The Mirror

  Brandy swayed and fell back to the floor. The dizzy swirling began again. This isn’t heaven, but a dream. I must waken to be rid of it.

  She fought the sickness and the suffocating texture of the cushion to push herself over onto her back.

  The wedding mirror loomed above her, looking immense from her position. How did it get here?

  Because this is a dream. Wake up, Brandy McCabe. Wake up.

  “Do you think lightning struck the house?” someone said far away.

  “Shay? …” A man’s voice, closer.

  Brandy raised her head to see a white-framed doorway. A rush of movement and a lady and gentleman entered together, bumping against each other in their haste.

  “Shay?” The man knelt next to Brandy. “What happened?”

  “Mom? My God!” The lady fell to the floor beside the ancient woman.

  “Not Shay. Brandy,” Brandy explained to the man through the sick dryness of her mouth. His hair was fluffy and so long it covered the top half of his ears.

  “Do you think … well, okay. Lie still, honey. I’ll get it.” He rushed from the room.

  Brandy clamped her eyes tightly until colored lights played across the inside of her eyelids. But when she opened them the dream hadn’t ended.

  “What was it? An earthquake?” the lady asked Brandy. “It must have frightened her to death.” Her face crumpled as she drew the dead woman to her breast and wept into snow-white hair, rocking back and forth.

  These people spoke so rapidly Brandy had trouble separating the words to make sense of them. At least they spoke English.

  The man returned to hold a glass to Brandy’s lips. She realized that her hair was loose and down. But before she could wonder how or when it had happened, she’d swallowed some of the liquid in the glass. It wasn’t water. It exploded on her tongue to burn down her throat. She sat up gasping. Tears blurred the room away.

  “That was brandy!”

  “Well, that is what you asked for. Here, let’s see if you can stand,” the man said gently. “Rachael, stop that. Help me with Shay.”

  Dizziness forced Brandy to cling to him as he drew her to her feet. “Can you tell us what happened, Shay?”

  Brandy could only stare at her bare legs and feet. Both pairs seemed too long and thin. She wore a gossamer garment that stopped at her … Dear God, I’m all but naked.

  She looked up at the man in astonishment but he seemed to notice neither her embarrassment nor her exposed state.

  And then, in the wedding mirror, she saw it wasn’t her he held but the young woman with the pale hair and darkened skin Brandy’d seen in the same looking glass at the Gingerbread House. But where he clasped the woman in the mirror, Brandy felt the heat of his hands on the same place – on bare skin, for the garment had no sleeves either.

  A jagged crack ran slantwise across the top of the mirror, where none had been before. It slashed the strange face in two.

  Brandy swayed and so did the woman with the light hair.

  “Shay? God … Rachael, will you help me here?”

  But Rachael moaned and continued rocking her lifeless burden.

  He guided Brandy to a ruffled bed, set her on the edge and picked up a shiny white object.

  Turning it over, he poked square buttons and put one end to his ear. He sat beside her taking her hand in a familiar way. “It’s all right, honey, I’m calling the twins.”

  Brandy, too stunned to pull away, sat half-naked on a bed with a strange man holding her hand.

  “Hello, Remy? Jerry. I’ve got bad news. Your mother died … just now. Sorry to break it like this … on the floor in Shay’s room … I don’t know. Did you feel an earthquake out where you are? No? Must have been a sonic boom or something. I don’t think lightning would do that and there’s no fire. Anyway, it shook us up here and broke a few things. Might have frightened your mother into a final stroke … yeah, we’ll never know. Listen, Remy, could you and Dan get back here quick? And bring Ruth and Elinore. I’ve got two hysterical women on my hands and need help.”

  “That is a telephone,” Brandy announced when he replaced the ear – and mouthpiece all in one.

  “Yeah … uh … listen, we better get you and your mom out of here, huh?” He lifted a strand of her hair, as she imagined a lover might, and drew it out away from her shoulder.

  The hair he held gleamed pale blond but she could feel the pull on her scalp as it moved through his fingers.

  I’m in the body of another. That was why these people could know her when she didn’t know them. She studied the ring on the body’s finger, a lone diamond set in a plain setting. It caught the light and cast dazzle spots across the ceiling. “This is madness.”

  “Hey, it’s going to be all right. Your old dad can handle this.” He didn’t look old enough to be the father of a grown daughter.

  “You’re shivering. You look like you’re in some kind of shock. What a night for the old lady to kick off.” He actually patted her bare leg as he rose from the bed.

  This room was very much like hers in shape, but smaller, more crowded. The closet from which he brought a robe was in the same position as her own. The robe, a quilted thing of powder blue, had matching fuzzy slippers.

  “Here, these’ll warm you up.”

  Brandy was grateful not so much for the warmth as for the more modest covering.

  This body was named Shay. These people were Shay’s parents. The dead woman was Shay’s grandmother. These facts whirled about her in the confusion.

  Where is Brandy?

  “Rachael?” He lifted Shay’s mother to her feet.

  She turned in his arms and hid her face against him. “Oh, Jerry.”

  “You knew this had to happen soon.” Jerry stroked Rachael’s hair. “She was ninety-eight. Now I want you two to go down and make some coffee. Shay, come help your mother.”

  Shay’s head throbbed and Brandy felt none too steady on the new legs. But she didn’t want to stay in this room.

  When Brandy took her arm, Rachael leaned against her. As they left, Brandy turned to see Shay’s father pick up the strange telephone again. What she’d thought was a cushion was really a rug that fit to the baseboards. It continued into the hall.

  Rachael stopped at the head of a staircase and lifted a framed picture from the floor. “At least it isn’t broken,” she said dully. “Must have been an earthquake. What else would knock things off the wall that way?” She held it up. Tears streamed down her face. “Oh, Shay, she’s gone forever.”

  Brandy stared. It was a picture of herself, Brandy McCabe, and a man she’d never seen. A photograph she’d never sat for.

  This dream fascinated her more and more. Would she remember when she woke? As if … as if instead of watching the entertainments in the wedding mirror she was now a part of them … living them. Did its magic extend this far?

  Jerry came up behind them. “Girls, I thought I told you to go to the kitchen.”

  Her thoughts in a turmoil but her senses painfully acute to her surroundings, Brandy descended a staircase with the same curve as the one at home. But here the steps were cushioned with that figured rug and the walls papered with the same design, tiny red and pink flowers gathered into nosegays. The air was close in this house.

  Brandy stopped at the foot of the staircase. The buffet was unfamiliar, but the entry hall, the coat tree …

  She ran a hand over the balustrade. Black walnut inlaid with rosewood, just as Grandfather McCabe had ordered it made when the house was built.

  “Is … is this the Gingerbread House?”

  The people turned to stare at her. They looked so lifelike.

  “I’m in a dream. You are not real.”

  “Oh, baby,” Rachael said. “I’ve been upset. I didn’t realize … I mean, you were there. Jerry, I’m worried. Look at her eyes.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. The brandy didn’t work. Let’s try some coffee, quick.”

  “Is that wha
t you do for shock?” Rachael drew Brandy around the base of the stairs and into the kitchen.

  “Hell, I don’t know.”

  The kitchen was where it should be, its windows and doors in their proper places, the cupboards had increased in number, but the strange and gleaming objects … the floor covered with small bricks that were really one piece of linoleum made to look like bricks … white walls … red and copper tones … a strong shielded light set close to the ceiling.

  This is the Gingerbread House in a future time. Brandy’s excitement grew. The wedding mirror had outdone itself.

  She and Rachael sat at a table with a booth arrangement for seating. The man, Jerry, made coffee. His pants and shirt fit shockingly close to his body.

  Rachael’s gown clung to her slender frame with no sign of stays beneath, her face was painted, her lashes darkened. Traces of red lip rouge lined her mouth.

  The planes of Rachael’s face were similar to Sophie McCabe’s, her hair thick and with the same red tints but without the streaks of gray. Was this woman a descendant of Elton’s perhaps? The Gingerbread House would go to her brother on the death of her parents.

  The coffee was made quickly and tasted like it – all the bitterness without the rich flavor and smell.

  “I forgot, you’ll want milk in that,” Shay’s father said when Brandy made a face.

  “I don’t like milk.”

  “You don’t like milk?” He slid into the booth next to his wife. “Then tell me why the milk bill’s gone out of sight.”

  “Perhaps you lost it.”

  “This is the strangest night I’ve ever lived.” Rachael rubbed her forehead. “Next you’ll be telling us you don’t like chicken.”

  “I’m not terribly fond of it.”

  Rachael took a paper package from a pocket in her gown and shook out a pre-rolled cigarette. It was the longest cigarette Brandy’d ever seen.

  The man makes the coffee and his wife smokes the cigarette!

  “Jerry, we have a problem here,” Rachael said through a cloud of tobacco smoke. “Do you think we should call a doctor?”

  “Nobody’d come to the house. We’d have to take her into the emergency room. This isn’t physical anyway. I’ll talk to Gale in the morning if she isn’t more like herself. Shay, drink all that coffee.”

  “Morning … Jerry, the wedding.”

  Brandy choked on Shay’s coffee and looked again at the gleaming diamond on the long slender finger. So Shay was to have a wedding in the morning also.

  “Oh, Jesus, I’ll have to call Marek. Where’s that party of his?”

  “At the Dark Horse. It’s a singles bar. They won’t page him there. I’ll be all right now. You better drive out.”

  Two older couples arrived to take charge. The men were twins and apparently the dead woman’s sons and Rachael’s brothers. One stouter than the other. They were both bald except for gray fringes.

  But their wives … gray-haired ladies wearing men’s pants!

  Others arrived to carry the dead grandmother out the front door.

  Someone pressed a sandwich into her hand. It was made of nearly raw beef and pasty-textured bread that glued itself to Shay’s teeth.

  Rachael sighed and gave way to tears again.

  “Now, Rachael, it was a blessing and you know it,” one of the aunts said. “Be happy your mother’s released from that zombie state.”

  “You’re right, Ruth, I know. It’s just the shock. We’ll have to postpone the wedding now.” And Rachael added as an audible whisper, “That’s one good thing that came of tonight.”

  This dream is lasting too long. It’s all very interesting but I must wake in time to ride to Denver tonight. What if she wakened too late to avoid the marriage to Mr. Strock?

  Jerry returned with Shay’s bridegroom, Marek. His clothing fit even tighter than that of the older men. He slid into the booth and kissed the end of Shay’s nose in front of a room full of people before Brandy could jerk it out of the way.

  Black hair fluffed at an angle toward a sun-brown face and completely covered his ears. He smelled of spice and alcohol. Violet eyes probed hers.

  “You all right, Shay?” he whispered.

  Brandy couldn’t keep Shay’s mouth from falling open when, under cover of the table, he slipped a warm hand through a space between the robe’s buttons and then between Shay’s legs, pressing her thigh snugly against his own.

  3

  Brandy McCabe stood before the wedding mirror in Shay’s room and in Shay’s body.

  She’d closed the door, pulled the shades and undressed. Curiosity had overcome embarrassment.

  When the mirror’s hands felt warm to the touch and it had shown her the image of this body before, Brandy assumed the shape to be distorted by the age of the glass and the mysterious nature of the mirror.

  But it was the same now. Tall, with straight, slender angles. Willowy, shapeless, underfed. The tiny breasts high and pointing. The teeth straight too, perfect, every one in place and evenly spaced. The armpits as hairless as a child’s.

  In a thin band across the nipples and another across Shay’s lower private parts the skin was white, more in keeping with the fair hair.

  Brandy stared back at the widening gold-flecked eyes in the mirror. Sun? Dear heaven, she didn’t go out into the broad daylight wearing no more than what would cover those light bands?

  She pinched the body’s forearm and felt the pain, watched gooseflesh rise on naked skin and felt the chill.

  Blushing and feeling rather wicked, Brandy redressed in the two-piece garment of yellow fluff and slipped into the robe.

  Marek had jolted her conviction that this was a fantastic dream devised by the wedding mirror. There could be nothing more real than the feel of his hand between her legs. Even if they weren’t her legs.

  She was torn between wanting to investigate some of the objects in this room and her haste to be back in her own world and off to Aunt Harriet Euler’s.

  I mustn’t succumb to panic but must find a logical solution. How did one apply logic to the impossible?

  If she fell asleep in this body, would she wake in her own and just in time for the wedding she’d planned to avoid? Or would she wake still in this time and therefore avoid it anyway?

  I don’t have the knowledge to exist in this world long. Or the immodesty, I’m afraid. She’d be found out soon enough. And then what?

  A crackling noise startled her, like fire eating away at small sticks. She traced it to the metal baseboard stretching along the wall under the window. Heat emanated from a crack in the … not a baseboard but some version of a radiator. Why would anyone stoke a furnace in the summer?

  Or was it summer in this time? Brandy raised the shade and the window. The screening had been pushed out at the bottom on metal poles.

  The smell of recent rain. Had there been a thunderstorm in this world that caused the wedding mirror to work and bring her here? Another odor, acrid and disagreeable, reminding her faintly of pitch. Giant trees dressed in summer leaves.

  Where she’d known a pasture, a large building loomed, blocking all trace of the mountains. Atop the building an enormous orange word in lights. The letters spelled LETOM but the L and the E were backward.

  No carriage horse to take her to Aunt Harriet. There’d be no Aunt Harriet in this world.

  She placed a hand on each side of the mirror’s cold frame. All traces of the enamel chips had been polished from the bronze. “You’ve enticed and toyed with me enough. Whatever you’ve done, you must undo.”

  But the wedding mirror stood hard against her, the glass clear of all but the body of a woman called Shay and the frightening distortion caused by the crack that separated her eyes from her nose.

  Was this a punishment from heaven because she’d planned to run away rather than marry Mr. Strock?

  Brandy knelt at the side of Shay’s bed and prayed for forgiveness and aid.

  Knowing that a watched pot never boils and having used u
p her meager store of ideas, she sat on the bed to wait for God or the mirror to do something useful and tried to think of other things.

  A white box sat next to the telephone. Everything in the room was either white, pink or red. There were numbers on a disk on the box’s side and below that a button. Brandy pushed the button but it didn’t move, nor would it pull out. It did turn however, and she moved it around until it would go no farther …

  “Shake, shake, shake!” the box screamed and Brandy jumped up to hit Shay’s head on the sloping ceiling above the bed.

  “Shake, shake, shake, Shake your boodeez.” It sounded like several young men whining in unison above a cacophony of musical instruments tuning up to play.

  Brandy was still staring at the screaming box when Rachael burst into the room and turned the button until it clicked and the box stilled. She held her hand over her heart.

  “Listen, honey, baby, sweetheart,” she pleaded breathlessly. “I know you’re upset, but dammit, so is everybody else.”

  “What… is a boodeez?”

  “Boodeez? I thought they were saying booty, but then I haven’t understood the words to a song for so long I’m used to it. I thought you got all that stuff.” Rachael had washed the paint from her face and was even lovelier with the tiny lines showing at the outer corners of her eyes. “I know what the problem is, all that coffee your dad poured down our throats tonight. And I have the answer right here.” She opened a hand to reveal a small bottle. “Come on.”

  Honey? Baby? Sweetheart? These parents were certainly fond of their daughter. Brandy wondered what they’d do if they discovered someone else lurking inside that daughter as she followed Shay’s mother down the hall and into the linen closet.

  But now it was not a linen closet. A shiny water closet sat on a commode and a porcelain sink was enclosed in a cabinet. The sink had one spigot but two handles.

  Rachael pulled a small cup from a rack on the wall and filled it with water. She pressed on the bottle cap with the heel of her hand and turned it until the cap came off. Taking out a pill, she shoved it onto Shay’s tongue and pushed the edge of the cup after it so quickly that Brandy was forced to swallow.