Dead Reflections (16 page)

They looked at each other.

“I know what I saw, Rob. I had his ankles as he slid through,” Tanya said.

“I saw him go through the mirror, too, Dad,” Chris added. “We all did.” He shuddered, his face waxen and horrified as he stared at the looking glass. “How do we get him out of there?”

Robbie slid down against a wall and sat on the cold tile floor. “I don’t know. I don’t understand how such a thing can happen, so how the hell can I reason how to undo it?”

“You do think he’s in the mirror,” Tanya prodded.

“I don’t know how, but his absence has to do with that mirror, yes.”

“And what if we can’t find him?”

“Then we call the police.”

“And how are they going to get him out of there? They won’t believe us! They’ll have us all locked up as insane or charge us with a missing child.” Tanya glared at him, tears streaming along her cheeks.

“Do you have any better ideas?” Robbie yelled back.

“Mom, Dad, calm down,” Cole cut in. “Fighting isn’t going to find him. Chris, come with me. We’ll take a look around the house again.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Tanya wept. “I’m going to be here for him when he comes back.”

She watched them step out of the room. Robbie glanced back at her.

“I love you. I don’t know what’s going on, but things are going to be okay. We’ll find him. When he’s back, we’re getting rid of that mirror.”

* * *

4:12 AM. Tanya sat with the light on in the bathroom. Robbie and her two older sons had conducted their search, to no avail.

“I can’t get my head around this,” Robbie said. “I’m sure there’s some kind of pathway in a wall somewhere, something that has created some kind of optical illusion with this mirror. He opened something, crawled through…we just don’t know what.”

“I suppose,” she said. “I’m sure if I wait here, he’ll come to me.”

“I’m going to look around again,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

A soft wind picked up. She sat with her housecoat pulled over her knees, looking at her reflection in the mirror, looking for any sign of her boy.

“I know you have him in there,” she told the mirror softly. “And I’m getting him back. I will not stop until I have him. Understand that. If I have to destroy you to get him, I will.” She got up and shut off the overhead light, throwing the room mostly into darkness, other than from the glow of the moon. Now her form looked like a shadow in the looking glass. She felt fear, but more so, the determination of a mother. She also felt guilt because she’d wanted an old house, this house, and now their son was missing and in such an extraordinary way that no one in their right mind would believe them about what had occurred. That was the hard part. Telling anyone about this would only make things worse. They had to find him themselves. And then they would leave. As much as she thought she’d love this house, she couldn’t live here any longer, even with this mirror removed, and ever look at this room the same way again.

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.

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.