by C Ross
R.E.L.
He was a coward and he let stronger men die for him.
I didn’t say that out loud to the curious boy in front of me,
looking so hopeful for tales of adventure and fun.
I thought of the innocent question again, what was his grandfather like in the war?
I can’t think of anything but of that craven hiding in the dirt while the brave dropped around him.
Telling the truth was out of the question. How could I disappoint this boy?
He didn’t need to know or fear that he had the blood of a gutless man in him.
I lied.
“I was… lucky.”
But that wasn’t a lie. I look now at the precious innocent life in front and my beautiful family surrounding me, I am lucky.
Gabriel’s Horn
I begin this diary out of sheer necessity. I fear I will forget certain facts which may be crucial for determining the truth behind my abnormal discovery. In order to leave no stone unturned, I will tell my story from the very morning I came in contact with it.
The journey to the Scottish coastline where my new home lay took a night and a day, the weather was fine and I read the majority of the trip. The house stood precariously near a high cliff, where the waves crashed with ferocity a fair way below. Everything about the place felt stoic, though I felt the very opposite. As I approached the house I felt some internal flicked on that tugged at my cowardly tendencies. They’re going to hate you for leaving, a meek voice whispered. It was a voice I had once followed. I will return back and be drafted in some war I don’t believe in. The war was far away now; I had a fresh start in this cottage by the sea away from harassing army recruiters. My acquisition of the cottage was a mystery until I found further clues to its benefactor within the cottage, specifically a curious letter. I’ll delve into what was curious about this letter later, but first I want to give my impression of my new home.
The doors, walls and windows creak a welcome greeting as I enter the living room. Part of me tries to resist labelling it a complete dump, I need to make the most of my opportunities from here on out and compromise with my negative thoughts; we’ll say it has ‘room for improvement.’ And so does its new owner I admitted to myself.
Throwing my clothes in the least decrepit cupboard I settled onto the stiff bed. The last owner had been as decrepit as his home. He was my distant uncle, a Mr Eastman, who must have taken a liking to me even though I can barely remember meeting him as a small child. He was the black sheep of his family, and he escaped the pointless war of his generation as well… which is why he probably liked this secluded corner of the world. The same reason it appeals to me. When I first arrived I found the letter he had left me, its white paper was obvious among the drab. It read as follows:
Dear nephew,
You have by now entered my humble hobble. I hope the road up was not too difficult for you, I have a lot of hard feelings for that long road which was especially tough on my ancient legs these past winters. I have no hard feelings for this house, it is here that I have found true happiness despite solitude. From what I have heard of you I think you will too. I will cut to the point, and so disprove the notion most old men don’t know when to shut up. My end is coming soon and I have talked enough. Enjoy the house, but try to free yourself from those fetters that have held you down before you exiled yourself from society-- do not downplay it, this is an exile. Free yourself especially vanity, cease to put value on how you look to others. Do not look deeply into the mirrors other than to remind yourself the colour of your eyes, especially not here.
I never had any children but I hope that you will think of me as some sort of guardian to you. Like you I also escaped here during the war of my time, and now it seems you are about to do the same. I know how cruel my brother could be especially when he sensed weakness in others, be strong. You may feel sorry for yourself and what others will think of you for fleeing the war-- but at least you are alive to feel sorry.
Good luck,
Your Uncle Eastman.
The letter summoned raw feelings from the past. I felt strangely despondent after reading it, I decided to look towards a hopeful future. The first task in building a better future life here was alleviating the haunted manor vibe surrounding the house. And the first job for that task was to remove that god awful mirror that almost takes up a whole wall. It was an old fashioned golden frame mirror, the cobwebs draped over were obstructing the reflection showing a view of the churning ocean behind me. Something was missing in all this. And I couldn’t pick it, the disturbance in the room had increased tenfold. Before I could determine the cause of this sudden and unnatural feeling, a man entered the room behind me. I froze, knowing with utter certainty that I was the coward I have always feared I was (despite my constant mental burial of the fact). I couldn’t will my body to move, attack him, or at least run! The intruder surveyed the room and seemed to look straight past me. And he turned to the mirror and his face became visible, I let out a scream as I looked into the face of the man whose face belonged to me. He was practically identical.
With a brief surge of courage, I spun around to witness this impossibility with my bare eyes. The room was empty. I looked back to the mirror. This doppelgänger seemed to only exist in the world reflected by the mirror. He was just exploring the room just as I had done moments earlier. And with that, a new equally terrifying realisation hit me, the source of my previous original unease, before the doppelgänger appeared, was that within this mirror I hadn’t a reflection of my own.
My face contorted to an expression of horror in the mirror. I still couldn’t comprehend, but the fact remained: somehow, my reflection was slow. I was watching myself become aware of this very concept. I winked at the mirror and then counted in my head to measure the delay. 20 seconds slow. I cast a moth eaten blanket over the bewitched mirror. With no light entering the cursed object I felt safer. At length and with great effort I convinced myself that this was some peculiarity science could explain. However, the logic I used was twisted and contorted upon the impossible facts that lay before me. I went to bed that night but tossed and turned the whole night, not only did the discovery disturb me but also my own appearance. For the first time I saw how others perceived me.
I woke in the morning with ideas on how I would proceed. One thing that was a certainty would be the massive attention, and since I do legally own the mirror, there could even be profit to be had. People would flock for miles to see themselves in the “Delayed Mirror”, it will be famous, I will be famous. Mulling over my grand plans I decided to check the mirror again. I pulled off the sheet to reveal my own surprised face, (in the present). It was if the enchantment had worn off. Had I simply dreamt the events of yesterday?
Although disappointed that the reflection now seemed to be synchronised with reality, a sense of relief soon followed. I would be spared from dealing with an arcane mystery it seemed.
Perhaps I had jumped to the conclusion that object was somehow divine too quickly. There’s the possibility it is some sort of mechanism, working through smoke and mirrors like a magician, though it is unlike any trick I have seen. Cautiously, I pressed my hands around the frame of the mirror for any signs of trickery. There was no sign of any hidden apparatus that I could see, I flipped around the mirror so that I was looking at its back. The rear was strange in that the golden frame was engraved on the back as well as the front, there was no practical point to this. Another peculiarity was the back seemed to be plastered with some sort of hardened plaster that looked to be gypsum. Pieces crumbled off it as if it had been placed long ago, I wonder if this was my Uncle’s doing, and if so, what was he hiding? I found a loose piece of the dried gypsum about the size of a keyhole. A glimmer of light shone through. Before I could speculate on this, I gasped with fright when I noticed single eye peering out at me.
I couldn’t believe my eyes and swung out of the eyes gaze. I dared not look in the eye again for several moments, fearful of its gaze. Finally
plucking up the courage I marched over and looked through the small hole. I could see the same room I was sitting in, there was a figure rummaging through the back drawers who I could barely make out. I decided on the spot to make the hole bigger by piling off the hardened plaster piece by piece. The figure came into view, it was me. So this backside was a mirror as well, and it was also out of sync with reality. However, it was not projecting the past, for I had only pressed my eye to the hole after I had witnessed myself doing it. The inevitable conclusion: this mirror seemed to be projecting the future before it even occurred.
I decided to swing my hand up to test my hypothesis, as I swung my hand I noticed my reflection’s hand was already up in the air. This couldn’t be a trick. I couldn’t resist blinking incessantly as my reflection blinked a fraction ahead of me. There was no earthly explanation for this, it was the work of God… or perhaps his counterpart.
My fixated thoughts took a turn into the philosophical. Was I truly in control of my fate if this mirror could predict my actions, did this miraculous object destroy the concept of free will? Before I fathom the effects this would have on humankind’s perception of the universe, my reflection seemed to be