The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen - Delia Sherman [71]
“One, two, three,” Fortran counted.
“Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary.”We chanted it three times, and then kept on chanting, not keeping count because you forget to count when you’re staring at a mirror as hard as you can, hoping and dreading to see something appear.
The chant was interrupted by a wail that would have made a banshee wet its pants. I wanted to put my hands over my ears, but that would break the circle.
I gritted my teeth and hung on.
The wail swelled. A pale mist appeared above the mirror, a sickly glow that grew and shifted—now bruise-green, now rot-yellow, now the scarlet of fresh blood. Louder and louder grew the wailing, then cut off abruptly with a deep, painful gurgle that made me think of slit throats.
Bloody Mary floated above the Mermaid’s mirror, swept our pathetic circle with mad, red-rimmed eyes, opened her terrible mouth, and cackled like a cageful of hyenas.
We couldn’t agree, later, on what she’d looked like. Espresso saw a girl with blood-stiff black hair and a gashed throat. Stonewall saw a blood-drenched woman holding a horribly smeared knife. Mukuti saw a child veiled with blood. Fortran saw a woman with knife-tipped fingers and more teeth than any mouth should hold. She was bloody, too.
Tiffany and Bergdorf wouldn’t tell us what they saw.
The Bloody Mary I saw reminded me of the Bowery. She wore layers of filthy, ragged clothes, and her wild white hair escaped from a shapeless man’s cap, jammed down over a face that sank away from her knife-blade nose and the blood-smeared cliffs of her cheekbones.
Near me, someone whimpered. My ears were full of hoarse, shallow panting. When I realized it was mine, I dragged a lungful of air into my chest. It didn’t make me less terrified, but the effort made me think of something besides how much those long, iron nails would hurt when she dug them into my face.
Then Bloody Mary raised her hard, gray claws and lashed out at Bergdorf.
Bergdorf screamed, ducked, and kept on screaming, even when the nails raked through the air a good two inches from her face. Fortran whooped, which was a mistake. Bloody Mary came after him next, with the same non-bloody results. By the time she got to me, I was pretty sure she couldn’t touch me. I still jerked back and maybe even screamed, just a little. Her nails were extremely thick and pointy. I thought I could see the dried blood on them.
And then she was going for Stonewall and I was wishing I could wipe my sweaty hands.
Airboy laced his fingers in mine so our hands wouldn’t slip. I did the same with Espresso.
The wailing rose to a scream of frustration. Bloody Mary began to hurl herself randomly against the invisible barrier. At one point, her face was an inch from mine, her bottomless eyes staring, her thin lips stretching painfully away from her broken, yellowed teeth. Her breath stank of rotting meat.
I coughed and gagged and held on.
She spun, rags trailing, matted hair flying, to scrabble at the air in front of Tiffany.
Maybe if Stonewall and Bergdorf had been expecting it, they might have held her, but I doubt it. One moment, our circle was complete. The next, Tiffany had shaken herself free, snatched a large and glittering knife from her coat, and was attacking Bloody Mary with it.
I watched, terrified, as they struggled knife against claw, fury against fury, both of them shrieking so loud I was sure the whole school would come running. Mary’s shrieks took on a triumphant note. Tiffany staggered.
And what did the big hero and champion of Central Park do?
I could have grabbed a candle and set fire to Mary’s rags or kicked the Mermaid’s mirror under the radiator or something, but I didn’t. I just stood there screaming something lame like “No, no, no!” while Stonewall and Fortran knocked the knife out of Tiffany’s hand, grabbed her wrists, and dragged her back into the circle, struggling and swearing.
I sobbed in a breath