Old Acquaintance

by Terri Reid

“But I’d never let him do that,” she argued. “I’d never let him keep them there.”

  Ian shook his head. “He’d only need you around until he trapped all the spirits in the building,” he said. “You’re only the bait. And the bait, once the trap is sprung, is expendable.”

  Mary shivered and nodded. “Okay, let’s go home and figure out how we can stop him. At least we know we have several weeks.”

  Chapter Forty-eight

  They carried the mirror to the SUV. Mary opened the tailgate and cleared a spot for the mirror to lay. Ian carefully laid it down, then reached into his tool box and pulled out a large roll of duct tape.

  “Duct tape?” Mary asked. “Why do you need that?”

  Pulling a long length from the roll, Ian ripped it off and taped one side of his coat to the other, securing the coat tightly around the mirror. “Well,” he said, ripping off another length, “if he does derive some of his power from this mirror, I want to be very sure that as we are driving he isn’t able to access any power.”

  Mary nodded. “Oh, really good point,” she said, pulling another length from the tape and helping secure the mirror.

  Once the coat was taped tightly around the mirror, they got into the SUV and headed back to Adeline’s house.

  “Do you mind if I take your files?” Ian asked the ghost.

  She shook her head. “No, I don’t mind at all,” she said, meeting his eyes through the rearview mirror. “It will give you a reason to return, and I believe we have some things to discuss.”

  Ian nodded. “Aye, I believe we do,” he agreed.

  Confused and more than a little curious, Mary wanted to ask them what their covert conversation meant. She glanced over at Ian and saw that his eyes were now firmly fixed on the road ahead of him. Something was bothering him. Something had been bothering him since yesterday, but, she decided, if Ian wanted her to know, he’d tell her.

  They pulled into the driveway at Adeline’s home, left the mirror in the backseat, and quickly went in to pack their belongings.

  Luckily, Mary thought as she scooped up her toiletries and placed them in her bag, she really hadn’t unpacked, only taken out what she needed. She was packed up and eager to go in a few minutes. She rolled her suitcase into the hallway and stopped in her tracks when she saw Ian and Adeline quietly speaking together in the living room.

  Ian was shaking his head sadly, but Adeline put her hand on his arm and spoke again. Ian quickly looked up at Adeline, hope in his eyes, and then turned away. Suddenly a highly ornate curio cabinet in the corner of the room opened and a sterling silver hand mirror floated across the room. Adeline put her hand out, and it landed gently in her palm.

  Even from across the room, the beauty of the mirror took Mary’s breath away. Although darkened with age, the carvings on the handle and edging of the mirror could still be clearly seen, and the luster of the silver still shone. Ferns, flowers and fairies embellished the mirror, melding within the flowing and intricate scroll work that was clearly created by a master’s hand.

  Adeline handed the mirror to Ian, and at first, he refused it. But she pressed it on him, and finally Mary heard her say, “Credendo vides.”

  With a reluctant sigh and then a grateful nod, Ian accepted the mirror, bent down and placed it safely inside his suitcase. When he straightened, he saw Mary there and seemed a little uncomfortable.

  “Sorry I took so long,” Mary said, pretending she’d just joined them.

  “Oh, no, no problem,” Ian replied with a forced smile. “I was just saying goodbye to Adeline.”

  Mary came across the room to where they both stood. “Thank you for your hospitality,” Mary said. “And your help. It was invaluable.”

  Adeline bent forward and kissed Mary on her cheek. Mary could feel the wisp of cold against her skin.

  “Thank you for allowing me to help,” the ghost replied. “I can’t tell you how good it feels to be useful again. And I hope you will visit again.”

  Mary nodded. “I would really love to,” she replied truthfully. “Your home is…” She paused to think of the right words.

  Adeline smiled. “Otherworldly, perhaps?”

  “Exactly,” Mary replied. “It’s like stepping away from the world for a little while.”

  “Well, anytime you need to step away from the world,” Adeline invited, “you must come and see me.”

  Ian picked up his suitcase and nodded. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Don’t hesitate to come back,” Adeline urged, her eyes fixed on Ian. “Remember credendo vides.”

  “Aye, I’ll remember,” he said.

  A few minutes later, their luggage was packed and Mary and Ian were both seated in the SUV. Ian reached over to place the car in reverse, but Mary placed her hand over his to stop him. He looked over at her, a question in his eyes.

  “Just one question before we go,” Mary said. “What does credendo vides mean?”

  Ian sighed. “In believing, one sees,” he said, and then he placed the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway.

  Chapter Forty-nine

  Mary hurried up the steps of the front porch to open the door for Ian who was carrying the large mirror in his arms, but before she could put her key in the lock, the door swung open.

  “It’s so great to have you home, sweetheart,” Bradley said, stepping forward to take her in his arms. “I missed you.”

  She slipped to the side and smiled. “Just a moment, Bradley,” she said. “We’ve got to get this inside.”

  Bradley stepped back when he saw Ian and the mirror and quickly moved any objects that might be a tripping hazard. Ian carried it across the room and carefully laid it on the couch.

  He turned and grinned at Bradley. “And it’s great to be home, darling,” he replied. “I missed you too.”

  “What is that thing, and why is it wearing your coat?” Bradley asked.

  “We should have a meeting,” Mary said. “But first…”

  “You have to go to the bathroom,” Bradley and Ian said together.

  Mary grinned. “Such a cute duet,” she teased, and then she went upstairs to her bedroom.

  They both waited to speak until the door closed. “So?” Bradley asked. “How is she doing?”

  Ian smiled at him and nodded. “She’s good,” he said. “Actually, she’s brilliant. You should have seen her handle the cop…”

  He stopped, bit his lip and shook his head. “I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that,” he added.

  Bradley folded his arms across this chest. “Yeah, probably not,” he said, glancing up the stairs with a concerned look.

  “It wasn’t as bad as all that,” Ian said. “Compared to the break-in…”

  He stopped again. “I’m just going to sit down now and shut my mouth.”

  Ian walked over to the table, and Bradley followed him to the kitchen. “Did you guys stop and get lunch?” Bradley asked.

  “No, we didn’t want to risk it,” Ian said, and when Bradley turned and stared at him, he shrugged. “Aye, I’ll explain that comment when Mary gets down.”

  Mike appeared in the kitchen and looked around. “What did you bring into this house?” he asked, nearly frantic.

  “A mirror from the asylum,” Ian said. “And we think it was Tony’s portal.”

  “It reeks of evil,” Mike said.

  “I’m sure it does,” Ian said. “But before we destroy it, we need to have a plan.”

  Mary walked down the stairs and crossed into the kitchen. She sat down across from Ian. “Why do we need a plan?” she asked. “If we destroy it, he’s caught.”

  Bradley sat down next to her and took her hand in his. “Okay, can we just start from the beginning here?” he asked. “So some of us can get up to speed.”

  Mary and Ian explained about the mirror being Tony’s portal and described Adeline’s theory about it being a hiding place.

  “So if we destroy it, what happens?” Bradley asked.

  “There�
��s too much we don’t know to answer that question,” Mike said.

  “Like what?” Mary asked.

  “Like, is this his only portal, or could he use others?” Mike replied. “If we destroy it with him inside, is he trapped, or does he have another escape route? If we destroy it with him on the outside, can we control him or capture him?”

  “I know that when we removed the portal from the asylum wall and covered it, all the spirits he was repressing were able to find the light,” Ian said.

  “So once you covered up his source of power, it became useless,” Mike said. “But by bringing it here, have you increased his power here?”

  Ian sat back in his chair and shook his head. “I hadn’t even considered that,” he said, distraught. “Have I made it worse?”

  He pushed his chair away from the table and strode across the room. “Dammit! I should have seen the danger. I should have known…”

  Mike glided over to him. “Hey. No. Stop,” he said. “We don’t know if what you did was the right thing or not. This is just conjecture on my part. Bringing it here would have probably been my decision too.”

  Ian took a deep breath and nodded. “Sorry for the dramatics,” he said with a small smile. “We need cool heads to figure this out, not emotional ones.”

  “I have a question for the group,” Bradley said. “How do you catch and contain a ghost?”

  Chapter Fifty

  “I ain’t heard nothing so ridiculous in my life,” Stanley exclaimed as the group sat around the table sharing a pizza. “Iffen they can go through walls, how do you think you can catch ‘em?”

  “Shhhh, Stanley,” Rosie cautioned. “Clarissa is upstairs sleeping.”

  “Actually, she’s at the Brennan’s tonight,” Mary said. “We just didn’t feel good about her being in the same house as the mirror.”

  “Stanley has a point,” Bradley said, getting back to Stanley’s comment. “How do you contain something that has no substance?”

  “How do you contain electricity?” Ian asked, selecting another piece of pizza and putting it on his plate. “It’s just energy, like a ghost, but you can contain it and direct it.”

  “So we get ourselves a breaker box and flip a switch?” Stanley asked.

  Ian smiled at Stanley. “Well, in a way, you’re on the right track,” he said. “There have been some experiments with a device called a Devil’s Toy Box.”

  Rosie dropped her fork on her plate and shook her head. “Oh, Ian, I don’t like the sound of that at all,” she said. “We shouldn’t be experimenting with the occult.”

  Ian placed his hand over Rosie’s and gave it a comforting squeeze. “No, darling, it’s not like that at all,” he said. “It’s just a name, like Devil’s Food cake.”

  She sighed and smiled at him. “Oh, then that’s okay,” she said, picking up her fork. “And you say it’s made of chocolate?”

  “He didn’t say that,” Stanley inserted. “He just said that names don’t make no mind. It’s what the thing is what’s important.”

  Rosie nodded. “Well, of course names don’t matter,” she said. “Unless, of course, it’s named that because it does matter.”

  Ian met Mary’s eyes across the table and grinned. Mary was relieved to see that this smile made it all the way to his eyes.

  “Precisely,” Ian said to Rosie, biting back a smile. “Now, this box is created by taking six mirrors, all the same size, and basically creating a six-sided cube with all the mirrors facing each other.”

  “Like an eternity box,” Stanley said. “The reflections would keep on going back and forth.”

  “And back and forth,” Rosie added.

  “Exactly,” Ian said. “The theory is that the infinite reflections confuse and trap the ghost because it doesn’t know how to get out. Everywhere it turns, it’s faced with its own reflection.”

  “How well has this worked?” Bradley asked.

  Ian sighed. “And there’s the rub,” he said. “It’s really hard to prove you have an entity trapped because you can’t see inside.”

  “And if you open the box to measure the electro-magnetic power, it will exit the box,” Mary added.

  “Yes, that’s right,” Ian agreed. “So all we have now is theory.”

  Bradley shook his head. “This is a pretty dangerous situation to be testing a theory,” he said. “Is there anything else out there?”

  “There are some theories about using a Faraday cage,” Ian said.

  “Wait, I thought you said that was for protecting items from electro-magnetic influences,” Bradley said.

  “Well, yes, it is in most cases,” Ian replied. “But in this case, you use the reverse. You lure the spirit into the trap and electrify the outside, effectively trapping them inside.”

  “And how do you know when they’re inside?” Mary asked.

  “You can use electromagnetic sensors to test for activity,” Ian explained. “Then once you get action, you flip the switch.”

  “As long as your switch flipping is faster than the ghost,” Stanley said.

  Ian nodded. “Exactly.”

  Mary leaned back in her chair and glanced over at the coat-covered mirror on the couch. There was something wrong. She quickly got out of her chair and hurried over to the couch just in time to watch one of the lengths of duct tape yank itself free from the coat.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Mary cried, sitting on the couch and wrapping her arms around the coat and mirror.

  A black shadow appeared on the wall behind the couch and slowly grew larger.

  “Oh my goodness,” Rosie squeaked. “It’s coming after Mary.”

  Bradley jumped from his chair and ran across the room. “Get out of here!” he yelled.

  But the shadow only grew.

  Mary felt his presence growing in the room too. The malevolence was almost suffocating. She had to do something quickly, or Tony’s evil would overpower her. “Ian,” she called loudly. “Hand me the hammer. I’m going to destroy the mirror.”

  The shadow shook visibly and diminished slightly in size.

  “Actually, I think a brick would be better,” she said, and Tony shrunk some more.

  She looked directly into the face of the shadow. “Get out of my house, or I will totally destroy your mirror,” she said. “Get out now!”

  The shadow lingered a moment longer until Ian approached with a hammer.

  “You will not win!” he screamed, his voice echoing through the room. “You will not win!”

  “Wanna bet?” Mary called as the shadow faded away.

  She laid her head against Ian’s coat and took a deep breath. “Well, that went well I think,” she exclaimed softly.

  “Iffen I wasn’t standing right here watching it with my own eyes, I would have never believed it,” Stanley said, still staring at the wall. “This is the shadow creature what’s been spooking us all?”

  Mary nodded. “Yes, that’s him,” she said. “And I think we were lucky.”

  “Well, we know the mirror’s important to him,” Ian said. “So at the very least we have bait.”

  “We have bait,” Bradley said. “But are we sure we can catch and hold it?”

  Chapter Fifty-one

  Stanley and Rosie arrived home close to ten o’clock, both shaken and exhausted from their day.

  “Stanley, that was the most frightening thing I’ve ever seen,” Rosie said as they opened the door and turned on the light in the living room. “If this is what Mary does all the time, I don’t know how she does it.”

  “I’m thinking this one is different,” Stanley said. “It don’t want her help. It wants something from her.”

  “But what?” Rosie asked. “What could it possibly want from Mary?”

  He shook his head. “Can’t say fer certain,” he admitted. “But I can guarantee it ain’t no good.”

  “Will you come and sleep in the bedroom tonight, Stanley?” Rosie asked. “I hate to admit it, but I’m frightened.”

&nbs
p; He kissed her tenderly and nodded. “Sure,” he said. “Sure, I can sleep in there aside you. Why don’t you go wash up? I got a couple o’ things I told Ian I’d look up on the computer. Then I’ll join you.”

  “Thank you, Stanley,” she replied and walked towards their bedroom.

  Stanley sat down on the chair in front of his computer and turned it on. He tapped his fingers impatiently, waiting for it to boot up. Then he typed in his password and waited for the main screen to appear.

  “Are you done yet?” Rosie called out.

  “No, not yet,” he called back. “You go ahead and lay down. I won’t be much longer.”

  He heard her shuffling around in the bedroom and then heard the sound of the springs from the bed. Good! She was laying down. Knowing his Rosie, soon as her head hit the pillow she would be fast asleep.

  He opened up a browser window and typed in the search command “how do you catch a ghost.” The first link he saw looked like an internet encyclopedia. “Well, this ought to be a good one,” he mused softly. “Can’t just anyone call themselves an encyclopedia.”

  The directions went through where to find ghosts, how to detect if you had a ghost, and finally, how to catch one. Then with fully animated instructions, they explained the candle method of catching a ghost.

  “Take a large glass jar,” Stanley read aloud softly. “Rosie’s got them canning jars. Those ought to do the trick.” He continued reading. “Put a candle in the bottom of the jar. Light the candle. The energy from the light will attract the ghost and he will enter the jar. Once you are sure the ghost is in the jar, place the lid over the jar and seal tightly.”

  Stanley smiled and nodded. “We don’t need no goldurn Faraday cage,” he said with a scoff of pride. “All we need is a jar and a candle. I’ll show them what an old guy can do.”

  He stood up and walked down the hallway to check on Rosie.

  The shadow flitted from behind the Christmas tree to the chair that Stanley had just occupied and studied the computer screen. The entity grew larger for a moment and then slipped back to the corner behind the tree.