The October Featured Writer is Thomas Joyce

Please feel free to email Thomas at: tjoyce10@gmail.com

THE MIDNIGHT MIRROR
by Thomas Joyce

Jake and Alice took one last look around the upstairs hallway of their Grandfather's large home before they slid through the heavy oak door to the attic staircase and closed it behind them.

The creak was only slightly audible but it belied the age of the house, as did the ancient runner that ascended the stairs ahead of them. Although it had once been the vibrant red of a magnificent ruby, the years and the darkness had reduced it to a dull rust color.

“Have you ever been up here?” Alice asked as they neared the top of the stairs.

“No,” Jake whispered, never taking his gaze away from the top step, barely even allowing himself to blink. “Whenever I tried to sneak up, the old man or that mean dog Scout would chase me away.”

Every step brought them closer to the top. The temperature seemed to drop a couple of degrees. Jake had never been very good at the science subjects at school, so he was not sure if the air should be colder at the top of a house, not when the rest of the house was filled with mourning people and the central heating was turned up high. But this was a very old building and it seemed unable to keep the warmth in or the cold out.

On the penultimate step, Jake felt a small hand softly land on his shoulder and nearly jumped right out of his skin. When he turned to berate his cousin for scaring him he found her wide-eyed and with one finger over her lips in a hushing gesture. She signaled towards the attic entrance and Jake could see a shadow moving around in the visible bar of light under the oak door. They waited for the inevitable sounds of Scout pawing and pouncing at the door.

But all they heard was part of a muted conversation between two guests that they couldn’t see.

“…suppose they’ll do with this house?”

“Looking for some commission, Rich?”

“There are a lot of hawks in the real estate biz, Bobby, and the early bird catches the worm.”

“All I know is they’re getting the removal guys to come first thing Monday. Sending all the old guy’s junk to the Salvation Army or the dump. Guy was ancient, must have a lot of crap. Gonna be a lot of work for…”

As the “mourners” moved beyond earshot, Jake could see Alice was visibly shaking with anger. He gave her a little pat on the arm and beckoned her to follow him into the privacy of the attic.

“Papa’s not even buried yet and that asshole has got his eyes on the house!” Alice sputtered. Jake had no answer so he remained silent.

The only light they had to guide them was whatever daylight could make it past the years-worth of dirt and dust that clung to the one small, round window at the front of the house.
Jake gazed around the attic. There was far too much stuff there for his brain to even begin to process, but he did notice a lot of cardboard boxes, none of which appeared to be labeled, as well as an old wardrobe and a giant trunk. The trunk looked like one of those luggage hampers that people used when traveling, before the invention of the suitcase. He ran one finger along the dull brass edging and frowned.

“Huh,” he said. “This isn’t even dusty.”

“What do you mean?” Alice asked.

“Everything else is covered in dust. But this trunk looks as though it has just been cleaned.”

“Maybe it’s new?”

“Seriously?” Jake said. “When did you ever see Papa buying anything new? Besides, it doesn’t look new. I wonder what’s inside.”

“Well, open it and see, dummy,” said Alice, clearly annoyed at the interruption as she tried to look in the wardrobe. “Look at these old fur coats! Ooh-la-la!”

Jake failed to suppress a smile as his older cousin struggled with a heavy white coat, attempting to put it on. She skipped around the attic and ran her hands along the collar. “I wonder what it's made of.”

“Polar bear, probably,” Jake said.

Jake turned his attention back to the trunk. He looked for a lock or a latch, or any kind of way into it. He could not even figure out which side was the front and which the back as the hinges seemed to be hidden. He ran his hand all the way around the brass edging…and felt a stinging pain on his fingertip. He jammed his bleeding finger in his mouth.

“What happened?” Alice asked. She shrugged off the Polar Bear coat and tried to look at Jake’s finger.

“Damn trunk’s not as new as it looks,” he replied, holding his injured finger out for inspection. “Caught it on a ragged edge.”

Alice took one look at the deep cut, seeing the blood trickle down Jake’s finger, and made that sucking sound reserved for life-threatening injuries and very bad news. “You need a plaster. I’ll go get one from the kitchen.”

“Look out for Scout,” he called after her as she headed for the staircase. “And don’t tell anybody where I am!”

As he heard the oak door creak closed again, he returned his attention to his surroundings. He looked around the attic room once again, seeing more details now that his eyes had adjusted to the gloom. Other than the wardrobe and trunk, the room seemed to be filled with nothing but boxes.

He took a step towards a nearby stack and noticed a small flicker of movement just to the right of the wardrobe. He stopped and waited for the rat or whatever it had been to make its move again but there was nothing.

Assuming it had scurried further into the darkness, Jake approached the boxes. There it is again, he thought. Every time he moved, it moved too. He steadied himself, counted to three and lunged for the unwelcome guest.

He collided with something huge and solid, causing him to stumble backwards and land on his backside. First my finger and now this, thought Jake as he rubbed at where he’d struck the floor. How unlucky can one kid get?

He heard a soft rustling noise that seemed to be getting louder the longer he listened. He thought maybe the rat or whatever had got inside the wall (probably the thing he had just collided with) and was now scrambling around within.

And then in front of him, heavy fabric slid down and revealed an antique mirror. It was something not only ancient, but also beautifully strange.

His eyes were immediately drawn to the intricately carved brass on the borders. Across the top of the mirror’s frame, which he estimated at about six feet, there was a trio of small shapes: a sun-like orb on the left, a crescent moon in the center and one more circle that may have been a sun or a moon on the right.

As detailed and beautiful as the carvings were, he had to avert his eyes, finding that the strangeness of the delicate designs making his skin crawl. If he was honest with himself, he might have admitted that the crawling was coming from beneath his skin…

When he stared into the mirror the image was dim. Still, he thought he could see a light coming from within the reflection, from over his reflection’s shoulder: a single, thin vertical line of light. He looked back into the attic, seeking the source of light, but the only light he could find was the dismal grey light coming from the small circular window, and even that seemed to be growing darker the longer he looked at it.

He returned his gaze to the mirror and immediately felt that strange uneasiness burst forth from the pit of his stomach and engulf every cell. He could not help but feel that his reflection was mimicking him, imitating each minute movement and always a split second behind. He leaned in towards the mirror’s dusty surface to get a better look at the face staring back at him, forgetting about the light in the mirror and disregarding the way that light illuminated the boxes and clutter in the reflected room and how it seemed to differ from the attic of his departed Papa.

He creased his brow and after a couple of seconds Mirror-Jake did the same. It wasn’t synchronized. He lifted his left hand and held it up with his palm facing the mirror. A second later Mirror-Jake followed suit. Jake lowered his hand and his reflection again seemed to ape the movement, rather than reflect it.

He stopped moving and inspected Mirror-Jake’s face. Every line, every freckle seemed to be in order from the way his slightly long fringe rested on his forehead to the small inflection in his chin. The only unusual thing he could find was the way his eyes seemed to sparkle and glitter in the gloom as though they were colored obsidian stones.

Suddenly he remembered the cut on his finger and knew there was no way to spontaneously imitate a bleeding finger. So, he half-turned away from the ornate antique before spinning back, this time holding his right index finger out before him and wearing a look of smug triumph on his face. But, to his obvious dismay, he observed the same small red line on the right index finger of Mirror-Jake. Mirror-Jake seemed to take just a tiny bit longer to lower its right hand after he did.

He began a “patty-cake” game with the mirror, and watched as Mirror-Jake seemingly copied every action.  He decided to speed things up a little, forcing a smile. Mirror-Jake returned the grin but it still seemed cold and disturbing on its face. The twinkly eyes appeared to stare hungrily at Jake as they focused on his increasingly blurry hands.

Suddenly he felt light-headed and his hands faltered. His eyelids grew heavy and he felt dizzy. Then he heard Alice banging on the attic door.

“Jake? How come you locked the door?”

The urgency of her words forced Jake to tear his gaze away from the mirror, to turn his head so he could see back into the dusty attic. He felt the sweat rolling down his temples and tried to call out for help, to tell Alice that he thought he was going crazy. But before he could utter a single word, his head snapped back and he was staring into the seemingly haunted mirror yet again.

He let out a scream.

“I’m going to get your Mum!” yelled Alice, giving the door handle one last futile shake before deciding it was not going to move and running off to find her aunt.

Jake tried to turn, to get away, but it was as if everything above his neck was now paralyzed. He could not close his eyes, never mind move them away from the macabre dance playing out before him.

The paralysis seemed to be spreading. His arms fell uselessly to his sides and the legs that, only moments before, had been trying to carry him away from this nightmare stood facing the mirror, ramrod straight and unmoving.

He began to feel a tremor starting in his left hand as though it was numb and he was trying to work the feeling back into it. But he was not making the movement, because he had lost all control of his hands. Any hope he had that it was an involuntary movement caused by the temporary paralysis soon evaporated when his arms were raised by the malevolent force and began moving around, sluggishly at first. He watched in mute horror as they waved aimlessly to and fro, completely without his control, and then began mimicking the movements of the thing in the mirror. Faster and faster they whirled .

And then Jake could hear a growl forming at the back of his throat. Not only hear it, but feel it too and he knew almost instantly what was happening as he watched the creature’s contorted grin form the words of the strange song. The mirror was singing!

The growl grew louder in his throat and he began to feel his shocked expression change to one of frenzied delight, his grin growing wider and wider until he thought he could see every last tooth. He tried to stop, tried to pull away from the mirror but his head still felt like it was being held in place by invisible hands, strong invisible hands like those that a giant ogre would use to crush little boys for dinner.

He did not know the words that he was about to speak and when they burst forth from his grinning mouth he was hearing them for the first time:

“You had better take heed, you had better take flight. Do not enter into the land of midnight.”

He felt one lonely tear trickle down his right cheek as he continued to repeat the chant over and over again like some creepy spell or warning from an old fairy tale. More tears joined the first as his mouth began moving at an incredible speed and his voice grew louder as the thing in the mirror moved so fast its face became a blur. Jake could still make out the occasional word but most of them just seemed to run into each other.

“You had better take heed, you had better take flight. Do not enter into the land of midnight.”

The words conjured within his mind images of a strange and scary place devoid of any natural light and inhabited only by the kinds of creatures too terrible to feature in the worst of nightmares. He thought of wild beasts with dozens of mouths and thousands of teeth that fed on children. He imagined barren landscapes illuminated only by occasional campfires and dotted with the skeletal remains of large elephantine animals too slow to escape the mouths of those fearsome predators. He imagined himself sitting next to one of those huge skeletons, hugging his knees to his chest and watching the firelight flicker on the bare, white bones covered in a million teeth marks, listening to the approaching footsteps of those predators getting louder and louder.

The words were beginning to reverberate around the room, and the words came faster and faster until he was unable to catch his breath. Then the mirror-creature slammed its left hand against the mirror and Jake followed suit with his right.

When they touched he instantly felt sick, feverish. He was hot, but he was cold. He was alert, and he was on the verge of fainting. He was good, but he was also evil.

He tumbled to the floor, his hand sliding down the mirror as dizziness passed through him and left him drained. His muscles ached from the rigidity of his legs and the maniacal dance of his arms. And the cut on his right index finger now seemed to be throbbing as though it were infected.

But he also felt relieved, almost happy, because now he seemed to once again have complete control over his own body, his mouth and, most importantly, his mind.

He looked up at the mirror and saw his own sweaty, tear-stained face staring back at him, the dusty junk-filled attic beyond proving he was where he ought to be. He took his hand away from the mirror and looked at the small cut. It already looked as though it had stopped bleeding, although the flesh that surrounded it did seem to be a fierce shade of red. And he was beginning to feel a fever coming on. He used the back of his right hand to wipe his brow and looked up again at the mirror.

The malevolent creature was climbing out of the mirror, placing one of its feet upon the floor of the attic, and then the second foot touched the ground. Jake could not believe his eyes and yet he could not deny it; the thing was real.

He watched as the mirror-creature stood unsteadily on its feet and looked at its surroundings. It kicked at a few boxes and seemed to laugh as some of them fell over, revealing old birthday presents, once treasured and now broken by the fall. Jake looked to where the mementos should have been next to him and could see nothing but the cold, stone floor.

He gasped. He was no longer in the attic. He groped around for something familiar; the old trunk he had cut his finger on, the fur coat Alice had left lying on the floor. But there was nothing, only a few old crates and barrels filled with what, Jake did not even want to know. He looked to the back of the room and saw that same vertical light he had observed in the mirror when the cover had first fallen away.

He and the creature had switched places. It was in his Papa’s attic and he was here, wherever “here” happened to be. And the creature looked exactly like him.

The evil creature clutched a claw hammer in its hand.

“No!” shouted Jake, holding both hands up in a halting gesture.

But the creature used the hammer to shatter the mirror into a hundred jagged pieces. They fell to the floor on both sides and Jake fell with them as his body began to shake. There was one solitary piece left in a bottom corner of the frame and Jake peered into it, through it, into the attic.

At first he could see nothing but boxes and darkness. And then something fluttered in the corner of the tiny window as the doppelganger covered up its handiwork with the dust sheet. But he did not cover it up entirely and Jake could still see, even with roughly half of the window covered. He saw the thing take a couple of faltering steps backwards and brush its hands together, that crazed grin still evident on its face. He watched as a shaft of light suddenly appeared behind the creature, presumably accompanied by the sound of someone calling up as the creature tensed, its ears pricking up.

And then Jake saw his mother, still dressed head-to-toe in black, open the door to the attic, which was no longer locked. She stepped inside.

Her expression was something between worry and disappointment, the same look she always seemed to use when Jake returned home late from the park or disobeyed her in one of a hundred other ways. Surely his own Mother would not recognize the monster before her as her own son.

But she did. Watching his mother embrace the monster-in-Jake’s-clothing, he saw as she began to lead the thing towards the attic door and presumably to a first-aid kit.

Jake gently touched the remaining fragment of window which was his only connection with home and felt none of the sensations he had felt when he had touched it on the other side. Then it had been complete, magnificent in its grandeur and full of magic. Now the magic seemed to have disappeared forever, and with it any chance Jake had of returning. He was overcome by a fresh wave of sobs.

He watched through the window as the creature flashed one last evil grin over its shoulder at him before it vanished down the attic steps with his mother, headed into his world which was filled with his family and friends. He thought of the wicked and calculating character of the creature, the fang-filled mouth, and the thought of what lay ahead for all those people he cared about, and it terrified him.

As the attic door closed and extinguished the light from the miniature window into Jake’s world, he turned to look at the door standing slightly ajar at the other end of the room and, with the terrible doppelganger in mind, wondered what other strange, horrible, evil monsters lurked beyond.

“I’m in the land of midnight.” Jake whispered. And he shuddered.

Thomas Joyce spent his teenage years trying to write the perfect novel (be it crime, science-fiction, supernatural or whatever half-baked idea popped into his head), and failing. The idea of writing a short story didn’t occur to him until he was in his early twenties. You can tease him all you like about it, but he won’t admit it. He has had no formal training, no English lit degree, no creative writing course. And yet “The Midnight Mirror” is his third story accepted for publication in The Horror Zine. He lives with his wife and their daughter in Dumbarton, a small town in the west of Scotland.