Killer Mirror

“I’m a huge fan!”

“I get that a lot.”

Eunice was shivering inside her large fur coat, eyebrow raised, watching Barry drop his pen.

“It’s cold in here,” he said, “I expected something more, you know, glamorous…”

Eunice smiled behind her oversized sunglasses, “Yeah, well, welcome to showbiz.”

The studio for weekly music show ‘Jamboree’ occupied the hollowed-out space of a frosty Victorian church in north London.  1967 was both the best and worst year for ‘Jamboree’ and what happened to The Freeway Girls during the live performance of ‘Killer Mirror’, their latest single, ended the show.

Floor manager Eric was supervising the clear up operation now the police had all but gone.  Sandy Collins, promoter and representative for The Freeway Girls, stood comforting Sue, the fresh-faced presenter whose heavy eye liner had run thick black tyre tracks down her face.  Mary Miller, Eunice’s band mate was sat on a stool, gazing blankly at the clear-up operation.

“I know it’s tough, but could you walk me through what happened, Miss Jackson?”  Barry had been given clear instructions by Sandy to only call her Miss Jackson, anything else and she’d walk.

“What do you want?  Today, yesterday, what?”  

Barry could see Eunice was growing irritable; Sandy had warned him about that too.  One diva in the band was bad enough, but two?  “How about from when you arrived at the studio for the run through?”

Eunice nodded, “Sure.  Yesterday the car collected us and brought us here and that’s when I saw the set.”

“What about Miss Demarco and Miss Miller, didn’t they come in the car with you?”

Eunice raised her sunglasses and fixed Brian with a hard stare, “No.  Sandy travelled with Mary and me, Brandy travelled like she usually does, alone.”

“So, Miss Demarco followed later, that’s helpful.”

“Is it?”  Eunice stubbed the cigarette out and rubbed her hands together, “Hey Sandy,” she called, “Get me a hot coffee, and not that instant stuff they drink over here!”

Sandy jumped like a startled cat and mouthed apologies to Sue, leaving her forlorn in the cold space, shards of glass still scattered across the floor.

“So, you got here?”  Brian prompted.

“Oh yeah, sure, we got here and then eventually she turned up and we saw the set.  It was, I don’t know, freaky you know?”  Eunice looked across at the raised stage where it had been and pointed, “They’d built this weird house made of mirrors, I guess.  Huge sheets of mirror glass for our single, ‘Killer Mirror’.  Pretty subtle huh?”  She smiled joylessly.

Brian was scribbling madly, in awe of a The Freeway Girls singer.  His kids would be impressed.  “So, you arrived early to rehearse, is that right?”

“Uh huh.  Our choreographer, Carol, she checks out the staging and blocks our steps, the best lighting and camera angles you know, so we know where we need to be standing and miming for each part of the song.  Me behind with Mary, Brandy up front.”  Eunice looked tired and turned to see where Sandy was with her coffee.  “When can I get back to the hotel?  There’re people I have to call.”

“Oh, not long.  Just another couple of things.  This set, was it something you’d worked with before?”

“No!  No way!  I don’t know whose idea it was.  It was wild, all these angles and reflections, it was impossible to find your way around.  Carol was tearing her hair out when we went on stage because we kept missing cues as our sight lines were all out.  I’d turn one way and Mary would turn another and we’d start again and then Brandy would step back and it looked like she was stepping forward.  Hopeless.”

“Disorientating.”

“Precisely.”

Brian had walked the place before, surprised at how small it was compared to how Jamboree looked on TV.  The whole studio was tiny, a ground floor area where the kids danced and the cameras roamed between four makeshift stages for the acts, maybe three feet or less off the ground.  He’d been given the set design, a rough sketch by the crew.  “Take me through the last rehearsal before the live appearance.  Had everything come together by then?”

Eunice turned her head and pointed her chin at Mary still sitting quietly in her own world.  “Go ask my buddy Mary about the last rehearsal.  Brandy had gone back to the hotel by then and Carol was standing in.”

#

Brian pulled up a chair and smiled bashfully at Mary.  Demure and pretty she was his favourite member of The Freeway Girls, bubbly and upbeat compared to the aloof Brandy and the tough Eunice.  “I hope you don’t mind answering a few questions?”

Mary shook her head, finding the boyish bashfulness appealing, “No problem.  I hope I can help?”

“At the dress rehearsal, Miss Demarco wasn’t there I understand?”

“Brandy just stands at the front and smiles and shakes about, we’re the ones at the back doing the heavy lifting.  Carol stood in for the final run throughs, listening to the playback and making sure we hit our spots on time.”

“And did you?”

“Eventually.  Me and Eu go way back, we were doing this in the schoolyard and the projects, making up routines and little numbers.  Brandy came later.”  Mary smiled ruefully and looked up into the darkness of the studio ceiling.  “We nailed it, but it was weird, you know?”

Brian had underlined weird as Eunice had used the same word, “Weird how?”

“It was this house of mirrors, not just behind us, but around us, to the side and above.  The set was small, but it went back a little way, and these panes of glass were angled, reflecting light in confusing ways and we kept missing cues, sometimes time seemed to jump forwards and then another time slow right down.  Weird, like I say.  We got it eventually, but it was freaky.”

Brian coughed and looked across at Sandy engaged in a heated conversation with Eunice, “Is there any conflict between the three of you?”

Mary burst out laughing, “Man alive, when isn’t there?  Listen, me and Eunice have always been tight.  I’m the peacemaker honey, I don’t like the rowing and crying and screaming, but Eu and Brandy would go for each other’s throats.  Especially lately.”  

Brian noticed Mary looked uncomfortable, crossing her legs and arms.  He liked to read body language, “Why lately?”

“I shouldn’t say but hey, it’s a bit late now, isn’t it?  Eunice was being cut out, one last promotional tour then you’re history, honey.  Hell, she created the band, she was our original lead singer, then Brandy arrived.  Eunice sucked it up for the sake of the group; she arranged our harmonies, got the voices right when Miss Demarco struggled.  But she and Brandy couldn’t get on and so it was either her or Brandy and you knew how that was going to land.”

“Mary, tonight’s performance, what happened?”

“Let’s go back a step first.  Eu and me got here this afternoon for the final run through.  Her majesty didn’t show so we were kicking our heels waiting for her to arrive and Eu said, come on, let's check this crazy mirror house out.  That nice floor manager, Eric, he said it would be fine just don’t touch anything.  It was mad, you know, it was such a tiny stage, you can see it, but with those mirrors here and there it felt huge, like we were walking from room to room.  Eu was fascinated by it, until she saw what she saw.”

Brian stopped writing and looked at Mary.  Her eyes were distant again.  “What did she see?”

Mary’s eyes snapped back and fixed Brian, “Her exact words were ‘Mary, I looked into another world!’”

#

Nigel Stewart sat looking at six monitors all flickering static at him.  Brian had never seen inside a director’s booth before, and it was as poky and ramshackle as the rest of the Jamboree set up.

            “I suppose you want me to tell you what I think happened?  Despite the whole bloody country watching it live on TV.  That’s it for me, career over!”

            Brian ignored the self-pitying tone, “Mr Stewart, can you recall what went on in the moments before The Freeway Girls started performing?”

            “I’ll tell you what went on, that bloody Brandy Demarco was having a hissy fit about her water not being the right temperature in the dressing room and was threatening to walk out.  My poor ulcer!  As if we weren’t having enough problems with that blasted house of mirrors threatening to topple over onto the kids.”

            “Was it unsafe?”

            “Oh no, it was safe, Eric Cotton is the best floor manager in the business, and he was all over it; it just seemed to have a life of its own.  I walked the floor like I do for the pre-show checks, and I saw Eunice and Mary hanging around the house of mirrors and I was just going to have a little chat, you know, as you do, and next second they’d disappeared.  I got up onto the stage to see where they’d gone, I mean it’s a four-foot-thick stone wall behind number one stage, you can only enter from the wings, but no sign of them.”

            Brian put his pen down.  “Where were they?”

            Nigel swivelled his chair, “Have you heard the old tales of what happens if mirrors face each other?”  Brian shook his head. “Different cultures say different things.  Some believe when mirrors face each other it creates a route, a doorway if you like, into the spiritual world.  Others think it makes an endless corridor for spirits to enter our world.”  Nigel watched Brian’s incredulous face, “You may mock, but there’s more in heaven and earth and so on.  Anyway, they turned up not long after I got off the stage, and that was all I was concerned with, having an act on stage, on time.”

            “So, in your opinion,” Brian was being careful now to pick the right words, given it was the early hours of the morning and everyone was tired and emotional, “what do you think happened to Miss Brandy Demarco of The Freeway Girls, live on national television, when the entire house of mirrors crashed to the ground?”

            Nigel pondered the question for a second before turning back to the silently flickering monitors, “She went somewhere, and I wish I could bloody disappear too.”

#

            The cars collecting Eunice Jackson and Mary Miller left as the sun was rising.  Brian sat in his car, reading and rereading his notes.  Nothing made sense.  Not Mary’s assertion that Eunice Jackson had witnessed something inexplicable, not Nigel Stewart’s belief in some spiritual portal stealing her away.  In the wing mirror he saw a glum Eric Cotton waving off his remaining floor crew, all of whom looked exhausted.  He called after him, “Mister Cotton, could I grab you for a second?”

            Eric rolled his eyes and wandered over, “You’ve been with the ladies and old Nige, haven’t you?”

            “Yes.  And I’ve got some ends that need tying up.”  Brian opened the passenger door, inviting the older man in.

            Eric sat, eyes forward, occasionally looking at something in the rear-view mirror.  “I think we’ve just about brushed up the last of the glass.  Stupid idea to use real glass, but there you go, these so-called stars get what they want in the end.”

            Brian flicked through his notes, “I thought the set was an inhouse design, nothing to do with The Freeway Girls or the record company?”

            “Is that what they told you?  No, I dealt with a designer, some foreign chap he was, very theatrical.  He was very definite when I could understand him, he said this was a bespoke design for The Freeway Girls and he’d been brought in to oversee the installation.  We had some back and forth about using real glass in a place like this, but he got his way.  He and his lads seemed to know what they were doing, had crates brought up from somewhere on trucks and there it was.  A house made of mirrors.  I know my place, and I run a tight ship, you ask anyone, never an incident on my watch. This accident has knocked me, I don’t mind admitting.”

            “Did you notice anything odd about the house?”

            “How do you mean, odd?”

            Brian didn’t expect Eric to buy into any supernatural nonsense, “The director and one of the group said the house was strange.  People came in and out of it.  Two of the girls in the group.”

            Eric was quiet.  His eyes kept being distracted by something indistinct in the reflection of the rear-view mirror.  “I’m not one for superstitions and stories like that, but I’ll tell you this young man, there was a funny atmosphere just before the girls went on stage.  Fear maybe?  Both that Eunice and the one gone missing; skittish, snappy with each other.  I put it down to nerves, but now look, one of them has gone and twenty kids in hospital with cuts and bruises.  This went out live remember, not on tape.  You tell me how a good-looking young woman was standing there, singing and dancing, bold as brass one minute then the next the whole house comes crashing down and she’s disappeared?  You tell me that!”

            Brian went quiet, then asked, “The broken glass, where is it?”

            Eric nodded towards a large yellow skip against the back wall of the studio, “Help yourself sunshine, I’m just waiting for that foreign gentleman to come back and collect it so I can give him a piece of my mind.”

#

            Even three days later news on the radio and TV was full of the Jamboree incident and newspapers couldn’t get enough.  A story had legged it round the world before the truth had pulled its pants on, so said his old Dad.  Brian was waiting for the van to arrive with his delivery, but whilst he did, he put on his favourite record, The Freeway Girls’s 1966 album, ‘Standing in the Shadows’.    

            A horn sounded and he waved the driver back onto his drive and into his workshop where they unloaded box after heavy box. 

            “Nice area round here,” said the driver, “Posters of you, are they?”  The walls of the workshop were papered with the smiling face of The Mysterious Mr Morgan, illusionist and magician.  

            “Previous life,” laughed Barry, “Just a boring old journalist these days.”

            “You don’t believe in magic though, do you?  Not real magic?”  The man felt uncomfortable all of a sudden as Barry’s eyes flashed,

            “Oh, I don’t know, there’s cheap tricks and then there’s magick.”

            “What like, wizards and witches?”

            “Something like that, yes.  Old rituals, secret rites and spells.”

            “It’s all just smoke and mirrors isn’t it though?”

            “They certainly play a part.”  

Seeing the nervous delivery man off with a tip Brian returned to the workshop, waiting for his guest to arrive.  

#

Just after lunch and having spent the best part of the morning unpacking some of the delivery his doorbell rang and he trotted through to greet a tall, elegantly dressed man.  They gave each other a nod and without a word the taller man followed Brian.  In the workshop the man let out a whistle,

“You’ve been busy?” he said in an accent as French as it was American.

Brian smiled, “There’s a lot more to do yet.”  Broken shards of mirror lay stacked in differently sized piles, catching the thin light through the garage window.  “Help me with this won’t you?”

Together the two men emptied and organised box after box of broken glass, silently.  It was nearly 4pm before they realised, they’d worked all afternoon and agreed to call it a day.  Brian saw the man off and before locking his workshop he admired his handiwork.  The glass, all laid together, glittered like a mirror ball, flashing shapes and rainbows throughout an otherwise grimy interior, slices of his own still image from the posters on the wall contrasted with a more fluid shape moving within the polished surfaces.  Brian squatted down before a larger piece and smiled as a figure flitted back and forth as if trying to find an escape.  Fascinated he moved pieces together and the effect was enhanced, he could see more of the shape, more of the frantic movement, like a butterfly trapped at a window.

#

“Cary, hi, it’s Brian.”  Arranging a call to America in 1967 took time, money and planning.  He was extremely pleased with himself.

“Brian, my man, is it safe to talk?”

Brian sat back in his armchair, sipping a rather good single malt, “It’s safe.  I just wanted to let you know it’s all gone well.  Our man from New Orleans was just the ticket, the mirrors worked perfectly.”

“And the studio people?”

“They thought I was just a reporter, getting the facts, seeing what they knew.  Our lady, is she happy with the outcome?”

“Sure is, we’ve got another girl lined up already.  Eunice loved what you did, and Mary will keep her mouth shut if she knows what’s good for her.  Best marketing strategy since Kennedy died and let the Beatles in!”

“You know where I am if you need me again.”  He looked at the evening editions reporting two unexplained deaths linked to the ‘Jamboree curse’ as it was now known, “I’ve taken care of the floor manager and the director, tidying up any loose ends.”

The call ended and Brian went to his workshop.  In the cold light he watched the shattered mirror pieces shimmer with energy, the desperate and terrified face of Brandy appeared here and there in the fractured glass, screaming. 

“It looks to me, Miss Demarco like you’ve totally gone to pieces.”

#