Mirror Mirror

Thomas

STEVEN STREETER

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Yvonne watched silently as her husband directed the two delivery-men to very carefully place the large crate – six feet tall, three feet wide, maybe two feet deep – on a vacant spot on the floor. Her bearing was impassive, though she scowled a little on the inside. The fact that this had been delivered to the east wing of their home told her that it was another antique of some sort, and being put in the upstairs ballroom meant it was from a period that he didn’t normally collect. Automatically she rattled off everything in her head – Tudor in the downstairs great hall, Georgian in the upstairs bedrooms, Victorian in the two other downstairs rooms, ancient Roman and Celtic in the upstairs dining room, all else in this large ballroom. A place for everything and everything in its place, as her long-dead father used to say. It could almost have been her husband’s motto.

Too much of their money was spent on his ever-expanding collection. Of course, she knew it wasn’t all bad. The west wing and southern annex of the Georgian era mansion his family had owned for at least three centuries was more than adequate for the family’s needs, even more so that their eldest had moved down to Cardiff with his fiancée to continue his work in forensics for the police. The other two were still at home, though not during the school term when they were both at university. Add to that the so-called ‘pocket money’ that came in from the weekend tours of the east wing, and Yvonne felt she could tolerate his hobby for a while yet. It wasn’t as if they were going to go broke any time soon. Her husband’s family might have been old money, but it was still money.

Finally, the crate was where he wanted it. What’s in this one, Thomas? she asked wearily.

You’ll see, he replied enigmatically, taking a crowbar from the floor and carefully levering it into position. He put effort in, but was so expert at it that the wooden container barely seemed to move. Then came the piercing screech of a nail sliding out of position, quickly joined by several more. He shifted the metal rod up a little higher and worked again. The corner popped out. He ran across to the other side and did the same thing. This time screaming nails were accompanied by creaking wood. Hold the body of the crate, he ordered the delivery-men, and they obeyed straight away. Both had worked for him before, and neither wanted to lose such a lucrative contract through laziness.

Hold tight, Thomas said and forced more of bis weight against the crowbar. With a final crack, the front of the box fell away with a resounding bang, just missing an art déco table and chair set, but Thomas hardly seemed to notice as he stepped forward. A knife appeared in his hands and he sliced through the plastic straps holding the contents in place. Yvonne was initially underwhelmed. Whatever it was, was protected by a heavy velour rug that covered the piece entirely. All that said to her was that this was expensive.

Good, good, Thomas mused. Okay, let’s move it to the corner over there, he said, indicating an empty area to his right. Yvonne hadn’t noticed that before; he must have re-arranged the room when she wasn’t around. The three men oh so carefully manoeuvred whatever it was to its new resting place and then stepped back.

Thomas grinned like a child at Christmas. He looked at the other three in the room, heightening the anticipation, and then swept the rug from the object.

Yvonne gasped; even the delivery-men, who barely knew a chaise-lounge from a sofa-bed, were stunned. It was a mirror, but not just any mirror. The bevelled edge of the looking glass gave the outer rim of the reflection a cloudy appearance, as though watching a dream. In contrast, the image in the centre was so clear it was like looking at a photograph from a high resolution camera with a stunning depth of perception. There was not a flaw in the glass anywhere, and not a hint of age or wear, as though fresh from the factory.

But its frame was, if anything, even more impressive. Carved out of a single piece of hardwood, it was a dark brown, almost ebony, in colour with the wood grain only just visible, like a light decoration. The carving that circled it was intricate, yet it took a few moments for the eyes to realise what it actually depicted. The left vertical was an old man in a toga, his shouldered sickle running into the upper horizontal. The right vertical was a skeletal figure clad in a robe, his sickle dangling down so the blade ran into the lower horizontal. Both figures faced away from the mirrored surface, heads slightly bowed. They were surrounded by vines and leaves, and each corner had a half-open rose bud. The base, on the other hand, was unadorned, apart from the four feet, each shaped like the paw of a large cat.

That’s beautiful, Yvonne gasped, despite her initial misgivings.

Thomas’ grin was confirmation enough.

* * *

Thomas knew antiques. He also knew folklore. He knew that images carved into the mirror frame were Father Time and Death, but that the way they were turned away and the surrounding leaves and vines full of life told of pushing the two of them aside, that the mirror celebrated then opposite of encroaching time and ultimate death.

It was a positive mirror and Thomas appreciated that as much as its beauty.

He would normally not have bought a mirror, especially one as old as this, possibly pre-dating William the Conqueror. Thomas believed a lot of what folklore spoke of. After so many years of collecting, he really did. He’d even sold his entire collection of skulls after seeing a dark shape staring at them one night, a shape that faded as he approached, a shape he was sure was human, yet headless. Even thinking about it, it seemed like the denouement of a terribly written horror story, but he couldn’t deny what he had seen. That one incident had made him take more note of his acquisitions and the legends surrounding them. And that was why mirrors were not his preferred items.

It was said that every mirror collects all the images reflected within them, like a never-filled memory, and that certain traumatic events, if filled with enough emotion, could even be replayed, as if on a film screen, affecting any unfortunate viewer incredibly deeply. There was even the story that an unnamed actress once bought the mirror that had been in Fatty Arbuckle’s room the night of his unfortunate, career-curtailing incident, and what she saw had driven her to suicide.

No matter; this one definitely felt different, but in a good way.

He gazed at his reflection, adjusted his tie, and smiled. This was indeed a great addition to the collection. He turned away.

A glimpse in the corner of his eye made him turn back to it. What had he seen? A movement? An out-of-place figure? He stared long and hard at the picture, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It must just have been a trick of the light, that was all.

* * *

Thomas sat at the eighteenth-century desk in his study, working on his manuscript long hand. He couldn’t bear the idea of typing this first draft; that didn’t feel personal enough for the story of his family line. He looked momentarily sideways at the mirror in the corner and nodded at himself. He had had it shifted here two days before, barely a week after purchasing it; he couldn’t bear the thought of it being a mere museum piece, and it already felt like a comforting family heirloom.

He then shifted the manuscript with a furtive look at the study door and smiled. The magazines there with their unclad denizens would have to wait a bit longer. He liked to look, and this was not a bad substitute until he returned to his computer when he was sure Yvonne was in bed and so he could visit the sites he frequented too often.

He smiled and concentrated on his writing, just to complete this particular...

His head snapped around in time to see something move on the edge of the reflection. He looked behind him but could pick out absolutely nothing, then turned back. On the margins of the picture, something was most definitely there. He stood and peered closer.

The room was reflected there... but the edges, near the cloudiness, were brighter. How was that possible? He moved closer. Something else was wrong with that picture. But what was it? He drew his nose to within an inch of the glass...

Where was he? His face should have been staring back at him. Instead, he was not there. He shifted to his left. The room was there, blocked by his head and concerned face. Back to the very edge. Once more, he simply was not there.

Wow, that was certainly an optical illusion he had never come across before. He would have to point it out to Yvonne one of these days, and see if he couldn’t find out if this was something special in the glass he’d not heard of before.

Very intriguing.

* * *

Thomas found himself going into his study more and more. Not to surf the Internet or flick through his private magazines, but just to stare at the mirror and its strange, non-reflective edging. It really made little sense to him, but he did like the mystery. It was made even more curious when Yvonne said she couldn’t see it; even his old friend Hugh, Lord Beechford, had not noticed any irregularity, and he was more of an antiques expert than Thomas.

You coming to bed soon?

He turned and smiled at Yvonne. Yes, dear, he said. Just tidying up a bit.

All right then. She blew him a kiss and sashayed away. Even now, in their late fifties, they still had that flush of youth about them at times. He liked the idea. Tonight, it seemed there would be no need to go on-line to watch; the real thing, age being kept at bay as well as possible by the best treatments money could buy, was beckoning. He started to follow, but looked one last time at the mirror.

There was no reflection at all. What he could see instead was a cobbled road, wooden buildings standing opposite. It was night-time in the glass as it was here, but that was a painting surely, not a mirrored image of his study. Was there a work of art behind the glass? Was that what he was seeing?

A scrawny dog ran across the scene, sniffing the ground as it went.

Thomas almost screamed as he fled the study.

* * *

It was over a week before he even opened the door of that room again. It had taken him that long to convince himself he was being stupid, that it had all been a delusion caused by a mixture of obsession, working too hard on his manuscript, and too much going on with his real work. Work; just the thought of it made his shoulders slump. The company that ran the family’s holdings had barely posted a profit and, although it was something they could absorb in the short term, he had decided to restructure to streamline everything. Only voluntary redundancies, one business arm sold off, and three other amalgamations had been done, so it was surprisingly harmless and bloodless, but it was still a stress.

That stress needed alleviation, and his means for that were in this room. The mirror was merely a distraction.

Despite that, upon entering he immediately stood before that looking glass. Not the computer or his magazines that had driven him here, as he would normally go directly to, but a centuries-old piece of furniture. He grimaced at the person staring back. Had his hair really got that much greyer in a mere nine days? He touched his temples and sighed. No, he just hadn’t paid attention before, and no other mirror in the house was this pure, that was all. He took a step closer and turned side-on. The paunch was still there; he really should go with Yvonne for her early evening walks, work some of this middle-aged spread off. Still, all-in-all, for a man his age, he didn’t look all that...

His image faded, slowly, gradually, replaced by that street made of cobbled stone, two wooden buildings opposite with thatched roofs. He stepped closer, not really saw what he was seeing. It was the same as he had seen over a week earlier, only now it was in the light of late afternoon, just as it was here, in his part of the world. A horse-drawn cart