chapter 6
Pursued by Mad Mannequins
A strange light was coming from the valley ahead of them. There was one thick sunbeam bearing down from a skylight in the roof which struck the centre of the Vale of Mirrors. But this was reflected back and forth over a thousand thousand times. It went from dazzling brilliance in the first mirror, to a silvery-dull echo of a gleam in the last. All the shades of light between these two extremes were to be found in the valley.
‘It’s a very bright scene,’ mused Alex. ‘I wonder how much candle-power is in there?’
Chloe said, ‘What candles?’
‘Candle-power is a measure of luminosity,’ replied Alex in a haughty tone, ‘whatever the light source is. Didn’t you know that?’
‘No, and you knew I didn’t, which was why you mentioned it.’
Alex smiled. ‘Oh no, I wouldn’t do that, sis. You know me …’
They entered the Vale of Mirrors, walking between two giant antique looking-glasses with ornate gilt frames. Even as they stepped into the gap that separated these two guardians of the valley Chloe realised this was no ordinary clutter of mirrors, which were there in a hundred varieties. Someone had collected these and brought them all to this place.
She said wondrously, ‘Look how many …’
There were mirrors from dressing-tables with wooden frames; from wardrobes; from retail clothes shops. There were bevelled mirrors with silver chains; spherical mirrors from ballrooms; hand mirrors, bathroom mirrors; fairground mirrors. There were huge mirrors from stately homes; tiny mirrors from musical boxes; long, lean mirrors, short, fat mirrors, mirrors with the quicksilver peeling away. There were mirrors from Turkey, from Samarkand, from Chad, from Fiji, from New England, Venice and Shanghai. There was every mirror, every looking-glass, from all the kingdoms and republics that the world has ever known. They stood, lay, were stacked, were scattered, were shattered, were placed in every position thinkable. There were mirror pools and mirror doors and mirror portholes. You could drown in mirrors, you could float in mirrors, you could lose your soul in their reflective surfaces, you could go stark – staring – mad.
The two giant mirrors which were the pillars of the valley entrance seemed to lock Chloe in a dual embrace. The trouble was, she hesitated and stared into the one on the right, and saw Chloes curving away into infinity. It made her dizzy to see millions of herself on both sides, sweeping off into a netherland of space, growing imperceptibly smaller until she disappeared. She turned away but the one on the left was even worse, for she was upside-down and arcing away on her head into a distant greyish otherworld.
She tore her eyes away, saying to Alex behind her, ‘Don’t look!’
But of course, he did.
Once they had entered the vale it was even worse. She was everywhere. Alex was everywhere. When they moved, a hundred other Chloes and Alexes moved, all in different directions. Some of these copies were fairground-mirror images and they warped and distorted the originals. They mocked the children with their willowy forms, or their fat, toadish, lumpy shapes.
Once out of the fairground cluster it was even worse, for at least she knew the right from the wrong Chloe in those undulating surfaces. In the clear mirrors she lost count of the times she bumped into herself, walking straight into a reflective surface and striking her face. It was utterly confusing to have so many altered images all moving at the same time, so she began to wonder which was the real Chloe and which were the fakes.
‘This is horrible,’ she said to Alex. ‘We have to get out of here.’
She turned to find Alex staring into a mirror which was not reflecting his form, but that of their living-room, back at the house. In this large mirror Dipa and Ben could be seen walking about, mouthing the names of the children, as if seeking them. When Alex let out a cry of anguish his parents looked out of the mirror at him, clearly not seeing him, but as if they had heard his yell and wondered where it came from.
‘Don’t stare at it,’ ordered Chloe. ‘It’s lying. Don’t let it fool you, Alex. There’s no one behind it.’
Alex tore himself away, just as Chloe confronted a looking-glass in which there was a scene of herself as a little girl picking daisies on a hillside. She remembered the picnic, which had been several years ago. Then coming up behind her was her father – her real father, not Ben – who was laughing and waving from a patch of bright-red poppies. There was her father, in the full flush of life, before he had died of his heart attack. His eyes were smiling, his skin was glowing in the sun and the wind, his hair flicking back and forth. His arms were stretched out to scoop her up, to cuddle her close to him.
‘Daddy?’ she yelled. ‘Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.’
Chloe became hysterical with a mixture of misery and joy. She ran towards the mirror, clawed to get inside its duplicitous surface, to touch its deceptive reflections. She felt if she tried hard enough she could enter the silver pool and join her father. Then she felt Alex pulling her jersey, yanking her back. He was in tears, calling for her to stop.
‘You told me not to look,’ he accused her, shaking her roughly. ‘Don’t you look either.’
And so they did their best, even though aircraft zoomed at them firing cannons and shooting rockets. Even though ships lurched out of fog banks and bore down on them with wicked-looking bows. Knights charged out of misty marshlands, lances pointing at their breasts. Eagles flew, talons hooked and beaks glinting, straight at their faces. Monsters stalked them on every side: monsters bearing shapes of which they had never dreamed, with open slavering jaws and hands with finger-claws as long and spindly as the legs of a crayfish. There were hideous mouths full of needle teeth. Spooks and ghouls came, rising from cruddy graveyard earth. Frightening corpses with the rotten flesh dripping from their bones. The mirrors tried every trick they knew to bend the children’s minds to their will.
‘Don’t worry, Alex,’ said Chloe, gripping her younger brother’s hand and pulling him along with her, ‘we’ll get out safe.’
‘Someone’s watching us,’ he replied, looking round. ‘I know they are. Someone’s here.’
‘No, you’re imagining it – it’s just us – and reflections of us.’
Alex was convinced there was someone there. Someone hiding at the backs of the mirrors, following them.
The way through was bewildering, being a path of mirror tiles on the ground and walls of mirrors for their avenues. They did not know whether they were going out or coming in, or walking in circles, or running mad. Several times they came across Atticans who looked as if they had been in the Vale of Mirrors for years. The faces of these distressed souls were locked in madness. Clearly their reason had flown long ago, for they simply wandered in and out of mirrored lanes and alleys, stumbling over their feet, seemingly hardly aware of where they were or what they did.
And of course these corridors of mirrors on either side of them continued to produce a multitude of images that sent both children spinning away in their minds, into a swirling whirlpool of Chloes and Alexes on a descent into the same kind of insanity which bedevilled other unwilling lost occupants of the Vale of Mirrors.
‘My head’s spinning,’ said Alex. ‘I feel sick.’
‘So do I. You have to fight it.’
Finally Chloe looked up and found salvation.
‘Alex,’ she said. ‘Look up there!’
Alex followed her gaze but could only see, high above them, a single rafter running the length of the heavens.
‘What of it?’ he said.
‘Keep your eyes on that rafter, Alex, and just follow it. Don’t worry if you bump into a mirror, don’t look at it, just feel your way round it. So long as we stare at that rafter we won’t be looking at reflections of ourselves. Walk carefully and slowly, so you don’t hurt yourself. When you’re aware of an obstacle in front of you, slide round it, but keep going in the direction of the rafter. Eventually it must lead us to the edge of the valley.’
This they did and blessedly found themselves out of the Vale of Mirrors and at the foot of Typewriter Hill.
Chloe felt immense relief wash through her.
‘We’re out. That was horrible, wasn’t it?’
‘It wasn’t the best time I’ve had. Where are we now?’ Alex looked around him. ‘Oh, this should make you happy. Word machines.’
A great jumble of typewriters faced them. They were mostly old, heavy-looking instruments, but a few were portables. The latter were in light cases and had smarter-looking keys than the standard desk typewriters. Some machines had pages stuck under the platen roller, with their typewritten words still legible. Chloe read one or two of them.
Dear Mr Glubb,
You will note by the enclosed that your bank statement shows a deficit of seventeen pounds. We would greatly appreciate
Boring!
Hi Roger,
Bet you didn’t expect to hear from me again! Well, here I am. Are you still going out with Jill, because I have no commitments at the moment. I know we had some bad
Intriguing, but the letter stopped after the word bad.
The next sheet Chloe read was the most fascinating of all. Like the two letter writers, the typist had simply stopped typing. The page remained in the machine and, like the others, the machine must have been put up in the loft without anyone having the interest to bother to remove the piece of typing paper. It seemed to be the start of a story.