Chapter 9

The answer came, not in her daddy's voice but in the throaty, amorous growl she had heard in her nightmare. It repelled and drew her, like the first fearful sexual awakening.

"I will take you where your uniqueness will shine and glitter like the stones on my fingers and your beauty will glow everlastingly. Where your senses and that marvelous white flesh of yours shall be bathed, lavished with the adoration and the pleasures it deserves. Where you will be appreciated, truly loved, because you will be forever young and perfect, Catharine."

"That's ... that's not real," she whispered to her reflection with the hazy greenish glow beyond it.

"What is real?" the demon answered. "That world out there? That banal, frustrated, dull, juiceless world you inhabit? Men who leer at you and their wives who hate you, a world where beauty such as yours is allowed to fade and age? Listen to me, Catharine ... to me. We'll leave this place. Be here at the mirror this night at one o'clock. That will give you enough time."

"Time? Time for what?" The urgency she felt in her whole body, the yearning for such promises to be true-too strong to deny. If she held back now, she would never know what it meant to be appreciated the way her daddy had promised, the way her body craved, the way the world beyond the mirror understood...

"Time to destroy your husband's project," the voice crooned.

"Time..." she repeated, dreamily, her breath clouding the glass. Then she stopped, and stared beyond her own startled eyes to the dim vision that drew her closer, closer, closer to herself and the terrible promise. "To destroy...? I don't understand," she whispered. "What project? Tell me, what project?"

"You'll know, Catharine. And ... your jewels. You must fling them away."

She almost smiled at the absurd suggestion, but the demon's breath mingled with her own and she felt a rush through her body that culminated in a hot tingling rush of wet to her crotch. The words came with difficulty as she tried to concentrate on what she was saying.

"My jewels ... but why."

"So he won't have them."

"Richard?" Saying her husband's name was almost a blasphemy, as though conventional marriage vows and the dull serenity of her real life had no place here.

The demon was enraged, although his seductive growl did not rise above the level calculated to make her blood race with longing. His body, more clearly distinguishable now, glowed wetly, and his eyes gleamed brighter and more exciting than any jewels, as he said, "He's a cheat and a borel I touch something there, don't I, Catharine? It excites you to hear that said out loud, because you know it is true. There are real pleasures and real sensuous journeys ahead for you ... when you leave him ... when you come with me. There are always conditions in these things ... you understand, you are exceptional. You will do what I ask, won't you?"

"I ... I'm afraid."

"Then you are not exceptional after all, are you?"

The glow began to fade. Frantically, Catharine pressed her body to the mirror's unyielding surface. "Don't leave me here!"

She saw his teeth when he grinned. They were sharp and glittered like the rings he wore. Her own mouth worked against her will, slavering and begging to be satisfied at last, not to be abandoned here to grow old among the hypocrites.

"And one more thing, Catharine. Give Jennifer the key to the attic. Allow her to come and visit me. She's become so beautiful ... exceptionally so. like you, Catharine."

"No!" she sobbed. "No! I won't ... I can't ... no! You are evil ... I won't do those things ... you are evil..."

"We are the same, Catharine, you and I. You will come back to the mirror. You always have. And I have always been here." His laugh was low, ironic, and certain. Certain of her.

Catharine beat against the glass with her fists, and cried desperately, with long rending sobs. Her tear-streaked cheeks rubbed against the mirror, smudging the image on both sides. She no longer saw her own face, and she no longer saw the glowing temptation as the vile laughter faded away under the torrent of her own agonized cries.

"Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!" she wept.

An echo, a thinner, higher voice sounded through her pain, calling, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!"

Catharine gulped and swallowed her sobs away and listened to the childish cry. Was it herself, the younger Catharine, waking in the dark and finding her daddy gone, calling for him to come back to comfort her ... she turned from the mirror to look at her bed.

Her own room had vanished. She felt a rush of vertigo as she looked around at the attic. All the things were piled together, as Richard had made her put her childhood away up here. Her things and her daddy's things, all in a jumble. Where was her pretty white room? What had happened in that room was real, she could still taste her daddy's beloved sweetness in her mouth ... but that was years ago ... her head spun.

The little girl's voice continued to call. "Daddy!" It was Jennifer, downstairs. She was calling to Richard. An icy spasm shivered the length of Catharine's body, from her fine-spun hair to her cold white feet that could hardly support her. She moved weakly away from the mirror-don't look back, Catharinelto the little dormer window where the sun's rays had long since fallen away. She hugged herself tightly, to stop the shivering and to try to keep from falling into the dizziness that whirled the world around her. She looked out of the window just as she heard her daughter's happy call once more.

"Daddy ... Daddy ... I'm so glad you're home!"

Richard had stepped out of the car and was hugging Jennifer's thin shoulders with one arm, swinging his briefcase in his other hand. The little girl wrapped her arms around his waist. Her short dress hiked high on her thighs as she reached up to embrace him. He hugged her tightly, and they turned toward the front door together, casting one monstrously interlocked shadow in the lengthening twilight.

Catharine looked at her watch. Her eyes were tired, and crystal teardrops still clouded her vision. Her wrist shook and she had to stare at the watch for a long moment before she could read it. 5:10. She hadn't heard the grandfather clock strike the hour.

When she glanced back outside the window, she caught Abel quickly looking away. His shoes crunched on the gravel as he walked briskly around to get back into the car. Why had he been staring up at her ... she must look a fright.

Catharine dared a single quick glance in the oval mirror as she passed it on her way to the attic door. She looked flushed, but that always made her even more beautiful. The mirror reflected only herself now, and the blurred spot her tears had left on the glass. It was just an ordinary mirror, after all. Her vile longings and lustful imagination had run away with her. And memories...

If her daddy were alive, she would run to him and ask him what to do. And he would say, "You are perfect, my princess, there is nothing wrong with you, you are not going mad, you are not insane or ill or vile. You need a vacation, Princess, you shall have whatever you want." That's what he would say.

But what did she want, she wondered as she descended the stairs and went quickly down the hall to her bath.

"You have always come back to the mirror," the demon had said.

It was true. The mirror was her only source of pleasure, as close to true fulfillment as she had ever had, since that time, that one time. How she had waited, every night for months and years, for her daddy to come back to her ... but when she had asked him, innocently, to come to her room after that night, he had laughed and told her not now, honey, not yet. Was this what he had meant-was this the time? Was it really her daddy, in some other form, telling her that she could come to him now ... now...

But he had let her marry Richard. On her wedding day, she had cried and pleaded to be allowed to stay with him alone, to send Richard away ... just the two of them now that her mother had gone away. Her daddy had hugged her and kissed her forehead and her cheek, he had stopped her white-gloved hand from reaching desperately to touch the front of his gray-striped pants ... if she could touch him where she most wanted to, she knew he could not help but respond to her ... but he had held her hands, kissed them and made her stop. He had taken her on his lap, in her white wedding dress, and he had sent her away.

"It was wrong for me to love you that way," he had said, rocking her like a baby in his arms. "Now that your mother is gone, do you see I can't trust myself alone in the house with you, Princess. You must have a husband, and I must not touch you again, ever. Richard will make you happy, you'll see. And I'll be here to see that he does."

"No, no, Daddy, please," she had sobbed. Her lace veil came between her face and her daddy's, and she had ripped it off, flinging it to the carpet. She pressed her ripe breasts against him, and took his hand to touch them, but he drew away gently.

"Catharine, don't you see how difficult it is for me..."

Yes, she felt him rising, enormously, in the cleft between her satin-covered cheeks. She burrowed deeper into his lap, opening herself under her wedding dress to him.

Abruptly, he lifted her to her feet and stood beside her, holding her arms firmly to her sides. The study was dark. Richard knocked on the door again, waiting for his bride.

"In a moment, Richard," her daddy called out, never taking his eyes from her pale tear-stained face.

"Go with him," he whispered, "and do all the normal, ordinary things that a beautiful young woman should. I can't keep you to myself forever."

"You don't want me," she wept helplessly. "You don't want me to stay here, with you ... just the two of us. I was glad when Mommy died, I was, I wasl I thought you and I would be happy here, just the two of us..."

"That's why I must send you away, Princess," her daddy sighed. "I couldn't stand it, just the two of us. It's not right, not good for you ... it was wrong, what we did ... you remember..."

"Oh, yes!" she said, happy because he had spoken about it at last. "I remember ... how could it be wrong? No!"

Her daddy started to embrace her, to take her into his huge safe arms, but stopped when there was another impatient knock at the door, and Richard's voice, indistinguishable, called to them.

"Tell him you're coming right away," her daddy whispered, close to her ear. His breath made her tremble. She did as her daddy told her. The knocking stopped.

"Are you still too young to understand, my beautiful girl? Or-God help me-have I ruined your life forever ... no, I can't believe that...." His broad handsome face looked so worried, so sad, that Catharine reached up to touch his cheek.

"No, Daddy, no!"

"Then go with Richard, darling. I want you to be happy. You can be, with him."

Catharine obediently gathered her rumpled wedding gown together and took a step backwards, away from her daddy. She stopped. "I don't understand, Daddy, not really. We love each other more than anybody..."

"You will understand, someday. In the meantime, do as I say, Princess, and make that young man as happy as I would like to be."

She looked through the shadows across the room at his lonely, looming figure. "I'll be back, Daddy. Soon."

"Yes, princess. Daddy will be waiting for you. Now you go on your trip. Go on. Have a good time. Your place is with him now. Don't keep him waiting."

" 'Bye, Daddy."

"Better change your dress before anyone sees you. Don't want to give the common people a chance to gossip."

"Yes, Daddy."

That's what he had wanted-go on your trip, he had said. That's what he would say now. That's what she must do.

But who was it who waited for her upstairs, beyond the mirror with her daddy's things...