Leaves and Shadows

by Christopher Chancy

  She found nothing but the silhouettes constantly pounding on their mirrors. The barrage of sound frayed at her nerves. She tried to tell herself that they didn't matter, they were just stupid reflections. Although their words were harsh, they hadn't harmed her physically and probably couldn’t.

  The unbidden voice in the back of her mind spoke again at last, its dark voice unhindered by the sound waves crashing against her being. “I wouldn’t be so certain of that my dear.”

  She actually paused as its unbridled words crashed through all the barriers of sound and thought. She thought she had left it behind her, far behind in the den of leaves and shadows.

  She felt cold amusement flare from the place it somehow occupied within her core. “Oh no, Erin, my sweet. I’ve been watching your progress from afar this entire time. You can never go anywhere without me.”

  Shut up! she thought fiercely. She felt its cold amusement fade back, watching . . . waiting.

  The pounding intensified even more. Somehow, these glass monsters sensed the exchange she just had. At least she could not hear their individual cat-calling. While they weren’t taunting her independently, they seemed to be working together as a united force.

  She turned down more confusing corridors. It was impossible to get her bearings. She ignored her growing vertigo and continued her route going this way and that. She went left, then right, left, left, right, left, right only to walk into a shadowed dead end. She backtracked and started down another unplanned course. The turns and twists all looked the same. She came to several more dead ends. She continued her trek through the maze for longer than she could estimate all the while calling out Evan’s name into the thunderous dark.

  Her doubts began to plague her more. How could she be sure she had even heard her son’s voice? She continued to bat her insecurities away, but it became increasingly more difficult to do so. Her uncertainty was a fast-growing cancer of the mind that ate away the grip of her tenuous calm. That fear continued to bore through her, trying to reach her core, her sanity, her soul. The forces here wanted to leave her as much of a shell as the limp son in her arms.

  She had something else to contend with. Her body was now reaching the crescendo of what it could possibly do. Willpower or not, she felt depleted. Her adrenaline was beginning to wane. She knew that she must have used up her lifetime supply ten times over on this night. As it dwindled, she felt unbelievably drained and so much weaker. Her son’s weight started to drag her arms again, causing them to burn like fire. Her back ached murderously. Air pistoned raggedly in and out of her lungs. Her throat felt scratchy and irritated as her hoarse voice called out for Evan. She was growing hoarse. To top it all off, her newly active baby girl had decided it was the perfect time to use her bladder as a trampoline.

  She flipped Evan from one side to the other. Any relief such a maneuver gave her was momentary at best. At any angle, her child was still limp and heavy in her arms.

  The reflections pounding continued. She vaguely wondered if their hands were either bruised or even bleeding for their continued punishment. She looked over at one mirror beside her. She could not see any sign of injury to its hands through the almost-opaque glass.

  She was about to turn away when something level with the reflection’s fist caught her eye. She squinted as she looked closer. When she realized what it was, her eyes went wide and she took an involuntary step back.

  The small, jagged white nick in the dark glass was more than a little unsettling as she looked around at the other mirrors and realized that it was not the only mar. Not every mirror possessed one, but about a quarter of them did. Nor were the marks identical. They all had a chaotic look each their own, all small but indifferent locations on the mirrors.

  She moved forward, scanning the rattling mirrors for more cracks. They were showing up with more and more frequency, and she didn’t believe it was just her imagination when the cracks starting growing in size as well. Soon all of the mirrors possessed a crack in their surface.

  The reflections continued to attack their mirrors without any sign of slowing. She just happened to glance up as one of the reflections struck the glass at just the right angle. With a sudden thundercrack of sound, the glass splintered. It reminded Erin of the sound a dried branch made when it shattered under the weight of too much snow in the winter. The crack spider-webbed across the glass in a chaotic line over two feet long.

  All of sudden the entire corridor of reflections froze within their frames. Through whatever group mind they possessed, they realized just how close they had come to piercing their own glass prisons.

  Erin looked around slowly. The reflections held their motion.

  What would happen if they all broke through?

  She didn't know, but she knew she wouldn't like the answer. She had a feeling that the dark reflections did not know the answer themselves, but she had no doubt they were very, very curious to find out.

  The stillness in the corridor, in all of the corridors was so complete. She almost didn’t want to breathe or move for fear that she would break their reverie. A hangover from the cacophony of their pounding rung in her ears

  Then one sound pierced the quiet darkness with awful clarity: “Momma!”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Cracks

  Evan was so close.

  Erin reacquainted herself with her old friend adrenaline. It washed over her with blessed relief. Her screaming muscles returned to merely dull aches, her strength renewed as she tore forward at a dead sprint to look for her baby.

  Evan’s scream broke the reflections’ collective silence. They attacked their mirrors with explosive force. The cataclysmic noise enveloped Erin in a wave of thunder, causing her to stumble. Her hand slapped against a mirror as the glass rocked beneath her palm. She snatched her hand back and kept running.

  The reflections attacked their individual mirrors with increased ferocity. They focused their blows on the individual cracks in their own glass. The effect was immediate.

  As she pushed herself down the corridors looking wildly for any signs of her son, she could not help but notice how rapidly the glass around her was swiftly deteriorating. Splintering cracks spread through the mirrors like streaks of white lightning. The now-distorted silhouettes continued their assaults on their prisons.

  She rounded a corner to the left where she thought she had heard Evan’s desperate plea. She saw nothing but more reflections pounding on their mirrors. Always more. She tried to ignore them as she ran, but it was like running past a caged, snarling dog. All the mirrors were plates of white glass, bulging out of their frames. She turned right and that immediately that the long corridor was a dead end.

  “No!” she gasped.

  Erin heard a crash behind her, and something bloody grabbed at her. She jerked away, repulsed, and backed into another buckling glass wall. Her bulging eyes fell upon on her reflection as it retracted its bloody arm through the hole back to its original side of the frame. Her reflections snarling face appeared in the arm-sized hole. She stared at Erin with ravenous hunger. Erin’s throat convulsed as she swallowed back a wave of fear and bile. Without the mirror in place, the reflection was so much more frightening.

  “You’re dead!” the copy hissed after.

  Her twisted doppelganger began to pull out the glass, spreading the size of the hole. Erin, cringed as she watched. The reflection tore heedlessly at the hole, even as razor-sharp chunks of the mirror cut deep gouges into its hands and fingers. Blood oozed and dripped down the white surface of the punctured glass.

  With the smash of more glass broken glass, two hands punctured the glass behind her trying to wrap its arms around her and grasp her with claw-like fingers. Erin screamed as she jumped away from the snagging digits. They locked around her hair as Erin stumbled. Her pregnant abdomen and Evan’s added weight threw her off balance and sent her tumbling forward as the reflection’s hand held fast. Her neck got a nasty jerk as she fell, but the combination of her weight and it
s hands slick with blood allowed her to yank free of its grip. Agony flared down her spine as she fell onto her side.

  Tears burst out of her eyes as spots floated in her vision. As she gasped for breath, she heard more crashes and the tinkling of glass about her as more of her evil reflections began to pierce the glass.

  She uttered the one word that was powerful enough to drive her past the pain: “Evan.”

  She pushed herself to her knees and gathered her limp son to her. He looked unharmed, but she couldn't really tell. She knew it would only be a minute or two before all of the reflections came crashing through their barriers. Soon they would be on them and tear them apart.

  Her jaw set grimly. Well, not without a fight!

  As she stood, her eyes scanned ahead of her at the dead end and she did a double take. At the very end of the long corridor was another form in a mirror, much smaller than all the rest about him. He was on his knees pounding on his glass encasement, but he was not nearly strong enough to crack his own mirror, let alone break through. Evan stared at her with wet terrified eyes, calling out to her, but his voice was inaudible in the din.

  She pelted forward. The mirrors along her path began to bulge, and several arms burst out trying to claw her. She awkwardly ducked below their reach. The arms began to pierce through with more frequency the further down the path she ran. Her doppelgangers’ hands, arms, and some legs became a web of extremities that tried to bar her way.

  An involuntary scream broke free of her lips as one hand lunged further than the rest and raked across her face. The nails scratched deep, drawing blood, but luckily they somehow missed her eyes and hair.

  The reflections were making more progress. The bloody versions of herself tore out bigger and bigger sections of the mirrors, many of which now had holes big enough for most of their torsos to fit through. Thankfully, their own pregnant bellies kept them from leaping out at her.

  She was almost to her son. She was within twenty-five feet or so left when a pair of hands snagged her arm. Then two more snagged the same arm.

  “Let go of me!” she shouted as she yanked away from the hands.

  She managed to take a few more steps before two more hands grabbed her from the other side, followed by another pair. Her head whipped around to each side of her to see reflections covered in their own blood as they lunged out to their chests trying to hold her in place. Behind her, another doppelganger tore far enough out of its mirror to lean towards her and lock fingers on her shoulder and arm. A fifth pair clutched at her from the path ahead. Behind her, she could hear so many more tearing out chunks of their mirrors.

  One of her shades released her and tried to grab at Evan. She witnessed her enemy’s attempt in a kind of horrifying slow motion. A fury rose up within her that spewed out like the molten heat from a volcano.

  “Don’t touch my baby!” she snarled.

  Desperate, she lunged for the owner of the hands to her, right ripping herself out of the grips of the ones on the left. She struck and clawed at her reflections hated face. This time she felt her nails dig into its flesh. Her reflection flinched back reflexively. Then it looked back at her with an expression of savage glee. “Is that the best you can do, pumpkin?”

  Her wounded reflection lurched for her, but its charge was rebuffed by the mirror’s portal gouging punctures into the shade’s stomach. A huge glass chunk plinked to the floor.

  The reflections flanking the scarred one reached for Erin.

  “Why not try that with me?” shrieked the one directly ahead.

  She pulled away, but stopped her backwards trek when several fingers brushed her back. She twisted around to see more clawing hands reaching for her.

  “Let me give you a hug!”

  All around her, abraded and lacerated arms reached and tried to snare her in their savage grasps. Their screeching voices hammered her from all sides. She could make out snatches of their threatening words.

  “. . . going to die . . . grind you . . . blood . . . Hell! . . . child will never . . .”

  Her eyes flicked down to the large shard that had fallen. She stooped down for the impromptu weapon. As she grabbed it, she looked ahead and froze. The pathway to Evan’s mirror was all but clear at this level. The reflections had broken sizable holes in their mirrors to get at her, but only at head and torso height, and still too narrow for them to escape through.

  She slid the shard of glass across the floor ahead where it skidded into her son’s mirror. She gathered Evan with one arm and began to crawl forward. The reflections immediately raged at her discovery. A chorus of shrieks and expletives echoed off her back.

  Allowing herself the momentary satisfaction, she continued to crawl forward while awkwardly holding Evan’s limp body to her as she moved. Suddenly glass pelted her back and struck her scapula as her doppelgangers began hurling it at her. The missiles of broken shards tinkled onto the ground around her. Her fingers began to bleed as slivers of glass nicked and embedded themselves in her skin. She ignored their attacks and her own discomfort as she crawled on doggedly.

  Her head bumped into something hard. She looked up directly into Evan’s little face as he stared at her through his mirror. She sat up cautiously, but quickly realized that she didn't have to. The panels of glass that flanked each side of Evan’s mirror were devoid of anything behind their glass. In this small space, nothing malicious was trying to get to her.

  Evan recoiled back from her into the shadows of his mirror. Her heart sank. She could only imagine how she looked to him right now, as blood and haggard as her reflections.

  “Oh baby! Please don’t go! It’s Momma!” she called to him. She had no idea whether he could hear her or not. The cacophony behind her was still only a few octaves below deafening.

  He slowly inched forward again and he stopped when his face protruded out of the shadow behind him. His face was uncertain. “Momma?”

  She nodded with open tears trickling down her cheeks. “It’s me baby.”

  He rushed forward pressing his hands on the glass. “Oh, Momma!”

  On her side of the mirror, she pressed her hands to his. Suddenly the mirrors all shrieked at once. Erin turned to see they were all tearing out their barriers more violently than before.

  She turned back to her son. “I need to get you out of here! Step back honey.” Looking past her at the evil reflections, his eyes grew wide with fright. He nodded his understanding.

  She laid limp his body on the ground between them, then balled up her fists and hammered on the pane of glass. Pain shot up her wrists as the glass remained unmarred beneath her blow.

  She glanced back and cursed herself for being a fool. It had taken several minutes of pounding on their mirrors before the others even made so much as a dent. And from what she could tell so far, pain did not seem to be a deterrent to them.

  She looked down at the mirror shard. “Hold on, baby!” she cried.

  She tore off a strip of cloth from the bottom of her shirt and wrapped it around the thicker end of the large shard of glass. Using the makeshift handle, she reared back with her impromptu weapon in both hands and began to stab at Evan’s mirror again and again.

  After half a dozen strikes, she had left nothing more than superficial nicks on its surface. She continued to attack it feverishly until Evan pointed behind her. “Momma!”

  Erin turned. Her reflections were now beginning to emerge from their mirrors into the hallway. Blood spurted and oozed from their wounds as they forced themselves past the razor edges of the glass. Jagged lacerations marred their flesh from having breached their prisons. Hundreds of eyes similar to hers stared at them with gleams of madness.

  Erin’s breath quickened as she turned to face them holding the shard of glass her hand. She stood protectively before her son’s limp body and the mirror holding his spirit. The Evan inside the mirror pressed his hands against the glass as he watched the oncoming horrors fearfully.

  “Momma loves you very much,” she told him.r />
  In perfect unison, the reflections laughed at this. One of her copies near the front of the slowly advancing horde of Erins remarked, “Don’t worry your little head, Evan baby. After were finished with her, we will all cuddle with you.”

  Evan flinched at the dark Erin’s words.

  “Don’t be so scared Erin. Soon it will be all over. No wait!” another reflection mocked. “Your soul will still be trapped here with us so your pain will last forever and ever and ever!” She began to cackle, and the other reflections joined in.

  Erin tried to still the hand holding her weapon, but its tip continued to shake. Her voice thankfully remained steady and defiant. “Stay back! All of you! If you come any closer, I swear I will kill you all!”

  “It’s not nice to swear, sweetie,” one chided her playfully. All around her, more faces pressed in.

  “I said stay back!” Erin swiped the mirror fragment at them.

  They spoke in a united coo that echoed all around her, “No.”

  Suddenly the crowd surged forward, pressing the front reflections onto her. Their momentum rammed the one at the lead into the path of her glass. Her glass snagged the doppelganger’s chest slicing a deep line over the flesh above its breasts.

  Erin sharply inhaled as the doppelganger's hot blood spilled over her fingers and hands. The affected reflection screamed in a mangle of pain and delight. The other reflections echoed the chorus and pressed in. Several hands, including those of her wounded reflection, grabbed her all at once.

  Erin tried to scream, writhe, claw, and stab all that attacked her, but she was instantaneously overwhelmed. They squashed her down to the floor with the sheer weight of their numbers. In the tangle of arms and feet, she lost her glass knife. More bodies piled on. Feet began to stomp and kick as fists pummeled and fingers clawed. She tried to fight back, to resist, but there were far too many.