The Haunted Heart: Winter (2 page)

I watched the mirror for another minute. The
cold silence of the house began to get to me. It was late. Past
midnight. I was tired. And probably starting to see things.

A tune came into my mind.
All we are
say-ing…is give sleep a chance…

I stepped back and turned off the overhead
light. Darkness fell like a drop cloth, cloaking the crowded
furniture and objets d’art. Here and there, starlight from the
narrow sash windows glanced off a finial or cornice. Still watching
the opaque surface of the mirror, I sat down on a brocade
upholstered Napoleon III chair and leaned forward, staring
closely.

“Are you there?” I whispered.

I couldn’t be sure, but it seemed as
though…perhaps…something changed, as though the darkness in the
mirror wavered.

I rose from the chair, crossed the floor,
knelt before the mirror. I peered at the silvered surface, eyes
straining. Yes, there was motion, a roiling like dark
smoke…something stirring at the bottom of the mirror, moving in the
opaque depths, walking up the tilted floor of the reverse room,
coming toward me.

My breath caught. “Alan?”

For an instant everything was still. Very
still. Then the darkness seemed to dissipate, disperse in the path
of a pale illumination. My throat closed. My eyes stung. I leaned
close, trying to peer through the glass.

There it was. A tiny glimmer, a pinprick of
light, barely more than a spark. I could just make it out through
the blur of my tears.

I wasn’t imagining it. It was real. Tears
welled. I wiped them away. I released a hard, shuddering
breath.

“
Alan…
”

I put my hand to the mirror’s surface, felt
the glass warm beneath my skin. I pressed harder. The glass did not
give. I closed my eyes, tried to picture it melting away beneath my
hand, concentrated hard for long minutes, but it stayed firm
and…cool.

Cool.

The glass was growing cold. I opened my
eyes. The mirror was dark now, the surface so chill it stung like I
was touching ice. A sob tore out of my throat. “Don’t go!”

The mirror was black and empty, revealing
nothing now but the bulky outlines of the furniture and my bowed
figure. Impatiently, I mopped my eyes and nose.

But it wasn’t a dream. I wasn’t asleep. It
had been real. I rested my head against the mirror, my breath
misting the glass.
Come back. Come back…

There was no sound. I don’t know why I
opened my eyes, but I did, and I saw — or at least had the
impression — of someone walking up the tilted floor behind me.

I whirled, but there was no one there. Only
starlight stippling empty floorboards, the gleam of the clock
pendulum swinging hypnotically back and forth, the painted kiss on
the lips of a porcelain nymph.

Heart pounding, I turned back to the mirror,
but the image staring back at me was not my own.

Not me.

Something else was there, something gazed
back, staring at me as though the mirror were a window. I leaned
in, trying to see more clearly, and the translucent form slowly,
slowly seemed to take solid shape.

A woman regarded me. She was maybe my age,
mid-twenties, unexpectedly beautiful with a cloud of black hair and
heavy-lidded eyes shining like jewels. She wore something pale and
filmy. Or maybe that pale, filminess was her. I couldn’t quite make
it out.

“What are you?” I was thinking aloud,
really, not expecting an answer.

And yet…there
was
something there. I
didn’t believe in an afterlife. But maybe I had been thinking of
the afterlife the wrong way. Maybe this was a psychic echo, an
imprint of energy, not alive, not intelligent or interactive…just
an impression. Kind of like the indentation a pen makes on the
paper below the page being written on.

This was just a tracing, a shadow of
whatever she had once been.

No need to be frightened of a shadow. This
was like studying a painting; she was as pretty as the Dresden
nymph pirouetting on the mantelpiece.

But as I crouched there, watching her image
waver in and out like a fading light bulb, an ominous feeling began
to creep over me. A growing sense of dread. There was no reason for
it, no tangible threat, but the sense of menace, of danger,
mounted. My heart pounded in my throat, my hands felt cold and
clammy, my stomach knotted in anxiety.

“What do you want?” I whispered shakily.

I didn’t believe I was actually
communicating with…it, so her smile — the patent amusement in that
little mocking curl of her lip — knocked me literally back on my
heels.

I scrambled up and she was laughing at me.
Silently.

It shocked me. More. It terrified me.

This was what I had felt earlier, this
feeling of something very wrong, something closing in on me. This
was what had sent me rushing out of the room and down the stairs.
My heart thundered in my chest as she floated there, seeming as
real and immediate as myself, laughing at me as though she found my
bewilderment amusing. No, it wasn’t just the amusement. It was the
derision behind it. Whatever she — it — was, it wasn’t
friendly.

I drew back — and then crawled still farther
away — as she slowly, almost cautiously reached out.

I didn’t wait to see if she breached the
mirror’s surface. I was on my feet, out the door, and flying down
the stairs once more.

There was no bar of light under 404-A’s
door. I hammered on the scratched, battered surface anyway.

The door flew open before I reached the
crescendo of my drum solo. Kirk Murdoch was hastily zipping up his
jeans, his expression a blend of outrage and grievance. His hair
looked like a bush and he had the kind of six-pack abs rarely seen
on dudes who didn’t make a living doing infomercials. One rock hard
bicep bore the narrow red and black banner of a tattoo which read
75 RANGER RGT.

“There’s something wrong upstairs,” I told
him.

“You’re telling me!”

“I have to show you something. Will you
come? Please?”

“
Now?
”

“Yes. Now. Sorry, but it has to be now.”

Murdoch stared at me with hard, narrowed
eyes.

“Please. Now,” I urged when he showed no
sign of moving.

“What are you on?” he asked at last,
conversationally. “Didn’t anybody teach you not to mix —”

“Nothing. I’m not drunk. I’m not on
anything. I’m not —”

“When was the last time you slept?”

“If you’ll just come with me, you’ll see. If
it’s not there then…I don’t know. Maybe I am crazy. But I’m not
crazy. It
was
there.”

“You seem crazy to me. No offense.”

“We’re wasting time,” I pleaded.

“Why not? We have all night, judging by
appearances.”

I got control of myself. Took a deep breath.
“Look, Murdoch — Kirk — I know how this looks.”

“Probably not.”

I said simply, desperately, “I need
help.”

After a nerve-wracking second or two, he
reached back into the room and picked up a baseball bat. “Okay.
Lead on, MacDuff. Let’s get this over with.”

This time I led the way up the stairs,
though Murdoch was right on my heels. I was glad he hadn’t brought
the baseball bat the first time; it wouldn’t have seemed a
neighborly gesture. I hated to tell him I didn’t think a bat would
be any use now. He held it with an easy and reassuring confidence
that suggested he was practiced at hitting homeruns or splitting
open heads as required. Not exactly my idea of the bookish type,
but I didn’t know any writers. In another life I had been an
antique dealer.

Not
literally
another life. That
seemed an important distinction at the moment.

We reached the top floor and the door to my
rooms. I turned to Murdoch and whispered, “Look at the mirror.” I
pushed the door wide.

He made a strangled sound, but followed me
without comment into the unlit room.

The mirror was dark.

Not an unnatural, mystical dark, just…dark.
The triangle of feeble, grimy light from the hall sliced across its
surface as I closed the door behind us.

Murdoch stood unmoving beside me, a bulky
shape in the gloom. He smelled of liniment or something eucalyptus,
and I was reminded of his — our — recent tumble down stairs. He was
a nice guy, Murdoch. Even if he did look like a biker dude. To have
followed me up here after our earlier encounter? That was kind.

He was quiet for such a big man. I couldn’t
even hear him breathing.

The clocks — seven of them at my last count
— ticked loudly in the silence.

I kept my gaze trained on the mirror.

Nothing.

Not a gleam. Not a spark.

“What are we waiting for?” Murdoch asked at
last, and the loudness of his normal speaking voice made me
jump.

“Wait. Please. Just wait,” I whispered.

“Wait for what?”

“
Shhh!
”

I felt him reach behind me. The chandelier
blazed on overhead, leaving me blinking in its dazzle. “What the
hell is going on?” Murdoch demanded. “What are we waiting for? What
do you think is going to happen?”

“I can’t explain it. You wouldn’t believe
me. It’s better for you to see it yourself.” I reached over and
flipped off the light switch.

He flipped it back on. “No. It doesn’t work
like that, Mr. Ambrose. Explain to me what you think is going on.
Or I’m going back to bed. Now.”

I had been “Flynn” earlier. Now I was “Mr.
Ambrose.” I said, “You have to be patient.”

“No. I don’t. Tell me what’s going on or I’m
out of here.”

Had something moved in the mirror? I stared
more closely.

“Suit yourself.” He turned to go.

“Wait.” My hand clamped down on his arm,
startling us both, I think.

“I saw something when I looked in the
mirror,” I told Murdoch.

He glanced at my hand, still gripping his
forearm. I could feel hard ropes of tendon beneath the warmth of
his skin. The last time I’d touched another man’s bare skin, the
man had been Alan. We had made love that morning. The last
morning.

I didn’t dare think about that now.

Murdoch was frowning at me. He shifted the
frown to the mirror which framed us in the tilted room surrounded
by the cabinets and candelabras and crystal.

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” he asked.
“Wouldn’t it be a bigger problem if you
didn’t
have a
reflection?”

I shook my head. “You think I’m crazy. This
is why you have to see it for yourself.”

“I don’t know if you’re crazy. I do know you
haven’t slept since you got here a week ago. And I know firsthand
what the lack of sleep can do to someone.”

There was probably an interesting story to
go with that assertion. “I nap during the day,” I answered, gazing
once more at the mirror. It wasn’t a lie. I did snatch cat naps now
and then. Not for long. If I slept too long, I forgot that Alan was
dead. And then when I woke up, I had to go through remembering all
over again. That was the real reason I refused to take the meds. In
the long run they made it harder.

I leaned my head to the right, then to the
left. Side to side to see if I could somehow see past the room’s
reflection to what I knew waited behind.

I was startled when Murdoch twisted his arm
so that now it was his big hand that was gripping me. “Fine,” he
said. “You want to do this, let’s do it. You sit down here.” He
gave me a little push toward the Napoleon III chair.

I sat down, gazing doubtfully up at him.

He turned, flipped the switch on the
chandelier, dousing the room in instant Cimmerian night. His
disembodied voice floated over to me. “I’ll sit over here.” His
bulky shadow crossed in front of the mirror and lowered to the long
Queen Anne sofa. The sofa cushions huffed a musty protest I heard
from across the room. “We’ve got our positions and we’ll watch all
night. How’s that?”

“Are you — do you mean that?”

“Doesn’t it look like I mean it?”

I watched his large silhouette lay the
baseball bat on an end table, pick up the unicorn tapestry draped
over the sideboard and spread it over himself like a blanket.
Actually, it looked like he was settling down for the night.

“Are you going to sleep?” I asked.

“Nope. But if you have any sense, you
will.”

I started to answer, then cut myself off.
Okay. Let him sleep. Maybe that was better. Maybe the mirror would
cooperate now. And if something did happen, I could always sneak
over there and shake him awake.

“Can you even see the mirror from
there?”

“I can see it all quite clearly,” he said
grimly, and I was surprised to hear myself laugh.

A
strange, low voice
growled, “The hell?”

My eyes flew open. I’d been resting them.
Just for a minute or two. At least, I’d only thought it was a
minute or two, but in the gloom I could make out a bulky form
crouched a few feet from me.

Memory snapped back into place and I sat up.
The bulky form was Murdoch. He was kneeling in front of the mirror.
The mirror was still dark. Too dark. The room was no longer
reflected in its dusky surface. I rose, went to kneel beside
him.

“You see it?” I mouthed.

I felt his assent. He didn’t reply.

We watched together, unspeaking, as the
murkiness before us seemed to swirl languorously like smoke from a
fire that couldn’t quite catch.

She was coming.

My heart sped up with apprehension, but at
the same time I felt great relief that whatever this was, Murdoch
saw it too. I wasn’t crazy. Not that I’d believed I was, more that
I had suspected Murdoch was right about the effects of sleep
deprivation. I could have dreamed what I’d seen earlier. Especially
the small, shining light. It was pathetic how badly I wanted to
believe in that spark within the darkness.