On friends and death

“I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death – Percival – others through sheer inability to cross the street.”

Virginia Woolf, The Waves

The painted mirror – “final” version

From the clifftop they could see the island of Ponza: sailboats and cruiseboats waving up from the harbour, and the countless stone arches.

The painted mirror – part 13

Tim’s dreams were not normally so vivid as the images thrown on the wall of his mind while unconcious that day. He imagined himself back in the cave. The walls were stained with blood and a creature half-man, half-lizard stood before him. It´s skin was made up of platelets, fleshy pale white platelets. It had not an inch of hair. It´s arms were tiny, the fingers near invisible. It had the legs of a man and a tongue that flicked out at intervals like it was tasting the air. Between its legs, there were fingers with wedding rings attached and fat hairy thighs on the floor. Every so often it bent down and buried its snout in the meat pile and hissed. It´s teeth snapped and crunched. The scene disgusted Tim. He couldn´t turn away. It was like his body was frozen. The eyes of the beast fixed on him in his panic. It had him in its sights and there was nothing he could do to escape as it came closer and closer. He tried to scream but nothing came out. He could smell the stink of its breath as it came towards him. It´s legs crunched against the rock floor. The eyes of the creature were human-like but they were completely round like a fleshy golf ball, protruding. He could see the carnage behind the creature. He didn´t want to be its snack food. As the jaw opened wide upon his hand, darkness returned. This was one of the things he didn´t tell the nurse when he woke up in the hospital. His right hand was bandaged up so tight he couldn´t untie it. Everyone – the police included – was asking about the whereabouts of Robin but Tim said nothing. It was all a blur. He only calmed down when they left the mirror he had found on his cabinet. No-one showed any interest in it.

“Let him keep if it makes him calm,” his mum had said after his panic attack. “Boys get attached to trash like that. He´ll grow tired of it and throw it away.”

The hospital had him on a drip and these pills that put him out for hours. He didn´t remember anything of these hours – not like the time in the cave. When he was alone he took out the mirror. He spoke to it but nothing happened.There was a pain in his right hand but none of the doctors or the nurses answered his questions. His family wouldn´t talk about it.

Every day his family came to tell him the news. There had been no sign of Robin for three days. The rescue attempt had had to negotiate fallen rocks to reach Tim. Robin was believed to be lost within the labyrinths of smaller caves. His mum told him that experienced miners were working at getting Robin out. There was a wall of rock to be cleared away first. The police were checking the local surroundings in case he had escaped outside. Every time Tim mentioned Robin´s name his mother wept.

The painted mirror – part 12

Tim veered left and right. Damage and fatigue weighted down his body. His head hung low and his arms swung wide, grazing the sides of the walls. He had the devil of a migraine, and his arm was wet with his blood.

He knew where he would find his brother. His brother, the sacrifice. Would Robin be sawing off his finger when he came, covering the walls with his arterial blood or floored already and the bone cruncher feasting on his face? Would he? Tim dared not think of the scene deep in the cliffs where time had stopped. He kept on moving,

When he reached the opening, the light of the torch had long extinguished but to his surprise he had no need of it. His eyes had accustomed. That, and a blue light came out of the chamber of hands, it flooded out of the mirror. His brother was bathed in its soft light. His features were indistinguishable.

Tim came forward and tried to grab the mirror from his brother´s hands. There was a fierce wrestling between the two. The light dazzled  Tim making it difficult to see his brother but he knew it was him for his touch and his grip. There was a loud explosion, and Tim was thrown to the ground. When he looked up the body of his brother was gone. Darkness had returned.

“Tim,” said a voice. “Help.”

He tried to find the source of the voice but he could find nothing.

“Tim,” said the voice of his brother again but this time more urgently.

It was when Tim looked down and saw the panicked face of his brother burning brightly behind the vine painted glass in the mirror that he fainted.

The painted mirror – part 11

“Robin,” Tim repeated.”Robin.”

He didn´t have the energy to reach out. All had lost its firmness. Contours were overlaid to blurring in his vision. A hand multiplied to dozens and sound came distantly. The world under had stolen him and he feared reaching out lest it disappear leaving nothing.

Blood trickling into his mouth from his busted lip brought Tim to. The urge to gag seized him. He clutched his hand to his head which pounded with each movement. There was a soft whisper of pain in his arm too.

“Robin,” said Tim. The fallen body twitched. The limbs, revealed in the little light of the wind-up torch, moved sluggish, silently. The torso began to right itself in the half-shadow.

“Robin,” said Tim. His brother had got to his feet.

“Robin, please,” said Tim.

His brother didn´t turn.

Tim´s anxiety rose as he saw his brother move out of the cave in the direction of the bone cruncher. He didn´t want to speak further for what he saw chilled his blood. His brother carried a mirror that shone liquidly in his hands like a pet serpent and his face bore the grin of an ecstatic devotee. Tim slumped to the floor as he watched the glow lights of Robin´s trainers disappear into the darkness once again along with all trace of normality.

The painted mirror – part 10

It was a clumsy journey clamber running in the dark his breath raking his throat but Tim kept on. He was pushing himself near to dropping. Hands and arms and legs motored him through crevices and cracks as he bellied for low ceilings, and negotiated handholds. Every second he gained distance. He had to escape. He wasn´t conscious of this need. He certainly wouldn´t have known what was behind nor in front of him which was exactly why he collided into his brother at speed. The impact sent both of them sprawling. On opening his eyes, Tim noted a warm liquid trickling down his arm. When he put his finger to it, he discovered it was blood. Stunned, he tried to gauge his surroundings all thoughts of the pursuit gone.

“Robin,” said Tim.

Across from him the body of his brother lay sprawled out like a ragdoll.

The painted mirror – part 9

The return journey was just as difficult. Tim was out of breath and his temperature was high, sweat poured down his scalp. Robin could be around the next corner so he had to stay alert. For the past five minutes though all he had seen was walls. But he couldn´t relax not when every step threatened to snap twist his ankles in an unseen crevice. He wanted to keep on going but the effort was too much. It was on stopping to take a breath that he noticed how dishevelled he was. He stank. The journey had covered his arms and legs in dirt. He was doubtful now his brother would recognise the shadow he had become. Every corridor and turning looked so similar he didn´t know whether he was making his way out of the cliffside or only going deeper and deeper inside. His trainers were stained and damp from when he was sick on them but he couldn´t take them off. He didn´t have a spare pair.

“Robin,” he shouted out. He waited as his voice reverberated around the tunnels but there was nothing. He felt stupid that he had left the mobile phone behind in the hotel room now. There probably wasn´t a signal though. There never was a signal when you needed one. And talking of Murphy´s Law, Tim was certain Robin was probably out of the caves. He was probably laughing about the whole thing. At least Tim hoped he was.

Tim didn´t know what bought his attention to the smashed bone fragments on the floor. The faded greying shards were so pathetic. Still the same sickness came back. It was like when he saw the hand prints. Now there was a fear this time, and a desire to live. The fragments looked like chicken bones that had been crunched up by a hungry beast – mawed and broken up like a mechanical grinder had chewed them up with its metal teeth. What kind of living creature had done this he wouldn´t like to know. He only wanted to be outside and laughing with his brother. He imagined the bone cruncher in the hall of the hands looking for easy pickings, looking for dismembered fingers, bones cast aside, the bodies of the sacrificed. Maybe it killed rats, wild dogs. No, thought Tim, he was being stupid. There was probably a rational explanation for everything.

When he heard the hiss in the distance, he nearly screamed. The whirring of the torch became even louder this time as he tried to raise the light level as he scanned the passage – one of many – but revealed nothing. Then the hissing came again and Tim was certain he felt a darting tongue flicker against the back of his neck,  a wet, cold lashing tongue that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He didn´t look back. He sprinted his way out of there. Rationality be damned.