The wind shakes the house and scrapes its claws across the inside of her skull with a shriek. It mills the nerves beneath her clotted spine. The corner of the mirror flickered, last night. She tries to concentrate on the papers, on the monitor, on the hopeless shout of the radio against the rage of wind, but it shivers her and shatters her thoughts into a thousand ashen shards that whirl away in the blast of the telephone's spine-stabbing skirl.
She jumps, starts, rises, snatches the phone silent.
"What?! Hello!"
"Hey, Mel.... Uhh... did I call at a bad time?"
Her shoulders sag and breath rushes from between un-clenched teeth. "Oh.... Jordan, no. I'm sorry. I'm just-- y'know, I'm having a hard time concentrating today. This wind--."
"Yeah, it was pretty wild last night. Trees in the road and trash cans and stuff all over this morning. Lucky you work at home, eh? But, it's blowing out. Should be nice for the party, tonight. Coming?"
"I- I don't think so...."
"Aww, Melanie, c'mon! It's Hallowe'en. It's Friday. C'mon."
"You don't understand, Jordan. You don't. I have to get some work done."
"One night off, Mel. It's not going to kill you."
"You just think that because I'm a writer and I work at home that I don't really work! You think that just because--!"
"I do not! Mel, you know I don't. That's not fair."
The wind shuffles around the house and knocks on the windows, claws at the panes. Chilly fingers touch her scalp. She turns and turns in place, widdershins, like a witch, wrapping herself in the old phone cord.
"You're right," she whispers. "You're right, that wasn't fair of me. You're always very thoughtful."
She looks up and sees the mirror, bites her lip, twirls a hank of straw-colored hair around one finger. The reflection puts its hand up to its face and shoves eyeglasses up with a flicker of middle finger.
"So, you'll come with me to the party."
She turns away, sun-wise, now, untangling from the cord, turning past the mirror once, twice, three times, sees the reflection turning, turning, widdershins, widdershins.... The wind slaps the walls and the house quivers, cowers with dread.
"I can't. I don't have anything to wear. It is a costume party."
"No one will mind if you don't come in costume."
"Oh, I think they will, considering the invitation says 'costumes required'."
"Lame, excuse. What are they going to do, Mel? Send you home? If it bugs you, just throw on a sheet and say you're Aphrodite in her nightie."
She giggles against her will. "Oh, all right...."
"Great! I'll pick you up in about three hours."
"At eight? But--. I don't know...."
"We'll be a little late, but this way, you can get an extra half-an-hour of work in and the party will be going strong when we get there. None of that standing around the kitchen waiting for the fun to start. C'mon, don't back out, now, Mel. Too late, anyhow: you already said 'yes'."
She stares at the mirror. "I did say 'yes'. I'll be there. I'll come."
"Good. I'll see you at eight."
She hangs up the phone and walks toward the mirror. The wind pounds on the door, shaking the walls until the mirror jumps. The reflection seems to hesitate a moment before it walks to meet her at the frame. She turns her head. It turns its head. The edges of the room waver and ripple in the quivering, quicksilvered glass, the corners spider-webbed with black lines.
She glares at the reflection. It grimaces back. She sticks out her tongue and receives the same in return.
"Stupid piece of glass."
She claps her hands over her ears as the wind shouts. The house throbs like a heart.
She jerks away and hurries back to her desk, keening against the wind. The reflection turns its back.
The papers lie limp, the monitor stares back, smug, defiant. The wind scores diamonds against her thoughts and batters them into sand and slivers of last night's bad dreams. Needle-knives of dream-shred stab the curly river canyons of her mind. She covers her eyes, bows her head and adds another voice to the wind's scream.
She feels blood start in her sweat. Wipes her face and looks down at fingers slightly slick, pale, trembling.
A blast of wind bites through the power cable. Light like television dances past the flailing trees from the street outside and paints the mirror sterling. A blade of reflection slices darkness from her skin. She rises and walks. The floor resonates the bass growl of the wind. The mirror looks back, empty.
She hesitates. The mirror-room is cold in gray-green light. The chairs loom like the dancing trees and cast shadows metallic-black on the green-silver floor. She takes another step. Two. Her reflection peers around the edge of the frame.
She stops before the mirror and smiles at the reflection. It bares its teeth. She frowns.
The reflection hesitates before it turns its mouth down, thrusting out its lower lip. She turns her head, then quickly turns it back, seeing the momentary hitch as the reflection lags behind. She laughs and the reflection mouths its wild, soundless laugh back.
"I caught you! You thought I couldn't, but I did!"
The reflection glares, sullen.
She jabs a finger at the reflection. "You think you can keep on playing these games, don't you? Hiding, making faces, lagging behind. It doesn't matter to me; you can't stop me doing what I want. I said I'll go."
The reflection shakes its head, sneers and mouths the words it has no voice to speak: Oh, no, you won't. Coward.
She clutches at the frame, shakes it as the wind shakes the house. "Oh, yes I will!
The wind drops a pebble. Rings swirl outward. The reflection curls its hands around the frame, white fingers over old, brown wood.
"I said 'yes'!" she yells, racking the old silver mirror against the wall. "I'll be there!"
The mirror bulges toward her, writhes like water filled with snakes. Silvery-white hands reach out from the surface.
"I'll be there," echoes another voice, coming out-of-synch from another mouth.
The hands close on her arms and pull.
"I'll come."
....
The Shadow drifts back on the stoop. She steps out, pulls the door closed behind her.
"Whoa, Mel! You look great!" Jordan grins, ogling.
She gives a sly smile, sliding her purse-strap high on her black leather shoulder. "I like it."
He bows and waves her toward the car at the curb, then follows her down the walk. Streetlight runs over her pale hair and ripples down the glossy leather jacket, dripping lines of scintillation along her black-stockinged legs. Every clack of her heels shortens his breath. His suit and cape squeeze tight and hot as rubber.
A breeze fingers his fedora. He shoves it tighter on his head, bending to open the passenger door, and keeps his blazing face turned away. The streetlight pops and flickers out. She slithers into the seat in darkness, under the smell of ozone and a whiff of must.
Words die in his throat as he drives. Headlights cast zig-zags of silver, blue or green up her chest to glitter in her uncovered eyes. She sits still, mouth curled like a cat's, throughout the trip.
The shriek of the doorbell brings their hostess, trailing gauzy, black tendrils, rubber snakes and little more. Surprise and disapproval vie on her face.
"You're supposed to come in costume, Melanie."
Melanie's cat-grin stretches to a scalpel-gleam. "I am in costume: I'm wearing my other self."
Medusa blinks. "Well. Black leather.... It's certainly not your usual, mousey get-up. I guess I'll let it pass."
She steps back. The guests glide across the threshold and a cold whisper finds her ear. "Far be it from you to miss a pass."
She gasps, turns. They melt into the red-lit crowd, surging in the living room.
"That was mean, Mel," Jordan whispers.
A sheet-steel chuckle as she replies, "Yes, it was."
He turns, but she slides away in the crush. A bloody glimmer of red light on pale hair is all he sees of her.
Some compass instinct draws him near her, again and again. Snippets of shark-toothed conversation and honed-steel laughter slash him to the bone. He seeks a drink to dull the edge, retreats to a bench outside, too cut and numb to feel the bite of Autumn.
Plate glass, silvered here and there with shafts of moonlight, shuts in the sound. He cannot spot her, cannot hear the foil-lined voice. Guilty relief sucks in alcohol fumes and breathes confusion.
"Who knows what Evil lurks in the hearts of Men?" chimes a soft voice near his shoulder. "The Shadow knows...." A laugh like jasmine petals falling in rain.
He sinks his head between his hands. "Yeah. But he doesn't know a damned thing about what lurks in the hearts of women."
"No?" A black velvet vampire slinks to the seat beside him and sits down. Cigarette smoke crooks upward. "What about your own heart, then?"
He shakes his head. "Just blood."
The vampire laughs again. "You're a bad liar, Mr. Cranston."
Frowning, he stares at her. "Do I know you? No, I can't, because my name's not Cran--."
"Lamont Cranston. Of course it is. You are The Shadow, therefore, you are also Lamont Cranston, for now. Isn't the point of a costume: to wear some face other than your own? To wear another skin?"
"I don't know. I'm wearing a costume, but I think I'm still just me, in here."
"What about her?" The vampire gestures with her cigarette. The ember leaves arcane cursive in the air. "She's cut quite a swathe. Is she wearing a costume?"
Jordan looks toward the window. Mel stands at the focus of a red arc of leering faces. The light seems to clot and intensify around her like coagulating blood. She laughs, throwing back her head until her shirt strains across her breasts. His head swims.
Smoke draws swatches of opacity, moving slowly, leaving a glimmer on the glass as it passes, then dissipates.
"She is so cruel to them, but they are eating out of her hand."
"She's not like that."
Laughter as the cigarette bleeds smoke in heavy, rising curtains. The odor of the smoke, its roiling crawl, discompose him. Shadows and shapes dance across the glass, lending every figure a ghost, superimposed.
"Maybe that's the best disguise of all: to change what's inside rather than what's outside."
Mel plucks at her collar, then shrugs off her jacket. The smoke streams over her, breaking in two. The black leather sleeves slide off her arms like the skin of a snake. The two smoke phantoms hover on either side. Three blazing red lines score the length of her forearms.
He feels the woman beside him lean forward. "Is she a suicide?"
"No! She's perfectly fine, now!"
The shadow Mels writhe. One bleeds from slashed wrists; the other wields the knife, which glitters mirror-bright. Bright as the glimmer in the eyes which look out from beyond the glass.
The jasmine voice beside him whispers. "On All Hallows Eve, the dead shall walk and wish that they could live again. Unwary souls may find themselves ensnared by phantoms, ghosts and demons...."
Mel watches him as the phantoms dance, smiling her cat-smile. Her scarred phantom falls while the other laughs. She laughs. The glass shakes as by some unknown wind, shudders the sound into the air around him, shakes him to the core of memory.
"No!"
He screams and flings the tumbler clutched in his hand straight for that smiling demon-visage. The heavy crystal smashes through the glass, exploding sun-rays and sparkling shards into the room. Guests shout, duck, run in confusion and pain, squealing like pigs.
On a sigh, the smoke drifts away. A cataract of glass falls from the window frame.
He bolts away from the empty bench, shoves through the shivering remains of the window. A thousand shreds of glass, a million, pool around Mel as she lies on the floor, a bright blotch on her brow from the tumbler. No blood. Her arms are smooth but for the thin, white lines, so small, now, you can barely see them. Only one tiny sliver of glass, dark, rimed with blood, pierces into her wrist. He yanks and throws it aside. Flashes of quicksilver and black spider-lines, then it vanishes in the drifts of shattered window.
He kneels and cradles her to his chest. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry...."
She mewls and reaches for him, leaving a thread of blood across his hand.
Apologies and recompense. The long, silent drive home. He carries her across the threshold like a bride, though she protests. A spill of dark glass crunches under foot.
"What happened to the mirror?"
"I don't know. I guess the wind broke it. It's all right; I should have gotten rid of it long ago. The reflection was always bad."
He puts her to bed and sweeps up the dark, quicksilvered glass, spider-webbed with small, black lines. He gathers every one, every tiny shard. He smiles and laughs into the furious face which glares back from every one and dumps them in the trash outside.
Inside, the clock strikes midnight. Smoke rises from the bin and fades away on a sigh of unknown wind.
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