Hall of Mirrors

"Hall of Mirrors" is a short story first published in the posthumous collection Look at the Birdie in 2009 and reprinted in Complete Stories in 2017.

Plot Summary

Two Indianapolis detectives, Carney and Foltz, arrive at the home and hypnotic therapy clinic of K. Hollomon Weems to question him about the disappearance of several "fairly rich widows" who went to sessions with him, took all the money from their bank accounts, and promptly disappeared. The police assume the bodies are hidden somewhere in the house, a rundown twenty room mansion which has a tower at one corner, housing a ballroom. During his questioning, Weems casually manipulates both detectives with hypnotic suggestions, causing them to feel uncomfortable in their chairs, find the room alternately hot and cold, talk on telephones that aren't really there, and so forth. Weems tells the increasing hypnotized detectives that he was able the get the women and other patients who were unhappy with their lives to step through mirrors, out of this world and into another, where they chose to remain. Confirming that there are no more police outside or on the way, he agrees to show them the mirrors, three floors up in the ballroom. Although the mansion is decaying and run down, Weems convinces the detectives that it's lavishly decorated.

Entering the circular ballroom, they find it empty except for alternating full length mirrors and leaded-glass windows along all the walls. Comparing it to a "railroad roundhouse", Weems says each of the mirrors leads into a different world, changing the person in many ways, including their future. Most of his clients, he says, are primarily suffering from "sick futures" and stay in the new world of their own free will. He helps them pass through for "a flat one hundred dollars a head" and can enter himself and return, although he generally does not do so except for "very special occasions". Foltz challenges Weems about why he stays if everything is so much better on the other side, who replies that it's from a sense of duty. Foltz is incredulous and Weems slowly notices that the two detectives are no longer hypnotized. They reveal that they were assigned to the case because they are amateur hypnotists and that a third detective is waiting outside the room. He enters, gun drawn, but eventually realizes that the two are not really hypnotized. Weems is able to get all three of them to handcuff themselves to a radiator and tells them that when he says the phrase "black magic", they will see him enter a mirror. When he says "white magic", he will appear in every mirror in the room and the detective will shoot the images and then themselves. Saying "black magic", the three are shocked and Weems leaves the ballroom, standing just on the other side of the door. He says "white magic" and they fire their guns through every mirror, including the one hanging on the door that Weems forgot about.

Quotes

"I was born in Romania, sir—where one is taught from birth to expect the police." K. Hollomon Weems

See Also

• "Look at the Birdie", in which Koradubian is implied to have practiced therapy in the same ballroom