Festival of Fear (20 page)

‘May I show you something?' he drawled. His accent wasn't Northern California. More like Marblehead, Massachusetts.

‘You probably don't remember me, but you sold me a mirror about six months ago. Jack Keller.'

‘A mirraw, hmm? Well, I sell an awful lot of mirraws. All guaranteed safe, of course.'

‘This one wasn't. I lost my partner this morning. I was just starting work when the police came around and told me she'd been mirrorized.'

The man slowly took off his spectacles and stared at Jack with bulging pale blue eyes. ‘You're absolutely sure it was one of mine? I don't see how it could have been. I'm
very
careful, you know. I lost my own pet Pomeranian that way. It was only a little hand-mirraw, too. One second she was chasing her squeaky bone. The next . . . gone!

He put his spectacles back on. ‘I had to—' And he made a smacking gesture with his hands, to indicate that he had broken the mirror to put his dog down. ‘That endless pathetic barking . . . I couldn't bear it.'

‘The same thing's happened to my partner,' said Jack, trying to control his anger. ‘And it was one of
your
mirrors, I still have the receipt. A cheval mirror, with a mahogany frame, with grapevines carved all around it.'

The man's face drained of color. ‘
That
mirraw. Oh, dear.'

‘Oh, dear? Is that all you can say? I've lost the only woman I've ever loved. A beautiful, vibrant young woman with all of her life still in front of her.'

‘I
am
sorry. My Pom was a pedigree, you know . . . but this is
much
worse, isn't it?'

Jack went right up to him. ‘I want to know how to get her out. And if I can't get her out, I'm going to come back here and I'm going to tear your head off with my bare hands.'

‘Well! There's no need to be so
aggressive
.'

‘Believe me, pal, you don't even know the meaning of the word aggressive. But you will do, if you don't tell me how to get my partner out of that goddamned mirror.'

‘Please,' said the man, lifting both hands as if he were admitting liability. ‘I only sold it to you because I thought that it
had
to be a fake.'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘I bought it cheap from a dealer in Sacramento. He wouldn't say why he was selling it at such a knock-down price. It has a story attached to it, but if the story's true . . . well, even if it's only
half
-true . . .'

‘What story?' Jack demanded.

‘Believe me, I wouldn't have sold it to you if I thought there was any risk attached, especially after that last outbreak of silver plunge. I'm always so careful with mirraws.'

He went over to his desk, which was cluttered with papers and books and a framed photograph of Madame Chiang Kai-Shek, with the handwritten message,
To Timmy, What A Night
!

He pulled open his desk drawers, one after the other. ‘I put it down to vanity, you know. If people stare into the mirraw long enough, it's bound to set off
some
reaction. I mean, it happens with
people
, doesn't it? If you stare at somebody long enough, they're bound to say “who do you think
you're
looking at?”, aren't they?'

He couldn't find what he was looking for in his drawers, so he pulled down a steady shower of pamphlets and invoices and pieces of paper from the shelves behind his desk. At last he said, ‘Here we are! We're in luck!'

He unfolded a worn-out sheet of typing paper and smoothed it with the edge of his hand. ‘The Camelot Looking-Glass. Made circa 1842, as a gift from an admiring nation to Alfred Lord Tennyson on publication of the revised version of his great poem
The Lady of Shalott.
'

‘What does that mean?' said Jack, impatiently. ‘I don't understand.'

‘The mirraw was specially commissioned by The Arthurian Society in England as a token of esteem for
The Lady of Shalott
. You do
know
about
The Lady of Shalott
?'

Jack shook his head. ‘What does this have to do with my getting Jacqueline back?'

‘It could have
everything
to do with it. Or, on the other hand, nothing at all, if the mirraw's a fake.'

‘Go on.'

The man pulled up a bentwood chair and sat down. ‘Some literary experts think that
The Lady of Shalott
was a poetic description of silver plunge.'

‘I think I'm losing my patience here,' said Jack.

‘No! No! Listen!
The Lady of Shalott
is about a beautiful woman who is condemned to spend all of her days in a tower, weaving tapestries of whatever she sees through her window. She weaves tapestries of all the passing seasons. She weaves courtships, weddings, funerals. The catch is, though, that she is under a spell. She is only allowed to look at the world by means of her mirraw. Otherwise, she will die.

‘Let's see if I can remember some of it.

‘There she weaves by night and day

A magic web with colors gay.

She has heard a whisper say,

A curse is on her if she stay

To look down to Camelot . . .

‘And moving thro' a mirraw clear

That hangs before her all the year,

Shadows of the world appear.

There she sees the highway near

Winding down to Camelot . . .'

‘Yes, great, very poetic,' Jack interrupted. ‘But I still don't see how this can help Jacqueline.'

‘Please – just let me finish. One day, Sir Lancelot comes riding past the tower. He looks magnificent. He has a shining saddle and jingling bridle-bells and his helmet feather burns like a flame. The Lady of Shalott sees him in her mirraw, and she can't resist turning around to look at him directly.

‘She left the web, she left the loom

She made three paces thro' the room

She saw the water-lily bloom,

She saw the helmet and the plume

She look'd down to Camelot.

Out flew the web and floated wide;

The mirraw crack'd from side to side;

‘The curse is come upon me,' cried

The Lady of Shalott.'

‘She knows that she is doomed. She leaves the tower. She finds a boat in the river and paints her name on it,
The Lady of Shalott
. Then she lies down in it and floats to Camelot, singing her last sad song. The reapers in the fields beside the river can hear this lament, as her blood slowly freezes and her eyes grow dark. By the time her boat reaches the jetty at Camelot, she's dead.

‘Sir Lancelot comes down to the wharf with the rest of the crowds. He sees her lying in the boat and thinks how beautiful she is, and he asks God to give her grace. That's what Tennyson wrote in the poem, anyhow. But listen to what it says on this piece of paper.

‘“Several other stories suggest that Sir Lancelot visited the Lady of Shalott in her tower many times and become so entranced by her beauty that he became her lover, even though she could not look at him directly when they made love because of the curse that was on her. One day however he gave her ecstasy so intense that she turned to look at him. She vanished into her mirraw and was never seen again.

‘“The mirraw presented to Alfred, Lord Tennyson, is reputed to be the original mirraw in which The Lady of Shalott disappeared, with a new decorative frame paid for by public subscription. When Lord Tennyson died in 1892, the mirraw was taken from his house at Aldworth, near Haslemere, in southern England, and sold to a New York company of auctioneers.”'

Jack snatched the paper out of his hand and read it for himself. ‘You knew that this mirror had swallowed this Shalott woman and yet you sold it to us without any warning?'

‘Because the Lady of Shalott is only a poem, and Sir Lancelot is only a myth, and Camelot never existed! I never thought that it could happen for real! Even Lord Tennyson thought that the mirraw was a phoney, and that some poor idiot from The Arthurian Society had been bamboozled into paying a fortune for an ordinary looking-glass!'

‘For Christ's sake!' Jack shouted at him. ‘Even ordinary mirrors can be dangerous, you know that! Look what happened to your dog!'

The man ran his hand through his straggling white hair. ‘The dealer in Sacramento said that it had never given anybody any trouble, not in thirty years. I inspected for silver plunge, but of course it's not always easy to tell if a mirraw's been infected or not.'

Jack took two or three deep breaths to calm himself down. At that moment, Punipuni appeared in the doorway of the antiques store, and the bell jangled.

‘Everything is OK, Mr German-cellar?'

‘No, Pu, it isn't.'

The man jerked his head toward Punipuni and said, ‘Who's this?'

‘A friend. His name is Punipuni Puu-suke.'

The man held out his hand. ‘Pleased to know you. My name's Davis Culbut.'

‘Pleased to know you, too, Mr French-somersault.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘That is what your name derives from, sir. The French word for head over heels. Topsy-turvy maybe.'

‘I see,' said Davis Culbut, plainly mystified. He turned back to Jack and held up the typewritten sheet of paper. ‘It says here that Sir Lancelot grieved for the Lady of Shalott so much that he consulted Merlin, the magician, to see how he might get her back. But Merlin told him that the curse is irreversible. The only way for him to be reunited with her would be for him to pass through the mirraw, too.'

‘You mean—?'

‘Yes, I'm afraid I do. You
can
have your lady-friend back, but only if you join her. Even so . . . this is only a legend, like Camelot, and I can't give you any guarantees.'

‘Mr German-cellar!' said Punipuni, emphatically. ‘You cannot go to live in the world of reflection!'

Jack said nothing. After a lengthy silence, Davis Culbut folded the sheet of paper and handed it to him. ‘I can only tell you that I'm very sorry for your loss, Mr Keller. I'm afraid there's nothing else that I can do.'

They sat by the window in Steiner's Bar on First Street West and ordered two cold William Randolph Hearsts. Their waitress was a llama, with her hair braided and tied with red-and-white ribbons, and a brass bell around her neck.

‘You want to see a menu?' she asked them, in a high, rasping voice that came right from the back of the throat. ‘The special today is saddle of saddle, with maraschinos.'

Jack shook his head. ‘No, thank you. Just the beers.'

The waitress stared at him with her slitted golden eyes. ‘You look kind of down, my friend, if you don't mind my saying so.'

‘Mirror trouble,' said Punipuni.

‘Oh, I'm sorry. My nephew had mirror trouble, too. He lost his two daughters.'

Jack looked up at her. ‘Did he ever try to get them back?'

The waitress shook her head so that her bell jangled. ‘What can you do? Once they're gone, they're gone.'

‘Did he ever think of going after them?'

‘I don't follow you.'

‘Did he ever think of going into the mirror himself, to see if he could rescue them?'

The waitress shook her head again. ‘He has five other children, and a wife to take care of.'

‘So what did he do?'

‘He broke the mirror, in the end. He couldn't bear to hear his little girls crying.'

When she had gone, Jack and Punipuni sat and drank their beers in silence. At last, though, Punipuni wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, ‘You're thinking of trying it, aren't you?'

‘What else can I do, Pu? I love her. I can't just leave her there.'

‘Even supposing you manage to get into the mirror, what's going to happen if you can't get back out?'

‘Then I'll just have to make my life
there
, instead of here.'

Punipuni took hold of Jack's hands and gripped them tight. ‘If your loved one falls from a high tower, even the flamingos cannot save her, and they can fly.'

That night, Jack sat on the end of the bed staring at himself in the cheval mirror, like a fortune teller confronted by his own mischance. Outside, the city glittered on the ocean's edge, like Camelot.

‘
Jacqueline
?' he said, as quietly as he could, as if he didn't really want to disturb her.

He thought of the day when he first met her. She was riding side-saddle on a white cow through a field of sunflowers, under a sky the color of polished brass. She was wearing a broken wedding cake on her head, and a white damask tablecloth, wound around and around her and trailing to the ground.

He stopped and shaded his eyes. He had been visiting his friend Osmond at the Mumm's Winery in Napa, and he had drunk two very cold bottles of Cuvée Napa
méthode champenoise
. He had taken the wrong turning while looking for the parking lot, and he had lost his way.

‘Excuse me!' he shouted, even though she was less than ten feet away from him. ‘Can you direct me to Yountville?'

The cow replied first. ‘I'm sorry,' she sighed, with a distinctive French accent. ‘I've never been there.' She slowly rolled her shining black eyes from side to side, taking in the sunflower field. ‘To tell you the truth, I've never been
anywhere
.'

But Jacqueline laughed and said, ‘
I
can show you, don't worry!' She slithered down from the cow and walked up to him, so that she was disturbingly close. The tablecloth had slipped and he could see that, underneath it, her breasts were bare.

‘You're not really interested in going to Yountville, are you?' she asked him. She was wearing a very strong perfume, like a mixture of lilies and vertigo. ‘Not any more.'

‘Have I drunk too much wine or is that a wedding cake on your head?'