The Delphi Room (21 page)

Dear Brinkley,

I was with you when you killed your mother. You couldn’t see me or feel me, but I was there. I stepped into my mirror and into your life. I watched you kill her. And then you started to laugh, and I did too—it was infectious. Sometimes murder leads to hiccups. But it wasn’t murder, not really. You did the right thing. I met Clara Bow, the great movie star. I can understand why you loved her. Well, sort of. She’s a spitfire, that one. So time travel must exist. That’s kind of exciting. Too bad I had to come all this way to find that out.

I’m glad I got to touch you, just once. This place has its privileges.

Sincerely, Velvet

Dear Velvet,

You were the last person to touch me. The morning after I killed my mother, I was hit by a car. I am not sure what I would have done with her body—Clara hadn’t given me instructions about that, and I had gone to bed worried about it.

I saw you, I spoke to you, I held you. I stepped into my mirror and there you were. Your friend Davie was not careful with you. Your love for him was the most valuable thing he had. People should always be careful with each other.

I don’t think you have to worry about the Shadowman anymore. I had a bit of a showdown with him, and sent him into retreat. First punch I’ve ever thrown! At first he was a Zorro look-alike, cruel and taunting. Then he became the white-faced ghoul, the devil with long black nails. He came after you and you were screaming, of course you were, and so I punched him. He fell to the floor! When I told him to leave you alone, he disappeared. You looked at me, Velvet, you looked but you did not see me. What I would give to have you look me in the face, and see.

Yours very truly,

Brinkley

Dear Brinkley,

So you beat down the demon that stalked me! Thank you for protecting me. I hope you punched hard! Maybe the Shadowman is gone for good. And I have you to thank.

Davie was never careful about anything, or anyone. But he was loyal to me, and loved me in his way. I used to love it when he’d photograph me. At his best, he’d make me feel like a movie star, at his worst, well, you know . . .

I’m running out of paper. I still have some left, but so far it doesn’t seem to be magically self-replacing and so I’ve realized that I don’t have the freedom to blab. This must also be true of you. Unless you have extra legal pads, which I doubt. If you do, push some pages through. New development: voices. Can you hear them? They hurt my ears after the treacle-thick silence. I’m not sure yet what I’m listening to. A buzzing, a high-pitched beeping, a rustling. Comes in and out, like sounds from a damaged radio.

Sincerely, Velvet

Dear Velvet,

No paper to send you. I also must prune my thoughts. I heard a voice—female. Almost sounded like she was calling my name. Not sure. I shook all over. Fingers keep bleeding because I’ve chewed the nails down to the quick. Something worse: I saw my mother’s face in the mirror. I am curled up in a corner as I write this, afraid to go near the glass. I will stare at the whiteness outside the window while I await your reply. The mirror side of the room feels haunted. I can feel the cold needles in my spine. She always hated me. Why did I bother trying to love her?

Yours very truly,

Brinkley

Dear Brinkley,

Write smaller. You’re using up too much paper. What are we going to do when it’s gone? Tried shouting through the grate again, and the silence nearly killed me. (Bad pun.) Don’t be afraid of your mother. She can’t hurt you. You sent her packing. (Though given what I know of her, I suspect she’s in the basement of this place.) Think of me. I’m holding you in my mind.

Sincerely, Velvet

P.S. My hair, what’s left of it, has become a shock of white-blonde. Acceleration.

Dear Velvet,

My second-to-last remaining clump of blond hair came out in my hands! Growing older, growing younger? Perhaps the transformation of our physical bodies is a safe passage, a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card. (I always did love Monopoly.) What becomes of the finite mind in an infinite place? Oh so many questions—the agonized dialectic of life pales in comparison to the agonized dialectic of death. Are we matter? I feel like matter, I bleed like matter. Does matter matter? (Hell does not dampen a taste for puns.)

My mother’s face is still in the fucking mirror! (Pardon me.)

Yours very truly,

Brinkley

A rag doll with its stuffing knocked out—a pale-faced Raggedy Ann in the mirror. I looked smaller even than the last time I’d looked at my whittled figure. Features shifted, bones softened, custard face. I lifted my dress: smooth, tender, unadorned.

Dear Brinkley,

I loved Monopoly too. From the gangplank of Hell to the Boardwalk of reincarnation? I was a blonde baby. Are we travelling—back into the womb? A womb would beat this place by a mile.

Sincerely, Velvet

Dear Velvet,

I was a blond baby too. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I pray I get a better womb.

Yours very truly,

Brinkley

Dear Brinkley,

I am in my mirror—my hanging self. What a horrible sight.

Velvet

P.S. Heard sirens.

Dear Velvet,

Help me. My mirror is bleeding.

B

Bleeding? His mirror was bleeding? Were we trapped in
The Shining
now?

I curved like a comma on the eyelet spread, Paddington making us into a semi-colon by sitting just above my head. The excoriating sight of my hanging self dangled in my mind. Was this the beginning of Brinkley’s Judgment? Was I for some unknown reason being spared? Never a glutton for optimism, I was sure that couldn’t be it. Face it, Velvet, you’re next.

Rolled onto my back. Helplessness, the precursor to despair, leadened me. The note that I had pushed through the grate in a panic, telling him that my mirror wasn’t bloody, it was all in his head, pinch hard and shake yourself, would be no comfort to him, I knew. I couldn’t help him. He couldn’t help me. We couldn’t help each other.

Seemed like a much longer while had passed than usual and still no note. I stood at the desk flipping through the dwindling pages of my legal pad, doing everything I could to avoid looking at my dishrag hanging body in the mirror. This pause in the letter-flow was alarming, alarm unmitigated by deep breathing. Brinkley reeled around my mind, flung from wall to wall by a pair of bloody claws extending out of his mirror.

Velvet,

My mother is in the mirror, crying blood. Wait—now she is gone. Now the room is reflected as before. I apologize for the shaky, chicken-scratch handwriting. I am curled on the floor in the corner. In the centre of the room, there are three spots of vomit—I could not seem to keep it all in one place.

B

Voices in the room:
How is she?
 . . .  Lift her leg . . . Do you want to do your Jane Fonda today? . . . Grab her leg, let’s get the blood flowing . . .

Blurred, as though travelling through the deep heat of a dark place. Then silence, returning like water reestablishing its mirror over the sand.

V: Did you hear the voices? Difficult to make out, but they sounded female. I’m under the sheets as I write this, heart still pounding. It was like the lid flipped off the silence and a bunch of Mexican hat dancers jumped out. Now my ears hurt, and I’m not sure whether it’s from hearing the timbre of voices after so long or the density of the silence that replaced them. Mother in the mirror?

B: No voices, but a sound like a bowl hitting the floor and rolling. My skin must be getting loose—I have jumped in and out of it so many times. Yes, she is in the mirror, holding up her hands now—they are crying blood also. I want to hang my suit jacket over the glass, but I am afraid to get close to it, afraid she might reach through and grab me, or that some other terrible thing will happen. Would it matter now? What could be worse? But I believe we have asked that question before, and we have been duly and thoroughly answered. And Velvet, I really am frozen with fear—I cannot go near it. I am mostly staying under the bed, receiving your notes and writing you back. But sometimes I crave bright light, and every time I stick my head out from under the bed I am compelled to stare at the glass. I know that you see goodness in me, and for that I am so thankful, but perhaps the mirror is the truth. I am a murderer, after all.