Corpse Cold_New American Folklore
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lookout for the perfect bathroom mirror for their Neo-
Victorian furnished home. They made their way down
Antique Row, popping into each and every shop, but found
no mirror to their liking.
They were about to give up, when they came to the last
store on the block: Marvelry’s Curiosity Shop. They went
inside and were taken aback by the shop’s odd assortment of
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bizarre knick-knacks and magician’s tools. A skeleton key
fashioned out of real bone. A cuckoo clock with a black cat that yowled the hours in place of the bird. A toy guillotine.
They had a good laugh at the items for sale, and were
about to leave, when the shopkeeper strode out from the
back room. “What’s the matter, folks? Nothing catch your
eye?”
The man made Echo and Robert uncomfortable.
Where all of the other shopkeepers on Antique Row fit their expectations—upper-middle class, well-dressed, reserved
disposition—this man was like a carnival barker. His eyes
and smile, both wide to the point of lewdness, were enough to give them the creeps.
“I don’t think you’ve got what we’re looking for,” said
Echo, looking around at the strange books on the shelf:
Vivisections of Non-Vertebrates, A Cannibalistic History of Central New York, The Vortex of Rapa Nui.
“We’re in the market for a mirror. Something for the
bathroom with an Edwardian sensibility,” added Robert.
“Indeed,” said Marvelry.
Echo was practically out the door when she caught sight
of a partially covered mirror and paused. “That mirror—is
it damaged?” she asked.
“Certainly not. It came from the Robertson Family.
You may have heard of the museum they helped fund across
town,” replied Marvelry.
Echo went to the mirror and removed the silk cover to
study its craftsmanship.
“So, you’re Dr. Merrily?” said Robert.
“It’s pronounced Marvel-’rye,’ no doctor necessary,”
replied Marvelry. “Miss, I haven’t had that mirror long. I bought it at a charity auction at the museum, just before
Christmas.”
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“It’s in great shape. What do you think, Robert?”
The man approached the mirror, then stopped. “What
hideous lighting.”
Echo laughed. “I never knew you to be so vain, dear.”
“Don’t worry, Robert. A mirror can never reveal your
true nature,” stated Marvelry.
“Mr. Marvel-ree,” replied Echo, donning her
philosopher’s cap, “what could be a truer presentation of
self than the apperception of one’s own reflection?”
“The way you and Robert reflect each other is much
more honest. Robert’s beauty can never be perceived by
Robert as fully as when you study him the way you do,” said Marvelry.
“Sir, constructing and maintaining an image of oneself,
predominantly from the feedback provided by others, is
often an indication of clinical sociopathy,” answered Echo, smiling. “But we’ll definitely take the mirror. It’s perfect.”
Marvelry clapped and rubbed his hands together.
“Excellent! You two have got great taste. Now, let’s ring
you up!” He walked back to the register. Robert followed,
removing his wallet from his coat pocket.
Echo ran her fingers over the mirror’s rosettes and
beveled trim, imagining how it would look paired with
the bathroom’s rosewood cabinets. She gazed into the
glass again and did a double-take when she caught an odd
reflection of herself—looking to be easily twenty pounds
heavier than her current weight. She examined the mirror
from the side; it was neither too concave nor convex. She
looked dead straight on it again, and this time the woman
staring back at her appeared perfectly normal. Chalking the strange reflection up to the shop’s unflattering lighting, she walked over to Robert, who was in the process of finalizing the transaction.
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“Thanks again, folks. I hope this piece makes a fine
addition to your home,” said Marvelry, as he wrapped the
mirror with newspaper and bound it in-between two pieces
of heavy cardboard. “You two take care.”
Echo and Robert said goodbye and carried their new
possession out of the store. Robert placed the mirror on a blanket in the back of their SUV and off they drove.
When they got home, Robert carried the mirror upstairs
to the bathroom connected to their master bedroom.
Taking direction from Echo, he hammered an anchor into
the wall over the sink, then picked up the mirror and placed it in position between a pair of cabinets.
When he removed his hand from the back of the mirror
to let it rest against the wall, he jerked his head back at the image before him. A hideous purple and black bruise was
running from his temple to his cheek, as if he had been
severely beaten. He blinked his eyes rapidly, disbelieving, then turned back to Echo. “Honey, wha-what the hell? Did
you see that?”
“What?” she said, perplexed by her husband’s sudden
vexation.
He looked back at the mirror, but the unsettling image
had vanished. He ran his fingers over the supposedly bruised portion of his face, but it wasn’t painful to the touch, nor were there any abnormal marks or lumps. “Nothing. I
must be tired.” Like Echo earlier, he attributed the strange reflection to a trick of the mind, a result of an odd angle.
After settling in from their shopping trip and attending
to other items they had picked up that morning, Robert and Echo discussed their wedding plans. The color would be
coral, there would be exactly 150 guests, and the vegetarian option at dinner would be a gluten-free pasta.
Talk of the future led, as it tended to, to the inevitable
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discussion of children. Echo had some reservations
about staying home with their future progeny and losing
momentum. She knew children would bring some form of
career hiatus, an inability to write in private for hours at a time, and a break from the hallowed halls of academia.
But as a woman with strong beliefs in early education, she couldn’t just let them run rampant in daycare. Robert was
supportive of her career, but plain biology would dictate
that a woman must make certain sacrifices a man simply
never has to.
The following morning, Robert left for work while
Echo finished doing her makeup in front of their new
mirror. Her first class wasn’t until 10 a.m., so she had time to get lost in her thoughts. She didn’t immediately notice her own reflection alter. She had been thinking of a few
of her newly postpartum friends—their fatigue, physically
and emotionally—and was pulled from her trance when she
noticed that her own imagination had transformed her
reflection into a sympathetic state. A weariness weighed
beneath her eyes; she had even developed slight jowls! She blinked several times, then stared back at the mirror. She relaxed at the return of her normal figure. There she was
again—svelte, alert, her body unmarred by motherhood.
When Robert returned from work that evening, he
told her that one of his colleagues had been assaulted and robbed in the parking lot during lunch.
“Rob, you work late, and they don’t have enough
security around that building. Will you promise to be
careful and come home a little earlier for a while?”
“You know I can’t help my hours. I’ll stay safe. On a
positive note, I think they’re going to make me a managing director soon. Isn’t that great news?”
They had a nice dinner at home. Echo refrained from
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ECHO’S REFLECTION
bringing up the topic of the mirror, her morning shock,
and its psychological implications.
The next morning, Robert was up at 4 a.m. sharp,
ready to start his workday. He was shaving in the bathroom mirror. The house was quiet, so quiet that he could hear
Echo toss and turn in the other room. He looked down and
dipped his safety razor into the water to rinse it off, quickly returning the blade to address a few errant hairs above his collar bone. When he looked up he saw a figure in a black
ski mask standing behind him, as if he were ready to strike.
Robert shuddered, and when he flinched, he cut his neck
with his razor.
“What the heck was that?” Robert looked around the
bathroom for anything that might resemble the intruder.
It certainly wasn’t someone at the window, as he was on the second floor. When he turned back to the mirror to check
his neck wound, an eerie feeling passed over him. His face was bruised again, but this time the longer he stared into his reflection, the deeper in color and more real the blemish
seemed to become. He raced into the bedroom, turned on
the light, and woke Echo.
“Look at my face! The bruise is back!” he yelled.
Echo awoke in a panic at his fearful excitement. “Let
me see!” she replied, somewhat groggy and unsure of what
exactly was happening. “Rob, I don’t see any bruise. You
cut yourself shaving, and it’s practically streaming down
your neck. Go get a towel.”
“What do you mean?! There’s definitely a bruise.” He
hurried back into the bathroom to check his face. Sure
enough, the bruise was gone, and his neck needed blotting
and a bandage.
The rest of the day passed uneventfully for the couple.
Echo taught class, Robert sold oil futures. That night
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when they went over wedding details together, they found
themselves arguing over minutiae that they would normally
have let pass without conflict.
“We should’ve hired a wedding planner. We both
have too much on our minds to have to worry about table
decorations and listing every single song the deejay’s going to play,” stated an exasperated Robert.
“This is more important than our work. This is about us
and our future. We should be enjoying this time together,
because soon enough we’ll have to put all of our energy into a baby.”
“Why? Are you pregnant?”
Robert’s tone irritated Echo, as if he were accusing her.
“No! But don’t worry; it’ll all fall on me anyway. You’ll be a managing director at Farrell Dench and I’ll be stuck at
home, with my treatise on Merleau-Ponty untouched and
unfinished for years.”
Robert went to bed early that night. When he saw the
nasty bruising return while washing up, he said nothing
about it to Echo. She, too, had an encounter with their
foreboding mirror that evening. While Robert slept she
witnessed something unlike any previous vision. The mirror became a looking glass into a living room where a pretty
toddler stood. A frumpy, overweight woman then entered
the picture, carrying two screaming twin baby boys. The
ragged woman was stone-faced and dead-eyed. She looked
absolutely miserable, having to deal with the day-to-day
grind of motherhood.
Echo tried to tell herself that she was simply projecting
her anxiety over her future with Robert onto the mirror,
but it looked and felt so real to her. That she would become that sad shell of a woman seemed almost an inevitability,
not just a possible outcome based on present and future
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choices she was free to make. She wanted to wake Robert
and share her fears with him, but she didn’t want him to
think her weak-minded.
Robert’s morning routine was again marred by the ghastly
bruising in the mirror. He had slept poorly and thought
it better to just get on with his day, rather than give the vision any credence. He left before Echo’s alarm went off, wanting to give her more time before properly addressing
their scuffle. He loved her as plainly and purposefully as on the day they first met. He was confident that she would be his lifetime companion, and the mother of his children,
unto death.
Echo felt almost hungover from her poor night’s sleep.
She got ready for work with a small handheld mirror she
kept in her purse, rather than again bear witness to her own psyche-made-real in her new, antique mirror. Her day
wore on slowly. Not looking into the mirror was perhaps
worse for her. She could only think about what it would
have revealed had she looked that morning. Would it have
shown her children grown and gone? Her divorce from
Robert? Her own death? What horrible things would await
her when she eventually looked back into that abominable
metal-coated glass?
Echo didn’t get any work done that day, and left the
college early. By the time she got home she was sick with
anxiety, and had to run upstairs to vomit into the toilet.
She felt better after heaving and started a warm bath. But ultimately, she couldn’t help herself and turned to look into the mirror. There she saw the living room again, this time with three school-age children at play. Echo saw herself
sitting on the couch, now seriously overweight, staring at something on the TV like a zombie. In that moment she
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resented Robert—that he would allow her, or even pressure
her, to make the life choices that would lead to the end of her intellectual life.
Echo knew she couldn’t blame Robert, the only man she
had ever truly loved, for the choices she would have had to make freely. She knew in her heart, that the mirror, whether a psychical projection or something more fantastic, was an honest picture of one form of her future. Dr. Marvelry was very much wrong about a mirror’s inability to project an
honest image. If she became Robert’s wife and raised his
kids, she was looking at her future, and at the end of her freedom to fully pursue her one driving passion in life—the development of her intellect.
There was no future for her without Robert; she knew
and felt that as an absolute truth. The only alternative was to face the unknown, a life without him—and a life without Robert was certainly not worth pursuing. She couldn’t
stomach the prospect of ever living a life unexamined—just carried along into old age the same as everyone else, without routinely stopping to just be conscious of what it
means to be a living, breathing being in the world.
Echo lashed out and punched the horrible mirror. Her
sizeable engagement ring caused the glass to shatter into
nasty shards in the sink and onto the floor. She watched the blood from several small cuts run down her hand and wrist
for a few minutes. She texted Robert, “I’m sorry” before
stepping into the warm bathtub, now brimming with water.
Robert, having also carried the daily anxiety of the
mirror, instinctively knew from Echo’s text message that
she was in danger. He left work and raced home. When
he found her in the bathtub, her wrists were slit and the
life had drained from her face. He screamed and picked
up a large shard from the edge of the bathtub, which she
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had used to end her life. As he wailed for his lost love, he witnessed the horrible facial bruise fade from his reflection in the mirror fragment.
Echo Dollinger was dead and buried five years when Robert
Simmons finally married. He and his new wife had trouble
conceiving, as they discovered Robert was sterile.
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ADDITIONAL
NOTES
NOTES
Switches
An homage to H. G. Wells’ horror opus “The Red Room,”
various episodes of The Twilight Zone, and tales that tell of nights spent in disappearing churches and homes.
• • •
Black Dog
Working-class teens Garrett and Carl are given freedom
out of necessity, likely more than they can handle at their level of maturity. The brothers choose to risk facing the
boogeyman their father warned them of, for a chance
at immediate reward. The Black Dog is a common,
traditionally British, omen of death. Garrett and Carl are warned from childhood about the dangers of being in the
woods at night, and the importance of hunting safety—first by way of story, and then through practical instruction.
This fairytale is meant to illustrate the broader scheme of why spook tales are told to children, and how stories evolve into valuable guides about what ought (and ought not) to
be done.
• • •
Czarny Lud
The Polish boogeyman, or ‘black monster-man,’ is said to
feed on the fear of children in dark places, and then trail the child into adulthood, where it remains in shadows, and