by Bryan Davis
“Where have you been?” Kelly asked.
“Just talking with Mrs. Romano. Sorry to keep you waiting.”
“We’ve been having a nice little interview.” Kelly bent toward Francesca and twirled the little girl’s dark locks. “How long have you played violin?”
“Six years.”
“Six years?” Nathan repeated. “Do you remember why you started playing?”
“Why does anybody play?” She looked up at him, her eyes filled with mystery. “Are you a musician?”
“Yes.” He glanced at Kelly then returned his gaze to Francesca. “Yes, I am.”
Her serious aspect deepened. “Then you know why I play.”
Lowering himself to one knee, he looked into her beautiful, innocent brown eyes. “Because your spirit has to sing. Every musician’s heart bears a song from the Creator, and he spends his life trying to duplicate it as an act of worship. His ultimate dream is to play it flawlessly for an audience of one at the great throne in heaven.”
“That’s what my teacher says.” Francesca touched his lips with two fingers. “But there are two songs in your heart, one for God and one for the woman who will be your wife.”
Nathan resisted the urge to look at Kelly again. “My wife?”
“My teacher says if a musician marries another musician, they harmonize their songs into one, but when he marries a nonmusician, he creates a new song for her and teaches it to her heart.”
“I have heard that before from a very wise woman.” He reached for her violin. “May I?”
She laid the violin and bow in his hands, her expression solemn. “Only if your spirit teaches me its song.” As she released her instrument, she blew on his bow hand. Her breath tickled his skin, sending shivers all the way up his arm. She then looked at him with sparkling irises. “My teacher always does that. He says music is the breath of God.”
Nathan’s entire body flushed with warmth. Tears welled in his eyes. As hot prickles covered his skin, he tried to shake off the emotional surge. He couldn’t break down. Not now.
He closed his eyes and raised the violin to his chin, reliving his childhood as he adjusted to the instrument’s smaller size. Then, playing long, gentle strokes, he interpreted the mural on the wall, giving life to the lullaby. The violin sang like a nightingale, whispering a melody of comfort, security, even sadness, and his mind repainted the lovely portrait of his mother playing the same hymn as he lay nuzzled in bed.
Barely opening one eye, he peered at Francesca. Now his mother played the part of the captivated child as she gave her own interpretation, swaying on her toes like an enchanted ballerina, every movement capturing the heart of his spirit’s song.
“You’re very good!”
Mrs. Romano’s voice jerked him back to reality. He lowered the bow and nodded. “Thank you.”
She leaned her cane against the wall and hobbled in. “I guess you really are music students. I tried to call Nikolai to check you two out, but his secretary said he never returned from his quartet’s performance last night.”
“Where did he perform?” Nathan asked.
“At Ganz Hall in Chicago. Maybe he fell ill and stayed an extra day. He has been rather sickly lately.”
Concealing a shudder, Nathan felt his back pocket for the newspaper. Should he tell her about the murder? Could Nikolai have been one of the victims? If only he’d had a chance to get a look in the coffins.
She extended her arm. A camera dangled from her hand by a strap. “It’s a Nikon F2. Do you want me to show you how to use it?”
Nathan recognized the camera immediately — his father’s. As he stared at it, he felt his jaw drop. Could it have been a gift from his mother? He traded glances with Kelly, but her furrowed brow told him she had no more answers than he did.
“It’s really not hard,” Mrs. Romano continued, pointing at the camera body. “All you do is focus and press the button. The flash is electronic.”
“Are you a photographer?” Kelly asked.
“It was my husband’s hobby before he died.” She gestured for them to gather together. “Squeeze in, and I’ll take one of the three of you.”
Keeping the violin and bow pinned under his arm, Nathan set a hand on Francesca’s shoulder as she stood just inches in front of them. When Mrs. Romano raised the camera to her eye, the sound of wood on wood banged from the house’s main entry way.
Nathan jerked his head around.
“That happens a lot when it’s windy,” Mrs. Romano said as her finger reached for the shutter button. “Must be a storm coming.”
Nathan glanced at Kelly. Was she thinking what he was thinking? It wasn’t windy when they arrived.
“I hear footsteps,” she whispered.
He clutched her hand. “We’d better —”
The camera flashed, bright and blinding, far brighter than any normal camera. Kelly strangled Nathan’s fingers. “What’s that?”
A dark human-shaped shadow appeared at the bedroom doorway. A new flash exploded from its hand, and a loud popping noise echoed all around. Mrs. Romano seemed to twist and bend, her body warping like a reflection in a circus mirror. The entire room contorted, becoming a kaleidoscope of colorful swirls.
Seconds later, the swirls spread out again, repainting the room with new details — the wall mirror, Nathan’s desk and poster bed, and the sprawled bodies of their dead twins. As each detail crystallized, the bands of color thinned out. But just before they disappeared, they swept over the two younger corpses, pixelizing every square inch of their bodies until their multihued dots blended into the flow. The swirls, now reenergized, orbited the room twice and flowed into the mirror, creating a splash of color that spread across the surface and slowly faded.
When the movement settled, Nathan rocked back and forth on his feet, dizzied by the chaos. Setting his hand on the wall to keep his balance, he felt a glassy surface — the mirror. He glanced down at his body, still clothed in khaki, and Francesca’s violin still tucked under his arm.
Kelly clutched the front of her safari shirt. “We’re back!”
“What happened to my room?” Francesca asked. “It’s so different!”
Kelly set her hand at the side of her mouth and called, “Daddy!”
“Clara!” Nathan shouted.
Francesca joined in. “Mommy!”
Tony stormed into the room, his eyes bulging. “Kelly! Nathan! But you were — “He staggered backwards. “I mean, I saw you —”
Clara careened around the doorway. She stopped and stared. “You were dead! Your eyes were burned out! How?”
“Who are you?” Francesca asked Clara. “Where’s my mother?”
Clara rushed forward and embraced Nathan. “Thank God you’re alive! We thought you both were dead!”
Nathan embraced her warmly for a moment, then pulled back. He touched the top of Francesca’s head. “This is Francesca Romano.”
Clara gave Nathan a quizzical look but said nothing.
“Romano?” Tony repeated. “My father bought this house from the Romano estate when the old lady got plugged by a burglar back in —”
“Daddy!” Kelly barked. “Hush!”
Clara bent over and reached for Francesca’s hand. “I’m pleased to meet you, young lady.”
A tear trickled down Francesca’s cheek as she took Clara’s hand. “Do you know where my mommy is?”
Clara looked up at Nathan. “Do I?”
Nathan sighed. “I guess I’d better start from the beginning and tell you everything.”
Kelly shuffled close to Nathan and whispered. “Do you really want to tell my dad the truth? He’s bound to make this place a media circus.”
“I have to. He’s already seen too much.”
Nathan pulled out the desk chair for Kelly and gestured toward the bed for the others. “Have a seat. This could take a while.”
7
A VOICE FROM BEYOND
“So,” Nathan concluded as he paced in front of the mi
rror, “we don’t know what happened to Mrs. Romano. We don’t know how we got into that alternate universe or how we got back. We don’t know how several hours could pass there and only a few minutes here, and we don’t know how we took over the clothes of the other Nathan and Kelly or where they went, but Francesca is proof that it all really happened.” He glanced at the little girl. Had he disguised the details of the story enough? Or had she figured out that she was actually his mother in another world and that her own mother seemed to be in great danger?
Seated in the desk chair, Kelly twisted a rubber band between her finger and thumb. “We don’t even know the whole point of it all. Why did that stage show up in the mirror in the first place? And who could’ve been in the coffins?”
With an arm draped over Francesca, Clara drummed her fingers on the bed. “All this alternate universe talk makes me dizzy but if you and Kelly had dead bodies in this dimension, and you’re still alive, maybe there’s hope for your parents.”
“You mean maybe they switched places like we did?” Nathan slowly clenched his fingers together. It was just a theory — too early to get excited. “If only I could figure out how to look for them.”
“Can you use the mirror again?” Francesca asked.
Nathan swiveled toward her. “What do you mean?”
She touched the surface with her finger, creating the image of two Francescas making friendly contact. “Does it just show places in your mind, like in your dream, or does it come up with the places by itself?”
“I’m not sure. I think everything came from my head, but I don’t know how the thoughts got there. I couldn’t have dreamed about the broken violins by accident.” Nathan watched the little girl’s reflection. Her eyes seemed to shine with insight beyond her years, and her presence gave him a sense of peace, as if his real mother were there offering him seeds of wisdom he could use to solve this puzzle. And what a puzzle it was! Time warps, coffins on a dark stage, broken and bloodstained violins. It would take a genius to figure it all out.
He imagined the coffins on the stage again and replayed the other Nathan’s words in his mind. “I crossed the same way as before. I had a dream, it showed up in the mirror, then music, a flash of light, and zap, I’m here.” That had to be a clue, a big clue.
As he scratched his head, Nathan scanned the four sets of eyes staring at him. “Hang on,” he said. “I’m thinking.”
“I know,” Kelly said with a smirk. “I feel the heat rising.”
Nathan gave her a quick wink and returned his gaze to the mirror. So, the image showed up before any music played, and then music allowed the other Nathan to enter. And it worked the same way when he showed up himself. He had the dream, music was playing … but was there a flash of light? Even if there was, the biggest part of the puzzle was still missing. How does the whole process start? Why do the images show up in the mirror in the first place? Could it really paint a picture of what was in his mind? Could he learn how to control what it showed?
He glanced down at Francesca again. Still staring at her reflection, she seemed mesmerized. Her eyes sparkled with light as she murmured, “Something’s happening.”
The image in the glass wrinkled, changing the surface to a jigsaw pattern. As it smoothed over again, the room in the reflection altered. The walls changed to the feminine pastels they had so recently seen. In the mirror, Francesca withdrew a sheet of paper from her trunk and set it on a music stand. Then, lifting her violin and bow, she concentrated on the sheet and played. After a few strokes, she picked up a pencil from the stand and made a mark on the handwritten score. She then lifted her bow again and played on.
“That’s me in the mirror,” Francesca said, pointing. “I’m playing my birdsong piece.”
“Birdsong piece?” Nathan squinted at the music, but it was too far away to read. “Can you hear it?”
She nodded. “Can’t you?”
“I can watch her fingers and imagine it, but I can’t hear anything.”
Tony rose slowly to his feet. “So that crazy museum guy was right after all! This mirror shows your thoughts.”
“Who was thinking about Francesca’s room?” Nathan asked.
“I was.” Francesca picked up her own violin. “I was thinking about going home.”
Nathan glanced between the two Francescas. Was the mirror now reflecting her thoughts? Maybe there was a way to make her wish come true, take her home and check on her mother’s safety. “Can you play the same piece?”
“I don’t have it memorized,” she said, raising her bow, “so I’ll be a step behind.” While watching her twin in the mirror, she played a series of short high notes, making her violin chirp like a songbird. The lovely melody filled the room with the bright sounds of an early spring morning.
Nathan marched to the lamp on his desk, ready to make the bulb flash on and off, but the music suddenly stopped. He swung back to Francesca. “What happened?”
She touched the mirror with a finger. “I heard a door slam and a loud popping sound. Then I hid under my bed, like I was scared of something.”
Nathan eyed his bed’s dust ruffle. What would happen if … No. It couldn’t happen … Could it? … He reached for the lamp’s switch. It was worth a try. With a few twists of his wrist, he turned the lamp on and off three times.
“What are you doing?” Kelly asked.
“An experiment.” He rushed to the bed, dropped to his knees, and looked underneath. Nothing. Nothing but his mother’s violin in its case and a few dust bunnies.
Rising to his feet, he looked back at the mirror. Once again it had reverted to a reflection of his room and everyone in it. Francesca stood next to Kelly who was still seated in the desk chair. Tony sat beside Clara on the bed, both staring at Nathan.
In the mirror, Tony propped his foot against the side of the trunk … the open trunk. “Well, if you ask me —”
“Everyone freeze!” Nathan raised his hand. “Don’t move a muscle!”
“Why?” Kelly asked. “What’s going on?”
Nathan stepped slowly backwards, keeping his eyes straight ahead. “Just look at the mirror. Watch me in the reflection.”
When he backed all the way to the trunk, his heels tapped the wood. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Tony swing his head back toward the trunk. “Don’t look!” Nathan ordered. “It won’t stay open if you do!”
“But it’s not open,” he said. “How can it stay open?”
Kelly growled but kept her gaze locked on the mirror. “Just do what he says, Daddy!”
“Okay! Okay!” Tony crossed his arms and stared at the reflection. “Satisfied?”
“Perfect.” Nathan reached behind him and bent his knees, lowering his hands until they descended into the trunk. This time, he had to stretch farther. If the sheets of music were still there, they would be flat at the bottom.
“Hey!” Tony bellowed, pointing at the mirror. “It’s open!”
Clara laid a palm on Tony’s cheek. “Don’t turn yet! Stay focused!”
Now almost completely squatting, Nathan sensed paper at his fingertips. He searched for the edges and gathered up the sheets before straightening his body. “Okay. It’s safe to look.”
As everyone turned toward him, Tony touched the top of the trunk. He quickly swiveled back to the mirror. The trunk in the reflection was now also closed. “How’d you do that?”
“I wish I knew.” Nathan leafed through the handwritten music compositions, pausing at a fairly complex piece several pages down. He played the notes in his mind through the first few measures. Humming them quietly, he aimed his gaze at Francesca. “This is really pretty. Did you write this, too?”
She pushed aside her dark locks, revealing flushed cheeks. “I wrote all of them, but I never showed them to anyone who knew how to read music.”
Nathan scanned the sheet again, now more analytically. Could the combinations of notes mean something? The letters, the key signature, the arrangement on the staff? What could it be?
Could it all relate to Rosetta or Quattro somehow?
Nathan reached under the bed and pulled out his mother’s violin.
“An impromptu concert?” Clara asked.
“Sort of.” Standing again with bow to string, he smiled at Francesca. “Mind if I play one of your pieces?”
Holding up the thin stack of music, Francesca grinned. “Which one?”
“Choose your favorite.”
She paged through her collection and pulled out a sheet. “Can you read it?” she asked, holding it high enough for him to see. “It’s pretty messy.”
“I think so.” He leaned closer to the page. “I just want to test a theory.”
As he played, he glanced between the music and the mirror, watching for a change, but nothing obvious showed up. The melody, though simple and sweet at the beginning, grew in complexity calling for difficult fingering.
Clara strolled slowly toward the mirror, crossing her arms as she gazed into the room’s reflection. “Everything’s normal so far. The trunk’s still closed.”
Nathan kept his focus on the music. When he neared the end of the page, Francesca held up another, waiting for him to begin playing it before lowering the first sheet. “This is the end,” she said. “I’m still working on it.”
Following the girl’s scribbled notes, Nathan increased his volume from piano to forte and shifted through a series of arpeggios. As he stroked the strings, he tried to concentrate on the notes and, at the same time, on thoughts of his parents. Were they still alive? If so, where were they?
The lamp in the mirror dimmed, and the walls darkened. As he watched the new drama in the mirror, his legs shook. The music was doing its part. Now it was time for a flash of light, but maybe this time it should be something different. He used his foot to point at the desk drawer. Sight reading new, handwritten music was hard enough. Trying to talk at the same time was almost impossible. “Get the camera,” he grunted.
Clara rushed to the desk, pulled out the camera, and draped the strap around her neck. “What should I take a picture of?”