his slowly spinning mind spun faster
Often these enormous father faces wore noble expressions, expressions of fearless determination, of squint-eyed ferocity, but some smiled. One winked. One laughed soundlessly. A few gazed fondly or dreamily not at Fric but at famous women with equally huge heads.
As his mind turned at a steadily slower speed, toward stability, Fric abruptly remembered the man who had come out of the mirror. He sat straight up on the attic floor.
[287] For a moment, his slowly spinning mind spun faster.
The urge to puke overcame him. He successfully resisted it and felt semiheroic.
Fric dared to tip his head back to scan the rafters for the wingless phantom. He expected a glimpse or more of a gray wool suit in flight, black wing-tip shoes skating across the air with an ice-dancer’s grace.
He spied no flying freak, but saw everywhere the guardian fathers in full color, in duochromatic schemes, in black-and-white. They advanced, they receded, they encircled, they loomed.
Paper fathers, all of them.
A daredevil of modest ambition, he got to his feet and stood for a moment as if he were balancing on a high wire.
He listened and heard only the rain. The incessant, besieging, all-dissolving rain.
Too quick for caution, too slow for courage, Fric found his way through the memorabilia maze, seeking the attic stairs. Perhaps inevitably, he came to the serpent-framed mirror.
He intended to give it a wide berth. Yet the silvered glass exerted a dark and powerful attraction.
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