The Dark

by Ellen Datlow

  “You see why I e-mailed you, Andy,” Paul said.

  Connie Peake had her notepad out, checking the word Paul had given her earlier. “And this is a … psychomantium?”

  “Probably is,” Paul answered. “There are other theories.”

  “Psychomantium covers it,” I said, trying to cue Paul to hold back, but it only made Connie more curious.

  “No. Please, Mr. Galt—Andy—you wanted me here as observer for this first entry. What is a psychomantium? What are these other theories?”

  “It’ll bias you, Connie. You’re meant to report only on what you see today, what is actually here in case the site ever becomes—”

  “I know. But you and Mr. Vickrey both know I’m going to do a Net search the minute I get back to the office. You might as well tell me.”

  “All right. But help us here, please. Just observe. You can go verify whatever you want and bring questions later. Paul, best guess, how long have we got?”

  Paul shook his head. “Can’t say. It’s not being treated as a crime scene. Janss has disappeared, but there’s no suggestion of foul play. He may have just gone off.”

  “But you don’t think so,” Connie said. “Look, I’m trying to be of use. Say I’ve done a Net search already. What’s a psychomantium?”

  Another time I might have resented the presence of this officious young woman, but not now. It was good to be challenged on the fundamentals, especially on the fundamentals. Instead of pleading jet lag and letting Paul deal with her questions, I kept my attention on the earnest face, not wanting her to see Paul and me exchange glances, and didn’t hesitate.

  “Okay. Psychomancy was originally telling fortunes by gazing into people’s souls. Catoptromancy was scrying using mirrors. The Victorians were especially fond of combining the two: building mirrored rooms so they could contact spirits of the dead. Mirrors are traditionally meant to trap the souls of the departed and act as doorways to the other side; that’s why they used to be covered or removed when someone died. A psychomantium is a mirrored room built for that purpose.”

  “You believe this?”

  Again I didn’t look at Paul. This was the way to go and I hoped he’d see that it was.

  “That they existed and still exist today, yes. That they permit communication with the dead, no. But others believe it, and I’ve been collecting psy-chomantia, mainly the modern ones.”

  “What, as oddments? Curiosities?”

  “As something humans habitually do, yes. As a constant; part of a fascinating social phenomenon.”

  “So not just as functioning psychomantiums,” Connie Peake said. “You want the range of possibility behind them.”

  Now Paul and I did exchange looks. Where did you find this woman? mine said. I had no idea! said Paul’s.

  Again, I barely hesitated. Connie was surprising me, changing the preconceptions I had of her. “Exactly. It’s the infinite regress that’s the common factor, and Janss has created it here using a hexagon, what I consider the classic form. The reflections in the angling of two facing mirrors have to be as old as reflective surfaces: the first virtual reality. It must have always been profound, something people just naturally hooked things onto. The French have the perfect term for it—mise-en-abîme: plunged into the abyss.”

  We gazed into that abyss now, the endless rush of corridors taking the three of us off to infinity, doing it in long curves, sending us to the left in one mirror wall, to the right in the next, back to the left, and so on. The ceiling light had seemed kind at first, pleasantly free of glare. Now my eyes had adjusted, and it lent a hard, almost clinical quality to the unending rooms and hallways, making me think of the oppressive cubicles in George Tooker’s The Waiting Room. I couldn’t prevent it.

  “Have you seen many?” Connie asked, almost in a whisper. The faux cathedral space seemed to demand it.

  “Not dedicated ones like this. Mostly you get full-length mirrors set opposite each other in drawing rooms and parlors that give the regression effect, or batwing dressing tables with adjustable side mirrors set a certain way. Sometimes it’s hard proving they were intended as psychomantiums at all. There are a lot of hoaxes; descendants staging the effect for tourism purposes, claiming all sorts of things. Paul and I are looking for prime naturals, dedicated setups like this, with no trumped-up back-story to work through.”

  “And you’ve been lucky?”

  “We’ve seen most of the famous ones,” Paul said. “But it’s the newer kind, the local ones, we’re after. I’ve found four naturals, none as fine as this. Andy’s located five, including a dodecagonal room—twelve mirror walls marked out according to the hours of the clock—a splendid octagonal, and two rather poor hexagonals.”

  “Using candlelight?” Connie indicated the candle stand.

  “Almost always,” Paul said. “It gives the most powerful—and traditional—effects.”

  “The most suggestive, I imagine. The most scary.”

  “No, powerful,” I said, interrupting. “Look for yourself. This present lighting is effective. Janss knew to use a low-wattage, yellowish bulb, but it’s like you get on mirror-wall escalators in malls and old department stores. It’s not optimal, hence the candle stand. He wanted a controlled effect. So far as we can tell, all the naturals originally involved candles.”

  “Janss let his burn down,” Connie said.

  “And that’s what we’ll do,” I said, letting Paul know that it was all right for Connie to know more. He’d accept the decision. “We’ll sit here and let ours burn down.”

  “Turn about,” Paul said.

  “Turn about,” I confirmed.

  “You’ll do it alone?” Connie actually gave a shudder. “It reminds me of that old skipping song we sang at school.”

  “I’m sorry. The what?” Paul asked.

  “A skipping song.” She gave an odd smile, part self-consciousness, part excitement, and recited it in the singsong rhythm of the schoolyard.

  One thing about the night,

  One thing about the day,

  You turn around and meet yourself

  And go the other way.

  She gave another little smile. “The rope would be going really fast, and everyone kept singing it over and over till you had the nerve to turn around. If the rope was long enough, you’d either move back to where you started and duck out, or you’d keep changing directions on the word ‘way’ until you were out. The one who turned the most times won.” She gazed off into the regress. “I guess Janss did his sittings mostly at night.”

  Now she had me. “Why do you say that? The room is completely sealed. It shouldn’t make a difference.”

  “I think it completes the effect. He’s got infinite night in here, but the sense of corridors leading off would be completed at night.”

  “It’s less virtual.”

  “That’s it.” Connie checked her watch, but instead of reminding us she had to go, she surprised me again. “Can I stay part of this? I won’t intrude. I’d just like to … well, know more.”

  “We’ll consider it, Connie,” I said, the best refusal I could manage after a long flight and having been awake for twenty hours.

  “You hope to find Janss.”

  “We’re doing this irrespective of Janss,” I said too quickly, too harshly. “Excuse me.”

  “Can you explain that?” she asked. “Before I go?” Connie Peake was proving to be a master at this, and her enthusiasm was infectious.

  Paul came to my aid. “Janss left no journals, no papers, doesn’t seem to have had a computer. We probably won’t ever know what he was really doing. We’ll have to go by what he made here.”

  “It’s like archaeology,” Connie said and turned to me again. “That other word you said about using mirrors. Catop—catop—something.”

  “Catoptromancy. Catoptrics is the branch of optics concerned with reflection, with forming images using mirrors. Catoptromancy is scrying by mirrors. A catoptromantium is an arrangement, sometimes
a room, for doing this.”

  I hoped my tone would warn her off, remind her that I wanted to examine the room with Paul. She did begin to move to the door.

  “So you can’t know for certain if a room was meant as a psychomantium or not?”

  “No, the distinction has been lost.” My tone was even cooler. Please go, Connie, go. “It’s more dramatic to talk of contacting the dead. It gets the media attention.” Why was I encouraging her?

  “I bet. And I guess you have lots of models at home. Miniature rooms made of mirror tiles.”

  She’d done it again. I had to laugh. “Yes, I do. It’s a hobby.”

  “It’s more than that,” she said. “You’re trying to know something. Look, Andy, can I see you? Can we go for a coffee or a meal?” She was so direct it stunned me. It was as if Paul wasn’t even standing there.

  “Connie, ask me another time. I’ve just arrived. I’m jet-lagged and there’s a lot to do.”

  “Of course. But another time. Please.”

  “Another time,” I said, and we saw her out, to discover that the weather had turned. Rain squalls blew in across the river and the park, keeping farewells to a minimum. We watched Connie drive off, then hurried inside. Paul locked the back door behind us.

  “Sorry, Andy. She was more high-maintenance than I expected.”

  “But valuable, Paul. We don’t have a pedigree for this one, and the chances of demolition are considerable. It’s all we can do.”

  Another time, we’d have postponed our first session, allowing for my jet lag, or Paul would have done a solo sitting. But we really didn’t know how long we’d have, and we’d been at so few sites together that we wanted to make a start, to log the room’s properties and just enjoy being there. Tomorrow we’d alternate solo sittings, overlapping a half hour or so to share information, then try another joint sitting later in the week, if we had that long.

  Paul brought in a chair from Janss’s makeshift bedroom out back and we sat with our camcorders and Pentaxes, taking footage and snapping dozens of shots, first by the overhead light, then using the new candle fitted in the stand.

  It didn’t matter that it was windy and rainy outside. In Janss’s mirror room, it was lit as if for night. There were no windows for the rain to beat against, just blind brick. In a real sense, time had ceased to matter. We could have been anywhere, and in day or night for all the difference it made.

  Though Connie had been right. It did make a difference. Of course it did. Doing this at night would complete something when the candle burned away. When darkness was restored.

  We measured the room’s dimensions next—smiling as we always did at the play on words—dividing the space into a clock face for easy reference. The door in its mirror wall was at six o‘clock; that wall’s juncture with the next, going clockwise, was seven; the center of that face eight; the next juncture nine, and so on. Twelve o’clock was directly opposite the door; the concealed light switch was at eleven, a tiny, cunningly hidden press button, virtually invisible unless you knew where to look.

  We didn’t move the bentwood chair, of course. Its position to the left of the candle was as Janss had last had it, his back not to six o‘clock but facing the full mirror wall at two, with the eight-o’clock mirror wall behind. It had to be significant.

  Paul and I were enjoying ourselves. His long-suffering wife, Cindy, had sent along a “care package,” as she called it: chicken sandwiches, blueberry muffins, and a thermos of coffee, complete with a note: Don’t stay up too late.

  When we were finally settled in our chairs, we shared a modest candlelit meal with our myriad selves out along the ever-dwindling boulevards, remarking on whatever details of construction or effect caught our attention, even beginning to work out a timetable for the next day Paul would do a four-hour morning watch before going in to the office. I’d do the late afternoon and evening, and he’d pick me up around nine.

  Connie was right. I wanted to be there at night. Night did make a difference.

  Inevitably we fell silent, looking off into the regress. As in other dedicated mirror rooms we’d logged, all the familiar things were there: the certainty of valid distance and genuine form, the sense of being watched, the uncanny stillness in which the smallest actions—gestures, sudden turns of head or body—sent immediate and startling motion across the lines, set crowds of ourselves gesturing, mimicking, almost urging stillness again by their manic imitation.

  Paul and I knew the routine; nothing had to be said. We became utterly still, gazing into the deep, horizontal domains as Janss must have. In our sweaters and slacks, we made a dark knot at the heart of each chamber; faces and hands glowing in the candlelight like countless studies for Rembrandt’s “Nightwatch.” The corridors and mirror rooms took that calm as far as the eye could see, into the impossibility of dimensions that couldn’t exist, yet did: space wrested from illusion, imposed on perception, demanding to be real.

  We managed nearly two hours before jet-lag torpor made me call it quits. We hadn’t let the candle burn away yet, but my journey across the world was already worth it. If Janss turned up right now, even if the police arrived and evicted us, we’d been in the Janss room at 67 Ferry Street. We were smiling as we went out into the rainy night and drove home.

  I SLEPT LATE, lulled by rain on the roof and wind around the eaves, and never saw Paul leave for his early sitting. An old friend of Cindy’s dropped by and I didn’t get to Ferry Street until after five. The rain had continued. The harsh autumn wind gusted in the trees, and the park and the river were reduced to so many inkwash veils in the chill afternoon.

  I was glad to lock the back door behind me, to place my bag in the laundry and enter the mirror room again. Paul had left the ceiling light on, with a precisely measured candle in the stand so I could do a burn-down. It would take two hours. My mobile was off. My checklist and clipboard were on my lap, my tai-chi chime ball in my pocket. There was a penlight in case it was needed; my main torch, camcorder, and camera were on the floor at my feet. Everything was ready.

  At 6:00 sharp, I lit the candle, switched off the overhead light and returned to the chair, sitting with my eyes closed for maybe a minute so they could adjust. Finally, I opened them on the miracle of the mirror world.

  I sat at the hub of an amazing wheel. Stretching away on all sides were corridors that existed only as reflection, arching off into replicated chambers of stars where other solitary watchers sat, eternally together, eternally alone. Each separate wall of the hexagon led into another hexagonal mirror room in which I was turned away, which then led into another where I was angled back, on and on, this way, that way, off to infinity, but with curves and archings according to counter-reflection and the imperfections and anomalies of the mirrors themselves.

  In the ten-o‘clock wall, lines of Andy Galt made an infinite corridor to the right. In the nine-o’clock wall, he arced to the left, then right, then left again in those puzzling alternations no one could satisfactorily explain. If I looked near where two mirrors joined, there was a boulevard, the sense of a shadowed avenue between infinite lines of Andy.

  Mesmerizing didn’t cover it. It was compelling, arresting, powerfully entrancing. I’d focus on a corridor, find myself staring at it, down it, across it, along all those curving lines of myself made into a string of honey-colored moons, party lanterns strung out forever along drained midnight canals and antique avenues. Yes, I was at the center of a universe. No other term came close. Janss had made himself a universe here, an orrery of realms in an arrangement few ever got to see, had brought endlessness into a red (and gray)-brick suburban home, put eternity into grains of sand and silvered glass.

  I logged the usual tricks when they came, the catoptric anomalies triggered in brains not intended to face things like infinite regress: the twelfth or seventeenth figure out behaving differently, the conviction of a light source not my own, the sense of rippling or of movements delayed or prefigured somewhere among the myriad forms, the constant g
ame of “Simon Says” you played until you were sure one doppelganger was truly, even purposely, out of sync.

  Complex mirror reflections like this had no precedent in nature, hadn’t existed for the eye and brain to adapt to in the evolution equation. Perhaps mirrors were the most profound, the most dangerous, the very worst human invention. They suborned the integrity of the mind, couldn’t do otherwise. We were never meant to have mirrors more elaborate than calm pools, clear ice walls, lightning-fused sandglass, and sandstorm-scoured sheets of metal or mica, dishes of water, blocks of obsidian, screens of iron pyrites, or oddities like Dr. Dee’s lump of polished coal.

  In the second hour, torpor took its toll, had me nodding off until—using the old Thomas Edison trick—I dropped the chime ball I was holding in my left hand and woke myself.

  That was the cycle until 7:52, when the candle was barely a finger’s width above the cup. The rooms were dimming on every side, readying themselves for night. It seemed as bright as ever, but that was an illusion. My eyes had adjusted to what light there was, had made an Indian-summer noon out of a generous twilight. It was like the heat death of the universe out there, all that warmth and life being drawn away in subtle shifts, like some pattern of entropy replicated in an insect’s eye. Janss had seen this, had been in this chair, seeing these gradations of night come.

  Absurdly, I recalled the title of a Giacometti sculpture: “The Palace at 4 A.M.” It felt like that dead hour now.