Mirror, Mirror
Valerie Gaumont
Copyright 2011 by Valerie Gaumont
Mirror, Mirror
The dusty floorboards creaked under my feet, sighing softly to themselves as I moved through the crowded shop. Row after row of forgotten treasures met my eyes when I scanned the shelves. The proprietor, a cranky old man seated at the front of the store watched my progress as I moved. I could feel his enormous eyes, magnified by his thick-lensed glasses into huge orbs of rummy green trained on my back.
His fingers were clasped atop the opened book spread across his stomach. Over his shoulder I caught sight of my sister, Emmie, making faces. I smiled and turned back to the rows crammed with forgotten remnants of the past. Emmie waited patiently for me to make my selection. She saw little use for anything not new and shiny. The patina of age never really suited her. But she was a lawyer, a good high priced lawyer, and she could afford new and shiny.
Monetarily I wasn’t doing so bad either. Corporate art paid well and at least let me be somewhat creative, even if it was for a commercial endeavor. It also left me time to pursue my own artwork on the side. That’s why I was here. I was in the middle of a still life that lacked something. Unfortunately, I didn’t know what it lacked. But I would, eventually.
I dragged Emmie into the store on a hunch. It was the same kind of hunch that led me to that fabric store for a drape or a crystal ware outlet for something faceted and sparkly. I still had the something faceted and sparkly sitting in my living room, even though that painting had been long completed. I simply couldn’t let the thing go until I had figured out its proper name and usage. I came to the end of the aisle and turned, meaning to go around to the next aisle and double back to the front of the store. Something on the edge of the shelves caught my eye.
It was a small wooden carving of a great cat. It wasn’t a lion or a tiger, more like a puma or maybe a jaguar. I wasn’t familiar enough with the great cats to know. I picked it up from the shelf. It neatly filled both my cupped hands. I brushed a spider web off its back and felt the silky smoothness of polished wood beneath my fingertips. Where they brushed the surface I could see the dark, rich chocolatey color. This was exactly what I was missing. I just knew it. I completed my turn around the corner and stepped toward the next aisle. I found what I was after and now we could leave.
I placed my foot down and the board squealed in sharp protest. It was an almost animal sound and I jumped back, not sure if the wood were breaking or if I had stepped on a hamster. I bumped the sheet-shrouded object behind me and the sheet slid to the floor with a whumphf and a cloud of dust. I coughed, the dust making my eyes water and my throat hurt. Emmie came quickly towards me, folding up her cell phone with a snap as she moved. The proprietor tottered after her at a slower pace.
“Kay, are you all right?” I nodded, still coughing.
“I’m fine,” I told her when I could breath well enough to form words. “Just caught me by surprise.”
“There better not be anything broken back here,” The owner said, shuffling over. He looked at me with his large water eyes. I inhaled deeply through my nose to clear the dust and smelled a combination of Old Spice aftershave, peppermint and something indefinable that said old man.
“I don’t think anything is broken sir,” I said politely, turning around to survey the damage. The fallen sheet had been covering a large oval mirror. It had a carved wooden frame and was covered in more dust than the rest of the entire store put together. It made me wonder why anyone had bothered to cover it at all.
“Oh, my goodness Kay, that’s the same design as your bed frame. They could almost be a matched set.” She pointed to a portion of the carving. I followed her finger. She was right. The design did seem to be the same. I bought the bed at an estate sale a few months earlier when Quinn left me. I bought it on the day I finally realized he wasn’t coming back. A new bed seemed like the perfect way to start a new life without him. I slept better the night I bought it than I had since long before he had left me.
My friend Angie told me it was because the old bed had absorbed all the negative vibes from Quinn. Emmie had laughed and told her it had also been molded into shape for his large body and the reason I couldn’t sleep in it wasn’t the psychic impressions but the physical ones. She didn’t have a strong belief in new age philosophy and usually I agreed with her on it.
“It does match,” I said. The one problem with the new bed had been finding anything to go along with its antique styled carvings. Everything I tried was either too plain or too overdone.
“And you were looking for something to match,” she said, as if reading my thoughts. A year separated us in age but we had grown up almost like twins. Most people still confused us for such.
“I was thinking more like a chest of drawers or at least something more practical than a mirror.”
“You don’t want this mirror, honey,” The old man insisted reaching for the sheet.
“Why not,” I asked. His knees crackled with the effort of bending and straightening.
“It’s haunted,” he said with a shrug. He reached up and started to slide the sheet over the mirror. This time his back creaked with the effort.
“Haunted?” Emmie and I both said together.
“Yup,” he said. “Best leave it alone.” I turned to Emmie. She had a wide grin plastered across her face.
“A haunted mirror. You have to get it now. We could get Angie to see what kind of vibes it has coming out of it.” I smiled back at her. The old man snorted.
“And how are the two of you going to get it out of here? You look like the pixie brigade. This thing’s too heavy for the likes of you to lift, let alone carry. Even if you could get it hoisted, you’d probably drop it and end up with seven years bad luck. Maybe more if the ghosts get out and are mad at ya. People have disappeared around this mirror. Gone into bed and never come out again.”
The old man eyed the mirror suspiciously as if it were preparing to snatch him away from his dusty shop with wooden fingers. My grin spread even wider. I knew I had to have the mirror now. Unfortunately, he was right. The frame was large and heavy, built to withstand the test of time. It looked to be one of those pieces designed to stay in one room and never be moved.
“I’m sure Keith wouldn’t mind picking it up,” Emmie volunteered. “I could call and ask him.” She opened her phone and started dialing. Keith was her fiancé and would soon be a part of our little family. Actually, he expanded our family by a great deal. Since our parents had been killed in a car wreck during my freshman year at college Emmie had been my only family. Keith came with a set of six brothers, two parents, four grand parents, a ton of uncles and aunts and a host of cousins.
Both Emmie and myself had been absorbed into the mass once things started to look serious between Emmie and Keith. Keith’s mother Natalie had also taken up the quest of finding me an appropriate husband. Almost all of the single men in their family had orders to drift my way. It always amazed me how such a big group of large men could be so cowed by one average sized woman. Emmie snapped her phone shut.
“Keith and his cousin Max are on their way. You haven’t met him yet. I’m told to tell you he is single, and used to play football. Now he is a cardiologist.” I smiled, no doubt Natalie had struck again. She turned to the old man. “So shall we talk price?” Emmie had switched from sister mode to lawyer mode in one seamless movement. It almost made me dizzy to watch.
In no time flat Keith and Max appeared in Keith’s trusty pick up truck. Keith waved at me and bent to kiss Emmie. He was a large man with a frame that people naturally backed away from. Max seemed built along the same lines, with the same
wavy brown hair and welcome smile. The only difference was his eyes, which were a deep rich, brown the same as my newly purchased cat statue while Keith’s were blue.
“Heard you need a mirror moved?” Max said by way of introduction.
“Sure do,” I replied. “I’m Kay, Emmie’s sister.”
“Yeah Aunt Natalie told me about you, an artist right? I’m Max.” Keith called Max over to the mirror and the two of them slid its now quilt wrapped bulk into the truck bed. Max and I hopped into the back with the mirror, to keep it from sliding around too much. The wind of our