Ordinary Souls

by J. S. Bailey

  Elena told him.

  “But there is a catch,” she added.

  “What’s that?”

  “You bring me with you.”

  THE alleyway behind Antiques and Oddities was dim to the point of being black, seeing as the corner streetlamp had conveniently burned out. Sirens wailed in the direction of the motorway—no doubt some fool had forgotten how to drive again. It was too unlikely that the sirens were meant for her.

  Elena felt her way through the darkness, taking small steps so as not to make much noise, when a sudden profanity mere feet away made her nearly leap from her skin.

  “Phil, it’s me,” she whispered, recovering from her surprise.

  “Bloody hell, Elena. I told you not to come.”

  “As if you’d really think I’d stay home from this one.” In fact, this was the first time Elena had ever called Phil. It was always Tom who’d recruited the burglar to do his bidding, normally to swipe information from his business competitors.

  Elena looked towards the mouth of the alley. “How did you manage the streetlamp?”

  “Trade secret,” Phil grunted. “Now shush before someone hears us.” A quiet click and an unoiled squeak indicated an opening door, which revealed the back corridor leading to David’s office.

  In the faint spill of light from within, Elena could see that Phil had dressed all in black and wore a set of goggles she supposed must let him see in the dark. “In, in!” he hissed.

  Elena obeyed without hesitation.

  Inside, an alarm panel blinked along the left wall. Her surge of anxiety was stifled the moment Phil plopped his kit on the floor and keyed a code into the panel.

  “Alarm’s off,” he said.

  Elena silently thanked the heavens for Phil’s success. “How did you know the code? Is it another trade secret?”

  Phil snorted. “I spent the evening researching this David bloke. He’s exactly the sort to set his own birthday as the alarm code. Now hurry up and get this contract you’re looking for.”

  Elena nodded. Praying there weren’t any security cameras in this part of the shop, she went to David’s office door and took great delight in the fact he hadn’t locked it.

  This feels like a trap, she thought as she flicked on the light, grateful the small room had no windows. Her gaze raked the ceiling. No cameras here. Good.

  Now that she was actually here and not just daydreaming about it, Elena’s mind froze. How would she know where to find David’s contracts? Would he keep them in a drawer or on a shelf? What if the contracts were digital and saved on his computer?

  What if he kept them at home?

  Fully aware that the night was steadily ticking by without regard to her needs, Elena scanned the shelf behind the desk, seeing files labeled “2012,” “2013,” and so on, but none that indicated they might be reserved for contracts.

  Just to be sure, she pulled out the one labeled “2016” and paged through it, seeing only copied invoices for items David had purchased from other dealers, not from private sellers.

  Elena replaced the file and started tearing through cabinets and desk drawers, her panic increasing all the while. “It has to be here,” she hissed, knowing full well that it did not.

  Phil poked his head through the doorway, scowling. “Need me to help?”

  “Not yet. I’ve got this.”

  Elena tugged open the bottom right desk drawer, and her heart made a little flip when she laid eyes upon a crisp yellow file labeled “Contracts.”

  Her first instinct was to grab the file and run, but David could not be given any hints that someone had broken in and rummaged through his things, so she flipped the file open and pulled out her phone.

  It took her a moment to register the fact that only one contract had been tucked inside the file, and oddly enough, it had been handwritten. Scanning it, she glimpsed the word “mirror.”

  Elena’s blood simmered. David had lied to her about needing contracts with his sellers. By the look of it, he’d only ever needed one.

  She photographed the contract and put it back where she’d found it. Before leaving, she waved at the shrunken head. It stared at her accusingly with dead eyes that seemed to know more than they should.

  She briefly wondered if a camera might have been hidden inside the head and then chided herself. Sometimes a shrunken head was just a shrunken head.

  If only her mirror could have been as simple.

  ELENA’S mobile rang in her pocket the next day at work. She’d thought about calling in sick since she’d had such a late night but knew she must avoid all suspicion, and therefore came in at her usual time.

  She had, thus far, drank more than her usual amount of coffee, so it was with a jittery hand that she held the phone to her ear and said, “Hello?”

  In her exhaustion she barely glanced at the caller. There came a long pause and a bit of a crackle, and then a faint voice said, “Elena? It’s Victoria.”

  Victoria McCreary was Elena’s ex-sister-in-law. Something in her tone made Elena’s muscles tense. “Yes, what is it?”

  “Elena, I’m afraid I have some bad news. Are…are you sitting down?”

  Elena’s heart began its descent to the region of her bowels. “What’s happened?”

  “It’s Tom. I suppose you figured that already. It was last night on the motorway. Someone in a Ford Fiesta wasn’t looking when they changed lanes, and I—I’m afraid Tom didn’t make it.”

  The room swam before Elena’s eyes as she tried to process Victoria’s words. Tom—the cunning man she used to love—was dead.

  “Thank you for telling me,” she heard herself say. Her voice seemed to belong to someone else.

  “I mean, a Ford Fiesta. Can you believe it?” Victoria said it as if it would have been more dignifying for Tom to have been killed by a Bentley. She let out a sniffle. “Anyway, I thought you ought to know. We’re having the funeral on Wednesday at St. Mark’s. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

  “I’ll…I’ll think about it.”

  “Take care, Elena. And I’m sorry.”

  “You too.”

  Elena laid her mobile down on her desk. Part of her felt numb. During the bitterest parts of the divorce proceedings, Elena would have rejoiced to hear of Tom’s demise. Perhaps she’d matured a bit since then, or maybe their time apart had mellowed a portion of her rage.

  In any case, sorrow began to fill her. Sorrow of what could have been, but wasn’t.

  “I was such a hateful fool,” she muttered as memories of their happier days together flashed through her mind—days before the arguments, days before the accusations of infidelity. Elena hadn’t even been seeing someone else. Her time away from the house had been spent with Marty, or at her favourite shops, but Tom wouldn’t believe it.

  A knock on her office door made her jump. She dabbed at her eyes and said, “Come in.”

  The door opened, admitting Jonathan, one of her younger assistants.

  He clutched a paper bag in one hand.

  “What is it?” Elena asked, hoping she didn’t come across sounding too testy.

  Jonathan looked as timid as a sheep. “Pardon me if I’m overstepping, ma’am, but a friend of mine gave me this for my birthday, and I don’t drink anymore.” He slid a bottle of Chase Vodka out of the bag and turned it so Elena could see the label. “I’ve been asking around and no one else seems to want it. I wondered if you’d want to take it.”

  Elena eyed the bottle with some trepidation. Yes, it was the one from her mirror—she was sure of it.

  Don’t take it, Marty’s voice advised her. See what happens if you don’t.

  “No thank you, Jonathan.” Elena gave him a tired smile. “I’m sure you’ll find someone who’d love to have it.”

  “I hope so.” Jonathan dipped his head and ducked out of the office, closing the door behind him.

  Elena kneaded her eyelids, too weary to feel any satisfaction from defying the future she’d seen in the mirror
. Tom was gone. How could she think of anything else?

  SHE left the office at three o’clock and stood blinking in the sunlight. She felt the need to go somewhere, to do something, but drew a blank. She should call Marty. Yes, that was it. Call Marty and tell her about Tom, and Marty would impart some words of wisdom that might take the edge off of her sorrow.

  Elena climbed into her unlocked car and went to put the key in the ignition when she saw the brown paper bag sitting to her left in the passenger seat.

  Someone had taped a note to it. She tore it off and read:

  Elena—Jonathan forced this upon me earlier despite my objections. I noticed you looked upset today and thought you might want it. –Gemma

  Elena crumpled the note and tossed it out the window. So much for avoiding the future from the mirror. The future had literally delivered itself into her hands.

  “I learned who owned the mirror before me,” Elena said to Marty. She paced back and forth in her kitchen with her phone to her ear, too agitated to sit.

  “How did you manage to pull that one off?” Marty asked.

  Elena sipped at her mug of coffee. “Trade secret.”

  “Who is it, then?”

  “George Alistair McPherson. Did a search on his name and found out he lives in Croydon. Want to pay him a visit?”

  “Now?”

  “I’m taking the day off.”

  “Well, I can’t. You want me to come with you, you’ll have to wait until tonight.”

  “I’m not waiting.”

  “Good luck, then. Tell me how it goes.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Elena?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “What? Of course it is.” Elena hadn’t told Marty about Tom. She hadn’t the strength to bring him up.

  “Take care, then, and don’t do anything too stupid.”

  Elena ended the call and set the phone on the counter. She would head out to see George McPherson the moment she was properly dressed.

  She wondered what in the world she would say to him.

  IT wasn’t often Elena ventured down to Croydon. She squinted out the windscreen at rows and rows of unfamiliar shops offering everything from Indian cuisine to Thai massages. This didn’t seem the sort of neighbourhood people who owned cursed mirrors might call home.

  Then again, her own home didn’t look like it should house a cursed mirror, either.

  Her GPS instructed her to turn left, and Elena obeyed, finding herself on a street lined with brown brick houses. She scanned the numbers in search of 16, where the internet had told her George McPherson lived.

  A woman leaned out of a window to water a box full of petunias at number 2, and a small boy in front of number 8 pedaled a tricycle up the pavement.

  “It’s too normal,” Elena said out loud. “All of it.”

  Number 16 looked as normal as the rest at first glance. Elena parked alongside the road, got out, and shielded her eyes against the morning sun. She checked the address she’d scrawled down on a used envelope for the thousandth time to make sure she’d read it right, then stuffed it back into her handbag.

  “Here goes, then.”

  She straightened her shoulders, took one step, and stopped. Two pots of withered flowers sat on either side of the front door, and in front of it lay several days’ worth of rolled-up newspapers no one had bothered collecting.

  She suddenly felt silly. Here she was, forty years old, and snooping around on strangers like this was some bad episode of Scooby-Doo.

  “I ought to be ashamed of myself,” she said as she pressed the doorbell.

  Elena sensed rather than heard movement behind the door. She took an involuntary step in reverse when a young woman with a pinched face appeared in the doorway. She looked Elena up and down and said, “What do you want?”

  It was hardly the greeting Elena had expected. She did her best to appear friendly but felt somewhat self-conscious for having worn one of her nicest blouses and skirts. In contrast, the woman at number 16 wore a wrinkled Muse t-shirt and ripped jeans long overdue for the dustbin.

  “I wondered if I could talk to George McPherson,” Elena said.

  The woman, likely in her early twenties, gave her a rather guarded expression. “Is this a joke?”

  “I—I may have gotten the address wrong,” Elena said. “If you could point me in the right direction—”

  The woman cut her off. “This is the place. I’m Amanda McPherson. George is my granddad.”

  When it seemed Amanda wouldn’t say more, Elena said, “Is he home?”

  Amanda’s dark eyes bored twin holes into her. “You really don’t know, then. Maybe you should just come in. What’s your name?”

  “Marty.” Elena felt herself blush. “Marty Brinkman.”

  Amanda led her down the hall to the lounge. “Go on, sit down. Can I get you anything? Water? Tea?”

  “Tea, please. And thank you.”

  Amanda let out a displeased grunt as she vanished through a doorway. Elena sat in an olive-green armchair and let her gaze rove over the room. Sunlight spilled through sheer drapes, illuminating someone’s rather cluttered lifestyle: a curio cabinet was filled with a collection of odds and ends like glass angel statues and hand-carved crucifixes, a brass floor lamp with a ghastly yellow shade stood in the corner, several dusty paintings she didn’t recognise hung on the papered walls, and on the low table in front of her sat a large ceramic bowl she was sure she’d seen in the window at David’s shop.

  She wondered if it was cursed, too.

  Amanda returned with a tea tray and set it next to the ceramic bowl with care. Elena smoothed out a wrinkle in her skirt while Amanda set about filling the cups.

  “Right, then,” Amanda said as she took the other chair. “What do you want with Granddad?”

  Elena cleared her throat. “I’m a collector, and I’d heard some compelling rumours about his collection.”

  Amanda’s face lit up a bit. “It’s not just him who collects. I’ve started, too. See that bowl? That’s mine. Granddad said…he said one can never be too young to appreciate good antiques. I think maybe he was partly talking about himself.” Her expression sobered. “What did you hear?”

  Elena measured her words with care before saying them. “I’ve been told he’s in possession of a rather fascinating mirror.”

  It grew so silent in the McPhersons’ lounge that Elena could hear her own heartbeat. Pink splotches appeared on Amanda’s face, and Elena knew she’d said exactly the wrong thing.

  “Who told you about that?” Amanda’s voice was low and even despite the storm Elena could sense brewing inside her.

  “I—I can’t remember.”

  “You’re lying. I know you are.”

  Elena paused for a sip of tea, then said, “Why does it matter who told me?”

  “Because only me and Granddad knew about the bloody thing! About what it could do, I mean.” Tears welled in Amanda’s eyes. “He was so excited when he bought it from a dealer in Paisley. He traveled a lot looking for deals on antiques. The bloke who sold him the mirror couldn’t wait to get it off his hands, he said. Granddad bought it for only a hundred quid.”

  Elena’s grip tightened on her teacup. “Only a hundred?”

  “I know! Granddad couldn’t believe it, either. Something that old he’d have gladly paid a thousand or more for. He thought it was his lucky day.” Amanda’s gaze grew hollow as she drank more of her tea. Licking her lips, she went on. “I had to get rid of it, which means you could have only heard about it from that twit down at the shop. Which means…” Her eyes widened. “You bought it, didn’t you? Please tell me you didn’t.”

  Elena sighed. “If it’s any consolation, David didn’t tell me who you are. Refused to tell me, in fact, so I dug around his office a bit while he was out. If Paisley were closer, I’m sure you’d have done the same.”

  Amanda shrugged. “Doesn’t matter now. It’s started happeni
ng, then?”

  Elena nodded.

  “It doesn’t happen to everyone. Found that out soon enough. My mum came by plenty of times and nothing ever happened to her, so I did the smart thing and didn’t bring it up. She’s had enough on her mind these last few years, with Dad dying and all. He was Granddad’s son.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about your father. Er…where is your granddad now?”

  Amanda’s mouth formed a thin line. “You’re not going to have a row with him over that bloody mirror, are you?”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “He’s upstairs. And if you’re thinking of threatening us with some kind of legal action, just know that we didn’t know anything about it when we got it, and that for all we knew, the mirror only worked on us.”

  “You still made David sign that contract.”

  “I’m sure you’d do the same,” Amanda said, rephrasing Elena’s earlier words. Her lips twisted into a wry smile. “Would you like to meet him?”

  “If I’m not intruding.”

  “You’ve done plenty of intruding already, so what’s a little more? Come on, I’ll show you where he is.”

  Dread crept into Elena’s heart and spread through her veins as Amanda led her up a squeaking staircase and pushed open a door that had sat a few inches ajar.

  “Oh, Granddad!” Amanda called in a falsely cheery voice. “Someone’s here to see you!”

  They stepped into a bedroom that smelled of cinnamon air freshener. An old man with stooped shoulders sat in a chair by the window that looked out on the back garden.

  The man didn’t even twitch to acknowledge their presence.

  Elena ran a hand through her hair. “Perhaps he’s gone to—”

  “He isn’t sleeping. Come here.”

  Amanda went to the window, and knowing she would regret it, Elena followed.

  George McPherson appeared to be in his early seventies and had bright blue eyes that stared at nothing.

  “Granddad, this is Marty,” Amanda said. Elena didn’t bother correcting her. “She’s the lucky one who bought our mirror.”