The Mirror (Northwest Passage Book 5)

by John A. Heldt

  She considered running a short distance to Performance Park, where a policeman talked to a young couple and pointed toward the nearest exit, but decided instead to reenter the House of Mirrors. After calling Katie's name two more times, she walked toward the source of her fears.

  With each step, Ginny wrestled with a new question. Was this somehow part of the exhibit's experience? Did the fair's sixties theme include acid trips? Did Katie's disappearance have anything to do with Marta's disturbing prediction? Was Ginny Smith flat out losing her mind?

  When she reached the end of the hallway, Ginny studied the mirror. It looked exactly like the one she had admired just minutes earlier. When she looked at its polished surface, she saw herself and the corridor behind her and only those things. Katie was gone.

  Ginny leaned against a wall as the first wave of nausea swept over her. She pulled herself together and reached for her phone. When she dialed Katie, she got no answer. When she dialed her mother, she got a voice mail message.

  She was about to call her father when she saw a strange bluish-green light shoot out from the mirror's ornate frame. Within seconds the images in the glass changed too. Where once she saw a reflection of herself and the hallway, she now saw an image of her sister.

  Katie was in the House of Mirrors, all right, but she was on the other side of a barrier Ginny could not even begin to fathom. The Katie she saw apparently did not see her. She instead ran from wall to wall in an empty room, shouting words Ginny could not understand. Her face was the picture of horror.

  "Katie!"

  Ginny grabbed her stomach and looked for a garbage can. She found one near the door, tore off the top, and deposited her dinner. When she was done, she dropped to the floor, curled up in the fetal position, and rocked back and forth.

  Pull yourself together, Ginny. Do it now. Do it right now.

  A moment later, when the pain in her abdomen began to subside, she took a deep breath and did her best to clear her mind. She didn't have the slightest idea what was going on, but she knew that she had to do something – and do it quickly – or she'd never see her sibling again.

  Ginny retrieved her phone and saw that it was ten after ten. The fair had closed for the evening. In another twenty-four hours, it would close for the year. She put the phone back in her purse and slowly rose from the floor. She gathered what was left of her strength and courage, turned to face the mirror, and stepped forward.

  Ginny sighed as she drew closer to the mirror and saw that it had not changed, which she considered a good thing. She didn't want anything to change until she figured out what she should do – or even could do – to get her beloved sister back.

  When she reached the mirror, she looked into the glass and saw a heartbreaking scene. Katie held her head in her hands as she sat on the floor cross-legged in the middle of the room. She appeared to be weeping.

  Ginny stepped toward the mirror and placed a hand on the glass and found it as hard and unyielding as a wall of stone. Then she tried again, this time with both hands, and looked on with shock and horror as both hands passed through the plane. She pulled them back quickly.

  There was now no doubt about the decision that confronted her. She could walk through this strange portal and join Katie on the other side or try to enlist help and risk losing her forever.

  Ginny knew that the smart thing to do – the prudent thing – would be to call her parents or the police and wait for assistance. The paranormal was way beyond her understanding.

  She knew in her gut, though, that she didn't have the time to do anything but act quickly. The bluish-green light, once steady, had begun to flicker. This was the supreme test of her faith and devotion, and she suspected that the forces conducting the test would not allow her to phone a friend or take a few minutes to find answers on the Internet.

  Ginny looked again at her sister. Just seeing the anguish on her face was enough to make her cry. She couldn't imagine what was racing through Katie's mind.

  She stepped back a few feet, took a deep breath, and gave herself another minute to weigh the pros and cons of proceeding. The pros won out. She didn't know whether she could save her twin, but she did know that she would never be able to live with herself if she didn't at least try.

  Ginny grabbed her phone, pushed a few buttons, and started a text message addressed to her parents and her four other siblings. When she finished typing I LOVE YOU, she hit SEND, returned the phone to her purse, and threw the strap over her shoulder.

  Armed with fresh resolve and newfound courage, she approached the mirror one last time. She wiped away a tear, said a quick prayer, and took another breath. A few seconds later, she placed both hands on the glass, pushed them through the membrane, and slowly stepped forward.

  With that, Virginia Abigail Smith of Seattle, Washington, age nineteen, walked through a shimmering sheet of glass and left the only world she had ever known.

  CHAPTER 5: GINNY

  Ginny remembered nothing about the passage. One minute she was standing in front of a glowing mirror. The next she was standing in a windowless room – a room that looked a lot like the one she had left. The chamber was empty except for a young woman who sat on the floor and stared into space as if in a trance.

  "Katie!" Ginny screamed as she ran to her sister.

  Ginny fell to her knees and shook Katie several times.

  "Wake up! It's me, Ginny. Please snap out of it. Please!"

  Ginny wrapped her arms around her twin and held her tightly. She didn't ease up until she heard a faint whimper. When she heard what sounded like a sob, she pulled back and studied her sister's face and saw that Katie's eyes had changed from vacant to fearful. She was coming back.

  "Katie, it's me. It's me, sweetie. It's Ginny."

  The name apparently did the trick. The moment Ginny uttered her name a second time, Katie looked at her sister like someone she knew and fell forward into her arms.

  "Ginny? Ginny?" Katie asked with alarm in her voice.

  "It's me, Katie. I'm here. You're safe."

  Ginny, of course, knew nothing of the sort. As far as she could tell, she and Katie were stuck on a set of the Twilight Zone – the one with no furnishings and teal pinstriped walls.

  "It's you," Katie said as she held Ginny more tightly. "It's really you."

  "Just take a breath, Katie. I'm not going anywhere."

  Ginny felt the tension leave her sister's arms. Her words had finally registered.

  A moment later, Katie withdrew, sat upright, and let her eyes wander. She looked at Ginny and then at the room as if she had emerged from a deep sleep and was just coming to grips with the conscious world.

  "Where are we?" Katie asked.

  "I don't know," Ginny said. "This looks like the same room we left, only without the mirrors and the garbage can."

  Ginny suspected she was right but drew little comfort from her hunch. If this place was, in fact, the House of Mirrors, it was not the same house she had left. There was no maze. Nor was there a large, oval mirror on any of the walls. In short, there was no visible way back. Ginny stood up and extended a hand to her sister.

  "Let me help you up."

  Ginny pulled Katie from the floor and gave her another hug and a much-needed smile. She was as terrified as her sister but sure as hell wasn't going to show it. Not now, anyway.

  "What happened?" Katie asked.

  "We both walked through a mirror, the big one on the wall," Ginny said. "When I got out of the maze, I saw you step through the glass. A few minutes later, I did the same."

  Katie looked at her sibling with puzzled eyes.

  "I walked through a mirror?"

  "You did. Don't you remember it?"

  Katie shook her head.

  "I don't remember anything."

  Ginny sighed. She had expected as much. If Katie had any memories of the past few minutes, they were undoubtedly buried under ten tons of trauma.

  "It's OK. We're together now. That's all that matters."
<
br />   "Is there a way out of here?" Katie asked.

  Ginny glanced at the far side of the room and saw that it had changed. She noticed a door that looked a lot like the one she had entered a few minutes – and a lifetime – ago.

  "There's a door back there," Ginny said as she pointed away.

  "What door? There's no door in here."

  "There is now."

  Katie turned around and stared at the back of the room with wide eyes.

  "That door wasn't there a minute ago."

  "It doesn't matter now," Ginny said. "Let's just get out of here."

  "Where are the mirrors?"

  "It doesn't matter. Let's just go."

  Ginny threw an arm around her twin and pulled her close as they walked the length of the room with the pinstriped walls and the checkerboard floor. A moment later, she hit the push bar on the door and led Katie out of a chamber that seemed torn from the pages of science fiction.

  The room, however, was nothing compared to what lay beyond. When Ginny and Katie stepped out of the room and out of the building, they did more than leave the indoors for the outdoors. They traded cool air for warm air and darkness for light.

  They traded night for day.

  CHAPTER 6: GINNY

  When Ginny stepped outside, she saw that the Twilight Zone looked a lot like the grounds of the Cedar River Country Fair – but not the grounds she had left. She saw six buildings, including one that looked familiar, but all were boarded up and apparently unoccupied. This fair wasn't just closed for the day. It was closed, period.

  "It's daytime, Gin," Katie said in a shaky voice. "It wasn't daytime ten minutes ago."

  "I know," Ginny said.

  Katie walked about ten yards to a maple tree that guarded the front of the House of Mirrors. She put a hand on the tree and looked back at her sister.

  "This tree wasn't here either."

  Ginny could see the fear return to Katie's eyes.

  "I know. It's OK. We'll be OK."

  Ginny tried to sound reassuring. She could sense that Katie was still on edge and could fall apart again at any minute. Before she could convince her sister that they weren't in one of Dante's nine circles of hell, though, she had to convince herself.

  Ginny joined Katie by the tree and gave her surroundings a closer inspection. The House of Mirrors had not changed. From the outside, the building looked just like the one they had entered minutes earlier. The exhibit's sign was exactly as she had remembered it.

  Nearly everything else, however, had changed. The House of Mirrors was nowhere near the eastside strip that had been cleared for the "Sixties Revival." It occupied a lot on the main road about a hundred yards from an arched fairgrounds entrance. The arched gate was new, as were a freshly painted red barn and a white maintenance building that flanked the House of Mirrors.

  The trees and bushes had changed as well. They were greener, fuller, and far more numerous. Ginny remembered seeing a few yellow leaves when she had arrived. She saw none now. The leaves were green – bright green – as if they had just responded to the first kiss of spring.

  Ginny looked beyond the front gate and saw something even more alarming: an unoccupied stretch of low-cut grass that hours earlier had served as a parking lot for several hundred cars. She didn't even bother trying to find her 2018 Toyota. She knew it wasn't there.

  "I'm afraid," Katie said, breaking the silence. "The grounds look different. The plants look different. We're not in the same place. I know it. We're not in the same place!"

  Ginny put her hands on her twin's shoulders and looked her squarely in the eyes.

  "Get a grip, Katie. Freaking out is not going to help. We have to keep our heads. There has to be a logical explanation for this. There has to be."

  Ginny gave Katie a hug, stepped back, and glanced again at the fairgrounds entrance. She looked for a sign of activity: a person, a dog, even bird or two. She sought confirmation that she was still on the same planet – or at least fully conscious – but saw nothing useful.

  The notion that this was all a nightmare remained ever present. Perhaps this was nothing more than a simple dream with a scary twist. Maybe Ginny and Katie had taken Marta's advice and gone home and gone to bed. What else could possibly explain what they had seen and done?

  Ginny wondered too whether this could be some sort of practical joke for a reality TV show or a new Candid Camera. Perhaps she and Katie had been selected, based on their wholesome appearance, for a series with a Through-the-Looking-Glass-type theme. She could just hear the ten-second promo:

  "She walks. She talks. She has a perky twin sister. She's Alice in Timberland! Next on Teen TV!"

  Ginny's gut, however, told her that she was stuck not in a dream or a television program but rather something that defied human understanding. She was as conscious and sober as she had ever been and knew that conscious, sober people did not pass smoothly through plates of glass or travel from night to day in a matter of seconds. Something was seriously wrong.

  She grabbed Katie's hand and pulled her forward.

  "What are you doing?" Katie asked.

  "I'm leading you out of here. We won't accomplish anything standing around," Ginny said. "There are houses on the road that leads to the highway. Let's go to one of them and see if we can find someone."

  A short while later Ginny found herself walking beside Katie on Blackberry Lane, a mile-long access road that connected the fairgrounds with State Route 169. She did her best to raise Katie's spirits and keep their conversation focused on solutions and not problems, but with each step she began to succumb to her own doubts and fears.

  It wasn't hard to find reasons to worry. Fifteen minutes into the walk, Ginny had still not seen nor heard another human being. She had heard a dog bark and a few birds chirp but nothing that might suggest meaningful contact was near. If people occupied this strange world, they had yet to make themselves known.

  Ginny looked for familiar landmarks when she and Katie turned onto Blackberry Lane but saw little that gave her comfort. The sign directing visitors to the fairgrounds had changed in size and color and a rural fire station that had once been visible from the turnoff had, for all practical purposes, disappeared. So had a cell tower that once shot above the surrounding treetops. Not that it mattered. Cell service, as both girls quickly discovered, had ceased to exist.

  "Do you think we're still in Maple Valley?" Katie asked.

  "Yes," Ginny said without hesitation. "I know we are. The hills haven't changed and neither have a lot of things I've already seen, like some of the buildings at the fairgrounds or even this road. It's still Blackberry Lane. There's still a big ditch on this side of the road and a pond on the other. I don't know what's happened to us, Katie, but I'm a hundred-percent certain we're still in Maple Valley."

  "Do you think we're still in 2020?"

  Ginny stopped when she heard the words, turned to face her sister, and saw fear in her eyes. She didn't want to answer that question. She didn't even want to think about it, but she knew she would have to broach the subject of time travel sooner or later.

  It wasn't just a proverbial elephant walking at their side. It was a mastodon. It was also a subject that wasn't entirely new to the twins or members of their family. For that reason alone, Ginny chose her words carefully.

  "I have no reason to think otherwise, Katie. I still believe there's a rational explanation for all this – maybe even a simple explanation. We just have to keep pressing ahead until we find it."

  Ginny watched as Katie lowered her eyes and nodded slightly. She didn't know if she had made her case, but she suspected that she had made some progress. Ginny threw an arm around her sister and guided her forward down a road that seemed a bit narrower and bumpier than the one they had traveled several hours earlier.

  As they continued down Blackberry Lane, Ginny noticed another difference. There were fewer houses – a lot fewer. On the drive to the fairgrounds Friday afternoon, she had noticed at least a dozen house
s on each side of the road. On the walk from the fairgrounds, she had so far seen just two. Both were unoccupied residences in the early stages of construction.

  Ginny knew it was only a matter of time, however, before the sisters encountered a house with living, breathing residents. Even before they reached the top of a rise in the road, she saw a row of mailboxes and newspaper tubes. The receptacles sat atop a brown rail near what appeared to be the entrance of a driveway. Trees and bushes obscured the rest of the road.

  "Do you see what I see?" Ginny asked.

  Katie gave her sister a sidelong glance.

  "I do."

  The sisters picked up the pace.

  Ginny started to speak again when she heard a sound she hadn't heard in several hours: the dull rush of an approaching car. She looked over her shoulder and saw a green pickup move toward them at roughly forty miles per hour. With large, rounded fenders and a grille that resembled a cattle guard, the vehicle looked like a relic from a classic car show. When it became apparent that the driver had no intention of slowing down, Ginny pulled Katie to the side of the road.

  "Step back, Katie. He's moving fast."

  Ginny waved frantically as the driver, an elderly man wearing what looked like a flannel shirt and a baseball cap, approached. She hoped to persuade him to pull over to the side of the road, where the twins could gain information and perhaps a ride to the nearest town.

  The driver, however, apparently interpreted her wave as a friendly greeting. He honked and waved as he approached and continued down the road at the same speed. He finally stopped in front of the row of boxes, about a hundred yards away, but only for a few seconds. He stuck newspapers in two tubes and sped off.

  Ginny and Katie gave chase until the futility of their pursuit set in. When they saw the truck round a bend and disappear from sight, they slowed to a walk.

  "At least there are people here," Katie said as she caught her breath. "Thank God for that. Maybe the next driver will stop."