Mirror (36 page)

He stopped for a moment, breathing deeply, and then he said, ‘And
why
do we face such an appalling Apocalypse? Let me tell you why, Mr Williams. Because of the vanity of a handful of poor insecure actors who lived in Hollywood in the 1930s. Those glamorous people of the silver screen, Joan Crawford, Errol Flynn, John Barrymore, those people we used to idolize! They weren’t glamorous at all, they were obsessed with the fear of failure. They were little and frightened, and terrified of the adoration that was showered on them. So they sought encouragement. They sought reassurance. And when one small boy came among them and said that they could be successful and happy forever, how do you think they reacted?’

Martin said nothing, but finished his wine and set down his empty glass next to the black-tissue package.

Father Quinlan said, ‘I’ve been through St Patrick’s files for the late 1930s. You wouldn’t believe it, but we were given anonymous tip-offs year after year that somebody, somewhere in LA, was holding Black Sabbaths on a monumental scale. Phone calls, scrawled letters; one or two photographs. The Hollywood Divine was mentioned several times. But almost all of those tip-offs were ignored – even though one of the letters specifically warned that
“they have the relics
”.’

‘But what were these actors actually trying to do?’ asked Martin.

Father Quinlan ran his hand through his wild white hair. ‘They were trying to do nothing more than bring back Satan. The real, reincarnated Satan, in the flesh. It was a pretty straightforward arrangement. In return for bringing him back, Satan would give them youth and glamor and eternal popularity.’

Martin said nothing, but lowered his head in silent acknowledgment. He had seen too much in the past few days to be a disbeliever.

Father Quinlan said more quietly, ‘It all started, somehow, with Boofuls. I had my suspicions, from the moment I started researching. I found a letter written by Bill Tilden … well, you know what
he
was like, Stumpy Tilden. Tennis coaching for pretty young boys, that kind of thing. In 1936, he wrote a letter to a close friend, and said that he had met an exquisite child who had offered him hope and happiness, “unimaginable” hope and happiness. The boy’s name was Walter Crossley, a.k.a. Boofuls. But Bill Tilden wasn’t the only one. Everybody in Hollywood, whether they were homosexual or not, was entranced by Boofuls: his sweetness, his apparent purity, and the feeling that, when they were around him, he made them feel confident and happy and capable of everlasting success.’

Father Quinlan said more seriously, ‘He was nothing more and nothing less than a child possessed by Satan. That’s my opinion, anyway, I was never able to confirm it. How can you confirm such a thing? I could never discover who his father was, and I could never discover the identity of the woman who always used to accompany him to the Hollywood Divine.’

‘Miss Redd?’ put in Martin.

Father Quinlan nodded. ‘That’s right, the mysterious Miss Redd. I’ve never been able to find any pictures of her or press references or anything at all. But several anonymous letters that were sent to the church in 1938 mention Miss Redd.’ He reached over and poured Martin some more wine. ‘However,’ he said, ‘let’s get back to your mirror.’

‘Boofuls’ mirror,’ Martin admitted.

Father Quinlan smiled. ‘I thought so. Well – Father Lucas thought so.’

‘He was quite right,’ said Martin. He turned to Father Lucas and gave him a nod of admiration. Father Lucas, in return, lifted up his glass of wine.

Father Quinlan said, ‘This isn’t easy to piece together. Some of the faculty here think that I’m obsessive about it. But the Revelation contains some remarkably clear facts and figures, apart from scores of extraordinary implications. Miss Redd, for example. In the Revelation, Satan appears as a
red
dragon. Perhaps it means nothing at all. Perhaps I’m being paranoid. Oh, yes, priests can be paranoid. But we have one more important authority to turn to; and I’m rather proud of this.’

He walked across the room to a large oak cabinet, carved with bunches of grapes. He took a small key out of his vest pocket and opened it. Inside, there were rows of small shelves. Father Quinlan drew out a small package of papers, closed the door, locked it, and returned to the sofa.

‘This,’ he said, ‘is an unpublished commentary on
Unusual Properties of Looking-Glasses
, by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.’

Martin said, in astonishment, ‘Charles Lutwidge Dodgson? You mean
Lewis Carroll
?’

Father Quinlan untied the faded silk ribbon which held the papers together. ‘The very same; and we’ve had it authenticated, too, by the British Museum.’

‘But it must be worth a million dollars. An unpublished book by Lewis Carroll?’

‘Well … another Alice adventure might be worth something. But not so many people know that Lewis Carroll was more of a mathematician than a storyteller. He wrote
A Syllabus of Plane Algebra
and an
Elementary Treatise on Determinants
, as well as
Euclid and His Modern Rivals
.’

Father Quinlan turned the musty leaves of the manuscript; and there was a smell of dust and burned cream. ‘This is all very scrappy … not what you’d call a book at all. Notes, really; and some of them very disjointed. But the most interesting part about it is what he has to say about mirrors. He always believed that there was some kind of wonderland on the other side of mirrors; but his first real revelation about mirrors came early in the winter of 1869 when he became extremely ill, pneumonia probably, and he lay in bed at his home in Oxford quite close to death.’

Father Quinlan looked Martin straight in the eye. ‘Carroll may have been delirious; but he tells in this commentary how he walked through the mirror in his sickroom in just the way that Alice did. “
The glass melted away, just like a bright silvery mist
.” He found himself in looking-glass land, where everything was reversed.

‘He writes here,
“Not just writing, and pictures, but Christian morality itself had been turned from left to right. Inside the mirror was the domain of demons, the ante-room of Hell itself
.”’

Father Quinlan said, ‘He tried to tell his friends; he tried to tell the Bishop of Oxford. But after
Alice in Wonderland
they chose not to believe him. So he wrote
Through the Looking-Glass
as an Alice story … mainly because he knew that it would find the widest audience. It was a warning, expressed in childish language, in the hope that – even if adults refused to believe the danger they were in – then perhaps children would.
Through the Looking-Glass
is the single most specific warning about the return of Satan since the Revelation itself.’

He handed Martin one of the pages. On it, in Lewis Carroll’s own handwriting, was written ‘Jabberwocky’:

Beware the jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Father Quinlan brought over some more wine. ‘Later in the book, Carroll explains away this gibberish-poem with all sorts of nonsensical definitions. But ask any
child
about the Jabberwock, and he or she will tell you about nothing except a dark wood, and a ferocious dragonlike creature, and a boy who slays it by chopping it into pieces. Alice herself says, “
Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas – only I don’t exactly know what they are! However
somebody
killed
something”. See what it says here:

“The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame
,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood
,

And burbled as it came!
”

‘Then,

“One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back
.”’

Father Quinlan smiled. ‘Well, it’s pretty amusing stuff. But these notes aren’t amusing at all. Carroll says here, “
I believe that I came as close to death as a man may go and yet return to the real world. I saw darkness; and I saw unimaginable beings; human-beings with heads as huge as carnival-masks; creatures with hunchbacks; dogs that spoke. It seems to me now like a dream, or rather a nightmare, but I am convinced that I saw Purgatory, the realm in which each man takes on his true form. In the land beyond the looking-glass, in the world of reflections, is the life after death, and the life before death. I understand now the closeness of Christianity, which teaches each man that he will have his reward or his punishment in the world beyond, and the Hindu religion, which teaches that a man will be reincarnated according to the life he has led
.”’

‘But the Jabberwock?’ asked Martin. ‘What does the Jabberwock have to do with Boofuls, and
my
mirror?’

‘Absolutely everything,’ said Father Quinlan. ‘The Jabberwock is the mirror image of Satan. Carroll derived the name from Jabbok, a mountain stream of Gilead, one of the main tributaries of the River Jordan. It was in the waters of Jabbok that Satan’s image was supposed to have been reflected when he fell from heaven. It may or may not be a coincidence that Carroll’s doctor at the time was called Dr James Crowe, and that the letters
c-r-o-w-e
make up the remainder of the name Jabberwock.’

Martin put down his glass of wine and dry-washed his face with his hands. ‘God, this seems so farfetched.’

‘Any more farfetched than holy water flying straight through a mirror and landing only in the reflected room? Any more farfetched than your friend Emilio disappearing into a mirror and refusing to come back? No, Mr Williams, this isn’t farfetched at all. What we are seeing here is Satan’s plan for his own resurrection, as foretold in the Book of Revelation. Somehow, he possessed the boy Boofuls; and the boy Boofuls regularly held blasphemous Sabbaths at the Hollywood Divine; and he used his money and his influence to gather together the scattered remnants of Satan’s physical body.’

Father Quinlan tugged out one of the sheets of Carroll’s notepaper, and on it was Carroll’s own sketch for the Jabberwock, on which the final drawing by Sir John Tenniel had been based. A snarling creature with dragon’s wings and scaly claws and blazing eyes. ‘You see,’ he said, in quiet triumph, ‘
the jaws that bite, the claws that catch
– and here they are.’ He picked up the black horny claws from the table. ‘Almost exactly the same; and to the same scale.’

Martin said nothing. He was overwhelmed by tiredness and by the magnitude of what Father Quinlan was trying to tell him.

Father Quinlan said, ‘When he had recovered from his pneumonia, Carroll spent a great deal of time at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, researching the legend of the fallen devil. He discovered that, according to Jacob and Esau, who met by the waters of the Jabbok, Satan and the children of Satan can be killed only by a sword blessed in the name of God and in the name of the angel Michael and engraved with the motto “Victory Over Ruin, Pestilence, and Lust”. Hence the vorpal sword in the poem – V-O-R-P-A-L. And hence, I strongly suspect, the chopping up of Boofuls by his grandmother.

‘They never found the murder weapon, did they? But it must have been very sharp and very heavy. She was an elderly woman, remember. She could have dismembered him only with a weapon that had considerable weight of its own, like a Chinese cleaver, or a large two-handed machete – or a two-handed sword.’

Martin lifted his hand. ‘All right – supposing this is all true – supposing Mrs Crossley killed Boofuls because she thought he was trying to bring back Satan – how do you think she found out about it? How do you think she found out what to do, to stop him? And where did she get hold of a sword blessed by God and the angel Michael?’

Father Quinlan smiled. ‘Every mystery has its unanswered questions, Mr Williams. I’m a theological historian, not a police detective. Perhaps you ought to ask Boofuls himself.’

Martin didn’t answer that. He wasn’t yet prepared to admit to Father Quinlan or Father Lucas that the curly-headed boy at his apartment was actually Boofuls. Father Lucas may have suspected it, having seen the boy. But before Martin enlisted the help of men like Father Quinlan, he wanted to be quite sure that he could rescue Emilio unharmed from the world beyond the mirror.

‘You told me this was urgent,’ Martin told Father Quinlan, deliberately changing the subject. ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite see the urgency. If we have these claws here, and the key to the rest of the relics – well, there’s not very much that anybody can do to bring the devil to life, is there?’

Father Quinlan nodded. ‘You’re quite right. But Satan is not to be underestimated. Neither is the prophecy that, to be given life, and to win back control over the world, Satan must be given as a sacrifice the lives of one hundred forty-four thousand innocent people.’

‘Is that a special number?’ asked Martin.

‘In the Book of Revelation, it’s the number of people who defied lies and wickedness and followed the Lamb. The first fruits of God. Satan cannot live and breathe until those one hundred forty-four thousand lie massacred.’