Boy in the Mirror

by Robert J. Duperre

  Olivia was waiting for her outside her apartment when she reached the third floor, grinning and gritting her teeth. “Finally! What took you so long?”

  “Sorry, got hung up,” she replied. Annette was the only one who knew about Mitzy running off, and Jacqueline wasn’t sure if she wanted anyone else to know. Annette was the only one who knew about a lot of things, actually.

  “Dude, everyone’s here already. This is your gig. Andale. Let’s go!”

  Jacqueline said a quick hello to Miss Sabuco and Olivia’s older sister Maria, who were sitting at the kitchen table, before Olivia dragged her down the hallway and into the living room. “Mama, when’re you going to the store?” Olivia called out.

  “A couple minutes,” Miss Sabuco shouted back.

  “Get us some chips, ’kay?”

  “All right.”

  The Otakus were all in the living room waiting for her. Annette gave Jacqueline a conspirator’s stare. She mouthed, You okay? Jacqueline nodded.

  Olivia grabbed the bags off Jacqueline’s shoulders, tossed them aside. “Stay awhile,” she said. “And look excited, chica!”

  “Um, okay.”

  Olivia rolled her eyes. “That’s the spirit.”

  Keys jangled out in the hallway, the front door opened and closed as Miss Sabuco and Maria left. “It’s time.” Olivia ran out of the room, and when she returned, breathless, she carried the thick book she’d taken from the Coppington estate.

  Jacqueline sat on the couch next to Annette. Neil and Ronni shoved over to give her room. Olivia paced in front of them, the book clutched to her chest.

  “This is so exciting,” she said. Olivia stopped her pacing and looked in Jacqueline and Annette’s direction. “It’s gonna happen. Tomorrow’s the day! You excited yet?”

  Jacqueline shrugged. “Sure.”

  “You’re such a thrill, Jackie,” Olivia sighed. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “It’s better to keep calm about this stuff, Olive,” Annette said, saving her. “This is mysticism. Not even sure if it’ll work.”

  Olivia looked exacerbated. “Then why’d you wanna try?”

  “To see if we can,” said Annette.

  Neil reached over and slapped the tiny girl five.

  “Okay, well you guys can be stoic all you want. I’ll stay pumped. I mean, come on! Ya can’t tell me the possibility people used to use that old mirror to open a line of communication with the afterlife isn’t exciting.”

  Jacqueline thought of the vision of her parents, trapped and screaming inside the mirror, and shuddered.

  “It’ll be exciting if it works,” said Annette. “Until then, it’s just a theory. An insane theory.”

  “I think it’s kinda neat,” whispered Ronni. “Getting to talk to your folks after they’re long dead…”

  “Thank you,” Olivia said. “At least someone’s with me.”

  Annette chuckled. “Olive, we all know you’re a spaz. How about doing what we came here to do?”

  “Yes!” Olivia exclaimed, kneeling on the carpet on the other side of the coffee table. Jacqueline leaned forward, jittery. Concern for Mitzy’s whereabouts was pushed to the back of her mind, at least for the moment. She almost wished Mal, hidden in her overnight bag, could be there to listen.

  Olivia presented the book to her friends, its cover wiped clean of dust. The old leather binding shimmered. “I told you that this word is pact in Latin, but I finally figured out what the second world on the cover means. Turns out it’s a Hebrew name. Khayrat. Means ‘benevolence’ or something like that. There’s always tons of different definitions for these old names, though. Anyhow, that means this book’s title is actually The Pact of Khayrat, or something similar. Interesting, huh?’

  Annette nodded. “Okay, cool. But what’s inside?”

  “Most of it’s in Latin, but I translated a few larger passages.” She glanced toward Jacqueline. “Turns out it isn’t about the mirror at all.”

  “No?” Jacqueline asked.

  “Nope. And it’s not as old as I thought either. Most of the book dates to the 1920s, transcribed and updated from a five-hundred year old text written by someone named Yusef Darshmal. Other parts are obviously even newer, but there’s no dates. It’s kinda an all-in-one type thing—part scripture, part history, part pseudo-science I wouldn’t understand if I was smart enough to go to freakin’ MIT.”

  Annette raised her eyebrows. “Examples?”

  There were sticky notes attached to some of the pages. “Take this,” Olivia said, flipping open the book to an illustration of a mechanical disc of some sort, all its parts spread out. The illustration was titled Cragton. “It’s a blueprint. I got no clue what the hell it’s supposed to be, but the words are strange. That word there means containment. The one over there means connection, and that one over there, next to the pointy-looking thing, actually means antennae.”

  “What’s it do?” asked Ronni.

  “Like I said, I don’t got a clue.”

  Neil cackled. “Okay then, how ’bouts you show us something you do have a clue about?”

  “Fine.” Olivia skimmed deeper into the book. “This here’s a long bit. Kind of an origin story, I guess. It talks all about this Khayrat dude, which I think is another name for God. Here, listen to this; ‘Khayrat came down from the heavens, and His light bathed the people in warmth. He promised to take from them their wills, their passions, and in return they would have everlasting peace, a place in the Garden by the Father’s side, none would know hunger, strife, anger, war, famine.’ Then I guess the people turned their back on ol’ Khayrat, God left their hearts, blah, blah, so on and so on. It goes on like that for a while.”

  “Is this, like, old timey fiction or something?” asked Neil.

  “I doubt it,” Olivia said. “You ask me, this is some weirdo cult’s bible.”

  “Makes sense,” said Ronni softly.

  Neil nodded. “Legends say old Gabriella Coppington worshipped the devil.”

  “Well, if this was her book, she didn’t worship the devil. It’s more like…‌shoot, I don’t know…‌like Scientology, if Scientology actually had anything to do with science. Well, weird science, anyway.”

  “Weird science?” Annette asked.

  Olivia rifled through the pages. “I didn’t really get into a ton of translations of the sciency bits, mostly ’cause I didn’t understand it and Annette said I needed to be quick. There’s stuff on astronomy and astrology, chemical compounds, that sort of thing. This part talks about spiritual positioning—you know, organizing your house to get the proper flow of energy, like feng shui. And check this out! I only looked at the first paragraph, but it looks a little like string theory; a bunch of stuff about disappearing particles and overlapping realities and all that.”

  That perked Neil up. “Really? From five hundred years ago? Damn.”

  “Maybe,” Olivia said with a shrug. “Could’ve been part of one of the updates. Then there’s this.” She swiveled the book back around, tapping her finger on the page. Jacqueline joined her friends in staring at a diagram of a female figure in the center of a circle, her arms and legs splayed. It looked kind of like a DaVinci piece—Venetian Man or something.

  “What’s that?” asked Ronni.

  Olivia smiled. “This whole section’s about creating a flawless human through centuries of genetic manipulation. It’s all spelled out here.” She pinched at least a hundred pages between her fingers. “I didn’t translate it. Way too much info. But the parts I skimmed through had ethnic interbreeding, mutations, the attributes of different tribes in different parts of the world, stuff like that. I wish I had time to look at it more. It’s pretty fascinating.”

  Jacqueline pointed to the markings above the illustration. “What’s that say?”

  “Gorgon,” Olivia said, and Jacqueline’s throat clenched. “I think that’s the name they gave this ‘perfect human.’ Though given what they say about it, I don’t know why they’d call it ‘perfe
ct.’”

  “Why?” asked Jacqueline.

  “Just something it says down here. Something about these things called The Infinity Trials, which I know, sounds like a bad Hunger Games rip-off. I guess the Gorgon’s supposed to complete these trials, then cause the end of days. Which completely contradicts that stuff about paradise earlier.”

  “Oh,” Jacqueline said, leaning back on the couch.

  Annette squeezed her hand. “So there’s nothing in there about the mirror we found in the basement?”

  “Not that I’ve seen,” answered Olivia. “But this damn book’s six hundred pages long. You gave me nine days. I got homework and stuff to do too, you know.”

  “I know,” Annette said. “Just wondering. Looking for a connection”

  Olivia perked up, a sly grin on her face. “Well, there is a connection, but not to any mirror,” she said.

  “What?” asked Neil and Ronni at the same time.

  “This is the best part,” Olivia said, flipping to the back of the book. “A list of names, like an appendix. There’s freaking tons of them.”

  Annette screwed up her face. “What’s so special about that?”

  Olivia slid the book across the coffee table. “See for yourself.”

  Jacqueline pressed her nose to the book. There were indeed names written there, each of them followed by a series of letters and numbers. She glanced down the list, and her eyes widened.

  There were two last names that appeared at least fifteen times on that page’s list—the first one being Cottard, the second, Talbot.

  “Huh,” said Neil.

  “That’s your last name,” Ronni whispered.

  “Yup,” Olivia blurted out, grinning at Jacqueline. “Looks like your family was in a cult, chica. And tight with the Cottards too!”

  Jacqueline wrapped her arms around herself. She didn’t know what to say.

  “Talbot’s not exactly an uncommon name,” Annette said, her tone fierce. “Could be anybody. Leave her alone.”

  “Whoa, it’s a joke,” said Olivia.

  “It’s okay,” Jacqueline was able to say. “I get it.”

  “Phew. Friends, right?” She dipped her chin and gave Jacqueline puppy dog eyes.

  “Friends.”

  “Coolness.”

  Neil leaned forward. “What else does the book say? I wanna see more of the physics stuff.”

  “I don’t,” Annette said. “I think we’re done with this for now.” Olivia went to protest, but Annette cut her off. “We got other things to talk about.”

  “Such as?” asked Ronni.

  “Like how we’re all gonna get out of our houses tomorrow night, what books on witchcraft Olive’s gonna bring, what materials we need…‌you know, that sorta thing.”

  Olivia smiled even wider, if that was possible. Jacqueline breathed a sigh of relief when she carried the book out of the room.

  For the next fifteen minutes they sat there and listened to Olivia lecture about the spices and oils they’d need to try a spell, none of which mattered in the slightest. Mal had already told her what she needed, which was her and her alone, plus another particular item. Olivia was going through all this work for nothing, and it made Jacqueline feel guilty.

  Or is she?

  She then thought of her fight with Mitzy. Pulling her phone from her pocket, she stared at the tiny viewing screen. No messages. Her heart sank.

  Olivia’s mom and sister got back home, and everyone hurried into the kitchen to get snacks. Jacqueline snuck the compact out of her overnight bag and excused herself to the bathroom. She sat with the compact unopened on her lap for a long time.

  She’d been hoping for answers, and she’d gotten some. But they weren’t the answers she wanted.

  “Shoot, Mal,” she groaned to the empty bathroom. “What the hell have we gotten into?”

  CHAPTER 45

  Jacqueline lay restless on Olivia’s bedroom floor. Her friend was sleeping peacefully, and Jacqueline wished she could be more like her, just close her eyes and drift away.

  But she couldn’t.

  Gorgon, the book had said. Mal had called her, and himself, that name. Were they destined to end the world together? A grand thought to be sure, but then again it made sense. Everything she touched turned to dust. It was her fault everyone eventually left her. She deserved to be alone. According to the book, it was her fate. Daddy’s daughter after all.

  You’re an idiot, she told herself. Stop letting the world drag you around. Do what you wanna do for once. Make your own damn choices.

  But what if part of her wanted to be that powerful? What if part of her heard the bit about ending the world and was actually intrigued? Did that make her a bad person?

  Jacqueline crawled out of her sleeping bag and went to the bedroom window. It was snowing again, tiny flecks passing beneath the streetlights like a million translucent fairies. The church across the street beckoned her with its stained-glass windows and warm yellow lights. She thought of her dad, toward the end, just before he lost his mind. He’d sometimes disappear when she was sleeping, and one night she’d caught him sneaking back into the house and asked him, in her naïve, ten-year-old way, where he’d gone.

  “To church, sweetie,” he’d said. “St. Mary’s. The good one.”

  “Why?”

  “Because sometimes answers only come when you’re alone with God.”

  This church looked similar to how she remembered St. Mary’s, and she grasped onto what Olivia had said about St. Joseph’s—that it was the only church in town where she’d felt comfortable.

  That’s where she needed to go.

  Jacqueline dressed in silence, quietly lifted Olivia’s apartment key off the dresser, and then crept down the hall. She slipped out the door, and when it clicked shut, the sound was loud as a firecracker. She cringed. Down three flights of stairs and out into the cold she went, holding her compact tight to her breast.

  Snowflakes melted on her cheeks as she headed for the church. It was past one in the morning, and even the highway a mile behind her seemed quiet. A cold wind billowed her hood. She cursed and pulled it taut as she stormed up the church’s front walk.

  The electric candles on either side of the large double doors gave off soft, warming light. Jacqueline tugged on one of the handles, and the door opened easily. Warm air kissed her cheeks, she smelled incense. The door closed behind her with an audible sigh.

  The church’s ceiling was high and arched, pews extending outward to the walls from the central aisle. The only light came from twelve wall-mounted lamps illuminating wooden bas-reliefs depicting Jesus’ final march to Calvary.

  Jacqueline went to the first row of pews, flipped down the kneeler, and kneeled with hands clasped before her, the compact between them. She stared at the altar. A black marble chair sat just beneath a giant statue of Jesus that’d been fastened to the wall. There was a welcoming smile on the statue’s face as He held His arms out in greeting, and Jacqueline found herself smiling as well. She was used to seeing images of a painfully dying Christ; it was actually surprising to see Him depicted any other way.

  She bowed until her forehead touched her clasped fingers. “Please, tell me what to do.”

  “Hello?” asked a man’s voice.

  Jacqueline jerked upright, slipped off the kneeler and jarred her tailbone. She let out a yelp, rubbed the sore spot, and glanced to the right of the altar.

  The same gray-haired priest she’d seen talking to Mr. Mancuso was standing there, a look of great concern on his face. “I’m so sorry,” the priest said. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “It’s okay.” Jacqueline righted herself, slipped the compact into her coat pocket.

  The priest approached, gesturing to the empty bench of polished mahogany beside her. “May I?”

  Jacqueline nodded and slid over. The priest sat down, folding his hands in his lap.

  “I’m Father Gallagher,” he said. “Sorry to frighten you. It’s unusual to ge
t worshippers at this time of night.”

  “Why’re you still awake?”

  Father Gallagher smiled warmly. The deep creases around his mouth made him look kindly and wise. “The Celtics are playing on the west coast, and I never miss a game. My wife says it’s a disease, caring that much about a bunch of men tossing an inflated rubber ball into a hoop. I don’t believe her.” He winked.

  “Oh,” Jacqueline said.

  “So I told you who I am. Who might you be?”

  “Jacqueline,” she replied.

  “Have we met before, Jacqueline? You look familiar.”

  “No.”

  Father Gallagher snapped his fingers. “Ah, I remember. You know Fran.”

  “Fran?”

  “Fran Mancuso. He’s been a member of this parish for years. He dropped you off today.”

  “Yeah, that was me.”

  “Well, Jacqueline, it’s an honor to make your acquaintance.”

  “Yours too.” She shook his hand. His grip was strong but not overly so.

  Father Gallagher leaned back in the pew, crossed one leg over the other, and stared at the statue of Jesus. “So, Miss Jacqueline,” he said, “is there anything you’d like to talk about? Anything you’d like to get off your chest?”

  She hesitated before saying, “Not really.”

  “No?”

  She shook her head.

  “Very well. Some things are between you and God. I’ll be in the sacristy if you wish to talk. It’s that door just around the corner of the altar there.”

  Father Gallagher stood up, his tender brown eyes twinkling when he smiled. Then he turned to leave.

  “Wait,” Jacqueline said.

  The man paused. “Yes?”

  “Is God real?”

  Father Gallagher tilted his head. “What?”

  Tears dribbled down Jacqueline’s cheeks as her words spilled out. “My mom died when I was three. My dad was a nice man who blew up three hundred people before he was executed. People die horribly all the time. Whole countries starve while rich people buy more food than they can eat. Little girls get hurt all over the world, get tortured and abused, and everyone acts like it’s normal.” She wiped snot from her upper lip. “Why would God let that happen?”