Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 39, No. 6, June, 1994

The Mirror by J. A. Paul

The words struck the dim alley outside my open kitchen window and ricocheted back as if the speaker were perched on my sill. The shout had come from my side, but that was all I knew for sure. I lived on the fifth floor and there were four levels above me, not to mention the building across the sooty ravine. The words rang false.

“What goes on here!”

It sounded like a line of script, the response of an actor catching his daughter in the arms of the town hoodlum. It was authenticated by a bang! bang! and moments later another bang! like an exclamation point.

I was standing at the sink, hands under flowing water peeling a potato. It slipped from my fingers and I swear not ten seconds passed before I thought of dialing 911, but either I was immobile longer than I knew or the cops were at the corner. Sirens were shrieking before I turned off the faucet.

Gary arrived for his second dinner of the week and told me reporters were crowding the entrance. I repeated word for word, shot for shot, what had transpired, expecting, I suppose, a consoling hug. I might have read him a summary on the life cycle of snails. He asked if there were onions with the steak.

Of course I got angry. Had I not obligingly cooked supper despite the echo of bullets zipping around my kitchen? Wasn’t it likely someone was hurt? A moment of sorrow was in order, if not for me, at least for the target. Instead he ate with fine appetite and used my cheerless mood to justify going home before nine o’clock. I opened a bottle of wine to celebrate the fact that I was fond of Gary but not in love with him.

I had no more information until the eleven o’clock news when my austere building was laid before the viewing public complete with flashing police cars and ambulance. It was the lead story.

Diamond merchant pays unexpected visit to girlfriend. Finds her with publishing executive. Kills both, then self.

Pictures of the deceased filled the screen. Two handsome men, one lovely woman. I recognized her.

We had occasionally crossed paths in the elevator and at the produce counter on Saturday mornings. Generally speaking, we were the same age, size, and coloring. Our carts contained the same vegetables, and our business suits could be exchanged with neither of us noticing. It was our very similarity that had caused me to wonder, sometimes with envy, at our differences. While I am grateful for the wink of traffic lights, she had spurned car horns and swiveling heads as only a beautiful woman who is used to them can do.

There is no denying she deserved the attention. Her skin glistened like a baby’s, her hair gleamed like silk. Her eyes sparkled like opals, and she moved with the grace of a ballet dancer. In short, she had the allure I possessed only in dreams. Her boyfriends, as would be expected, were a parade of rich and exciting men, while mine — Gary, the insurance salesman, was typical — stood in a short, polyester-clad line of famished suitors. As her picture faded I was filled with pity.

Life goes on. The scene of the crime was for rent. The lease Gary held on his place downtown was ending, and its renewal would mean an increase. When he saw the Vacancy sign on my building, he reasoned he might get a bargain on rooms in which a double murder and a suicide had been committed. I took him to the ground floor rental office to meet my manager, a personable, balding, roly-poly man named Mr. Gillespie. He handed Gary a typewritten sheet of paper.

“All it says is you’ve been informed of the crimes. Management doesn’t want anybody moving in without signing. Later on the tenant could say we concealed pertinent information and stop paying the rent. There’s all kinds, believe me.”

I read it over Gary’s shoulder. The wording puzzled me.

“It says ‘three incidents of violent death.’ Don’t you mean one incident? Three deaths in one incident?”

He looked surprised.

“No. Three different incidents. Didn’t you hear about them?”

Privacy is costly. I should have befriended the gossips.

“If it’s your policy for tenants to learn such things by chance, how come you’re informing Gary and didn’t inform me when I rented my place?” I asked.

“Because you didn’t rent that apartment. We don’t have everybody sign. We’d scare away the whole population.”

“Do you mean to say they all occurred in that particular unit?”

“Right. And I’m glad you haven’t heard. It means we’ve managed to keep the apartment number a private matter. Those reporters would turn a coincidence into a mystical event.”

I’m not especially superstitious, but three violent episodes in a single apartment struck me as mystical, too. I thought Gary agreed.

“That bad, eh? What’s been happening up there?”

Mr. Gillespie sighed. Evidently the story bored him.

“The first was five years ago. Young lady fell into the alley. Nobody else was there, and she wasn’t the type to stand on a ledge washing windows, so they ruled it a suicide. The next tenant poisoned a bottle of whisky at his birthday party. Killed himself and three of his friends. Then there was this last, of course. At least this time the tenant didn’t do it.”

I had been calculating rapidly. Eight people in five years had come to an untimely end.

“Gary, I don’t like the sound of this.”

“Believe in ghosts, do you?” He grinned, showing a slightly crooked set of teeth. Glancing slyly at the manager he added: “I bet she’s not the only one. How many have turned it down?”

Mr. Gillespie smiled knowingly, and they spent a few minutes haggling. Finally Gary was promised a reduction of two hundred a month, and we were given the key to take a look.

The apartment was three stories above mine on the same side, but all they had in common was the layout. Every appliance in the kitchen looked new, and so did everything in the bath. Even the ceiling fixtures had been replaced. The most noticeable difference was the brightness. The added height afforded a clear view well over the top of the building next door, the one that dimmed all my windows. The rooms were freshly painted, the carpet shampooed — probably all done to quell the morbid fears of apartment hunters, though none of it diminished mine. The living room had a mirrored wall that was startlingly beautiful, reflecting a panoramic sweep of skyscrapers visible through the picture window opposite.

“Wow,” said Gary.

“Wow is right,” I shot back. “Wow — one plunge, four poisonings, and three bullet holes.” I wasn’t in love with Gary; neither did I long to witness him hurtling past my window minus a bungee cord or writhing in agony as he frothed at the mouth. He ignored me.

“Look at this mirror,” he said. “It must weigh a ton. The pieces are screwed in, which says they were too heavy to be glued. That means they put up plywood first. And see the frame? The beams were cut to butt against the edge instead of overlapping, and then they were sanded and stained and varnished. The carpentry alone is worth a small fortune.”

The mirror’s beauty interested me more than the cost of its installation, and I went to take a closer look. It was made of separate tiles, each piece about ten inches square and beveled. The glass was smoky, not clear, and there were narrow veins of gold wiggling through it like jagged scores of precious metal in a dark, underground mine. I laughed when I saw Gary’s reflection in a pose of vanity run preening fingers through his light brown hair. He looked unusually handsome, as if all irregularity of feature, all flaws had been erased. I glanced at myself and was surprised to see I had lost the seven pounds I’d been trying to drop for months. Besides trimming my figure, it had sharpened the angles of my face, and I almost looked like a model. Then I noticed that my hair looked glossier, too. A shiver ran through me. I had not looked like that less than an hour before. My senses sharpened with fear as if footsteps thumped behind me on a dark, empty street. I tore my eyes away.

“Gary, let’s get out of here.”

“I’m taking it,” he said.

Back downstairs I asked Mr. Gillespie if the mirrored wall had been recently constructed.

“Nope. The young lady put it in, the one who jumped. She imported it from India or Burma or someplace. It’s a beauty, isn’t it?”

“Everything looks so new. Did you renovate because of all the deaths?”

He eyed me sternly. “You shouldn’t be so superstitious. All we did was paint. The young lady put in the mirror, then every tenant after her didn’t know what to do with their money and got permission to modernize something. First it was the bathroom, I think. Then the kitchen. Come to remember, we did replace the carpeting. We had to, after the poisonings. We couldn’t get the stains out.”

“But the mirror has been there since the first death?”

“We left it there, sure. Is something wrong with it?”

If I’d said I felt menaced by it, he would have thought I was mad. I opted to sound quality-minded.

“It distorted our images. I think you should remove it.”

He looked at me like I was crazy.

“You should see it at night with the city reflected in it. You’d change your mind quick.”

“The mirror stays,” said Gary as he wrote a check.

And that was that.

Gary moved in and immediately began to insist that I cook our dinners at his place where “the view is better than your brick wall.” Maybe it was, but I didn’t think I could eat while chills ran up and down my spine. I never went.

We soon became ordinary neighbors bumping into each other crossing the lobby, waiting for the elevator, or hailing a cab. Neither of us missed the other terribly, so we always exchanged news cheerfully. During one such brush he told me he had elevated himself from selling insurance to selling advertising on Madison Avenue, and that he was doing well. I believed him. He looked like he belonged in a commercial for the stylish man about town. I concluded that he was spending his rental savings on smart clothes. As time passed, I noticed other refinements and decided in turn that he was spending it on a hair stylist, a gym, a tanning salon. It wasn’t long before it penetrated my dense skull that he looked like a million dollars, and a savings of two hundred a month couldn’t buy that much. He had to be raking it in on Madison Avenue.

And then came the women. One after another until finally it was just one, a twig-thin, gorgeous brunette who fetched him at the curb in a red convertible, where I, flagging a cab in my brown checked suit, was given a dazzling smile before they sped away. Increase his list of enhancements to include his having his teeth capped. So full of vitality was he that I forgot about our altered identities in the spooky mirror.

I had not been abandoned by romance myself. By then I was being squired, albeit via mass transit, by Philip, an accountant in the garment district. Two nights a week found me peeling potatoes over my kitchen sink again. That thrill was followed by an invigorating walk to the living room for a curl-up on my lumpy couch to laugh at sitcoms. One night a week we changed the routine. We brought home tacos and bypassed the kitchen to eat them in front of the set.

The last time I saw Gary was taco night. Philip and I were crossing the street sharing the burden of white paper dinner bags when déjà vu hit me. My building was blocked by police cars and an ambulance, the entrance starkly outlined by the floodlights of a television van. Fear gripped me.

I pushed my bag at Philip and told him to go home. He looked petulant behind his spectacles, but he accepted it.

I cornered Mr. Gillespie, who was pinned to the brick as if under attack. He shook his head as questions bombarded him.

“It’s Gary, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

He whispered in my ear to avoid being overheard.

“That model stabbed him.”

His head was shiny under the illumination of the floodlights. He kept moving it from side to side, trying yet to deny the undeniable. “Stabbed herself, too. Can you believe it? How am I going to keep this one quiet, that’s what I want to know. It’s only five months since last time...”

“Stabbed, but not dead?” I was praying my premonition was wrong. If it hadn’t been for me, Gary would not have known about the apartment, would still be downtown content with crooked teeth.

“Not dead? Last count was sixteen knife wounds. On herself she had better aim. That only took one.”

A stretcher came out. The body was covered, but I recognized the size and shape. A couple of people yelled, but before they could stop me, I ripped off the sheets.

His wounds were below the neck. Death had not stolen Gary’s hard-won beauty. I suppose I fainted. Next thing I knew I was lying on the leather couch in Mr. Gillespie’s office. When I awoke, he was on the telephone speaking in tones of amusement that were plainly false. “Nah, just coincidence... Don’t be ridiculous — tenants will be fighting for that place!”

That place. That obscene place where people died, where something fiendish urged them to murder others and themselves, be they occupant or friend. However much he denied it, the evidence was overpowering. A ghastly thing lived in that place.

I mourned. I went to work, that was all. I stopped seeing Philip and everybody else. I mourned Gary, but also the demise of the friendly world I thought I knew.

Evil lurked. It waited in ordinary, well-lit places like apartments and supermarkets and bowling alleys, not mausoleums. Evil. A word reserved for the likes of Hitler and the devil. A word we rarely use and never expect to encounter in anything but human form. Evil human beings can be hunted and punished. How could we defend ourselves against a devil? — evil formed in a dimension we did not understand? How could we hope to understand it if men like Mr. Gillespie forever denied its existence, thwarted investigation with words like superstition and coincidence? Something diabolical dwelled in that apartment, and it had a savage, voracious appetite.

One consolation sustained me. The day after Gary’s murder headlines screamed across the city. Ten Tragic Deaths Haunt Midtown Apartment.

And so the place remained empty. No lunatic apartment hunter had surfaced. Yet.

Spring came. Violet-colored crocuses pushed their way into my joyless existence. Children reappeared on park swings. Where evil dwelled, so did kindness and decency and all things heavenly. I concentrated on that and began to feel better.

One Saturday morning I was carrying groceries, weighing the pros and cons of giving Philip a call, when Mr. Gillespie caught me in the lobby.

“I’m telling all the tenants. Management is willing to rent the apartment for half price. Tell your friends, okay? Outsiders won’t look, but you people — you know how safe the building is, right? You could tell your friends?”

For the first time in my life I knew what the urge to spit felt like.

“Don’t ask me to talk, Mr. Gillespie. If I did, I’d be on a soapbox demanding that you board that place up, or at the very least that you smash that mirror. I should have made it clearer at the beginning. It was eerie, threatening. Gary and I weren’t ourselves in it. And it’s the only common factor, the only appointment never changed in all your ‘coincidences.’ ”

For a moment he looked mystified. Then he remembered.

“The mirror? Is that all? Listen, you don’t like it? I’ll rip it off! You remember the apartment, right? Even without the mirror it’s beautiful. Perfect for a young lady like you.” His hand grasped my arm. I pulled away and walked to the elevator. He followed.

“Listen, fifty percent. That’s dirt cheap!”

I almost pitied him. An empty unit in a nice building in the heart of town might be prompting “management” to threaten him with the unemployment office. But he should be standing against them fighting to shut the place up, not groveling.

“Ten cents on the dollar, chop down the mirror, and I’ll consider it.” I said it through clenched teeth, meant it to be an insult, a suggestion so absurd he would leave me alone. To a salesman it must have sounded like a first offer, for his eyes lit and his answer astonished me.

“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. The elevator arrived, and I made my escape.

Ten minutes later he was at my door grinning from ear to ear and jangling his set of master keys.

“Management says they can’t go that low, but they’ll go another ten percent. Because you’re already a good tenant. That’s forty cents on the dollar and a release on this unit. They’ll even give you the new unit for an extra year. That’s two years, no rate increase!”

So. Bad publicity was enough to make even moguls capitulate. Since it was doubtful they would profit at a rent of forty percent, what they really needed was a tenant who would walk out on her own two feet, survive long enough to prove the apartment was safe. I toyed with the idea of asking for it free of charge, but frankly I was afraid they’d give it to me.

“My offer was a joke, Mr. Gillespie. I’m sorry.”

His face collapsed, but he didn’t surrender.

“Okay, you drive a hard bargain. Let’s say thirty-five percent. And the mirror goes. It’s the mirror that bothers you, right? Some kind of ghost in it? We’ll get rid of it! C’mon, thirty-five percent! Let’s take a look.”

Yes, it was the mirror that bothered me, though compared with what I thought was there, a ghost would be a welcome guest. I didn’t bother correcting him and agreed to one last look. The alternative was to hit him in the nose with the door.

I expected to be filled with terror when I stepped over the threshold, but all I felt was grief for Gary. The drapes were drawn so it was quite dark, but even in the half light I saw that the living room carpet had been replaced. I didn’t ask why. The answer would be a graphic description of Gary’s bloodstains. A dank smell was in the air. I attached no demonic purpose to it. The apartment had been vacant all winter.

Mr. Gillespie opened the drapes, and light poured into the room. He lifted a side window allowing a crisp spring breeze to sweeten the air. Then he busily clucked his way to the other rooms as agents will, checking that everything works before showing it to the client. I avoided looking at the mirror and went instead to the picture window. Towering buildings rose before me like majestic tributes to the gods. I turned and saw the mirror shimmering before me, and then I saw me.

The same me I saw that single time with Gary.

I stood at the forefront of skyscrapers. The incoming breeze lifted my hair. The reflection captivated, like an oversized photo depicting the spoils of success. Towering buildings, a beautiful woman mistress of the wealth and power behind her — mine if I wanted it. All I had to do was live here. I stepped forward.

Porcelain skin taut over intriguing angles and hollows. Lush, shining hair falling in wisps over seductive eyes. Confidence radiating from a slim and alluring figure.

The reflection wasn’t mine any more than Gary’s reflection had been his. But the illusion was hard to resist.

Mr. Gillespie returned.

“Everything works; naturally I expected it to. It’s all in excellent condition.” He paused to run his hand over the smoky glass. “You don’t really want to get rid of this, do you? Think how it looks at night.”

In his reflection he was just himself. Mr. Gillespie was not a prospective tenant.

I turned to answer, and he stepped back in awe, openly gaping. Bewitching women can rivet a man’s attention like that. Never before had I been one of them.

He found his voice.

“So how about it?” he asked.

I could have chosen to shock men in that way for as long as I lived, but the knowledge that it wouldn’t be for long was enough to smother what little temptation I had. The truth is, beyond a compulsion for a daily shower and attractive clothes, my appearance had never ruled me.

But the apartment was beautiful, and I knew one day it would be rented. It had to happen. Apartment hunters can be desperate people. Even when presented with its history and despite their misgivings, they would take it. The reduced price was too strong an inducement. And like Gary they would admire the mirror, count themselves lucky to have it.

The knowledge burdened me with responsibility. No one but I would demand that the mirror be removed, no one but a tenant had the right to make the demand, ergo, I had to be the tenant. I didn’t know the level of consciousness the thing had, so I wasn’t about to say its days were numbered as I stood in front of it.

“I’ll take the apartment, Mr. Gillespie.”

He almost fainted. In the hall I added the rest.

“But I’m not signing anything until the mirror is gone.”

He was happy to agree. “You got it. The maintenance crew is on the second floor. We’ll have it out before lunch.”

By the time we reached the elevator, he was gazing at me oddly. I wasn’t surprised. As I was not yet the occupant, I had probably reverted to my bland appearance. But he shook my hand when we reached my floor. The bride of Frankenstein would look like Venus to Mr. Gillespie if she were leasing that apartment.

I felt pretty good, too. The mirror would be trashed, I’d make sure of it if I had to jump on every last piece myself. Not until I was slipping the key into my door did it occur to me that I was getting a princely sum to do it. In fact I jolted when I realized what the sixty-five percent actually amounted to. Midtown apartments are expensive; I wouldn’t reveal the cost to my own mother, but if the savings on a thousand is six hundred fifty and I was getting more than that — it was a lot of money.

I opened my closet and removed every pair of bargain basement shoes I owned. With the savings of just one month I could replace them all with designer shoes — on sale, of course. I sat down with a pad and pencil. I could buy three, maybe four new suits the second month, throw out the T-shirts I wore to bed and get myself some gorgeous lingerie in the third month. During the fourth I’d look into mutual funds if the interest on CD’s was still so anemic — and still be able to afford a cruise next winter. The doorbell rang.

Mr. Gillespie stood there. I couldn’t read his expression. Annoyed? Disbelieving? Both, I thought.

“Uuuumm...”

“What is it, Mr. Gillespie?”

“We can’t get it off.”

“What?”

“I said we can’t get it off.”

That hadn’t occurred to me. It should have.

“I was thinking we could cover it for you. You know, with paneling? Listen, I don’t understand it. Joe stripped the screws trying to get them out. They won’t budge. He’s mad as hell...”

I got my keys, locked my door, and went upstairs with him.

Joe, the head of maintenance, is six foot four. He is two hundred and fifty pounds of muscle. We have a nodding acquaintance.

“I put it up myself,” he said. “No reason for this.” He was squatting, glaring at the mirror like a frustrated pugilist amazed by the abilities of his opponent.

“Let’s try this.” I took a hammer from his toolbox, and avoiding my reflection, I released some of the wrath I’d contained for months by swinging the hammer at the nearest square. The result was the tinkle of a fork tapping crystal. No breakage, not a nick.

Joe got to his feet. He took the hammer from me and hit the mirror himself. Then harder. Nothing happened. His face turned grim, and Mr. Gillespie and I retreated a step at each blow he swung, every one mightier than the one before until the last was struck like the Babe swinging for the avenue beyond the fence. The result was nothing but a succession of chimes, tiny bells in the wind. Sweating, he stepped back and cursed.

“I don’t believe this.”

Mr. Gillespie swallowed and waved his arms.

“Like I said, we’ll cover it. What’ll it take, Joe? Two, two and a half pieces? You’ve got some in the basement, remember? Left over from 3-B?” He avoided meeting my eyes. “It’s nice paneling. A little dark, maybe. Dark walnut. If you don’t like it we’ll get some with a lighter finish...”

“You said you installed the mirror?” I asked Joe.

“Yeah. Built the housing myself. Good deep wood, new screws. No reason it shouldn’t come off easy.”

“Do you remember if she said anything about it? — I mean the girl who brought it here, the one who killed herself?”

“I remember I dropped one of the pieces and it didn’t break. Surprised the hell outa me. Her, too. She said considering its age it was hard to believe it was so sturdy.”

My mouth grew as dry as sand in August sun.

“What else did she tell you?”

“That her father was in the import business, which was no surprise considering that the whole apartment was full of foreign stuff. She said this came from an old castle or temple, some fancy place that got destroyed somehow, earthquake or something, I don’t remember.” He stared at the mirror moodily, went up and ran his hands over it. “Funny, huh? A building is wrecked, but a mirror buried in it is in perfect condition. ’Course I understand it, now. It’s bulletproof glass or something.” He checked the corners of several pieces. “Don’t explain why it won’t come off, though.”

“Did you drill the holes in the squares?” I asked.

He glanced my way, momentarily puzzled by the question, then realized that the existence of holes proved the mirror was not, after all, impervious to the tools of men.

“No, but somebody did, didn’t they?” He smiled and went went to his toolbox, got a drill, and picked through his bits. “This one would go through Fort Knox,” he said as he plugged the drill into the extension cord. Facing the mirror, he touched the bit to the surface and slowly pulled the trigger. A high-pitched whine sang in the room. He pressed into the job, increasing pressure until his biceps bulged. I watched in fascination as gray ash floated to the floor near his feet and grew into a tiny hill of silvery powder. Releasing the trigger he stared in wonder at the remainder of his bit, a blunt stub. There wasn’t a mark on the mirror.

“Geezus!”

“Get the paneling, Joe,” said Mr. Gillespie.

Joe lost his temper. “How am I supposed to attach it, Sidney? You want me to hang it from the ceiling?”

“Use the frame,” said Mr. Gillespie.

“That’s okay for the two pieces that have a side to anchor,” Joe snarled, “but we need more than two pieces. Which means the middle can only be attached at the top and bottom, and sooner or later it’s gonna billow like a sail in the wind.”

“Use glue on it.”

“On what?”

“Let me know when you’re finished,” I said.

I went back downstairs. I had to think. I made a pot of coffee, hoping to speed the process.

The mirror had to be destroyed, its pieces buried in quicksand, but if they couldn’t get it off, that wasn’t going to happen. Would anything be accomplished by covering it? About as much as tossing a blanket on a charging tiger. What was I going to do?

Think. Knowledge is power. What did I know?

The ghastly thing hated people. That much was fact. There was a primary victim, the person who lived with it, but it could wield its heinous influence over others, too, if they were in its presence often enough. That it was Gary’s girlfriend who did the killing in the last incident and the boyfriend of the previous tenant the time before, proved it. But all that meant was that they had been soonest influenced. Eventually the urge to kill, to die themselves, would have overpowered the occupants anyway. It had at least a rudimentary intellect. Neither Mr. Gillespie’s, nor Joe’s appearance had been altered, while Gary’s and mine had. It recognized potential victims and influenced only them. Could it hear? Understand? Maybe. I was certain only that it could see. The vicious hell-hound was able to see by its very property. It was visually oriented.

I was sure of precious little else. Maybe someone had put the facts together; maybe it wasn’t an earthquake that had destroyed its home but the human residents in a last-ditch effort to crush a monster. Actually, the possibility that it had been kept — probably hidden — in a temple of some kind was more plausible. People of deep religious faith accepted the existence of evil. In this case the keepers might well have been armed with secrets as old as the pyramids to hold the fiend in limbo. If so, a catastrophe beyond their control had unleashed it.

If it was visually oriented, blinding it would be effective, but only temporarily. Someday this building would fall, too. By wrecking ball a hundred years from now, or earthquake or gas explosion tomorrow. Everything came to an end. Everything but that mirror. And then someone would find it and the slaughter would begin again. “Look, hon, look what survived the blast. I brought it home...”

It had to be destroyed. The paneling should keep me safe until I figured out how to do it. I would start by asking my kindly librarian for a do-it-yourself volume on killing ogres. The request had to lead somewhere.

I checked my watch. Two and a half pieces of paneling didn’t take long to install. I went back upstairs.

The door was propped open by Joe’s coffin-sized toolbox.

Papers lay on the foyer shelf. The esteemed manager wasn’t wasting a moment. I didn’t hear voices. Had they killed each other? This apartment was no place to have an argument. I found them in the living room in perfect health and looking pleased. Mr. Gillespie beckoned to me.

“Look, sweetheart, I told you, didn’t I? It’s beautiful.”

The job was done. The mirror was gone, or at least no longer visible. In its place was a wall of wood paneling screwed to the beams that had previously been the mirror’s frame.

“I used insulation to fill the space behind it,” Joe said. Glancing at his boss he added, “Couldn’t stick the middle section to air, now could I? The tack isn’t dry yet, but it seems to be holding okay. If a seam separates, give me a call.” He gathered up the rest of his tools.

We took the lease into the kitchen. I read it quickly, thrilled to see my first rental figure of three digits instead of four. And for two years! Then I sobered. I would be earning it, possibly paying for an exorcist. I wondered what they charged. New shoes could wait.

Joe came in and rinsed his hands in the sink. Mr. Gillespie signed his line and handed me the pen. I signed my name, and he gave me the key. I dropped it into my pocket. And odd sound, like tops spinning lazily on a gritty sidewalk, came from the living room. The men looked at each other with expressions of “what now?” and went inside to find out. I followed.

The screws in the perimeter of the paneling spun in reverse rotation. Unlike human hands that pause to recover leverage at ninety degrees the motion was without interruption, utterly smooth. Out they came, all of them at once, until, balanced perfectly on their tips, they wobbled, hung for a moment, and fell. We stepped back as the paneling pitched forward in slow motion, picking up speed as it came. It landed with the thud of a single piece, not three, and was finally hidden by the cushion of pink insulation that had been its backing. A study in contrast, we stared at ourselves in the glittering mirror.

Joe stood with legs apart, knees bent and fists closed, ready to swing at whatever slimy, red-eyed ghoul might emerge. Next to him Mr. Gillespie stood quivering, gasping for air through bloodless lips in a circle around the black hole that was his mouth. I looked like a park statue whose rigid stone arm was suddenly jerked up like the limb of a puppet when I reached out to pat Mr. Gillespie’s shoulder. I was afraid he might die of shock.

“Don’t worry. Nothing else will happen.”

He managed without words to tell me I was deranged.

“Joe, would you move the paneling, please?”

I had to get closer to prove my eyes had not deceived me.

Mr. Gillespie began a sidestep out of the room.

“It’s all right,” I assured him. “We’re safe. At least for now.” I felt like I was on intimate terms with this thing. One glimpse had told me a lot.

“Safe?” he croaked. “Safe? Listen, you’re right, okay? There’s a ghost here. Those screws... we’ll shut the place up, that was a good idea you had. If they don’t listen — better yet, I won’t ask. We’ll just do it. We’ll seal the door. Joe, be here tomorrow. Wait, it’s Sunday. Never mind, come anyway. We’ll use plywood, then sheet-rock. We’ll spackle, paint it over. Nobody will know there’s a unit here...”

He was babbling. Joe, to his credit, had responded to my request and slid the paneling aside until I had a path to the mirror. He was now rolling up the insulation, sticky side inward. He was the kind of man who did what could be done, who’d plug holes in the roof with gum if it was all he had.

I went to within a foot of my reflection to be sure my image was still the Hollywood version. It was. I had tried to smash it with a hammer, and still it dangled the bait. Why?

Because I was no threat. No more than Joe was with his powerful bits and bone-crushing blows, or Mr. Gillespie with his shroud. In comparison to what it had probably endured in the past, we must have looked as fearsome as charging toddlers to a sumo wrestler. No human was a worthy adversary. A borrowed gorilla infuriated by his reflection might get a reaction, but it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that the tactic had been used before and an ape had killed himself.

Which gave me an idea.

Joe returned from the hall where he had left the insulation.

“Push the paneling back again, would you, Joe?”

“What?”

“Please. Then let’s visit the basement.”

He did as I asked. It was silly, but I wanted to protect the new carpeting from what I hoped would be a devil having a fit. I closed the drapes and we left, Mr. Gillespie leading the way with such abandon that it was I who remembered to take the sheaf of papers, my new lease.

Mr. Gillespie had no interest in my plan. He disappeared into his office without a word, probably to find a bottle of scotch. I asked Joe if he kept discarded furniture in the basement the way most buildings did. He nodded and asked no questions, though he did make a couple of remarks.

“Sidney told me what you said about that mirror. I thought you were a nut.”

“He thinks it’s a ghost, but the truth is worse. It’s a cunning, human-hating ogre from another dimension, Joe.”

“I’d believe anything after seeing those screws spin out by themselves. Those holes must have been in the pattern when the squares were made,” he added, looking for logic in madness.

We found two pieces of plywood, and I asked him to cover them with every piece of mirror we could find, removed from rusty medicine cabinets and rickety bureaus. The largest single piece was a mottled wall mirror, the kind that used to be placed behind couches. I helped him drill holes, and we fitted the assortment as close together on the plywood as we could. When the job was done, he lifted the two pieces, now jigsaws of hazy, pock-marked mirror — I wiped them with a dirty rag — into a contraption that was a crate on wheels. They were heavy; his muscles came in handy. We used the service elevator.

I went in first to make sure the lights were off. Joe wheeled in the cart, lifted out the mirrors, and leaned them close together against the section of wall above the drapes. When he was back outside, I flicked on all the overhead lights, making it bright enough to see easily. I left quickly, locking the door behind me.

It was visually oriented. It had probably never been threatened, never known fear. I hoped it had never seen itself.

I cannot rationally defend the plan. Maybe it was a spirit that had no substance to reflect. Or if it had, maybe it would use the method it used on humans and attempt to beautify its own reflection. But if it had a form — and I prayed it was a massive one — it would surely see a difference at once, perceive a being unlike any seen before. An enemy. At which point maybe it would adopt a posture of threat, an attitude reflected back as a real adversary. A deadly foe.

That was where the plan ended. I had no idea what would happen next. If it worked, would a demon jump out of the mirror to attack? And find nothing but old glass? Would I have let loose a creature from Hell? Common sense said it could not escape, that if it could, it would have done so long ago. Did I say common sense? There was no sense to the plan, really, far less any that could be described as common, for if the creature wanted to fight and could not escape, how would it vent its rage? And of course if it realized that its adversary was only an illusion, the result would be utter failure. I guess I hoped the sight of itself would induce a heart attack first.

My reason had obviously died with Gary, but in all that I did not understand, could not fathom, maybe there was a factor that would allow us to win. If not, human beings would be massacred forever.

The worst part was not being able to tell whether anything was happening at all. How would I know? And how long would it take to find out? Days? Years?

It turned out to be hours. It was about midnight.

I had fallen asleep on the sofa. The windows were open, and sirens woke me up. And then the telephone. Mr. Gillespie was spewing obscenities on the other end. When I spoke, he blubbered in confusion. Neighbors were calling everybody, he said. Him, the police, management. If I was here, then who was upstairs? What were they complaining about? He was coming over. He would call Joe. Not to worry. He had already thought of a few things that could have dislodged the screws like that. I hung up on him and used the stairs instead of the elevator.

The hall was almost crowded. Neighbors stood staring toward the apartment. Two puzzled cops stood at the door.

“It’s my apartment,” I said as I approached. “What’s going on?” I put my hand in my pocket. The key was still there.

“You tell us,” one of them smiled. “Somebody said he saw smoke, somebody else heard something — he’s not sure what — and another smelled something peculiar. Nothing like first-hand, eyewitness accounts. Shall we go in and find out?”

“No,” I said.

His grin disappeared. I didn’t score points with that word, but I couldn’t let them get hurt.

“It’s not safe,” I added.

He looked at me suspiciously. “And why would that be?”

An elderly woman in a bathrobe answered from her doorway.

“Because that’s the place all those people got murdered, that’s why! There’s probably another maniac loose in there.” She slammed the door and slid her safety bolts loudly.

It took awhile to refresh their memories about the history of the apartment. I didn’t mind when amusement reappeared. I wished they’d laugh and leave.

And then we heard a faint tinkling of glass followed by a whoosh, like wind whipping up. A sickening stench crept from under the door. Something was happening.

Mr. Gillespie came out of the elevator fussing with the waistline of his pants. One shoelace was untied, and he had forgotten to put on a belt. He was accompanied by Joe, solid and practical in T-shirt and jeans. They were halfway down the hall when I felt the floor shudder beneath my feet. We all looked down, but it ended so quickly it was almost as if it hadn’t happened.

“What is it, vandals?” asked Mr. Gillespie.

As if in answer, the door shook on its hinges. A crash came from within and then another. The neighbors vanished. The cops stepped back and drew their guns, probably expecting a gang of thieves to come charging out. Mr. Gillespie began to walk backward. Only Joe came forward.

I pulled out my key. It was my plan after all. I had a right to witness the result. I slipped it into the lock and turned the knob. It was wrenched inward and me with it.

I gripped the doorknob with both hands as air with the windspeed of a hurricane took me to my knees. A stink fouler than the depths of a hundred sewers burned my mouth and stung my eyes. It turned thick and black and wet, filling my lungs like rushing swamp water. Crashes came from ahead where one piece of glass after another was being hurled as if a creature the size of a mythical dragon were pulling itself apart piece by piece to vanquish an enemy who refused to surrender. And above it all, with it all, was a grinding shriek of such pitch I felt my eardrums stretched like balloons and about to explode. Sightless and gagging, clutching desperately at the knob, I felt myself dragged inexorably into the whirling cesspool. I was about to die. If that was the price, it was worth it. A vile beast was dying, too. I had won.

An arm came round my waist. A leg braced itself against the wall. A huge, warm hand crushed mine on the doorknob. I felt myself being pulled with the steady force of a bulldozer. The door was yanked shut in front of me, and we lay gasping on the hallway floor. The other one was Joe, of course. Blessedly muscular Joe.

“Damn fool.” he said.

Mr. Gillespie crept forward and the five of us, he, the two policemen, Joe, and I, waited in the smelly hall for the noise to end. Six more cops joined us, and we waited some more. An hour of silence had passed before we dared to enter.

The officers insisted on going first, guns at the ready. They didn’t fool me. If they thought vandals were inside, or anything human or animal that could be brought down by guns, they would have gone in a lot sooner. We walked as if we expected land mines.

It was as silent and cold as a snowcapped mountain. The air wasn’t too bad. In a moment we found out why. The drapes on the picture window were in tatters. The window itself was broken on both sides of the mirrored plywood, allowing much of the foul odor to escape. I prayed that was all that had escaped. There were no mirrors left, neither the ones we had brought nor the other. But if we had expected from the noise to find blood, gore, clumps of torn, coarse fur, we were wrong.

Ankle-deep ash was all we found, most of it on the overturned paneling between what had been old — and much older — mirror. I bent down and scooped up a handful of it, let it run through my fingers. It wasn’t ash after all. It was too shiny, too needle sharp. The rear housing of raw wood Joe had built five years before was still on the wall. So was the frame of varnished beams. A cleaning, a new window, new drapes, and the only reminder of the evil that had existed here would be the lovely frame Joe had built.

I knew he’d agree to remove it.