The Haunted Heart: Winter (6 page)

Kirk. What was his story anyway? What was he
doing living out in this run down and nearly deserted part of town?
Talk about Off-Broadway. Why would anyone — anyone normal — choose
to rent rooms from an eccentric old man in a death trap of an old
house? Okay, the rent was ultra affordable. Even so.

Maybe his plays were so bad he had to hide
out from the critics.

I shook some powder in my cupped palm,
turned the taps on, and after a death rattle, icy water spurted
out. I uncapped my toothbrush, the only genuinely clean thing in
the room — maybe even the entire upstairs — and dipped the brush in
the white-ish powder. Leaning against the sink, I gave my teeth a
long, thoughtful sweeping.

Maybe I
would
sleep that night. All
at once I was so tired I could barely stay on my feet. I scooped
the frigid water up, swished it around my mouth, spat it out,
splashed more cold water on my face for good measure, recapped my
toothbrush, and replaced the powder in the cabinet. I swung the
mirrored door shut.

I yelped and stumbled back from the sink. I
wiped my eyes with my wet hand, peered through wet lashes.

“No way,” I protested.

The surface of the mirror was nearly black,
and rising through the inky blackness was an image. A face. No, not
a face, exactly, more like a diluted and wavering reflection on
water, or features seen through a mist. A miasma in this case,
because those black and burning eyes and bared teeth belonged to
something diseased, not sane, barely human.

“No, no,
no
.” It
couldn’t
be
happening again. This time it
had
to be a nightmare.

The hazy image began to solidify, take
form.

Kirk’s door flew open on the third knock.
Okay, given the speed with which I was hammering his door, it was
more like the thirtieth knock, but that had to do with how fast
I
was moving, not how fast he was moving.

“I’m going to kill you,” he announced, “and
no jury in the world will convict me.”

“It’s not the mirror. It’s upstairs.”

“What’s upstairs?”

“Upstairs is haunted. Not the mirror. The
top floor of this house is haunted.”

His head fell back and he groaned. It
sounded heartfelt. Or maybe gutfelt. Either way, he plainly
expressed pain in every anguished particle of out-rushed sound.
“That’s impossible.”

“I know. I agree. But I’m telling you, she’s
up there. I just saw her in the bathroom mirror. I think it was
her. Maybe not. Maybe it was another one.”

Kirk raised his head and gawked at me. “What
are you
talking
about?”

“Just now. I was getting ready for bed, and
when I looked in the mirror there was something else there. I think
it was her, but she didn’t look the same. She looked…I don’t know
how to describe it. She looked…her eyes were black and dripping.
She looked muddy, moss stained. You have to see it for
yourself.”

“Yeah, I can’t wait to see that!”

“Kirk, you have to hurry.”

“Christ Almighty. This is where I came in.”
His black brows drew together in a genuinely forbidding glare. “You
know what I think, Flynn? I think
you’re
the common
denominator.”

“Are you coming or not?”

“How is this my problem?” A flat statement
of fact.

My heart seemed to drop like a water balloon
hitting the pavement. “Oh. Well…true. Fair enough. It’s not your
problem.”

I didn’t have another plan though, so I
continued to stand there like a wind-up toy one spring short of a
full key-turn.

Kirk swore something passionate and
uncomplimentary, brushed past me, and headed for the stairs. For
the first time I noticed what he was wearing. Or rather, what he
wasn’t wearing, which was pretty much anything. Everything.
Nothing. He wore black briefs. And that was all he wore.

And while I was never going to care about
such things again, I couldn’t help noticing that Kirk was put
together very nicely. Wide shoulders, narrow hips, long legs.
Everything in perfect proportion to everything else. He was made to
move, made for action, briskly jogging up the stairs while I
trailed behind.

It wasn’t that I meant to trail behind. The
heart was willing, but all at once I seemed to have run out of
steam. Or adrenaline. Whichever it was that had kept me in motion
for the past…however long it was now. Steam was probably as likely
as anything else.

Ahead of me, Kirk reached the top landing
and vanished inside my rooms. I grabbed the railing, hauling myself
past the winking, leering faces carved into the banister. Were the
expressions different now or was that my imagination?

As I gained the top floor, Kirk called, “You
better get in here, Ambrose.”

Ambrose
again. He really was not
happy with me. Well, that made it universal.

I found him in the bathroom inspecting the
mirror which was now filled with nothing more sinister than Kirk’s
black scowl. His dour reflected gaze met mine.

“It’s like before,” I said. “If we turn off
the lights and wait, I’m sure she’ll show up.”

He turned to face me. “Do you hear
yourself?”

I listened to the mental echo. I said
cautiously, “Yeah?”

“Really?”

“Well…yeah.”

Kirk gazed ceilingward. But if he was
looking for divine intervention it would have to come from the dead
moths in the dirty globe of the overhead light because the other
kind was asleep at the wheel. That I could guarantee.

“I see,” he said with exaggerated patience.
“So did you want to take the tub or the toilet?”

I glanced uncertainly at the now perfectly
ordinary bathroom cabinet mirror. “I…”

“Yeah, me neither. I want you to listen to
me and listen carefully, Flynn. This house is not haunted. Not the
upstairs and not the downstairs. Do you think I wouldn’t have
noticed? I’ve lived here for two years. Your uncle would have
mentioned a ghost. It’s the mirror. If it’s anything.”

“If it’s
anything
? What does that
mean? You saw it yourself!”

He winced. But the next second he was
glaring again. “Okay, so it’s the mirror. Which is safely locked up
downstairs.”

I took a breath, trying to pitch my voice to
a calm, reasonable decibel. “If it’s not these rooms, then she’s
moving from mirror to mirror. I’m telling you I saw —”

“What did you see? You said you weren’t sure
it was her. You said maybe it was someone, some
thing
else.”

“The point is, whatever it was, it was
there
. It was in the mirror. I didn’t dream it!”

“Are you sure? When was the last time you
slept?”

“There. Was. Something. There.
Something…awful.” My voice shook despite my effort at control. “I
didn’t dream it.” My heart was racing. I was close to panic as I
foresaw Kirk walking out of here and leaving me to whatever haunted
this place. I’d be sleeping in my car before I spent the night in
these rooms alone.

Maybe he saw how close I was to losing it,
because Kirk sighed. “Flynn, listen to me. If you don’t sleep,
you’ll crack up completely.”

“Got it.” I swallowed. “I need sleep. And
probably a shower. My cracks are starting to show. I still saw
something in the mirror. I didn’t dream it. I’m not imagining
things. I’m not hallucinating. I don’t know why this is happening,
but it is happening.” I added, and maybe it was too close to
pleading, but what did I have to lose really? “Kirk, you saw it.
You know you did. There’s something here. You know it.”

He stared at me for a second or two with a
kind of furious impatience. But then, astonishingly, he said,
“Okay. There was something there. Locking her in the basement isn’t
enough. So tomorrow we get rid of the mirror. In the meantime…” I
could hear the reluctance in his voice, “you can crash at my pad
again.”

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

When we reached his rooms, Kirk pointed to
the sofa where the blankets I’d used the night before were still
stacked. “You know where everything is.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Same drill. Don’t wake me before ten.”

“Right.”

He went down the hall, but then returned.
“Do you want something to help you sleep?”

“What did you have in mind? A two-by-four
over the head?”

“That’s Plan B.”

“What’s Plan A?”

“Trazodone.”

I wearily lowered myself to the sofa.
“That’s okay. I don’t really do drugs.”

“Shot of brandy?”

I shook out one of the blankets and draped
it over myself picnic table style. “I think I’ll sleep tonight, but
thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” Kirk disappeared down the
hall again.

I spread out the second blanket and lay for
a few moments blinking sleepily up at the ceiling and wondering
what was going on upstairs in my rooms. After a bit, I reached up
and turned out the lamp.

“Maybe you have sleeping sickness,” I
greeted Kirk the next morning.

He snorted. “You think
I
have sleep
issues?” He headed straight for the coffee pot. “Did you sleep in
those clothes?”

I said in my best Southern belle accent, “Ah
hadn’t tihme to pack mah valise.”

Kirk spluttered, coughed up coffee, then
recovered enough to inquire, “Are you ever
not
bundled to
your chin in a bulky sweater?”

“It’s cold in this dungeon. I think we need
a new furnace. Is the offer to use your truck to cart the mirror
out of here still good?”

“Yep.”

“Because the snow has stopped and I think we
should get going while the getting is good.”

Kirk raised his coffee mug to his mouth,
slurped another thoughtful mouthful, and lowered it. “Okay. Suits
me. Maybe we’ll finally get some peace and quiet around here.” He
glanced at the clock over the breakfast nook. “I’ll meet you in the
basement in ten minutes.”

“Synchronizing my watch now,” I called on my
way out the door.

I had a final look around for papers
relating to the mirror, but I didn’t expect to find anything, and
in that I wasn’t disappointed. I brushed my teeth — avoiding
looking in the mirror — ran a wet comb through my hair, changed my
gray sweater for my black sweater, grabbed my boots and parka, and
ran downstairs in time to meet Kirk starting down to the
basement.

The mirror was just as we had left it. We
lifted it out of the basement and then began the long, arduous task
of hauling it back up the rickety stairs. Luckily just one flight
of stairs this time. Granted, it was probably the worst flight,
given the narrowness and flimsiness of the steps. And we weren’t
racing against the clock this time. Even so, Kirk was out of breath
by the time we reached the ground floor, and I had those black
spots dancing before my eyes again.

We lugged the mirror onto the porch and
propped it cautiously against a post. The cold air felt good on my
flushed and sweating face.

“Wait here. I’ll get my truck out of the
shed,” Kirk threw back as he went cautiously down the snow-caked
steps. He disappeared around the corner of the building.

The snow swallowed the sound of his
footsteps, swallowed all sound. It was a silent, white world I
waited in. Now and then a non-existent breeze seemed to tease the
bottom of the sheet over the mirror.

I could see the snow plow had already been
down the lane that morning. That simplified everything.

“Lane” was an exaggeration. Pitch Pine Lane
was really just a country road leading back into a small housing
development. Way back. This house sat on the edge of the woods on
the outskirts of Chester, and there was no other building or
structure within immediate sight or sound. The house was formerly
part of an estate, but most of the land had been sold off before
Great-Uncle Winston bought the house. The lot the house currently
sat on was large but unremarkable. The trees had all been cleared
away and there were just a few scraggly shrubs, scattered sheds and
fenced-in areas that looked more or less like trash dumps. A
tilting telephone pole was loosely and dangerously tethered to the
house by a stretch of sagging line. Kirk and I were probably the
last people in the world with dial-up.

As for the house itself, it defied
definition, architecturally speaking. It was kind of like an
unhappy marriage of convenience between a demure Victorian cottage
and a dissolute French chateau. Mottled ochre-colored stone and
blood red rimmed windows and doors. The west wing was three stories
tall and included an out-jutting windowless space that would have
once been a green room or conservatory but now housed Kirk’s truck.
The east wing was four stories tall and capped by a crazy Queen
Anne roof that looked like the sorting hat in Harry Potter, the one
they slapped onto kids in order to determine which of the four
school houses they’d been assigned to. Attached to the outer west
wing were some low sheds with tin roofs, but they looked of more
recent construction. I was using the closest as a garage.

I hugged myself, rubbed my arms. My teeth
were chattering. In fact, now that I had time to think about it, I
felt cold all the way through. Cold and sick. Was it some
manifestation of the mirror? Like the pall of anxiety and fear that
preceded the appearance of the apparition in the mirror?

More likely I was coming down with the
flu.

Finally I heard the roar of an engine and a
white Ford pick up drove across the blanketed lot in front of the
house, winter tires chewing up the powder.

Kirk briskly backed up to the porch, jumped
out and lowered the tailgate. “Watch your step,” he warned as we
levered up the heavy mirror.

He was right. The steps should have been
shoveled or salted. I was a lousy landlord. It hadn’t occurred to
me that I had a responsibility here beyond sorting and sifting
through junk. The snowplow had been down the main lane that
morning, but our own drive needed a snow blower. Or maybe a
bulldozer.