Mirror of Shadows (12 page)

She righted the headstone as best she could with one arm and wiped it off as if brushing the wrinkles out of a skirt. Though her walk through the forest was fruitful in adventure of discovering the garden and the graveyard, sadly, she did not find Boo and she returned to the house feeling as if she had failed the kitten immensely.

Chapter 12

Tired and depressed from her failure to find Boo, she fell into bed before the sun had dipped behind the mountains. The phone rang many times that evening and she only looked at the caller ID to see that it was Matt calling aside from one call from Marlin.

Surely both were checking up on her but she did not want to talk to anyone. She wanted only to find her kitten who must be very scared and hungry after two days. She must have fallen asleep for a bit, for when she woke the sky was dark. A fire had been built in the fireplace of her room and an old quilt she had found in a blanket chest had been pulled over her. A sandwich, a left over cookie from Meme’s tin, and an unopened Pepsi can sat on the nightstand. Jeremy must have been up to check on her.

She wasn’t hungry and she didn’t get up; she just closed her eyes again and reached for Boo only to remember that she wasn’t there. Her heart tore a little bit more as tears fell to the pillow and she went back into a restless sleep.

She found herself in a familiar swirling blackness and once more, walking down the stairs.
The mirror—it must be calling me somehow
, she thought as her body moved forward despite what her mind wanted. Again she found herself face to face with the mirror. The reflection of her stark white and scared face gave way to the churning black shadows of the mirror until an image emerged from them. It felt as if the mirror was physically pulling her through to its world, showing her through its visions what someone was seeing. It was a forest she was moving through. The same forest she had ventured in earlier that day looking for Boo. Headstones and markers started to appear scattered around and Ella recognized one of the more ornate headstones she had seen in the graveyard earlier.

The image in the mirror moved her towards the lone oak tree with the single primitive marker, only it looked different somehow, newer. The dirt around the grave had been recently dug. A large pile of dirt was to the left of a long, narrow hole in the ground below the marker. Scratched coarsely, but not deeply into the marker was the word
Willow
—
nothing else. When Ella looked down into the dark, unearthed grave she saw nothing at first. She bent over and squinted in the darkness to see better when something pushed her from behind and she was falling into the grave. It felt as if she had fallen a hundred feet down and there was a desiccated body coming at her fast.

A noose around the neck of the corpse and a simple white linen nightgown reminded Ella of the previous vision of herself running through the forest from the mob only to be caught and hung.
Was this the same girl?
she thought as she hit the bottom of the grave and the bones. Terrified and in pain, she scurried to one side trying get off and avoid the bones of the resident corpse. She looked up the narrow shaft of the grave and screamed for help over and over until her throat hurt and her voice grew hoarse. A hard yank on her arm made her yelp and scream again as she seemed to be flying up and out of the grave. With a glance back at occupant of the grave, Ella saw a hint of gold sparkling from under the noose. It was the last thing she saw before she found herself sitting upright in bed, with Jeremy shaking her gently by the arm.

*****

“
Are you okay?” he asked. His hair was every which way, his t-shirt was on inside out, and his pants weren’t zipped. Ella could only assume he had gotten dressed as he ran down the hall to find out why she was screaming.

She brought her knees to her chest and hugged them tight. “I’m okay, I guess.”

“Did you have a nightmare?” he asked.

“I’m not sure they are nightmares any more.”

“They? You mean you’ve had more than one?”

“I’ve had a few since I’ve moved in here,” she admitted.

“Why haven’t you told me about them before?”

“I don’t know. You already think I’m nuts. Guess I didn’t want to add any more ammunition to your claim.”

He smiled. Putting a hand on her shoulder he said, “Why don’t you give it a try?”

“They are visions, I guess, like seeing the past. The first was of my grandmother. She was my age and she was trying to warn me that I was in some kind of danger.

“The second was of a mob of faceless people chasing a girl through the forest, catching her and then hanging her. She looked just like me, but after thinking about it more, I’m not so sure that she wasn’t just an ancestor that looked like me.

“And this last one, I fell into a grave landing onto its occupant, which I think was the woman who was hung.”

“These visions
—
they’re related then?”

“Yes. I think so and they are all centered on the mirror.”

“The mirror? What mirror?”

“The mirror I asked you to take down and then you put back up just to spite me?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about. I took the mirror down and put it in the attic. I didn’t put it back up.”

“Well, it’s back on the wall. I saw it just before I left last night.”

“I didn’t put it back up. Why would I do that?”

“I don’t know; why would you? Maybe you were angry?”

“I thought you knew me better than that.”

“You’re not exactly easy to get to know.”

“I guess, but angry or not, I wouldn’t do something like that.”

“Who then?”

“I don’t know, but I too have been finding things misplaced or moved. I just didn’t think much of it. I’m sorry you think I could do something like that. I’ll go take the mirror down right now and put it away,” Jeremy said as he stood up and left the room.

Ella wanted to say something but she didn’t know what. Instead, she laid back and pulled the sheet over her face in frustration.

*****

When Ella came down to get some coffee, she found Jeremy in the hall covering the mirror he had just taken off the wall with a sheet. Their eyes met for a moment and she could see the sadness he felt at her accusation, but she wasn’t sure what to say just yet. She was still processing the vision and wondering how the mirror got on the wall if Jeremy hadn’t put it there.

She continued her search for Boo in another area of the forest well past the graveyard and very near the other end of Cauldron Lake. She found nothing quite as interesting there as she did the previous day, but after several hours she did come upon some ruins. A stone foundation ran the perimeter of what must have been a small home. Remnants of a hearth and partial chimney remained there too. The chimney had long since collapsed in on itself, but the hearth was very much intact.

Ella thought it must have been a beautiful piece of masonry at one time. The mouth of the fireplace was arched and large enough to easily sit inside, if you had the inclination. The keystone of the arch had a small, indentation in the middle with a decorative border of what may have been lilies around the outer edge, but she wasn’t sure with the age and deterioration of the stone.

She sat on the hearth for a long time enjoying the serenity of this place and wishing she had found Boo. The water could be seen from where she sat. Ella supposed more of the lake was probably visible when the long-gone occupants resided here but the forest, over time, had taken back what had been lost to it when the small house had been built. The ruins could easily be overlooked by someone walking by. Even what was left of the chimney was covered in ivy, vines, and brush, camouflaging it from the outside world.

She wondered if this might be the dwelling of the woman in the mirror
—
Willow
, she said quietly, remembering the scrawling on the marker. A breeze rustled through the branches and leaves of the canopy above as if answering back and acknowledging her presence.

*****

Jeremy was on his way back to the house after yet another trip to the hardware store. Making the final sweeping curve just before the house came into view, he noticed a car parked near the house
—
a big, black monster truck. Matt was here. Jeremy surmised that he must be in the house with Ella since he was nowhere to be seen outside. Pulling up near the truck to park his own truck, he noticed something in the bed of the black truck. It was barely peeking above the sides of the bed and a shorter person might not have noticed it at all. It looked to be a large, tattered cardboard box.

The fact he didn’t trust Matt made the mysterious box even more suspicious. Jeremy needed to know what was in it. He didn’t know why, and nothing about the idea was smart or logical. He just knew he needed to know.

Closing his door as quietly as possible, he crept over to the truck and stood on one of the rims of the shiny wheels to get a better look at the contents of the bed. He stretched to reach over to the box to pull it closer to him.

There were holes randomly punched into the box with what Jeremy could only guess was a screwdriver. It had been taped up at one time but no longer was sealed. There was nothing in the box when Jeremy opened it, but it had a foul odor. The inside of the box was raked with irregular vertical lines that looked like they had been made with tiny razors. What could Matt have had in the box, Jeremy wondered, and why?

Jeremy thought he heard voices in the woods and quickly closed the box and jumped down from the wheel of the truck. He grabbed some items in a bag from his truck and made his way to the shed and out of sight.

*****

Ella made her way back towards the house with the untouched smelly tuna can. It had become quite ripe after a day of walking around in search of Boo.

A branch snapped somewhere in the densely wooded forest and Ella stopped for a moment and listened. Nothing.
Must have been an animal
. She trekked on, passing a large birch tree trunk that she recognized from earlier, ensuring her that she was on the right path and headed the right direction when she heard another twig snap, much closer this time.

She thought of Willow being chased through the forest only to be hung from one of these trees and a chill ran up her spine and made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

“Who’s out there? Boo? Jeremy? Is that you?” she called out over her shoulder. Nothing again. However, she did smell something
—
cigarettes. She turned to continue down the path and Mr. Morton stood in her way.

Ella squealed slightly at the sight of him before she caught her breath. “Geez, you scared me, Mr. Morton.”

He smiled ghoulishly. “Did I?”

“What do you want?”

“What I’ve always wanted.”

“I told you I’m not selling Grey Manor to you
—
not now, not ever.”

“Well, you can’t blame a gent for trying. I’m only looking out for your best interest.”

“You are only looking out for YOUR best interest, not mine. Now please quit sneaking around and leave me alone.”

He took a long drag off his cigarette, and then dropped it on the ground without extinguishing it.

“What are you doing? Are you insane? You could burn down the whole forest.”

“That would be a shame,” he said looking around at the forest and its canopy. “Or would it?” he laughed deviously and then disappeared into the woods. Ella stomped on the cigarette, making sure it was completely out before continuing back to the house.

Chapter 13

The house came into view as she rounded a bend in the path; she could see a monster black truck parked in front, dwarfing Jeremy’s old pickup that was parked nearby.

She climbed the front steps to the porch and opened the door to find Matt in the house setting something down on the settee.