The Mansion of Mirrors, page 27
Those last words hang in the air between them for a moment as Starck stares down at his hands folded in his lap.
“There’s a catch, though,” he says. “Doing so would mean delaying the trip to the mansion.”
Lisa, convinced that Michael is about to explode, shifts uneasily and is already searching for words to calm him down. But Michael surprises her. He shows no sign of anger. He just stands there, arms still crossed and a thoughtful look on his face.
“What kind of delay are we talking?” he asks. “Days . . . or weeks?”
“Days,” Starck says. “If all goes well, it’ll take three to four days to get word out to all the towns to start gathering the mirrors. That should give the troops enough time to assemble and be ready to invade Tagoanan once all confirmations are received.”
“And what if Crane actually has kidnapped Benjamin? Would we be putting him in more danger?”
“No,” Starck says, and this time his gaze doesn’t waver—not down at his hands, not anywhere else. It stays fixed on Michael’s face. “If Crane took your son, then he’s in the mansion.”
But what if Crane escapes and decides to go there? Lisa thinks, but before she has opened her mouth, Michael beats her to it.
“From what I understand, your plan will leave Crane with only two possible escape routes,” he says. “And one of them is the mansion, right?”
“That’s correct,” Starck admits. “However, that doesn’t mean he’s stupid enough to go back in there. And even if he did, he wouldn’t be able to harm your son. If your son—”
“Benjamin.”
“Benjamin, yes,” Starck repeats, nodding apologetically. “If Benjamin is there, he’ll be trapped in a mirror, and Crane won’t be able to reach him anymore. The mirrors in the mansion aren’t like the ones out here.”
For what feels like an eternity to Lisa, Michael remains still, standing behind the cross of his arms without saying a word, just watching Starck. The look in his blue eyes is stern, bordering on threatening. So is his voice when he finally speaks.
“Four days. And then I have your word that you’ll take me straight to the mansion afterward?”
Starck nods.
“You have my word.”
“No matter what happens?”
“Four days,” Starck repeats. “No matter what.”
65
That night, Michael sleeps miserably. He and Starck have been given a room on the top floor of the council’s headquarters, while Sunni and Lisa are sharing a room farther down the hall.
As such, it’s a decent sleeping arrangement. The room is warm, its thick walls block out most of the sounds from Soto’s nightlife, and Starck is silent in his bed. Nonetheless, Michael sleeps like crap. He is caught in an endless cycle of intrusive thoughts and nightmares.
When he’s not sleeping, his thoughts revolve around Benjamin. He is worried that the four-day delay will turn out to be a fatal decision—that it might be exactly what makes the difference between life and death for his son. And he’s also worried that Starck might know this.
Then, when he actually does manage to drift off, those worries carry him into a recurring nightmare—one that, in many ways, is an echo of the one that drove him back to work after the accident.
In the dream, he once again finds himself wandering through the mansion’s endless rows of sheet-covered mirrors, and as always, the sound of whispering voices leads him to the mirror with Benjamin’s name on it. However, in this version of the dream, just as he reaches out to pull the sheet away, his fingers barely touch the fabric before he hears a sound behind him and freezes.
It’s the sound of someone mimicking a ticking clock by clicking their tongue.
No words follow, and turning around, Michael sees nothing but the pale beam of moonlight streaming down from the skylight in the large hall. Still, he has no doubt that the sound is coming from a person. Just as he has no doubt about who it is.
“What do you want, Crane?”
For a few seconds, silence. Then the answer comes—this time from a different place out in the darkness among the mirrors.
“I merely want to help you get your son back. I mean, someone has to, seeing as your guide can’t get his act together. The clock is ticking, isn’t it?”
“You don’t have my son,” Michael replies, though he doesn’t feel nearly as confident as he tries to sound. “If you did, you’d have given him back to me already.”
“Now, as far as I recall, I never claimed that I took your son. What I said was that your son is in the Mansion of Mirrors. But just for the heck of it, let’s assume I did take him. Why would you think I’d have given him back to you?”
“Because you’re a dad too. You know what it means to lose a child.”
“Oh, I see. Starck told you about Rebecca and Isabel. Did he also tell you that I could have saved them, if it hadn’t been for him?”
“He told me you defied the orders of the council and followed your wife into the mansion.”
“Oh yes, the great council that has your dear Starck bending over backwards. But did he also mention that he was the one who talked me out of going to the mansion right away? That it was his advice to wait that kept me from saving her? That I might still be holding my wife in my arms today if it weren’t for him. Did he tell you that?”
Don’t listen to him, Michael says to himself, but it’s hard, because there’s something in Crane’s voice that wasn’t there in the previous nightmares. A frailty that must be a remnant of the man Crane once was. A man who loved and lost. Just like him.
“I trusted Starck, let the clock run out, and waited too long,” Crane repeats. “The same mistake you’re about to make. And you know what I found when I finally went in there? Do you want to know?”
“What did you find?”
“I found her. I found Rebecca. My wife, lying on the floor in front of a shattered mirror that bore my daughter’s name. She was lying there, lifeless on the ground, among the shards of glass she had used to open the artery in her arm.”
After those words follows a long, unpleasant silence, and even though Michael opens his mouth to try and break it, he can’t. Every time he tries, his throat tightens, keeping any words from escaping.
Because no matter how much he despises Crane, he can’t help but ask himself what he would have done in the same situation. And the answer isn’t as clear-cut as he’d like.
Now, almost as if he has read the thought in Michael’s mind, Crane steps into the light, revealing his face. His pale, wide-grinning face, with eyes that gleam in their sockets like two black marbles.
“You do understand my concern, don’t you?” he says. “It’s just that I’d hate for you to end up in the same situation as me.”
“I’ll never end up like you,” Michael retorts, although the doubt is still stirring in the back of his mind. “I’d never have done the things you’ve done. True, I lost my family too. And it hurts like fucking hell. But I’d never use that pain as an excuse to start a war that hurts innocent people. Because I know that’s not what they would’ve wanted.”
Crane doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to either. The crooked smile on his lips speaks volumes.
We’ll see about that, my friend. Just you wait.
“I can’t imagine it is what Rebecca and Isabel would’ve wanted either,” Michael finishes, hoping the words will be powerful enough to break through to Crane. That they’ll reach the broken man still hiding somewhere behind those black eyes and let him accept the hand being offered. But then the smile returns, and Michael realizes it’s pointless.
“Maybe you’re right,” Crane says with a shrug. “Maybe I’m just the villain in this little drama, and maybe it’s a big, fat lie that your son is in the mansion.”
He pauses for effect, taking a deep breath and looking down at his folded hands. Whether it’s deliberate, Michael doesn’t know—but the gesture sends a chill down his spine. It’s the exact same motion Crane made right before delivering the news on the day Michael’s world fell apart.
“The question is whether you’re willing to take that chance,” Crane finishes. “Are you ready to blindly trust your guide and let him take his sweet time . . . knowing that by the time you finally reach the mansion, it might already be too late?”
On this, their first night in Soto, it’s those same words that wake Michael from the nightmare each time, sending him back into his half-waking speculations.
Are you willing to take that chance? The wording may differ, but the essence is the same as the question Crane asked him in a nightmare when they stayed at Mary and Elias’ house: What if you can’t trust Starck, and he’s just using you for his own agenda? Are you really willing to gamble with your son’s life like that?
Back then—as well as he does now—Michael tried to tell himself not to let the words get under his skin. Still, something gnaws at him as he lies in bed, analyzing this night’s version of the dream. Maybe it’s because his background in psychology drives him to search for subconscious messages in dreams.
Maybe it’s just that.
But maybe—just maybe—it’s because his roommate sleeps like a baby the entire night.
66
As the sun rises the next morning, Tom Cerveau is sitting hundreds of miles from Soto, gathering the courage for the conversation he’s been planning to have with Crane. With everything he has contributed by now, he feels it’s high time the mirror man holds up his end of the deal—especially considering Tom’s role in the plans Crane has for the mirror that Anton planted in the Guide Council’s headquarters.
And he is gonna keep his promise, Tom thinks as he folds his hands behind his head and leans back into the soft armchair. He’s gonna help me remember.
It’s been a long time since he has sat this comfortably, and for a moment, he is tempted to complete the experience by kicking his feet up on the table. He quickly changes his mind, though—and for good reason. The courthouse in Tagoanan, where he’s currently located, serves as Crane’s base, while most of his followers have settled in the other buildings of the abandoned city.
In other words, the courthouse is the closest thing to Crane’s home, so he probably wouldn’t be thrilled if Tom planted his boots on the table. Especially not with that reddish-brown layer stuck to the soles—a lumpy mix of the watchmaker’s blood and desert sand.
Sitting there, comfortably sunken into the chair’s soft cushions, Tom can see the glass door of a cabinet standing against the wall across from him. In the glass is his own reflection—and above it, he sees the door behind him slowly creak open, gradually revealing Crane’s pale face.
“I wanna talk to you about something,” Tom says as he turns around and puts on what he hopes comes off as a confident expression.
Crane raises one eyebrow and tilts his head to the side.
“You promised you’d tell me about my past,” Tom continues.
A moment of silence, then Crane lets out a dry, rasping laugh.
“Is that all?” He walks around to the other side of the table, drops into the room’s other chair, and kicks his feet up on the edge of the table. “You sounded so serious. I was starting to get all nervous.”
Bullshit, Tom thinks. There are plenty of things Crane could be accused of, but getting nervous isn’t one of them. Tom, on the other hand, has to work hard to keep his own unease from showing.
“I’m tired of being played for a fool,” he says. “And if you want me to kill the boy, I want something in return. You gotta tell me who I was!”
The mirror man stares at him, the wrinkles in his corpse-pale face shifting until they finally settle into a smile—one that, in many ways, is worse than the laughter.
“You’re sure?” he asks. “You’re absolutely sure you want to know?”
Tom nods.
“Very well.”
Crane gets up and walks over to a painting hanging on the wall next to the cabinet with the glass door. It’s a small painting depicting a sunset over Mount Heriotza. Without saying a word, he takes the picture from the wall and places it on the table.
“What am I supposed to do with that?” Tom asks. He is struggling to see how an oil painting of Urari’s only graveyard is going to help him remember his past. He has heard the story of Crane’s promise to the council—that one day he’ll stand at the top of that mountain and see nothing but ash—so he gets why the mirror man has it on the wall . . . but what good it’s gonna do him, he has no idea.
“Turn it over.”
Tom does as Crane asks and discovers that the cracked wooden frame encloses more than just the painting of Heriotza.
“A mirror?”
“Of course,” Crane replies. “I’d be a pretty lousy leader if I didn’t make sure my people had an emergency exit in case the shit hits the fan . . . or if they need a reminder of who’s in charge.”
Those are the last words Tom catches before the mirror lights up and reaches out for him with its merciless, invisible hands. It pulls him into the darkness and leaves him there, as his memories start to pour down over him.
At first like soft raindrops, then like icy hail.
Tom looks up just as the first drop falls from the black void above him. A small, white bead of water trailing a streak of blue light through the darkness, until it hits his forehead and, with the jolt of an electric shock, sends the first image flashing through his mind.
Stairs. A hand on a railing. A painting of a hot air balloon on the wall.
I’m . . . home? he thinks, and instantly, another jolt shoots through his body as the next drop falls, hitting the back of his neck.
Golden hair. A girl sitting with her knees pulled up on a bus seat, buried in a book. The world outside rushes past.
Michelle Roux. That’s the girl I’m going to marry.
Another drop, another jolt, and his nostrils fill with the scent of rain-soaked asphalt and sunshine.
Same girl, now a woman. Tom sees her from below. She’s smiling, proudly holding out her hand. A small silver ring glints in the sunlight.
Tom tries to hold on to this image, but the rain grows heavier, and new drops shatter it.
The sound of a scream. Of pain. The sterile smell of a hospital. The feeling of helplessness turns into the feeling of joy.
From now on, you’ll always come first, he thinks, as two new jolts surge through him. One shows a nightlight above a crib, the other a name—Elliot—spelled out in red and blue letter blocks on a floor. I’ll always protect you.
An intense pain, like a divine reprimand, shoots through Tom as another raindrop lands in his hair, and he knows it’s a lie. He is back on the staircase, heading down to the living room where she is waiting—and he won’t always protect his son.
The rain stops, and he remains trapped in this memory for a while, against his will. It’s like watching a disturbing movie while wearing a torture device that forces his eyelids open.
On the movie screen, his hand reaches out and opens the door. There she is, the same girl, the same woman, but no smile and no pride. Defiance and an edginess he doesn’t understand are all that remain in her green eyes. She’s sitting on the edge of the couch, legs tucked beneath her just like she had on the bus seat back when he realized she was the one. However, there’s no book in her hands now. They’re clasped together, and they’re trembling.
“Did you get him to sleep?”
Tom nods to the woman on the screen and twitches as a drop slides down from the hair on the back of his neck and runs along his spine.
“Good,” she replies, looking down at her hands. “There’s something I need to talk to you about, and I have to do it before I lose my nerve.”
Tom opens his mouth, but then feels his throat tighten as he follows her gaze down to her hands. The small movement she makes with her left hand is barely noticeable. She opens and closes it, only for a fraction of a second—but it’s enough for Tom to catch sight of the silver object resting in her palm.
The little ring.
The storm begins simultaneously inside him and in the black void above. An overwhelming swirl of confusing sensations and memories crashes down in the form of tiny, stinging hailstones.
Electric shocks blast through his body, and memories flicker past his eyes, rapidly and out of order. Like poker cards being shuffled.
His hand touching her cheek. Her grimacing and turning away. A dog barking at the neighbor’s. Elliot opening his eyes and stiffening. A hand on the stair railing. Two signatures on a piece of paper—his in blue, hers in black. A mattress on the floor in an empty apartment. Green leaves turning brown. Her new, stylish haircut. Loneliness and betrayal. A streetlamp in moonlight. Two silhouettes in a window. A knife block. Canned laughter from a TV show in the background. A scream. Red stains on a carpet. Stairway. The door to a kid’s room. A man’s shadow on a child’s blanket. Two breaths, one fast and one slow. A triangular patch of light shuddering on a wall, then shooting downward in a single, swift motion.
After that, nothing.
67
“Are you nervous about tomorrow?”
Sunni’s question catches Lisa completely off guard, and she doesn’t really know how to answer.
Two days have passed since they got the green light from the council, and during that time, she has asked him that same question more than once. The focus has been so heavily on him and his young age that she hasn’t even considered whether she might be nervous about the trial.
“Why do you ask that?” she says as her gaze drifts to a stone bridge up ahead, connecting the street they’re walking on with the one on the other side. “Do I look nervous?”
“I don’t know,” Sunni says with a shrug. “I guess you don’t, but I mean . . . maybe you should be?”
They were given the details of the Guide Trial the night before, and in light of those, there probably is reason to be a bit nervous. They were told that they’ll be placed in a room where Sunni must try to paint his way to the reason for her being in Urari. That he’d be given painting supplies and a Guide Mirror which—if he truly is chosen—will grant him access to her subconscious. She, on the other hand, just has to be present and try not to shut him out.
