Mirror (17 page)

He smiled. ‘I suppose you could say that by keeping the story alive, we were exorcising the ghost. An annual ritual of bell, book and candle. Or, at the very least, a way of reassuring ourselves that we hadn’t all gone mad.’

‘You’re not mad,’ Martin told him.

Dr Rice sipped his tea and then set his cup down. ‘You seem very certain about that.’

Martin nodded. ‘I am. Because
I’m
not mad, and I’ve seen Boofuls, too.’

‘
You’ve
seen him?’ Dr Rice asked with care. ‘I suppose by that you mean recently?’

Martin said, ‘I’ve been a Boofuls fan ever since I was young. I’m a screenwriter now; I write for movies and television. I’ve written a musical based on his life – not that I’ve managed to sell it yet. In Hollywood, the name of Boofuls seems to carry a built-in smell of its own. The smell of failure, if you know what I mean.’

Dr Rice said, ‘Aye,’ and sipped more tea.

‘This week, I bought the mirror that used to hang over Boofuls’ fireplace,’ Martin explained. ‘Ever since then, I’ve had nothing but trouble.’

‘And you say you’ve
seen
him?’

‘In the mirror, yes. And that’s why I wanted to talk to you.’

Dr Rice said, ‘Yes, I can see why. It’s all very disturbing. As a rule, I am not a believer in mysterious occurrences. I am a gynecologist; and once you have seen the mystery of human creation repeated over and over again in front of your eyes, then I am afraid that, by comparison, other mysteries tend to dwindle into insignificance.’

‘I don’t think there’s anything insignificant about this mystery,’ Martin told him, and explained about the two mismatched balls; and how Emilio had tried to step into the mirror; and what happened to Lugosi.

‘I’m in the hospital because of that mirror,’ said Martin. ‘I’ve had thirty-eight stitches, and I could have been killed. That’s not insignificant to me.’

Dr Rice was silent for a long time, his soft, withered hands lying in his lap like fallen chestnut leaves. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and controlled, but that made his account of what had happened on the night that Mrs Alicia Crossley was brought to the Sisters of Mercy sound even more frightening.

‘There was, of course, enormous excitement. The press were everywhere. The lobby was filled with reporters and photographers and cameramen from movie newsreels. I arrived at seven o’clock for my night duty, and I had to struggle to get into the building.’

He paused, and then he said, ‘Mrs Crossley died around eight o’clock, I think. After that, there were a few hours of comparative quiet, because the press had all rushed off to file their stories for the morning editions. I was on the gynecological floor, that’s floor five. There were two babies being delivered that night, so I was constantly to-ing and fro-ing between the two delivery rooms.’

‘Is that when you saw Boofuls?’ asked Martin.

Dr Rice said, ‘Yes. It was a quarter of ten. I was walking along the corridor between what they used to call Delivery Room B and the main stairs when I saw a small boy standing at the end of the corridor, looking lost. I called out to him, but he didn’t seem to hear me. He was crying, and saying “Grandma, where’s grandma?” over and over.

‘I went right up to him. I was as close to him as you and I are sitting now. Closer, maybe. I put my hand out, I could see what was right in front of my eyes, but somehow my brain wouldn’t believe it. I put my hand out to touch him even though he was standing not outside but
inside
the mirror. The mirror was like a glass door, no more; or a window. It was completely impossible; it couldn’t happen. It flew right in the face of everything I’d ever understood about science, about the world, about what can exist and what can’t exist. And, believe me, this couldn’t exist, but there it was, right in front of my eyes.

‘The boy had stopped crying, and he had covered his face with his hands, and was playing peek-a-boo through his fingers. I shouted at him, “Can you hear me?” two or three times, and then at last he took his hands away from his face. I wish he hadn’t.’

Martin sat back, waiting for Dr Rice to finish, knowing that it took extra courage for him to explain what he had seen.

‘His face looked normal at first. A little pale, maybe, but in those days a lot of children used to suffer from anemia. But then suddenly something red and thin started to dangle from his nostril, then another, then another, until they were dropping out onto the floor. He opened his mouth and stuck out his tongue, and his whole tongue was wriggling with them. Meat worms, the kind that eat corpses. They were pouring out of him everywhere. I expect you can understand that I dropped my clipboard and my smart new stethoscope and ran outside. I was in a terrible state.’

‘Do you think it was some kind of hallucination?’ asked Martin. ‘After all, everybody knew that Boofuls was dead; there was mass hysteria; and you were right there in the thick of it.’

Dr Rice smiled ruefully. ‘Don’t you think I’ve asked myself that same question a thousand times? Was it a hallucination? Was it a dream? Was it tiredness? But no, my friend, I’m afraid not. I saw Boofuls quite clearly. I was in perfectly sound health, well rested, no hangovers. I couldn’t afford to drink in those days! The only conceivable explanation as far as I’m concerned was that he was really there. Or, at least, that his
spirit
was really there.’

‘Do you believe in spirits?’ asked Martin.

‘Do you?’ Dr Rice retaliated.

‘I don’t
dis
believe in them, let’s put it that way. Especially now that I’ve seen Boofuls.’

Dr Rice said, ‘Altogether, five of us saw him. Well – I believe six, but one of the nurses refused to admit that she’d seen anything out of the ordinary. All five of us had similar experiences – that is, we all saw Boofuls weeping in a mirror – all at approximately the same time, about quarter of ten, but what makes the whole affair so fascinating is that we were all on different floors, and two out of the five who saw him I didn’t even know.’

Martin cautiously touched his bandaged chin. ‘So there could have been no – what would you call it? – group hysteria, something like that? I mean you didn’t get together and discuss the Boofuls murder to the point where you all temporarily flipped?’

Dr Rice shook his head. ‘There was no “flipping” that night, I can assure you. I had to drink three large Scotches one after the other, just to reassure myself that I wasn’t completely losing my reason.’

‘The other doctors and nurses – are they still here?’

‘Only Sister Boniface. The rest, I regret, have passed on. Cirrhosis, cancer, auto accident; a fair cross section of modern fatalities.’

‘Can I speak to Sister Boniface?’

‘You may, if you wish; but her sighting was extremely brief. She had been sitting with Mrs Crossley before she died; and after her death she stayed to do the usual tidying up. She was covering Mrs Crossley’s face with a sheet when she thought she heard a noise, just above her head. She looked up, and there was Boofuls – well,
lying
, as it were, on the ceiling. She screamed, and the police guard came in, and Boofuls vanished.’

Dr Rice picked up a gold mechanical pencil from his desk and began to turn it end over end. ‘It disturbed her deeply, seeing Boofuls like that. Who would ever believe that she had seen a dead boy smiling at her from the ceiling? She went quite to pieces. Well – it was only our annual storytelling rituals that helped her to keep her feelings in perspective. She’s a poor soul, Sister Boniface, and no mistake.’

Martin looked at Dr Rice narrowly. ‘What do
you
think of all this?’ he asked him bluntly. ‘I mean, is it bullshit, or are we all going crazy, or what?’

Dr Rice gave him a tight smile. ‘I saw what I saw, Mr Williams. You saw what you saw. To each, his own experience. Let us simply say that no one can take that experience away from us, no matter how unhinged they think we might be.’

He raised his head and looked at Martin benignly. ‘Either we were all witnesses to an extraordinary manifestation – the power of love, perhaps, to extend beyond the moment of death – or else we are all quite mad.’

Martin sniffed, and found it painful. ‘Welcome to the nuthouse, in other words.’

Sister Boniface was taking her lunch in the hospital gardens when they found her. She was sitting in the shade of an Engelmann oak, eating a vege-burger out of a polystyrene box. She was so thin that she was almost transparent; with rimless spectacles; and a face that looked like Woody Allen if he had been seventy years old, and a nun. She blinked as Martin and Dr Rice approached, and closed her lunch box, as if she had been caught doing something indiscreet.

‘Hello, Sister,’ said Dr Rice. ‘This is Martin Williams. Martin, this is Sister Boniface. Martin writes for television, Sister.’

‘Yes?’ Sister Boniface smiled. ‘How do you do, Mr Williams? You’re not writing one of those hospital series, are you?
St Elsewhere
? Something like that?’

Martin shook his head. ‘You watch all of those things? Do you know something, I can never imagine nuns watching television.’

‘We tend not to
collectively
,’ said Sister Boniface. ‘The wimples get in the way.’

‘Humorist, too,’ Dr Rice muttered out of the side of his mouth. ‘You know what I mean?’

Sister Boniface said, with some precision, ‘You came about Boofuls.’

Martin glanced at Dr Rice. ‘How did you know about that?’

‘Well, Mr Williams, all hospitals have their grapevines. I understand you had nightmares last night; Nurse Newton told me. Naturally, I asked her whether you were suffering from any particular anxieties – and, well, Nurse Newton is an excellent nurse, but not discreet.’

Martin was sweating. The midday sun was hot; and the salt from his perspiration irritated his stitches.

‘I understand that you saw Boofuls in his grandmother’s room, the night she died.’

Sister Boniface nodded, her starched wimple waving up and down like a snow-white sea gull. ‘That is correct.’

‘He was floating on the ceiling, right?’

‘That is quite correct. He was floating on the ceiling.’

Her voice was so equable that when she looked up at Martin and her eyes were filled with tears, he was taken by surprise. She put aside her vege-burger and reached out her hand and clutched the sleeve of his shirt. ‘Oh, Mr Williams, that poor child! It still haunts me now!’

Dr Rice said, ‘Mr Williams has seen Boofuls, too, Sister Boniface, just this week.’

‘Then you
believe
?’ asked Sister Boniface, her eyes widening.

‘Well, of course I believe,’ said Martin. ‘I saw –’

Sister Boniface awkwardly climbed onto her knees on the pebble paving. ‘Mr Williams, all these years, it’s been such a trial! Whether to believe in it or not! A miracle, a vision, right in front of my eyes!’

Martin knelt down beside her and gently helped her up onto her feet again. Underneath her voluminous white robes, she felt as skeletal as a bird. ‘Sister Boniface, I’m not sure that it’s a miracle. I don’t know what it is. I’m trying to find out. But I’m not at all sure that it’s – well, I’m not at all sure that it comes from God.’

Sister Boniface reached out her long-fingered hand and gently touched Martin’s cheek. ‘You are a good man,’ she said. ‘I can feel it in you. But it had to be a miracle. What else? He was floating on the ceiling, smiling at me. As clear as daylight.’

‘He didn’t speak?’ asked Martin.

‘No, nothing,’ said Sister Boniface. ‘He was there for a second, then he was gone.’

‘You screamed?’

‘Of course I screamed! I was very frightened.’

‘Well, sure, of course you were. What with Mrs Crossley’s body and everything.’

Sister Boniface sat up straight. ‘I am not frightened by death, Mr Williams. I am frightened only by the face of pure goodness; and by the face of pure evil.’

‘How long did you stay with Mrs Crossley that evening?’ Martin wanted to know.

Sister Boniface shrugged. ‘They asked me to come into the room to help with the last rites. Mrs Crossley was a Catholic, you know. Afterward … well, I just stayed where I was, helping, until it was time for them to take her away.’

Martin slowly massaged the back of his neck. This was getting him nowhere at all. He had learned that Boofuls had appeared as a mirror-ghost on the night he was murdered; but he had learned nothing at all about why he had been killed; and how he had gotten into the mirror-world, or why he should have decided to reappear now.

‘You’ve been very helpful,’ he told Sister Boniface. ‘I’m sorry if I brought it all back to you.’

Sister Boniface smiled distantly. ‘You haven’t brought it back to me, Mr Williams. I never forget it. I never stop thinking about it. Was I visited by God, do you think, or by the devil? I fear that I shall never know. Not in this life, anyway.’

Martin hesitated for a moment, and then bent his head forward and kissed her hand. Her skin was dry and soft, like very fine tissue paper.

‘There is one thing,’ she said.

Martin looked up. Sister Boniface’s eyes were unfocused, as if she were trying to distance herself from what she was going to say next.

‘What is it?’ he asked her.