The Egyptian Mirror

by Michael Bedard

  The old man glanced over. “Further, Simon, further. I’m still too young there.”

  It was deadly dull, looking at page after page of dour old strangers. His attention kept drifting from the album to the room around him. The fine old furniture; the books lining the walls—more books than he’d ever seen in a house before; the mirrors that met his gaze wherever he turned, some hardly looking like mirrors at all—ancient things of metal, their surfaces shrouded with corrosion, their secrets shut away.

  One in particular kept drawing his attention. It hung on the wall opposite the chair where he sat. It was a bronze mirror, about the size of the plate Mr. Hawkins’ dinner was on. Round like that, though slightly flattened—the shape the sun has as it hangs on the horizon before it sets. The handle was in the form of a woman with the head of a lion, her arms raised above her head to support the disc. Unlike the other metal mirrors around it, this one shone.

  The boy in the photos began to change. Now he was a gangly boy with a book, sitting cross-legged in a chair, staring up into the camera as if he’d been called from somewhere far off—the same boy, but different somehow, as though a light had been flicked on inside. The photos, too, had changed. There were suddenly more outdoor shots. Street scenes of the neighborhood a lifetime ago: the Hawkins house sitting prim and proud on its little rise of land, large old cars huddled like cattle along the curb, the fence at the end of the street just half as high as the one there now.

  “There,” said Mr. Hawkins, startling him as he turned the page. “Right there. The spitting image.”

  It was a black and white shot of two boys sitting side by side on the front porch steps of the Hawkins house, smiling at the camera. They wore T-shirts, jeans, and sneakers, and had the look of boys in on a secret. One was the boy from the other photos. But it was his companion who caught Simon’s attention—a boy who looked so much like Simon that it might have been him sitting there on the porch steps. He looked up, stunned.

  Mr. Hawkins let out a chuckle.

  “That’s your granddad and me,” he said. “My mother took that photo of us with the camera I’d been given for my birthday that summer. It captures the two of us perfectly. And the two of you could be twins.

  “We shot everything in sight that summer. When we ran out of things in the neighborhood, Davey suggested we try the museum. He’d been there with his class that year, and he had the notion of taking a photo of the mummy in its tomb. It was strictly forbidden, of course, but we were young, and we were on a mission. So off we went. I still recall the shock of delight when I looked up under the lid of the mummy’s coffin and saw the wonderful things that had been painted there—as bright as the day they were done—nearly four thousand years ago.

  “We shot a lot of other things there that day, as well. Ancient things unearthed from the desert sand. Among them mirrors much like these.” He gave a nod in the direction of those on the wall. “Dimmed and corroded by time, but magical still. Windows onto vanished worlds. I imagined all the things they’d reflected lay somehow hidden in them still.

  “That was the start of it. I devoured everything I could find on early archaeologists and the excavation of ancient civilizations. I reveled in the exploits of Caledon’s own Edmund Walker—the fantastic treasures he brought back from his digs in Egypt and donated to the Caledon museum in its early days. I longed to feel that thrill of discovery. And right then and there I knew what I wanted to be. So I owe a great debt of gratitude to your granddad, Simon. He helped set me on my way.”

  Simon looked down at the double looking back at him.

  “Take it,” said Mr. Hawkins.

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Nonsense. It’s not doing any good shut up in there.” He leaned over, plucked it out, and handed it to him. “Now put this old thing back.”

  Simon returned the album to its place on the shelf. As he was walking back to his chair his eye was drawn to the mirror that had caught his attention before. He saw himself reflected in its ghostly surface, behind him the empty chair where he’d been sitting, the books stacked beside it on the floor. It was not like looking in an ordinary mirror. Everything was murky and dim, steeped in mystery.

  He was about to turn away when a ripple of darkness appeared at the mirror’s rim. It spread across the surface, till the whole reflection was swallowed by it. As it spread, it snuffed out all sound, and he found himself wrapped in a vast silence. It was as if he were looking down into a dark pool, and some dim shape was rising slowly to the surface. He saw a face forming, wide eyes peering up through the murk.

  “Simon?” came a voice from far away.

  The darkness dissolved, and the mirror went back to what it had been.

  “What is it?” said Mr. Hawkins, looking at him curiously.

  “Oh, nothing,” said Simon, and gathered up the dishes to go.

  “Tell your mother the dinner was delicious. I thank her very much.”

  “Thanks for the picture,” said Simon.

  “Not at all,” said the old man. “It’s been like a bit of the past come back to life. You can let yourself out. Just pull the door closed behind you.”

  “And one more thing,” said Mr. Hawkins as Simon turned to go. “You may take those balls in the hall with you when you go. Give them back to the boys they belong to. It may help ease your crossing if you come again—as I hope you will. Next time, I’ll set you to work.”

  3

  “How did it go?” asked Mom as she dried Babs’ wet hair with a towel after her bath. Babs was two and could be a bit of a handful. She didn’t like having her hair dried and was putting up a fuss.

  “Fine. He really liked the dinner. He said to thank you.”

  “See, I told you he was nice.” After the incident with the ball in the bushes, Simon had been nervous about taking dinner to Mr. Hawkins when Mom asked him.

  “He gave me a picture of Granddad and him when they were kids,” he said, showing her the photo.

  Mom leaned over and took a peek. “My, you look like him,” she said.

  “My wan dee picter too, Dimon,” wailed Babs as she squirmed to escape.

  “Okay, you can see it after you get your pajamas on,” he said. “But you have to be a good girl for Mamma now.”

  He took the picture to his room. It was a small room, as were all the rooms in the narrow old house. The floor creaked, and the ceiling sloped. But with a big bay window overlooking the street, it was airy and bright. And it beat looking out on the rusty fire escape and the dingy laneway at the old place.

  He looked over at the Hawkins house, directly opposite theirs. It was the oldest house on the street, and the grandest, sitting on a piece of property twice as large as the rest, with a wide swath of lawn and garden running down one side and wrapping around the back.

  He heard Babs chattering away through the wall as Mom readied her for bed. For the first couple of months after they moved in, the bedroom beside his had been Mom and Dad’s. Babs had shared it with them, her crib crammed into the corner at the foot their bed. But Babs was a restless sleeper and Dad an early riser—and with her constant stirring and waking, nights became an endless drama.

  For the sake of their sanity, Mom and Dad moved down to the living room to sleep on the sofa bed. The bed frame bumped against the legs of Granddad’s old upright piano, and the rocking chair spent its nights in the kitchen with the coffee table. Dad routinely stubbed his toe on them as he stumbled about, half-asleep, at the crack of dawn, getting ready for work.

  The situation was less than perfect, as Mom put it. The rooms were cramped, the fuses blew, the old pipes shuddered in the walls, and the wind whistled through the leaky windows. But it was a house, and it was theirs. There were many families far worse off than them.

  As he tucked the photo in the frame of his dresser mirror Simon glanced at his reflection in the glass and remembered the odd expe
rience with the mirror at Mr. Hawkins’ house. Babs came padding into the room in her pajamas, clutching her brush in her hand, her hair all spikey wet.

  Mom popped her head through the doorway. “Would you mind, Simon? She insists. It seems you have the magic touch.”

  Babs dragged the desk chair over in front of the dresser and scrambled up onto it. She took a quick peek at the picture she’d wailed to see, but was instantly sidetracked by the sight of her reflection in the mirror. She tucked her chin down coyly against her shoulder and looked at herself.

  “Who’s that in there?” Simon said, taking the brush from her hand.

  As he drew it through her hair she gazed transfixed into the glass, not even flinching as he tugged through the tangles. She knew well enough who that was in there, having her hair brushed, feeling the tug of the brush, the prickle of the bristles against her scalp. That was Babs.

  She hadn’t always known that. Not long ago, she hadn’t a clue who the girl in the mirror was, or how she’d gotten in there. Last winter, when they first moved in, Mom would often put Babs in the playpen in the living room with some toys, while she worked in the kitchen in the next room, keeping an eye on her through the door.

  A full-length mirror in a hinged wooden stand stood near the playpen. It had belonged to Granddad, one of the many things of his that shared the house with them now. In no time at all Babs made friends with the little girl who lived in the mirror. She babbled away to her and didn’t seem to mind that the little girl never answered back. She offered her toys through the bars of the playpen. But the little girl couldn’t seem to hang on to them, and let them all fall to the floor.

  It wasn’t long before Babs considered the playpen a prison, and screamed blue murder after more than a few minutes in it. Her playmate seemed unhappy too. They clearly had a lot in common.

  So the first thing she did when she was set free was go to visit the little girl. But when she tried to crawl into the mirror where she lived, it tilted away. And when she searched behind it, there was no one there. After several futile attempts, she decided the little girl was being deliberately difficult—and wanted nothing more to do with her. She crawled past the mirror without so much as a glance in her direction.

  This went on for some months. Then one day last spring, she was in the living room by herself, being very quiet—never a good sign. Simon went to see what she was up to. He found her sitting on the floor in front of the mirror. She touched her mouth, and watched the girl in the glass touch hers. She touched her eyes, then her nose, and watched intently as the little girl did the same.

  “Who’s that?” he asked, pointing to the mirror.

  “Babs,” she said. But there was a hint of doubt in her voice, some mystery to it she couldn’t fathom.

  Maybe the mystery never really went away, thought Simon, as he drew the brush through her damp hair and watched his mirror self do the same.

  * * *

  “I’ll take that over,” he said as Mom prepared the dinner tray for Mr. Hawkins the next day.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.” And from then on it was simply understood that Simon would carry dinner across to the old man. Now that they had the balls back again, Joe and the gang grew accustomed to his daily trek to the old man’s house, and let him be.

  Since his accident, Mr. Hawkins had all but abandoned going upstairs. The cumbersome cast made the task too much for him.

  “Takes me half the day to get up there, and the other half to get back down,” he complained. So he’d set up his old camp cot in the dining room, and by dribs and drabs the things he needed were brought down to the main floor. Vera, his cleaning lady, had helped with much of it. But Vera only came once a week. The rest of the time, Simon was enlisted for the task.

  Mr. Hawkins’ memory had suffered since his fall. He tended to forget things. So he kept a notepad and pencil on the table by his chair. And when Simon arrived with the dinner each day, there would be a list of things the old man had jotted down for him to fetch from the second floor.

  As soon as Simon had set down the tray on the table and switched on the evening news, Mr. Hawkins would consult his list. He’d sit for a minute puzzling over his scrawl, for he had a slight tremor in his hands that wobbled his words.

  “Like writing in the midst of a quake,” he said.

  When he managed to decipher the note, often what he’d written came as a surprise to him. “What could I have wanted that for?” he’d say. And then he’d remember and laugh it off, and Simon would be sent to fetch it down.

  —two hankies from the top drawer of the tall dresser in the front room.

  —black belt hanging on the hook behind the closet door.

  —tall book with green binding on shelf below the convex mirror in the library.

  —section one of manuscript in the study.

  “Think of it as a bit of an adventure,” he said, as if Simon were striking out on an expedition to some remote corner of the globe. And all the while he was off on his mission, the old man sat downstairs at his dinner, urging him on.

  The wall by the stairs was lined with photos. There were shots of a young, tanned Mr. Hawkins on the sites of various digs. One showed him standing with a young woman at the entrance to a shaft sunk in the desert sand. There was a photo of Eleanor and him at a market stall hung with mirrors. Another, of the two of them standing on the deck of a ship, gazing out over a sea as still as glass.

  “Don’t linger, Simon,” came the old man’s voice. “Onward! Onward!”

  The mirrors met him at the top of the stairs—a multitude of them, mounted everywhere on the walls. Mirrors of all shapes and sizes, from tiny pocket mirrors to tall pier glasses, some as bright and clear as crystal, others mottled and dull with age. As he moved along the dim hall, they gazed silently after him.

  At one end of the hall stood a large bedroom, facing onto the street. A vanity with an oval mirror stood in the corner near the window. On the table lay a hand mirror shaped like a peacock, its long neck bent back upon itself to form the handle, its fantail flaring in a blaze of painted enamels on the mirror’s back. Two dressers stood side by side against one wall. On the wall opposite, a four-poster bed with a bright coverlet into which countless tiny mirrors had been sewn. A large old leather case covered in faded travel stickers stood at its foot.

  And everywhere he looked, the mirrors lurked. They merged in seamlessly with the furnishings, taking him by surprise as they peered from their places on the wall. He walked up close to stare into them. They seemed to brighten at his approach, as if they were lonely and craved reflections.

  There were humble mirrors of tin that gave but the dimmest of reflections; ancient mirrors of bronze, coated in corrosion that had quenched their light. There were mirrors of burnished gold or silver, and one of black volcanic rock that held shadowy reflections in its murky depths. With so many mirrors about, he found it hard to keep his mind on his task. He fetched the hankies from the dresser, the belt from the back of the closet door.

  The middle room was lined with books and mirrors from floor to ceiling. A convex mirror gaped from the wall opposite the door like a bulbous eye, swallowing the room whole in its hungry gaze. As he leaned toward it to pluck the book from the shelf below, it made his face look monstrous.

  One day, Mr. Hawkins had noticed him taking an interest in the books on the shelves downstairs. “You may borrow any book you’d like,” he said. “Books are like mirrors; they yearn for the company of eyes.”

  Books were scarce in Simon’s house. So borrow he did. Hardly a day went by that he did not take one book or another down from the shelves and carry it home. There were stories of adventure and exploration, tales of far-off times and places. But his favorites by far were the books of colored engravings that stood on the bottom shelf beneath the all-seeing eye of the convex mirror. He took one out now.

&
nbsp; “Don’t forget my manuscript,” came the old man’s voice up the stairs.

  The study stood at the rear of the second floor. A full-length mirror mounted on its door stretched the hall to twice its length. As Simon hurried now along the hall a second Simon came scurrying down the mirror hall to meet him.

  The study had started out as a sunroom. Windowed on three sides, it overlooked the large wild yard. Below the windows were shelves lined with books.

  A large oak desk stood in the center the room. Laid out on it in numbered sections was the manuscript of the book Mr. Hawkins had been working on in his retirement. It was on the subject closest to his heart, the history and lore of the mirror.

  Since breaking his leg, he’d been unable to get upstairs to work on it. “I feel like a squirrel in a cage down here,” he said one day. “If I don’t get back to work, I’ll go right round the bend.”

  So Simon had helped clear a space at one end of the dining room table for him to work at. And now another of his tasks would be to bring down sections of the manuscript as Mr. Hawkins needed them. Today it was section one he’d been sent for. He found it on the top left corner of the desk, sitting in front of a squat computer, its screen furred with dust. Across the topmost page, under a circled number 1, the title “Soul Catchers” appeared above the text. His eyes drifted down the page, then turned to the next. Before he knew it, he was caught—as surely as the mirrors caught him if he stopped to peer in them.

  “Simon, have you fallen down a crevasse up there? Are you trapped on a narrow ledge with no way to turn back? Shall I send out a rescue party?”

  “Coming,” he said.

  Scooping up the manuscript with the rest of the things he’d been sent for, he headed back downstairs. The dinner was long since done, the television switched off. Dusk had settled like a shadowy visitor in the room.