The Dark Mirror

An almost unnoticeable, ever so tiny glimmer caught Emma’s eye, but when she turned, she saw no source. She thought the sunlight had reflected off the old standing mirror and paid no more attention. She continued drawing. She stayed in her room until the time when she would meet her parents in the kitchen so that they could all stand around wondering what to eat for dinner. She was twelve years old, and her input often did not hold much value. 

After dinner, her father cleaned the dishes (which he did on nights her mother cooked and vice versa). Emma wiped the table and put things away. As per the nightly routine, her father then rubbed his belly, noted what a good dinner he had, if applicable, and, without fail, said, “Well, I guess I’ll head upstairs.” And, he disappeared to leave Emma with her mother who often said, “Just a minute. I just have one more thing to work on.” 

The night of July 13 was no different, and the family held tightly to its evening routine. Emma watched some videos and made her way upstairs to bathe and watch more videos. She stood in front of the oval standing mirror and brushed her very long and very straight brown hair. She hated the mirror, actually, but feigned a smile when her father presented it to her today for her birthday. The mirror was foxed, as her father said, which to her meant old and ugly and utterly useless. It looked like it had a marbled effect riddled with spots. She wished it had gone to the trash pile with everything else her father had laid waste when his old house burned—which he never talked about—and before she was born or even considered being thought of. However, it was the only thing salvageable, he had said only once, and because the mirror was special, it sat in her room. Even the new frame could not make it more likeable. 

As she waited for her parents to say good night as usual, she lay on her stomach, her chin resting on her hands. A faint flicker glinted in the corner of the room, and she turned to see a sparkle fade on the old mirror. 

“Stupid mirror,” Emma said. 

Her parents tapped on the door and entered. “Hey Mom, how much do you love Emma-Lou?” Emma’s father, Dan, smiled without teeth and sat down on the bed to snuggle but caught a foot instead. He held her foot and looked at it quizzically then placed it back after a brief examination of her toes. 

“Infinity plus twelve,” Emma’s mother, Dana, said, “just like your birthday! Hope you had a good day.” She leaned down and swept Emma’s intrusive bangs away and kissed her on the forehead. “Good night. Don’t stay up too long.” And, with this, as usual, her parents swept themselves out of the room from whence they came. 

“InFiNiTy PlUs TwElVe,” Emma mocked, and she closed her tablet case. She stood in front of the mirror, feeling that it had her worst interests in mind because it failed to help her look her best. She sighed again. She crossed her arms. She flung her hair in her face. She swept it back like a model. She moved her face close to the mirror and stuck out her tongue. She looked intently at a fleck, and she used her fingernail to scratch whatever it was off. She succeeded in removing a tiny flake, almost too small to see, and it disappeared as if in a puff of smoke before she could examine it.

 The night held little sleep for the house and those in it. Storms blew through the city. Lightning razed the air, and thunder shook the foundations of earth in violent clashes. Emma rummaged through her closet to find a blanket, and jumped back into her bed. As she snuggled in the warm security of the blanket, her eyes met the mirror that sat in the corner of the room, facing her bed. One speck of light lingered after a lightning flash, and that light seemed to be, if she remembered correctly, around the same place that she flicked the fleck from earlier. A curiosity lifted the covers and wafted her to the mirror for a closer look. She faced her reflection, and a pinpoint of light created a dot between her eyebrows. She stood on her knees and began scraping the mirror with her fingernail. 

Sometime after midnight, Emma had scraped a black spot the size of her palm from the mirror. A thunderclap shook the windows, and she jolted. The gaping hole stared at her, and she wondered what she had done. Her father would be upset. The flicker from before had grown into a warm light at the back of the mirror. Feeling as though the storm had breathed the words into her, she whispered, “Hello?” 

***

            Emma heard a faint “Hello” like that of a young girl far away. She believed she heard it. She knew it. Emma felt a warmness from the mirror and touched it from top to bottom. She found new places to scrape and noticed that the clustered dots offered more ease in scraping than the marbled streaks. She continued from different places until she had several holes around the mirror. She did not notice the time nor storm that faintly grumbled from a distance. The mirror held her attention, and she failed to think of anything else—she must know what or who was inside.

            Around two in the morning, and after many attempts to locate the voice inside again, Emma sat down in front of the mirror, as though just woken from a dream. She surveyed the damage to the mirror, and tears gathered but did not fall. “Dad’s gonna kill me,” she thought. “If only I could prove someone was in there, he wouldn’t be mad.” And, with this, Emma whispered again, “Hello?” 

            Like an echo, Emma heard a distant reply. Yes! She heard it. She did. She put her face next to the biggest hole—the first hole—and whispered again, though a bit louder, “Hello? I’m Emma.”

            A mouselike squeak drew closer to Emma and breathed, “Hi.” Emma could not detect any movement or any person or other kind of being in the hollow darkness beyond the glass. Her heart beat so hard she knew her parents could hear it, and she ran to put her ear to the bedroom door. She waited to hear their footsteps in the hallway, but they did not come. She rushed back to the mirror and called out again, louder, though still a whisper. 

            “Hi! I’m Emma. Who are you?” She waited, face to face with the hole and whatever was inside. “I’m twelve, and I live in this house. Can you see me?”

            “Hi.” A warm whisper met Emma, and she leaned closer to the dark hole. “I’m Ami.”

            Emma, not actually expecting to find anyone, felt at a loss of what else to say to someone in a mirror. She and Ami sat quietly on their sides of the mirror, and Emma felt enlightened with an obvious question. “What are you doing in there?”

***

“I’ve been scraping a hole, too, from my side. It’s taken me forever,” Ami said. She giggled, and her sound trailed off to a faint sound. Emma thought she had lost her and peered into the gaping hole, though she saw nothing but a contrast of bottomless black and a distant glow. She looked around her room to find something else to scrape with. Her fingernails and fingertips were now smudged a dark silver color, and while they worked well at first, Emma now wanted something that could take off more mirror in less time. She tried several things from her room. Scissors only left a long, thin scratch. Pencils and pens did not work at all. A hairbrush proved useless. The only thing that slightly worked was a long, metal ruler, and she used the short end of it and pushed with might and determination to remove any mirror she could. 

             By three in the morning, Emma had about one third of the mirror scraped off, mostly in an increasing hole in the middle, though other holes dotted themselves throughout the mirror. With each few inches, she called out, “Ami! Where are you?” Though tired, she refused to stop. 

            “A girl in a mirror,” Emma whispered to herself, “that doesn’t make any sense. How would a girl get in a mirror?” She asked the mirror again, “Are you there?”

            A woman’s voice, deep and shaken, answered and startled Emma. “I’m here.” Emma jolted back and sat frozen to the floor. The voice continued, “Emma, that’s your name? My name is Joyce. Ami told me about you, but I can hardly believe it. We’ve been here so long, and we haven’t talked to anyone.”

            Emma still sat, mouth agape, stuck upright on the floor in the shape of an M. A little girl in a mirror is one thing, but now a woman? Joyce spoke again, her voice softened, “Emma, dear, can you help us? We’re trying to get out of here.” 

            As if lightning flashed to bring Emma back to the unbelievable moment, she moved closer to the mirror but peered in a smaller hole, just in case. She saw nothing. “Hi. I’m Emma,” she managed to say. “How are…What…” Her thoughts mangled themselves into a web, unable to untangle themselves into articulation. One thread singled itself out, and Emma held onto this until she pulled herself out of the mess. “Your names, Ami and Joyce, they sound familiar. What’s your last name?” Her hands shook as she took hold of the sides of the mirror and positioned herself in front of the large hole. 

            “Pitts,” Ami shouted from behind. Joyce quickly shushed her.

            Emma’s heart pounded harder, and she barely caught her breath. “My name is Pitts.” 

Joyce and Ami fell silent, as did Emma. Joyce began, “Emma, honey, your last name is Pitts, and so is ours. That seems kind of strange, right?” She tried to laugh. “Yes, that seems like a coincidence, doesn’t it?” Emma nodded though no one could see her. “Let’s try to figure ourselves out here, and we can all move on, okay?” Emma nodded again in silence. “We’ve been here for a long time, but I can’t really say how long. There was a fire, see, and we just woke up in here. I don’t know how we got here, and we can’t seem to get out. Maybe you could help us.”

            Emma nodded again. She whispered, “I don’t know how,” her lips trembling and hands gripping the frame of the mirror. 

            “Well, from what I can see, we could maybe get through this mirror. You’re making a pretty good hole on your side, and I think we can continue to make our side bigger and just wiggle on through there. What do you think? Can you help us, sweetie?” Joyce spoke with the determination that hope secures.

             “Okay,” Emma said and slowly picked up her ruler and began scraping with long, mindless strokes, her brain still processing this impossible event. With few words, Emma, Joyce, and Emi worked until day crept through the windows. Emma noticed that most of her side of the mirror was completely black, and their side had grown. The light she had seen before distinguished itself as a fire that stretched along the horizon with no beginning and no end. 

***

            About six thirty in the morning, Emma sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the mirror. Her side of the mirror was completely black, and she could scrape off nothing more. She waited with eyes that sloshed open and shut, and she feared that sleep would overtake her. A thin wisp of smoke snaked from the center of the mirror and startled her awake. A dull smell with sharp, putrid bursts wafted throughout the room, and Emma tottered towards the mirror.

“Emma, sweetie, are you there? I think we’re about ready,” Joyce said as Emma moved near. 

“I’m here,” Emma said. Steps in the hallway shook Emma with fear, and she froze, anticipating her mother’s entrance. Her mother lingered in the hallway, then made her way downstairs. Emma’s breath released, and a wave of relief fell her to the floor. With a sense of urgency now upon her, she said, “What do you want me to do?” 

Joyce did not immediately answer. She had no idea what to do, but she had to try something. “Can you see anything? I don’t know, maybe say the words, ‘Come out’?”

Emma stood in front of the mirror and looked inside but saw just the same faint glow of a distant fire. The smell of smoke deepened, and Emma coughed. “Okay,” she said, “Come out!” They waited. “You’re not out.”

“No, sweetie, let’s try something else. Can you put a rope through or something for me to hold on to?” 

Emma searched around her room for anything that would 1) hold a woman and child, 2) not force her to leave the room, and 3) be inserted into a mirror that she had just spent all night scraping off that revealed another worldly realm. She continued coughing, and her eyes started to burn. She took the pillowcase off the pillow and pushed it against the darkness. It met the hard surface of the mirror and would not go through. “It’s not working.” 

“Hmm, can you see if you can reach your hand in here—see if you can come over to our side? Maybe you can pull us out. We can see if that works.” Emma, too, had not thought this far ahead, but she feared that if she put her hand through the mirror, she might be pulled in or worse. Joyce continued in rapid form, “Emma, sweetie, yes, let’s try that. Put your hand up to the mirror and see if you can put your hand through. Maybe Ami can grab on and come out.”

Shaking, Emma lifted her hand to the mirror. She pressed the mirror and met a warm surface which then enveloped her hand like a slimy gel. She gasped, and her eyes widened and froze. Her hand moved further through the darkness until it reached just above her elbow. Something grabbed her hand. Her breath stopped as a small hand held hers in a scalding heat. She winced and whimpered as the heat rose. “Wait! It hurts!” 

Joyce said, “You’ve got Ami. Please, pull her through. You’re almost done!”

Emma stepped backward, wincing in pain, her face crinkled with strain, heat, and disbelief. Her hand emerged, and she gasped as she saw Ami’s hand in hers. As Ami surfaced through the mirror, each part of her turned a seared red with black splotches. Smoke wafted from her charred arms, and a crisp burn enveloped her. Emma heaved back one more time. Ami’s head and right leg emerged at once, and her once long, brown hair had shriveled in recoil of the room. Her clothes, now scorched rags, began falling in pieces. Ami moved her other foot over, and the rest of her body followed. She held the hand of her mother who began to emerge. With just a quick movement, Joyce burst through, her head smoldering with red and black flesh and parts of her skull visible. 

Emma screamed. Her parents, never known for taking speedy action, hesitated to ascend the stairs, but on the second scream that carried with it a horrific urgency, her mother ran to her room. Dana screamed when she surveyed the scene, took several steps back, and collapsed in the hallway. With a humph and sigh for having his morning routine disrupted, Dan heaved himself upstairs, for he expected a mouse or some other undesirable. 

            Finally at the doorway, Dan shrieked, “Oh my god!” 

            Ami had crumbled, for she was only a child, into a smoking pile of singed clothes and hair and burned bones and flesh. Joyce turned her head toward him, finally free from her imprisonment. “Hello, husband,” she said, her voice crackling and smoke curling from her mouth.

            Dan held onto the doorway in a grip that, in any other situation, may have indicated that he intended to rip the house down by hand. 

            “What’s going on!” Dana cried. She still lay on the floor and managed to hold her upper body up on her elbows. “Emma!” 

Emma, caught on the other side of an unfortunate and unbelievable situation, struggled to decide where to direct her eyes. She settled on the contorted face of her father.

“Joyce?” Dan said. 

“I see you moved on,” Joyce wheezed, her body blackening and hissing with each passing second. She struggled to stand and move. “You killed us!” She lifted her arm and pointed her finger at Dan, still cemented to the doorframe. Her finger fell first, then her arm. She opened her mouth to speak again, but her bottom jaw dropped to the floor. The rest of her collapsed and crumbled into a smoking mass beside her daughter. 

Emma ran to her father and put her arms around his torso, burying herself in his chest. She noticed the stiffness of his body and looked up at his face which had deformed into a twist of bulging eyes and mouth agape. “Dad!” Emma screamed, shaking him. A guttural sound escaped his mouth.

“Dan!” Dana blundered to her feet behind him. She grabbed his shoulder to help herself stand straight, and down Dan fell, face forward and in the same star-like shape he had been in the doorway. “Dan!” Dana cried again, moving her hands on his back and on his neck. “He’s dead!”