A Shade in the Mirror

by Tracey Lander-Garrett

  The whole time the professor lectured, Katie furiously scribbled into her notepad. Dr. Hernandez, in the meantime, alternately checked the device she was holding and watched the rest of us. Zoe didn’t look up from her feet again until Gannon stopped talking.

  Billy slowly raised his hand. Prof. Gannon nodded at him, and Billy asked, “Exactly why are we here? Is the place haunted, or what?”

  Prof. Gannon exchanged glances with Dr. Hernandez, who shrugged and smiled brightly at him. He sighed, and said, “For the purposes of this field experiment, my colleague has requested that I not inform participants about the nature or background of any suspected paranormal activities here in order to avoid bias or expectation on your part. We don’t want your perceptions tainted by prior awareness.”

  “Why did you tell us the history of the house then?” Derek asked.

  Dr. Hernandez smiled. She seemed to approve of the question. “The history meets exemption criteria for the research we’re doing today,” she said.

  “Huh,” Derek said. “Interesting.”

  I took this to mean that knowing the house’s history wouldn’t affect whatever we found or saw. Why she couldn’t just say it that way, I had no idea.

  “I have another question,” Billy said. When the professor nodded again, Billy continued, “Does the house have anything to do with the Headless Horseman?”

  Derek snorted. Katie’s pencil stopped. Dr. Hernandez seemed amused. Zoe flushed.

  Billy looked chagrined. “Well, we are in Sleepy Hollow.”

  Prof. Gannon’s eyebrows drew together a moment and then he took a deep breath. “I’m afraid I can’t answer that question as it might bias your experience as a participant.”

  Billy’s mouth opened for a second and then closed. It seemed like he was about to ask another question, but then decided not to.

  “Any other questions?” the professor asked, looking around. When there weren’t any, Prof. Gannon rubbed his hands together. “Excellent. Let’s head inside and get set up.”

  Billy took his phone out of his pocket, presumably to check the time—something he normally did several times per hour. “What the—? I don’t have any signal,” he complained.

  Derek checked his phone. “Neither do I.”

  “Me either,” Katie said, checking a device with a hot pink cover.

  “You might as well turn them off,” Prof. Gannon said. “I don’t know if we’re just too far from the nearest cell tower, or if there’s some kind of electrical interference, but you’ll never get a signal until you get back to the main road.”

  “Creepy,” Billy whispered. He seemed to be enjoying this.

  “No reception in the boonies,” Derek said, and shrugged. “Not that surprising.”

  “Miles away from the nearest phone,” Billy replied with a grin. “Can’t call for help.”

  “Not true, actually. There’s a working phone in the caretaker’s cottage, which is only half a mile out past the carriage house,” Prof. Gannon said, hefting a large cardboard box. “Shall we head in?”

  Chapter Eleven

  The foyer was large, with a dusty glass chandelier hanging in the center of the room. Its crystals hung in cascading rows like sequined fringe. Behind it, a stylized wrought iron banister with geometric shapes curved upwards along black and white marble steps. Arched doorways led to other rooms both up and downstairs.

  Prof. Gannon led us through the right arch into the huge living room. The walls were elaborately paneled, while most of the furniture was covered in white sheets. The room’s focus was a large ornate fireplace covered in white and blue tiles. All of the other furniture surrounded it: two couches, two coffee tables, two chairs. Even the lighting flanked the fireplace, two lamps built into the walls with gold-tinted glass shades facing upwards like tulips. Was that a piano in the corner of the room? Was it the piano? The one Rebecca had mentioned?

  I impulsively walked toward it before seeing something move in the corner of my eye. I glanced to my left, toward the tiled fireplace. Nothing was there. I shook my head and found Zoe’s eyes on me. She tilted her head meaningfully at the fireplace, then raised her eyebrows with an expectant look.

  Was she asking me what I’d seen? I shrugged. I hadn’t seen anything, really. Just a shadow, probably. It could have even been my own. Even so, I got a creepy feeling and wondered if I should try to avoid being around Zoe. What did the professor mean that she was a “paranormal expert” anyway?

  Just as I was wondering this, the professor brought in some clamp lights that he attached to the tulip lamps.

  “The electricity isn’t on. It was supposed to be,” he said. “I’ll have to check the fuse box after we set up.”

  Zoe was looking at the fireplace again, her face scrunched in confusion as she examined the white tiles with their blue illustrations.

  “The Delft tiles in that fireplace are original to the house,” the professor commented. “Everything else was renovated. So what do you think, Zoe?”

  She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and grimaced, her eyes scanning the ceiling before coming to rest on the professor. “It’s . . . um . . . going to be interesting, I can say that.”

  He leaned in closer and, in a low voice, asked, “How many?” I guess he thought I wouldn’t be able to hear.

  “How many what?” Billy asked, carrying in a cardboard box full of cables.

  “Three,” Zoe said, ignoring him.

  The professor seemed somewhat taken aback, his eyes going wide for a moment. “Already?”

  “They’re curious.”

  “You see ghosts,” I said to Zoe, not asking.

  “Yeeeah,” she said, somewhat reluctantly.

  Billy dropped the box. “Really? In here? Where?”

  “Careful with that!” the professor shouted, rushing over to check the contents.

  “There was one in here. Over there,” Zoe said, pointing toward the fireplace, “but he’s gone now.”

  “Really? No shit?” Billy said. “Did you see it, Maddy?”

  “Um, no,” I said.

  Zoe gave me a look like she thought I was lying.

  “See what?” Derek asked, carefully setting down a heavy box marked CAMERA EQUIPMENT.

  “Nothing,” I said, and went to see if there was still more gear outside.

  There wasn’t. Billy and Derek had wasted no time moving all of the equipment inside. The crystals in the chandelier tinkled as Derek’s head brushed against the lowest row as he planted the last of the boxes beneath it. I peeked through the archway behind the stairs to see a kitchen done in green tiles. I also noticed a door that might have led to the basement. I ducked my head back into the living room, where Katie, Dr. Hernandez, and Prof. Gannon were setting up lights. Despite their efforts, the shadows in the room deepened in the twilight.

  I went over to the fireplace to see what I could see. It was immaculately clean. No ashes, no logs, not even a bit of kindling to get a fire going.

  The white tiles with the blue drawings seemed to depict biblical stories. There was an image of a whale on one tile, and another with a man versus a giant. Yet another had a large boat with animals. Weird. I wondered why I was just wandering the room, and then realized that my wandering was purposeful, that what I was actually doing was avoiding the one thing in the room that had brought me there: the piano.

  Summoning up my courage, I walked over to it and peeked beneath the sheet. There it was, the logo Steinway & Sons etched in gold. But what about the fall? Julie had said it was chipped. I sat down and ran my fingers along the bottom edge. The left corner had indeed been chipped off. Bingo. It had to be the same piano. And now, here I was, sitting on a piano bench, knowing that I knew how to play. I doubted it was in tune, but I longed to run my fingers over the keys. I assumed what I knew was the correct posture.

  “Do you play?” asked Zoe. I hadn’t realized that she’d walked up beside me.

  “I . . . think so,” I said. What a weird answer. You’re
going to have to do better than that.

  Zoe’s raised an eyebrow. “Well, let’s hear a few notes.”

  I raised the fall and tentatively touched an ivory key. A rich C, bell-like in tone and perfectly pitched, sounded in the room. Prof. Gannon stuck his head in. “Uh, don’t do that, please.”

  I jumped up, my legs pushing the bench back a few inches. “Oh! Sorry,” I said, letting the white sheet fall back across the piano.

  “Zoe,” Prof. Gannon said, holding up a finger and moving it from side to side, as if he were reprimanding her.

  “What?” she said, incredulously. “They like it.”

  “Who likes it?” I asked. But Prof. Gannon just held his finger up again and make a “tut” sound, then curled his finger in a come-hither motion and gestured for Zoe to come. She went, like a child reluctantly reporting to a parent for punishment.

  She was definitely young, I thought. Older than me, maybe even older than Derek, but probably around his age or not much more. The large sweater she wore over her skirt made her seem shapeless. I could just see Kara trying to give her a makeover like she had me. I was still most comfortable in jeans and t-shirts, but she’d taught me to show off my figure—such as it was. I didn’t think much of my appearance but others said I was pretty.

  I was a little warm, so I took off my coat and backpack and hung them on the coat rack near the front door, where everyone else’s things were. I found myself looking at my reflection in a mirror there while everyone else bustled back and forth. Light eyebrows, a dusting of freckles across my nose. High cheekbones. I poked at one. Who was I? What was my background? Was I French? German? I couldn’t speak a lick of it. Irish? I wished for the thousandth time that I had some hint to my identity other than an old matchbook and a key hanging on a chain. I pulled on the key through the material of my shirt and the chain went taut around my neck.

  “All right,” Prof. Gannon said, calling my attention back to where I was and what I was supposed to be doing. “You’ll be going through the first floor in teams of two. We were supposed to have electricity, but it’s not working. I’m going to have to go check on that. For now, every team member gets a flashlight with a red filter to keep you from ruining your night vision. This is just our first pass. After full dark, we’ll keep flashlights off and pass out walkie talkies. I will be stationed here with the equipment.”

  Dr. Hernandez began messing with the walkie talkies while Prof. Gannon loaded new batteries into flashlights, flicking them on to test them once before handing them out. “Madison and Billy, you will have thirty minutes to explore the kitchen and connecting hallway. Derek and Katie, you will have the same amount of time to explore the dining room. Dr. Hernandez and Zoe, the living room is yours.”

  “Professor?” Katie asked, her hand in the air. “What are we looking for, exactly?”

  “Anything that strikes you as strange, out of the ordinary. I don’t mean strange items, though there are plenty of those in this house, but rather odd noises, smells, feelings. Inexplicable phenomena. That kind of thing. Changes in temperature. If you see something, say something, as they say on the subways.” He gazed at us all for a moment and asked, “Good enough?” Billy shrugged and nodded, and I saw Katie and Derek do the same. I nodded too. “Very good,” the professor said, checking his watch. “And . . . go. Meet back here in thirty minutes.”

  “Here we go,” Billy said, clicking on the flashlight, headed toward the kitchen. Derek nodded at me and went in the opposite direction with Katie. I was a little bummed that he and I weren’t together. I followed Billy into the hallway that led to the kitchen. Behind an open door, there was a little bathroom, just a half-bath, probably for guests to use, done up in black and—were they red? No, that was the flashlight—white checkerboard tiles with a black toilet and black sink. The room was small and the water ran when Billy tried the tap. “Good thing to know if you need to go,” he said.

  There was a door on the right, farther down the hallway. “What do you think this is?” Billy asked.

  “No idea. You open or me?”

  “I’ll open,” he said, and did. I held my breath a moment and then let it out. It was an empty closet.

  Billy sighed and closed the door. “Kitchen next?”

  “Sure,” I said, and we made our way back to it.

  Some light was still coming through the windows so we turned off our flashlights to save power. There wasn’t much of note aside from the color scheme, a round white table, white chairs, white counters, and lime green cabinets with glass doors that revealed empty shelves. One door led to a porch on the back of the house, another was a pantry that was almost completely empty except for a few prehistoric cans of food. The ancient refrigerator—resembling a coffin in size—was empty, luckily, though it smelled of mildew. Billy searched through a few drawers while I checked to see if the water was running in the sink. It was. I almost expected it to be brown—or possibly even red—but the water came out clear and boring.

  “Hey,” Billy said, holding up a corkscrew he’d found. “Check this out!”

  “You found a corkscrew. Congratulations,” I said.

  “No, no, not the corkscrew itself, but what the corkscrew implies.”

  “Which is?”

  “Wine. Corkscrews are for opening bottles. Wine bottles. Therefore, where there’s a corkscrew, there’s wine. I bet this place has some kind of awesome wine cellar or something. We should find it.”

  “I think we’re just supposed to do the first floor, the kitchen and hallway over there.”

  “Boring,” Billy intoned. “Come on. The basement is bound to be spookier than this.”

  “I don’t know if I want to go to the spooky basement,” I said, looking through the cabinets beneath the counter tops. Pots and pans and mixing bowls lined most of the shelves. Some were empty.

  “Why did you come here then?” Billy asked. “And what was up with your ID? Don’t you have a license or state ID?”

  Ugh. I did not want to get into that discussion. Not one part of it. I pointed at the one door we hadn’t tried. “Think that’s the way down?” I asked him.

  “Oh, hey, it just might be,” he said, forgetting his question. He opened it, and the hinges creaked loudly. “Confirmed,” he whispered. “We have stairs going down.”

  A vaguely musty, damp smell emanated from the doorway now—a basementy smell, I thought, kind of like the basement at work.

  “Do you really want to do this?” I asked.

  “Totally,” Billy said. “I’ll go first.” He stepped tentatively onto the first step, which beneath his weight creaked with a little eep sound at first, as though the step was protesting.

  I hesitated at the top of the stairs, watching the red beam from Billy’s flashlight bob in the darkness. I wasn’t sure if we’d get in trouble for going down to the basement when we were supposed to be exploring the hallway and kitchen, but I wasn’t sure what else there was to investigate besides the dishes and glasses. Billy was right, it was boring. For the first time since coming to the Adderly House, I felt some doubt. I felt foolish. What the hell was I doing there, and why had I dragged Billy and Derek into it?

  Maybe I did owe Billy an explanation. I directed my flashlight into the stairwell and grasped the handrail and went down into the red-lit dark.

  The musty smell was stronger as I reached the bottom of the stairs, and the air felt colder and damper. “So, Billy, about why I came here . . .” I began, only to realize I couldn’t see the light of his flashlight anymore.

  “Billy?” I said, and waited for a response. Nothing.

  It was too quiet and too dark. “Billy?” I said again, lifting my flashlight to scan the area around me.

  “HA! Gotcha!” Billy said suddenly, clicking on his flashlight beneath his chin. He was just a foot away from me, provoking both a brief, hysterical scream and a punch as I whirled on him. “Owww,” he said. “I’m just fucking around.”

  “Well, don’t. You scared me half to
death.”

  He rubbed his upper arm. “Damn, girl, you can punch.”

  “Remember that,” I said, pleased with myself. I could punch a guy and make it count. That had to be a worthwhile skill. Maybe I’d taken self-defense classes. Or boxing. Or maybe I’d had an older brother. No way of knowing.

  “Did you find the wine?” I asked, shining my flashlight around the room. There were arched ceilings that were over seven feet high. Shelves had been built into the walls, with small boxes and barrels piled on them. Wooden crates had been stacked on the floor against the walls where there were no shelves.

  “Not yet,” Billy said, scanning with his own flashlight. “Bingo,” he said when the light landed on a rack filled with dark, dusty bottles. “Man, some of these aren’t even labeled. Whoa! This one is from 1939,” and picking up another, said, “1926. That must have been a good year. There are five bottles of that one alone.”

  “What do you think is in all of these boxes?” I asked.

  “Hm, good question,” he said. He pulled down a small wooden box and I came closer to take a look.

  The top of the box was engraved with the word HABANA, and the latch, while firmly closed, was not locked. A partially torn sticker on the side read, “For cigars imported from H—” with a bunch of Spanish words I couldn’t read.

  “A cigar box,” I said.

  “Wow, old Cubans, huh? Too bad they’re probably dried out.” Billy handed me the box and I gave it a little shake. Something rustled inside.

  “Should we open it?” I asked. I felt strange. Like I was invading someone’s privacy.

  “Duh, yes,” Billy replied. “Go ahead.”

  Billy held his flashlight over the top while I opened it. Inside were photographs. Small black and white pictures with thin white borders. The one on top showed a man and woman posed together, smiling, their clothes probably from the 1920s or ‘30s.