The Mansion of Mirrors, page 6
Shortly after, it reappears, but to Michael’s surprise, it’s not heading toward them. Instead, it scuttles sideways—first in the direction of the corner, then toward the door, as if it’s planning to cut off their only escape route. All the while, its legs clack up and down with a speed that reminds him of a sewing machine needle.
“LET’S GO!” he roars, shoving Lisa toward the door. “WE HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE!”
Lisa runs a few steps forward, then stops and looks around.
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?”
“THE LEG!” she screams. “THE TABLE LEG!”
It takes Michael a moment to realize she’s talking about her improvised weapon. She put it on the floor when they were moving the chairs—and now she’s heading back for it. Meanwhile, the drumming legs are getting closer. They’re close now. Far too close.
“GOT IT!” she shouts, after which she sprints back toward Michael. She catches up to him just as he yanks the door to the hallway open—and the instant she’s through, he slams it shut behind her.
A second later, there’s a loud thud when something crashes against it on the other side.
“It doesn’t make sense,” Lisa moans. “It just doesn’t.”
Whether she expects an answer to this astute observation, Michael doesn’t know, but if so, she’ll have to put up with waiting a bit. He needs a moment to process all of this. A moment to think.
Ten minutes have passed since they slammed the door to the hall shut. They’ve also closed the other doors in the hallway. Now, they’re both sitting on the floor, knees pulled up under crossed arms.
“I mean . . . it can’t be real. We agree on that, right?”
Lisa turns her head and stares at him, but when he still hasn’t answered after a while, she resumes her monologue, fiddling with the yellow and purple plastic bracelets on her wrist.
“I mean, it was huge. Freaking huge! And the way it changed direction, like it was trying to cut us off. It was almost like . . .”
Now, Michael lifts his head after all.
“Like it was thinking. That’s what you mean, right?”
Lisa bites her lower lip and lets out a sound that was probably meant to be a chuckle but never amounts to more than a hiss.
“It’s too much,” she sighs, leaning back until her neck rests against the wall. “We’re stuck in a desert town . . . a desert town! Completely cut off from—”
Suddenly, her eyes widen. She almost jumps up on her knees, then leans her torso sideways to squeeze her hand into the pocket of her jeans. From it, she pulls out an old cell phone whose screen is so full of scratches it looks like a spiderweb has been spun across it. That detail doesn’t matter to Michael, though, because in this moment, that phone is nothing short of beautiful.
In her excitement, Lisa drops the electronic miracle on her lap twice before she manages to steady her hands and hold it triumphantly in front of her.
Sitting there, kneeling in the bluish glow of the fluorescent lamps with both hands folded around the phone, she resembles the main figure of a mural that Michael once saw in an Italian cathedral on a holiday.
The Virgin in Prayer it was called.
11
While Michael and Lisa sit on the floor of the community house’s hallway, staring anxiously at a phone screen, Erik Starck stands in front of an abandoned warehouse about twelve miles away.
He has only just arrived and, as always, he takes a moment to get accustomed to the place. Even though time is of the essence, experience has taught him it’s a moment well spent. This place rarely hesitates, and not being properly prepared can cost dearly.
Once he feels ready, he pulls a bundle of keys out of his pocket, fans them out, and lets his fingers glide across them until they stop at the one that fits the padlock on the gate leading into the building.
In truth, the padlock is more of a symbolic gesture than an actual barrier, a way of marking the area as off-limits. If someone wanted to get in, the thin, corrugated metal of the gate would likely give way without putting up a lot of resistance.
Besides, no one can truly claim ownership of anything here—not along the Perimeter.
Before opening the gate, Starck scrapes away a pile of sand that has gathered in front of it. Clearly, it’s been a long time since he was last here. Longer than it feels.
All the more reason to be careful, he thinks as he turns the key until the shackle on the padlock pops open. There’s no room for mistakes. Not with these two.
Inside the building, it’s dark, but that doesn’t prevent him from walking straight over to the workbench on the right side of the room. Nor does it keep him from reaching out and finding the right drawer on the first try. From it, he retrieves a flashlight, which he turns on and places on the table. Then he pauses for a moment, giving his eyes a chance to adjust.
The padlock and the pile of sand suggest there haven’t been any unwelcome visitors. Still, he lets his gaze wander along the walls once his eyes have adjusted to the light.
To his relief, everything is where it’s supposed to be. The car is parked in front of the gate at the opposite end of the building, the canned food is neatly arranged on the shelving unit alongside bottles of water, and next to the shelves is the metal locker where he keeps backpacks, sleeping bags, tarps, and other general survival gear they’ll need once they reach the Wastelands.
On the front of the locker hangs an old postcard. The image shows a tall, snow-covered mountain, and across it, a message is scrawled in capital letters. Over time, some of the letters have gone blurry, but the text is still legible.
I ATE A HAM SANDWICH RIGHT HERE!
Beneath the third word, an arrow is drawn, pointing down toward the mountain’s peak. As he follows it with his eyes, a faint smile appears at the corners of Starck’s mouth. It fades, though, once his gaze drifts to the right, landing on the rifle leaning against the side of the locker.
A loud, jarring screech fills the room as he pulls open the doors of the locker. From the top shelves, he grabs two large backpacks, places them on the table, and begins to fill them.
He can’t fit as much food and water as he’d like, since he has to use some of the space in one of the backpacks for an extra blanket—a necessary adjustment due to the addition of a stowaway. On the other hand, if the girl’s presence means what he believes it does, losing a ration or two of the food is a small price to pay. Also, it shouldn’t be a problem before they reach the Wastelands and are no longer able to use the car.
With the backpacks packed to full capacity, Starck double-checks the straps securing the sleeping bags to the top of each one. Afterward, he slings the backpacks over his shoulders and carries them to the vehicle parked in front of the gate.
With deliberate, routine movements, he loads the car. Once finished, he spends a moment studying the packed trunk to make sure he hasn’t forgotten anything. Satisfied, he nods to himself, checks that there’s fuel in the spare canister, before heading back to grab the final—and perhaps most important—piece of survival gear.
The one that’s still leaning against the locker.
12
Lisa’s cell phone—the technological lifeline that was supposed to solve all their problems and save them from their predicament—delivers nothing but a shrill, metallic hum. Even so, she keeps pulling it away from her ear, staring at it in despair before hanging up and trying again.
This ritual is repeated several times—and could probably have kept on forever—if she hadn’t recognized the expression in Michael’s eyes. It’s the same pity-look her teachers always give her. The sickening mixture of obligation and sympathy.
“Why do you keep staring at me like that?”
The words come out more sharply than intended, but she genuinely is surprised. She hasn’t seen that look in his eyes before. Not even back in the desert when she broke down.
“Sorry,” Michael says. If he’s offended, he hides it well. “I just don’t think it’s gonna get us anywhere.”
“I’ll give it one more shot, okay?”
He nods and then walks over to the bulletin board as though he wants to give her some privacy. Meanwhile, Lisa takes a deep breath, preparing herself for another fruitless attempt, before she locates her mom in the phone’s contacts list and presses Call.
Come on, let me get through to her, so I can . . .
That’s how far Lisa gets before hearing her mom’s voice. But it’s not coming from the phone. It’s the version of it that lives in her own head, more condescending and sarcastic than ever.
So you can do what? Tell me that you’re sitting in some godforsaken desert town with one of the teachers from school? Ask if I’d mind swinging by on the way home from work and pick you up? Something like that?
She closes her eyes and lets her head drop forward in defeat, her bangs closing on her face like a stage curtain. More than ever, she needs the darkness behind her eyelids. More than ever, she needs to escape into the memory of Emma on the coffee-stained couch, mouth full of popcorn, knees tucked up under her T-shirt.
When Lisa opens her eyes again, Michael is standing in front of her. She looks up at him, her lips pressed tightly together, and answers his unspoken question with a slight shake of her head.
“What now?” she sighs. “What are we gonna do?”
Michael shrugs his shoulders and glances up at the ceiling, as if hoping to find an answer there.
“I don’t know,” he says. “But I think maybe it’s time we talked about what’s going on here. I mean, for real.”
Lisa stares at him hesitantly for a moment. Then she puts her phone down on the floor and leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees.
“I know it sounds weird,” Michael continues. “But just about every psychological research paper I’ve ever read underlines how important it is to process extremely stressful situations like this properly—and as soon as possible.”
Maybe it’s because he has that look in his eyes again, or maybe it’s because she has the feeling that the conversation is heading to a place she has already visited—unsuccessfully—with the therapist after Emma’s death. Whatever it is, something about his words ignites a flicker of resentment in Lisa.
“So, you’re telling me there are theories about stuff like this?” she snaps. “What, like a fucking ten-step guide on what to do if you blink and suddenly find yourself in a desert?”
Her outburst is born out of frustration and anger, and the comment is in no way an attempt to be funny. Still, hearing herself say the words, she realizes how stupid they sound. And when she notices Michael fighting to suppress a smile, his lips twitching despite his best efforts, something inside her gives way, bursting open a dam.
All the confusion, helplessness, and desperation she has felt on this terrible day pour out in a series of gasping, choking outbursts of laughter, each one edged with a hysterical undertone she doesn’t like. In fact, the sound is downright scary, but it still takes her a while to kill it.
When she finally manages to stop, she wipes her eyes and looks up at Michael. She expects him to be staring at her with concern—which, in a way, he is—but there’s something else in his expression as well. A gravity that makes her instinctively sit up straight.
Without saying anything, he walks over and crouches down next to her. Then he folds his hands and clears his throat.
“There’s something that has been bothering me ever since we met at the library,” he says. “A question. I think I already know the answer to it . . . but I have to ask it anyway.”
13
The man in the dark brown fleece jacket scratches his beard and whistles cheerfully. Jackpot. He had almost given up hope of finding anything edible when he saw that the grocery store had burned down. In fact, he was just about ready to lie down in the middle of the street and wait for starvation to take him. Now, however, standing in the glow of the vending machine in the abandoned theater, those kinds of thoughts are water under the bridge.
“Jeez, yeah, wishy water under the bridge,” he mutters, winking at his own reflection in the vending machine’s glass.
Except it’s not him. Not really.
What he sees is the eerie glare of a scrawny drifter who looks like him and copies his movements down to the tiniest detail, but in many ways it’s still a complete stranger. One whose life began only a year and a half ago when he woke up to find himself wandering the Wastelands, alone and abandoned.
In the beginning, it bothered him that the only remnants of the life he must have had before were a series of blurred images that couldn’t even be pieced together to form a single meaningful memory. Over time, though, other worries took the wheel—things like where his next meal would come from—and his past got pushed into the background.
He crouches down in front of the vending machine, sliding his arm into the tray where the items land.
Damn it! There’s a panel blocking his arm from getting to the chocolate bar he had his sights on. He slams his hand against the underside of the panel in frustration, but it doesn’t budge.
“Jeez,” he moans and makes another attempt, this time a bit harder. “Come on, you stupid machine!”
Suddenly, his eyes widen, as if he has just remembered something, and he presses his cheek against the glass, whispering in the sweetest tone his voice can muster: “Pretty please?”
As if expecting it to increase his chances of persuading the device, he curls his lips into a smile, which his semi-transparent doppelganger in the glass immediately returns.
The sight of his yellowed, uneven-toothed grin would send a chill down most people’s spines. It doesn’t faze him, though. He’s just as oblivious to his own mental illness as he is to the events in his past that caused it.
The stubborn machine, on the other hand, is blatantly indifferent to both the smile and his pathetic appeal. The only answer he gets is the sleepy hum of the ventilation grate in its lower left corner.
His stomach growls in frustration now—and so does he.
“Well, then it’s your own f-fucking fault!” he roars, yanking his arm out of the hole with enough force to have dislocated his shoulder had it been stuck. “Miserable shit! Shit!”
He grabs both sides of the vending machine’s door with his hands, then pulls his right leg up high toward his chest and kicks the glass.
“Kriit!”
One single crack. Not good enough. He lifts his leg for the second attempt, tensing every muscle his brain is able to establish a connection to.
“STUPID SHIT-CRAP-PIECE OF JUNK!” he screams as his foot smashes through the door, sending a shower of glass shards flying over the snacks, the floor, and himself.
Reaching in for his prize, he cuts his arm in several places, but it doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care. Not. One. Bit.
Chuckling, he sits down cross-legged on the floor in front of the vending machine and kicks off a full-blown feast, starring an assortment of chocolate bars and cookies, all washed down with—oh yes, jackpot alright—cold cans of soda.
He brushes crumbs from the beard around his mouth and casts another glance at his reflection in one of the glass shards on the floor. What he sees still looks, to him, like a perfectly normal person.
He registers no trace of madness.
14
Michael got the answer he expected. Nothing more, nothing less. Even so, it hurt when Lisa confirmed that the voice she heard in the school’s hallway had, in fact, belonged to a boy who (it hurt like hell) was calling for his dad.
And it was Benjamin. As outrageous as it sounds, it must have been Benjamin’s voice she heard . . . but what does that mean? What the hell does that mean?
He touches the back of his head, the ache from his run-in with the prep table’s edge flaring up again. The blood is starting to clot, feeling rough under his fingertips. The healing process has begun. Soon it’ll start to itch.
He wonders if the same will be true for the wound in his soul. Will his grief and longing fade over time if he resists the urge to scratch at it? And would he even want that?
“Michael?” Lisa sounds a little worried. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah . . . yeah, I am.”
“This is some messed up shit,” she says, fiddling with the filter of a cigarette that’s long since been smoked down. “I’m really sorry all of this is happening to you.”
To his surprise, Michael realizes that this is the first of the many condolences he has gotten that actually means something to him—and that thought leads him to another. The same one he had in the library when their eyes met, just before the world disappeared around them:
She knows what it’s like.
“Thanks,” he says. “You’ve been through some stuff too, haven’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess I have. I, um . . . I lost my sister and my dad a little over a year ago.”
“Damn. That must have hurt. What happened?”
As soon as he asks the question, Michael regrets it. Because it does hurt, that much is clear from her tense body language. And if there had been any doubt, Lisa’s next words would have erased it.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” she says, “but if I don’t find a bathroom soon, I’m gonna pee my pants.”
Michael doesn’t need his background in psychology to know that it’s just an excuse to shut down the conversation, but he also doesn’t see any reason to stress her out by pressing the issue. So instead, he places a hand against the wall and pushes himself to his feet.
“Well, guess we’d better go see if we can find one,” he says, pointing to the door above the stairs. “The question is whether we try up there or we drop this house and try another one. What do you think?”
“To be honest, I’d like to get as far away from that . . . thing as possible.”
