Mirror Image Read online

Tony didn’t know how long he’d lain unconscious. Ten, fifteen minutes, maybe. The angle of the sun through the window had definitely shifted. When he came to, he defiantly resisted the urge to vomit. His protective glasses now rested at an awkward angle across his face. Pulling them off, he threw them to his side, relieved that his own glasses were still intact. He felt the back of his head, wincing as he touched a warm sticky liquid oozing from an open wound. Skull laceration, maybe a concussion, he guessed, but he’d been lucky. It could have been worse, much worse. He could have snapped his neck when he’d fallen.

  Every movement was agony, and his entire body was a solid mass of anguish. Paradoxically—in spite of the pain, because of the pain?—he was losing feeling in his legs, but he guessed that was just the shock, or maybe there was internal bleeding.

  “Stupidstupidstupid.” His voice was a strangled hiss of pain. Finally, when he decided he had come to terms with the hurt, he began the painful process of crawling across to the telephone on the wall above the workbench. All these years he had resisted getting a cell phone and now he wished he hadn’t. How he was going to get the phone down was another matter, but one thing at a time. He knew Jonathan was at the store; he knew Celia—Mrs. Frazer—was still surfing in Hawaii and wouldn’t be back for another few days, and Manny was staying with friends. If he could get to the phone he’d call Jonathan at the store. Fuck that! He would call the paramedics first.

  Digging his fingernails into the scarred concrete floor, Farren pulled himself forward, moving awkwardly around the mirror, which was directly in front of him. Blood was pounding in his head, roaring in his skull, and he could feel it trickling warmly down the side of his face. His breathing was a loud rasp. When he got to the bench, he would …

  Concentrate … one thing at a time …

  He was going to have that engraved on his tomb: one thing at a time.

  Right now he was concentrating on reaching the workbench. When he reached it he would rest.

  Pressing his palms to the floor he pushed … and nothing happened. He couldn’t feel his legs now. His shoulder muscles were aflame; his arched spine ached as he dug into his reserves, attempting to pull himself along the floor. With an almost superhuman effort he reached out, his fingertips lightly brushing against the wooden corner of the workbench. With one final effort he managed to grab a firm hold.

  Something shifted.

  Tony Farren turned. His left foot had become caught up in the ornate base of the mirror. He had been pulling the mirror with his every movement, and the flesh of his ankle was rubbed raw. He hadn’t heard it because of the noise in his head, hadn’t felt it because of the numbness in his legs. He sat up and attempted to extricate his leg using both hands, jerking it towards him.

  The seven foot tall mirror shifted on the stand, the top swiveling, dipping downwards.

  Tony Farren opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came. He knew what was going to happen. Trapped, unable to move, he could only watch in horror as the mirror shifted, turning on its stand. With a slow, almost ponderous movement, the entire four hundred and twenty pound weight toppled forward.

  Farren managed to scream once before it crashed into him, snapping through his outstretched hands, impacting the bones deep into his body, cracking and then flattening the skull, crushing the ribs deep into the lungs and internal organs. Blood and gore spurted once—briefly—before the weight of the mirror pressed the corpse onto the ground.

  * * *

  IT TOOK FOUR firefighters to lift the mirror off the crushed remains of Tony Farren. There were two surprises in store for them: the mirror was intact despite the fall, and there was virtually no blood.

  3

  FOREVER AND EVER. Unchanged and unchanging.

  And so it was.

  The Otherworld landscape: a shadowland, gray and sere, black and white.

  Not quite soundless. A whisper of wind, the hint of voices, a threnody of off-key music.

  Forever and ever. Unchanged and unchanging.

  Until now.

  Color ran through the Otherworld. A flash of blood-red, bringing memories, awakening desires.

  It experienced a quickening …

  4

  THE MAN was, Dave Watts thought, one of the biggest and, without a doubt, the ugliest, motherfucker he had ever seen. Dave had been watching the man for the past few moments peering in through the auction room’s large windows, shading his eyes with his hands to see into the darkened interior. Finally, he moved in off the sidewalk and stood in the doorway, effectively blocking it. He was not the sort of guy you’d want to meet in a brightly lit alley, Dave decided, never mind the other kind.

  Dave Watts moved through the bewildering assortment of furniture he was presently listing in preparation for the usual weekly auction and stopped a few feet away from the large shadowed figure. “Morning, can I help you? Auction’s not ’til Wednesday, and there’s no viewing until Tuesday morning.”

  The big man moved into the large circular room, ducking his head slightly to avoid the low beams. He was dressed entirely in black, the outfit vaguely clerical, except that he wore a black turtleneck sweater instead of a Roman collar.

  Dave, who himself stood six foot and weighed a hundred and ninety-six pounds, found himself looking up at a man who topped him by at least four inches, and who had the body of a professional wrestler. The big man stopped in the center of the room, his head swiveling on a thick neck. He had a shock of snow-white hair, though his eyebrows were coal black, and much of his face was lined with a tracery of scars, which were especially evident along his cheekbones and forehead. His nose had once been broken and badly set and his chin was deeply cleft. When he finally turned to look at Dave, coal-black, stone-hard eyes stared unblinkingly at him.

  “Can I help you?” Dave demanded more forcefully. As casually as possible he began to move over to a collection of umbrellas and walking sticks in an elephant’s foot stand. There was a sword cane in one of them, though God alone knew which one. The auction rooms had been raided once, and on two previous occasions they had been approached and asked—no, told—to pay protection money. Despite repeated threats of burning they had refused to pay, and they had heard nothing further.

  But the big ugly mother was an enforcer if ever there was one.

  “You’re auctioning a mirror,” the big man said finally, his voice a rasping whisper as if his throat had once been damaged, though still revealing traces of a refined Oxford accent.

  “No … no … sir, we’re not. Not this week anyway.”

  The big man frowned. “I was told there was a large mirror coming up for auction in these rooms. I have traveled a long way to purchase this mirror. Now, is there a mirror for auction?”

  “Well, no, sir,” Dave said nervously, completely disconcerted by the man’s sheer presence. “We did have a large mirror for sale in last week’s auction … perhaps you got the dates wrong.”

  “Have you the catalog for that auction?”

  “Yes sir, but I can describe the mirror to you. I actually catalogued it myself.”

  “Describe it.”

  Dave glanced nervously around the room: where were the assistants? Surely they should have been back from lunch by now?

  “It was a large mirror, measuring approximately seven feet by four feet, set into a plain wooden frame, the whole lot mounted on a hinged base which allowed the mirror to be tilted back and forth. It weighed a ton,” he added with a grin, which faded at the expression on the other man’s face.

  “That is the mirror I was looking for.” He took a step forward. “It was sold.” He turned the question into a statement.

  “Yes sir.”

  “To whom?” he demanded.

  “I … I’m afraid we’re not at liberty to disclose that sort of information.”

  “Disclose it!”

  “Now hang on a minute…!”

  “Who bought that mirror?” Although his voice was still little more than a whisper, there was a defin
ite menacing tone in it now.

  “Sir, like I said, we guarantee client confidentially. I’m afraid I cannot disclose the purchaser of the mirror.” Dave felt beads of sweat pop out on his forehead as the man stepped nearer, towering over him. The scars on his face stood out whitely against the darker tan of his flesh. He looked as if he’d gone straight through a windshield. Dave glanced longingly at one of the nearby walking sticks; he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get to one before the stranger was on top of him.

  “Why make trouble for yourself?” the man asked pleasantly. “I can make it worth your while.” He pulled out a roll of currency and began peeling off the larger red notes, the fifties.

  Dave Watts stared at him until the man had counted out four fifties.

  “Frazer Interiors,” he blurted out suddenly. “Los Angeles address, purchased by Jonathan Frazer for five hundred pounds and shipped by AGP International Shipping, which cost him another nine hundred pounds.”

  The stranger smiled thinly, and the wad of money disappeared back into his coat. “Thank you.”

  “Hey,” Dave said, affronted, seeing his two hundred disappearing along with the rest. “What about my money?”

  “I never said I’d give you money,” the man said, turning away.

  “We had a deal; you said you’d make it worth my while.” Forgetting his earlier fears, he reached out and grabbed the bigger man by the arm.

  The large man turned, grabbed Dave by the throat and shoved him up against the wall behind him. Pitiless black eyes stared into Dave’s face for at least a minute, then the big man loosened his grip and smiled. Dave rubbed his hand over his throat wandering if it was covered in red marks: that smile had been the most frightening thing he had ever seen. He stepped forward and tripped over the elephant’s foot, scattering umbrellas, walking sticks, and canes all over the floor. He looked down involuntarily, and when he looked back, the big man had vanished.

  Dave Watts wiped his face on the sleeve of his shop coat. He felt chilled although he was bathed in sweat: for the first time in his life he realized he had experienced real fear. And then he discovered that he had wet himself.

  5

  THE PLACE wouldn’t be the same without Tony. Jonathan Frazer wandered down the silent workroom, still wearing the black suit he had worn to the funeral. This was the first time in the past week that he’d come into the guesthouse, and the long room—even though it was crowded with furniture and antiques—now felt empty. He sat down in Tony’s much battered chair and looked around the room, dust motes spiraling upwards in the afternoon stillness. He had lost a friend. He had never looked on Tony Farren as a father, but rather as an uncle or maybe a much older brother. Oh, he’d had his faults—he could be petty and spiteful, quarrelsome, and he hated to be proven wrong, and in recent years he had become far too fond of old wine and young men—but he had always been a friend.

  His eyes were drawn to the tall imposing mirror and the dark red-brown stain on the floor in front of it. Christ, but what a freakish accident! There had been an autopsy, of course, and a coroner’s report: accidental death had been the predictable verdict.

  The sequence of events was easy enough to reconstruct. Jonathan found his eyes going up the mirror, visualizing Tony working on the screws, cleaning them all off, and then laboriously cutting new grooves in them. He’d overstretched and fallen, cracking his head, breaking his hip, damaging his spine. The mirror had tilted, shifted, and then fallen forward on top of him. The cops had estimated its weight at about four hundred and twenty pounds, but he thought it might be heavier. Tony must have been in terrible pain when he’d fallen and it was small consolation that he’d died instantly when the mirror crushed him.

  Jonathan smiled bitterly. Tony always said he thought he would like to die working on something special. Well, he’d had his wish.

  May God have mercy on his soul.

  The door cracked open, the hinge screeching, startling him.

  “Sorry Jonathan, I didn’t expect to find you here.” Diane Williams, Tony Farren’s assistant, stepped into the long room, allowing the door to swing closed behind her. “It’s not the same without him,” she said quietly. She was dressed in a black suede skirt and crisp white shirt—the first time Frazer could ever remember her wearing a skirt—and her shaggy blond hair was bundled up neatly at the back of her head. She was wearing dark glasses to hide her red and swollen eyes. Although she had fought long and bitterly with Tony every day, they had been very fond of one another. “There was a good turn-out,” she said numbly, the silence of the long room oppressive.

  “He would have been proud.” Frazer nodded. Just about every notable antiques store in Los Angeles had sent a representative, along with numerous interior designers, colleagues, and contacts Tony had built up over the years. Frazer’s one regret was that his wife had categorically refused to cut short her surfing vacation to attend the funeral and Manny, his daughter, was still with friends in San Diego. Jonathan had never felt so alone.

  “Jonathan…” Diane began tentatively. She loosened her hair clips letting her long shaggy hair fall to her shoulders. “I know this isn’t the time, and this probably isn’t the place…”

  “What is it, Diane?” Frazer asked gently.

  “It’s that mirror, Jonathan, that … that fucking mirror! I’m not working on it. I couldn’t!” She began crying then, the tears which flowed so freely at Tony’s graveside returning again. She pulled off her glasses, wiping the tears away with the palm of her hand.

  Jonathan took her in his arms, pressing her head to his chest, stroking her hair, crooning softly to her. She would be about the same age as Emmanuelle—Manny—he guessed, around eighteen, and he had soothed and salved enough tears in his twenty-year marriage to be counted an expert on the subject. “I wasn’t even going to ask you,” he lied. He hadn’t even thought about the subject. “Now, listen to me. I want you to take a couple of days vacation—we’ll call it compassionate leave. Come back to me Monday, and we’ll work out something. I need you now, Diane, and I need you in top form. Only you know all of Tony’s tricks. Don’t even think about the mirror. I’ll probably dispose of it.”

  “I’m not superstitious, Jonathan, you know that. But that mirror is bad luck…”

  “Diane…” he began.

  “Look…” Taking his hand, she maneuvered him in front of the mirror. “What do you see?”

  “Beneath a layer of dirt, I see two unhappy people,” he said gently.

  “I polished that mirror four times since it arrived here. The first day I spent nearly two hours removing every speck of dirt and grease from it. Tony insisted.”

  “It probably got dirty when it … when it fell,” he said reasonably.

  Diane took Jonathan’s arm and turned him so that he was facing her. “Please Jonathan, get rid of the mirror, break it up, throw it away, burn it, but please, don’t keep it here.”

  Frazer took hold of both her arms, squeezing tightly. “You’re overwrought, Diane. Now please, go home, get some rest. We’ll sort everything out on Monday, I promise.”

  “Thanks,” she said meekly.

  “Off you go now.”

  When she had gone, Jonathan Frazer walked up to the mirror and ran his fingertip down the length of the glass. It came away black with grime.

  He presumed it had gotten dirty when it had fallen, but wasn’t it amazing that it hadn’t shattered when it had fallen on poor Tony? It had emerged from the accident completely unscratched … even the frame …

  A sudden thought struck him and he knelt on the floor, unconsciously standing in exactly the same spot where Tony had been killed. He examined the edges of the wooden frame. They had been splashed with blood, they should be stained, the wood scarred where they had struck the concrete floor … but there was no evidence that it had ever fallen. And then he noticed something else: the black speckling around the edges of the bottom of the glass had disappeared!

  6

  JONATHAN FRAZER tu
rned his Volvo Estate into the driveway and was surprised to find his wife’s new BMW M3 convertible parked carelessly across the double garage door, effectively blocking it. Hissing in annoyance, he pulled the Volvo onto the pathway leading to the house and then tramped up the graveled driveway, lifting the duplicate key for the BMW off his own key ring.

  It would have taken her two minutes to park the car.

  Jonathan sat in the BMW, smelling its newness and the richness of the leather upholstery, now overlain with his wife’s latest perfume, Opium. She changed her perfumes with extraordinary regularity. Before starting the car he took a deep breath to calm himself. She could have parked the car, or at least not blocked the entrance … it was just thoughtlessness. Or maybe it was something more than that. He suddenly grinned into the mirror. He hadn’t had an argument, hadn’t felt like this in a month … which was exactly how long Celia had been away.

  The last time he had had an argument with Celia—which was just before she left for Hawaii, which was her third, or was it her fourth holiday this year—he had stormed out of the house, climbed into the Volvo and proceeded to back into one of the free-standing ornamental water features on the lawn. The large ceramic pot had toppled off its pedestal and shattered the back taillight. He hadn’t seen the bill for the repair yet, but he knew it was going to run into thousands rather than hundreds of dollars. In some obscure way, he felt that just about summed up their relationship.

  But the bitch could have parked the car properly!

  When his breathing returned to normal and his heart slowed its angry pounding, he started up the BMW, carefully backed it down the drive and then tripped the garage door with the remote control. Celia had had a trick with the previous car of tripping the garage door when she was just turning in to the driveway and shooting straight into the garage without waiting for the roof to settle. Jonathan had been waiting for the day when she would either drive straight into the garage door which had refused to open or the door sticking halfway up and taking her head off.