"Let's All Kill Constance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradbury Ray Douglas)

CHAPTER THIRTY

in the dark unlit basement, there were rooms and rooms and rooms, all with mirrors lining their walls, the reflections reflecting and re-reflecting, emptiness facing emptiness, corridors of lifeless sea.

We went into the first, biggest one. Henry circled the flashlight like a lighthouse beam.

"Plenty of ghosts down here."

The light hit and sank in the ocean deeps.

"Not the same as the ghosts upstairs. Spookier. I always wondered about mirrors and that thing called reflection. Another you, right? Four or five feet off, sunk under ice?" Henry reached out to touch the glass. "Someone under there?"

"You, Henry, and me."

"Hot damn. I sure wish I could know that."

We moved on along the cold line of mirrors.

And there they were. More than ghosts. Graffiti on glass. I must have sucked in my breath, for Henry swung his flashlight to my face.

"You see something I don't?"

"My God, yes!"

I reached out to the first cold Window on Time.

My finger came away smudged with a faint trace of ancient lipstick.

"Well?" Henry bent as if to squint at my discovery. "What?"

"Margot Lawrence. R.I.P. October 1923."

"Someone stash her here under glass?"

"Not quite. And over about three feet, another mirror: Juanita Lopez. Summer '24."

"Don't ring no bell."

"Next mirror: Carla Moore. Christmas, 1925."

"Hey," said Henry. "Silent film but a sighted friend spoke her to me one matinee. Carla Moore! She was something!"

I guided the flashlight.

"Eleanor Twelvetrees. April '26," I read.

"Helen Twelvetrees was in The Cat and the Canary?

"This might've been her sister, but so many names were fake, you never know. Lucille LeSueur became Joan Crawford. Lily Chauchoin was reborn as Claudette Colbert. Gladys Smith: Carole Lombard. Gary Grant was Archibald Leach."

"You could run a quiz show." Henry extended his fingers. "What's this?"

"Jennifer Long: '29."

"Didn't she die?"

"Disappeared, about the time Sister Aimee sank in the sea and arose, reborn, on the Hallelujah shore."

"How many more names?"

"As many as" there are mirrors."

Henry tasted one finger. "Yum! It's been a long time but-lipstick. What color?"

"Tangee Orange. Summer Heat Coty. Lanvier Cherry."

"Why do you figure these ladies wrote their names and dates?"

"Because, Henry, it wasn't a lot of ladies. One woman signed the names, all different."

"One woman who wasn't a lady? Hold my cane while I think."

"You don't have a cane, Henry."

"Funny how your hand feels things not there. You want me to guess?"

I nodded even though Henry couldn't see; I knew he'd feel the rush of my bobbing head. I wanted him to say it, needed to hear him speak that name. Henry smiled at the mirrors, and his smile beamed one hundredfold.

"Constance."

His fingers touched the glass.

"The Rattigan," he said.