The Face

situation.
        Sitting in his desk chair with a can of Coke, he considered the elements of the riddle.
        The small jar containing twenty-two dead ladybugs. Hippodamia convergens, of the family Coccinellidae.
        Another, larger jar into which he had transferred the ten dead snails. An uglier sight by the day.
        A pickle-relish jar holding nine foreskins in formaldehyde. The tenth had been destroyed by the lab in the process of analysis.
        The closed drapes muffled the snap of rain on glass, the threat of wind enraged.
        Beetles, snails, foreskins…
        For some reason, Ethan’s attention drifted to the phone, though it hadn’t rung. No indicator light burned on Line 24 or on any of the first twenty-three.
        He tipped the Coke can, took a swallow.
        Beetles, snails, foreskins…

         Ooodelee-ooodelee-oo.
        Maybe Mr. Truman had slipped and fallen and hit his head, and maybe he lay unconscious, oblivious of the ringing. Or maybe he had been carried off into a land beyond a mirror. Or maybe he had just forgotten to modify the system to receive Fric’s private calls.
        The caller would not give up. After twenty-one repetitions of the stupid child-pleasing tones, Fric decided that if he didn’t pick up the phone, he would have to listen to it ringing all night.
        The slight tremor in his voice dismayed him, but he persevered:
        [305] “Vinnie’s Soda Parlor and Vomitorium, home of the nine-pound ice-cream sundae, where you splurge and then purge.”
        “Hello, Aelfric,” said Mysterious Caller.
        “I can’t make up my mind whether you’re a pervert or a friend like you say. I’m leaning toward pervert.”
        “You’re leaning wrong. Look around you for the truth, Aelfric.”
        “Look around me at what?”
        “At what’s there with you in the library.”
        “I’m in the kitchen.”
        “By now you ought to realize that you can’t lie to me.”
        “My deep and secret hiding place is going to be one of the bigger ovens. I’ll crawl inside and pull the door shut behind me.”
        “You better baste yourself in butter, because Moloch will just turn on the gas.”
        “Moloch has already been here,” Fric said.
        “That wasn’t Moloch. That was me.”
        Receiving this revelation, Fric almost slammed down the phone.
        Mysterious Caller said, “I paid you a visit because I wanted you to understand, Aelfric, that you really are at risk, and that time really is running out. If I’d been Moloch, you’d be toast.”
        “You came out of a mirror,” said Fric, his curiosity and sense of wonder for the moment outweighing his fear.
        “And I went back into one.”
        “How can you come out of a mirror?”
        “For the answer, look around you, son.”
        Fric surveyed the library.
        “What do you see?” asked Mysterious Caller.
        “Books.”
        “Oh? You have a lot of books there in the kitchen?”
        “I’m in the library.”
        “Ah, truth. There’s hope that you’ll avoid at least some misery, after all. What else do you see besides books?”
        “A writing desk. Chairs. A sofa.”
        [306] “Keep looking.”
        “A Christmas tree.”
        “There you go.”
        “There I go where?” asked Fric.
        “What dingles and what dangles?”
        “Huh?”
        “And is spelled almost like angles .”
        “Angels,” Fric said, surveying the radiant white flock that gathered with trumpets and harps upon the tree.
        “I travel by mirrors, by mist, by smoke, by doorways in water, by stairways made of shadows, on roads of moonlight, by wish and hope and simple expectation. I’ve given up my car.”
        Amazed, Fric clenched the phone so hard that his hand ached, as if he might squeeze a few more revealing words from the mirror man.
        Mysterious Caller met silence with silence, waited.
        Of all the kinds of weirdness Fric had been expecting, this had not been on the list.
        Finally, with a tremor of a different quality in his voice, he said, “Are you telling me you’re an angel?”
        “Do you believe I could be?”
        “My… guardian angel?”
        Instead of answering directly, the mirror man said, “Believing is important in all this, Aelfric. In many ways, the world is what we make it, and our future is ours to shape.”
        “My father