Others by James Herbert Read Free Book Online Page A

the glass from the other side. And I screamed myself and heard the sound, the only sound in that terrible tenebrous twilight. And I backed away from the room as I screamed, moving fast, my bent spine breaking the frail banister behind me, so that I plunged into the stairwell below, thudding against the sodden carpet, rolling down, over and over, head over hump, until I reached the bottom.
    I wasn’t knocked unconscious, but I was dazed, my one good eye deliberately closed again after observing the hallway revolving around me. The pain of landing had hit me instantly and as I lay there it gathered force rather than subsided.
    I whimpered first, and then I moaned. Oh dear Lord, that fucking hurt.
    I sucked in a large draught of musky air, then resumed moaning, for a short time the shock of the fall outweighing the fright I’d received inside the upstairs room. But quickly the fright claimed the upper hand and I began pushing myself along the hallway towards the front door. I didn’t get far though: the dizziness and gathering pain soon brought me short. Hunched there, on knees and elbows, I drew in more breaths and closed my eye once more.
    The worst of the pain eventually passed, along with the giddiness, and I managed to lift my oversized head a little.
    What the hell was that up there?
    I blinked, blinked again.
    What the hell had I seen in that mirror?
    My panic began to ease as I considered the question. Unfortunately, my heart still thumped too hard and too quickly, my hands and arms continued to tremble against the carpet. Shapes, horrible, disgusting shapes - that’s what I’d seen. It was almost as if the room itself had been alive with monsters that could only be seen as reflections in the broken mirror. A long shudder ran through me, seeming to start with my head and shoulders and coursing right down to the soles of my feet. It couldn’t be. The room had been empty. I would have heard those things before I’d even entered the room if they had truly been there. No, something had triggered my imagination. Maybe my own distorted reflections, multiplied by the fractured glass, were the images that gaped at me across the darkened room. Or maybe it was just another acid flashback, a lingering chemical imbalance among the complex neurons of my brain. Lord knows, it wouldn’t be the first time.
    Not entirely convinced by either solution, I mentally began to explore my limbs and body, wondering if anything had become broken or detached in the fall. I breathed more easily when everything appeared to be intact; well, as intact as it ever could be. I pushed myself back against the wall and rested there awhile.
    I let a minute pass by, then another, knowing what I had to do if only for peace of mind. I had to go back up there and take a second look. No rush though. I had all the time in the world.
    I hesitated at the top of the stairs. I really didn’t want to go inside that room again. There was no percentage, no incentive. No gain. Not really part of the job description. Except I had to; for my own satisfaction.
    I’d suffered flashbacks before, a result of too much Eighties acid, but they’d never been as nightmarish as this. And the last one had been well over a year ago and had involved hundreds of thousands of dancing legs, a black and white Busby Berkeley extravaganza of torso-less limbs and sparkling sequins, a Grand Guignol musical of severed parts danced to a full Latin-rhythm orchestra. Where that peculiarly horrid fantasy was dredged from, I’d no idea - probably from watching too many Thirties musicals on TV while tripped out on A - but it had been patently unreal, easy to cope with, unlike this latest vision - hallucination? No, there had been something all too real about those mutants in the mirror.
    I inspected the broken landing rail before moving on, a delaying tactic, I guess. I must have hit it with some force to smash right through, even though the mounting had been weakened by the last tenant.