Mirror, Mirror Valerie Gaumont Copyright 2011 by Valerie Gaumont Smashwords Edition Smashwords License Statement This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Mirror, Mirror The dusty floorboards creaked under my feet, sighing softly to themselves as I moved through the crowded shop. Row after row of forgotten treasures met my eyes when I scanned the shelves. The proprietor, a cranky old man seated at the front of the store watched my progress as I moved. I could feel his enormous eyes, magnified by his thick-lensed glasses into huge orbs of rummy green trained on my back. His fingers were clasped atop the opened book spread across his stomach. Over his shoulder I caught sight of my sister, Emmie, making faces. I smiled and turned back to the rows crammed with forgotten remnants of the past. Emmie waited patiently for me to make my selection. She saw little use for anything not new and shiny. The patina of age never really suited her. But she was a lawyer, a good high priced lawyer, and she could afford new and shiny. Monetarily I wasn’t doing so bad either. Corporate art paid well and at least let me be somewhat creative, even if it was for a commercial endeavor. It also left me time to pursue my own artwork on the side. That’s why I was here. I was in the middle of a still life that lacked something. Unfortunately, I didn’t know what it lacked. But I would, eventually. I dragged Emmie into the store on a hunch. It was the same kind of hunch that led me to that fabric store for a drape or a crystal ware outlet for something faceted and sparkly. I still had the something faceted and sparkly sitting in my living room, even though that painting had been long completed. I simply couldn’t let the thing go until I had figured out its proper name and usage. I came to the end of the aisle and turned, meaning to go around to the next aisle and double back to the front of the store. Something on the edge of the shelves caught my eye. It was a small wooden carving of a great cat. It wasn’t a lion or a tiger, more like a puma or maybe a jaguar. I wasn’t familiar enough with the great cats to know. I picked it up from the shelf. It neatly filled both my cupped hands. I brushed a spider web off its back and felt the silky smoothness of polished wood beneath my fingertips. Where they brushed the surface I could see the dark, rich chocolatey color. This was exactly what I was missing. I just knew it. I completed my turn around the corner and stepped toward the next aisle. I found what I was after and now we could leave. I placed my foot down and the board squealed in sharp protest. It was an almost animal sound and I jumped back, not sure if the wood were breaking or if I had stepped on a hamster. I bumped the sheet-shrouded object behind me and the sheet slid to the floor with a whumphf and a cloud of dust. I coughed, the dust making my eyes water and my throat hurt. Emmie came quickly towards me, folding up her cell phone with a snap as she moved. The proprietor tottered after her at a slower pace. “Kay, are you all right?” I nodded, still coughing. “I’m fine,” I told her when I could breath well enough to form words. “Just caught me by surprise.” “There better not be anything broken back here,” The owner said, shuffling over. He looked at me with his large water eyes. I inhaled deeply through my nose to clear the dust and smelled a combination of Old Spice aftershave, peppermint and something indefinable that said old man. “I don’t think anything is broken sir,” I said politely, turning around to survey the damage. The fallen sheet had been covering a large oval mirror. It had a carved wooden frame and was covered in more dust than the rest of the entire store put together. It made me wonder why anyone had bothered to cover it at all. “Oh, my goodness Kay, that’s the same design as your bed frame. They could almost be a matched set.” She pointed to a portion of the carving. I followed her finger. She was right. The design did seem to be the same. I bought the bed at an estate sale a few months earlier when Quinn left me. I bought it on the day I finally realized he wasn’t coming back. A new bed seemed like the perfect way to start a new life without him. I slept better the night I bought it than I had since long before he had left me. My friend Angie told me it was because the old bed had absorbed all the negative vibes from Quinn. Emmie had laughed and told her it had also been molded into shape for his large body and the reason I couldn’t sleep in it wasn’t the psychic impressions but the physical ones. She didn’t have a strong belief in new age philosophy and usually I agreed with her on it. “It does match,” I said. The one problem with the new bed had been finding anything to go along with its antique styled carvings. Everything I tried was either too plain or too overdone. “And you were looking for something to match,” she said, as if reading my thoughts. A year separated us in age but we had grown up almost like twins. Most people still confused us for such. “I was thinking more like a chest of drawers or at least something more practical than a mirror.” “You don’t want this mirror, honey,” The old man insisted reaching for the sheet. “Why not,” I asked. His knees crackled with the effort of bending and straightening. “It’s haunted,” he said with a shrug. He reached up and started to slide the sheet over the mirror. This time his back creaked with the effort. “Haunted?” Emmie and I both said together. “Yup,” he said. “Best leave it alone.” I turned to Emmie. She had a wide grin plastered across her face. “A haunted mirror. You have to get it now. We could get Angie to see what kind of vibes it has coming out of it.” I smiled back at her. The old man snorted. “And how are the two of you going to get it out of here? You look like the pixie brigade. This thing’s too heavy for the likes of you to lift, let alone carry. Even if you could get it hoisted, you’d probably drop it and end up with seven years bad luck. Maybe more if the ghosts get out and are mad at ya. People have disappeared around this mirror. Gone into bed and never come out again.” The old man eyed the mirror suspiciously as if it were preparing to snatch him away from his dusty shop with wooden fingers. My grin spread even wider. I knew I had to have the mirror now. Unfortunately, he was right. The frame was large and heavy, built to withstand the test of time. It looked to be one of those pieces designed to stay in one room and never be moved. “I’m sure Keith wouldn’t mind picking it up,” Emmie volunteered. “I could call and ask him.” She opened her phone and started dialing. Keith was her fiancé and would soon be a part of our little family. Actually, he expanded our family by a great deal. Since our parents had been killed in a car wreck during my freshman year at college Emmie had been my only family. Keith came with a set of six brothers, two parents, four grand parents, a ton of uncles and aunts and a host of cousins. Both Emmie and myself had been absorbed into the mass once things started to look serious between Emmie and Keith. Keith’s mother Natalie had also taken up the quest of finding me an appropriate husband. Almost all of the single men in their family had orders to drift my way. It always amazed me how such a big group of large men could be so cowed by one average sized woman. Emmie snapped her phone shut. “Keith and his cousin Max are on their way. You haven’t met him yet. I’m told to tell you he is single, and used to play football. Now he is a cardiologist.” I smiled, no doubt Natalie had struck again. She turned to the old man. “So shall we talk price?” Emmie had switched from sister mode to lawyer mode in one seamless movement. It almost made me dizzy to watch. In no time flat Keith and Max appeared in Keith’s trusty pick up truck. Keith waved at me and bent to kiss Emmie. He was a large man with a frame that people naturally backed away from. Max seemed built along the same lines, with the same wavy brown hair and welcome smile. The only difference was his eyes, which were a deep rich, brown the same as my newly purchased cat statue while Keith’s were blue. “Heard you need a mirror moved?” Max said by way of introduction. “Sure do,” I replied. “I’m Kay, Emmie’s sister.” “Yeah Aunt Natalie told me about you, an artist right? I’m Max.” Keith called Max over to the mirror and the two of them slid its now quilt wrapped bulk into the truck bed. Max and I hopped into the back with the mirror, to keep it from sliding around too much. The wind of our drive blew clouds of dust from the loosely wrapped mirror. The dust spun around the truck bed in little eddies making both of us cough and conversation impossible. I led the way up the staircase to my place while Emmie brought up the rear. Between us Keith and Max struggled to heft the large mirror up the narrow staircase. I took the stairs backwards watching them. “Keys,” Max said jarring me into my position as hostess of this erstwhile group. “If I put this thing down, I’m never going to be able to pick it back up,” Keith said. I unlocked the door and stepped out of their way, pointing out the direction of the bedroom and trailing behind Emmie and the struggling men. They tilted the mirror to get through the door and avoid scraping their knuckles on the frame. With a thunk they placed it at the foot of the bed and stood it where I pointed. The quilt the old man had given us, for a small price, to shield the mirror in its transition slid off with a plop, revealing the large old-fashioned mirror. Both Emmie and I were reflected in the dust-covered lens we stared at the reflection for a minute. I stood at an even five-foot and my sister at five foot one. We both had a petite, somewhat athletic build and short brown hair. Mine brushed my chin in a bob cut while Emmie’s barely brushed the tips of her ears. “I think the old man was right,” Emmie said with a grin. “We do look like the pixie brigade.” The mocking of the old man in the antique store set both of us off into giggles again. “That would be the pixie brigade making off with a magically haunted mirror,” I reminded her with a laugh. It felt good to laugh. Keith and Max went off to the kitchen to forage for water while we giggled. “Mind if I use your bathroom,” Emmie said when we had quieted. “Sure,” I said to the back of her head as she closed the bathroom door. I stared at the mirror. What had possessed me to buy it? It was huge and old-fashioned with an ornately carved frame. The wood may have matched my bed frame but overall it looked like something out of a fairy tale. In my bedroom it looked even more fantastic than it had in the store. I could almost believe the old man’s tale. “And he was never seen or heard from again,” I whispered the last line of many an old fairy tale out loud. I could almost believe it. The heavy mirror did look like something out of one of the darker tales. “Mirror, Mirror on the wall,” I said to it in a somewhat louder voice. “If it actually answers you, I don’t want to know about it,” my sister said, returning to the bedroom. I rolled my eyes. What had I been thinking? “Why did I buy this?” Emmie shrugged. “Because it’s pretty and it matches,” Emmie got a wicked gleam in her eyes. “Or maybe because you have a kinky fetish for watching you and your man get wild in the sheets,” she said. I snorted and thought of Quinn. “Well my man took off with a stripper so I don’t think that is going to be on the agenda for awhile.” Emmie’s smile dropped from her lips. “He was an asshole Kay,” She said giving my shoulders a squeeze. “I know,” I said. I didn’t want her to worry. Besides it had been over two months since he collected the last of his things from my place and he was now more or less washed out of my system. “Besides,” I told her giving her a big grin to lighten the mood. “He had a very hairy butt, and no one really wants to see that reflected.” We both laughed as the alarm went off on her watch. Emmie sighed. “Time to head to the bakery to taste test wedding cakes,” She said. Keith heard her and quickly made his excuses of other plans. With a wave and a quick kiss for Emmie, he dragged Max out the door as he was still trying to say goodbye. Emmie hooked her arm through mine as the door clicked shut behind the men and led me back out the door. “You can’t let me pick the red velvet one even though we both know it tastes the best,” she continued with a grin. “Keith still thinks it looks like a raw wound?” I asked. Emmie nodded. “And the yellow lemon one he thought looked like urine,” she said with a sigh. “Charming,” I said. “The baker must love to see him coming.” Emmie shook her head. “By the time we left the woman was shaking. That is why I’m bringing you. He has been banned from the premises.” I thought of my soon to be brother-in-law with his massive bulk and sympathized with the shaky baker. The rest of the day passed in a whirl of wedding related activities. The cake testing, wine tasting, color combinations and gown fittings pushed both thoughts of Quinn and my new mirror completely out of my mind. I returned to my apartment exhausted by the minutia that fancy weddings seemed to require. I made a mental note to run off to Las Vegas and seek out the sequined Elvis should my life ever turn in the direction of wedded bliss. Still it made Emmie happy. She had always been a more formal person than I was. As children her Barbie dolls would always wear ball gowns with the matching shoes while mine tended to have clothes I painted on because nothing in the box of clothes suited me. With a minimum of fuss I undressed and crawled into bed. Sleep claimed me quickly and dreams seemed to come almost immediately. My new mirror was prominent in my dream. Its reflective surface glowed a light blue, like a sapphire held up to the sun. Small tendrils of smoke began to drift from its surface and snake their way onto my bed. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t scream. I knew that when the smoked touched me it would hurt me. I whimpered softly, an injured animal sound that was all that would pass through my frozen lips. I was cold, so cold, but I couldn’t shiver. The smoke reached the bed and began to slide up the sheets. The phone rang and I shot up from my bed, wide-awake and vaguely surprised that there was no blue smoke. The mirror was just a mirror in the darkened room. For a second I caught sight of a reflection that wasn’t my own pressing against the mirror as if it were window glass. I rubbed my eyes and I could only see myself reflected in it. I dismissed the image as dream residue. I was pale and sweaty and my eyes were wide with fear. My heart beat rapidly in my chest. The phone rang again and I jumped. 2:35am. I grabbed for the phone blindly almost knocking it to the floor as I answered. My heart almost stopped. Something happened to Emmie. “Hello, I’m here, hello,” I said rapidly. Visions of hospitals danced in my head. I pushed the images away. “Hello,” I said again struggling for calm. Heavy breathing met my ear. Oh god. It was just a crank call. My heart started to slow. Nothing was wrong. “It’s two in the morning, go bother someone else,” I said crossly. “Kay,” my caller said before I could hang up. “Kay it’s me.” I knew that voice. Just as I knew from the sound of his speech that he had been drinking heavily. I sighed. Hanging up would do no good. He would just call back repetitively until I answered. It would be best to get it over with. “What do you want Quinn?” I didn’t hide the weariness from my voice. “Are you there baby?” he asked. “I’m here Quinn what do you want?” I looked up and caught sight of myself in the mirror. I could not sit here and watch myself talking to Quinn. Luckily it was a cordless phone. I slid out of bed, went to the kitchen and made myself some tea as he began his rambling monologue. As I listened I began to wonder what I had ever seen in him to begin with. I sat on the couch and drank my tea. My only comments were bare affirmative sounds every time Quinn asked me if I was still there. Finally, he seemed to wind down. His words slowed to a trickle and stopped abruptly. “I guess I just miss you baby.” There was silence after this pronouncement and I wondered what I was supposed to say. “I think you need to get some sleep Quinn,” I winced. That had sounded cold even to my own ears. I shook my head and didn’t soften the words. “Yeah,” Quinn said. “Your right baby, you’re always right. I’ll sleep and call later. Night.” “Good night, Quinn,” I said and hung up the phone. I set the phone down on the coffee table. After that call my gut was wound too tight to crawl back into bed. Instead I flipped on the television and put an old movie on the screen. I pulled the afghan from the back of the couch and curled up with my mug of tea, letting the mystery of The Maltese Falcon soothe me. I woke up the next morning curled up on the couch and thinking about Quinn. I ran a hand through my hair and straightened up the couch. “Damn,” I said aloud to the empty room when I realized that Quinn was not going to leave my mind. I did my best though. I blocked him from my thoughts with lists of household chores. I cleaned my apartment from top to bottom, even giving the wood of the mirror frame a good dose of lemon pledge and the mirror’s surface a spritz of glass cleaner. I spent quite a lot of time digging the dust the wind had missed out of the cracks. The design of the wooden frame was more intricate than I had thought in the store. Actually the cleaner it became the older and more ornate it appeared. I was certainly no judge of antiques but to my untrained eyes this mirror looked much older than the man at the junk store had thought. I smiled to myself thinking I had actually gotten the better of the deal. I caught sight of my smile in the now sparkling mirror and backed up, studying my reflection for a minute. The angry words Quinn had spoken as he left echoed in my head and washed the smile from my lips. As I stared at my reflection I began to take off my clothes, letting them slide to a heap at my feet until I was naked before the mirror. Quinn was right. I didn’t have a body like Miss Starlight, the stripper he had left me for. She was lush with dramatic curves while I was small and petite in every way. “Delicate,” I said defending my body from his sharply remembered words. I turned a little, watching my reflection move. I tilted my chin a little higher. I may not have Miss. Starlight’s form but I was certainly not the grotesque Quinn had painted me. I stuck my tongue out at the mirror and giggled to myself as I pulled my clothes back on. For the rest of the day, I washed, dried, folded and put away my laundry and through the use of these and other household chores I managed to push Quinn to the back of my mind. But there he simmered until bedtime. When I crawled into bed with no more physical tasks to keep my mind away from him, he came to the front. My mind turned over the details of the conversation so many times, worrying each word so that I was sure I would dream of him. When I did finally drift off however it was the mirror that once again took hold not Quinn. Once again I could see the mirror glowing dimly in the dark. As tendrils of blue smoke once again began to reach for me. I realized that I couldn’t move. The cold had returned, freezing me in place. I felt my lips turn as blue as the smoke slithering towards me. My eyes darted around the room seeking anything I could use to help me. It slid its long fingers under the covers, and wrapped around me. The glowing blue tendrils bound my arms, legs, neck and torso. When it touched my skin all the warmth left my bones. I was as cold as death. It formed iron like bands around me and when it felt that I was secure in its grasp, it pulled me towards the mirror. I tried to fight it but I still could not move. My body felt like a rag doll, no muscle or bone, just a loose bag of flesh. Finally it reached the surface of the mirror and I braced myself for the cut of glass as I slammed into it. Instead I passed through the glass like a diver passing through water. Once on the other side, the smoke disappeared. I realized I could move. I rubbed my arms with my hands, trying to erase the icy feel of the smoke. I looked through the glass I had been pulled through and saw my bedroom on the other side. Inside my bedroom was a man about my age dressed in a nightshirt that reached to mid calf. He had large mutton chop side burns and seemed very much out of place. I realized two things at once. One, that the man was the reflection I had seen in the mirror the night before and two that I was no longer asleep. I made my hands into fists and began to bang against the glass, trying to break my way out. “Ah, that feels better,” he said. “I’ve been trapped in that curse-ed thing for damn near a hundred years if my timing has been correct.” He turned and studied the mirror. I realized he was studying the mirror in much the same way I had when I was naked. I blushed, the heat of it wiping away the last of the aching cold of the smoke. “I can no longer see you my dear, but I would like to apologize. You seem like such a nice young lady. If I could have chosen someone else, then I would have. But with these mirrors falling so out of fashion as bedroom accouterments, I was getting rather desperate. No one has fallen asleep in front of me in years. I became trapped in the mirror in much the same way as you were. You see the mirror appears to need someone inside it. At least that was what I was told by the man who imprisoned me. He never said why. You can’t break your way out of it, believe me I tried.” I stopped pounding on the glass even though he obviously could not hear me. “You can only affect someone when you are sleeping and you can only pull yourself out by pulling someone else in. I really am sorry my dear. If it could have been any other…” The strange man’s apologies were cut off by a heavy banging on the door. A loud bellowing sound came along with the pounding and I recognized Quinn’s voice. He was drunk again and had decided this time not to settle with a phone call. The man in front of the mirror raised his eyebrow in question. “My first guess would be to believe that is the Quinn who called last night? Hmm, you didn’t seem to care for him,” he tapped his chin in thought. “Very nice timing indeed. Maybe we can help each other out. After all things do appear to have changed a bit since I’ve been in the mirror. I could use the help.” He looked at me as he started walking towards the door. “All you have to do is press your hands flat against the glass. The mirror will do the rest, as long as he remains asleep.” He went to answer the door. From my place in the mirror I heard Quinn roar into the apartment, demanding to know both who the strange man was and where I was to be found. I raised my eyebrow and put my hands on my hips as he claimed the status of my boyfriend when confronting a strange man in my apartment. Quinn quieted as the stranger explained things and led him to my bedroom. “…just an old family friend in town for the wedding you see,” he was saying as they entered the room. “She was kind enough to put me up for my stay. I believe she is expected back soon,” the stranger shot a mischievous grin in my direction. “Why don’t you just lie down and wait for her here. You do look awfully tired. I’ll just go back to the main room and have a lie down there. I’ll be sure to send her right in to you when she returns.” With a wink in my direction, the strange man closed the bedroom door, leaving the room in darkness and me to wait for Quinn to fall asleep. Other Books By Valerie Gaumont The Channel Riders Series Pilot (Book 1) Storm Chaser (Book 2) Alliance (Book 3) Roses for Juliet All works by this author can be found at www.smashwords.com or are available for kindle on Amazon.com. More information and upcoming works by this author can be found at http://www.valeriegaumont.yolasite.com