Beyond the Hall of Mirrors

    The exit left the Mirror Hall, but not to the outside. Hoell found himself in a chamber of library quiet buoyed by faint opera, too large to be a trailer, but certainly behind-the-scenes. Weak light crowded with furniture, benches, things he couldn’t make out, blossoming dancing shadows over the tent walls, scarcely illuminating, mystifying. He moved cautiously, quietly. He thought he heard deep breathing, someone sleeping, softly on the edge of bel canto. Accoutrements of show-business loomed from the darkness, ornate canes, silk toppers, chains and feathers, trunks draped in mythology. The private quarters of magic.
   The soprano scratched, needle stuck, then freed itself with a lurch. Hoell heard a voice, speaking from the darkness. Soft and scratchy as the needle, surreal. “How will it end?”
   Hoell froze. Was it imagination? He couldn’t see anyone. But it spoke again, repeating itself. “How will it end?”
   Still no one he could see, but had to be aware of him. “Excuse me?”
   “Everything has a beginning. And everything has a end. How will it end?”
   Hoell slowly moved toward the music, not sure what to expect. Whatever he had in mind, it wasn’t what he saw. On a table, just across from a wobbly phonograph, was a glass dome containing a human head, hair and beard white with an expression of doubt and apprehension. The head swiveled, eyes looked directly at him. “I sought to enjoy the folly of man’s short pleasures of earth. What is it you seek?”
   Hoell held the gaze evenly, somehow unsurprised the macabre thing spoke. “I’ve come to return something. But I don’t know who it belongs to.” He wasn’t sure why, but he told the head the truth. “Whitechapel wants me to take it to him, but he just wants to save himself. It belongs to someone else.”
   “You seek Him.” Eyes tossed lightly to the ceiling. “He who constructed this Babylon. He who holds the keys.”
   “I don’t know what I’m after,” Hoell admitted.
   “You want more than your life is now,” the head said sorrowfully. “You want to touch the promise before the world moved in around you. You want what can be found at the Crossroads. What only He can give you.”
   Hoell let the words assemble in his mind.“Then it is true. This . . . . carnival is run by The Jew?”
   The bushy eyebrows closed sadly. “It is true he has power. It is not of his own making, but he possess it nonetheless. And I am too old to envy him any longer. I had my time, and squandered it.”
   “Who are you?”
   The head sighed. “I have known many names, worn the mantle of many civilizations since he first cursed me. Cartaphilus. Matathias. Isaac Laquedem. Newton. Van Houten. Ahasver. I have none, now. It has been my curse to pay for my pride, my inhumanity, for eternity. Do not squander yours. The winds are blowing again. Where will you let them take you?”
   Hoell took in the room again. His fingers reflexively twisted the bullet in his pocket. “I don’t know. To an ending, I suppose. I’ll find out.”
   The head closed its eyes, slipping into a blissful expression, like tasting the most perfect dream one could dream. “Only your life can speak your fate. All man‘s dreams and ambitions are meaningless. All that matters is, how will it end? How’s it going to end? Be a friend, and wind the phonograph.”