by Carol Weekes
Frustrated, she got up and using her hands and wit, she felt along each of the room’s walls, starting with the wall that had held the mirror. She moved from wall to wall, locating nothing. She tried the taps in the tub and sink, thinking perhaps they hid some other purpose, some kind of spring that would open a magic door. Nothing occurred. Angry, but exhausted, she went back to her spot and sat down again.
A young girl stood in the center of the mirror’s glass, looking directly at her. A dull yellow light appeared behind her, as if she stood in a room that was backlit. Tanya gasped and recognized her at once. It was the girl who’d died in the road yesterday: Gina Dewar.
“He’s here,” Gina told her from the other side of the glass. She appeared scared and kept glancing back over one shoulder. “Your mother’s watching us. She can see us.”
“Gina?” Tanya stood up and rushed towards the mirror. “Honey, are you alive?”
“Shh! They’ll hear you!” Gina motioned for someone to step forward. Cory came into view in the glass, to stand beside Gina.
“Cory…how did you get in there?” Tanya whispered. “Try to touch my hands.”
She placed her hands on the dark mirror and felt only cold, smooth glass. “How did you go through? Tell me.”
“I just touch the glass and wait and it lets me through,” he said. “Gina’s here, Mom. She’s real.”
“But they took a lifeless body away,” she said. “How can this be?”
“Put your hands up to mine,” Cory said.
Tanya did as she was told, matching her hands to Cory’s. She forgot about calling her husband or other sons. She felt afraid that, should she disrupt the moment, she’d lose him again.
“Now just wait,” Cory said.
Then she felt it; a warm, almost tingling sensation along the palms and undersides of her fingers. Suddenly the glass gave with a gentle sponginess and her hands broke through so that she felt hers clasp Cory’s. She let herself fall forward, a gentle almost flowing motion, and within seconds found herself stumbling into a room that looked very similar to the one she’d just left, only darker, older in style. She stood up and brushed herself off, then grabbed Cory to her.
“Oh my God, I didn’t know what had happened to you,” she hugged him to her. She became aware of the girl, Gina, standing nearby. She stared at the girl. Tanya shook her head and reached out to grasp Gina’s hand. Gina stepped back.
“I can’t go with you.” She glanced over her shoulder again.
“This has to be some miracle,” Tanya said. “You’re alive and your parents are going to be so happy to see you. You must come with us.”
“She can’t, Mom,” Cory said. “The house won’t let her out of here. Only me.”
“What is this place anyway?” Tanya looked around herself. “It looks like our house only older…”
“It is your house, sort of,” a man’s voice said behind them. Tanya whirled. Gina rushed towards Tanya. Tanya went to hug her and felt the girl move through her like a cool breeze; it was the feeling of an electrical current passing through her body and then Gina was gone.
“Where did she go?” Tanya yelled.
“Back to her parents,” the old man stepped into the room. His facial skin was the color of wet plaster, his lips almost ruby, his eyelids bagging over his cheekbones. His neck bulged with what looked like a large, dark growth from one side and when he turned his head to regard Cory, Tanya saw that a piece of wet bone protruded through the bloody skin. She fell back, pulling Cory with her. This man looked like he was dying.
“Cory, come now,” she said, turning back to face the mirror. She saw her bathroom through it, opaque and gradually brightening as the morning sun came up.
“He can go home, if you wish to stay instead,” the man told her.
“I will not, and neither will my son. Who are you?”
“His name’s Jeffrey, Mom. He lives here with his family.”
“Our family grows a little at a time. New people are both invited and required. I am not making a request. Him or you.”
“What exactly are you asking of us?”
Others moved into the room behind the man named Jeffrey. There were women dressed in an era from the forties and fifties, one of them only in her early twenties. A gunshot wound allowed blood to trickle from her forehead into small rivers along her face.”
“Madeleine!” Cory called out. “What happened to you?”
“She didn’t listen,” Jeffrey said.
The other woman in a sharply fitted suit carried an infant dressed in a pale pink sleeper. “All this commotion all the time,” she complained.
“Be quiet, Ruth,” Jeffrey snapped. “We’re in the middle of a negotiation. So what will it be, Mrs. Parker? You or your boy? One of you can leave, and one can stay. I’m being generous.”
A man with a fedora and a loose suit jacket extracted a cigarette from an antique cigarette case and used a matching lighter to bring it to flame. Tanya watched as the cigarette smoke furled through each of them, twisting and coalescing as if interwoven with them.
She understood, suddenly, especially the baby. The baby…realization dawned on her.
“You took their baby,” she spat, frightened, yet disgusted. “You would stoop as low as that to a child and a young couple? You deprive another couple of their only child—that poor little girl—and now you dare to try and take my son?”
“Your son can go, if you stay. Or you both stay,” Jeffrey said.
“We make lovely strawberry ice cream,” the dead girl named Madeleine told them. “It’s your son’s favorite.”
“And you can visit any place you want, any time, as long as you always come back,” they all chorused, as if in a rehearsed speech. They stepped closer and she smelled them now; cloying, the under-aroma of things going soft.
“What you’re doing is wrong,” Tanya said. “You’re killing people and you’re depriving them of a rightful death. This isn’t what death is supposed to be. You’re a cold pocket of disease.”
She felt a small hand come into hers just then; cold, not-quite-solid in the way a silk scarf might feel, and looked down. She saw that Gina had crept back and stood with her.
“I don’t like this house,” Gina said to her.
“I know, honey,” Tanya said. She turned and looked at Cory. “Sweetheart, listen to me. You go back home. You go find Dad and your brothers. You stay with them. You tell them what happened. Go now.”
“Are you going to come home too?” Cory asked.
“I’ll always be with you,” she said, doing her best to contain her tears. “Hurry now.”
Cory stepped back to the glass and placed his hands on it. “I’ll wait for you.”
Tanya forced herself to smile as she watched her son climb through and disappear through the silver. Then she saw his form through the glass, on the other side. He stood up, disheveled, and called out to his father. A moment later, Robbie hurried into the room and she watched as her husband scooped their son up into his arms, jubilant.
“There you are!” Robbie cried out. “Where were you?”
“In the mirror, with Mom,” he said, and she watched Cory point at the glass. Robbie’s mouth fell open with horror.
Chapter 24
Tanya pretended to play their game. She held Gina’s hand as they followed the others downstairs to the kitchen of this astrophysical house, its composition a dark vibration of its physical component’s past, and she understood. It was an old house. It came with a history, some of its former residents not-so-nice. She’d gone to university before she and Robbie got married and one of her electives had been a metaphysical course, its study having focused on life-after-death ideologies. At the time, she’d seen the course material as somewhat nebulous, an interesting time-passer in an otherwise practical academic program.
She saw now that the discussion of lower astral levels had been correct. This house was nothing more than a sprocket of dark space along the subway line to a proper
death, and fear could keep her here; fear or ignorance. She felt fear about leaving her family behind but understood now that all would come together again at a distant point like the stitches of pattern forming a cohesive fabric, if only she stood her ground and kept moving. Bring the girl and the baby with her, back to the place where they now needed to go. She would open the door and those with the desire to follow would do so. The others could stay behind in the place they had created—a diseased version of their former home with its dank shadows, needing the energy of new souls to fuel their own dim lights.
“And you say that, should I open that porch door, that the children and I will be able to go home?” she asked Jeffrey. She’d taken the baby from Ruth who stood in the background, looking a little lost and over-protective. Gina held her other hand.
“You can see your husband and sons anytime,” Jeffrey said, a little cocky for her. “They just won’t be able to see you. I consider it a good compromise. We benefit from your energy, and you get to live forever.”
“Live forever,” Tanya said. “Sure. So, you consider this home then?”
“Yes, we do,” Jeffrey said, proud.
Tanya turned away from him. “Shall we go home?” Tanya asked the children.
“I can go see my parents any time, but they can’t see me,” Gina said.
“I know,” Tanya whispered. “But things will get better, in time.” She would have to allow the image of peace in her heart to override her fear, and they would have to keep walking. She shut her eyes for a moment and imagined the place that she’d always envisioned as Heaven: it didn’t matter how you pictured it as long as your heart felt clear and good, and your intention was strong when you did so. She recalled part of the content of the course: …for in the spiritual world, the mind creates reality. If you think fear, you will create fear. If you focus on joy, you will create a place of joy. This world consists of a higher vibration, ruled by thoughts and intent.
She saw the yard stretch out ahead of them and began walking with Gina, while carrying the baby.
“I’m taking the children out for some air,” she told Jeffrey. “We’ll be back.”
“Of course you will,” he said.
“Cocky bastard,” she muttered under her breath and kept walking. “He thinks I’m as ignorant as he is.
“You see that light at the end of the yard, near the road?” she asked Gina.
It looked almost like the rising sun, only whiter, larger, and it undulated a little.
“Yes,” Gina said. “Where are we going?”
“Home,” Tanya said. “Don’t feel afraid. Just hold my hand and keep walking with me. It’s a beautiful place with green hills and clear blue skies. Everything you could ever want is there, and everyone you have ever loved, or will love are there, or will be.”
Gina nodded. “Yes. What about the baby?”
“We’re all going home,” Tanya said. “Gina, do you know anything about Heaven?”
“Only what my parents told me when my Grandma Dewar died last year. They said she waits for us in Heaven.”
“Yes,” Tanya said. “They were right.”
They approached the light, which felt almost tropical, yet soothing, brilliant, yet not blinding. The town fell away from the edges of this light and from deeper in the light, first one, then another, and then another figure emerged and stepped towards them. Their ears buzzed a little.
Tanya felt Gina’s hand stiffen around hers for a moment, then the girl let go of her hand and ran towards someone stepping towards her.
“Grandma Dewar!” Gina cried out.
Tanya wept with relief and joy when a great-grandfather came forward for the baby.
“Thank you for looking out for her,” the man said, his eyes a kind dark blue.
“I’m always a mother,” Tanya told him.
“Are you joining us?”
“I have something else to do first, and then I will.”
* * *
“What is that mirror?” Robbie sat Cory on the edge of his bed. “I’m not angry at you, son. But Mom’s gone now and we need to get her back. You have to tell me how that mirror works.”
Cory cried a little. He thought of Jeffrey’s words: he can go home, if you wish to stay instead. “He told Mom that I could go if she stayed instead. He won’t let her go.”
“Who won’t let Mom go?”
“Jeffrey.”
“Who’s Jeffrey?”
Cory looked at his father. “I don’t know. He’s an old man who lives in that mirror, with his family. They invite new people to stay with them, but I didn’t want to live there. It felt weird, even if I could visit our old house.”
Robbie shuddered at the words. “What do you mean you could visit our old house?”
“When you go through Jeffrey’s back door, you can imagine being any place you want to be, and suddenly you’re there. Except the people there can’t see you.”
Robbie’s forehead beaded into a sweat as new fright overtook him.
“And what did Mom say when Jeffrey told her this?”
“She told me to come home and said she’d always be with me.”
Robbie’s fingers tightened into clenched fists.
“Come downstairs with me. You’re to stay right beside me at all times, do you understand?”
Cory nodded. “What’s wrong, Dad? Mom will come back here. I always did, even though they didn’t want me to go.”
It was now almost 6 AM in the morning. Robbie didn’t care about the time. He found Des Hawkins’ business card and dialed the man’s number, letting the phone ring until Hawkins’ picked up.
“It’s Rob Parker calling. I’ve had an incident at my house and now I want some clear answers out of you. Did this house ever belong to an old man by the name of Jeffrey or Jeffries?”
A long silence on the phone, then Hawkins said, “Yes, it did. Why do you ask?”
“There’s a mirror in our spare bathroom, and something’s not right with it,” Robbie stormed.
“Jesus,” Hawkins’ said. “I’ll be right over.”
Chapter 25
Hawkins hadn’t shaved and his eyes had the scared look of a rabbit in the road with a tractor-trailer bearing down upon it.
“He was the second owner of the house,” Hawkins explained. He recited the story to Robbie. “His wife, his daughter, and finally him, the first two murdered by him, his wife when she tried to leave and he thought she might talk…as for him, some say it was an accident. Others around here say he might have committed suicide. A few even say he was pushed.”
“Pushed by whom?”
“His angry family?” Hawkins’ countered. “Yes, the house has a history. Nothing you can prove, nothing tangible that science can place a cool, laboratory finger on. People buy the place and something happens. Something that frightens them and they leave. Often, someone in the family dies. A crib death, a barn fall, a slip from a roof while laying shingles, a kitchen fire one time. I’ve sold the place twice. Other agents have sold it a few times. Most agents won’t touch it. They won’t even walk in here.”
“So why do you keep selling it again and again when these things continue to happen?” Robbie forced himself not to yell. “Now my wife’s missing. You may think I’m crazy, but our son somehow passed through that mirror in the spare bathroom. My wife had him by the ankles and he still floated through the thing. He doesn’t understand how or why. He’s just a kid. What is wrong with that mirror? Where’s the hidden device that opens something near it?”
Hawkins’ looked like he wished he was in a bar, throwing back tequilas.
“I don’t understand the mirror,” he said. “I know that other owners hated it. They would try to take it down, and it would go right back up on its own. They’d remove it from the house…one family even carried it out to the barn and left it there, and it was back up in the bathroom the next morning, fully secured to the wall. The woman with the baby, the last family, wanted the house put up for sale when the w
oman walked into that room with the baby one morning—she’d been rocking the baby and she heard voices in the room. Her husband was at work. As soon as she and the child looked into the mirror, she said she saw the faces of other people looking back at her and the baby. Someone in the mirror, a woman from another era said to her ‘what a sweet baby.’ The woman almost fainted as she ran from the house with the baby, terrified. Her husband coaxed her back inside. When he went and examined the mirror, he saw nothing; experienced nothing. He tried to convince her that she’d imagined things because of her fatigue being up half the night with a newborn.
“And then the child got caught between the crib mattress and the bars a few days later. They were hysterical, naturally. The woman kept ranting about how she could still hear the child cooing in that room, and how, when she’d go to see the mirror, she’d see the other woman holding her baby and saying ‘Melissa’s fine. She likes it here.’ They put the house up for sale that same week. The woman had a nervous breakdown. She still thinks her baby is somewhere in this house.”
Robbie fell back hard against the chair. He pulled Cory to him.
“Why did you agree to sell the house?”
“What else are we going to do with it, Mr. Parker? No family is going to walk away without getting their down payment back. I have no right to walk in here and burn it down or condemn it. Nobody does. You try talking about this stuff outside of superstitious gossip circles or séances and people think you are crazy. What would you have me do? The family wanted the house up for sale. They wanted to be gone, pronto. I did what they asked. And I know you’re going to ask the same thing of me, aren’t you?”