Mirror Magic

MirrorMagic.

The house was alive. Or at least, that’s what it felt like. The floorboards moaned when you walked on them and the doors sighed when they opened. The old grandfather clock ticked away in its corner like a heartbeat. I moved through that living house, listening to all the sounds as I groped my way through the darkness. When I passed by the ballroom it got cold and I got this weird chill that snaked its way up and down my spine and suddenly I felt like I wasn’t alone anymore. Curiosity clawed at my mind but I didn’t let myself look. If I looked, I’d see the grand mirrored walls that enclosed the ancient ballroom. If I looked, I’d see myself reflected back. If I looked, it would all be over.

              

There’s something about mirrors. They seem like something so simple. Anything with a shiny surface could be used as one. A fork or a spoon, the black screen of a television set, the silver edges of a picture frame, or even a puddle left over from the rain. And there were all kinds of mirrors, too. Funhouse mirrors that made you look like some sort of funny little Tim Burton character and compact mirrors that ladies kept in their purses, rearview mirrors- all different kinds. Old mirrors with antique glass, their surfaces were so worn that when you looked in them you didn’t recognize the person looking back. But then again, that can happen with all mirrors…Can’t it?

               

Maybe mirrors aren’t so simple.

               

Letting out a breath I didn’t know I was holding, I quickly shook my head to rid it of all those troublesome thoughts. I had to keep going, get past that ballroom and get up the stairs. I closed my eyes for moment and then opened them again and I half-expected to be at the base of the spiral staircase. But of course that would require some sort of magic and magic doesn’t exist. People like to make us think it exists, and we really, truly do when we’re children. But then we grow up and this meddlesome thing called reality grabs hold of our lives and if we want to survive in this world we have no choice but to let it take all the magic away, and all we’re left with is logic and reason. Though I, and I can’t say that I speak for all of us for some people truly love the logic and reason and reality that binds them, but I believe that most of us still have this tiny little desire in our hearts, way deep down, that really wants to believe magic is real.

               

So anyway, when I opened my eyes and found myself in the same spot I had been standing in for what had to be at least ten minutes by now, I took a deep breath, long and slow, counting in my head like I was meditating. One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three four, five. And then I gathered up all the courage I had and I sprinted past that ballroom. I swear, if I had been in some sort of track and field event I would have won a gold medal for how fast I ran. In seconds I was right where I wanted to be, in front of the huge spiral staircase that would lead me up to the next floor. And as I stood there, catching my breath, I tried to pretend that I hadn’t caught glimpse of myself in the mirrored walls of the ballroom.

               

I gripped the banister. At my age, this was something I often did not do. Banisters, as I saw them, were virtually useless. They were for women who couldn’t find their way down the stairs in their heeled shoes that raised them much higher off the floor than they were used to. They were there for you to drape something over, like a coat or a sweater, if you were too lazy to bring it upstairs. In my own building, I never held onto the banister. But in this house, with this spiral staircase, I always felt like I had to. It was like if I didn’t hold on to that banister I would slip and fall and tumble down the stairs like I was falling out of a twister.

               

So I gripped the banister and I set a foot on the first step and then the second and I climbed up and up and up until I reached the very top. The second floor had more windows than the first, letting in much more moonlight and making the hallways significantly brighter than the ones downstairs. I liked it this way. I could see better. But at the same time I felt more exposed in the moonlight. If I could see better than anyone could see better and if anyone could see better than anyone could see me. Because of this, I raced past windows and doorways very quickly. The room I wanted to get to was at the end of the hall. Four doors away, three doors and a massive window, three doors, two, one.

               

I paused at the door. It was closed, just like it always was. I imagined all the things that would happen to me if I were in a movie. They’re always such ridiculous things. The doorknob would be too hot for me to grab, or it would just explode in my hand. Maybe it wouldn’t turn and I would have to knock the whole door down. Or perhaps some kind of monster would break through the wood as I stood there, bringing me down and pinning me to the floor with huge, dagger-like claws. Or maybe I would open the door with no problem, but when I did that set off some crazy alarm system and in three seconds flat the house would be surrounded with every law enforcement agents possible- cops and FBI, SWAT. But that’s just the crazy stuff that happened in movies.

               

I touched the doorknob. Of course, it wasn’t too hot and it didn’t explode. Nothing came out of the door to grab me. I pushed the door open and no security alarm went off. The old man never put in any security system. It always seemed like he should have. After all, the house was enormous and I couldn’t even begin to comprehend all the valuables inside waiting to be stolen. The way the old man saw it, though, was that his only real defense would be himself and a gun, a little handgun he kept in a drawer next to his bed. That was his security system. No alarms or cameras, no mazes of lasers. Just a handgun.

               

The room was dark, a lot darker than the hallway I’d just come from. Maybe even as dark as the first floor of the house. I looked around, letting my eyes adjust to the eerie darkness again. Then I took a step further into the room, and then another and more and more until I stood next to the old antique dresser with its pretty little carvings and delicate curved handles. I put a hand on the smooth top and ran my fingers along the wood. A whole bunch of dust flew around my hand like little fairies dancing on the air. I looked up and saw what I had completely forgotten was there. A mirror.

               

You remember what I said about mirrors before? How sometimes, when you look in them, you don’t recognize the person looking back? It’s true. When I caught my own eyes in that glass I had no idea who the reflection in it was. He didn’t look like me. He had a lot more stubble than I remembered ever letting grow on my face, and his eyes had this odd kind of determination glistening in them. His muscles looked bigger than I could ever fathom mine being and he looked strangely calm, especially considering what he was about to do. I couldn’t stand looking at him anymore, that stranger in the mirror, so I turned away.

               

I saw the painting on the wall. It was of a pretty blonde girl looking out a window down a busy little port town. In the distance you could see the waves crashing on the shore and the boats at the docks and the people running up and down the streets. If you looked at it really fast the whole thing looked like it was real, like everything was moving, living, breathing. But it was just a painting and paintings don’t move. Once you stopped and really looked at it closely you’d see all the haphazard brushstrokes holding the scene in place.

               

The vault was underneath the painting, and the jewelry was in the vault. Gold and silver, huge diamonds and pretty pearls. Just one piece would make a man rich. I reached one arm up to grab the top of the painting’s frame and kept the other hand on the bottom. Carefully, as if the whole painting, frame and all, would disintegrate on the spot if it was moved the wrong way, I lifted the painting off of the hook on the wall. I tried to avoid the mirror as I turned slightly to set the painting down on the floor.

               

I turned back to the vault and started fiddling with the lock. I used to know the combination by heart, but when I tried it nothing happened. I felt a surge of anger run through me, a stinging of betrayal, the awful feeling of a knife being plunged into my back. He changed the combination. Nobody else knew it, I was the only one he ever shared it with, but he changed the combination anyway. He didn’t trust me anymore.

               

It’s funny how much people can change in four years. I started flipping through all the numbers, trying and combination of three numbers I could think of. I tried to go about it logically at first, using things like his birthday and digits of his credit card number, but after I while I just started scrolling to random numbers hoping something would work. Eventually I succeeded in the task, the winning combination being 5-4-27.

               

The vault’s door swung open and revealed the little wooden box inside and I felt a smile creep onto my face. I lifted the lid off the box, reached in and removed the false bottom and there it was, shining gold chains and huge diamond ring, a one-of-a-kind silver necklace and delicate pearl earrings. I stood there quietly for a moment, drinking in the moment. You know how sometimes you have those moments when you feel like the planets have finally aligned? The stars are all shining just for you, the moonlight bends at your whim, everything just falls perfectly into place and for once the entire world is on your side? This was one of those moments. I’d done it. I’d pulled it off. All that was left to do was to take the jewelry and run. By morning, when the old man found out it was gone, I would be far away and nobody would be able to find me. I’d sell off all this stuff within a week and have enough to last me for years.

               

“Whaddaya think you’re doing?” The voice was low, gruff and angry and caused me to freeze where I stood. I turned around slowly and there he was- the old man, in the flesh. I hadn’t seen him in four years, since the day he sold me out to the cops. He looked the same. Maybe his skin was a little more worn, his hair a little more gray, but for the most part he was still the same man.

               

“You know you saw this coming.” Was it me that said that? It must have been, because there was no one else in the room with us. God, that was strange. I didn’t normal say things like that but seeing the old man standing there like that just set something off in me.

               

“You know you’re not gonna pull this off,” he said. “You got caught before and you’ll caught again.”

               

I swallowed hard. “You led them to me.”

               

“You betrayed me.”

              

“Never.” I could feel my anger rising and something, a scream or a sob or a curse, creeping up my throat and before I knew what I was doing I whipped around, swiped the box out of the vault and I ran. I had to go past the old man, but of course I was younger than him. I was quicker, stronger, more agile. I pushed him out of my way and I ran down the hallway past all the doors and the windows I had counted before and I hurried down the stairs two at a time, leaping over the last three with all the grace of a gazelle.

               

I barreled down the hall and I could hear him coming after me and I could see the front door and I could picture myself swinging it open and racing outside into the darkness of the night and getting away, finally getting away. But then I saw the ballroom. I saw its mirrored walls. I slowed down. I stood at the doorway and for a second I wanted to look inside, I wanted to see what I looked like running away with the jewelry, I wanted to let the mirrors confirm that this was real.

               

And then I heard his footsteps behind me and I snapped back to reality. I took a deep breath and I charged past the ballroom and I came closer and closer to the front door until, finally, I was there and I put my hand on the cool doorknob, feeling its strange leafy carvings under my palm, and I turned it kind of slowly. A nice breeze greeted me and I wanted to savor it but I just didn’t have the time. I glanced over my shoulder, just a peek, and I saw the old man coming at me, shouting words I couldn’t understand.

               

I practically threw myself outside and the cold air swooped around me, twisting and turning and wrapping itself around my arms and legs as I kept on running. The old man was still after me, shouting and cursing so much I thought someone might hear and come outside to see this scene but luckily his great house was set back quite a while away from the little town it was a part of, way up on a hill. I was thankful for that, because running downhill, even though sometimes it can feel a little crazy and out of control like the hill is taking over or something, always made you go faster. And the little neighborhood at the bottom of hill was mostly older people, a lot of them with hearing aids they took out at night and early bedtimes that guaranteed they were all tucked away in their cozy houses by now.

               

I ran and I ran and I ran, as fast as my legs could carry me, and I zigzagged through streets and down sidewalks and I made a really sharp turn that would take me right out of town and into the heart of the woods. I didn’t like the woods much when I was younger. But that’s because I was a child who still believed in magic, and I thought that awful nocturnal creatures like vampires and werewolves were hiding behind the trees waiting to snatch up unsuspecting victims. But now, of course, reality had a hold on my life and knew those things didn’t exist, so the woods weren’t so scary anymore. I guess that might be one plus to being an adult living in the real world.

               

He caught up to me in the woods. Or, rather, I let him catch me. I waited for him. He came up walking and he was panting heavily, like a dog on a hot summer day. I switched the box from hand to hand, watching the way the jewelry glinted in the tiny slivers of moonlight that managed to squeeze between the trees’ leaves. After a long while of him leaning over, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath, he looked up at me. I looked at him, too, and we just stood there for a minute. I’m not sure if either of us really knew what should have happened next.

               

“What the hell do you want that for?” he finally asked and I shrugged my shoulders. I reached into the box and took out the jewelry, holding it up so I could see it a little better. “Is that all? All of this for that?”

               

I swallowed hard past the lump in my throat and I nodded my head slowly and the old man, he sighed deeply and shook his head. He wiped some sweat from his forehead and then he looked back up at me.

               

“What’s this about?” he wanted to know. I looked down at the box in my hands, suddenly aware of its weight, and I switched it back and forth from one hand to other.

               

“You owe me,” I told him and his eyebrows knitted together and his mouth made this strange kind of shape.

               

“I don’t owe you anything,” he grunted. “You’re the traitor here.”

               

“Why?” I asked, even though we both knew the answer. It was hanging right there in between us, balancing on a tightrope above our heads, and neither of us spoke because we didn’t pull it down. Pulling it down would open all the wounds, it would bring back all the problems I know we’d both prayed would just go away. But then again, maybe I was the only one with the wounds. I was younger, weaker, he always told me so. He’d been through more, he’d seen more, he’d been hurt and now he could take any punch life threw his way without even wincing. That’s why I wasn’t really surprised when he looked at me with a hardened expression and pulled down on that imaginary tightrope.

               

“You’re the one who got caught.”

               

The words didn’t sting as much as I’d thought they would. I’d imagined all different kinds of scenarios of how this whole thing would go, and they all ended with those words tumbling out of one of our mouths, so maybe that’s what prepared me for it. I leaned back against the trunk of a strong oak tree and shook my head.

               

“I didn’t tell them anything,” I said softly and for a minute I thought a saw a smile twitch across his lips, a little light flicker in his eyes. But they were both gone before I could be sure they were there and he made a strange, harsh sound in the back of his throat.

               

“I don’t believe you,” he said, and he pretended not to notice the way his voice faltered and that’s when I realized he still trusted me. He didn’t want to, but he did anyone.

               

“You changed the combination on the safe,” I stated and he nodded. “5-4-27.”

               

“Liar,” he said, confirming my suspicion. If you’re confused, and I wouldn’t blame you if you were, take out a phone and take a look at the little letters underneath the numbers. I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Anyway, at that point I pushed myself off of the tree and for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to look at his eyes anymore so I just looked down at the dirt. I kicked some of it to the side, making a dark, shallow hole in the ground.

               

“Was that a message?” I asked. Even though I wasn’t looking at him I knew the old man well enough to know what he was doing. He was shrugging his shoulders and shifting his weight between his feet, wracking his brain for the right answer.

               

“It was…” His voice trailed off and I took a short glance up to see him wringing his hands. “It was a reminder.”

               

“For who?”

              

“Myself.” I looked at him. How could I not? We found each other’s eyes in the darkness and I saw some kind of sadness in him.

               

“You’re the liar?” I asked. He gave a small nod of his head and looked down to the ground.

               

“I acted angry at you all this time,” he sighed. “But I knew you wouldn’t tell anyone anything, I knew you wouldn’t rat me out. You spent four years in prison because of me and all that time I knew you be given any opportunity to rat me out and I always knew you wouldn’t. But I lied to myself and I made myself hate you by telling myself that you were just like me, that you would do anything just to save yourself.”

               

“So,” I said quietly, “if it had been you in jail, you would have told them about me?”

               

“If it would reduce my sentence?” he asked and I nodded. “Yeah.”

               

We stood there for a long while in absolute silence, unsure of what was supposed to happen next. I could feel the moon drifting in the sky, the stars running away with it as they all made room for the sun to come out. And then the old man made a sort of grunting sound that made me look up at him. “Keep the box,” he said, and those were the last words he ever said to me. He turned his heel and started walking away and I, unsure of how to comprehend the happenings of that night, sat down in the dirt with the box in my lap and I stared at it.

               

A part of me expected to hear the heavy footsteps of cops running, their voices shouting to each other as they searched for me. Another part of me expected the old man to come back with his gun and just shoot me.  And the rest of me was trying to figure out what I was going to do next.

              

I never sold any of those jewelry pieces. I still have them, every last one, tucked underneath a floorboard in my apartment.  That night it had been my intention to sell it off fast and reap the rewards, and I keep on telling myself I have to do something with it, find some eager buyer, but then I reason with myself that I don’t really need the money now, it can wait. Well, it’s been four years of waiting. Four years since that night. And now I’m walking up the great stone steps to the old man’s house. He’s gone now. Died just months ago. The house looks like it hasn’t had any visitors since his passing and I suppose that makes sense. There were only two people who were ever close enough to the old man to visit his home. Myself, and his late wife.

               

I walk through the threshold of the front door and into the foyer and I take timid steps down the hall. As I get further into the house I start walking a little faster, my steps holding a bit more confidence and then I come to the ballroom and I stop. I’m scared at first, because as you know the ballroom is lined with mirrors and mirrors have a tendency to show you things you don’t want to see. I take a deep breath and I turn into the room. My footsteps echo in there, and I see many reflections of myself in the many mirrors. I close my eyes for a minute, as if I’m afraid to face them. I’m afraid that if I look at my reflection it’ll be just like the last time I was here those four long years ago and I wouldn’t recognize the man in the mirror.

              

When you’re younger, you do everything on the count of the three. You’re afraid to go down the biggest slide at the water park? Do it on three. Don’t want to feel pinch of the needle when you get a shot? The doctor will do it on three. Afraid of your dad letting go of your bike when you’re learning to ride a two-wheeler? He’ll let go on three. So, of course, I decide that it is best for me to open up my eyes on the count of three.

               

One…Two…Three.

               

I open my eyes. I look around. I smile.

               

I know the man in the mirror this time. I know exactly who he is, I recognize him completely. He’s changed a lot, but four years can do that to you. I step a little closer to the mirror and so does my reflection and I reach out to the glass and our fingertips touch and I feel amazingly light.

               

I bend down towards the floor and I set down the little wooden box I had taken from the house all those years ago. Of course, as I’ve already told you, the jewelry is not inside. But I did leave something in it. A little note for the old man. I wanted to give it to him some time ago, but we were too out of touch and I think we were both afraid of opening the doors again. And then, of course, he died and I felt bad for a few days because I wouldn’t have the chance to let him read that note. It wasn’t anything special, really. Just a little thank you for that night.

               

People try and tell you that ghosts, like magic and vampires and werewolves, don’t exist. Well you know what? People are wrong. After I received the news that the old man had passed and after I had spent the few days I needed to grieve, I felt something. A presence, I guess, like I was alone in my little apartment and then, suddenly, I wasn’t. I heard the floorboards creek like somebody was walking on them, and the one that I had all the jewelry hidden under it wiggled a little bit in its spot.

               

Now, I can’t say that I prove the existence of vampires and werewolves because of this, but ghosts and magic, they’re absolutely real. I know that because that presence with me, that invisible person walking across my floor, that was the old man, and being in that ballroom and being able to completely recognize myself in all those mirrors, that was a magical kind of feeling.

Author's Note

Written for my school's literary magazine, although it ended up feeling much too long for a literary magazine. We'll see how that goes. The theme this year is "through the looking glass" and I wanted to do something kind of...abstract with it, I guess. Comments and crit would be great. :3

Reviews

[Hingabe]

Wow, you've probably hear this before, but that was amazing. It is an abstract was of "through the looking glass", but if you look at it, you can clearly see the theme. If those literary magazine people have any sense in them, they put you on the starring page. I enjoyed all the different age references in the book, and the intimacy you gave us. Allowing us into the character's mind and emotions. There was a lot of that, but it did add length to the story and a feeling of knowing the character.