by Ayse Hafiza
Paul and Phil walked into the kitchen together, they were wearing coats. Frank looked at them quizzically.
“Thanks for inviting us here, but we’ve made a decision,” Phil announced, Paul nodded at him.
“Really, Why? We’ve just got here,” Sophie knew what they were going to say, and asked the questions on all their minds as she pottered around the kitchen.
Losing the guys would mean there were fewer people to help with renovations.
“It’s just we don’t feel comfortable,” said Phil. Both men looked at each other again and nodded.
Frank wanted to have a private conversation with them, to know what they were thinking. But he couldn’t miss the fear that edged Paul's eye, and he stood slightly straighter as an apparition walked through him. Could he see them? Frank wasn’t sure they weren’t aware.
“We’d rather not go through it again. We’ve spoken about it a lot together, and we just wanted to let you know that we intend to leave today and to wish you all the best of luck here,” announced Phil. Paul nodded.
Frank knew what was coming next and he wouldn’t talk them out of it, he wasn’t going to try and find them jobs as an incentive to stay. What he really wanted to do was go with them. Again, he stood at the jetty watching his two old housemates leave, he knew running away was at the depths of his desires. He felt his life here like the crumpled edges of a photograph, closing in and making the space in his life smaller and smaller. He fixed a smile on his face and waved at the disappearing dots that were his old housemates, wishing he was with them.
Frank opened the book and lay on his bed, he knew he needed to study it. For the last twenty years he had only one desire, and that was to rescue Jane from the mirror. To end the curse and be free to live. All these things were leading him along a path which had physically brought him to the Isle of Eigg. Once he rescued Jane, he would renounce his Mastership of the Coven and run away with her.
He was desperately looking for a solution one that would allow him to do what he needed. Get in, find her and get out. He studied the book and as he did he wrote down potions, antidotes to illnesses, but there was nothing he could immediately see as being helpful. He needed to concentrate, so he got up and closed his bedroom door before returning to the bed to once more read over the book.
“Roger, Frank, Girls. . .dinner!” he heard Sophie call.
He was glad she was helping in the kitchen. Having never had a woman’s touch around the home, he deeply appreciated it. He knew that if he had been left to make dinner he would open a can of beans and eat with a spoon, whereas Sophie helped run the house. He knew she didn’t need to do it, but he was grateful she did.
Roger’s hands were dirty so Frank guessed that he had been at work in the garden. The house would be a different place without Phil and Paul, but Sophie and Roger had been more determined than the others to make this home theirs and Frank was glad. Not having to be involved with the manual labor gave him time to learn about his family.
It was after dinner as Sophie was tidying the kitchen that the twins showed off gifts they had made for those sat around the table.
“We made this for you Frank,” said Nevaeh as she passed him a daisy chain.
“And one for you Mommy and you too Roger,” said Heaven.
Frank held it in this hand, each stem had been pierced with a small fingernail and the next daisy stem threaded through.
“Thank you, girls,” said Frank.
“Wear it, wear it,” said Heaven excitedly.
“I don’t know how to, would you put it on me?”
The little girl rushed around the table and hung the flowers around Frank’s neck, he held them in place as if he had a string of pearls around his neck. He loved the girls, loved the energy that they brought to the house. He couldn’t imagine this house without them.
He kissed them on their crowns before they were sent to bed and he moved to the living room and sat with the others in front of the fire for the evening.
“Are you both happy here?” with the others having left, he needed to ask.
It was a question that was on his mind since they had waved goodbye to Phil and Paul earlier in the day. Both Sophie and Roger smiled, Frank knew he didn’t need to worry.
“I’ll be happier when those apple seeds become cider,” said Roger.
They all laughed, Roger was having a tough time with not having much access to alcohol. But Frank knew Sophie was especially glad, with the girls in the house and them all living in closer quarters than they had done in the squat.
“You know you can use one of the outbuildings for brewing,” said Frank. “But be careful, don’t let the girls near it.”
Roger nodded, “This trip has been good for me, it’s helped me dry out.”
They smiled, they knew it was his way of saying thank you.
“Anyway, I’m beat I’m headed up to bed, goodnight.” With that, he stood up and left Sophie and Frank alone in the sitting room.
Neither of them spoke a word, they both looked into the flames of the open fire.
Sophie stood after a few minutes and walked to the open sitting room door closing it, Frank didn’t need to look to see what she was doing, he knew. She walked between his seat and the fire and unbuttoned her dress letting it fall to the floor, before walking forward in her underwear. Taking his hand, she pulled him toward her.
Frank momentarily forgot about the book sitting on his bed.
He wasn’t sure if it had been a wasted opportunity to taunt the mirror but seeing as it hadn’t shown him Jane recently he had cooled toward that tactic.
Frank parted with Sophie in the upstairs hallway and headed alone into his bedroom. He took out his mom’s box of keepsakes, hoping and wishing that there might be something in it that would be useful to him.
The dread was palpable as he put his head inside the mirror. Was he going to be ambushed, anything was possible. He took a deep breath but this time things were different, Frank was different, around him radiated a light that he could not explain.
Frank’s eyes were drawn to the beautiful delicate chain of daisies the girls had made for him hang loosely from around his neck and was amazed at the radiant glow that came from them. It was almost like their gift was a talisman, a protective charm that seemed to cast this mirror world into a new and safer place.
Hope flooded him, and although he knew his footsteps would not be confident, he decided that he should enter the world inside the mirror if he had any chance of finding Jane he needed to take this step. Bolstering his confidence, he stepped into the mirror fully, and as he fell on the bedroom floor inside the reflection he looked up at the mirror seeing the color of the real world fade to a black and white. Like before the maid with the demonic smile walked past the bedroom entrance. Frank jumped to his feet preparing to run back to the real world, but she did not stop. Frank walked on the wooden floorboards careful not to make a sound as he crept to the open door. He peered cautiously out. The top floor was full of ghosts but none of them paid him any attention. Feeling newfound courage, he waved a hand outside the room, he was still close enough to the mirror to get back to it quickly.
Seeing no reaction, he slowly stepped outside the bedroom. None of the ghosts paid him any attention. Frank expelled the air from his lungs, a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, he could feel the sweat on his brow which reinforced what he already knew. He was finally going to be able to explore the inside of the mirror realm, but he needed to make a plan.
He stepped back through the mirror into his real world bedroom, he knew that he needed to learn more about his environment before he was able to search properly. Jane had been trapped for over twenty years and as much as it pained him, she would have to wait a little longer before he was able to come for her. When he did find her, he would need to find a way in which he could get her back into his world. . .the world of the living.
Stepping out of the mirror he stood facing it, after a few moments he took off the
daisy chain and just before climbing into bed he put it on the table at the side of his bed then went to sleep.
His dreams were not peaceful. The mirror appeared as the dark abyss of his mom’s right eye, the dark, putrid hole he had seen on her face as a ghost when she stood at the window of his childhood home.
“Don’t go in there again Frank, I’m warning you,” she scolded, her skinny finger wagged in front of his face.
He tried to ignore her by turning away, but she was in front of him every direction he turned. Haunting him.
“Jane’s in there,” he cried aloud to stop her.
“No Frank, never go in there. It’s not safe,” she said as her face slowly faded from his dream.
Frank woke in the twilight hours and looked out his bedroom window and across the garden of his home. He knew it wasn’t safe, it had never been safe. He looked at his reflection, ‘you can commune with the dead,’ the words rose in his mind. As Master of the Coven he could speak to the dead. Maybe the daisy chain wasn’t enough, Frank needed to commune with the dead, he needed to go back further than his mom, go back to an ancestor who would be able to give him some real direction, but not too far that he wouldn’t be able to understand.
Frank opened his mom’s box of keepsakes. He noticed some brown envelopes with curly handwriting, opening them he glimpsed his mom’s collection of love letters from a secret admirer. He shuddered and put them to the side, there were some things it would not benefit him to learn. He rummaged through until he found a necklace one Mom had said belonged to Nanna. Frank had vague memories of the portly woman he was instructed to call Nanna. He remembered very little of her other than everyone expected him to be sad at her funeral, so he faked the tears to keep them all happy and when they were gone so were his tears.
He held the necklace in his hand, forcing his mind to search for her.
Then as he lifted his gaze to soften and focus on the glass pane in front of him, behind him in the reflection of his window he saw a dark mass form. That was the point at which he passed out and fell on the floor, his head cracking against the floorboard.
11
Nanna Hamilton
Why wouldn’t she speak to him? She was his maternal grandmother, and there she sat unmoving in a wooden chair with her eyes closed. Frank lay where he had fallen, in front of her, in the same position.
“Nanna Hamilton, Nanna Hamilton,” he called out.
She didn’t open her eyes. Instead, she held her shoulders close to her body and pulled herself into a ball. From her actions Frank could tell she didn’t feel safe, she was waiting for something horrible to happen.
“Nanna? I am Master of the Coven of Hamilton witches. I am here, and I command you to tell me the secrets of the mirror.”
The woman scrunched her eyes tighter as if she was about to be impacted by something, almost like she was expecting something negative.
“Nanna, please?” begged Frank.
It was pointless, how was he meant to commune with the dead when the dead didn’t want to speak. The maid in black suddenly entered the room, she didn’t look at Frank, and he wondered if she could see him as he wasn’t wearing the daisy chain the girls had made.
Raising her hand, she smacked it down hard on Nanna Hamilton’s face and head, again and again, until the old woman passed out in the chair. The maid was evil.
She turned her head and looked at him lying on the floor. The shock and fear of what he witnessed forced him to scuttle backwards into the protection of the shadow, she left the room. Frank stood up, that maid had been hung from the branches of the fig tree at the back of the house, he knew that the evil woman kept all the captive souls under control. She was important he was sure of it.
Frank stumbled to his feet and ran out of his room to the back window in the upstairs hall. Looking across the garden he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The garden was full of captive souls. Congregated together in a group they swayed with the wind, the pale faces expressionless as if they were drugged, all the captured souls over generations. His eyes searched the many faces desperate to see her, his Jane. He felt his legs weaken and threaten to buckle beneath him at the realization of the task dawned on him. He would need a lifetime to find her.
Tears started to trickle from his eyes, blurring his sight. He needed to find her, but the impossibility of the task struck him, and he knew that among the thousands of souls that the mirror held in the garden, he was trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Deflated he turned with his head hung down but his eyes caught the movement of the hem of her full black skirt and he faltered. She had been waiting. He lifted his gaze higher and up to her soulless black eyes and they paralyzed him with fear. She was close to him. She smiled with that creepy demonic grin, then without trying to say or do anything she turned her attention to the end of the hall.
Frank knew it was a warning, the ghostly demonic maid had a plan. She disappeared as he blinked. She was gone, he could no longer feel the darkness of her presence.
“Roger, Frank, Girls. . .breakfast is ready,” Sophie called out.
When Frank pushed himself up he noted he was laying on the floor of his room, he had drooled over the floorboards and he moved his hand to wipe the fluid away. He fell back on the floor again; his head briefly touched the board and felt the searing pain of the bump on his head. He lay still willing his eyes open and trying to remember what happened last night, then he felt the foreign weight in his hand, he pulled the object up in front of his eyes, it was Nanna Hamilton's necklace. He played with it in his hands then hoisted himself up off the floor before tossing it back inside his mom's trinket box. He washed in the bathroom, he needed to pull it together before he went downstairs so he gave himself a much-needed pep talk.
Fixing a smile on his face he went into the kitchen, Sophie acted normal and he was grateful for it. Although they were more like a family, if Roger knew what was going on around him, he would want to leave. So would Frank if he unwittingly realized that he was the third wheel in a relationship. Roger was helpful, he had taken to fixing tiles on the roof as well as gardening. The old house had been maintained by the Islanders, but that didn’t mean it didn’t need love and attention. All of which Frank was unable to provide.
He sat outside in the garden drinking his cup of tea, the work Roger had done was outstanding. He had cleared an area for his orchard at the side of the house. The girls ran past him on the step into the garden, and he found himself smiling as he watched them chase each other around. They had been a liability in the commune but here they were a joy, they brought the house alive. Frank and Roger stood together staking spaces where each tree should stand, working together they quickly formed a grid.
They abruptly they heard an ear piercing scream, raising their heads they turned toward where the girls had been playing. Frank sprinted to where he had seen them last followed by Sophie who came running from the kitchen.
Bile rose in his throat, the image of the maid was in his mind, he knew she had something to do with that scream.
“Heaven. . .Nevaeh? Heaven?” Sophie screamed running in circles, trying to see where they were.
Roger caught up.
Frank ran toward the fig tree, and then past it, he caught a glimpse of one of the girl’s yellow summer dress.
“Stop! Stop!” she said holding out her hands.
Frank grabbed her and pulled her back toward the tree and safety.
He then saw a small hand clutching a tuft of grass so tightly that it was deathly white, green blades poking out between a closed fist on the wrong side of the chalk cliff. Frank carefully made his way to the edge. Perilously Frank jolted forward attempting to grab her hand, but it moved out of his grasp and as he looked over the edge he saw her, the whites of her eyes and her mouth wide as she screamed. It was as she fell that he saw her hanging from the little girl’s foot. The demonic maid with that cruel smile on her face. The tuft with its visible roots lay in the palm of her open hand as gra
vity and the maid dragged her away.
He was too late, he missed. He turned his face away, he couldn’t bear to see the depths of Irish sea that lapped the cliff and claimed her.
She was gone.
Sophie and Roger arrived, Roger held Neveah, allowing Sophie to get to where Frank stood.
“Heaven? Heaven! Hold on Mommy is here,” she called.
She attempted to jump off the cliff, but Frank grabbed her, he held her and rocked her until she completely broke and folded into him.
In silence they walked her back to the house, Sophie and Nevaeh were broken.
Roger spoke first and suggested they call the coast guard.
So, Frank told him to watch over them, he went to Mrs. Boswell’s house to use her phone to make the call. It was unspoken between the two men, they would do all they could to console Sophie and Nevaeh. The girls were old enough to know they shouldn’t have been playing there. Old enough to know better, so why had they been there? It was a mystery to everyone, everyone apart from Frank.
He had no doubt the demonic maid had everything to do with Heaven’s death. He wondered if he would be able to find her and commune with her.
Mrs. Boswell and all the community of the island came for the funeral, the one which had an empty casket because her body was never found. In the days after the girl’s death Sophie wanted to leave, but Nevaeh was stubborn. Frank could hear them arguing in their bedroom.
“All I ever wanted was for you girls to be safe, that is why I brought you here,” screamed Sophie.
“I am safe, and so is Heaven,” screamed Nevaeh back.
“You don’t know that only Frank can speak to the dead, you don’t have those skills,” Sophie screamed at the girl.
Frank knew that wasn’t strictly true, but Nevaeh remained quiet never contradicting her Mom when she said that.
“I don’t believe you are safe,” Sophie would say as she inevitably would start bawling then leave the room.