I started to mop more quickly. I wanted to get it over with. Finish up. Take my money and run. Faster and faster I mopped. And faster and faster the freaky copies moved with me.
I turned a corner and faced a door.
On it was a sign which simply said: RICHARD’S ROOM.
3
A small building stood within the tent. Made of steel. About twice the size of a toilet.
Richard’s Room? What did that mean? Had Mr Image put that sign there especially for me? Or was there another Richard? And what was inside?
I didn’t know whether I was supposed to sweep in there or not. ‘Hey,’ I called out. ‘Hey.’ The silent army of terrible copies in the mirrors mouthed my words in silence. Jagged, torn mouths of every shape seemed to be laughing at me. Copies of myself.
It was like being left alone in bed in the dark of night. You hear a noise. You want to call out ‘Mum’. But if there is a burglar, if there is an intruder, he will know where you are. And come for you like a shadow.
‘Don’t be silly,’ I said to myself. ‘Don’t be stupid. It’s just a room.’
I pushed open the door and stepped inside with my mop and bucket.
There was nothing in the room except one mirror, which filled up a whole wall. Not a trick mirror. It was straight and flat like the ones in your bathroom at home. The wall opposite the mirror was covered by a picture. A huge painting which reached from the floor to the ceiling. A scene with a flat plain that was edged with jungle growth.
The door clicked shut behind me. Just a soft sound. But I knew, I just knew that it was as final as the clang of a noisy lock on a jail cell.
There was no handle.
Just a keyhole.
No way of escape.
‘Hey,’ I screamed. ‘Help. Let me out.’ My words were soaked up by the thick walls. I knew that no one could hear me. I kicked and shouted and punched the door. It didn’t move. Not even a rattle.
I was alone.
Or was I? The mirror glowed faintly as if it had a light of its own. I moved over and stared into it. The warmth from my body drained out through my feet and I shivered in horror. It was not an ordinary mirror. I could see the reflection of the wall behind me. The flat plain. The jungle. The vines and creepers and thorns. The towering trees. They were all there.
But I wasn’t.
I couldn’t see my own reflection. It was just as if I wasn’t there.
I turned back to the door and began kicking and screaming and yelling. I kicked until my foot hurt. But no one came. I was locked away from the world in this silent room. I might as well have been in a coffin way under the ground. No one could hear me. No one except Mr Image knew where I was.
I stared into the softly glowing mirror. Something had changed. Something was different. There, across the plain. In a tree. On the edge of the jungle was something like a coconut on a tree. But it was moving. It ducked back out of sight.
A face. Someone or something was living inside the mirror.
I turned back to the door. ‘Get me out of here,’ I screamed.
No reply. I turned back to the mirror. The figure was no longer in the tree. It was moving closer. Dodging from one clump of grass to the other. It saw me and stopped. Almost as if frozen by my gaze.
Could this really be happening? I rubbed my eyes and then stared. Zip. It had moved closer.
Now I could see the figure more clearly. It was a person. Staring at me from the cover of a small bush. A person who I thought I knew.
My heart was pounding like a million mallets. My hands were clammy and cold.
I tried to stop panic taking control of me. I tried to force my brain to think. I didn’t want this mirror man to come closer. I had to help myself. There was no one else.
I snatched a glance at the door. How could I get out?
Then I turned back to the mirror. He had snuck up. And he wasn’t a mirror man. He was a mirror boy. Sneaking forward every time I looked away. There was something about him. What was it?
I stared and stared, trying not to blink. He stared back from a distance. Waiting for his chance to move forward.
Time passed. The seconds and minutes dragged by like a slug in the sunshine.
Who was he? I decided to find out. I closed my eyes and counted to five.
Oh, no. No, no, no. Now he was much, much closer. And I could see his face. I knew who he was.
Me. The boy was me. My nose, my ears, my hair. It was me but not me. Not a reflection. More like a living shadow.
He froze under my gaze. I was scared. More frightened than I have ever been in my life.
Think. Use your brain, Richard. That’s what I told myself. He wouldn’t or couldn’t move forward while I was watching him.
I stared harder and harder. Not even blinking. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like me looking at him. Like a startled rabbit in the beam of a spotlight he blinked and shuffled. And started to move backwards.
‘Go,’ I said to myself in the mirror. ‘Go, go, go.’
Slowly and then faster and faster, he moved away. Suddenly he turned and ran back into the jungle. He clambered up a tree. I could see him there. A tiny distant face. Like a coconut in among the branches.
But I knew he was waiting. Looking for his chance to creep up.
‘Ah, Richard,’ said a soft, wet voice, ‘there you are.’
4
I hadn’t heard the door open. But I heard it click shut. And I knew who it was. Mr Image.
‘Look at me,’ he said.
I snatched a glance. He was staring into the mirror himself.
I knew his game. He wanted me to look away from the mirror. So that my mirror shadow could sneak up again.
I wasn’t falling for that. No way.
‘Look at me when I speak to you,’ he hissed.
I was his prey. Like a fly in a spider’s web.
But I was in control. There was no way I was going to take my eyes off that shadow-boy in the mirror. No way. It wasn’t going to sneak up on me.
I edged away from Mr Image. If he grabbed me and wrestled me to the floor it would give my shadow time to run up. Mr Image moved with me. I could feel his jacket brushing against me.
‘Look at me,’ he screeched. He didn’t grab me. He was transfixed. He was staring into the mirror himself. Suddenly I realised why. There was another figure on the edge of the forest. Wearing a baseball cap. Unshaven and rough.
Mr Image had a shadow in the mirror himself.
Suddenly Mr Image lost his cool. He turned and grabbed me by the arm. ‘Look here, look here,’ he shouted.
But I didn’t. I watched Mr Image’s shadow sprint across the plain. Closer, closer. Jumping tussocks of grass. Dashing furiously towards us. The shadow was a copy of Mr Image. Another person like himself. Similar but not the same.
Mr Image grabbed my head. He twisted it towards himself. The pain in my neck was terrible. He was too strong for me. His own hatred and terror filled him with enormous strength.
I tried to speak but could only wheeze out the words, ‘He’s coming for you, Mr Image.’
He gave a strangled scream and let go. He peered into the mirror and saw his own shadow almost upon us. He stared and stared with wide-open eyes. The shadow halted. Frozen by his gaze.
Mr Image was terrified of the other version of himself. But I wasn’t. The copy of Mr Image was not a copy. It was an opposite. It had a kind, loving face with warm eyes.
My own hateful shadow was now halfway across the plain. It had snuck up when Mr Image grabbed my head. It had been waiting for its chance.
There in the mirror our shadows were held frozen by our stares. Neither of us could look away.
Mr Image began to walk backwards in the small room. The door behind was locked. But he could get out. He would know how to open the door. He was feeling in his pocket for the key.
‘I think you need a little more time on your own,’ he said.
He was going to leave me in there by myself. In the
end I would have to take my eyes off the mirror. In the end I would have to fall asleep.
And then. And then.
The shadow would come for me.
I had to do something. I had to stop Mr Image rushing out of that door. He took another step backwards.
Suddenly I tore my eyes away from the mirror. So did Mr Image. He was fumbling around with a key, trying to get it into the lock.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the two shadows sprinting towards us. Mr Image’s shadow was much closer. Almost up to us. My own was further back across the plain but running fast.
I looked around for a weapon. And found one.
‘Cop this,’ I shouted.
I threw the contents of the bucket into Mr Image’s face. He screamed as the soapy water stung his eyes. He rubbed and wiped and wept in anger. But he couldn’t see.
I fixed my shadow with a stare. And held him there. Inside his glass prison.
Mr Image’s shadow was closing the gap. Running furiously. Bigger and closer. He was upon us. He leapt at the mirror from the other side. Like a horse clearing a hurdle he passed through the mirror. He landed at the feet of Mr Image, who was still screaming and rubbing his eyes.
Without a word the shadow grabbed Mr Image, lifted him above his head and twirled him around. Then he threw him into the mirror.
Mr Image screamed. A drawn-out, horrible cry. It was pitched so high that it hurt my ears. Then, like a glass broken by the voice of an opera singer, the mirror shattered. It fell to the floor in a million pieces. Mr Image was gone. Trapped inside his own mirror.
I turned and faced Mr Image’s shadow.
He smiled at me with a warm, kind face. Little crinkles ran out beside his friendly eyes. The shadow was nothing to fear.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘It’s nice to be back.’
The shadow unlocked the door and took me out into the sunshine. ‘Here’s your pay,’ he said. ‘Ten dollars as agreed.’
He was such a nice man. He really was.
I smiled back at him. ‘What was all that about?’ I asked as I took the money. ‘Did it really happen?’
He nodded. ‘Everyone has a shadow,’ he said. ‘We all have a mixture. Strong and weak. Kind and cruel. Generous and mean.’
I shivered. ‘I’m scared of my own shadow,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘Don’t be,’ he said. ‘Take a walk in the sun. Think about it.’
5
I did take a walk. Past the animal nursery. The man on stilts. The busker playing the violin. The man throwing fire-sticks into the air, and all the stalls selling jewellery and scented candles. Little kids with their balloons. Mothers and fathers pushing prams.
It was really busy. But I didn’t feel part of it. I couldn’t stop thinking about my shadow.
The thing about it was this. Your shadow couldn’t get you if you kept an eye on it. You could learn to live with the other side of yourself. It really wasn’t so bad. We all do selfish things now and then. But so what? Just don’t let it get out of hand.
That’s how I figured it anyway. I wandered back towards the Hall of Mirrors. I wanted to ask the man from the mirror if I was right.
But he was gone. The grass was all flattened where the tent had been. He had packed up and left.
The guy with the earrings and the tattoos was still there with his tent though. I walked over to him. ‘I’ve got a question,’ I said.
He leered at me with a raised eyebrow. But he gave me the answer all the same.
‘Five dollars,’ he told me.
I pushed the five dollars into his hand and went in to have a peek at Bubbles Bo Bo.
Okay, so my mum wouldn’t like it. And some people might even think I was a sleaze. But what the heck. There’s two sides to all of us.
No one’s perfect.
Dad was scabbing around in the rubbish.
‘How embarrassing,’ said Pete. ‘It’s lucky there’s no one else here to see us.’
I looked around the tip. He was right. No one was dumping rubbish except us. There was just Dad, me, and my twin brother Pete. The man driving the bulldozer didn’t count. He was probably used to people coming to the tip with junk and then taking a whole pile of stuff back home.
It was a huge tip with a large, muddy pond in the middle. I noticed a steer’s skull on a post in the water. There were flies everywhere, buzzing and crawling over the disgusting piles. Thousands of seagulls were following the bulldozer looking for rotten bits of food.
‘These country tips are fantastic,’ yelled Dad. ‘Come and help me get this.’ He was trying to dig out an old pram. I looked around and groaned. Another car had just pulled up. It was a real flash one. A Mercedes.
We had just arrived in Allansford the day before. It was a little country town where everybody would know what was going on. Pete and I had to start at a new school the next day. The last thing we wanted was someone to see us digging around in the tip.
A man and a boy got out of the Mercedes. They had a neat little bag of rubbish which the man dropped onto the ground. A cloud of flies rose into the air. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ the man said to the boy. ‘This place stinks.’
The boy was about my age but he was twice as big as me. He had red hair and he looked tough. I could see that he was grinning his head off and staring at our car. The back seat of our old bomb was full of Dad’s findings. There was a mangled typewriter, a baseball bat, two broken chairs, a torn picture of a green lady lying on a tree branch and a bike with no wheels. I blushed. Dad just could not go to the tip without taking half of it back home with him.
I looked up at the kid with red hair again. He was pointing at Dad and laughing fit to bust. ‘Oh no,’ groaned Pete. ‘Look what he has got now.’
Dad had run over to the bulldozer and held up his hand to stop the driver. He was digging around in front of its blade. He had found an arm sticking out of the junk. It looked like a human arm but it wasn’t. It was the arm of one of those shop dummies they put dresses on. Dad pulled and yelled and jiggled until he got the whole thing out. Then he stood there holding it up for all the world to see. A female shop dummy with no clothes on.
It had a wig for hair but apart from that it was stark naked. Its left arm pointed up at the sky. It looked like Dad was standing there with a naked woman. The red-haired kid and his father were both laughing by now. The boy bent down and picked up something from the ground. Then they got into their Mercedes and disappeared through the gate. Pete and I hung our heads with shame. We couldn’t bring ourselves to look as Dad dragged the dummy back to the car. I hoped like anything that the red-haired kid didn’t go to Allansford School.
‘Wonderful,’ hooted Dad as he examined the shop dummy. ‘Your mother will be pleased. She can use this for making dresses.’
‘Don’t give me that,’ yelled Pete. ‘You promised Mum that you wouldn’t bring anything back from the tip.’
Dad looked a bit sheepish. ‘This is different, boys. This isn’t junk. This is valuable stuff. Now give me a hand to get this dummy into the car.’
‘Not me,’ I said.
‘Nor me,’ added Pete. ‘I’m not touching her. She hasn’t got any clothes on. It’s rude.’
2
There was no room in the back of the car so Dad sat her up in the front. He put the seatbelt on her to stop her falling over. Her lifted-up arm poked through a rust hole in the roof.
‘Where are we supposed to sit?’ I asked. ‘There’s no room in the back.’
‘One on each side of her,’ said Dad. ‘We’ll all sit in the front. There’s plenty of room.’
So that’s how we went home. Shame. Oh terrible shame. Driving along the road with a naked dummy sitting between us. Every time we passed someone Pete and I ducked down so that they couldn’t see us. Dad just laughed. It was all right for him. He wasn’t starting at a new school in the morning.
Then it happened. A blue flashing light. A siren. A loud voice saying, ‘Pull over driver.’
It was the police.
A policeman got off his motorbike and walked slowly to the car. He pulled off his gloves and adjusted his sunglasses. Then he leaned in the window. ‘What’s this naked lady …?’ he started off in a cross voice. But then he started laughing. He doubled up holding his side and pointing to the dummy. ‘We had a report that there was a naked woman,’ he managed to get out in between gasps. ‘But it’s only a shop dummy.’
I thought he was never going to stop laughing but finally he said, ‘Where did you get all this stuff, sir?’
‘The Allansford tip,’ answered Dad.
‘The locals call it Haunted Tip,’ said the policeman with a grin. He seemed to want to stay and talk. He probably was trying to figure out if Dad was a nut case or not. Pete and I just sat there trying not to be seen. ‘No one will go there after dark,’ he told us. ‘They say the ghost of Old Man Chompers walks that tip at night.’
‘Old Man Chompers?’ said Dad.
‘Yes, he was the caretaker of the tip long ago. They say he was minding his two grandchildren there one day. The children disappeared and were never found. The ground collapsed and all the rubbish fell into a huge hole. People think the children were buried under piles of rubbish. Their bodies were never discovered because the hole filled up with water and formed a lake. Not long after that Old Man Chompers died. People say they have seen him walking the tip at night. He pokes at the rubbish, turning things over. He is looking for his lost grandchildren. He moans and calls out for his lost darlings.’
I shivered and looked at Pete. ‘You won’t catch me going to that tip again,’ I said.
‘Good,’ said the policeman. ‘It’s a dangerous spot. No place for kids. Anyway – it is said that Old Man Chompers can’t leave the tip until he finds his darlings. He has to stay there until he finds them. That’s why he wanders the lonely tip at night. He might think that you two would do instead, if he caught you there.’ Then he said something that made my knees wobble. ‘His grandchildren were twins. And Old Man Chompers had poor eyesight. He might mistake you boys for his lost grandchildren.’ The policeman looked us straight in the eyes and then turned and walked off, chuckling as he went.
Paul Jenning's Spookiest Stories Page 12