The Conjuring Glass (18 page)

There was a moment of pure darkness after the batwing door swung closed behind them, and then the place filled with a strange, ambient light. There were no overhead lights. The only light was a soft glow that seemed to come from the mirrors themselves.

When Penny finally registered the image in the mirror directly before her, she gasped and spun around, searching for what she knew would not be there.

Zoe, who had been behind her only a few seconds before, was gone.

“Zoe?”

She waited for a reply, but heard nothing.

She spun in a circle, looking for a way out, but found her own reflection facing her from four directions. Reaching out slowly, her fingers brushed the cool surface of the mirrors to her right and to her left.

Something that was not a reflection of her moved quickly through the mirror in front of her, and she turned quickly to see it. There was nothing behind her except smooth, cold glass.

Taking a deep breath to control the panic that tried to bloom in her head, she turned again, reached out for what appeared to be her own reflection—and watched her hand reaching for her reflection’s hand, but not stopping at the point where the mirror appeared to be. A trick of light and reflection? She didn’t know, but she did breathe easier when she stepped forward and found a narrow, mirrored hallway on her right.

Penny knew this hallway was a trick of light, it seemed to go on forever, its end lost in darkness long after the double-wide trailer that contained the House of Mirrors would have ended. So she tried to ignore the unease that wanted to freeze her in place, and stepped forward.

“Zoe?”

Nothing.

“Anyone?”

No one.

Penny took another step forward and flinched to her left as something large and dark flashed by on her right.

There could be nothing else in the corridor with her and she knew it. The hall was far too narrow, but she had seen something reflected in the mirror for just a moment.

Maybe something
in
the mirror.

That was an idea she would have normally dismissed at once as stupid. However, in The Birdman’s House of Mirrors, she could not push the idea away. There was magic here.

She took another step, looking right, looking left, and she stopped abruptly as her wide-eyed reflection stretched, changed, and became the image of her taller friend.

Zoe appeared to be looking back at her from inside the mirror—it was not just a separating pane of glass between them. There was no depth behind it, only Zoe’s reflection—and there was no recognition in her dark, frightened eyes.

“Zoe!” She pounded a fist against the spotless surface, not caring if it shattered, not caring if she cut or embarrassed herself.

Zoe did not hear her, seemed completely oblivious to her presence. She looked forward again and took another step, and Penny saw that dark shape that had teased its way across her own peripheral vision maneuvered in behind her friend.

“Zoe, behind you!”

Penny rushed forward to keep up with Zoe, and as she passed a seam between one mirror and the next, The Birdman vanished. Zoe stopped, looked to her right, staring unknowingly at Penny again, then to her left. A second later, she turned and vanished.

A sound from behind caught Penny’s attention, and she turned slowly, dreading what she might see, illusion or not.

The Birdman stood behind her, his feathery head brushing the ceiling, his dark wings folded against his sides, but still filling the glass corridor completely. The weird, ambient light seemed to make the red of his eyes glow like fire.

Around its neck, hanging from a gold link chain, hung a shiny brass key.

It made a noise, something close to a chuckle, and clicked its beak at her. Penny shrieked, and ran.

As blind panic took over, Penny lost all sense of reason and direction. She ran until one mirror or another mocked her progress, forcing her into various side corridors, or sometimes back the way she’d come. She didn’t scream, but only because she couldn’t spare the breath for it.

The Birdman was always close, sometimes behind her in the twisting mirrored hallways, sometimes in the mirrors themselves. Once Penny felt the tickle of feathers against the back of her arm and clawed fingers scraping through her hair, but the sensation was gone quickly, and she put on a burst of speed that threatened to propel her through the next mirror she met.

Finally, she saw daylight and heard Zoe’s screams as her friend emerged from a seemingly solid mirror surface just ahead and to the left of her. A moment later Rooster emerged from the right, his pudgy arms squashing his Stetson to his chest, his eyes popped open wide, and his chubby face twisted in a silent scream.

Then they were out, bursting through the open door at the end of the House of Mirrors like projectiles from the barrel of a gun, smashing into each other and the railing beside the stairs to the grass, seeing the pointing fingers of the people waiting below them in line, hearing their amused laughter, and not caring one bit.

Penny was just happy to be out of there. She had no idea of what she had hoped to accomplish with the trip. Maybe simple curiosity had coaxed them inside. She decided that nothing in the world would coax her back in.

Watching Rooster run away sobbing in terror lifted Penny and Zoe’s moods a little as they left the House of Mirrors behind. However, Penny could not deny the occasional nervous glance back, just to make sure The Birdman hadn’t flown out to catch her.

There were more screams from behind as more kids exited the House of Mirrors. Screams laced with nervous, tittering laughter, and Penny turned again to see the small group of boys clustered around the exit head straight to the back of the line again.

And why wouldn’t they? It was scary, but fun,
if
you didn’t know the truth about it. If you didn’t know The Birdman chasing you through those mirrored hallways was real.

Susan was surprised when they asked to go home early, but she obliged, dropping them off at the top of the driveway before turning around for town again. Susan was opening the shop for a half day, which she did every Sunday during Harvest Days, and after that she and Jenny were going to spend some time enjoying the fair.

“I’ll call about seven to check on you, so you better be inside.” Then she settled back in her seat, regarding them with curiosity for a moment. “Where is it you go all the time, anyway?”

Zoe squirmed a little.

“We have a place up at the edge of the field, in the trees,” Penny said, referring to a grove of old, tall pines that stood where the wild field ended and the wilder hills began. A place far away from Aurora Hollow. “We like to go there because Rooster doesn’t.”

Susan waved as she drove away, and Penny waved back.

“I’m starved,” Zoe said, and they went inside to pack bag lunches to take with them.

On the walk to the hollow, Zoe asked, “How long do you think she’ll be gone?”

“Dunno,” Penny said around a mouthful of sandwich. She chewed ferociously and swallowed before continuing. “She never goes out.”

“We have to wait until she comes home and goes to sleep before we can go out tonight,” Zoe said. “If she catches us out when we shouldn’t be she’ll probably ground us.”

“But we do have to go tonight,” Penny said. “He won’t come for us while his ride is open. He has to work.”

They scrambled down the steep bank. The dirt path, untouched for years until they found it, and now trodden daily, was getting loose and unreliable. Penny lost her footing halfway down, but Zoe grabbed her arm before she could tumble.

“We need to put stairs in,” Zoe said. “You’re a clumsy little thing.”

“Har, har,” Penny said. “You’re a laugh a minute.”

Penny and Zoe spent the afternoon practicing, getting better at Zoe’s new spell, and Penny experimented with the shock spell, making it powerful enough to send her stuffed bear, now almost unrecognizable, several feet into the air. Smoke trickled from a hole where Penny zapped it, and she had to stomp out a tongue of flame that rose from the stuffing.

“Handy,” Zoe said, looking honestly impressed.

Penny was less excited about it. She guessed it was almost as powerful as your garden-variety stun gun, but you had to be right up close for it to work, and she didn’t want to get that close to The Birdman. That close he wouldn’t have to use magic against them, just lift them into the air and fly away with them.

They lost track of time as they usually did in the hollow and had to run home. They were a few minutes late, and Penny snatched the ringing phone from its cradle, puffing and out of breath.

“There you are,” Susan said sounding partly amused, partly exasperated.

“Sorry,” Penny said in a croak. “We were outside.”

“Time to stay in now. It’s getting dark.”

Penny could hear a chorus of laughing voices and huckstering from game booths on  the other end of the line.

“Still at the fair?”

“Still here,” Susan confirmed. “I borrowed Jenny’s cell phone. I’m going to stay a while longer.”

“How much longer?” Penny wondered if she and Zoe could risk another trip to the hollow before Susan returned for the night.

“A few more hours at least. The sheriff’s making a press release later tonight, and I’ll probably stay in town for a bit afterward.”

“The sheriff?” Penny was a little disquieted by this pronouncement. Knowing who, what, they were up against, Penny was doubtful the sheriff had come any closer to solving the mystery or finding the kids. Any progress he had to report was likely false progress, misleading, and maybe even dangerous. “What’s it about?”

“Don’t know,” Susan said. “If it’s anything important I’ll give you a call.”

Penny and Zoe decided to stay home for the rest of the night, and try to spend at least a few hours not worrying about The Birdman.

If they had known what news the sheriff was about to share with the town, they may have decided differently.

The Truth about Tovar

Penny and Zoe kept their mirrors in the backpack with their wand and the remainders of the lunch they had packed earlier in the day. After opening the bag to stow her coat in it, Zoe dropped it near the recliner in the living room and sat down to watch television.

She didn’t notice the bag tip over as her chair rocked against it. She didn’t see one of the mirrors spill out onto the carpet.

She didn’t see the dark, sleek head that passed into it, blood red eyes glowing as they darted around, searching, then finding the girl sitting oblivious, dozing to the images of an old sitcom rerun.

The thing’s beak split in the parody of a smile, then faded.

Zoe heard a tap against the front door and snapped awake. Her first thought was that Penny had accidentally locked herself outside, but even as she rose, Zoe remembered her going up to her room to change while Zoe sat channel surfing and finding nothing worth watching. Sunday night television was, as a rule, lame.

Someone outside tried to turn the knob, but it only rattled. They’d locked it when they came back, had even used the door chain just to satisfy the paranoia that had been a part of life since Jodi Lewis’s disappearance.

Zoe paused halfway across the living room, suddenly scared for no reason she could pin down.

It’s just Susan
, she thought.
She’s come home early after all
.

A metallic snick sounded, and a moment later, the doorknob turned.

Zoe moved forward again to undo the chain, then froze for a second time. This time her fear had a face—a black, feathery face with a wicked, sharp-looking beak and burning eyes.

The door stopped at the end of its chain, but it was open far enough to admit one clumsy looking talon of a hand at the end of an arm that looked like crow’s feathers glued to a stick. Beyond the leering bird face and reaching arm was a view Zoe could not immediately explain: not the darkness beyond Penny’s front porch, but a large and dimly lit cavern.

Two of the cave’s walls were clothed in scarlet tapestries that flapped and fluttered with some unfelt breeze. Candle flames likewise danced from the surface of a table in the center of the cavern. The table was not wood, but a dark gray stone polished to a gemstone shine.

“Penny!”

Zoe stumbled back a step, thinking of the wand tucked in her backpack somewhere behind her, but she could not turn. Her eyes were pinned helplessly on the monstrosity reaching up along the partially open door.

The Birdman’s clawed fingers grasped the door chain and ripped it free of door and wall.

The door crashed open, affording Zoe with a full view of the room on the other side, the room where no room should be, and she remembered it from their expedition the previous day. It was one of the locked and secret rooms in the House of Mirrors that Penny had viewed through a keyhole and later described to Zoe. The room that was too large to fit inside the trailer.

One of the tapestries fluttered, and she saw the kids lying on the floor behind it, stretched out in the relaxed poses of the deeply sleeping. Not just the four kids whose disappearance had caused such a panic in Dogwood, but a dozen or more, laid out side by side.

“Penny, help!”

Zoe heard Penny’s answering shout, too far away.