In the House of Mirrors (24 page)

“
Simple?”

“
Yeah, I guess.” I was almost a little disappointed that this was the conclusion to our Denlax problem.

“
Sometimes,
the correct answer is the simplest one,” he said, grinning.

“
Aren't you a wise one.”

“
Nah, I read that in a fortune cookie yesterday,” he said, and we both roared with uncontrollable laughter.

Our laughter was cut short by an incoming call on my phone. I slipped my cell out of my pocket and saw Aurelia was calling me. I was looking forward to telling her the entire story. I doubted she would believe a word of it. Which also made me think that I could tell her nothing, and our relationship would carry on just fine. But no, I wanted to share it with her. I wanted to share
everything
with her.

“
Hello there, pretty lady—”

I was interrupted by a soft snicker, which sounded like a dolphin's cackle. If I didn't know any better, I'd say the laughter belonged to something inhuman.

“Who is this?” I asked, but my instincts beat me to the answer.

“
Hello there, Ritchie-my-bitchie,” a familiar voice croaked.

4

For a second, I thought my heart was going to stop beating again. Instead, it pounded heavily in my chest. Like a well-amped kick drum, it vibrated my entire body. I did not feel woozy or disorientated. I felt fine. I felt normal. Hell, I felt more focused than I ever had in my entire life.

“
Geoffrey,” I said into the phone, and I heard the evil bastard snorting with laughter on the other end of the line. “What have you done with her?” I asked.

“
Oh, a little of this, a little of that,” he said, snickering as if he were a fifth-grader with a secret. “I'm just prepping her for our meeting with the Master.”

I heard Aurelia screaming in the background. Her cries were muffled, so I imagined her having an old shirt tied around her face, gagging her. Tears were probably streaming down her face. Her clothes were probably torn from trying to fight off the abduction. I promised myself to stay cool, not to freak out. I tried not thinking about the condition she was in (physically and mentally), and prayed that he didn't hurt her. Of course my mind immediately wandered to dark places, where Boone had hit her repeatedly and had his way with her. I pushed these tainted thoughts to the side and concentrated on the task at hand; ensuring that nothing bad happens to Aurelia.  

“If you hurt her, Boone—if you touch her in anyway—I swear to God I'll chop your pecker off with a meat cleaver and feed it to the swine at the zoo in Carver's Grove,” I told him. I think my threat surprised Little Chris. His forehead wrinkled with disgust.

“
Don't worry. Aurelia and I have a lot of catching up to do. You know, I knew this bitch looked familiar. The whole time she was coming to my father's masses, I knew I knew her from somewhere. And then it hit me. The night of the fire. When I saw her leave with you. I knew she was Johnny Anderson's sister. The hot one. Oh, yes, I remember it vividly now. The day she came into visit him. How beautiful she looked.” I heard Aurelia scream louder now, and I knew Boone had done something to provoke her. “She doesn't look as beautiful now as she did then, but you know what they say; beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

“
Boone, I swear to God—”

“
God doesn't exist, Ritchie-my-bitchie. Only the Master does. And it's time I meet him. So here's what I want. Are you listening?” he asked.

“
I am.” I put the phone on speaker so Little Chris could hear too.

“
Bring me the camera. In exchange, I'll let her live. Happily ever after.” His demeanor went from being positive to seemingly dismal. “If you don't, Ritchie, then I'll be forced to kill her. And it won't be a quick slitting of the throat, like what your uncle did to Marty and Danica. No, it'll be a slow, torturous death. I'll start with stripping the flesh off her back, and then I'll make my way to her insides.”

“
If you fucking touch her, Boone, I will kill you.” I tried to remain calm, I really did. It was challenging.

“
Just bring me the key and we won't have to worry about nothing.”

I heard a click and there was silence.

I put the phone back in my pocket and looked at Chris. He looked back at me, waiting for direction.

“
Well,” I said, “I guess that answers our question.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I told Chris to pull over near the narrow path that led into the woods. “We'll walk from here,” I said to him. We needed to be stealthy. He agreed. “Look,” I told him before we exited his vehicle. “You don't have to do this. You can turn around, drive away and never look back. I won't think any less of you. Who knows what we might see down there,” I nodded to the path, “and who knows—we might not make it back.”

That is the rule of the House of Mirrors,
a voice echoed in my head, and suddenly I recalled the strange dreams I had over the past few months.

“
I've come this far,” he said. “Screw it. I'm riding this thing out.”

“
Are you sure?”

He paused, and for a second I thought he might change his mind. “Look at me, man. I'm a fucking loser. I'm like a hundred pounds overweight, I fiddle with cameras all day long, and I never went to college. I have a comic book collection that would make Kevin Smith jealous. I'm twenty-four years old and I've never been on a date.”

“Maybe that's because you use words like
fiddle
.”

He cracked a smile, but it quickly faded. “I'm serious. I have no real friends. I have... not a lot to look forward to in life. And don't get me wrong. I'm not doing this because it might be a way out without killing myself. That's not it at all. I want to live, it's just—” He took a beat to search for the right words. “I want my life to mean something. I want to make a difference. And how many chances am I going to get to prevent a dark wizard from busting out of his cell and potentially destroying our plane of existence? None. So since I have a chance to do something great—goddammit I'm going to do it.” 

I nodded. “Okay, let's do this.”

2

“You know, if I ever write a book about this,” I told Chris, as we were walking toward his trunk, “that speech is definitely going in there.”

“
Screw you, man,” he said, chuckling softly.

“
Seriously, I'm motivated,” I said, trying not to laugh myself. Then I quickly thought of Aurelia and the trouble she was in. Time was against us. How long would Boone wait before he determined that I wasn't going to show? Would he wait at all? Would he kill her anyway, knowing I was undoubtedly going to bring the camera? I didn't know, and I didn't want to think about it. All I knew was that there was no more time for joking around. It was time to get moving. “Ready?” I asked, as Little Chris rifled through the shit in his trunk.

“
Just a minute,” he said, and then, “Ah! There it is.” He produced a wooden baseball bat with the famous “Louisville Slugger” insignia branded on it. “I keep one in my car just in case someone tries to rob me in the parking lot after work.”

“
Good thinking,” I said, and then the two of us headed down the path, toward the House of Mirrors.

3

I recalled the dream. The one where the two of us walked down that very path; Little Chris armed with his Slugger, and I with a bottle of Holy Water. Holy Water was useless now, as it was in the dream. Now I held the camera with the name Denlax etched into its shell,
the key
, as Geoffrey Boone called it.

I'd be lying if I said I walked down that path with any concrete plan. Aurelia was in need of help, and that was my main objective. To make sure she came out of this thing unscathed. The other was to shut down the portal that linked our two worlds together—the world where Aurelia and I would hopefully end up together, and the world where Arthur Denlax currently resides, inside the House of Mirrors.

Whatever fate would come our way, waited up ahead.

We made out the House of Mirrors through the trees and dangling branches. We were close. Without thinking, I picked up the pace, breaking into a power walk. Chris tried to keep up, but eventually he fell further and further behind. The path twisted and turned, sometimes hiding the House of Mirrors behind a wall of half-naked trees. I thought about deviating from the path, making a beeline through the forest toward the house, but then thought better of it. I didn't want to get lost. But time was a factor. The hourglass was filling fast. Who knew how much time we had before Boone would give Aurelia the similar fate that Uncle Bernie had given his wife and her lover.

Within a few minutes, I came to the clearing where the House of Mirrors stood before me. Little Chris came trotting to my side a few seconds later. We both stared at the structure before us, gazing at its unique architecture. The place where the black masses had once taken place was mostly how I remembered it when Aurelia and I last left it—charred rubble. The rest of the house, which had been mostly intact, was now completely covered in mirrors, with the exception of the windows. The porch was exactly the way it was on the night I followed Marty Olberstad and uttered the password to Geoffrey Boone, who reluctantly let me in. The front door was not boarded up, as it had been in the dream. Instead, a giant mirror hung from it.

“
Holy shit,” Little Chris said.

“
Must have taken a week to hang all these mirrors.”

“
You think the inside is decorated the same?”

“
I think it's safe to assume.”

“
Why?”

“
Because... the House of Mirrors was Arthur Denlax's greatest accomplishment.”

Not a second after I uttered those words, the front door with the giant mirror on it opened. Geoffrey Boone stepped through the doorway and onto the porch. His caveman hair swayed wildly. His grin was that of a court jester. His clothes were filthy, as if they had not been washed in weeks. He had worked on the House of Mirrors in them, slept in them, prayed to the master in them. There was a bloodstain on his shirt, just below the collar, from a rabbit he captured two nights ago. He ate the poor bastard without cooking it. Its remains were strewn across the dirt lot, not more than ten feet from where Little Chris and I stood still, facing off with Geoffrey Boone like gunslingers in an old western flick. Boone skipped down the steps, onto the dirt lot, on even ground with us. It took a very long minute before anyone spoke, and when the time came, it was I who broke the silence.

“Where is she?” I asked.

A long stream of brown liquid discharged from his mouth. “She's safe.” He glared at us, cautiously, as if we came to harm him. His seedy eyes surveyed us for several moments, waiting for us to do something rash and unexpected. “Did you bring what I asked? Did you bring the key?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“
Let me see it.”

I held the camera up with one hand, as if I were King Arthur and I had just pulled the sword from the stone. Geoffrey's smile increased, and it turned my stomach upside down. He rubbed his hands with delight. He became more and more animated as time passed. He no longer acted like a human being. He appeared and behaved like the characters from the Saturday morning cartoons I watched as a kid; the kind with wild crazy eyes and grins that wrapped around their faces. The kind that made me laugh. In real life, a face with murderous insanity was hardly something to giggle about. It was something that made my knees quiver.

“Very good.”

“
Now, give me Aurelia,” I said. “Or...” I dangled the camera in front of me and looked to Little Chris, nodding. He understood. He put the bat over his shoulder as if he were ready to swing for the fences. “The camera turns into a fucking piňata. Want to see what kind of candy comes out of it?” I asked.

“
How dare you threaten me?” he said, laughing as he spoke. “You want to destroy it? Fine. See what happens to your precious Aurelia. I'll make sure she loses her voice from screaming, before I slit her neck open.”

I almost charged at him, but I was able to restrain myself.

Boone turned back to the steps, toward the House of Mirrors. “Bring the camera inside, why don't you. And do us both a favor and leave the bat outside.” He hopped up on the porch and headed for the front door. “Unless you want your girlfriend's face looking like a pumpkin on Halloween.” He opened the door and put one foot inside. He stopped, as if he had forgotten something. “Oh, and gentlemen. Welcome to the House of Mirrors.” A second later, his sinister smile disappeared through the doorway and into the darkness inside.

4

We walked cautiously toward the House of Mirrors. It was unspoken, but both of us expected some sort of magical booby-trap to be hidden beneath the dirt lot. Slowly, we put one foot in front of the other, like two unsuspecting horror movie characters. Once we reached the porch, we both let out a sigh of relief.

“
What the hell do we do now?” Little Chris asked. I could see the excess weight in his face trembling. 

“
Leave the bat here,” I told him.

“
But—”

“
I know. But you heard what he said. Leave the bat here. Trust me. It's the only way.”

Reluctantly, Little Chris tossed the bat on the ground in front of the porch. I took the first step toward the mirrored door. Chris followed cautiously, in anticipation of something horrible that was about to happen. When we reached the door, I was the one to open it. The reflection of me in the door was normal, a true reflection of myself. I half expected it to be a warped image of me, maybe a dwarf version of myself, like those Funhouse mirrors that were so popular when I was a kid.

“Ready?” I asked, as I pushed the door open.

Little Chris gulped. We ducked inside.

5

The entry room was covered in mirrors, just like the exterior of the house was. This was not to our surprise. The extreme decoration had been man-made and we marveled over its grandness. We swiveled our heads up and down, left to right, taking in the full scope of it. Mirrors of all shapes and sizes covered the walls and ceiling like some three-dimensional wallpaper. Some of the mirrors looked like they had been hand-me-downs, dirty and hazy. Some of them looked new, perhaps purchased at a specialty store, or ordered from a fancy catalog. The trim around them was intricately designed. These mirrors were crisp and clean, untainted. There was one thing that every mirror had in common, something Little Chris and I noticed almost simultaneously.

None of them were broken, not so much as a scratch on them.

“
WELCOME TO THE HOUSE OF MIRRORS!” a voice boomed through speakers that had been intentionally hidden somewhere within the room. “DO NOT TOUCH THE MIRRORS, FOR YOU MAY NOT LIKE THE CONSEQUENCE OF THIS ACTION! PLEASE PROCEED UP THE STAIRS, WITH THE KEY IN HAND, SO WE CAN GET THIS PARTY STARTED!”

I knew it was Geoffrey Boone, broadcasting from somewhere within the house. I nodded to Little Chris, telling him we should comply with the crazy bastard's demands. He nodded back to me in agreement. The two of us marched toward the stairs, utilizing less caution than we had when we were crossing the dirt lot.

The stairs creaked with each step. Again, like the outside of the house and the living room we had just walked through, the stairway was also covered with mirrors. I looked at myself as we walked up the stairs, with a pace I couldn't seem to slow. With each passing mirror, the images of myself became more distorted. I caught a glimpse of myself in one mirror where I was the size of a small child; another displayed me as being a tall, pencil-shaped man. The mirrors had been stolen from some seaside amusement park, no doubt about it.

“
DO NOT STOP AND LOOK AT THE MIRRORS FOR AN EXTENDED PERIOD OF TIME!” Boone blared through the speakers. It caused Little Chris to jump. I heard him mutter obscenities under his breath. “YOU WILL BECOME LOST IN THEM!” he announced, like any good host would.

I caught a bizarre image in the last mirror I passed before we came to a long hallway. It was of me, but it wasn't. I was green. I had gills growing out of my neck. My fingernails were long, curled at the ends. My eyes were yellow. I was snarling like a wild animal trying to intimidate an enemy. I looked vaguely familiar, and the images of Lynne and Buster Gritton from my dreams came flooding back to me.

I did a double take. I didn't adhere to Boone's warning and went back to the mirror that displayed me so grotesquely. I stared at it, closely, examining every inch. I did not hear Little Chris calling to me, telling me to hurry up.

Suddenly, something made my whole body vibrate.

“DO NOT DWELL ON ANY MIRROR FOR TOO LONG!” Boone's warning caused me to jump out of my skin. I stumbled backwards, and my back collided with the mirrors that were fastened to the wall.

None of them broke.

I looked at Little Chris. He stared at me, eyes wide open and his arms extended, asking me what the hell had just happened. I shrugged and shook my head. He waved me on, telling me to hurry up. Then he disappeared down the hallway.

I stood on that last step, trying to catch my breath. Before I followed Little Chris down the hallway, I looked into the mirror that had warped my image so unearthly. I peered into it.