“There is such a thing as too much to worry about, but Jesus, did he not tell us to desert worry and not give it thought,” Arkadiusz said as he adjusted his wire-framed glasses with a pudgy hand, stepping aside for Shalom and Jerusha to pass.
“Then what we do is pray,” he heard his mother, Liraz say from inside. For prayer is the one thing we have left, aside from one another.”
Part One:
The Humming
One
Vancouver, Washington… May 10, 2025
Me’chelle watched as her husband, Jason, brother- and sister-in-law Edward and Paloma, and Masao disappeared through the glimmering doorway, followed moments later by her other brother-in-law, Justice.
“You’re really just going to stand there,” she heard Eugenie say as she noticed the petite but plump blonde nudge her husband with her elbow. “This could be the answer we’ve been praying for, and you don’t even care what’s on the other side?”
“What are you talking about,” her nephew, Duncan asked. “They might not even come back alive; they might not come back at all!”
The youth – a replica of his twin, Chosen – threaded a hand through his red-blonde hair and kicked at a stray rock sitting in the grass. The rock, only a few centimeters wide, went flying through the air and bounded off the fence, catapulting backward toward the mirror.
Me’chelle did her best to stop it; moved in the path she thought it might take, and flinched as it hit her in the arm. She sighed and grasped at the tender flesh of her upper arm where she’d been hit as a number of the people around her converged – on her, to see if she was alright, and on Duncan, for being so brash.
The noise around her sounded as if it were coming from a tunnel, and she wondered if her ears were playing tricks on her. She could hear voices, but her mind wasn’t computing what they were saying.
Had the mirror been hit, would the doorway have closed? She shivered at the thought. And how long will it remain open?
The shimmery edges already seemed to be fading, much to her horror, as the sun began to shift a little lower in the sky. In stunned silence, she saw first the upper edge of the doorway fade back into fence slat, and then the next half inch, causing its rounded appearance to look cut off and deformed.
She glanced from the mirror to the people around her.
Did anyone else notice what was happening?
She tried once more to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. Finally, in desperation, she moved her hand to point at the doorway. The movement seemed to take an eternity before anyone noticed what she was doing, and then, reality moved back into a normal cadence.
She heard the gasps of those around her, and she thought she heard Mark swear under his breath before he stormed away, back toward the mirror – or was he headed inside the house? She didn’t know anymore what to expect from the man who had betrayed their trust time and again.
She’d wanted to believe he had truly changed, and perhaps he had. But how could she be sure?
“Come along, kids,” she finally said. “Nothing more to do here but pray, and we can do that inside. I don’t see what good it’ll do us to watch the rest of the doorway fade. I’m not sure what’s-“
“You mean just act like this didn’t happen at all,” her daughter, Charlotte – who they often called Charlie – said, wiping tears from the corners of her green-tinged brown eyes. “That Daddy and Auntie and… that they’re all really here, when they aren’t? How can you-“
“Hush, Charlie,” her brother, Clayton told her, grabbing one of her blonde braids and tugging slightly. “Mama’s right. We can’t change it now, and we aren’t here to forget anyone or nothing,’” he continued, his spindly arms dropping to his sides as he heaved a sigh. “May as well go inside. It’s depressing already, not knowin’ what’s gonna happen to them, but don’t we gotta have faith?”
A murmur once more went through their little group, some heads nodding, others simply sharing hugs and moving toward the house.
“I vote we cover the mirror for now to protect it from the elements and pray God will keep them safe until they arrive wherever it is they are meant to be,” Anouk Chanel finally said quietly as she remained still, Midge at her side. “One can never be too careful or too prayerful when it comes to antiques, or to loved ones.”
Wiser words, Me’chelle had not heard in too long.
She smiled at the woman, considered an aunt though only a few years older, and moved toward her for a hug. Her brown arms wrapped around the pale dark-haired woman’s shoulders, so much shorter than herself. She had to bend down a fair ways in the process, wishing not for the first time she’d been just a little shorter herself.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “You have no idea what that means to me, hearing you say that.”
The woman smiled, a sad smile. “My husband is among them, too, remember. I say it for my sanity.”
“As is mine,” her sister said, joining in the hug. “I think it’s time we really got our houses in order, and whatever we may need, because as much as we’ve been through already… who knows what the future holds for any of us.” She paused a moment, looking Anouk Chanel in the eye and then turning to Me’chelle.
Mark’s head swam as he tried to understand what he’d just witnessed. All his psychological training was kicking into gear, but none of it was meshing with the scene he’d witnessed a mere five minutes prior.
Had he really just watched a group of people – people he cared about – disappear into a figment of his imagination? That doorway couldn’t have been real… but then, where had the five of them gone?
He’d only been able to see what looked like clear stairs… maybe five or eight of them, and then they seemed to just… evaporate. How was it that Jason, Paloma, Edward, Masao and Justice had been able to traverse them, if they weren’t even there?
And if they were, what did that mean for how he thought of the world?
Sure, he believed that everything was possible, but was everything logical? Was everything really likely to be true? God was the Creator, and He could do as He wished; that was a given, and Mark had seen it proven more times than many, but really?
How could the same mirror that transported people through time and space during thunderstorms also, when no storm was around, create a portal people could walk through?
It couldn’t be real!
His head felt like it would explode at any moment. There was pressure in his temples, and he was beginning to see auras as the light filtered through his closed eyelids. He sat as far back as the old green velvet couch would allow him to, his sweaty hands pressed against his black corduroys, his fingers stiff and unmoving.
Normally, he’d be tearing a seam out of his pants that he’d have to restitch at this point. His skin felt itchy, but he couldn’t mobilize his hands to scratch, and was oddly thankful; the intensity of the itch was fierce, and if he alleviated it, part of him feared tearing the skin and making it bleed.
Just the thought of blood made him even more woozy than before, and added to the sense of loss and confusion coursing through him. The air smelled metallic, and he could taste it on his tongue as he forced himself not to bite down on it.
“Not now, God. Not today; not when these people here need me,” he prayed as he heard the sliding glass door open as the teenagers and remaining adults began to filter inside. Among the conversations, he could hear his daughter, Majesta chattering excitedly with Cherish Stuart and Izzie Morrison, but the words were like needles hitting him between the eyes. And then, someone’s phone rang.
The stabbing pain behind his eyes exploded into him again as he realized it was his own. With care, he pulled it from his pocket, intent on silencing it, but startled as he saw the number it was coming from.
Jason Rutherford’s.
Two
“Aren’t you going to answer that,” Mark heard his daughter ask through the stabbing pain in his head. She reached for the phone and paused as she saw who it was.
“Accept call,” Majesta said as she pressed the little green button underneath the bottom edge. Light filtered up and the holographic system appeared, causing Mark’s eyes to water and his heart to pound.
There was no image on the screen as he heard the voices of his friends; the friends who he’d just watched walk through a projection on a fence. The sound was muffled, the interference scratchy, and the words unclear.
“Uncle Jason? Is that really you,” Majesta cried loudly as the others quickly swarmed around her in the living room.
A scrambled “yes,” met Mark’s ears as he closed his eyes again. A migraine, new technology he hated, and claustrophobic moments all stacked up together, and he wondered if he wasn’t going to go into what, for him, was a rare epileptic event.
He could barely remember the last one, but he recalled how it felt and what he saw. It had been the day he learned his sister had gone missing… he had been eight years old, and his brother, Jonas, had been eleven. He’d needed to be hospitalized for three days because of the severity of the event, and the doctors had said his mind might never fully recover, but thankfully, he’d not gone past a migraine into a seizure again since.
He prayed the same would be true now, though terror filled his veins and flooded his mind, pushing him further toward what he began to feel was inevitable.
“You… wouldn’t belie-… told you,” he heard Justice say through the crackling of interference as the throbbing in his head sped up.
The air around him seemed to be getting sucked up by everyone else, as if they were in a vacuum, and as he opened his eyes, trying to catch his breath, he saw the holoscreen of his Andromeda fizz out into a nothing.
Had they just gotten a call from…?
Where are they, anyway, he thought, moving his hands toward his forehead in slow motion as those around him began to fade away.
He closed his eyes and still, the auras, moving like sparklers, shot out at him. Pain radiated through his skull and he began to feel like he was floating in the midst of it as all thoughts slipped away.
He sensed his body tense up and begin to convulse, but could do nothing to stop it. He could hear, as if from miles away, the voices of his wife, daughter, and friends as they began to scream. Anouk Chanel’s voice – never raised – was louder than he’d ever heard it, and still he heard not words, but sounds. It was like the teacher on Peanuts from when he was a kid, where the words were all waaah wahs, melding together with something that reminded him of a symphony.
He felt his head tilt back and to the left in rapid motion, hitting against the wall as he slid from the sofa, hitting the cushion, and then, finally, the floor. A light brighter than the one that shimmered against the fence minutes before sparkled in front of his closed eyes and suddenly, the pain lifted, leaving him with a warmth that radiated from his head down toward his feet.
Eugenie watched Mark collapse onto the floor in a fit of convulsions and then, he was motionless. It couldn’t have taken more than half a minute, but it felt like it took an hour to cross the room to him. Her limbs were heavy, and her heart beat within her so loudly it roared in her ears.
He had told her he’d had a few very minor seizures as a young child, and then, at eight, a larger one, but how could someone seizure-free all these years all of a sudden collapse like this? He’d been on medication, but was he still taking it? She hadn’t paid close enough attention to what he was taking in the last year.
Had he missed some doses, or just decided enough was enough?
And did anyone else in the room, aside from their daughter, know of his past? They knew Mark’s sister had gone missing, but had he ever told anyone else he’d seized and had to be hospitalized in London for three days as a result?
Had he told them that the hospitalization was for not only the seizure but an anxiety attack that rendered him unable to even speak. With his sister’s disappearance, his voice was never the same; so went the doctor’s theories… but who was to know for sure?
“Mark,” she shouted as she finally reached her husband, slid to the floor beside him, and rested his head against her thigh to support it.
She felt his pulse race against her fingers and his face was clammy. His body still twitched occasionally, and his eyes were closed, only occasionally fluttering open.
“Someone call an ambulance, don’t just stand there,” she said to nobody in particular; to everyone at once.
Had the twins not come to get her and tell her something strange was happening with him, would she have even come to check on what was going on? As upset as she was with him over his lack of trustworthiness, that didn’t mean she didn’t care – she cared more than perhaps she should, but he was her husband, and he would always be so. She had made that choice, and stuck by it.
Her vows had said better and worse, and they’d certainly had both.
Eugenie grabbed Mark’s Andromeda from Majesta to call out, and she heard the girl’s breathing heighten.
“What’s wrong,” her daughter asked.
“There was a call from Jason’s phone, and…. Since they passed into…”
Eugenie didn’t finish, but instructed the phone to dial the closest hospital and simultaneously the local EMT service, which connected up quickly. After she said hello, the hospital also answered, and the screen widened to show two faces side by side.
“What is your emergency,” the EMT operator asked her, then glanced over his shoulder. “It looks like you have someone down at floor level, but it’s difficult to tell.”
“My husband has had a seizure of some sort; more than that, possibly. He hasn’t had any that I know of since he was a child. can someone please come and at least look him over. He was hospitalized with the last one, because it then turned into a panic attack; or perhaps it was a panic attack that gave him a seizure, then caused more attacks, I’m not sure, but someone needs to come and make sure he’s alright,” Eugenie said loud enough for the screening nurse at the hospital and the EMT operator to both hear her.
Majesta moved closer to her as she spoke, hugging her tightly as she sat down. Anouk Chanel, Midge, Me’chelle, and the rest of the teens had gathered close, but left one side open for them to breathe and move. Eugenie sensed only her daughter, Majesta, behind her, and was thankful for it.
The screening nurse began asking questions while the EMT’s office dispatched someone to their location.
Looking at the nurse through the lens of the holographic projection, Eugenie could only guess as to her heritage, with bright blue eyes shaped more like someone from Korea, and her hair a bright Spring blonde with hints of both corn silk and auburn. Was it natural? Eugenie wasn’t sure, but the rest of the woman’s coloring reminded her of someone from the Mediterranean, and her figure was more slender than most she’d seen; almost anorexic.
A knock at the door startled her, and she watched Midge – her recently darkened hair in jostling braids– go to open it, and within minutes, Mark was being put onto a stretcher. His eyes were still fluttering occasionally, but no longer opening, as though he was dreaming.
What exactly had happened, the EMTs wanted to know. What could have triggered this?
Without telling the men what had happened with the mirror, the transporting of her loved ones through the fence, and the phone call from – well, wherever it was Edward, Paloma, Jason, Masao, and Justice had ended up at – she and the others described what they’d witnessed and it was ascertained that Mark should, indeed, go to the hospital – at least for observation.
“I’m going with you,” Eugenie told them. It wasn’t a question, and they didn’t argue. “And so is my daughter. Our daughter,” she continued.
The closest EMT to her, a tall bald man with a long red beard and the name Wilma tattooed into the left side of his head in curly script and the words Bad Wolf written underneath the knuckles of his right hand in deep purple lettering, the “o” in Wolf shaped like a face with glowing yellow eyes, nodded silently.
The
others – a short blonde man whose hair was shaggy and eyes were hooded, another man who looked like he could be a sumo wrestler, and an older gentleman with five piercings in his right ear and three more in the left – including a four inch hoop that was fully embedded into the lobe – shook their heads no before Jeff – Mr. Piercings – finally spoke.
“She’ll have to stay out of the way; you’ll have to stay out of the way. Wouldn’t it be better to follow us?”
“There’s no way he’s going without a representative, and that’s us. We’re all family here,” she told him, frowning. Who does he think he is, telling me not to go with Mark? I understand we need to respect their jobs, but, really, she thought to herself before continuing.
“We’re going… and that’s that.”
Three
The Stairway… The Timeless Now
Justice continued following his friends – his family, really, in many ways – as they continued up the crystal stairs. He occasionally glanced down, and the sight of clouds underneath his feet made him feel like he was going to puke, so he kept his eye on Masao’s back, the top of Jason’s head, and Paloma’s hand on the rail. From the start, he counted the steps in his head; the first set were four sets of twelve with a triple wide step for a landing between them.
Each of the sets became just a little more translucent as they went along.
When they paused at an interlude in the stairway – a four and a half by five foot space that resembled large tiles made from sapphires and rubies - were they? – he watched as Jason cautiously pulled out his phone and raised it in the air.
“What are you doing,” he asked the man, his heart still racing. “There’s no way we’ll have reception home from… well, wherever we are. I mean, really?”
The Angels' Mirror Pack 2: Books Four through Seven Page 62
