Dead Reflections (4 page)

“I’m thinking that you fell asleep somewhere, like maybe inside a closet or a cupboard and that you’ve just woken up.” Tanya kissed his forehead. “I’m not sure how you scraped your arm, sweetie, but I’ll get that fixed up for you. Let’s all go downstairs. Food’s on the way. Dad will get a nice fire going in the wood stove for us.”

A bolt of lightning cut through the sky, followed by a rumble of thunder that seemed to shake the house. Tanya took Cory by the hand and led him downstairs. Chris followed them. Cole waited in the spare room for Robbie as he stood in the bathroom, his face quizzical.

“Go down and join them,” Robbie told him. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

Cole hesitated.

“What?” Robbie said.

“What’s bugging you?” Cole asked. “You’re acting weird. He’s okay. Like Mom said, he probably fell asleep somewhere. Everything’s cool.”

“I know.” He lied to him next. “I just want to clean up these insects first. Go ahead.”

Cole shrugged, turned, and Robbie heard his feet banging down the stairs a few seconds later.

* * *

Robbie rested his hands on the counter top and looked into the mirror. He tried to move the frame, but it wouldn’t budge. It was adhered to the wall. It was old, smoky glass. He knew that Tanya might want to keep it because it was probably original to the house, but he realized that he wanted it gone. The house had a few other mirrors; one inside their walk-in bedroom closet, a modern one in their bathroom, another mounted in the main entrance hall. A house needs mirrors, he thought. But he certainly didn’t like this one.

“What did you do to him?” he asked. He examined every facet of the mirror, using his fingers to follow along its frame and edges, seeking anything that could indicate an entrance point, a lever or switch that might open it and into a crawl space behind a wall…anything that would make sense to him because now he
knew
that the stuff on Cory’s clothing
was
plaster dust. He’d been somewhere
between
the walls of the house, some internal crawlspace or area not meant for daily living. He also knew that his two other sons were telling him the truth when they said that Cory hadn’t walked by their room to get here. That meant only one thing: he’d been in here all along when Robbie had first looked for him, but he’d been hidden from sight. Where and how?

“Fucking room,” he murmured and examined the tub area, behind the door, opening the cupboards and searching for any crawlspace or hole that could lead into the house’s walls. He found nothing. He stood up, exasperated, as the doorbell rang.

“Pizza’s here, Robbie, if you want some,” Tanya called.

“I’ll be right down.”

“Don’t get any funny ideas,” he said to the mirror, not sure what or who he thought he addressed. He felt as if he’d just purchased a house with a malignancy in it. To argue to sell it would crush Tanya. She’d think him insane. And what would he tell her? That he wanted to sell because he was afraid of the mirror in the guest bathroom, afraid of the house in general because something about it felt ‘funny,’ something for which he couldn’t put a finger upon? He went down to join his family in the kitchen for dinner, but he’d lost any semblance of an appetite.

After they finished dinner, Robbie got a fire going in the woodstove, given the day had grown cool and damp. They sat on the floor with their food and drinks. Robbie picked at his food. Tanya noted it.

“You not feeling well?”

He shrugged. “I’m tired; long day. Maybe I’ll want to eat more later.” He pushed the plate away.

Cory, on the other hand, had snapped out of whatever funk he’d been in when Robbie had found him. He looked through some electronic gaming magazines that Chris had found inside a box. Robbie watched him. When his usual smile returned, Robbie relaxed a little, but he’d be keeping an eye on him over the evening and into the next few days to see where he went. A part of him wanted to deny access to that guest bedroom, but that would make it frightening to his family and he couldn’t offer a rational explanation for doing so. Who wanted to live in a house with a concealed room that sits like a secret behind plaster and paint?

“I’d say it’s time for you to go to bed soon, sleepy head,” Tanya told Cory who’d curled up in a nearby chair.

“Can I sleep in your bed tonight?” he asked. Tanya looked surprised. It was not something that Cory had asked to do since he’d been three or four years old.

“But we set up your bed, honey,” she said, “and it’s all ready to go. Your nice blankets, some of your toys; it’s your own space.”

“The house is so
big
,” he said. Something about his words made Robbie shiver again.

“What if we start you out there and see how it goes?” Robbie asked. “You can’t sleep with us every night.”

“It
is
really big,” he said. “It goes
everywhere
.”

“Everywhere,” Robbie echoed, wanting to ask him what he meant by that, but Tanya interjected.

“We can leave a soft lamp on in the hallway for the first few nights so that you can find the bathroom, okay?”

He nodded.

“Let’s go,” she said. “Pajama time.”

Robbie reached out and touched her hand as she passed him, and she gave his fingers an affectionate squeeze.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she told him. He didn’t want her to leave Cory alone, not even in their bedroom. He had this overwhelming fear that he’d go to check on him and he’d be gone again. There had to be a rational explanation that he just hadn’t discovered.

Chris and Cole got up a few minutes later.

“We’re going upstairs to play some backgammon.”

“Okay,” Robbie said, feeling better that the older boys would be up there. Then another thought struck him: what if something happened to all three of his children? Okay, he thought. Enough. This was not a good way to begin living in their new house.

“Have fun, boys,” he said. “Do me a favor and peek in on Cory over the next little while. Make sure he doesn’t get up and go wandering again.”

“Yeah, okay,” Chris said, his tone suggesting that Robbie was being the overly-worried parent yet again. Robbie sat in the parlor and watched the reflection of flames dance across the walls of the room.

Tanya returned and they poured more wine to enjoy in front of the fire.

“You happy?” he asked her. “With the house?”

She gave him the biggest smile. “Sweetheart, it is a dream come true,” she said. “I couldn’t be happier. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” he said, and thought that it was a good thing she couldn’t see his face because, as happy as he was for her, he couldn’t rid himself of a dreadful anticipation of something unknown. He heard the older boys pad along the hallway, a toilet flush, and knew that one of them peeked into his and Tanya’s bedroom. Nothing undue occurred. At eleven o’clock Tanya and he went upstairs to bed, the woodstove fire nicely kindled for the evening. Cory was fast asleep in the middle of their bed.

“I’ll get him into his bed,” Tanya said and went to reach for him.

“No,” Robbie said. “Let him stay with us tonight. I don’t want him falling down those damn stairs in the dark.”

Tanya laughed. “I can leave the light on the bathroom. Robbie, the boys will be fine.”

“Just let him have tonight with us,” he said. “We’ll get all of their rooms fixed up tomorrow.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’m glad we have a queen-sized bed.”

Tanya fell asleep with Cory snuggled against her. Robbie laid awake in the dark and listened to the house go quiet. He heard rain tap along the roof and move along the eaves. He felt the gentle warmth of the heat from the woodstove rise up the stairs to embrace them. Sometime after midnight, he finally fell asleep.

* * *

He wasn’t sure what woke him up, but it came as a sound that traveled through his sleep like a gentle but persistent nudge. Robbie’s eyes shot open in the dark. He felt a sense of disorientation, then remembered where he was. He saw Tanya’s sleeping form, her face pale in soft moonlight. Cory slept with his mouth open. Robbie relaxed, yet listened for something. He heard the toilet in their bathroom trickle water along a pipe. The storm had long passed on, leaving the night sky clear and star-studded.

Something slid over the floor in another room. He propped himself up, listening, wondering if one of the boys was awake. He rose and padded into the corridor, pausing by Chris’s room. Chris was asleep. On impulse, he reached into the common bathroom and sought the light switch. He felt a sudden need to yank his hand back, as if something in there might grab onto his fingers. Warm light filled the room and spilled into the hallway. He edged along the corridor, peeking into Cole’s room. Cole was also asleep.

Robbie faced the doorway of the guest room. The air near it felt cooler, as if the continuing warmth from the woodstove met some kind of transparent barrier outside its entrance. He put his hand up and felt inside. It was definitely cooler and the air smelled faintly of chalk. He closed Cole’s door so as not to wake him, switched off the light in the bathroom, then padded back through darkness to the spare bedroom. He stepped inside, triggered the light switch, and shut the door so he wouldn’t awaken his family. He faced the room. He’d thought he’d heard a soft, shuffling sound, like the noise of a box or something solid being pushed along the floor.

Its emptiness met him face on, its windows looking black against the night, its walls like four hands cupping him, its closet door wide open to its sterile interior, its adjacent bathroom darker. He walked around the room, feeling its walls with his hands, running his fingers along runnels in its plaster, looking for something, some hidden button or device that might open the chamber that had taken his boy into it. He found nothing. He searched the closet with equal intensity. Again, nothing.

“I know the sound came from you,” he whispered to the room. Although his family slept within twenty-five feet, he felt alone, stranded in here. Angry, he hastened to its bathroom. He almost turned on the light, then had a notion to leave the light off and to look into the mirror.

The tub shone like dull alabaster, the toilet sitting prim like an ivory sphinx. He spun to face the mirror.

Cory stood there, facing him from the opposite side of the glass, his fingers moving along the surface and making soft squeaking sounds as if trying to find a way out. His eyes were focused on something beyond Robbie. Then, he began to cry. “Daddy?” he asked. “Mommy?”

“Cory?” Robbie rushed at the mirror, fingers crunching hard against glass to reach his son. Instantly, Cory blinked out, his image replaced with Robbie’s stark, horror-etched reflection.

“What the
fuck
?” he yelled. Robbie slapped the mirror hard with his hands and felt a strange kind of tickling on one side of his face, the sensation of fine filaments brushing over his skin as if something had passed him in the dark. He pulled his hands back and the mirror stuck to him with the movement, glued against his skin like wet material – a thin veil of silver that clung like cool jelly before retracting. He yanked his hands back and watched the mirror ripple, then go still. Mesmerized, he poked it with a finger. It was hard, silver glass again.

“I’m not dreaming,” Robbie said. “I know what I just felt.” A dank aroma of old wood, dust, and something else, something rancid like long-dead mouse bodies, blew at him and he knew without doubt that not only was the house dangerous, but that something within
this
room served as its core energy source, a malevolent pivotal point, a portal to something sinister. It was an innocuous room in a house that didn’t feel right; it wasn’t the traditional creepy basement, wasn’t the lonely attic – the familiar tenets of ‘bad places’ in too many horror films. An empty bathroom at the end of a corridor…

Something cold swept over his feet. He looked down and saw that, in the minute he’d been captured by the mirror, the tub had filled with stagnant water that bubbled up from the drain, foamy and black, the bubbles bursting with the stink of methane gas. The sinister water trickled over the edge and onto the tiled floor. Robbie felt
things
move in that water and something stung his bare feet.

“Get off me!” He slapped at the light switch in the bathroom. Light spilled on. The tile floor was clean, white, devoid of water. The tub was stark, sterile. His feet were dry, untouched. He stared at the mirror. He saw a man with a night’s worth of beard-growth whose dark blue eyes formed pinpoints of terror. He tore through the empty bedroom and ran towards the door, expecting it not to open. It opened and he stumbled into the hallway, urine-yellow light spilling out behind him. Cole stirred in his bed and Robbie heard his mattress squeak as he got up. His form filled his doorway, his longish hair looped in messy cowlicks.

“What’s wrong?” he asked Robbie. “You look spooked. What are you doing in that room?”

Robbie hurried past him and burst into the main bedroom, feeling for Cory. He found him cuddled against Tanya. He felt warm, soft. He heard Cole approach their door.

“Dad,” he whispered. “He’s fine. You’re having a bad dream.”

Robbie stood, hands shaking, the spit in his mouth gone dry.

“I’m awake,” Robbie said.

“
Now
you are,” Cole kept his voice low, “but you must have been sleepwalking and dreaming about looking for Cory. I don’t know what’s with you and that room. It’s just a room.”

Robbie walked back, his voice low but firm. “I looked at every inch of that frigging room today and I’m telling you, I didn’t miss him. He wasn’t in there.”

“Then he must have snuck past me and Chris,” Cole said. “It’s not like we were just watching our door. Take a chill pill.” He turned towards the empty room with its dull light.

“Don’t go in there,” Robbie said. “I’ll shut the lights off.” Cole looked quizzical. “If there was something so bad about that room, it could come out into the rest of the house any time, right?”

His words scared Robbie more than Cole could know. “Do you feel something wrong with it?”