Atlantic.
When done, she popped her phone back into her pocket and gathered her jacket from the back of the chair.
‘Are you leaving?’ the apparition asked.
‘I was planning to spend some time researching surveillance equipment. I’d suggest you come along, but I can see how impossible that would be,’ she said once she’d donned her jacket and picked up her attaché case. ‘While this has been very amusing … I would prefer that this little charade ends right here.’
Gripping the gilt doorknob she looked meaningfully at the man in the mirror. ‘Don’t be here when I get back.’ The door squeaked as she thrust it wide, blocking him from her sight.
‘Wait!’ John’s voice wrapped about her like a whip.
She stopped. The logical part of her brain wailed as she allowed the door to swing back. His eyes captured hers in a vice-like grip that defied her to turn away.
‘What if I can prove I am who I say I am?’
She tried not to smirk at the absurdity of such a statement. ‘I don’t think that is possible.’
‘I heard Tom say something about you being an investigator – if that is indeed the case, then investigate me. I could tell you all I know and you could look up the histories in the church records.’
Kelly rubbed her forehead tiredly. ‘Anybody can do that … besides, all that would accomplish is to tell me that you have done the research to play your role.’
‘But I know things that are not in the records. And my cousin’s journal … Edward Ditchley … it would tell things that nobody but I could possibly know.’
She sighed. ‘And where would this journal be?’
John hesitated, glancing away as if staring out the window into an unknown horizon. ‘That is the great dilemma – I do not know. It is the very thing that has been plaguing me allthese years past. I am certain the answer to my incarceration lies within those pages. Indeed, I know it is, because my cousin wrote everything down – it was almost a sickness in him.’ His eyes darted back to hers, burning with both fire and challenge. ‘Please, could you not look for the journal?’
A vibrating silence filled the space between Kelly and the mirror – between Kelly and the apparition that had undoubtedly been very well rehearsed to play his role. Not once had he dropped the act, either by mistaken word or false movement. Yet she knew that the journal, like the man in the mirror, was surely just a device to make her fall more deeply into the trap.
And there was one gaping hole in his argument.
‘If you have been in this house all these years, why don’t you know where it is? Surely, being a wraith, you can go through every room. If what you said is true, you’d certainly have had enough time to search the place a thousand times.’
‘Alas, the method of my incarceration allows me little movement and as the years pass, even less so. You see, I am trapped within the mirrors—’
‘Well, from what I’ve seen there are plenty of those,’ she scoffed, her fingers tightening on the doorknob as she again prepared to leave.
‘Ah, but I cannot enter all the mirrors – only those that were present at the time I became imprisoned. Each time a new generation takes up residence, they move, sell or sometimes break one.
‘In the beginning, I could move easily from room to room and know all the doings, but now only five of the original mirrors remain. This one, the mirror in the formal dining room, the one on the landing above the main stairs, one in storage in the pantry and my mother’s ivory hand mirror are all that allow me to see.’ His voice dropped to a plaintive whisper. ‘One day, if I cannot find a way out, all the mirrors shall be gone and I will be blinded – forever lost between the real world and the next.’
Against her will she became so enthralled by the quiet desperation in his voice that her fingers slid from the gold knob and she stepped toward him, a tiny thrill racing through her abdomen.
‘Even
When done, she popped her phone back into her pocket and gathered her jacket from the back of the chair.
‘Are you leaving?’ the apparition asked.
‘I was planning to spend some time researching surveillance equipment. I’d suggest you come along, but I can see how impossible that would be,’ she said once she’d donned her jacket and picked up her attaché case. ‘While this has been very amusing … I would prefer that this little charade ends right here.’
Gripping the gilt doorknob she looked meaningfully at the man in the mirror. ‘Don’t be here when I get back.’ The door squeaked as she thrust it wide, blocking him from her sight.
‘Wait!’ John’s voice wrapped about her like a whip.
She stopped. The logical part of her brain wailed as she allowed the door to swing back. His eyes captured hers in a vice-like grip that defied her to turn away.
‘What if I can prove I am who I say I am?’
She tried not to smirk at the absurdity of such a statement. ‘I don’t think that is possible.’
‘I heard Tom say something about you being an investigator – if that is indeed the case, then investigate me. I could tell you all I know and you could look up the histories in the church records.’
Kelly rubbed her forehead tiredly. ‘Anybody can do that … besides, all that would accomplish is to tell me that you have done the research to play your role.’
‘But I know things that are not in the records. And my cousin’s journal … Edward Ditchley … it would tell things that nobody but I could possibly know.’
She sighed. ‘And where would this journal be?’
John hesitated, glancing away as if staring out the window into an unknown horizon. ‘That is the great dilemma – I do not know. It is the very thing that has been plaguing me allthese years past. I am certain the answer to my incarceration lies within those pages. Indeed, I know it is, because my cousin wrote everything down – it was almost a sickness in him.’ His eyes darted back to hers, burning with both fire and challenge. ‘Please, could you not look for the journal?’
A vibrating silence filled the space between Kelly and the mirror – between Kelly and the apparition that had undoubtedly been very well rehearsed to play his role. Not once had he dropped the act, either by mistaken word or false movement. Yet she knew that the journal, like the man in the mirror, was surely just a device to make her fall more deeply into the trap.
And there was one gaping hole in his argument.
‘If you have been in this house all these years, why don’t you know where it is? Surely, being a wraith, you can go through every room. If what you said is true, you’d certainly have had enough time to search the place a thousand times.’
‘Alas, the method of my incarceration allows me little movement and as the years pass, even less so. You see, I am trapped within the mirrors—’
‘Well, from what I’ve seen there are plenty of those,’ she scoffed, her fingers tightening on the doorknob as she again prepared to leave.
‘Ah, but I cannot enter all the mirrors – only those that were present at the time I became imprisoned. Each time a new generation takes up residence, they move, sell or sometimes break one.
‘In the beginning, I could move easily from room to room and know all the doings, but now only five of the original mirrors remain. This one, the mirror in the formal dining room, the one on the landing above the main stairs, one in storage in the pantry and my mother’s ivory hand mirror are all that allow me to see.’ His voice dropped to a plaintive whisper. ‘One day, if I cannot find a way out, all the mirrors shall be gone and I will be blinded – forever lost between the real world and the next.’
Against her will she became so enthralled by the quiet desperation in his voice that her fingers slid from the gold knob and she stepped toward him, a tiny thrill racing through her abdomen.
‘Even
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