Monsters live in the mirror behind his mother's door.
Such an ordinary door. The wood is dark and reddish. It has a faint gleam during the day, a waxy, muted shine that exposes the grain, so all the lines appear like black gouges, stretching from the top of its frame to the floor. Fingernails dug into the wood once. Light scratches near its bottom tease at a mist of a memory.
His fingers curl inward, the tips pressing into the soft skin of his palm, as if to take refuge there. He recalls the stinging sensation. Above all else, he recalls the sound, the whining, dragging, hissing. There was a crack as the tiny white ends bent and splintered backward.
The sound stuck in his mind, as all sounds tend to do. They collect within him, a catalog, a chorus with parts ranging from the plodding mundane to the instrumental extraordinary. He enjoys this, at this early phase in his life. Most sounds, aside from the fingernails, appeal to him.
Footsteps pound their way up the main staircase. He is huddled at the bottom of the attic steps and rises quickly, meeting his mother on the landing between the two flights.
Her head is still higher than his, though not as high as his earliest recollections would have him believe. She does not realize they are traveling at each other right away, and he nearly collides with her dress as it swishes forward. They are suddenly close. Too close.
One of the unspoken rules has been broken.
"What are you doing?" she snaps, recoiling. "How many times must I tell you to pay attention to what's in front of you? And, by God, don't run in the house!"
It is instinctual to crumple under the explosive volume of her voice. Her fury is always set to the same deafening intensity, and forever at the ready, so that every misstep is attacked like a life-threatening flaw. Merely being in her presence carries with it the tingle of something slightly acidic. There is steam beneath her skin, bubbling out her pores, seeking any excuse to erupt.
He lowers his head.
Her last word pings against the walls, unchallenged, supreme.
Her anger, however, is not afraid to touch him. The excess of it fills the space between them and infiltrates the mask. It bristles his back. It fists his hands. It fills the thin, hollow cavity of his chest with something hot and lively and righteous.
His head snaps up, and he glares at the steps behind her, thinking suddenly of how simple it would be to shove her down.
"Where are you off to this time, Mother?"
"I—well…" Her eyes dart to the side, bewildered. Her hands rake over her clothes, searching for the giveaway that told him she was leaving. The tie of her bonnet catches on her fingers, and she seizes it, relaxing her shoulders.
She tilts her head back slightly, so her chin juts out at him. "I have to fix the mess you've made. Did you honestly believe Monsieur Bardin would not notice his sister's mandolin had gone missing? Did you really, Erik?"
"You said his sister wasn't coming back. He isn't going to play it." He shrugs. "It deserves to be played."
"Monsieur Bardin deserves to go to bed every night without wondering if his belongings will be there in the morning!"
"But the mandolin—"
She exhales, a deep-throated growl of frustration rolling out with the air. "I won't hear another word about it. Do you understand? I won't, I won't!"
She whips around and runs back down the staircase, as though she expects to be chased.
He remains where he is, looking after her. He waits until he does not hear footsteps anymore, and then slowly, quietly makes his way down. He takes one step at a time. He does not want to frighten her. He knows she spends every night locked in her room with the mirror monsters, and that they must chase her, and he does not want to be anything like them.
He lingers on the second step from the bottom. His fingers rub the edge of the banister, pressing into it as though it possesses a string. He watches his own movements for a few beats, only daring to observe her out of the corner of his eye.
His most common view of her is from the back. Her spine is nearly more recognizable to him than her face. He has made a study of her posture. Almost without variation, she stands as straight as a wall when she knows he is there and curls in on herself when she is unaware of his presence.
"Let me come," he says.
"No. You must stay in the house."
The answer comes in a mindless mutter, without even the pretense of consideration. It is always the same—precisely the same—and the words have taken on the feeling of iron bars.
The mandolin is waiting by the door in its case. She lifts the handle and allows it to lean against her body. The wooden box completely disguises its rounded shape. It has sharp corners with diagonal sides, making it much wider on one end than the other. In fact, it resembles the pine boxes that can sometimes be seen at night in the village cemetery, and that is appropriate. The mandolin may as well be stuffed underground.
"I can show Monsieur Bardin my music," he bursts out, pleading. "I can play for him. He can't be angry anymore, once he hears it. He might let me keep it long enough to finish!"
His mother's shoulders quiver, raising and lowering in jerky increments.
When she glances back at him, her eyes are dark and bloodshot and swimming. There are circles formed by the heavy, etched creases beneath them. "He will see you before he hears you, and he will never listen."
"Why not?"
"Keep away from the windows. Don't cause anymore trouble." She opens the door.
He leaps from the second step to the floor. His feet crash down on the boards with a violent smack. "Why not?"
"You know why not!" She faces him fully, and her shouting spews venom throughout the entire room. "Don't think you can play your games with me. I can't stand anymore games. You've looked into the mirror, and I know you know!"
She wrenches the door open the rest of the way and flings herself over the threshold. Once outside, she freezes, one arm extended behind her as her hand keeps hold of the door handle. A gust of wind invades the house. She gasps at the air, as though she has been holding her breath for a very long time.
She pulls the door. It closes softly.
She disappears. The lock clanks into place, not as softly.
He peers out the window out of spite but keeps his focus on the greenery, which is not difficult when the vision of her shrinking away has been fixed to the dark side of his eyelids. He draws back to glower at the furniture, and the ceiling, and every other detail that limits the space around him. Frustration is not at all as satisfying as anger. It is abrasive, and it scrapes and takes pieces of him back to wherever it started, so its roots remain planted in his mind until the matter is completely resolved.
He kicks the bottom step once, twice, as many times as he wishes, then stomps his way to the drawing room. The drawing room is important because it contains the piano. For the past month, it has also been the favored hiding place of his mother's spare keys.
The piano stool feels warmer than his hands. He pulls it out from under the instrument before lifting and carrying it to the china cabinet against the wall. The cabinet sits high on four long legs that are carved to resemble those of a fox, tapering inward with clawed feet digging into the floor. He completed the alteration over a year ago with blunt, unsuitable tools, and he regrets pouncing on the impulse to bring the animals he had only spied from a distance into the house.
Upon closer inspection, the anatomy is not right. The proportions are all wrong.
He climbs onto the stool and stands on top of it. The added height places him eye level with the painted, precious dishes on one of the cabinet shelves. There is glass in front of them, glass in front of him, but it is clear and crowded, not having any room for a thing larger than the cups and bowls inside.
He reaches up. His fingers brush across the top of the cabinet, feeling along the edge first, and then farther and farther back. He begins to visualize other common hiding places—his mother once suffered from the mistaken belief that his disinterest in her cooking would keep him from exploring the pantry—but his hands strike metal before he can decide where to look next.
"There!"
He takes the keys and leaves the stool, just aware enough of the possibility of discovery to shove his accomplice back beneath the piano. There is triumph with anticipation like spurs upon its heels, and he runs without a thought to any rules. His mother's door cannot stop him now. That boundary is powerless.
Her room is dark. It is the place where he learned to fear the dark, but he is not afraid of the quality itself anymore. He has adapted to his room, which is often black since the boards were secured to the windows. His mother only has heavy draperies that are soft by comparison, allowing slivers of light to creep ever so slightly around their sides. Now that the door is open, there is also natural light coming in from the hall.
The mirror is there. He still thinks of it as a new mirror, even though his fists were smaller when the old glass got broken and bloodied. The mirror is there, but he does not step in front of it, and he is wearing the mask. So, he cannot see the monsters, and they cannot see him.
He does not think they can see him.
The mask makes him feel his breathing. He breathes out hard, and the hot, humid air is forced to fill the gap between the organic and artificial skin. It is wet inside. He does not know if he is sweating.
He moves to stand before the mirror, and, though it is only a matter of a few steps, it feels like he is traveling a great distance. He stares ahead and gazes straight at the glass, watching the backwards bedroom materialize around him. It is a flawless reproduction. Of course, the Louis Philippe furniture has never been moved, but it is the details that astound him. The hairbrush that occasionally migrates from dresser to nightstand. The lights that glow, and then are put out. The sheets which are nearly always folded, but never creased in precisely the same lines.
It is a perfect mirror that reflects the world down to the slenderest misplaced pin. It is the same bedroom in the same home, but it does not belong to his mother. Although he can see himself standing in it now, he has no place there. It is teeming with monsters.
The mask has a special power. His mother made it that way. It is his shield, his medieval knight's armor. There can be no monsters so long as the mask is in place.
His fingers tremble as he reaches to undo the ties, vibrating like a warning drone against the back of his head. He knows, though, that if there are no monsters, there will be no answers. He will never understand, and the need to understand has grown stronger and louder than the nightmares that leave him screaming into the night.
He tugs the frayed end of one string. The mask drops into his free hand, the one waiting close by his face. The skin that was hot when it was covered is immediately cold. He goes rigid, and his attention is drawn to the solid frame around the mirror, the safe edges that keep the monsters contained. The first time he attempted this, he was unable to look beyond the edges at all.
That was weeks ago. He peers in.