The Haunting of Beacon Hill

by Ambrose Ibsen

  Sadie, though, could hear nothing but that perverse laugh, and as she barreled after him, she couldn't help screaming back, “Shut up!”

  They arrived at the first of six or seven doors. Each was set several feet from the last, and which contained the sought-after mirror was an utter mystery. August dove into the first room on the right. “Hurry! Start looking!” Whether he intended for them to go room by room together was unclear, but he disappeared into the open doorway and fell completely out of sight.

  Sadie's dithering was cut short by the trudging at her own heels. She cast her light up and down the hallway, and though she failed to secure a visual, the thump and gaiety of the monstrous thing still filled the air. In a panic, she hooked into the first room on the left, opposite the one August had entered.

  This interior room had no windows. Though it may once have been a bedroom, it had been stripped of every defining characteristic since antiquity, leaving only peeling plaster and an abundance of grime. This wasn't the room she was seeking. When Ophelia had spoken of the mirror, she'd described the room that housed it as boasting a window—one that admitted ample moonlight. It'd been the girl's journey toward this natural light that had led her into that room to begin with. What's more, Sadie had seen the room herself, in the crime scene photo. She realized the room she was looking for had to be on the right side of the corridor.

  Sadie darted back into the hall, and at that moment August, too, had rushed out of his chosen room so that the two barely avoided colliding. He chose the next doorway on the right, seemed keen on taking them in order. His light flashed across the walls of the next room and he stomped about the floors in search of the mirror.

  Sure now that she must follow the moonlight to her target, Sadie lowered her flashlight just long enough to see where the natural light shined brightest along the passage. The last room on the right, twenty or thirty feet ahead, appeared positively brilliant in comparison to everything around it. That one. The mirror has to be in that one! She set off for its twilit borders immediately.

  But the hall had grown quiet. The sounds of August's investigation were plain enough, as were her own noisy wanderings, but all evidences of Mother Maggot's chase had seemingly petered out. Even the laughter had stopped. She paused, blasted the walls with her light and listened for any sign of the thing.

  The sign came from above in the form of a sudden rustling.

  Her flashlight may not have been strong enough to probe the high ceilings with perfect thoroughness, but a toss of the light upward was sufficient to expose a body huddled there. The blasphemous thing inched across the ceiling like its namesake, its face left dangling low by a tarry thread of a neck. The teeming sockets were fixed on her and the specter peeled a black hand from the crumbling ceiling to swipe at her. The tainted digits missed the mark, but the air in their wake was scented with the sourness of decay.

  Sadie threw herself forward to avoid being grabbed, and the resulting force of her knee striking the floor made one of the boards crack. She ignored the pain, clawing her way back to her feet and aiming now for that room whose borders were thickest with moon glow. As she went, cognizant of August's efforts, she shouted a warning to him. “She's in the hall! Be careful!”

  He paused his search, panning the hallway with the handicam and seeming to confirm the apparition's presence with a muttered curse. August backed up into the room he'd been exploring, unsure whether it was safe to proceed to the next.

  Sadie closed the distance, her legs aching, and not bothering to look back she dove at once into the doorway of the moonlit room. The abundance of natural light here was almost disorienting, what with her having just wandered out of almost complete darkness, and as she began searching the walls she realized she didn't even need her flashlight to find the promised mirror.

  It was, frankly, an unassuming thing, roughly three feet by three feet with a thin iron trim. The glass itself had been discolored by age so that one could not be assured a precise view of anything reflected in it. Where mirrors were usually intended to aid their owners in pursuing beauty, this blotchy timeworn thing had very much the opposite function; everything glimpsed in it was degraded. The mirror was propped against the wall by a number of small, rusted nails, and a test of them found it also bound there by an nigh-disintegrated length of wire. When she'd gotten her fingers around its borders, pulling it from its resting place proved simple enough.

  Her heart was still thumping with terror, but having met her objective, the quickness of her pulse was increasingly owed to excitement. “I found it!” she yelled, the ancient walls trembling at the force of her voice. “August, I found it!” She peered at the window to her right, the tottering sill shining with the powdery light of the moon. There was a bit of broken glass there, but if she moved carefully she'd be able to make it out without cutting herself—and this method of escape suited her much better than running back through the house and chancing an encounter with the apparition. She tucked her flashlight into her back pocket and prepared to climb over the sill.

  There was a step at the door—August, she presumed—and she looked back to the hall with a wide smile, holding up the mirror and showing it off. “See? I found it—”

  But it wasn't August who stood there, head low and ropey arms drooping nearly to the floor.

  24

  A white socket bulged with an effusion of legs and wings as the thing peered at her from across the room. Mother Maggot staggered in, limbs jittering and ovoid head bobbing.

  Sadie froze. Her petrified mind tried to run the numbers as she pressed the mirror to her body. If she climbed out the window at that instant, she could almost certainly outpace the thing. It didn't move quickly enough to beat her in a full-on race. Still, she wouldn't be able to dig a hole on her own quickly enough to escape the specter; she needed August. She wanted to call out to him again, but her throat locked up on her.

  In this breathless moment however, Sadie noticed something strange.

  The apparition had stepped into the room, but at sighting the mirror in her grasp, had come no further. Mother Maggot remained just inside the threshold, still as a statue.

  It was hard to assign intention to many of the horror's movements. Perhaps it was merely taking a break, gathering its strength before rushing her. But as it stood some paces into the room, seemingly transfixed, and then leaned down far enough to study itself in the spoiled glass, one would have almost thought it on the verge of preening.

  Sadie struggled to hold onto the mirror for the shaking of her arms. She held its odious frame closer to keep from dropping it and then took a measured step backward, to the window. Mother Maggot, though, remained in place, seemingly engaged in deep appreciation of her own botched reflection. The infested features narrowed in study, perhaps even familiarity, like those of an animal looking into a mirror.

  Had the specter halted because Sadie held in her hands the very seat of its power, or merely because its own reflection proved distracting? So that she might come nearer to the truth, Sadie took another step toward the window and then allowed herself a quick glance at the glass. Nothing could have prepared her for what she found there, however.

  The figure standing across the room was an incarnate nightmare—a thing so foul that it should not have been allowed to exist in a sane world. That which was reflected in the mirror at that moment was shocking primarily for its normalcy, though. It was, put plainly, the reflection of a middle-aged woman. In fact, the only off-putting notes in this woman's appearance were those which the time-spoilt mirror added by its warped nature.

  To believe the mirror was to entertain the idea that the thing standing before her was not the black-bodied, insect-ridden monster known as Mother Maggot, but a trim and sallow woman of fifty-odd years with whitening hair—a figure garbed not in darkness and filth, but in a severe, semi-clerical grey dress of ankle-length. The stained mirror-face made it difficult to know for certain, but from fragments showcased in those few unobscured sections it was
possible to surmise a tight smile plastered to that face, and a cutting stare as well.

  This woman, Sadie could only presume, was Margot Blake, and when the standoff had worn on for several moments, it was by this name that she addressed the figure. “Margot? Is that your name? Margot Blake?”

  There was no perceptible shift in the apparition, but the woman in the mirror moved all the same. Her dark eyes were cast upward as if in answer to Sadie's voice, and from somewhere in the room there drifted a quiet reply. “I've been waiting for you.”

  She glanced about the moonlit room after the source of that disembodied whisper, but came up short. “Why?” she squeaked out, taking another step toward the window. Her backside met the sill—if she threw one of her legs over it, she'd be able to climb into the bushes outside. “What do you want from me, Margot?”

  The specter's voice drifted through once again; low and quiet like a radio transmission heard from afar. “I've been waiting so long for you. I thought you'd never come. All these years I've waited and now you're here.” The woman in the mirror looked upward, giving the impression that she could see over its edge into the room—into Sadie's own face.

  “I don't understand,” began Sadie. “I don't know you, Margot. You're mistaken. I've only been in this house twice. What do you want?”

  “No,” replied the mirror-borne apparition with a hint of a laugh. “No. I've waited for you many, many years. We all have. Finally, you have come to us.”

  The familiarity with which she was being addressed struck a nerve. She clutched the edges of the mirror tightly and weighed the possibility of a hasty exit, but something made her hesitate. “You're mistaken, Margot. You don't know who I am—you know nothing about me. And... what do you mean, 'us'? Is there someone else here, too?”

  The spirit laughed smugly. “You've forgotten, haven't you? It's all right. Come closer. I'll remind you. We've been waiting so long for you to return to us. I've longed for you. This is the day we all prepared for.”

  In time with the woman reflected in the mirror, Mother Maggot outstretched one of her withered, inky hands and beckoned.

  “Sadie?” shouted August from deeper in. “Where are you? Is... is it still in the hallway? You OK?”

  The sound of his voice made her startle—she nearly lost her grip on the mirror and it was only a lucky nudge of her knee that kept it from sliding to the floor. Glancing over her shoulder, she eased herself onto the sill and shouted back, “Get out of the house! Now! I've got it, meet me outside!”

  “Huh?” There was a confusion of steps from the hallway. “You found the mirror?”

  “Yes!” Sadie stuck one leg out, grazing the bushes, and then quickly retracted the other. Clutching the mirror to her breast, she leaned forward and dropped over the other side, landing awkwardly in the tangled growth.

  From inside the house, August's heavy footfalls could be heard as he clumsily traced his way back to the entrance. And there was something else, too.

  Mother Maggot was on the move again. The specter slunk toward the window, gnarled hands groping the sill and wandering eyes peppering the bushes with wriggling pests. The sound of the monstrosity sliding down into the bushes and giving sluggish chase shattered the quiet night as Sadie began running across the overgrown yard. At the same time, the woman in the mirror still beckoned. “We've been waiting so long for your return.”

  She broke into as fast a run as she could with the bulky mirror in her grasp and tried to ignore the sounds of pursuit, the sinister voice that kept coming through the air despite her increasing distance from the house. Upon reaching one of the corners, she burst around it and caught sight of the broken retaining wall, where August had just arrived and was presently searching for her. “August!” she yelled. “Dig! Dig!”

  He turned to her, studied the rectangular mirror she held and then scrambled for the shovel. “OK, got it!” He glanced about his feet and, selecting a patch of damp ground, plunged the tip of the shovel in. His thin arms shook and when he stamped down on the head of the shovel to dig deeper, his entire frame quivered. With an audible groan, he began hoisting the soil over his shoulder.

  Sadie arrived at the retaining wall within the next few seconds, panting and fatigued. With great care so as not to smash it, she set the mirror down on the remnants of the wall so that its surface looked up into the moon-bright sky, and was terrified to find Margot still reflected there.

  The reflection wobbled slightly as the figure showcased therein adjusted itself. Margot peered out at her as through a dust-streaked window, still smiling, eyes wild and black. “We knew you'd come. We prayed for it all these years...”

  Meanwhile, from around the very corner she'd just turned, there came a rustling. Even August heard the commotion and paused in his digging.

  “Don't stop!” she ordered him, grabbing the box of salt and ripping the top off it.

  Mother Maggot clawed her way through the grass, slithering across the lawn like a great, black serpent. From within the knotted growth the white face leered, polluting its wake with mounds of shuddering flies. The entire property seemed to buzz for the things that inched throughout that egg-like skull.

  “Damn it.” August reared back, batting away a cloud of flies. “Where the hell are these coming from all of a sudden?” He buried the shovel again and lifted another clump of dirt. The soil was fairly loose and the hole was getting deep—but was it deep enough?

  Dropping to her knees beside him, Sadie began scratching at the earth with her own hands, lifting out fistfuls of soil and increasing the opening's footprint. Very soon, the apparition would be upon them. She moved aside as August cleared a few more inches and then stood, grasping the mirror with her muddy fingers. “Is it deep enough?” she asked.

  “I... I think so,” he replied, standing aside. “Drop it in, see if it fits.”

  Lowering the mirror into the ground, she was reacquainted with Margot, who continued to beckon. “We've been waiting so long for your return. Come closer...” Having placed the accursed artifact in its grave, she grasped the box of salt and began pouring it liberally over the top. All the while, the rustling in the grass continued and the woman's beckoning grew more frenzied. She caught a shadow in her periphery, as of something looming within arm's reach.

  Having emptied the entire container of salt into the hole, Sadie rolled aside. “Cover it!”

  August began tossing shovelfuls of dirt back into the opening, and Sadie, too, threw whatever clumps her shaking hands could gather. The air buzzed with a frenzy of flies, but they worked through them, covering the mirror completely with soil and then madly packing it down with their hands and feet.

  It wasn't until the last bit of dirt had been added that the flies dispersed and Margot's voice finally faded out of hearing. When, after more than a minute, Sadie rose to her feet and surveyed the vast property, she found the two of them were alone—or, very nearly. In the grass some feet away there writhed a knot of white maggots, the last-remaining trace of the apparition that had been racing toward them only moments ago.

  “She's gone.” Sadie turned to him, had another look around. “We did it. She's gone!”

  August leaned on the handle of the shovel, sweat dripping down his nose. “It's over?”

  Sadie gave the burial mound one last stomp for good measure, then took a moment to peer into the house's black windows. No pale faces leered at her from their heights—nothing, save for mice, perhaps, stirred within. Any such declaration was admittedly premature, but sensing a shift in the mood of the place, a lightening of the atmosphere, she felt confident enough to nod. “Yes, it's done.”

  For the first time all day, the two of them were able to relax, and they plopped down on the sturdiest section of the retaining wall to catch their breath.

  “So, what happened? You found the mirror and then jumped out a window?” asked August, scratching at his ruby red cheek.

  Sadie pawed at her capris, wiped the grime from her fingers. “She follow
ed me into the room where I found the mirror,” she began. “But... when I took it off the wall and pointed it at the spirit, it stopped following me, like it was too busy staring at its own reflection. I looked into it, too—I could see someone else there, a woman. I think it was Margot Blake, the way she looked in life. And she spoke to me. Could you hear her?”

  August shook his head. “Nah. I thought I heard something in the grass there, but I didn't hear anyone speaking. What did she say?”

  “She said... she'd been waiting for me a long time. She and... others.” Sadie chuckled, but a shiver raced through her tired form all the same. “She wanted me to come closer, to stay here, I guess. I don't understand what she meant, though—she must have been mistaking me for someone else. She didn't stop talking till we finished burying the mirror.”

  He didn't have much to say about that. Wiping at his brow, August kicked a few dirt clods from the shovel and then stood. “This has all been quite the adventure, Sadie. But there's one thing I still don't understand.” He picked up the handicam and dropped it into his pack.

  “What's that?”

  “After all we've been through, I don't understand how anyone could possibly enjoy gardening. Imagine, spending your day digging a bunch of holes to plant stuff in,” he said, shaking both of his noodly arms. “Digging sucks. I'm gonna be sore for days after this. We librarians are delicate creatures!”

  She couldn't help but laugh. “A little soreness? I think we got off easy.” She cast one last look at the house and then grabbed the shovel. “Ready to go?”

  “Hell yeah.” Slinging his bag over one shoulder, he led the way down the hill.

  25

  August pulled into one of the open spots outside her building and rested his head on the wheel. They hadn't spoken much on the way back from Beacon Hill, hadn't seen the need. “Well,” he said, puncturing the lengthy silence, “If it's all right with you, I'm gonna drive home and collapse face-down in my bed now. You gonna be OK?”