The Mirror

“Oh. look at the frame on this one,” Margaret said, running her hands down the gold-painted finish. The mirror she admired was in an old antique shop in the mountains. Every mountain town was the same; one or two ice cream shops, a salt-water taffy store, a mountain chocolate shop, a couple of western bars selling bison or venison for the adventurous eaters…and an antique shop. 

The quality of these shops varied, but after a long dry spell of antique hunting, Margaret seemed determined to purchase something today. 

“Yeah, the frame is okay,” I picked up the mirror to look for a price tag, “but the glass is distorted. We’ll have to replace the mirror part. And it’s $100.”

“Okay, let's keep looking..”

“That was found up in the Old Magintty ghost town,” came a gruff, deep voice from behind. Turning, we saw a tall rotund man. We assumed to be the shopkeep. He wore overalls and flannel, which I assumed to play up the appearance of hillfolk in a sea of Columbia and Burton-clad snow bunnies. 

“Just came in this morning,” the lumbering shopkeep continued, “don’t know much about it, really. A local family found it about a week ago, but they got creeped out by it, so they dropped it here. Magintty ain’t had people in it for more than a hundred years.”

“The quality doesn’t look great,” my wife Margaret always tried to drive a bargain.

“Well, with antiques, you’re buying the story, ain’t ya?” the shopkeep countered. “Tell ya what…fifty bucks, and it’s yours.”

Margaret’s face lit up like we had won the lottery. “Wrap it up, well take it.”

Some newspaper and tape wrapping concealed our prize as we made our way back to the car. The past year had been rough on us. We were new empty nesters as our second kid had traveled across the country to college last year. Margaret said that it was “our time” now, but we seemed to be filling that void with arbitrary things - a new dog, a new job, and the redecoration of our suburban house in the foothills. We still sometimes called each other “mom” and “dad” as we did when the kids were in the house.

“It will look great in the hallway’ don’t you think?” Margaret said as I placed our parcel in the back seat. I drove the two and a half hours back to our house. My wife smiled in her sleep as she basked in the sun’s warmth of the late afternoon. She looked like a fourty five year old angel. We had a pretty good life to this point. Soon we would have to realize that the kids would not be coming home. They would be living their own lives, and our involvement in their lives would be less and less.   

It was dark as we pulled up to our cottage. Rosco was glad we were home. He tried his best to get all the other dogs in the neighborhood to join him in his welcome. The dogs on either side of our home joined the chorus. 

“Please let Rosco out,” Margaret said, “I am going to take a shower.” 

I placed our mirror on the dining room table, still fully wrapped. We had not used the table since the kids left. Now, it was a place for pre-projects and half-completed tasks.

“Out you go, Rosco,” I said as I opened the back door to the yard. I went to the kitchen to see what we might have leftover, and Rosco was back waiting for dinner. 

Margaret was already in bed by the time I got upstairs, so I showered and decided to read for a while. I got into bed and turned on the small reading light, but a wave of nausea overcame me, and I turned off the light to sleep. 

Rosco had gotten into the habit of needing to touch both of us during his sleep, so sometimes you would have his feet in your back, and sometimes you might have his nose breathing right into your ear, but it was always unpleasant.

I drifted off…

“Dagnamit Maurice!” I started awake. It was daylight. I was in a mountain glade. The aspen were just turning yellow. Winter was coming. There were eight small wooden structures along either side of a rutted road, high peaks surrounded us. All these structures were just unpainted wood with either a door or a window on each side. 

“What the hell do you want?” came a voice from behind. I spun around to see a wirey short man in red longjohns slamming an outhouse door. He did not seem to notice me, but stomped by to the nearest house.  

“Buck, just get your ass up to our claim. Ain’t no use worrying about women. Once we strike, women are gonna find us.” the longjohns man shouted back - I assumed that was Maurice. 

At a far cabin, three men made their way out and started up the mountain. They were too far away to hear, but you could tell from their mannerisms that they were not on friendly terms. 

Dog feet in the small of my back brought me back to my bed. Rosco was doing his best to push both Margaret and me off to the floor in his sleep. 

Between the dream and Rosco, I knew that I’d be up for a bit. A glass of ice tea seemed like it would be welcome, so I went down to the fridge. I would have sworn that there was a slight glow from the dining room as I walked by. I squeezed my eyes tight to chase away the sleep, and nothing seemed unusual when I looked in the room. The nausea returned in the kitchen, and I sat at the small kitchenette with my head in my hands.

“Maurice…”

I glanced around the kitchen. “Fucking dream,” I said to no one. 

“Hey, Honey,” I heard Margaret from upstairs.

“Yeah, in the kitchen.”

“Can you bring up some water? I just had the weirdest dream.”

“Yep, give me a minute.”

I knew that this mirror had nothing to do with my dreams or nausea, but we all don't think straight at two thirty in the morning. I was determined to get the mirror into the basement - as far away from our bed as possible. I made my way to the dinning room and then to the top of the basement stairs. I needed to brace myself on the railing all the way down to the basement - my nausea increasing step by step. There in the basement, the glow behind the newspaper wrapping was unmistakable. If I did not get away, I would be vomiting, so I propped the mirror on the floor and left.

“It must be the gold paint,” I told myself as I made my way back upstairs, “or maybe I am just imagining the whole thing.” My head cleared some as I made my way to the second floor. 

Margaret was sitting up in bed on her phone when I came in. I handed her the water. 

“Magintty was a prospecting town,” Margaret told me. “A little silver was found, but people started disappearing and people started avoiding the town. Some said that claim jumpers killed everyone. Everyone was killed right about the same time.”

“Yeah? Why are you looking up Magintty?”

“I just had a very realistic dream. A small town up in the mountains.  Malevolent force. Very creepy.”

“Was Maurice there?” I joked.

“What? Why would you say that?”

“I just had a similar dream. Maurice and Buck were in it.”

Margaret pulled her knees up to her chest, “Oh my god, do you think that the mirror is theirs?”

“Oh come on Margaret, you can’t be serious.”

“I saw Buck. A huge, hulking, hideous man. He was planning to kidnap some women from a neighboring town.” 

“If you want, we can take the mirror back to the antique shop in the morning.”

“And make someone else deal with it?”

“Okay,” I said, “maybe we can hike back up into Magintty and drop it there or just hit it with a hammer.”

“It’s just creepy.”

I got into bed and cuddled with Margaret. She shivered. “How is your head?” I asked.

“I’ve been feeling a little woozy.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Let’s get some sleep.”

When I woke in the morning, Margaret was up with a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. 

“Where’s Rosco?” she said as she took a sip of coffee with a slight slurp. 

“I don’t know. Did you let him out?

“I think I would know if I let him out.”

I grabbed Rosco’s bowl and scooped some dry food. That would bring him. Nothing. “Rosco?!?” I looked in the yard trying to find where he might have gotten out. I looked upstairs. Nothing.

“Maybe he’s in the basement,” Margaret said.

The nausea returned. “Okay, I will go look.” The nausea was not as bad as the night before. Maybe we had eaten something bad yesterday. 

“Rosco?” I called as I inched down the stairs.

“Rosco?” Margaret called from behind me.

At the bottom of the stairs, the mirror remained. The newspaper was sagging and part of the mirror exposed. “Rosco?” I avoided the mirror to check the rest of the basement. I rounded the stairs to check on the other side.

“Hey, Marg? Rosco isn’t here.”

“Oh, you put the mirror down here?” I could hear Magaret at the bottom of the stairs. 

“Oh, god,” Margaret said. There was a flash of light and silence.

“Marg?” I ran up the stairs. “Marg?” I ran up to our bedroom. “Marg?”

“Alright, Buck, You want to play this way?” I grabbed my Taurus 9mm from my bedside and ran down to the basement. “Buck, I’m coming for you!” as a rage crept up the back of my skull. I ripped off the newspaper from the gilded mirror, and there was a blinding flash.