by B. Groves
“Where do you live Miss Winters?” He asked after a moment.
Mark had a sudden thought that if this girl were dressed up she would be stunning. She had a slightly curvy figure, but he never had a problem with that.
Pushing that ridiculous thought out of his head, Mark asked again after she didn’t answer right away. “Where do you live Jessica?”
“Over on Briarwood,” she finally answered, knowing she wasn’t going to get away that easy from him.
“Why don’t you get in, and I’ll give you a ride home,” he said.
Jessica thought for a moment, and then nodded.
She started to go for the passenger seat, but protocol dictated she had to get into the back seat. She did not put an argument about it. In fact, she seemed relieved she didn’t have to sit next to him.
Mark recognized her name right away, but didn’t say anything. She didn’t seem like a talker. In fact, she never looked at him the whole ride back to her house. She seemed to pretend that he wasn’t there at all, and just stared out of the backseat window.
Though he wanted to try one more time, he knew he would not get anywhere.
“Jessica, I am going to ask you one last time. Did you see anything out there besides the bear?”
Jessica finally looked up and met his eyes in the rearview mirror. She shook her head furiously.
“No Sheriff,” she answered with conviction.
“Alright.”
Mark pulled up to the simple two-story home with a porch wrapping around the perimeter of the house. The home was dark blue in color, with white shutters accenting each window on both floors. It looked like a cozy, middle-class family kind of place.
Jessica practically jumped out of the cruiser when he opened the door for her, and saying a quick “thank you.” Mark spied a figure rise moving around inside the huge front window of the house, and then a man came out of the door. The two spoke for a moment, and Jessica quickly walked inside.
“Hello, Sheriff. Did she do anything wrong?” The man, whose name was Donald Winters, asked with concern as Jessica went into the house, leaving the door open behind her.
Mark could smell the beer on his breath, and thought he wanted one now.
“No, sir. She said she spotted a bear when she was taking a walk, and ran the wrong way from where she was walking, I think,” he answered scratching his head in question.
Donald shook his head in frustration, looking back towards the house in thought.
“Maybe, you should tell her not to go out there so late,” Mark suggested.
Donald cursed a little, and said, “She does that a lot, but I will let her know.”
“Thank you. Goodnight, sir,” Mark said, nodding.
“’Night, Sheriff,” Donald answered, walking back into the house.
Mark sat there for another minute. He knew the girl was lying, but since no fire had been found there was not much he could do. It was probably a joke gone wrong, and she was in the middle of it, he guessed.
He finally put the cruiser in gear, and drove off thinking that this will be the most excitement he’ll have for the night.
He drove around the area again looking for anything resembling smoke or fire, but came up empty-handed. If there were not wildfires this year, that was a good thing.
Not seeing anything he told Marge to let him know if anyone else spotted it again.
“I’m going home, Sheriff. It will be Paul now,” she said a little disgusted.
Mark laughed before he apologized to his dispatcher.
“Sorry Marge, please let Paul know,” he answered.
“I already did,” she retorted clearly annoyed now.
He knew she didn’t like him very much, she thought he was too young to be a Sheriff, which she voiced her opinion on constantly.
Mark knew when to stop and gave a ten-four, but chuckled as he continued his patrol.
Chapter 4
“Are you sure it was over here?” Jessica’s friend Tessa asked.
It was two days later, and Tessa was finally able to leave her house to see her best friend.
Surprisingly, Jessica’s parents hadn’t lectured her too much about going into the forest by herself that late in the day. In fact, they blew it off, and were more concerned with her getting in trouble with the Sheriff. Jessica told them she did nothing wrong, she was just startled by something she couldn’t see, referring to the imaginary bear. Her parents seemed fine with it, and told her to be more careful next time.
Her best friend Tessa was short, and very thin. Sometimes she looked anorexic and was constantly pale. Jessica always told her she needed to move to California after high school to get some sun.
Tessa was diabetic, the reason for constantly looking sickly. She was on insulin, and had to take shots every time she ate.
Tessa was usually very shy, but extremely smart. Jessica always said that Tessa would probably get valedictorian when they graduated. Tessa wanted to be a doctor, and find the cure for her diabetes, and treat people like her.
Tessa was always fighting with her little brothers. They always made fun of her, and Tessa may have been shy in school, but she was tough when she wanted to be, and could kick her brothers asses.
Jessica often wondered where that strength came from in admiration of her best friend.
Jessica was no fighter, and knew her siblings would bully her if she had any, and she was thankful she didn’t have to put up with that.
“I swear it was around here,” Jessica said, scrunching her eyebrows in thought as she stopped to look around the old ski resort.
“I don’t see anything,” Tessa said, scratching her dark brown head.
Jessica was confused. She knew she had spotted the fire, and the mirror around here somewhere. She knew she was around the general area of where the fire happened.
Where could it have possibly gone? She thought, puzzled by its disappearance.
She knew she was on the right path, but she didn’t see anything except green and brown forest ahead with moss covering most of the trees and ferns all over the ground. She didn’t see any of the damage the mirror had done or any proof that there had been an explosion and a fire. It looked like it always did, untouched and pristine.
Jessica frowned profusely, and Tessa stood there just waiting for her to say something.
Then Tessa cocked her head in thought. “I remember listening to the police scanner, and the reports about the fire.”
“See? I wasn’t the only one,” Jessica said, turning to her friend with a smug look.
“I know I believe you, but you must have been in another area or you’re smoking something and not sharing,” Tessa said smiling at her own joke.
Jessica laughed and the two girls turned around and decided to head back to their usual spot at the lake after finding nothing out of the ordinary. Though, Jessica had to admit, she was disappointed the mysterious mirror was gone.
Jessica looked around one last time, and thought she spotted something glint in the sun.
“Did you see that?” She asked, turning to her friend.
Tessa looked at her confused. “No, what?”
Jessica turned making her way back into the brush again, but there was nothing there.
Jessica sighed, and told Tessa it was a false alarm, and they headed back to their usual spot.
Jessica and Tessa spent the rest of the afternoon talking about their latest crushes in the music business, and Jessica flipped through some teen magazines. The two girls giggled as they dreamed about their perfect husbands, and their rock star lifestyles.
Finally, Tessa said she needed to go home and eat something before her blood sugar got too low.
Jessica offered to drive her home since her mom would let her borrow her car, but Tessa insisted she was good, and only a couple of blocks away.
Jessica decided not to go back into the house. Her mom was still sleeping for her night shift, and after a short time, Jessica was already bored again.
<
br /> She was actually looking forward to the school year, not only to cure her boredom, but also to graduate, and begin life outside of this small mountain town.
She sat on the porch for a little bit still reading the magazine, and she thought about the Sheriff she encountered a couple of days ago.
She suddenly felt a little nervous, and her imagination took off as she thought of him coming back to arrest her for lying about the fire.
Well, it’s been two days and no sign of him or the fire, so she figured she was safe from going to jail.
She did think he was handsome though. Just something about men in uniforms… she thought, trying to stifle a smile.
He had the deepest blue eyes she had ever seen, and a rugged face. He was short, but taller than her, and built like a rock.
He had a scar that ran across his chin that Jessica thought was sexy and then her cheeks reddened as her thoughts turned to imagining how it would feel if he kissed her.
Jessica may have never said it to her mom, but she did like guys, and did have secret crushes through school.
Jessica suddenly sat up and tried to shake her thoughts of the cute Sheriff, and felt compelled to walk back into the woods again. Jessica could have sworn a voice inside of her head was coaxing her to take a walk again.
She put down her magazines, and took off walking down the trail again behind her house. She wondered if she had been imagining it all along, but her logical mind said that someone else had spotted the fire, because the fire department showed up.
She walked around the lake like she was on a mission. She was determined to prove to Tessa that the mirror had been there, and there had been a fire around it.
Jessica stepped onto the secluded path again, swallowing hard, and wondering if she was doing the right thing.
Her anxiety heightened as she moved closer to the area where she first spotted the mirror. She cursed her fears, because she had known these woods since she was a young child and never feared them before.
Taking tentative steps she looked around, but all was quiet except birds chirping in the trees above her, with the occasional squirrel rustling leaves somewhere in the woods.
Then, something caught her eye. The sun had flashed off of something in the distance.
Pushing through the brush Jessica came to the opening in the path. There were no signs of the fire from days before making her even more confused.
However, there was no confusion as to what she spotted as walked into the open area.
The mirror was there!
Cautiously, she approached it. She remembered the voice that seemed to come out of it, but just thought it was her overactive imagination at the time.
It just quietly sat there against the tree, so out of place in the middle of the forest.
She wondered who put it there, and when, and why.
She was now close enough to see her reflection in it, and found it was not damaged or warped. That was weird, she thought, because it had cracked a couple of days ago.
She peered closer at the markings on the frame. They were strange ones that were covered in gold, with darker gold paint in some spots.
There were angels, and demons intricately carved into the large oval frame. At the top was a sun, and the angels and demons seemed to be rising towards the sun around the oval shape.
The angels were carved with long robes, and hair with halos around their heads. Their arms were extended as they rose towards the sun design at the top of the mirror.
The demons were small and ugly, with their eyes slanted, and tongues sticking out. They seemed to be fighting the unknown force that was taking them towards the sun. Jessica caught some markings carved on their horns, but had no idea what they could be.
At the bottom it looked like they were coming out of some kind of pit that surrounded a fire.
Jessica didn’t know much about the Bible, though her parents and she attended church every Sunday and she only half listened most of the time, but this seemed biblical to her in some way.
The carvings in the frame were so precise and intricate that she couldn’t help but want to reach out and touch them.
Jessica reached out to touch it, and gasped when a bolt of electricity coursed through her body making Jessica jump back a little.
She looked at her finger, and it was a little red from where she touched the glass.
She turned and looked at it again, and then almost screamed at what happened next.
The mirror began to warp, and almost twist inside the frame forming the illusion of a spiral.
Jessica began to breath heavily as panic began to take over, and she started to back away slowly wondering if she should just run or keep doing what she was doing.
There was no noise as the mirror twisted one way and turned another except the light scraping behind it on the tree.
Jessica turned to run away, thinking that her life may be in danger, and she better get out of there in case this thing was evil and wanted to hurt her.
“Hello again, Jessica Winters,” it said in a cheerful voice.
Jessica cried out in astonishment. Again, her feet were frozen in place. She couldn’t will her brain to do what she wanted to do, which was to run away. She just stood there watching the glass twist and turn inside of the frame.
“I knew you’d come back,” it said, smoothly.
The voice was a deep male voice, and it sounded almost like an echo, but musical in Jessica’s ears.
All she could think of was a smoother version of Darth Vader.
“Who……are you? Is someone playing a joke on me?” She asked as her voice shook in fear, but her feet refused to move.
Her eyes widened and she moaned, but still refused to move.
Like molten lava the glass began to pour on the ground, and Jessica could only watch in amazement.
If this was a joke, it was a damn good one, she thought.
The glass of the mirror began to take on a shape.
She could only stand there mesmerized as a figure began to form.
The shape then became a human like figure, and almost towered over her. Then eyes, a mouth, and nose formed on its face.
The only thing about the form was it stayed reflective, and did not develop into anything else that looked human.
She was standing there staring at a human shaped mirror!
The eyes glowed white, and looked like diamonds on the head of the figure.
The figured stared down at her, and then smiled.
“Is this better?” He-er-it asked.
Jessica screamed with every ounce of strength that she could muster, and a white flash suddenly came from the figure’s eyes.
Jessica was temporarily blinded, and the force of the white flash sent her flying back.
Jessica fell on her behind, and grunted in pain when her right hip landed on a tree root. She gathered herself, and felt around the ground trying to regain her eyesight.
Her surroundings began to focus again after a few moments, with white dots dancing in front of her eyes. The reflective figure was still there looking upon her with slight concern. She was amazed she could see emotion on its face.
“Do not fear me Jessica Winters. I am here to help you,” The Mirrored Figure said in a soothing voice.
Jessica could still not stand out of panic. She tried to crawl away, but she was held in place by an unknown force.
“Please don’t hurt me,” she begged the figure looming above her.
“You can rest assured that I am not here to hurt you. Can you stand?” It asked.
Jessica nodded, never taking her eyes off of the figure as she finally gathered the courage to stand again.
“What are you?” She finally asked, trying to be brave at what was standing over her.
The glass figure laughed lowly. “You can say I am your guardian angel.”
“I don’t believe in that kind of thing. Are you real or is this a joke?” She was trying to be brave, but her body shook everywher
e. She looked around for help, but knew no one was coming.
The figure laughed lowly again, and said, “This is not a joke, child. You wished for something to happen and here I am. I don’t grant wishes for just anyone, only those that are special.”
