Through a Glass, Darkly

By Rick Hartford

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn’t my own.

I was in the bathroom, preparing for bed, and was about to turn the light off and return to my room, when I saw her motioning to me.

It was the face of a beautiful young woman. She wiped tears away with a sleeve and moved close to the mirror speaking with hushed words.

I could see past her face that a desk and some chairs had been jammed against a door in the background.

“Thank God you came along,” the girl, who looked to be about 20, said.

Please listen. It is searching for me. It could be here at any moment.”

The girl stole a look behind her at the barricade and then turned back to the mirror. “I don’t know many of us are left. I could hear screams out in the hallway a little while ago, but now everything is quiet. You’ve got to help me get out of this place.”

I didn’t know what to say at first.Then I then blurted out, “who are you? Who is looking for you?

My immediate thought was that she had been sent to prove that I was hearing things. Seeing things that weren’t there. Like ghosts.

Those who want me committed were waiting to take my freedom away.

The girl turned silent, looking at me as if she was reading my thoughts. And then she said:

“I am real. You must help me escape. I beg you.”

If I help you all that will happen will be that they will come and take me away.”

The young woman looked at me with concern.

“I’m not sure I understand what is happening here. Who is it who wants to take you away?”

“My grandson,” I said. My husband of 60 years disappeared one day last year. I know that my grandson was behind his disappearance. But I can’t prove it.

Even though I am able to live alone and drive my car, he has sought to have me ruled as incompetent. He wants to place me in a home and has petitioned the court for power of attorney over my estate. He wants to take everything in my life away from me. It’s only a question of time when he does. And now you show up. I should be the one asking you for help. If they find out I’m talking to a stranger in the mirror, my grandson could lock me up and throw away the key.”

“Maybe we could help each other,” the girl said. “But you have to get me out of here first. You have no idea what this monster is capable of.”

The girl held out her palm of her hand in order to stop my reply. “I know what you are thinking. That I am a crazy spirit who somehow invaded your consciousness…”

I cut her off.

“You could actually be acting in concert with my grandson, helping him prove to the court that I’m the one who is crazy.

They are probably recording this as we speak, with a hidden video camera establishing that I am talking to myself in the mirror.”

The girl turned around to look at the barricade. “I don’t have much time. Please don’t let me down.”

And then… “Be quiet,” she whispered. It’s coming!)

Then the light went down in the mirror and she was gone. But I could still hear her breathing.

“Hello,” I whispered. “Are you there?”

There was no response.

Eventually I gave up and went to bed. I had nightmares. A monster was in the house, moving room by room, dragging its reptilian tail as it climbed the stairs up to my second floor bedroom. I awoke before dawn drenched in sweat and clutching my husband’s service revolver. It was almost like having him close to me. I felt the fear ebbing as the sun rose. I could hear a single bird singing in the near daylight.

Talk about the monster. I was at the kitchen table pouring my first cup of coffee when my grandson’s limo pulled around the circular drive to our brick mansion. I had to laugh. The little bastard couldn’t even drive his own car, and he wanted to be in total charge of my life.

I reluctantly opened the back door into the kitchen and let him in. He was dressed in a grey sharkskin suit (so appropriate) and wearing a pair of dark Wayfarers. He wore delicate white leather gloves like he ripped a page from a Howard Hughes germaphobe handbook and he also sported an ornate walking stick whose handle was a silver naked nymph. He twirled it around In his right hand so I could could be impressed, I suppose. If my husband were there he would have stifled a laugh and then asked Reginald — yes, Reginald — if he had a flask hidden in the handle of his cane and if he did he should share it.

“No sense you having all the fun,” he would say, looking at Reginald’s driver with a wink.

Reginald, (I called him Reggie) make himself comfortable at the kitchen table, one hand on the handle of his naked lady while is other hand sought out to pat mine, reassuringly, I imagine. I pulled my hand away, then I rose and took out a meat cleaver from the utensil drawer. Reginald moved his chair back.

“I”m just chopping up a roast for the crockpot, Reggie. No need for alarm. Your gonads are safe, for the moment.”

Reginald looked at his driver. “Did you hear that, Ned?”

Ned gave him a deer in the headlights look.

And then Reginald turned to me: “Grandmama, don’t you think you should lay down and take a rest? You are acting strangely. I think doctor Sullivan should pay you a visit. Just let me help you.”

“What’s your business here, Reggie?” I asked. “If you want the deed to the ranch, sorry to disappoint you. It’s not for sale. And my name is Gloria, or better still, Mrs. Armstrong, to you. I’m nobody’s Grandmama. If my husband was here he would march you out of here by your earlobe.”

“If you want to be this way, well, let’s just say that there is a growing concern about your mental health,” Reginald said. I mean, really, gonads?”

I looked at Ned, the driver, whose face was beet red from trying to stifle a laugh. “Take this lad out for an ice cream, would you, Ned? Something with nuts. He’s going to need them.”

I whisked them out the door and finished my coffee, thinking about the young woman. I was afraid for her. I was afraid for myself.

The next morning after my coffee I got dressed in a pair of old jeans and a leather bomber jacket and got in my car, thinking about what had happened the night before.

I looked in the rearview mirror to back up. There she was. With an urgent look on her face.

“We have to move quickly,” she said. “If you want to help me, now’s the time. We need to find a bigger mirror so I can escape. It’s got to be a place where I can get my body through.

“Hold on!” I said breathlessly . “I’m going to the master bedroom!”

In less than a minute I had the door open and the light on and was next to the full length mirror by the dresser.

There she was, a look of panic on her face, but this time she was standing in the middle of a desert, with no homes, no shelters anywhere in sight.

“Thank you Thank you!” She cried, holding out her hand.

As soon as our hands clasped together the girl stepped through and yanked me hard, pulling me through the mirror to the other side. I fell, sprawled on the ground which seemed to be as hard as cement, my right knee skinned and bleeding. The palms of my hands were sore and I rubbed them together as I rose.

And then, unbelievably, the girl used a rock that she had carried with her to smash the mirror, heavy shards of glass collapsing to the floor. My passage into the real world had been literally shattered. All that was visible to me was a black rectangle which seemed to be framing a forbidding stretch of endless sand. A giant sand worm broke through the hard ground and burrowed into a dune and disappeared.

Already I was thirsty and almost feverish with the sudden weight of a blasting sun pressing down on me. Dumbly I stepped through the mirror frame, as if that might change my situation and put me right back into my bedroom.

Fat chance.

But then I heard something in the distance. There was someone running across the hot plain, waving their arms. As the person approached I could see it was a man.

And as that man got close enough, I could see that it was my husband.

“Frank!”

“Gloria! My God, I can’t believe this!”

We embraced, both sobbing in each others’ arms.

“How did you get here?” I asked

“I’ll tell you everything. But first we have to get out of this sun.”

“Where? How?”

“It’s right over here,” Frank said. We walked along the desert where he had first appeared. He brushed back the sand from a trap door which opened to reveal a staircase which sunk deep down into what seemed to be the bowels of the earth.

In less than a minute we had descended into cool, moist air and I looked around to see that we were in the middle of a jungle. “Welcome to the Garden of Eden,” Frank said. “It’s in foreclosure.” We both sat on a smooth boulder.

“I certainly never thought I would see you again,” he said.

“No matter. We are together now,” I said. “And nothing will ever rip us apart again.”

““I Imagine you met her,” Frank said.

I waited for him to continue.

“The panicked woman in the mirror with a sob story about being trapped?”

“Oh,” I said, slowly. “Her.”

“Interesting girl,” he said. “I imagine she did to you what she had done to me, with the exception that when she pulled me through I grabbed her, and in the fight that ensued I was thrown against the mirror, breaking it. Then, we were both trapped in paradise.

“So where…”

“I made my own mirror, fashioned from the sand in the blazing desert we just came from. I had just finished it when the girl, who I call DG, short for Devil Girl, tracked me out into the desert and discovered my new mirror. You know the rest.”

“Frank. What are we going to do?”

“I’m going to make another mirror. That’s the easy part. The hard part is going to find somebody to bring is through.”

“I get it,” I said. “The only three people who can bring us back are your devil girl, Reggie the cad, and perhaps Marie, the maid, who only shows up once a week.

“When is Marie due to stop by the house?” Frank said.

“Tuesday is her usual day,” I said.

“That’s Tomorrow!”

“Let’s get going!” Frank said.

Marie had finished with the downstairs and was dusting the bannister on our ornate staircase when she heard someone cry out.

She followed the sound to the master bedroom and when she opened the door she looked to be having the shock or her life. In fact, the way she clutched her chest I thought she was having a heart attack.

“Marie! It’s me, Gloria.” I cried out from the mirror. “I’m here with Frank! We need your help.”

Marie came to the mirror with great suspicion, her eyes narrowed and her hands held out as if to fend someone away.

“I can explain everything,” I said. “But first, I need you to reach into the mirror — I know it sounds crazy — and pull us through. Can you do that for me, Marie?”

“Miss Gloria, I am afraid something bad is going to happen.”

“Nothing bad will happen, I can guarantee it. And if you can help us through this dark time I will make sure that you are set up for life.”

Marie stood still for the longest time. I thought she was frozen there, in some sort of trance. I snapped my fingers.

She came to!

“Come on, Marie. Nobody is going to bite you.”

Gradually, painstakingly, she moved to the mirror, tentatively offering her hand, pulling back at the last moment as if she was going to get burned if she touched the mirror.

“You can do this, Marie!”

“Go Marie! Frank said.

And then, miracle of miracles, I found myself in the bedroom, safe and sound,

I pulled Frank through and turned to face Marie, who was now leveling a pistol with a silencer at us.

“I knew something bad was going to happen,” Marie said.

Later, after she finished cleaning up, (which, after all, is what she does) Marie went down to the kitchen and waited until Reggie’s limo pulled up in the driveway.

“Is it finished? he asked as he entered the kitchen.

“Home clear,” Marie said.

“It’s all ours now, babe,” Reggie said, offering his gloved hand.”

They did a little waltz right there in the kitchen.

“Not too bad for a couple of klutzes,” I said from the doorway. Frank was behind me, his hand on my shoulder.

Reggie turned in mid-twirl like he had been hit with a cattle prod.

“What are you two doing here? You’re supposed to be dead!”

“Yeah, Reggie, we’re dead. And now we are going to be haunting your fat ass,” I said.

Reggie turned to Maria, who had transformed into Devil Girl. He was speechless.

DG, looking glamorous in a little black dress, drew a long red fingernail across Reggie’s neck, leaving a little trail of blood.

“DG has been getting real lonely in the Garden of Eden, Reggie,” Frank said.

“She’s been looking for a naughty boyfriend, and you are definitely showing potential. We told her all about you.”

DG was leading Reggie by his red tie as she headed toward the stairs to the master bedroom.

As they disappeared up the staircase, we heard Reggie say:

“DG, are we going to be running around naked in the Garden of Eden? I just got this outfit.”

“You can leave the gloves on, Reggie,” DG said.