Half Title
Title
The Egyptian Mirror
Michael Bedard
Copyright
First published in Canada and the United States in 2021
Text copyright © 2021 Michael Bedard
This edition copyright © 2021 Pajama Press Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free 1.800.893.5777.
www.pajamapress.ca [email protected]
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for its publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF) for our publishing activities.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Title: The Egyptian mirror / Michael Bedard.
Names: Bedard, Michael, 1949- author.
Identifiers: Canadiana 2019021127X | ISBN 9781772781106 (softcover) | ISBN 9781772782080 (EPUB)
Classification: LCC PS8553.E298 E49 2020 | DDC jC813/.54—dc23
Publisher Cataloging-in-Publication Data (U.S.)
Names: Bedard, Michael, 1949-, author.
Title: The Egyptian Mirror / by Michael Bedard.
Description: Toronto, Ontario Canada : Pajama Press, 2020. | Summary: “Thirteen-year-old Simon and his friend Abbey become embroiled in mysterious and fantastical events surrounding the ancient Egyptian mirror of Simon’s elderly neighbor, Mr. Hawkins. When the old man dies, a suspicious couple claiming to be his relatives moves in. Simon, who has been plagued with a strange illness since first looking into the mirror, retrieves it from Mr. Hawkins’ hiding place and seeks the help of a museum curator to unravel a dark spell tied to its original owner and to Mr. Hawkins’ so-called niece” -- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: ISBN 978-1-77278-110-6 (paperback) | ISBN 978-1-77278-208-0 (EPUB)
Subjects: LCSH: Magic – Juvenile fiction. | Amulets, Egyptian – Juvenile fiction. | Detective and mystery fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Legends, Myths, Fables / General. | JUVENILE FICTION / Paranormal, Occult & Supernatural.
Classification: LCC PZ7.B464Gir |DDC [F] – dc23
Cover design—Rebecca Bender
Text design—Lorena Gonzalez Guillen
Pajama Press Inc.
469 Richmond St. E Toronto, ON M5A 1R1
Distributed in Canada by UTP Distribution
5201 Dufferin Street Toronto, Ontario Canada, M3H 5T8
Distributed in the U.S. by Ingram Publisher Services
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Dedication
For Ann
I felt my life with both my hands
To see if it was there —
I held my spirit to the Glass,
To prove it possibler —
Emily Dickinson
Part i
Taking Dinner to Mr. Hawkins
The ancients believed that all people were born double…
–Randall Hawkins, Soul Catchers
1
Not everyone is the same. People are different. Either they start out that way, or they are shaped by the things that happen to them. Not everything happens now. Some things happened long ago, and cast their shadows down through time. Others are contained within the short span of a life, cupped like sand in the palms of one’s hands.
When Simon looked back on the year he turned thirteen, it was a memory shaped by the mysterious illness that struck him that year—and all the mysteries that seemed to follow from it, and somehow be part of it. So that each year now, when the turning of the seasons woke the old symptoms again like a memory in the bone, that time flooded back whole in his mind. And suddenly he was there again, on the bright summer day it all began, taking dinner to Mr. Hawkins.
The tray shook in his hands as he carried it down the walk that day. The dishes chattered, and the saucer trembled on its perch atop the cup of steaming tea. Down at the end of the street a diamond had been chalked on the road, and a baseball game was in full swing. He could hear the guys talking to one another as he stepped through the break in the hedge onto the sidewalk—deep center field.
Blinded by the glint of the sun off the tray, he felt for the edge of the sidewalk with the toe of his shoe. As he stepped off the curb he heard the crack of the bat and prayed the ball wasn’t headed his way. These were big guys, and when they got into a ball, there was no telling where it might go. He’d seen them scatter like sparrows more than once that summer at the sound of breaking glass. At the beginning of June, they’d broken a second floor window at the side of the Hawkins’ house.
* * *
Two weeks back, Mr. Hawkins took it into his head to mend the broken window. Simon had been home sick from school that day and saw the whole thing from his bedroom window. He watched the old man haul the long wooden ladder from behind the house on his shoulder and position it below the broken window; watched him slowly scale it as it wobbled and waved like a licorice whip. While perched high atop the rickety old thing, cutting away the caulking from around the broken window, he took a fall and crashed down into the flowerbed below.
Simon called down to Mom. She told him to keep an eye on Babs and tore across the street. She found the old man lying in a heap, his head bleeding, his leg twisted under him at an angle no leg was meant to take. She called an ambulance and stayed with him till it came.
He was in the hospital over a week. As well as breaking his leg, he’d suffered a concussion, and they wanted to keep him under observation. Mom visited him every day while he was there, for he had no family she knew of, and since his wife Eleanor had died two years ago, he was alone in the world.
Mom’s ties with the Hawkins family ran deep. She’d grown up on this street. Her dad and Mr. Hawkins had been childhood friends. So when Granddad died last fall, and she and Dad decided to trade the store-top apartment where they’d been living for the small frame house she’d been brought up in, it had been like moving home.
* * *
The ball smacked down on the road right in front of Simon and skittered past him up the street. He was so startled he nearly dropped the tray.
“Hey, Simon, get that, will you?” shouted one of the guys.
“Can’t,” he called over his shoulder, and kept walking.
* * *
At the beginning of the summer holidays, at Mom’s urging, he’d ventured down to the end of the street one day to ask if he could play. He was younger than they were, and short for his age. They looked him up and down and snickered. One of them, a kid called Joe whose mom ran a home daycare across the street, seemed to be their leader. He quieted the others with a glance, clapped his arm around Simon’s shoulder, and said he could be outfielder.
His job as outfielder was to station himself down the street and call out when cars were coming, tramp through gardens, shake bushes, and leap fences—looking for balls. A few weeks back, Joe hammered a ball that sailed high and far and came down in the lilac bushes inside the Hawkins yard. Joe stood at the plate, his cap skewed to one side, the sunlight dancing off the stud he wore in one ear. Since losing the ball that broke the Hawkins window, he’d been forced to use his prize ball, autographed by his hero, Jesse Barfield. Barfield was leading the American League in home runs, and Joe was not about to give up easily on the ball.
> He gave Simon a long look and nodded his head in the direction of the Hawkins yard. Simon crossed the road on shaky legs, scooted across the old man’s grass, and slipped in through the gate. As he frantically rooted around in the lilac bushes, searching for the ball, he heard a creak behind him. The back door opened, and out came Mr. Hawkins, cursing and waving his cane.
Simon thought he would die. But suddenly the old man stopped—stopped dead in his tracks and stared, as if he’d seen a ghost. And Simon tore off through the gate without the ball. Joe hadn’t quite forgiven him for that.
* * *
He ran past Simon in pursuit of the rubber ball they’d been using since then. Scooping it from the curb, he tossed it toward home plate.
“Where you headed with that, Simon?” he said, eyeballing the tray.
“Taking it to Mr. Hawkins,” he said, like it was something you did every day.
“Really,” said Joe, falling in step with him as he crossed the road. “Say, is that blueberry pie?” He leaned over the tray and took a big sniff. “I love blueberry pie,” he said, and without a word of warning he took a swipe at the pie.
Simon swung the tray away. The saucer perched on top of the teacup lifted off like an alien spacecraft. It spun in a lazy arc through the air and came crashing down on the sidewalk in front of the Hawkins house.
“Sorry,” said Joe, “I was just playing with you, man.” And he jogged off to rejoin the game.
Simon stared down at the broken saucer. It was from the good set in the china cupboard. Mom had taken it out especially for Mr. Hawkins. Some of the tea had slopped over the edge of the cup onto the tray. It ran in rivulets around the cup and plates. Joe had tweaked off the tip of the pie, and a bit of the filling had fallen onto the tray, turning the tea that ran by it blue.
He toed the broken saucer to the edge of the sidewalk and nudged it out of sight under the scruffy grass. He thought about turning back, then thought better of it. Taking a deep breath, he started up the walk to the Hawkins house.
The wind chime played its random music as he approached, like his baby sister Babs at her xylophone. Sunlight danced off the shards of mirror glass. The wisteria vine that snaked up the porch post and looped across the beam below the eaves was in flower, its gnarly old branches decked with purple blooms.
One of the treads wobbled under him as he started up the stairs. At the far end of the porch a wooden porch swing sat heaped with bundled newspapers. The ancient doorbell was on a twist handle set in the center of the door. There was no way he could turn it without putting down the tray. A white wicker table stood below the large front window that looked onto the porch. He set the tray down on it. The window was dark, the interior dim through a mist of sheers.
To the right of the door the mailbox dangled from one screw. A mirror was mounted on the brick above it, set in an octagonal wooden frame decorated with Chinese symbols. It was meant to ward off evil spirits, Mom said. The spirits couldn’t stand to see their reflection in the mirror, so they stayed away. Some of the silvering had flaked off the mirror’s back, and a bit of the brick wall behind showed through.
He gave the bell a twist. The tumblers, slack with age, made a feeble ring. But before he’d taken his hand away, the door opened, and he stood face to face with Mr. Hawkins.
They eyed one another a moment, without a word. The old man looked smaller than he had that day in the yard. His keen old eyes studied Simon over the top of the small round glasses perched on the end of his nose. The lines on his face looked chiseled in stone. He wore a satin dressing gown with a purple sash. His left leg was in a cast up over the knee. He leaned heavily on a wooden cane with a carved handle in the shape of a snake’s head.
Simon prayed the old man wouldn’t recognize him as the boy in the lilac bushes that day. “I’m—”
“Simon. Yes, Jenny’s son.”
He’d never heard anyone call his mother that before. It was ‘Jennifer.’ Sometimes, if Dad was feeling particularly affectionate, ‘Jen.’ But never ‘Jenny.’
“I brought you some dinner,” he said, and watched the old man glance down at his empty hands. “It’s on the table,” he said. “I put it down so I could ring—”
“Remarkable,” said the old man, “Absolutely remarkable.” And hitching himself around awkwardly with his cane, he motioned Simon to follow him into the house.
2
“The spitting image,” Mr. Hawkins muttered as he hobbled down the hall. Waggling his cane behind him, he disappeared through a doorway on the right.
“This way, young man. This way. Mustn’t let that food get cold.”
Mom had warned Simon that the old man could be a little prickly. She had failed to mention crazy.
The dishes juddered on the tray as he followed after him. The scent of cut flowers and furniture polish hung in the air, overlaying the deeper, more pervasive smell of age. A worn runner ran the length of the hall, then bumped itself up the stairs and disappeared into the shadows of the second floor. A cluster of mirrors on the wall caught at his reflection as he went by. Mom had told Simon about the old man’s mirror collection. She said when she was young the kids used to call him Mr. Mirror.
At the end of the hall, a vase of roses stood on a table in front of a window that looked out on the Hawkins side yard. A drift of petals lay scattered around it. A few had settled on a pair of scuffed balls nestled against the base of the vase. One was the Barfield ball. Simon swallowed hard and turned into the room where Mr. Hawkins had disappeared.
“Forgive the state of things,” said the old man. “My life’s all topsy-turvy since this fall.” Supporting himself on his cane, he was fumbling with a large book on the bottom shelf of a bookcase on the wall opposite the door.
“Oh, blast this bloody leg,” he cursed, and gave the cast a sharp smack with his cane as he abandoned the attempt. He made his way over to a padded armchair and sat heavily down.
“Don’t linger there in the doorway, lad. Come set that down here.” He pointed to a metal TV table by his chair.
As he put the tray down on the table Simon noticed another like it beside a neighboring armchair piled high with books. Between the spilled tea and the ravaged pie, the dinner looked a disaster. He shifted the table in front of the old man.
“It was Eleanor started us watching the evening news while we ate dinner,” said Mr. Hawkins with a sidelong glance at the armchair next to his. “Disgusting habit, really. But I can’t seem to give it up.”
He turned his attention to the tray. “Is that blueberry pie you’ve got there?”
“Yeah. My mom baked it today.”
“Wonderful.” He didn’t say a word about the state of it, or the puddle of blue tea the plate sat in. He just quietly removed the cover from the dinner plate and leaned down to smell the meal Mom had put together for him—meatloaf with mashed potatoes and spinach.
“Ah, home cooking. How I miss that. Everything I eat these days comes from a box or a tin.” He took the knife and fork from the soggy napkin they were wrapped in and tucked into the meal.
“Thank you for carrying this over for me, Simon. I’m sorry for any trouble it may have caused you.”
“I had a little accident on the way.”
“Sometimes, crossing even the quietest street can be a dangerous thing,” said the old man, with a glance his way. “Now switch that fool thing on, will you? Then I want you to fetch a book for me. I’ve got something to show you.”
A portable TV sat on a wheeled stand by the wall. Simon went over and switched it on. The news was just coming on. The picture was poor; the newscaster looked like he was reading the news in the midst of a snowstorm.
“Give it a smack. That sometimes does the trick.”
Simon smacked the set once, then a second time with feeling—to no effect.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s just background noise
, anyway,” said the old man. “Now, on that bottom shelf over there, there are some photo albums.” He pointed to the bookcase he’d been standing at when Simon came into the room.
“Eleanor was a demon for photo albums. It’s the third from the right. The one with the blue cover. Yes, that’s it. Bring it over here and sit down there beside me. You’ll have to clear those things off Eleanor’s chair. She won’t mind.”
It was an odd thing to say, and Simon gave him a look as he lifted the stack of books off the seat of the chair and looked for a place to put them down. The room was in a state of turmoil. It looked as if things had been brought from other places in the house and dropped here. The dining room table at the far end of the room was cluttered with books and papers, pill bottles, and piles of folded clothes. A camp cot had been set up beside it. It seemed the old man was sleeping down here.
Finally, he set the books on the floor and sat down in the chair, the album on his lap. The chair was upholstered in worn red velvet. Doilies had been pinned to the arms to hide the wear. A fringed shawl was draped over the back. A pair of black brocade slippers peeked their toes out from under the skirt of the chair. It was as if Eleanor had popped out on an errand and would momentarily return.
“Switch on the light, so you can see,” said Mr. Hawkins. “It’s somewhere in there. You’ll know it when you come to it. Two boys, sitting on the porch steps out front.” He went back to his meal, one leg flung stiffly forward in its cast, his cane propped against the arm of his chair.
Simon flicked on the lamp by the chair and opened the photo album. Across the room the newscaster battled on through the blizzard.
He began flipping through the album. It was all old family photos—black and white prints held in place with gummed corner mounts. Many were studio shots, stiff and formal. There were gaps here and there where pictures had fallen out or been removed. He turned the pages as carefully as he could, but the thick old photos kept threatening to pop free.
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