Whispers: An anthology of Fantasy and Horror

MIRROR, MIRROR by Ray Russell

Copyright © 1977 by Ray Russell.

Alan sold himself to the Devil for a mirror.

The moment the contract was signed, Alan’s front doorbell rang and the Devil slipped out the back. When Alan answered the ringing, two thick-thewed delivery men carried into his house a large flat oval shape wrapped in brown paper. Alan instructed them to bring it into his study and lean it against the south wall. After they left, he locked himself into the study, drew the blinds, and tore the paper off his acquisition.

The oval mirror was as tall as Alan, of good quality glass set in an ormolu frame. It was quite handsome. Alan was pleased.

But the image that stared back at him from the glass was obviously displeased. It was merely himself, dressed exactly as the real Alan, in shirt sleeves and pearl-gray slacks, but the expression on the face was angry and the writhing mouth spat three silent syllables, the last of which (Alan deduced from the placement of upper teeth on lower lip) began with an “f”.

Alan grew furious and blurted out: “It’s a fraud!”

The image in the glass turned its back to Alan and strode out of sight.

Alan, perplexed and vexed, turned away from the mirror and left the room.

Having carefully relocked the door to his study, Alan now paced the floor outside that room. His furrowed face hardened into a mask of bitterness as the truth became clear.

He had requested, for his private use, a magic glass in which he could see the future. The Devil had given him precisely that.

What Alan had meant was a glass that would foretell all future events, like the crystal ball of fable, magazine cartoon, and cliché.

Of what conceivable earthly or, for that matter, unearthly value was a mirror that did no more than reflect an image five seconds ahead of time?

If the reflection were twenty-four hours in the future, or even twelve, he could put it to some use; hold up newspapers to the mirror, read the next day’s racing results and stock market listings. He could win wagers on elections, predict earthquakes and other disasters, beat Broadway critics to the punch, become famous as a prophet, make a lot of money, be praised and feared and sought after.

But five seconds?

Alan howled with rage. The stinking goat had tricked him!

He did not sleep all night. He paced, cursed, smoked cigarettes, drank whiskey, drank coffee, scribbled thoughts on paper, tore up the paper in frustration, pounded his head with his fists, formed and rejected a dozen ideas, two dozen, a hundred. None of them were any good. He could do nothing with those absurd five seconds. The mirror was utterly worthless.

As the dawn began to reach hesitantly into his house, he fell into a sleep of total exhaustion. Five hours later he awoke, much refreshed, with a new idea in his head. That evening, he would have cause to wonder who had put it there.

He made several telephone calls, inviting a variety of people to cocktails in the afternoon. He then phoned a modish caterer, to order liquor and exotic hors-d’œuvres.

Next, he carried the mirror out of the study and into the living room, where he hung it in a conspicuous place.

Alan’s idea was simple, if not brilliant. The mirror would be made useful to him, after all. Not as directly as he had hoped, but indirectly. It would become a conversation piece. It would fascinate all sorts of people. Among his invited guests were a nationally syndicated gossip columnist, several show people of all sexes, tattletales of all ages, beauteous if vacuous ladies of the beau monde, a nice sampling of that worthless world Alan despised and admired.

These creatures would be impressed and awed by his mirror. They would squeal and gibber and ask how the trick was done. They would question him about the mirror’s origins; he would be deliciously cryptic, hinting at other dark, nameless forces at his beck and call. Word would spread, by mouth and print, about the mysterious Cagliostro in their midst. He would be lionized, fêted, adulated. His lightest statement would carry weight. He would be a frequent guest on television talk shows, entering the homes of millions of people. He would be written up in magazines of huge circulation. His photo would appear everywhere. Publishers would offer him gigantic sums for his ghost-written autobiography. He would be in great demand on the lecture circuit, at stunning fees. He would be considered a sage, and his advice on all matters would urgently be sought. He would be deemed delightfully dangerous, and women would fall at his presumably cloven feet, yearning to learn the arcane amatory techniques of which surely he was a master. He would become a legend in his own time, for in our epoch, Alan well knew, it is not necessary to be gifted or accomplished in order to attain legendary status. And perhaps, some distant day, when he was very old, he might sell the mirror for a vast amount of money.

It would not be a bad life, he told himself, as he showered and prepared for the cocktail party.

His guests began to arrive at about six, and everything went as he’d wished. The mirror was a great success, and so was he. He saw the hot glitter in their eyes, heard their voices coarsen with a kind of lust, filled his grateful lungs with the acrid perfume of glamor (didn’t ‘glamor’ have a dazzling original meaning?—he’d have to look it up in the Unabridged in the morning).

All but a few of his guests were remarkably ugly, but it was a fashionable ugliness that passed for beauty in certain strata of society, and most of them were no longer young, although they strove to present the appearance of youth, aided by dyes, diets, corsets, injections, surgery, dentistry. One person of indeterminate age—Alan was fairly sure it was a woman—had hair bleached white as the well-known sepulcher and skin the texture of cold gravy. Several of the men wore hair not their own. Costly gems, throbbing with inner fire, pulsated on many a turkey neck and talon.

They cavorted before the glass like performing apes. They grinned, frowned, rolled their eyes, stuck out their tongues. Some made obscene gestures.

When the guests reluctantly left, one of them was persuaded to stay a little longer. She was beautiful, haughty, confident; her face was on the cover of every fashion magazine; she had starred in a chic movie—and yet Alan possessed her mere minutes after the last of the others had departed. It happened on the soft carpet in front of his marvelous, his glamorous mirror (an interesting experience, that: he told himself he might try placing the glass on the ceiling over his bed some time, just as an experiment).

He dismissed her somewhat later, after a cozy tête-à-tête supper, and only after solemnly promising he would call her the next day.

Alone, Alan stood in front of the mirror, intensely pleased with himself. His reflection appeared to be pleased too. Why not? The Alan of five seconds from now would be just as content as the Alan of now. He had won. In stories, the Devil always wins by cleverly wording the contract and then sticking literally and precisely to that wording—observing the letter of it, but violating the spirit, for the Devil has a brilliant legal mind, and is The Father of Lawyers. By such a device he had triumphed over Alan—temporarily. But Alan had turned the tables on him by making those five useless seconds useful. He had traded on human curiosity, cashed in on human gullibility, much in the manner of the Devil himself. He had beaten the Devil at his own game. He had bested him. Alan’s image smiled broadly and, five seconds later, Alan did likewise.

A few moments after that, however, there were two figures in the mirror. The Devil’s image appeared behind Alan’s, and tapped Alan’s reflection on the shoulder.

The real Alan, though he’d felt nothing, quickly whirled around—but it was all right, there was no One behind him, he was alone.

He immediately turned back to the mirror. The images of both the Devil and Alan had vanished from the glass. It reflected an empty room.

Icy sweat covered him in an instant as he recalled a condition of the contract: the mirror was “for his private use.” But Alan had put it on display, shown it to many others. He had violated the contract. The Devil was therefore entitled to . . . foreclose.

Alan smelled a goat-stink. He felt somebody tap him on the shoulder.