But then he swung the metal detector again and she knew she’d lost her chance.
“Maybe he’s finally forgiven me,” he said. “And by the way, I can’t imagine anyone finding you boring.”
She opened her mouth to thank him, but the words got lost somewhere between her mind and mouth, tangled in a ballooning bulge of emotions. Heart beating quickly, she waited, listening to the night wind, to the crickets, to the stars and their overwhelming silence. Tony swung the metal detector and there was something hypnotic about the motion—how it went back and forth, big and gleaming and dark. Every moment seemed swollen with possibility, then lank with disappointment as it passed without discovery or progress. She didn’t think she could bear being sucked back into the shadow house with nothing gained, no further discovery to aid her in her escape. And the girl to look forward to.
Just as the horrible possibility was beginning to sink in, the metal detector beeped again.
She didn’t hurry forward as she had the time before; she didn’t think she could bear the disappointment if this was only another coin. But when Tony began to dig in the grass, she could no longer suppress her curiosity. She darted forward and helped him expand his hole in the lawn, although her translucent fingers did little more than rearrange some pieces of dirt. They dug down three inches before Alice caught sight of something shiny sticking out of the dull brown.
“There!” she said, grabbing hold of Tony’s arm. He pulled the object out and handed it to her.
“Unbelievable,” he whispered.
Encased in a layer of dirt was a large, heavy, old-fashioned key—the perfect size to fit in the hidden keyhole. Alice closed her fist around it so tightly that the metal dug painfully into her skin.
“This is it,” she said unnecessarily. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
She meant it, too, though she wasn’t sure she liked it, being in someone’s debt. But it was Tony and he’d pulled her out of the pool twice now. She’d lost faith in him but he hadn’t ever given up on her. She owed him her life and her sanity.
Tony shrugged off her thanks and asked, “Are you sure you’ll be able to bring it back with you?”
“I think so. It works with clothes. It worked with your sweatshirt.”
“Yeah,” he frowned. “Guess I’m never getting that back, am I?”
Alice gasped. “I completely forgot. You know, I should have tried to—”
“Alice.”
“—take it with me. I could have. Tell you what—”
“Alice.”
“—next time I’ll bring it—I will.”
“Alice, it’s fine. I was just teasing you.”
“Oh.” Of course he was. And there she was, embarrassed again. She never had been good at knowing when people were joking and when they were being serious.
“Well, I think the key should—I think I’ll be able to get it back,” she said in an attempt to cover the awkward moment.
“I hope so. Hey, if you can bring things back, what about people? I mean, if you just took my hand—”
“No,” said Alice firmly. She knew what he was thinking, but she wouldn’t do it. Not ever. “I’m not bringing you to that place. I’m not putting anyone else in danger.”
“But I could help. I can take the risk.”
“No.”
There must have been something in her face that warned him against repeating the request, because he dropped the subject, although he didn’t look happy about it. His gaze wandered from her eyes to her dress, and that strange frown crept over his face again.
“You don’t like it, do you?” Alice asked, suddenly self-conscious.
“What? Oh—no, it’s not that. It looks,” he paused, “very nice on you.”
Alice disregarded the compliment immediately, sure that he was just being polite. “Then what is it?” she asked.
“I did some reading,” said Tony, his eyes on the grass. “My dad’s notes.”
“I know.”
He glanced up in surprise.
“I was watching,” Alice explained.
“Oh, right. Of course.” If anything, this made him look even more uncomfortable, and he pulled out a few blades of grass as he spoke.
“Anyway, what happened to her … it was awful. She went crazy, you know. Completely insane.”
He emphasized this last word, clearly anxious to get his point across. Alice, however, was entirely nonplussed: she already knew this.
“And?” she asked, hoping he had something more to add—something that would help her.
“And now you’re wearing her dress. When you were upset before, I thought I saw it—saw her … ”
“Yes?”
“And I can’t help but think that you … what if you’re kind of … becoming her?”
Alice stared at him in shock for a moment. Then, an instant later, the tension in the air broke and she actually smiled. Tony smiled back—a hesitant, shaky kind of smile, but a smile all the same.
“Hey, do I look crazy to you?”
He laughed now. Such a nice laugh: deep and rich and comfortable. She, Alice, had made him laugh. Alice—the serious girl who never smiled anymore, the girl whom boys avoided—had just made one of them laugh.
“Yes,” Tony teased, “absolutely out of your mind. I knew you had crazy eyes from the moment I met you.”
They both laughed for a second then, but what little happiness they had squeezed out of the situation faded fast, leaving only ghosts of smiles on their faces. The darkness of the night seemed suddenly impenetrable, as though they had, for a brief moment, been bathed in light, then jerked away from it and tossed back into the black that was the world.
“I don’t want to die,” Alice heard herself say. The only thing that surprised her more than how calmly she said it was the fact that she had said it at all. “For a minute there, I thought I did. It was the witch—she had me so convinced.”
It had been less than an hour since she’d fallen to the ground in tears, but she felt years older—so old now that when she looked back she hardly recognized that girl. Maybe it was Tony. Maybe talking to a real person had brought her back to the self she had lost somewhere in the house. Or was this a new person—someone she hadn’t met before? Alice wasn’t sure, but everything inside of her was quiet and calm and she wanted to cling to this stillness forever.
“You won’t die. Not if I can help it,” Tony said. He looked more determined than ever; his jaw was clenched and his lips were pursed. “I think I’m going to have to talk all of this over with my dad. He knows a whole bunch more about stuff like this than I do.” He frowned. “He’ll be delighted, not that he deserves it.”
“I think that—”
But Alice didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence. She began to dissolve into the towel that she was lying on.
I think that I’m going to be okay.
And she was—for a moment. Then her head sank into the ground and she appeared once again in the library and remembered immediately what it was to be trapped.
***
She found herself staring at the ceiling and seeing only Tony’s face, his eyes. A powerful sense of possibility had come over her and even this dark place couldn’t shake it. She had the key and she knew now that she wanted it. She wanted the key and she wanted to live and she wanted Tony to care one way or the other.
Standing up, she found herself staring at the portrait of Elizabeth. “I’m not beaten yet,” she whispered. The painted face stared back, deranged.
“Are you ready?”
She turned around and saw the girl approaching—all charm. She held out a hand. “Shall we go?”
Alice shook her head. “Not quite yet. There’s one more thing I want to do.” There was still a loose end she had to tie up before she could be sure. The attic key was warm in her hand.
The girl looked worried for a moment, but then pasted her smile back on. “Of course, Alice. You do whatever you need to.”
“I wan
t you to wait here for me. Can you do that?”
“But I’d like to come with you—”
“Wait here.”
Alice watched the girl carefully. She thought she saw her try to take a step forward, but then she pulled back and sat down in a chair. She masked her attempt to move so well that the whole maneuver looked effortless and natural, but Alice was sure now that the witch had been telling the truth about one thing at least: Alice had power over her. This was why she had had to work through persuasion—get Alice to let her into the shadow house. For some reason (and Alice thought she knew why now), the girl had to obey Alice’s rules.
“Thanks,” Alice said, with an ingratiating smile. She didn’t want the witch to know that she knew the truth—not just yet. But there was still suspicion in the girl’s face as Alice hurried away.
As she ran out of the library, Alice saw something that stopped her in her tracks: the mist was creeping forward again, faster than ever, as though it knew what she was trying to do and was doing its best to stop her. She sprinted up the stairs all the way to the deer tapestry. The attic room was on an outside corner of the house. If the mist kept advancing at this pace, the attic would be one of the first rooms to be eaten up entirely.
Fingers wrapped tightly around the heavy brass, she rushed down the hall and pushed the tapestry aside. She eased the key into the lock, holding her breath.
It fit.
The door swung open under her hand and she was faced with a small flight of stairs. She hurried to the top and stopped in surprise. Elizabeth had written that she didn’t like this room, but whatever Alice had been imagining, it was nowhere near as bad as the truth.
Everything in here was black. The chest of drawers in the corner, the desk, the vanity—even the velvet bed covers. A forbidding iron chandelier hung from the ceiling, holding at least twenty half-melted candles. The triangle bed was pushed against the wall, and the blanket, made for a normal bed, did not fit it well. The corners lay crumpled on the floor, like puddles of tar. The triangle desk faced the bed; it was covered with blank pieces of paper. But the mirror—the mirror was worst of all.
This was the first mirror in the entire house that actually showed her own reflection—probably because the original room no longer existed. And yet this was not her reflection as she remembered it. Each triangle of glass distorted her face in a different way. Once during school, a police officer had come to talk about drunk driving and had made them put on “drunk” glasses to prove how dangerous intoxication was. Staring at the mirror made her feel like she was wearing the glasses again; she couldn’t focus on any one part of it—it was all so blurred and strange. There were blank patches of wood between the triangles, as though someone had pried the dividing bars out. There was something somber and dreadful and haunting about the whole thing—something that she couldn’t quite explain, even to herself.
She tore her eyes away from the glass and turned to face the other side of the room. Just as she had suspected, the mist already covered two of the walls and, if Alice watched closely enough, she imagined that she could see it inching closer every second.
She had to find the witch’s books before everything was swallowed up—gone.
She wished she’d had the foresight to bring Elizabeth’s diary with her, but as it was she didn’t dare waste time going down to fetch it. She would just have to find the books on her own.
First, Alice dove for the bed and looked under the pillows, but she found only dust. Then she rummaged through the papers on the desk, checking every cupboard and drawer. She found quite a few things there—an old-fashioned fountain pen, a hat, and even a feather boa—but still no spell books. Her luck was no better with the drawers or the vanity. By the time she’d finished looking through the dresses in the closet, the mist was starting to work its way across the bed.
Starting to panic, Alice ran forward and pulled the blankets off the mattress (they fell heavily to the floor). She sent the pillows flying. In desperation, she knelt on the bed only inches from the mist and grabbed ahold of the headboard and pulled so hard that the bed frame shook; the floor whined like a wounded animal. An idea hit her at last. She froze, then leapt off the bed. Elizabeth had first found the books under a floorboard. What if they were still there?
The mist already covered most of the room. What if she had missed her chance? Heart racing, Alice dove for what was left of the floor and started banging on the floorboards, listening for creaks. She found nothing until she was almost under the bed. When she knocked on a board right next to the nightstand, it fell in at least an inch. She pushed on it again, harder this time, and it creaked and slipped down even farther. Alice quickly spotted the crevice that Elizabeth had mentioned in her diary, and she stuck her finger underneath to try to pry the board up. At first it came easily, but then it got stuck and refused to budge. The mist was only a foot away. Alice leapt up and grabbed the only tool available to her—the pen from the desk.
She eased the pen into the crack and used it as a lever. For a second she felt guilty about scratching the floor up like this, but then remembered that this house and everything in it (including her) didn’t even exist in the ordinary sense of the word. She gave one final push on the pen and the board came loose. Pulling it free from the floor, she reached into the hole and pulled out two books that looked so fragile she worried they would disintegrate in her hands.
The mist was so close now that she could blow on it and see it bend under her breath. Alice took one final look around the room, trying to cement it into her memory. On a crazy impulse, she pulled the mirror off the vanity and tucked it under her arm with the books. Then she hurried out of the room and locked the door behind her.
Alice sat down at the top of the staircase and thumbed through the book of curses with shaking hands. It was very old, with yellowed pages and that musty smell distinctive to decaying paper. All of it appeared to be handwritten—it had probably been the witch’s personal notes. Alice didn’t have to read long before she felt shivers crawling up and down her back. There were dreadful things written in this book—spells to cause excruciating pain, spells to kill in the most gruesome ways imaginable. Alice would have stopped if she weren’t so desperate to find the binding spell. But she had to admit that, despite the horrible illustrations and instructions, she read the book with a kind of strange fascination. It reminded her of watching horror movies with Jeremy when their parents were out. She would usually cover her eyes during the scary parts … but she always peeked through her fingers.
Jeremy would have loved this stuff, obsessed with ghosts and hauntings and magic as he was. He’d always been that way—from the very beginning. The first Halloween Jeremy had been old enough to choose his own costume, he had declared he was going to dress up as a witch. Her mother had tried to talk him out of it. Don’t you want to be a firefighter? What about a prince? You could have a sword and a shield and … But he had insisted, and between his whining and Alice’s arguing, their mother gave up, and Jeremy had left the house on Halloween with a ridiculous wig and a pointed hat and a huge, hairy fake wart right on the tip of his nose.
Now, holding this tattered book, thinking of the portrait over the fireplace—the madness on Elizabeth’s face—Alice regretted every creepy movie she’d ever snuck home for him, every magic trick book she’d pointed out to him at the library. Most of all she regretted that her body was lying somewhere just dying. What would he do without her? Who would make sure he didn’t do something dangerous when her mom wasn’t looking? And her mom was rarely looking.
Alice clasped her arms against her stomach, staring blankly into the distance, thinking of Elizabeth locked in her room going insane—seeing only Jeremy, with his bright red hair, his silly smile. As she watched, he cracked then crumbled, falling slowly to pieces.
She shook her head. No. She wouldn’t let it happen. Grabbing the book again, she flipped through the pages with new determination, because she could not lose this battle.
; She found what she was looking for in the very last section of the book. It appeared to be a section for very difficult magic, spells that (judging by all the notes and modifications in the margins) the witch herself had not perfected. The final few pages dealt with cursing objects. Alice slowed down and read very carefully.
***
Laying a curse on an object with no life of its own is very difficult magic indeed, for magic feeds off of souls and off of life. Curses draw their strength from life, and, if there is not a life to use, then they can do nothing. This is why, in order to perform such a curse, the object must be imbued with a life of its own, and that is the difficulty.
A curse on a house is a common request, but one that even the wisest among us hesitates to grant. A house is a very large, lifeless thing and to fill it with a soul requires a human life. But the problem is that simply murdering the person will do very little good, for if the soul is transplanted into the house without knowing and agreeing to behave as it must, then the curse is useless. The soul and the witch must work in complete cooperation. For this reason, it is not uncommon that the witch has no choice but to sacrifice her own soul. Of course, no sensible witch would do such a thing unless forced.
Binding a soul to an object is perhaps the most difficult magic. There are many speculations on the procedure, but I hold with the oldest belief. Life is the most basic magic—the very core of our being. There are many who speak of four elements that make up our existence: earth, water, air, and fire. I believe that there are five. Life is the fifth element and it encompasses all of the others, like a triangle divided into four smaller ones. Melding all of the elements creates a new existence where there was none before.
The Looking Glass Page 16