A Shade in the Mirror

by Tracey Lander-Garrett

“Damn thing almost gave me a heart attack,” Billy muttered. He began looking through the books on the shelves.

  “I wonder what it was doing in here,” Derek said.

  “Sleeping, maybe?” I offered.

  “Maybe it was hunting mice,” he suggested. “We get them in the store. They love to chew paper.”

  I picked up a piece of paper on the desk. It was sheet music.

  “You were pretty good with that cat, by the way, Madison,” Derek said.

  “Yeah, right. So good it ran out of the room.”

  “No, I’m being serious. You were like, natural with it. Maybe you used to be a cat person.”

  “Hm. Maybe,” I said. I hadn’t really thought about it.

  Billy glanced up from the book he was holding. “What are you two talking about?” he asked.

  “He doesn’t know?” Derek asked, surprised.

  I sighed. “No.”

  “What? What don’t I know?” Billy asked, putting the book back on the shelf.

  “I really don’t want to talk about this now,” I said. “Can’t it wait?”

  “That depends,” Billy said.

  “On what?”

  “On how juicy your secret is.”

  “It’s about my past. My . . . family . . . and stuff,” I said. It was sort of true. I leafed through the desk papers, finding more sheet music and plenty of blank pages.

  “Oh,” Billy said, seeming relieved. “Whatever then. Tell me whenever you want.” Billy didn’t like his own family at all. He’d once remarked that the only surviving members of his family that weren’t in jail just hadn’t gotten caught yet. I hadn’t asked for more detail.

  “Thank you,” I said, lifting another piece of sheet music. Beneath it was a golden locket. Inside was a tiny, inch-tall portrait of a woman with piles of white hair like Marie Antoinette. On the opposite side, an engraving: “Myne Always, Irina.” I read it aloud.

  “Hey, let me see that.” I put the locket in Billy’s outstretched hand.

  “Irina?” said Billy. “That was the name of one of the owners. She was the one who added the Greek stuff to the house, wasn’t she?”

  “But wasn’t that before the renovation and Adderly?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe he just found it in the house and kept it,” Billy mused.

  “We should show it to Prof. Gannon when he gets back,” I said as the locket came back to me. I put it down and continued to leaf through the papers.

  There was a stack of magazines on the opposite side of the desk. The word Look was emblazoned in big red letters across the cover of the top one. In the lower right corner, 10¢ appeared in a red rectangle, with the date May 17, 1938 below it in smaller print. The man on the cover had jaw-length dark hair and held a large square microphone. He smiled a crooked smile.

  “Hey, it’s the guy!” I said to Billy.

  “What guy?” Derek asked, coming over to look.

  Across the bottom of the cover the text read MICHAEL ADDERLY, and beneath that, VOICE OF AN ANGEL.

  “Michael Adderly. The singer,” I said. “Billy and I found a box of pictures down in the basement with this guy in all of them. He’s why it’s called Adderly House.”

  I studied the image. His lopsided smile was somehow both cocky and warm. It went all the way to his vivid blue eyes, which crinkled at the corners beneath thick eyebrows that complemented his high cheekbones and strong chin. The bridge of his nose was somewhat crooked, as if it’d been broken once or twice. Along with his slightly disheveled dark hair, it made him seem both disreputable and boyish.

  “Holy shit, check this out,” Billy said, holding out a record in a paper sleeve. “ ‘The Kiss. Michael Adderly with Les Elliott and His Orchestra.’ Should I put it on?” he asked, gesturing with his elbow at the old record player.

  “Sure, why not?” Derek said.

  “What are you guys up to?” asked Zoe as she came back into the room.

  “We’re trying to play a record of Adderly singing,” Billy said. “As soon as I can figure out how to work this thing, that is.”

  “Have you ever seen a picture of him?” I asked Zoe.

  “Who, Adderly?”

  I nodded and held up the magazine cover. “Oh, hotness,” she said. “Can I see it?”

  “Sure,” I said, handing it to her.

  The next issue of Look had a blonde woman with very red lips on the cover. A black and white picture of Michael Adderly and a pretty, laughing bride appeared along the right side in a column of photos advertising the other contents of the magazine. ADDERLY WEDDING, it read. The magazine was dated July 26, 1938. “And here’s his wedding,” I said. Zoe held out a hand and I passed the magazine to her.

  The next magazine in the pile had a picture of a baby on the cover, and Michael Adderly appeared in the column of photos again. The baby’s skin was orangey, an unnatural crayon flesh-tone, and I suddenly realized that the photo was probably black and white that had been tinted. All of the covers probably were. In the side column photo, Michael Adderly was looking downward. The caption read ADDERLY TRAGEDY. The date on that one was December 13, 1938.

  “Adderly Tragedy,” I read aloud.

  “Tragedy?” Derek said. “What’s that about?”

  “Dunno,” I replied.

  “His wife died. Am I the only one who listened to the history of the house?” Billy asked.

  “I don’t remember the professor saying anything about the wife dying,” I said.

  Billy continued tinkering with the record player. “Well, no, but the professor did say tragedy, and when Adderly disappeared, the house was supposed to go to the nephew, right? So Adderly obviously didn’t have any kids. You said he got married. I figured the wife must have died.”

  “Actually,” Derek spoke up, his eyes scanning a magazine article, “It looks like he had three wives total. And all three died. One from a chronic illness, another fell out of a window at home—here, I guess—and the other was hit by a car in the driveway. Also here.”

  “I told you he was a serial killer,” Billy said.

  “He was born in 1910,” Zoe said, reading from the magazine with Adderly on the cover. “I guess he’s about . . . twenty-eight in these pictures. Signed by Romeo Records in 1937. He had a number one hit the next year.”

  “He’d be over a hundred years old if he was still alive,” Billy said, still fiddling with the record player. “But nobody knows what happened to him, right? Prof said he disappeared in the early 1990s? So he’d have been eighty-something by then. I’m actually a little disappointed that we didn’t find his corpse in here.”

  “The night’s not over yet,” said Derek.

  “Gross, you guys,” I said.

  The magazine Derek had been reading showed Michael Adderly on the cover, sitting on the steps in front of Adderly House. The headline read: AT HOME WITH MICHAEL ADDERLY. The magazine was dated September 26, 1944.

  “Got it,” Billy said, and then the room filled with the sound of a needle drop, that repetitive white noise of an empty recording just before the music starts. Then the music started, an orchestral piece of jaunty melody. Billy made an exaggeratedly-excited face, opening his mouth and snapping his fingers in time with the music.

  And then there was the voice.

  It lanced through me, pierced my solar plexus and took up residence in my chest. I could feel the words in my lungs, the notes in my ear, loneliness and wanting bundled together in a rich tenor that ranged into baritone on the low notes.

  It hurt, this voice. It hurt not to have it close by, near me. I knew the song. I didn’t know the song, I knew the voice, even though there was no way I could know the voice. I could feel myself pressed against a chest I’d never been held against. I longed for the feeling of his lips on my brow. His voice swelled within me, stirring ghosts of memory, insubstantial as smoke, leaving me aching. My chest ached for feelings I’d never felt, dreams I’d never dreamed, a love I’d never known.

  I coul
dn’t think. I could feel, only feel, truly feel, and it felt like life, this feeling, like desire, like being set on fire on the inside with wanting, wanting this voice, this singer.

  I was lost in a maze of emotion. Was this how other people felt? Lost in a hazy dream-world of need? The fire burned, warming me from the center of my chest and expanding outward through my torso.

  Too soon, the song ended.

  I felt hollow. Bereft.

  My breath came shallowly. I took a deeper breath and blinked. My eyes were wet. All at once, I came back to reality. Billy and Derek and Zoe were all looking at me. Katie and the two professors were at the doorway.

  I blinked, and everyone looked at me expectantly. I realized that I’d been asked a question. That a conversation had been going on and, while I’d been aware of it on some level, I hadn’t actually heard the words being spoken.

  I felt like I had been to the moon and back.

  A polite response would be expected in this type of situation. I reached for something to say.

  I glanced from person to person, not sure who had spoken. “I’m sorry,” I said. “What did you say?”

  “Are you okay?” Billy asked.

  I blinked a few more times and took a deep breath. “Yeah, sorry. Just spaced out,” I said.

  Billy said, “I was just telling Prof. Gannon about the locket—” CRASH.

  The loud noise had come from somewhere on the second floor. Everyone shrieked or jumped or screamed. A confusion of voices followed, with everyone talking at once.

  “Was that a ghost?”

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Probably the cat again.”

  “Everyone quiet down!” This last statement came from Dr. Hernandez. There was silence for a second. Then the lights went out.

  Katie and I both gasped. Billy said, “Ohhhhh, shit.”

  Zoe, who was standing near me, muttered, “Really?” while Prof. Gannon sighed heavily.

  Dr. Hernandez’s voice once again took command. “Everyone stay calm and don’t move. Those of you who still have your flashlights, please point them at the floor and turn them on.” I pulled mine from my back pocket and six other beams of red light clicked on within a matter of seconds. The room had deep shadows but the light from the different flashlights was enough to see one another and the furniture by. “Prof. Gannon, what’s the plan?” Dr. Hernandez asked.

  “Well, the equipment can run on battery for another half hour or so,” said Prof. Gannon. “I’m going to check the breakers and the main switch.”

  “Should I come with you again?” Katie asked. The beam from her flashlight bounced along the floor in his direction.

  “No, Katie, you stay here so you don’t miss anything else. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said. “Dr. Hernandez, I leave you in charge.”

  “On it,” she said. The room grew just slightly dimmer as Prof. Gannon left and took his flashlight with him.

  “Dr. Hernandez, you’re good to have around in an emergency,” Derek commented.

  “USMC,” she responded.

  “You were in the Marines?” Billy asked.

  “Why’s that surprising?”

  “Well, you’re a doctor. That’s not how most people think of Marines.”

  “The G.I. Bill paid for my doctorate.”

  She seemed unconcerned with how Marines are perceived.

  Several of us started as something went THUNK upstairs. “Oh, man, we have got to check that out,” Billy said.

  “It’s probably the cat again,” Derek said.

  I glanced at Zoe. Even in the dim light, I could see that she had her lips pressed together tightly.

  “I’m game,” I said. Anything to distract myself from the uneasy feeling that the song had brought on.

  “I’ll accompany you,” Dr. Hernandez said.

  “I should probably come too,” Zoe said, sounding resigned.

  “Can I stay here?” Katie asked nervously.

  “All by yourself?” Billy said.

  “I’ll stay with her,” Derek said.

  “That’s settled then,” Dr. Hernandez said. “We’ll take the stairs in the foyer, while you two supervise the equipment.”

  “Do you want to take one of the night-sight cameras?” Katie asked as we filed out through the dining room and into the foyer.

  “Hell, yeah,” Billy said with a grin. “All the better to see the ghosts with.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  We mounted the curving black stairs in the darkness with our flashlights bobbing. Dr. Hernandez was in the front, I was in the middle, and Zoe and Billy were behind me. I heard Billy ask Zoe about the ghosts she’d seen.

  “I’m not supposed to talk about it with anyone else here,” she said in a low voice.

  “Why not? The bias thing?” he asked.

  “Pretty much,” she said. “Prof. Gannon doesn’t want me to influence any of your testimonies.”

  “So how long have you been able to see ghosts?” he asked.

  “My whole life, pretty much.”

  “Wow.”

  I grinned, listening. He seemed interested in her. I was glad. I’d never been able to tell if Billy was flirting with me or if he was just naturally friendly. Sometimes it seemed like he was just joking around and other times it seemed like more. Kara had lectured me about the dangers of dating co-workers, so I never tried to pursue it. I didn’t see him that way anyway.

  At the top of the stairs a short hallway and banister connected an archway on either side. Dr. Hernandez pointed her flashlight through the right arch and then the left.

  “What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever seen?” Billy asked Zoe.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Anything supernatural.”

  “I see dead people all the time. That’s just a regular day. But did you notice the fireplace downstairs? The art on the tiles tells Bible stories—like Noah’s Ark—that seems weird to me,” Zoe replied.

  Noah’s Ark. Someone else had mentioned that recently. I thought back and an image of a white stone table and bench came to me. Right. Rebecca. Rebecca had mentioned Noah’s Ark when I asked her about Adderly House. It couldn’t be. Had she been to the house?

  I thought back to what she’d said. Something about an archangel that used to sing to her? She said he was named Michael—could it be? Michael Adderly with the “voice of an angel”? And she said he “was beautiful . . . handsome.” I thought of the image of Michael Adderly, gorgeous on the cover of Look magazine. It must have been him—but that was in 1938. Tamara had died in 1992. It was around the same time Adderly had disappeared. Maybe due to a guilty conscience.

  But it didn’t make sense. He’d have been eighty-something by then. How could an old man have been “so beautiful” and handsome to a couple of college students and been two-timing them both? Could it have been the nephew the professor mentioned?

  And then I remembered the pictures. The box of pictures. Every picture posed with a different girl. Lots of girls.

  But Michael Adderly was always the same. Different years, different decades. Same hair, same smile. As if he didn’t age at all. I swallowed uncomfortably.

  My mind jumped back to what I’d read about Tamara. Her body was found in the apartment but they thought she’d been killed elsewhere. Why? Because there was hardly any blood at the crime scene. No blood, because none was left in her body.

  Where did it go?

  What if someone took it out?

  No. No way, I thought.

  Then: Michael Adderly is a vampire. I suddenly felt sick.

  Had he posed as his own nephew so he could inherit his own wealth and start over? But then, where was he? If he had truly disappeared, it would explain why no one could find the nephew either.

  I had to laugh at myself. It couldn’t be true. I was being silly. There was no such thing as vampires. Just like there’s no such thing as ghosts? a voice in my mind queried.

  I didn’t dignify it
with a reply.

  At the end of the upstairs hallway we found a smashed vase in front of a window. Dr. Hernandez blamed the cat, while Zoe scanned the walls and ceiling. Billy kept futzing with the camera, trying to get it to work. Ornately carved double doors stood to the left of the window.

  “What’s in there?” I asked.

  “Master bedroom,” Dr. Hernandez said.

  “Should we check it out?”

  “After you,” she said, waving her flashlight in a blur of red.

  “What color is that?” I asked. The whole room seemed sort of brownish-mauve colored.

  Dr. Hernandez unscrewed the filter at the end of her flashlight. “It’s blue,” she said, shining light on the walls and across the bed.

  “Is it okay if I take the filter off mine too?”

  “You can do whatever makes you feel comfortable,” she said.

  Blue wasn’t enough of a description. It was not unlike entering a dark blue cave—passing through the double doors, our flashlights picked up walls upholstered in blue-green silk, and a round king-size bed with a blue-green coverlet. Once again, my feet sunk into thick shag carpeting, though in this room it was dark blue. Heavy damask curtains—also blue—obscured the windows entirely.

  “Holy fuck. This bedroom is almost as big as my entire apartment,” Billy said.

  “Anything look disturbed?” Dr. Hernandez asked.

  “Since I don’t know what it’s supposed to look like, I really can’t say. There aren’t any smashed vases as far as I can tell.”

  I resumed looking around, using Zoe’s method of scanning from floor to walls and ceiling. It was just a huge dark bedroom. Matching night tables stood on either side of the bed. There was a blue velvet chaise longue and small round table next to it. A vanity set with a mirror and a low cushioned chair. A crystal chandelier hung centered over the bed. Double doors against the far wall revealed a very large bathroom finished in green glass tile with a long tub and double sinks. Beyond, two more double doors opened to an empty walk-in closet that was bigger than my room.

  “Man, the battery on this thing is totally kicked,” Billy complained from the bathroom doorway, holding the camera aloft. “I’m going back downstairs to see if they have another. Don’t find any ghosts without me.” His footsteps retreated down the hall, then echoed faintly as his combat boots clunked down the stairs.