The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(107)
“Emma, my love!” Murray cried, running his hands over the mirror’s icy surface, which froze his fingertips with the coldness of dead things.
Once she had absorbed the strange phenomenon, Emma also tried to intertwine her fingers with Murray’s, only to be prevented by the smooth glass. For almost a minute, they both clawed at their side of the mirror, as though desperately trying to scratch through its surface, to tear away the seemingly fine veil separating them, enclosing them in identical prisons. Until Murray finally lost his temper and began to strike the mirror with the heels of his hands. On the far side, Emma, who had a greater capacity for understanding (or perhaps for acceptance), was content to gaze at Murray, whispering “Monty,” her eyes filled with tears. She had tilted her lovely face, moved by the immensity of his love for her, made evident by his desperate pounding on the mirror, increasingly angry yet restrained, for he knew that if he broke the glass he might lose forever the cherished image contained in it. They all understood that the mirror reflected a shared suffering. When Murray finally accepted that he would never be able to tunnel his way into Emma’s arms, he moved back a few inches and gazed at her helplessly, noticing for the first time the air of weariness clouding her beauty: she had huge shadows under her eyes and her skin had lost its glow, as if something had been tormenting her for months, and it had begun to undermine her health. Murray’s fingers trembled as he caressed her lips without being able to touch them. At that moment, through the tears welling up in his eyes, Murray noticed the light in the room grow brighter as the peculiar gloom that seemed to have distorted it for the past few minutes lifted, and then he blinked and found himself touching his own reflection. He stepped back with a mixture of surprise and irritation.
“No, no! Emma, don’t leave! Come back!” Murray gave a loud bellow that gradually subsided as the relentless passing of the seconds threatened to transform Emma’s reflection into a hallucination or a dream, until it was reduced to a pitiful wail.
Grief stricken and exhausted, he pressed his forehead against the mirror and began sobbing louder and louder. Images of the accident, which plagued him day and night, began to flash through his mind once more: his perspiring hands clutching the steering wheel of his shiny new automobile, his heart pounding in his chest as he tried to think of how to start his confession; Emma’s smile, at once curious and amused; that sharp bend appearing out of nowhere; the car veering off the road and plunging into the gorge; his attempts to control the machine, which had started to bounce across the ground; the violent jolt that had sent him flying through the air; the world shattering into a thousand pieces, and Emma’s voice, ever more remote, shouting his name even as the world went dark. And then, he never knew how long after, the slow awakening, the fog of his unconscious revealing snatches of hellish images: people running and shouting, concerned faces staring at him, the heels of his boots making a furrow in the ground as they dragged him away from the scene, and a voice ringing out with infernal clarity amid the din of orders being hurled left and right, the gruff voice of a stranger whose face Murray would never see, echoing in his head above the clatter of the carriage taking him to the hospital, above the questions of those accompanying him, above any other sound. Those words he would never manage to forget, those words that announced the end of everything: “We’ll have to cut through the metal to get the body out.”
“What the devil happened?” he heard Doyle ask behind him.
Wells opened his mouth to reply. He no longer had any doubt that his experience in front of the mirror the fateful day of the excursion hadn’t been the result of an optical illusion. While the others had been busy looking at Emma and Murray, Wells had taken the opportunity to study his own reflection, which was also ignoring the lovers and staring straight at him, with an identical expression of terror, but without the scar across his chin. Wells hadn’t a clue what any of it meant, although obviously both phenomena were closely related. But before he could utter a word, he heard Jane say, “Emma was wearing black. As if she were in mourning.”
“That’s true,” Doyle said. “And I had a different suit on. The one I’d be wearing now if I hadn’t spilled coffee down it this morning.”
“And I—” Wells attempted to add.
But Murray didn’t let him. He wheeled round, pointing his finger at the medium.
“Do it again!” he cried. “Bring her back!”
The Great Ankoma recoiled, waving his arms in front of his chest.
“Wait, Gilmore, let me explain,” Doyle said, placing a hand on his shoulder.
Murray brushed it away and strode over to the medium.
“Makoma, or whatever your name is, make her come back, or I swear I’ll strangle you with my bare hands!”
“I can’t!” The Great Ankoma protested in perfect English, looking imploringly at Doyle.
Doyle tried once more to restrain Murray, this time gripping his arm hard.
“Listen to me, Gilmore: none of what happened here tonight has anything to do with Ankoma.”
“It’s true, Monty,” Wells admitted, placing himself between Murray and the medium. “I’m afraid Ankoma has no special powers.”
“It’s true, Mr. Gilmore,” the alleged medium said apologetically, trying to regain his composure. “I know exactly who my parents are, I speak perfect English, as you can see, and I’ve never been in a Bakongo village making bowls levitate, simply because I don’t have the power to lift objects . . . It seems my only talent, in Mr. Doyle’s worthy opinion, is my handwriting, which is more beautiful and more legible than his. At least, that is what he tells me whenever he asks me to write a few lines for him. And if I may say so, I don’t think I deserve to be strangled for it.”