by Brian Knight
Penny and Zoe waited anxiously while Susan read the note, looking increasingly incredulous. After refolding and replacing it back in the envelope Zoe had handed her, she looked at the pair of them, her mildly chagrined expression fading into an indulgent smile.
“Tell her I said that would be just fine. We have enough room for one more.”
Penny at least knew what the chagrined look was about—Zoe’s grandma was part of a clique of grim-faced town ladies who remembered Penny’s mom and Susan from when they were teenagers. She had branded them, and Penny by association, unrepentant troublemakers.
This still puzzled Penny, who had never seen that side of her mom or Susan. The woman she’d grown up with had been predictably boring, reliable to a fault.
One of these days, she’d work up the guts to ask Susan what kind of mischief they’d gotten up to as teenagers.
Zoe’s grandma and a handful of her fellow curmudgeons were taking a two-week trip to Vegas; Zoe’s mother, who was supposed to have come back to town for that short time, had canceled her trip back.
This put Susan in the unique position to be able to deny one of the women she referred to as ‘The Town Elders.‘ However, she’d squashed the impulse for Penny’s sake—and because she liked Zoe, if not her grandmother.
Penny refrained, barely, from running to Susan and bowling her over in a tackle-hug. She could not stop a pleased squeal, which Zoe mimicked.
“Thanks, Susan!” Penny and Zoe shrieked in unison.
Susan only laughed and waved them off.
“I’ll drive you home so you can tell her I said yes and pack some clothes. I just don’t feel right letting you ride back to town alone. Especially in the dark.”
Penny rolled her eyes behind Susan’s back, making Zoe break into fresh laughter.
Susan spun around, as if she’d grown eyes in the back of her head and seen Penny’s mockery.
“You,” she said, pointing a finger at Penny and startling her into jumping back a step, “do your chores while we’re gone.”
Five minutes later Penny was alone, wiping down the kitchen counters before sweeping. Never in her life had Penny been so enthusiastic during her house chores.
It was Friday evening, Susan’s overprotective grasp had loosened for the first time since Jodi Lewis’s disappearance, the weekend stretched free and clear before her, full of freedom and possibilities, and now her best friend would be staying with her for the next two weeks.
For the first time since attending Tovar The Red’s show at the park, life was good.
In less than thirty minutes, Penny finished her chores and Zoe came back with a huge duffel bag filled to seam-stretching capacity.
Susan offered Zoe a guest room on the second floor, one of the unused rooms haphazardly furnished with decades-old furniture not yet rickety enough to throw out.
“Most of the stuff in there was mine when I was your age. The bed, the dresser, the curtains.” She pointed to a vanity on the opposite wall, and a large wooden chest on the floor beside it. “You can sleep here if you want. I thought you’d probably want to stay in Penny’s room, but this one is open if you get tired of her.”
They carried Zoe’s stuff up to the attic room and Zoe unpacked, stowing her clothes, books, and her favorite rocks—the ones she simply couldn’t be parted with—in the spare dresser.
Dinner was tacos. Susan cooked and seasoned the meat while Penny and Zoe grated cheese, shredded lettuce, and diced tomatoes.
After dinner, they sat quietly for a while watching Susan’s pick for movie night, a regular Friday evening event, passing a bowl of popcorn between the three of them. The movie was a little too sappy for Penny’s tastes, and so her attention kept drifting.
When it drifted to Zoe, her heart did a little flip-flop behind her ribs.
Zoe ignored the movie too. Her attention was focused on a shining oval object lying in her cupped hands.
Her souvenir mirror from Tovar’s show—The Conjuring Glass.
Penny waited a few moments for her heart rate to return to something approaching normal, then forced a little cough to draw Zoe’s attention. When that didn’t work, she sidled over closer to Zoe and gave her ankle a jab with the toe of her shoe.
Zoe looked up, startled and blinking like someone caught napping.
Penny jerked her head in the direction of the hallway and rose. “Think I’m going to get ready for bed, Susan.”
“Yeah,” Zoe said, and yawned. “Me too. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight girls,” Susan said, her eyes never leaving the screen. This Friday night’s hunk of a leading man was currently gazing deeply into the eyes of a breathless, young leading lady, and Susan, it seemed, didn’t want to miss the juicy part of the scene.
Penny waited at the top of the stairs for Zoe to catch up.
“Don’t let Susan see that,” she pointed at the mirror in Zoe’s hand. “She’s freaked out about Tovar already. If she sees that and figures out where you got it…Zoe, what’s wrong?”
Zoe looked frightened for a moment, on the cusp of panic. She cringed at the mirror, as if a large spider had just crawled onto her hand.
Then she shoved the mirror in her pants pocket, rubbing the palm of her hand against her jeans afterward, as if scrubbing off some unseen filth. Afterward, Zoe fixed a tired, resigned gaze on Penny.
“I need to talk to you, Penny. Something is going on. Something scary. I don’t know what exactly, but it has something to do with this,” she pointed a finger at the bulge the mirror made in her pocket. “It has something to do with him.”
There was no need to ask who Zoe meant by him.
Penny sat on the edge of her bed, and Zoe sat on the edge of hers, shifting as she pulled the mirror from her pocket and set it next to Penny. After a slight hesitation, she flipped it upside down, as if afraid to look into the reflective surface.
“That night after the magic show I took the mirror out and stared into it. I thought maybe if you were looking into yours, we’d see each other in them again. I thought maybe we could even use them to talk to each other.”
Penny’s first thought was: yes, I bet we could if we knew how. Her second thought was: but I didn’t see her. I saw him.
Had Penny told Zoe about that? She supposed not.
Penny hadn’t looked into the mirror that night. She had shoved it into the bottom of her nightstand drawer, and had not moved it since.
“What did you see?”
“A bird.” Zoe shivered, then continued. “A giant bird’s head. When I saw it, it turned and stared back at me. Its eyes were red, like they were on fire.”
“A bird?”
Zoe nodded.
“It looked at me, then it turned and walked away. It was huge…it walked like a person…it had arms and legs and wings. Then it vanished…and…”
The look Zoe shot at Penny was terrified, but not just terrified. She thought there was real shame in it too.
Embarrassment?
“What?”
For a moment, Zoe seemed unable to finish. She opened her mouth, her deeply tanned cheeks flushing a deeper red. There was some residual fear there, Penny thought, but the greater part of her discomfort was pure shame.
“Come on, Zoe. I won’t laugh.”
Zoe closed her eyes, leaned in close to Penny, and whispered.
At first, Penny thought Zoe was pulling her leg. Then Zoe moved away, opening her eyes again, and Penny knew she was not.
“What did you do?”
“I ran,” Zoe said. “Out the back door, got on my bike, and just rode. I was almost out of town before I realized where I was going. I rode around town until it was too cold to stay out, then I snuck back in and slept in the living room.”
“Did you tell your grandma?”
“Are you kidding?” Zoe actually laughed at the idea, though Penny didn’t hear much honest humor in the laugh. “She’d either call me a liar and ground me, or think I’d gone crazy and ship me to the closest lunat
ic asylum.”
“Oh,” Penny managed, feebly.
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but she doesn’t like having me around that much. You should hear her talk sometimes.” Zoe scrunched up her face in a gargoyle-like caricature of wizened crotchetiness. “It’s all that Indian’s fault. I knew when your momma married him there would be nothing good from it. And now she’s gone off to drive a truck with him and I have another kid to raise.” She never says his name, he’s just that Indian.”
Penny felt a rush of anger for Zoe’s grandmother, but held her tongue.
“Grandma never did like Dad, and she’s given up trying to like me, I think. She’s just counting the days until they come back for me.”
A long silence unwound itself following that pronouncement. Penny just couldn’t find the right words to break it. Finally, Zoe did.
“You’re the only one I told,” she said, her voice dropping to a near whisper again. “Who else would believe me?”
“Why do you keep looking at it then?”
Zoe shrugged, reached over, and picked the mirror up again, glanced into the reflective glass quickly, then turned it upside down on the palm of her hand. “I don’t know. I just keep looking. I can’t help it.”
“Jodi Lewis had one,” Penny said. “Just like ours, remember? She was one of the first onstage that night.”
Zoe nodded. “I know.”
Penny thought about the face she’d seen staring back at her through her own mirror and shuddered.
Zoe looked into hers again, longer and deeper this time, her gaze seeming to almost fall into it.
“It doesn’t mean he took her though,” Penny said.
Zoe looked up from the reflective glass again, catching Penny’s eyes with her own. She did not reply or dispute Penny’s words though. She didn’t need to.
Zoe climbed into her bed, lying on her side to face Penny, and Penny did the same, pulling the sheets up underneath her chin and scooting to the edge closest to Zoe so they could resume their conversation.
Her words to Zoe, It doesn’t mean he took her, played back in her mind; chased around and around in a circle by the words she’d spoken—shouted really—at Susan a few weeks before.
What did he do that was so bad?
Susan’s reply came back to her, making her stomach tighten, making her feel sick.
“Penny?”
“What?”
“How did your mom die?”
The question jolted Penny, but after a few seconds consideration she realized that every time their conversations turned toward Penny’s past or Penny’s mother, she had quickly deflected. She didn’t like talking or thinking about it. It was still painful. But Zoe was her friend. She knew almost everything about Zoe, and Zoe knew very little about her.
It’s mine, Penny thought with uncharacteristic avarice. My past … my pain, and I don’t want to share it!
Penny understood better than ever before why her mom had been so reluctant to share her past, her pain—and she understood why it was wrong to not share.
“If you don’t want to talk about it you don’t have to,” Zoe said, sounding shamed.
“No, it’s okay.” Another long moment passed before Penny continued. “She worked for a talent agency and she had to travel a lot between San Francisco and L.A. The agency used a private jet. She was over the ocean when the engine failed.”
Zoe said nothing for a while, waiting to see if Penny had finished.
“I’m sorry,” Zoe said at last.
There was no more conversation that night. Within a few minutes, Zoe’s light snores filled the room.
Strangely enough, Penny felt better after the telling. As if by sharing the story she was also sharing her pain. It was a feeling she wished her mom could have experienced with her.
It felt good to share.
Penny moved to the other side of her bed, reaching for the lamp, then moving to the top drawer of her nightstand. She slid it open slowly, not wanting the scrape and squeak of the warped wood to wake her friend.
She searched blindly until she found her mirror, then steeled herself, and brought it up before her face.
Her own reflection stared back at her.
Penny let out a long breath, closed the drawer, turned off the lamp on the nightstand, and then lay down to sleep.
She drifted off minutes later with the mirror clutched in her hand, and Zoe’s whispered words echoing in her sleeping mind. The words she’d been too afraid to say aloud.
My closet door opened and something huge came out of it.
Penny awoke once to the bump and scratch of something against wood. A mouse in the wall maybe, but it sounded too big to be a mouse. It came again once, then no more, and she slept again.
Sometime during the night a teenage girl, who still had the wilted bouquet of flowers a handsome magician had given her a few weeks earlier, vanished. There at bedtime, gone the next morning.
Neither Penny nor Zoe found out until much later the next day, but they both awoke with a feeling that something bad had happened.
Chapter 14
The Door
They left for the hollow early the next morning, after a hastily eaten breakfast of eggs and toast. Susan was still asleep when they left, so Penny left her a note.
Susan,
Zoe and I are going out. We promise not to leave the property. Maybe we’ll look for that old grove you told me about.
We’ll check in around noon.
Love ya,
Penny
The sun was barely up when they’d finished breakfast, and had only just crested the eastern horizon when they walked into the lower field. They were used to sleeping in on weekends, so they felt strange being up and out with the rising sun. Sleeping in would have been impossible that morning after the nightmares that had plagued them that night.
They had awakened at the same time, both bolting upright. Before the feeble glow of dawn’s approaching light could burn the full horror of their dreams away, they faced each other, and Penny spoke a single word.
Birdman.
The dream itself faded quickly, until all she could remember of it was feathery darkness and the slamming of a door.
When asked, Zoe said she couldn’t remember anything from hers.
They walked quietly for a while, wallowing in the shared gloom of the morning, but as they climbed the rise to the higher, wilder field above, their spirits lifted.
The top of the hollow was in sight, and knowing they would shortly be back at their place after a forced absence of two weeks cheered them.
Penny had decided to keep the wand with her from now on, at least until the shadow that had fallen over Dogwood lifted. She didn’t like leaving it behind. It made her feel vulnerable.
“Have you seen Ronan around at all?”
Zoe’s question broke the crisp, autumn morning silence, startling Penny.
“No, I’m kind of hoping he’ll be around. Maybe he knows what’s going on,” and since conversation had finally started again, Penny decided to tell Zoe something she should have already told her. She’d held her tongue for personal reasons.
Despite what Susan had said, Penny couldn’t get the idea that Tovar The Red might be her father out of her head. Even if he wasn’t her father, she was sure there was a connection between them. Penny was determined to uncover it, whatever it was. She would not allow herself to think that Tovar might have had anything to do with Jodi Lewis’s disappearance.
He couldn’t have, an inner voice argued. He never left his room that night. He had an alibi, that’s why they had to let him go.
A second voice, not hers, but one that sounded like Ronan, replied with cynical humor.
Convenient, aye, Little Red? Very convenient.
What is that supposed to mean?
He’s a magician, Ronan’s voice spoke in her head, then retreated.
“Zoe?”
“Yeah?”
“During the show, when we looked in th
e mirrors …”
Zoe stopped walking, regarded her curiously.
“You saw me in the mirror, right?” Penny asked.
“Yes,” Zoe said, her curiosity becoming bewilderment.
“I didn’t see you.”
Penny told her what, who, she had seen staring back at her in the mirror.
After a moment Zoe asked, “What do you think it means?”
“I don’t know,” Penny said. “Maybe it was because I wanted to see him.”
They started walking again, and when Zoe’s silence held, Penny asked, “What do you think it means?”
“You’re not going to like it,” she said with a sad certainty.
“Tell me anyway.”
“I think Tovar and The Birdman are working together.”
There was another silence—that morning seemed to be full of uncomfortable silences, Penny reflected—and Zoe broke it.
“You mad at me now?”
“No,” Penny said. She was a little mad though. She couldn’t help it.
“Do you still want to find out? Do you still want to talk to him?”
“Yes.”
Zoe offered no reply to this, and it was just as well. Nothing she could have said would have changed Penny’s mind.
They both felt the magic of the place as they descended into Aurora Hollow—a tingling in their fingertips, a high buzz of energy that seemed to saturate them, and their excitement grew, pushing the nagging question of Tovar The Red and The Birdman out of their heads. A little, anyway.
They had never felt it this strongly before.
They hoped to see Ronan, either lounging in the mouth of his little cave or on one of the high boughs of the big tree at the water’s edge.
Ronan was not there, but something else was. Something new.
“Look!” Penny pointed to the new thing, standing between two trees beyond the fire pit.
A door, old and weathered, standing there for no reason either girl could fathom.
Zoe strode to the door without hesitation or fear, inspecting the front, then walking around it. When she was standing before it again, she grasped the knob and turned it. The doorknob gave a faint rusty, dusty sigh when she turned it, then she pulled the door open.