"Mirror" - читать интересную книгу автора (Masterton Graham)

'He looked like .. .' and he tried to explain, but he couldn't, even with mime. 'He looked like . . .' and then he suddenly rushed through to the bedroom and pointed to the poster of Boofuls pinned to the wall.
'He looked like that?' Martin asked him, with a deeper feeling of dread.
'He's a real boy,' Emilio repeated. 'He's a real boy!'
Martin laid his hands on Emilio's shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. 'Emilio, he was a real boy, but he's been dead for nearly fifty years.'
Emilio frowned.
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'I don't know what you saw in that mirror,' Martin told him, 'but it wasn't a real boy. It was just your imagination. Do you understand what I mean? It was just like ... I don't know, your mind was playing a trick on you.' 'I saw him,' Emilio whispered. 'I talked to him.' Martin couldn't think what else to say. He stood up and rubbed his hands on the legs of his pants, the way pitchers do. 'I don't know, Emilio, man. It sounds pretty screwy to me.'
At that moment there was a cautious knock at the apartment door, and Emilio's grandmother came in. She was carrying a glass oven dish with a checkered cloth draped over the top of it.
Martin had always liked Mrs Capelli. She was the grandmother that everybody should have had: cheerful, philosophical, always baking. She had white hair braided into elaborate plaits and a face as plain and honest as a breadboard. She wore black; she always wore black. She was mourning for her dead sister. Before that, she had been mourning for her dead brother. When she and Mr Capelli went out shopping in their long black Lincoln together, they looked as if they were going to a funeral.
'I brought you lasagne,' she said.
Martin accepted the dish with a nod of his head. 'I'm trying to diet. But thanks.'
'Well, you can share it with the boy.' Mrs Capelli glanced around the apartment as if she expected to see someone else.
'The boy?' asked Martin.
'Emilio told me you had a boy staying here. He was playing with him all morning. He's your nephew you spoke to me about?'
Martin exchanged an uncomfortable look with Emilio. If he said that there was no boy, then Emilio would get a hard time for lying. On the other hand —
But, no. He needed Emilio's confidence right now. If there was something odd in the mirror, if there was some kind of manifestation, then so far young Emilio was the only person who had seen it. Emilio might be the only contact with it, like a medium. After all, he was a boy and Boofuls had been a boy.
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Maybe there was some kind of left-over vibe in the mirror that Emilio was tuning in to. Or something.
He lifted up the cloth that covered the lasagne and inhaled the aroma of fresh tomatoes and thyme and fresh-grated Parmesan cheese. 'Petey will probably eat all of this on his own,' he remarked as casually as he could. 'Petey's a real pasta maven.'
He saw Emilio's eyes widen; as if the Hershey chocolate of his irises had melted into larger pools. But he winked at Emilio behind the upraised cloth, and he could see that Emilio understood.
'He's here now?' asked Mrs Capelli, beaming. 'I love boys! Always rough-and-tumble.'
'Well, he - er — he's running an errand for me - down at the supermarket.'
'You send a little boy all on his own to the supermarket? Ralph's, you mean?'
'Oh, no, no, just to Hughes, on the corner.'
'Still,' said Mrs Capelli disapprovingly. 'That's a bad road to cross, Highland Avenue.'
'Oh, he's okay, he walks to school in New York City, crosses Fifty-seventh Street every morning, hasn't been squished yet.'
Mrs Capelli's forehead furrowed. 'I thought you said he lived in Indianapolis.'
'Sure, yes, Indianapolis! But that was a couple of years ago. Now he lives in New York.'
Slowly, Mrs Capelli turned to leave, her eyes still restlessly looking around the apartment as if she expected 'Petey' to come popping out from behind a chair. Martin knew that she kept a constant watch on the landing from her chair in the parlor downstairs, and since she hadn't seen Petey go out, she was obviously suspicious that Martin was keeping him hidden. Maybe he had measles, this Petey, and Martin didn't want her to know, because Emilio may catch them.
'You do me a favor,' she said at last as she went out through the door. 'You bring your Petey down to see me when he gets back. I give him chocolate cake.'
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'Sure thing, Mrs Capelli,' Martin told her, and opened the door for her. She eased herself down the stairs, one stair at a time, holding on to the banister. When she reached the door of her apartment, Martin gave her a little finger-wave, and said, 'Don't you worry, I'll bring him down. He'll feed your canary for you. If there's anything he likes better than pasta, it's chocolate cake.'
Mrs Capelli paused, and then nodded, and then disappeared into her apartment, leaving the door slightly ajar.
Martin came back to Emilio and stood in front of him with his arms folded.
'You believe me,' said Emilio. 'You believe there's a boy.' 'Did I say that?' 'But you said "Petey".'
'Emilio, there is no boy. I said that just to get you out of trouble. What do you think your grandmother would have said if I had totally denied it? She would have thought you were some kind of juvenile fruitcake. She would have had you locked up, or worse.'
Emilio looked bewildered. 'There is a boy,' he insisted. 'Come and see him.'
'All right,' said Martin, 'let's take a look at him; even if we can't shake him by the hand.'
Emilio ran into the sitting room and stood right in front of the mirror, impatient to prove that he was right. Martin followed him more slowly, checking the details of the real room against the reflected room. Two realities, side by side, but which one was real?
He checked everything carefully, but there were no obvious discrepancies. The screenplay of Eoofuh! lay on his desk at corresponding angles in each room; one of his shoes lay tilted over, under the chair. The Venetian blinds shivered in the sunlight.
Emilio pressed the palms of his hands against the glass. 'Boy!' he called loudly. 'Boy, are you there? Come out and play, boy! Come say hello to Martin!'
Martin, in spite of himself, found his attention fixed on the doorway in the mirror. It didn't move; not even a fraction; and no boy appeared.
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'Boy!' Emilio demanded. 'Come out and play!' They watched and waited. Nothing happened. No blue and white ball, no laughter, no boy. Martin was seriously beginning to believe that this was all a hallucination.
'Maybe he doesn't feel like playing anymore,' Martin suggested.
'He does, too!' Emilio protested. 'He said he always wants to play. The trouble is, they make him work, even when he's tired, and they always make him wear clothes he doesn't like, and he has to sing when he doesn't want to and dance when he doesn't want to.'
'Did he tell you what his name was?' asked Martin.
Emilio said nothing.
'Emilio, listen to me, this is important, did he tell you what his name was? He didn't call himself Boofuls, did he? Or Walter maybe? Or just Walt?'
Emilio shook his head.