. You must, now."
Hacker sat down heavily. His wife leaned against his shoulder. The two waited another moment. Then it came.
"I don"t know how to begin, how to explain," said fat Mr. Hacker. "It"s probably my fault, of course, but I didn"t know. All this foolishness about haunted houses n.o.body believes that stuff any more, and all it does is push property values down, so I didn"t say anything. Can you blame me?"
"I saw her face," whispered Mrs. Hacker.
"I know. And I should have told you. About the house, I mean. Why it hasn"t rented for twenty years. Old story in the neighborhood, and you"d have heard it sooner or later anyway, I guess."
"Get on with it," said Mrs. Hacker. She was suddenly strong again and he, with his wobbling chins, was weak.
Host and hostess stood before them, brittle as gla.s.s, as the words poured out; poured out and filled them to overflowing. He and she, watching and listening, filling up with the realization, with the knowledge, with that for which they had waited.
It was the Bellman house they were living in, the house Job Bellman built for his bride back in the sixties; the house where his bride had given birth to Laura and taken death in exchange. And Job Bellman had toiled through the seventies as his daughter grew to girlhood, rested in complacent retirement during the eighties as Laura Bellman blossomed into the reigning beauty of the county some said the state, but then flattery came quickly to men"s lips in those days.
There were men aplenty; coming and going through that decade; pa.s.sing through the hall in polished boots, bowing and stroking brilliantined mustachios, smirking at old Job, grinning at the servants, and gazing in moonstruck adoration at Laura.
Laura took it all as her rightful due, but land"s sakes, she"d never think of it, no, not while Papa was still alive, and no, she couldn"t, she was much too young to marry, and why, she"d never heard of such a thing, she"d always thought it was so much nicer just being friends Moonlight, dances, parties, hayrides, sleighrides, candy, flowers, gifts, tokens, cotillion b.a.l.l.s, punch, fans, beauty spots, dressmakers, curlers, mandolins, cycling, and the years that whirled away. And then, one day, old Job dead in the four-poster bed upstairs, and the Doctor came and the Minister, and then the Lawyer, hack-hack-hacking away with his dry, precise little cough, and his talk of inheritance and estate and annual income.
Then she was all alone, just she and the servants and the mirrors. Laura and her mirrors. Mirrors in the morning, and the careful inspection, the scrutiny that began the day. Mirrors at night before the caller arrived, before the carriage came, before she whirled away to another triumphal entry, another fan-fluttering, pirouetting descent of the staircase. Mirrors at dawn, absorbing the smiles, listening to the secrets, the tale of the evening"s triumph.
"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?"
Mirrors told her the truth, mirrors did not lie, mirrors did not paw or clutch or whisper or demand in return for acknowledgment of beauty.
Years pa.s.sed, but mirrors did not age, did not change. And Laura did not age. The callers were fewer and some of them were oddly altered. They seemed older, somehow. And yet how could that be? For Laura Bellman was still young. The mirrors said so, and they always told the truth. Laura spent more and more time with the mirrors. Powdering, searching for wrinkles, tinting and curling her long hair. Smiling, fluttering eyelashes, making deliciously delicate little moves. Swirling daintily, posturing before her own perfection.
Sometimes, when the callers came, she sent word that she was not at home. It seemed silly, somehow, to leave the mirrors. And after a while, there weren"t many callers to worry about. Servants came and went, some of them died, but there were always new ones. Laura and the mirrors remained. The nineties were truly gay, but in a way other people wouldn"t understand. How Laura laughed, rocking back and forth on the bed, sharing her giddy secrets with the gla.s.s!
The years fairly flew by, but Laura merely laughed. She giggled and t.i.ttered when the servants spoke to her, and it was easier now to take her meals on a tray in her room. Because there was something wrong with the servants, and with Doctor Turner who came to visit her and who was always being tiresome about going away for a rest to a lovely home.
They thought she was getting old, but she wasn"t the mirrors didn"t lie. She wore the false teeth and the wig to please the others, the outsiders, but she didn"t really need them. The mirrors told her she was unchanged. They talked to her now, the mirrors did, and she never said a word. Just sat nodding and swaying before them in the room reeking of powder and patchouli, stroking her throat and listening to the mirrors telling her how beautiful she was and what a belle she would be if she would only waste her beauty on the world. But she"d never leave here, never; she and the mirrors would always be together.
And then came the day they tried to take her away, and they actually laid hands upon her upon her, Laura Bellman, the most exquisitely beautiful woman in the world! Was it any wonder that she fought, clawed and kicked and whined, and struck out so that one of the servants crashed headlong into the beautiful gla.s.s and struck his foolish head and died, his nasty blood staining the image of her perfection?
Of course it was all a stupid mistake and it wasn"t her fault, and Doctor Turner told the magistrate so when he came to call. Laura didn"t have to see him, and she didn"t have to leave the house. But they always locked the door to her room now, and they took away all her mirrors.
They took away all her mirrors!
They left her alone, caged up, a scrawny, wizened, wrinkled old woman with no reflection. They took the mirrors away and made her old; old, and ugly, and afraid.
The night they did it, she cried. She cried and hobbled around the room, stumbling blindly in a tearsome tour of nothingness.
That"s when she realized she was old, and nothing could save her. Because she came up against the window and leaned her wrinkled forehead against the cold, cold gla.s.s. The light came from behind her and as she drew away she could see her reflection in the window.
The window it was a mirror, too! She gazed into it, gazed long and lovingly at the tear-streaked face of the fantastically rouged and painted old harridan, gazed at the corpse-countenance readied for the grave by a mad embalmer.
Everything whirled. It was her house, she knew every inch of it, from the day of her birth onwards the house was a part of her. It was her room, she had lived here for ever and ever. But this this obscenity was not her face. Only a mirror could show her that, and there would never be a mirror for her again. For an instant she gazed at the truth and then, mercifully, the gleaming gla.s.s of the window-pane altered and once again she gazed at Laura Bellman, the proudest beauty of them all. She drew herself erect, stepped back, and whirled into a dance. She danced forward, a prim self-conscious smile on her lips. Danced into the window-pane, half-through it, until razored splinters of gla.s.s tore her scrawny throat.
That"s how she died and that"s how they found her. The Doctor came, and the servants and the lawyer did what must be done. The house was sold, then sold again. It fell into the hands of a rental agency. There were tenants, but not for long. They had trouble with mirrors.
A man died of a heart attack, they said while adjusting his necktie before the bureau one evening. Grotesque enough, but he had complained to people in the town about strange happenings, and his wife babbled to everyone.
A school-teacher who rented the place in the twenties "pa.s.sed away" in circ.u.mstances which Doctor Turner had never seen fit to relate. He had gone to the rental agency and begged them to take the place off the market; that was almost unnecessary, for the Bellman home had its reputation firmly established by now.
Whether or not Mary Lou Dempster had disappeared here would never be known. But the little girl had last been seen a year ago on the road leading to the house and, although a search had been made and nothing discovered, there was talk aplenty.