The Crow Behind the Mirror_Book One of the Mirror Wars

by Sean M. Hogan

  “Before I leave you to your work I thought you might want to see—” He contorted in a sudden gasping cough and fell against the wall, dropping his cane. His eyes bulged and his face reddened. Reaching into his pocket he slid out a handkerchief, covering his mouth as he tried regaining back control of himself.

  Sharon retrieved his cane and rushed to his aid. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he said, regaining his balance. “It’s just a...” His eyes scanned for an answer. “...cold. Nothing worth fretting your pretty little head about.”

  As she handed him his cane, she spotted something odd on his handkerchief. The white fabric was stained with fresh blotches of blood.

  This is no cold.

  But she kept her thoughts to herself, deciding against prying any further. Instead, she walked to the center of the room, looking at the pictures on the wall. Some contained photos of her father with Morrie. Together they posed with strangers dressed in suits and ties, shaking their hands and accepting awards.

  “So, you knew my deadbeat dad?”

  “We were colleagues at the Department of Archaeology in Oxford University.”

  Her attention came to an old framed newspaper clipping resting on the black piano. The image was hard to make out, the picture faded orange and a layer of dust coated the glass.

  “You could say we were both obsessed with the past,” said Morrie. “We just couldn’t escape it, no matter how hard we tried.”

  She picked up the picture frame and wiped away the dust, unveiling two figures next to a tall freestanding mirror. The figures stood in front of some Egyptian tomb, posing for the camera in the hot sand and bright sun. She lifted the picture closer to her face.

  Her father was smiling with sand riddled hair and sunburned cheeks.

  Sharon frowned back.

  Her gaze shifted to the man on the other side of the mirror. A younger man, mid-twenties, with long blond hair tied into a ponytail. His style of dress was old fashioned. He wore long socks that went up to his knees, simple black shoes, oval shaped glasses, and a newsboy cap.

  She turned to Morrie. “When was this photo taken? It looks like it was shot over a hundred years ago.”

  His face saddened. “Sharon, your father wasn’t a saint. I’ll be the first to testify to that. But he was the finest man I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. He was a better man than me, or at least he tried to be. Whatever grievances you have toward—”

  Sharon cut him short with an abrupt cynical laugh.

  The absurdity—the hilarious absurdity. Was he really trying to defend the character of the man who took so much from her? Not a saint? What a laugh. He’s more devil than man.

  “I’m not a big fan of history, Professor Morrie. It’s just that some things are better left buried.”

  She set the picture frame down and walked away, unaware her thumb had wiped a little more of the dust off in the process. Now below the photo in the bottom right corner some text was clearly legible. Eric Ashcraft, Alexander Morrie. The date of the paper: July 24th, 1914.

  ***

  The seven-foot-tall, freestanding mirror rested at the back of the shadow-infected basement, surrounded by a hoard of cardboard boxes, rusting tools, and broken furniture. A blanket of dust covered everything but the mirror. Framed in heavenly silver, the mirror glistened and sparkled as if carved straight from diamonds. The mirror stood perfect, unblemished, without a single scratch or the slightest smudge. Lost to the sands of time and unearthed by two archaeologists. The mirror was once resigned to be gawked at by school children and overweight tourists in England’s most prestigious museums. Now it was retired to Morrie’s private art collection, never to witness the rising Egyptian sun again.

  Two figures appeared in the reflection of the mirror. Clouds of dust stirred in the air as Morrie and Sharon descended the creaking wooden stairs.

  Sharon coughed, covering her mouth with one hand and beating back the dust with the other. “Eww, it’s dirty.”

  “I’ll be sure to inform Prime Minister Churchill,” said Morrie.

  She took in the cobweb-infested room. There was nothing unusual about it, just dust, cardboard boxes, and the mirror.

  He glanced back at her puzzled face. “What is it?”

  “It’s just a normal basement,” she said, taking a few steps to look around. She stopped in front of the mirror; her reflection stared back.

  “You were expecting neon lights and whistling bells? Just remember not to touch anything that looks...”

  She posed for the mirror’s reflection, admiring herself. Her reflection was different somehow. Better. Flawless. Her hair elegantly smooth, her teeth bleached to a movie star’s smile, her lips fuller, her eyes bigger and brighter, and her figure curving to sexual perfection.

  “...priceless,” he finished, watching her with nervous eyes.

  She reached out to touch herself in the reflection of the mirror.

  “That includes my mirror, unless of course, you want seven years’ worth of my wrath.”

  She paused before her fingers connected and withdrew her hand. “Relax, I’m not gonna break it.”

  “Like my window and vase? You’ll have to forgive me if your words don’t exactly fill me up with confidence.”

  Sharon turned from the mirror.

  Her reflection didn’t.

  Morrie observed the mirror with unease. His reflection was paler, sicker, older—emaciated with sunken eyes and caved in cheeks. His face, the face of a dead man rotting in his coffin between seven feet of soil and the gnashing teeth of hell. He turned from his own Dorian Gray’s portrait and ascended the wooden stairs.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to lay down for a bit,” he said. “I think I’ll go take one of those afternoon naps we old people like so much. Dust, sweep, mop, vacuum, and try to resist your criminal urges to rob me blind while I sleep.”

  His back turned, she stuck out her tongue and waved him the bird. He shut the door and she was finally alone.

  Sharon turned back to the mirror. She smiled. Her reflection smiled back.

  ***

  Morrie clung to his white sheets while he slept in his small bed. His bedroom was sparse and empty, nothing like the rest of his mansion decorated with art and culture robbed from the dead skeleton hands of forgotten nameless corpses. The walls carried no family photos or heirlooms or anything personal. There was an air of coldness about his room, like an abandoned hospital.

  The clock struck three A.M. The witching hour.

  The wind picked up, howling and hurling rain against the window in machine gun bursts. Tree branches raked across the glass in twisted claw swipes. Lightning struck, bleaching the room with suffocating white.

  A human shadow darted across his bed.

  Morrie’s eyes flashed open—his pupils expanding—as he shot up in bed. He scanned the room, his heart racing. The faint whimper of a weeping child caught his ear. Morrie’s focus fell to the sound’s origin. His heart skipped a beat as a figure shifted in the darkest corner of the room.

  “Who...?” His voice trembled, his next words forced out in a painful gasp. “Who’s there? Sharon, is that you?”

  Lightning struck again, slicing the darkness in half.

  A naked pale-skinned boy with jet black hair, no older than thirteen, huddled in the corner of Morrie’s room. The boy rocked back and forth, crying black tears that streamed off his face and collected into puddles on the carpet. They rotted the fibers away like battery acid. His arms rested on top of his crossed knees in front of his chest, as if he was cuddling some not yet visible creature.

  “What’s wrong child?” Morrie’s throat thickened as he gazed upon the pale weeping boy from behind his bedsheets.

  The boy gave no response. He just continued his compulsive rhythmic routine.

  Morrie took in a hard breath and willed himself out of bed. He stalked forward toward the boy. What should have taken seconds stretched into minutes. With each step, time slo
wed to a syrup’s drip. The shadows invaded the light behind Morrie, encroaching on him with malice intent. The walls expanded and contracted like pulsing intestines. He quickened his pace, the air growing cold and burning his throat. Finally, standing over the boy, Morrie got a good look at him.

  The boy was wrapped in phantom chains and glowing shackles that faded in and out of existence like moonlight reflecting back on crashing ocean waves.

  Morrie reached out to touch his shoulder.

  “Why are you crying?” he asked, halting his hand inches before the boy’s naked flesh.

  The boy clutched something between his arms and chest.

  “What’s that in your arms?”

  The boy jerked his head up with the force of a cracking whip and flashed his eyelids open. His eyes were missing—empty sockets revealing exposed red flesh inside.

  Morrie lost the air from his lungs.

  The boy glared at Morrie with hollow sockets and peeled back the skin of his chest like he was ripping open a button shirt. A large golden eye opened inside the boy’s chest cavity and peered up at Morrie. The eye fused with squawking and flapping crows, buzzing like a swarm of angry bees.

  Morrie staggered back, almost collapsing at the horrendous sight.

  The boy stretched out his lower jaw the way a snake swallows an egg and from the void of his throat, a crow flew out.

  Morrie jumped back, throwing his arms over his face to shield himself. He lost his footing in the process and tumbled helplessly to the ground.

  The crow descended upon him with dark beating wings and gouged out his eyes in a flurry of violent, stabbing pecks.

  Morrie shot up in bed with a screaming gasp. He ran his hands over his face. There was no blood, and his eyeballs were still there. He peeked out from behind his sheets, eyes darting in all directions. The room was empty and he was lying in a pool of sweat. It was only a nightmare.

  He turned to the window. Outside, perched on a tree branch, sat the crow.

  The crow stared back at him, motionless, with piercing wraithlike eyes.

  “Every night it’s the same,” he said as he sneered at the crow. “You won’t be satisfied until you get every last bit, will you?”

  The crow remained still as a Greek statue.

  Morrie slid his necklace out from underneath his shirt. Two glowing crystals hung from the necklace, one blue and one red. The blue crystal was fading, and his health followed suit. His skin paled and shriveled, his muscles shrunk, his vision blurred, and his heart ached with every beat. He convulsed into a violent cough, blood spraying all over his palms and the white sheets. At last, the attack passed and his blue crystal stabilized. Though much dimmer than before.

  “I should have never placed faith in that boy,” said Morrie, his breaths growing heavier and heavier. “Where are you, Eric? I’m running out of time.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Strings

  LONDON, FRIDAY, JULY 24TH 1914

  It was dark. Heavy breathing muted all other noises. The air was stagnant and stale, the taste of sickness catching in the breeze. Small white beds lined the room, neatly and orderly. Their occupants were undersized, frail and sickly children dressed in white hospital gowns. Eric sat hunched over a bed in the back, placing the chest-piece of his stethoscope over the heart of a little girl with brown hair and olive-green eyes.

  The little girl watched him with a glazed delirious look, remaining quiet and still as if her limbs were weighed down by a thousand pounds of iron.

  Eric listened with a purposeful intensity. Her heartbeat was erratic and weak. He frowned. Even to an untrained ear it would sound bad. A sudden swell of sadness rushed over him when he placed his hand over her forehead. She was white-hot to the touch, sweating profusely, and the panic movements in her darting eyes told Eric of the worst. Her fever was literally cooking her organs.

  Eric removed his stethoscope and rested it on his lap, rolled up his sleeves, and placed his hands over her chest. His hands bobbed up and down like a tiny sailboat at sea in harmony with her expanding and contracting lungs while she inhaled rough gulps of air with a crackling, wheezing struggle.

  Then the light came.

  Blue light filled Eric’s hands. The light flowed down to the tips of his fingers and formed into a glowing circle of living energy above the little girl’s chest.

  ***

  An eighty-year-old man, as frail and fragile as the sick children just behind the door, sat impatiently in the children’s hospital waiting room with all the anxiety of a stampeding buffalo. He clutched the fabric of his black pants, scrunching them up in his fists. Bright blue light shined through the cracks around the doorway. The light went dim, and his heart sunk like a dead goldfish. The doorknob turned and the old man rose to his feet.

  Eric stepped into the full light. No longer was he the spitting image of a savage barbarian, having discarded his unkempt beard and fur garments for a clean-shaven face and a black and white suit. He was a proper English gentleman, cane and all.

  “Is she?” the old man asked, without a beat of thought or hesitation.

  “She will live,” replied Eric.

  Tears swelled in the old man’s eyes. “Bless you.” He swung his arms around Eric and pulled him in for a passionate embrace.

  Eric gently pushed him aside. “I’m not someone who deserves things like blessings,” he said grabbing his coat and top hat and heading for the front door. “Just remember our agreement.”

  “Don’t worry,” the old man said with tears flowing. “Not even a whisper.”

  ***

  Horse-drawn stagecoaches rode down the street in the hot English sun. A fat man with a curling mustache bought a bouquet of yellow roses from the flower shop. A policeman shook his fist and blew his whistle at a group of running boys as they weaved through the moving crowds. The sickly-sweet scent of imported overripe watermelons lingered from the fruit stands. The noisy chatter of gossiping women with exotic feathered hats and the lively haggling of gentlemen with fat cigars filled the air. Folks of all shapes and sizes went about the hustle and bustle of English life.

  A young man in his early twenties with blond hair and a newsboy cap leaned against a lamppost. His face buried between the folds of the morning newspaper oblivious of the world around him.

  Eric exited the children’s hospital, sliding on his coat and positioning his top hat to its proper place on his head. He descended the steps leading to the sidewalk and passed the young man without a moment’s glance.

  The young man lowered his paper and, after adjusting his circular glasses, leered at Eric. “We made the paper, Professor Ashcraft.”

  Eric turned to meet the youth. The young man held up the newly minted paper. In the middle, there was a photograph of Eric and the young man posing next to a mirror outside an Egyptian tomb.

  “‘The pharaoh’s magic mirror’, they’re calling it the ‘find of the century’.”

  Eric’s face tightened. “Alex, what are you doing here?”

  Alexander Morrie’s smile widened. He had caught Eric off guard.

  “Me?” asked Morrie. “Oh, I’m just admiring the summer air. But you, you never leave your precious study without good cause.”

  Eric preened and straightened his coat. “I was visiting an old friend. His granddaughter was not well.” He pointed to the hospital with his cane.

  “Was? So, I take it she’s better now?”

  He tugged at his tight collar. “You’ll have to forgive my rudeness, Alex, but my driver is waiting.” He started off down the street. “Perhaps we could chat at a later date?”

  Morrie trailed after him. “I took the liberty of translating some of the text around the mirror’s frame.”

  “Oh?”

  “It seems that it was used as a gateway of some sort, to someplace called the ‘God Realm’,” he said, keeping pace at Eric’s side. “Once I finish the rest I’m sure we’ll be able to operate the mirror. That is, if you haven’t already.” He waited for Er
ic’s reaction, studying his every movement.

  But Eric was steadfast and calm, his face and body language giving away nothing. “You’re my brightest student, Alex. It concerns me that you of all people would indulge in such fantasy.”

  A flash of annoyance streaked across Morrie’s face. “All human societies were born from beliefs rooted in the mystical and supernatural. Why is it now that we deny our heritage?”

  Eric glanced back at him. He stopped mid-stride, freezing in place, his expression dropping like a stone.

  Morrie tried his best to analyze Eric’s bizarre reaction. Was it something he said? He followed Eric’s line of sight down to the newspaper in his hands. His face now matched Eric’s as he read the headlines. ‘Archduke Franz Ferdinand Assassinated, July Ultimatum Issued, Austria-Hungary and Serbia at odds’.

  “War is coming,” said Morrie.

  “Wars come and go. All things come in cycles. This will be no different,” said Eric, his words more for himself than Morrie’s comfort.

  “You’re wrong, you know. This time is different. This time the whole world will be involved. A war to end all wars.”

  “No such thing. As long as humans continue to practice the philosophy of apathy and indifference there will always be conflict. Not even I could escape that reality.”

  “You talk as if you’re not one of us.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Morrie let go a depressed cynical laugh. “We must look like children to you, am I, right? We gamble our lives away in such needless causes and petty squabbles. I wager it’s hard to believe in anything when you can see the strings.”

  “You’re not making any sense, Alex.”

  “Don’t be coy. I’ve done my share of outside research. I know you’ve published other books on certain taboo subjects. Subjects that could do more than just muddy your reputation. Subjects like alchemy and witchcraft.”

  Eric’s face went grim, the color draining from his cheeks and bleaching them ghost white.