The Map of Chaos (Trilogía Victoriana #3)(88)
“I don’t think you understood a single word that my fiancée said, Doyle!” exclaimed Murray.
“Of course I did,” Doyle replied indignantly. “I am simply pointing out that there are many ways of expressing the same idea. Something transcends us, transcends our will, our perception of time and space—in other words, our death. Yes, even though our bodies turn to dust, part of us lives on forever. And I agree completely, Emma, that there must be places, as well as people, that serve as conduits for all that energy. Perhaps this house is one of those places, for there is no doubt that we all sense something now. You feel it, Emma, and George and I also feel it. And so do you, don’t you, Jean?”
The young woman nodded, her expression reflecting her unease.
“It must be the damp,” said Murray, wrinkling his nose and staring up at the ceiling.
“Oh, Monty, you are the limit,” sighed Emma. “I promise that if I die before you, I will come back to haunt you every night.”
“Well, you’ll need to find a proper conduit,” he reminded her with a grin.
“Well,” she retorted, “with your great fortune, I have no doubt that you would hire the best medium there is.”
“You can be sure of that, my darling.”
Emma’s eyes twinkled with amusement.
“And the séance would have to be held here at Brook Manor,” she demanded, tapping her foot on the floor. “If I were a spirit, I couldn’t possibly appear anywhere else. It is too delightfully sinister!”
“As always, my love, you show an exquisite taste in—”
Worried that the couple were about to initiate one of those conversations others find embarrassing, Jane hurriedly interrupted, asking Murray whether the house really suffered from damp.
“I’m afraid so, my dear,” Murray told her. “We have found serious damp problems throughout the house. Some of the floorboards are completely rotten, but nothing that can’t be fixed.”
With that, Murray motioned to the others to follow him through the second door. Heaving a sigh, Wells prepared to join them, but a big cobweb hanging from the ceiling became tangled in his hair, and he frantically brushed it away. Fearing the creature responsible for such a colossal web might be proportionate in size to its architectural feat and could now be running about on his back, Wells went up to the mirror and, performing various risky contortions, began to examine himself carefully. Then something he saw reflected in the mirror made him pause. The others were filing out of the room, not through the second door, but rather through the one they had entered moments before. Wells wheeled round, only to find himself even more flabbergasted. There they were, still walking through the second door, Murray at the fore, listing the different ways of combating damp, followed by Emma and Jane, who appeared rapt, and behind them Jean and Doyle, who at that moment whispered something in his companion’s ear that made her chuckle. Wells turned back to the mirror and felt his heart jump. There they were again, faithfully reflected, but filing through the wrong door. Unable to believe his own eyes, Wells turned his head from the real world to the reflected world and back again, watching his friends leaving the dining room through two different doors.
When they had all gone out, Wells stood mutely in front of the mirror, which now reflected a room that was empty except for one terrified man. He turned around and, although he could hear his friends’ voices clearly coming from beyond the doorway they had just gone through in the real world, ran across to the one they had stepped through in the mirror. As he expected, the room with the big fireplace was deserted. Wells stood for a moment staring awkwardly at the mounted deer heads, which were gazing at one another with the idiotic expression guests have when they have exhausted all possible conversations. Then he ran over to the other door, leading to the vast entrance hall, at the far end of which he discovered his companions climbing up to the first floor via the magnificent marble staircase. Wells opened his mouth, ready to call out, but closed it instantly. What on earth was he going to say to them? He returned to the dining room and walked back over to the mirror. Trying to think rationally, he told himself that, due to the way it was positioned or to some distortion in the glass, he must have experienced a strange optical illusion. He spent several minutes examining the mirror and the frame from every possible angle. He even lifted it slightly away from the wall but found nothing behind it. He stood facing it once more and examined the reflected image of the deserted dining room, which seemed identical now to the real one. The same portraits adorned the walls, the same crossed swords, the same lamp spilling its tentative pool of light onto the dusty table . . . the dusty table . . . Wells breathed in sharply. Resting his hands on the mirror, he narrowed his eyes and drew closer until the tip of his nose was almost touching the glass.
In the reflected dust on the reflected table, where Emma had written the two initials, there was nothing. Wells glanced over his shoulder, and he could see them even through the gloom. They were still there, illuminated by the lamplight, an “M” and an “E” clearly traced in the thick layer of real dust. Of course they were still there; why wouldn’t they be? He was alone in the room, and they couldn’t have erased themselves. Wells looked into the mirror again and confirmed once more that the initials weren’t reflected there. His head started to spin. Was this still an optical illusion he couldn’t account for? He tapped the cold surface gently with his splayed hands, as if to satisfy himself that it existed, that it had the consistency of a real object, that it wasn’t a figment of his imagination as well. And then he noticed that, on the side of his chin where he had the tiny scar that gave him such a complex, his reflection showed nothing. As he stood gaping at himself, a wave of sheer terror began to crawl up his spine and spread around the base of his skull like a hungry snake, ready to feed on his sanity. Because there was no other possible explanation for that horror except insanity! Wells ran his fingers over the familiar roughness of his scar, while his reflection stroked his pristine skin with what must have been the same terrified expression.