11

Tom turned on the kitchen lights. Both the stove and the refrigerator were outsize and made of stainless steel - restaurant equipment. And when he swung open the refrigerator's double doors, he saw piles of steaks, cooked hams, heads of lettuce, bags of tomatoes and cucumbers, gallon jars of mayonnaise, rolled roasts of beef - as much food as he had ever seen in one place. All this, for one man and his housekeeper? And a restaurant range to cook it on? Of course - it was for Mr. Peet and the Wandering Boys as well as Collins and Elena. Tom searched the drawers for a knife, found a long bone-handled carving blade, and cut a section of ham away from the bone.

Chewing, he remembered what he had wanted to do, and the thought nearly made the ham stick in his throat. Because of what the 'Brothers Grimm' had said, he had decided to take another look at the Collector in the bathroom mirror.

For the sake of your story, he is.

Del had said the face just came forward until it was near your own, and then retreated. It was a grisly joke, a Shadowland joke. All he wanted to do was to see how closely the horrible face actually resembled Skeleton Ridpath's. That was all he wanted, but it still scared him.

Tom left the kitchen and walked slowly back down the hall to the bathroom door. He jittered there a moment, now thinking that the idea of inspecting Coleman Collins' macabre joke was silly.

Not really, he thought. Because it would be better to find that the Collector did not look any more like Skeleton Ridpath than Snail or Root did - that way, he could get rid of the feeling that he and Del were still in some awful way linked to Skeleton Ridpath: that graduation had not taken Skeleton out of their lives.

But of course it did, he thought, putting his hand on the doorknob. He's gone for good. Then Tom remembered the day, years before, when an eighth-grade Skeleton had knocked him down in the Junior School playground; and knocked him down again; and then flurried his sharp fists and shredded his lip. Dirty little Irish nigger, dirty little Irish nigger: spitting that out mindlessly, his eyes showing that his brain had switched off absolutely. Skeleton had struck his face and slobbered with glee, and struck his face again, making his nose bleed. Tom had fought back, but Skeleton was three years older; he had never got close enough to land a blow, and Skeleton kept chipping away at his face. It might have gone on until the end of recess if one of the teachers had not pulled Skeleton away and sent him home.

The humiliation had been worse than the pain. The pain went away, but Skeleton Ridpath returned to school and the playground, a spindly, snaky eighth-grader who had only to look at Tom to tyrannize him. Long before Del's arrival at Carson, Tom had felt hounded by the coach's son. Tackling him, bringing him down hard again and again in the practice game between the varsity and the junior varsity, had helped him face down Skeleton during all the trouble with Del.

All right. He swallowed, reminded himself that it was just a joke and that Del had seen it a hundred times, and opened the door. He flicked the lights. His own face looked worriedly back at him from the mirror. The button, the one that brought the Collector, was just beside the light switch. It just comes up close and then melts back down into the mirror. He took a breath and pushed the button.

The yellow light instantly turned purple. That other face swam up from the mirror like something hidden hi his own face. For a second, his own features obscured it. He knew in his stomach that he had made a mistake.

Then the avid, greedy face jumped into life. Purple, with distorted mouth and dead skin and flabby smudges under its eyes. Tom groaned, all but quailed back against the wall. It was Skeleton Ridpath's face, and no other: Skeleton blowtorched down to painful essence, skinned of whatever was human and pitying in him. Skeleton grinned at him and crawled forward.

Tom's knees turned to rubber. The figure was lifting its hands. Mirror image, Tom thought with weird rationality. Now the entire trunk was protruding out of the mirror, leaning toward him.

Tom backed away, in his panic forgetting all about the button. Skeleton's face was alight. He was holding himself up on the edge of the mirror, taking his weight on his arms in order to get his knee on the silver frame.

'Go back,' Tom whispered.

Skeleton's knee appeared on the lip of the mirror. He opened his mouth in a wordless shout of rapture, and pushed his leg through the mirror.

'No,' said Tom, barely able to get the word out.

The awful face homed in on the sound of his voice; the distorted mouth began to drool. The Collector was blind. He grinned, showing purplish blackness instead of teeth. Balanced on the sink, he soundlessly dropped his feet to the floor.

Tom bumped into the door, moving sideways, then realized what the door meant. He opened it a crack, the Collector's face scanning brightly toward him, and jumped through the opening. He slammed the door shut and heard Skeleton's feet shuffle on the floor.

Bracing himself, Tom pushed in with all his strength: in an instant, the world had flipped inside-out and turned his mind to jelly. He felt a gentle push from the inside, then a harder push that nearly moved him. Tom laid his cheek against the wood and got his shoulder to the door. He heard himself making little whistling noises in his throat. Keeping the door closed was all he could think of. The next push wobbled him, but his feet held. When Skeleton came back for another attempt to escape the bathroom, he battered the door open an inch and a half before Tom was able to jam it shut again.

He saw himself standing there all night, bottling Skeleton up inside the bathroom.

The fifth blow knocked him back off his feet - he went sprawling in the corridor, and the door banged open. The Collector stood on the threshold, arms dangling, his face swiveling avidly from side to side. He wore the ancient black suit of the mural, and it too shone a faint purple. He shuffled forward.

Tom scuttled backward and got to his feet, making enough noise for the figure to focus directly on him. The Collector's face split open in a grin of empty radiance. 'Great play,' he whispered in a voice a shadow of Skeleton's.

He stumbled forward. 'I told you to stay away from that piano. Take off that fairy shirt. I want to see some skin.'

Tom ran.

'Flanagini! Flanagini! FLAAAAANAGINNNIII!'

Panting, Tom wheeled around the corner into the living room. Hide behind a couch? Behind a curtain? He could barely think: pictures of hiding places too small for him rattled through his mind. From Rose Armstrong to this… thing, as though a line were drawn between them.

Why, sure, Tom thought with bright panic: Rose wanted out of Shadowland, Skeleton wanted out of the mirror. Simple.

'I saw your owl, Vendouris,' whispered a voice behind him. 'You are mine.'

Tom spun around and saw purple Skeleton skimming toward him. He uttered a squeak and dodged to the side. Skeleton snaked out an arm and dug his fingers into his shoulder. The thin fingers burned through Tom's shirt like ice. 'Dirty little Irish nigger!' Tom banged the side of his fist against Skeleton's unheeding head, twisted in frantic disgust to the side, and lost his balance. Skeleton lurched nearer, Tom swung and hit a rock-hard chest, and when Tom twisted again, he brought both of them down onto the flowered couch.

'Great play,' the Collector whispered. 'I want to see some skin.' The icy hands found Tom's neck.

Tom was looking up at the inhuman face - the pouches under the empty eyes were black. A foul, dusty, spider-webby smell soaked into him. Lying atop him, Skeleton felt like a bag of twigs, but his hands squeezed like a vise.

'Dirty little… '

Then sudden brightness stung his eyes; the frozen hands fell away from him. He scrambled to his feet, flailing out, and saw only the sliding doors and the lighted woods where Skeleton should have been. The emptiness before him momentarily felt as charged as a vacuum; then ordinariness rushed into it.

Coleman Collins, in a dark blue dressing gown and paler blue pajamas, limped into the room. 'I pushed the button, little idiot,' said the magician. 'Do not begin things when you will get too flustered to remember how to finish them.' He turned to go, then faced Tom again. 'But you just proved your greatness as a magician, if you are interested. You made that happen. And one thing more. I saved your life-saved it from the consequences of your own abilities. Remember that.' He measured Tom with a glance, and was gone.