Torsade Literary Space The Mirrors (part forty-two)
The Mirrors
(part forty-two)
“Is he Dumain? Or if he was…if he’s dead…does Dumain leave the world that way?”
“Chamante, you and I are learning together. How could I know?”
“I’m sorry.” She owed Veronica an apology for more than one thing. For not saying at once, how are you? Instead she said: “Because you’re stronger than the rest of us. I could never have gone in that room and come out.”
“Oh yes, you could.”
“And because of the institute.”
“Because I had secret information, is that it? Did you think I could be Grandfather?”
“You’ve never felt he has power in his old house?”
“Of course he does. That is, he haunts a little. I warn the kids, and they take it for a joke. The place is too busy. And I only allow mirrors built into the furniture, that can’t be moved.”
She stood, patting down her skirt. “As I’d guess…not knowing…the devil can rise where his conduit is. Dumain flesh and blood seem an avenue, but he needs a soft head, let’s say, to induce the mirrors. Carolee and I don’t even know who made the island grouping…and we haven’t got our gumption up for that job! Sorry truth.”
Climbing to the mirrors meant stepping around Rothesay. The figure did not open an eye or stir; the hum was not even audible, just present. Charmante caught Veronica’s elbow and passed her on the stairs.
Here, the hum was a mockery, of thin glassy voices. The ring showed its single gap. Charmante aimed for the mirror belonging to Carmine, easiest to put in its place.
Veronica seized the nearest at hand. “Close your eyes.”
Advice come too late.
87
xviii.
Two boys pick their way down a hill. They call it a hill, and low as the land sits on the delta, the rise from here to the good streets, again to Dumain’s mansion, its conical turret roofs surmounting, is at least a climb.
The elder boy is on the brink, when the height shoots up, and nothing less than the life of a man seems to him unembarrassing. The younger is still a child.
The game today is one they’ve played before.
Gotten away with, it might be fair to say. On this barren field, site of the hospital that burned, they aren’t safe…a status only gratifying to a hunter’s quest. The land is posted, the attics topping the brick wall harbor eyes; and twitching fingers, quick to summon a constable. Possibly the old man watches all—discomfited neighbors, streetcars going back and forth, cops wandering down in no hurry, scavenging boys.
As scavenge is the game.
Luck has never come to Harold, or the acolyte he commands, William. But bones can be found here, everyone says…or someone said, sometime…buried in the grass and litter. William believes that a bone, a jaw with teeth on it, maybe, must carry a spirit inside, waiting to tell its story. You might hold it overhead in the light of the moon and see what the dead saw, the last dance of burning men and women in their throes. He pictures this well.
He has been prodding absorbed, but his stick breaks. He gets up smacking his uncovered calves, killing mosquitos he’d had no time to itch over. He discovers Harold striding off.
William stands torn, in a heartache he doesn’t understand. He can’t often, no matter what he digs up, win praise from Harold. Or the better thing than praise, a grin, a whoop, eyes wide with surprise. His brother is only a brother to him, but still a kind of father. At the top of the rise, across the street, seen and vanishing behind a car, seen again, leans Leonce. The jacket is trim at the waist. The hat tall, rounded at the crown. Harold wants to acquire a hat, instead of the cap he thinks makes him look like a laborer.
William has nothing to wear on his head, and in the summertime wouldn’t like to. But of what Harold knows, what he cares for, William is an apt pupil. It has to do with getting yourself free. A man can go anyplace. Part of what aches in William’s heart is Harold’s easy plan to leave them all behind. No, he won’t want a tagalong brother where he means to go.
But, does he mean to go this minute?
With no goodbye. And whatever time he strolls home, no apology? Irresolute, William stubs his shoes against the meadow grass. He sees exposed dirt, driven-up mole tunnels. He sees a shine like metal, and has to kneel again to winkle the object out.
A brass fitting, as might secure a hose to a tank. Pretty in itself…if he had a chain to hang it on, almost an ornament. He would give it to his sister Jane, as Mama would ask where’d he been to, to get hold of a thing like that? And if she thought what he thought himself, that it was from the fire engines, from way back, she would fling it out the door with a prayer.
88
The Mirrors
The Mirrors (part forty-three)
(2020, Stephanie Foster)