by Tim Meyer
I stopped. Aurelia tugged me in the direction the arrow suggested we travel.
What's your problem? she asked.
Nothing, I replied.
This is why we came, isn't it?
Yeah, I guess.
Well? What are we waiting for? Then she let go of my hand and started to jog toward the house.
Aurelia wait! I yelled, but she ignored me. She was laughing as she ran. She wanted me to chase her, follow her into the fog. Into the House of Mirrors. Something inside my dream-self did not want to go near that house, but I had no control over my actions. I chased after Aurelia, despite my inner-dream voice telling me not to.
The fog thickened. Within seconds, I was unable to see my own feet. I followed Aurelia's laughter. The House of Mirrors was no longer visible. The fog had blanketed my dream, consumed it, and now all I could see was whiteness, as if I were inside an avalanche. I stopped running and called out Aurelia's name. She did not respond, but her laughter resonated around me. It had become impossible to tell where she went. Her laughter, her high-pitched giggles, encircled me. I paced around, calling her name, begging her to stop and come to my side. I suddenly felt abandoned. Alone. Aurelia's laugh changed. It was no longer her laugh. It suddenly transformed into somebody else's, a deeper voice. A man's voice. It continued circling me, like a school of sharks stalking its prey. I turned toward every echo, only to face another aspect of the white atmosphere. I shouted for Aurelia one last time, but only the laughter answered.
Then the haze gave way to a path. The rest of the world around me remained clouded in the opaque whiteness, but a small path appeared in front of me and I knew the dream wanted me to follow it. The laughter continued, coming from the direction of the path. Whoever it was, the dream wanted me to meet him.
The path did not twist and turn; it did not throw me any curveballs. As I continued down the straight path, the house I had been hesitant to approach formed within the ever-stretching cloud that filled my dreamworld. Each step brought clarity to its structure and it didn't take long for me recognize its true form. It was Boone's house, the one which had been mostly converted to rubble and ash. Only it wasn't. It was the Denlax's version of Boone's house, the old decrepit one. The one that shouldn't be. The one with the old man who watched me from the porch, protectively.
The old man was not sitting on the front porch watching me. He was in the front yard, laughing as if he were a comic book villain and his diabolical plot had finally come to fruition.
My heart skipped when I saw whom he held in his arms.
Aurelia.
He was gripping her with one arm, the other held a knife to her throat. The tip of the knife had started to sink into her tender flesh, and a small dribble of blood oozed down her neck. The old man grinned devilishly. He wore a ring master's costume, a bright red topcoat with golden trim and tassels. He sported a black top hat that seemed bigger than him. He snarled at me, like a dog with rabies, as I inched closer to them. I put my hands up as if to say that I had come in peace. Aurelia's stifled whimpers began to manufacture tears. They rolled down her face smoothly.
The old man erupted into laughter. “COME ONE, COME ALL! TO THE HOUSE OF MIRRORS!” he screamed, and then continued to laugh diabolically.
Stop, I said. What do you want? Just let her go and I'll do whatever you want.
“WHAT I WANT? WHAT I WANT? YOU KNOW WHAT I WANT RITCHIE-MY-BITCHIE! I WANT YOU TO ENTER THE HOUSE OF MIRRORS! WON'T YOU? OH WON'T YOU COME SEE IT! IT'S GLORIOUS! ALL CAN SEE IN THE HOUSE OF MIRRORS!” the old man yelled. He stepped backwards, in the direction of the porch. I moved forward cautiously, hoping not to alarm him. He still pressed the tip of the knife to Aurelia's neck. Blood flowed from the tiny wound steadily.
Aurelia mouthed the words, HELP ME.
I began to pick up the pace and the old man growled at me, like a wolf protecting its cubs.
“KEEP YOUR DISTANCE.”
Please, I begged, ignoring his command. I kept putting one foot in front of the other, with only one thing on my mind; Aurelia.
“THAT'S ENOUGH!” he yelled.
I ignored him once again. He took the knife away from Aurelia's throat, and drove the blade into the area below her stomach, working the metal deep into her body. When the entire blade disappeared inside her, Aurelia screamed and fell to the ground. The ringleader cackled. Black sludge sputtered from his mouth. It looked like motor oil. It ran down his chin. The liquid gurgled in his throat as he continued to laugh mechanically. He turned toward the house and hobbled up the porch's steps slowly, just like an old, feeble man would. I didn't chase him. I was in shock, frozen. I looked at Aurelia as she rolled back and forth on the ground, blood spurting through her fingers, which were tightly clamped over the wound. She was screaming, but her voice was muted. The only sound that could be heard in the dreamworld was the loud abrasive laughter of the old man, who had reached the porch, arms raised above his head as if he'd just won a heavyweight fight.
“COME AND FIND ME RITCHIE-MY-BITCHIE,” the old man called to me. “COME AND FIND ME IF YOU DARE!”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The obnoxious tune my cell phone played jerked me out of the nightmare, and replanted me into my sister's basement. The world around me faded in. I reached for the phone, which rested on the small table where I usually keep my effects. The phone rang three or four times before I was able to collect my senses and answer it.
“Yeah?” I answered, without checking the caller ID.
“Where are you?” Little Chris asked, sounding nervous.
“I fell asleep. What time is it?”
“After eight.”
I peered out of the tiny window on the wall, a porthole that displayed the front lawn. It was pitch black, and I couldn't see a damn thing. “Fuck,” I said into the phone. “I was really out of it. Late night last night.”
“Yeah, no shit. Your pictures are finished. Don't tell me you burned that house down.”
“No, it wasn't me.” I found my shoes messily thrown in the corner of the room. I pinned the phone to my ear with my shoulder, freeing my hands so I could get ready to leave as soon as I could. “I don't know who did it. But I think it has to do with the camera.”
“What? How is the camera responsible for burning it down?” he asked. “No, I don't think so.”
“Well, how'd the pictures come out?” I paused for a beat, waiting for him to speak. He didn't, not right away. “Normal?”
“Not exactly. Look, you should probably just come here and get them now. There's... something else I want to tell you.”
“What?”
“It's probably nothing.” Nervousness crept into his voice. It cracked, slightly, as if he were just entering puberty. “Just get here.”
2
I entered the front door and Little Chris was, wiping down the counters with some household cleanser. “Didn't think you were going to make it,” he said.
“Sorry. I can't believe I slept that long.”
“Well, like you said. Busy night.” He put down the abrasive sponge and turned to the photographs he developed, which were organized in a manila envelope, exactly like the one he had previously given me. He plucked a photograph I had taken of Boone's house, or what was left of it, after the fire had eaten through most of the living quarters. The rectory.
“Let me see the other ones,” I told him. “The ones where... well, you know.”
“I'm afraid I do.” He tossed two photos on the counter. The one on top showed Boone's home, burned to the ground as it had been the other night. The church section of the building was mostly intact. In fact, I could see the altar where Boone led the ceremonies through the wreckage around it. The stairs, which probably led to the sleeping quarters, were exposed. Rubble surrounded the premises. Ash flurried from the sky. There was only one thing in the photograph I don't remember being there when I originally took it.
The old man with long white hair stood over the wreckage, his head tilted toward the
ruins, seemingly upset. He was back to wearing his long black robe, not the ringmaster's getup he fashionably wore in my nightmare. His sorrowful pose sent shivers down my spine. Someone's unhappy.
I couldn't help to think back to when I first saw him. It was as if I were looking in on him. As if I wasn't supposed to be seeing what he was up to. He chased me, I thought. He was running toward the camera because he was chasing me away, like a rabbit in the garden.
I flipped the picture and saw the same photograph, only the old man's head was careened toward me. Red rings surrounded his eyes from rubbing them. His lips were curled in an evil snarl, like the wolf-man in the old black and white movies. His eyes were yellow. I could see Hell in them. Or someplace worse, whatever world this creature existed in.
Then I thought I saw him move.
3
“He's been doing that,” Little Chris said. “I looked away the first few times I saw it too.” He took the pictures and put them back inside the envelope.
“Freaks me out every time,” I told him. I could feel my heart beating faster. Luckily, I had remembered to take my medicine that morning.
“All he does is move a little bit,” Little Chris said. “I stopped turning away after it happened a few times. You should see it. It's like... It's weird. He starts to move like he's coming at you and then... I don't know, he just stops. It's like he can only move so far. Like something is keeping him from jumping out of the picture. I can't really explain it any better than that. You just have to see it for yourself.” He stuck his hand back into the envelope. Producing another picture—this one looking the same as the other two, except the old man was facing the camera, no longer concerned with the destruction beneath him, attention completely turned on what stood in front of him—Little Chris nodded his head. “Look.” He slapped the picture down on the counter in front of me. “Don't turn away.”
I looked down at the picture, completely focused.
“Wait for it,” Little Chris said.
I stared at the old man, into his yellowish eyes.
“Give it a minute.”
A storm brewed above him, dark clouds hid most of the moon, which had become responsible for lighting the scene. The moonlight exposed the old man's facial deformities, thick jagged keloids I hadn't noticed before. The old man looked like he had been through a war.
“Here it comes.”
Then, the old man moved as if he were coming after me. He took one step forward. Then he became distorted, as if he had been electrocuted in fast motion. Within an instant, he returned to the same position in the original photograph. He remained still, with no evidence suggesting he had ever moved. If I hadn't known better, I would've thought my mind had been responsible for the moving image. The old man's motion was subtle and harmless. Still, I felt uneasy about the whole thing.
“Told you. Something is keeping him there.”
“Well, let's just hope whatever it is keeps up the good work until we can figure this whole thing out.” I moved toward the door, ready to leave. “Oh, almost forgot. What was it you wanted to tell me?” I asked Little Chris, turning around before I reached the exit.
“It's nothing. Don't worry about it,” he responded.
I gave him that look parents sometimes give their kids when they want them to own up to some mistake. “Come on,” I said. “Tell me.”
He thought about it for a moment. “Okay. It's dumb. But when I was waiting for you to come back I was sitting behind the counter—what I normally do when it's dead and we have no customers—which is most of the time—I saw the woman from the beauty salon next door.”
“You're right, that's totally weird.”
“Shut up.” He rolled his eyes at me. “Anyway, I was reading a magazine and I just happened to look up from it and caught her staring into the store. Looking right at me. She was just staring, not speaking a word. She didn't wave, or try to get my attention in any way. She just stared.”
“Now that is weird.”
“Anyway, it went on for a good minute. She was peering through the glass, as if she were window shopping. But instead she was looking into my eyes. And then I caught something in hers; it was as if she had seen something really horrible, you know? Like something had frightened her.”
“Then what happened?” I asked.
“She took off, back to the salon. Like she was running away from something.”
“Strange. What do you think she saw?”
“I have no idea. I didn't really think much of it. I just thought she was crazy. I don't really know her that well. But who knows? People do strange things sometimes. Maybe she left something on inside the salon and had to turn it off before it burnt the place down,” Chris said, as if he were trying to convince himself that was the truth.
I didn't point out that “those weird things that sometimes happen” happened way too much lately. However, deep down inside, Little Chris already knew that.
4
I dreamed of nothing.
I awoke several hours later, in the darkness of night, to the sound of my cell phone once again. I picked it up without opening my eyes to see who it was.
“Where you been?” a voice asked.
“Uncle Bernie?” I asked the voice.
“Yeah, who else?” He sounded perturbed. “What's going on with you? You've been a goddamn ghost lately. Meanwhile, my whore wife is running all over town with her little fuck buddy, probably getting it on every chance they get.”
“Calm down,” I told him. “There isn't any proof that they are...”
“Fucking each other?” my uncle eloquently finished for me.
“Yeah.”
“Well it doesn't take Jake—fucking—Gittes to figure out that they are.” The anger in his voice was evident. Uncle Bernie sounded like he was well on his way to a nervous breakdown. If he kept going down this path—obsessing over his adulteress wife—he'd probably find himself in a cozy little room up in Benton. I thought about calling Aurelia to have her get some sheets ready for him. “You listen to me, nephew. I don't know what's going on with you, but my wife has been acting real weird lately. She's been very jumpy. Very jumpy, catch my drift?”
“I think so.”
“I think she thinks I'm on to her. I think she knows she is being tailed by someone,” he said. I had my own opinions as to why she was jumpy, but I didn't tell my uncle that it was probably because she almost burned to death in a house fire during some Satanic ceremony in the middle of the goddamn woods. “You listening to me?”
“Yeah, I hear you. But if your wife is suspicious, Bernard, it's not because of me. She has no clue she's being followed, I can guarantee it.”
“I wouldn't be so sure. Just finish it already. I just...” he paused, whimpering, “I just want to know that she's been unfaithful. It would be so much easier if I just knew...” He trailed off. I imagined his eyes becoming wet. On the other side of the line, I heard sniffling.
“Why don't you just ask her then?” Now it was me who became angered. “If you're so worried about it, Bernard, why don't you just fucking ask her? I mean, why do you need me to take a picture of her doing it? Why don't you just grow a pair of balls, and fucking ask her if she's having an affair. Why are you making this my goddamn problem?”
Silence fell on the line.
“Because...” Uncle Bernard finally said. “I know she'll never admit it. She never has with any of her other fuck buddies.”
5
I left for the hair salon where Aunt Danica gets her nails done every Friday night, according to my uncle's comprehensive notebook on my aunt's frequent wanderings. He texted me earlier in the day to tell me that she called him at work, saying she'd be home late because she was going to dinner and a show with some of her girlfriends. Danica had told Bernard that the group had a reservation at La Scalle's, an upscale Italian restaurant located downtown. The reservation had been made for eight-thirty. I asked Bernard who she said she was going with. He told me her friend Julie would be
there, but that's the only one of her friends she mentioned. I thumbed through my uncle's notebook and found a list of mutual friends that the two of them had. Low and behold, a Julie Marwich was in there, and so was her phone number. So I called it.
“Hello?” Julie answered.
“Hello, Mrs. Marwich?” I asked.
“Yes? Who is this?”
“This is, uh, Tom from La Scalle's Italian Restaurant,” I said.
“Um... okay?” she said, sounding confused.
“Yes, I'm afraid there's been a problem about tonight's reservation.”
“Uh, what reservation?”
“The one that you and your girlfriends made for eight-thirty?”
“I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that we had one.”
“Really? Well then, I apologize for disturbing you. Have a nice night, Mrs. Marwich.”
“Wait, what did you say your name was—”
I pushed end call. I became paranoid that she was going to find out that the call had not come from an Italian restaurant, but I had blocked my number, and even if there was an alternative way of finding out, I doubted she'd go through the trouble.
Either way, it was worth it. Now I knew that Aunt Danica's story was unquestionably a steaming pile of horseshit.
I parked across the street from Aunt Danica's favorite salon an hour before the time Bernard's notebook suggested. I kept a vigilant watch on who entered and who exited, without being distracted by what was playing on the radio or fidgeting around with the games on my phone. Stakeouts were beyond boring and I found becoming distracted an easy task. The slightest thing would break my concentration; a small squirrel jetting across the busy main road; a family of strangers laughing and happily congregating in front of an ice cream parlor; even a piece of trash being carried away by a strong gust of wind. It didn't take much.
I wasn't there too long before two familiar figures approached the salon. The man had his arm wrapped around the woman's shoulders, and she was smiling, twirling her fingers through her hair. This woman, of course, was my adulteress aunt. The man was none other than a guy named Marty Olberstad. The two of them were practically skipping down the sidewalk, toward the salon my uncle claimed his wife spent many hours in. Something told me tonight would be a quick visit, for she had other things she wanted to spend hours doing. Before Marty Olberstad freed Danica from his clutches, he grabbed her head, and pulled it close to his.
