The Attic

by Sara Bourgeois

  Sammy didn't know how Henrik knew she'd needed to speak with him, but she had an idea. The mirror must have been playing along, so Sammy needed to take everything Henrik said with a grain of salt.

  "There aren't any mirrors in the day room," Henrik said as they entered the room.

  He threw a frightening glare at one of the other patients who sat in the day room doing a puzzle. The woman got up quickly and exited the room without a word.

  "You shouldn't do that," Sammy said calmly.

  "Did you want to talk about this with her in the room?" Henrik said smugly.

  "Not really, but it's not okay for you to scare the others," Sammy said and took a seat by the window. She pulled a game from the shelf and began to read the directions. That way, if anyone were to happen by, it would look like she was actually helping Henrik with something.

  "I'll ask nicely next time," Henrik said with a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.

  "Thank you," Sammy responded and pantomimed showing Henrik something on the direction sheet. "So, how do you know why I'm here?"

  "You know that. Try as I might to cover the mirror in my room, I can't seem to get anything to stay over it. I got my mother to sneak some black paint in on visiting day at the last facility I was held at, but the staff just replaced it. I didn't even bother here."

  "It's not a coincidence that the mirror was in my attic and I work in the place where you've ended up, is it?" Sammy asked.

  "No. I can't tell you exactly why or how, but this has been in the works for a while. The thing in the mirror orchestrated the move from my Grandfather's house to your attic somehow. You're on its list. I was on its list." He said grimly.

  "Who is she?" Sammy whispered. "The woman in the mirror?"

  "That woman you're seeing is it," Henrik said. "That's Lizzette. She's someone else who was on the list, but she wouldn't play. So, she's caught in there. The thing, the entity that trapped her, can wear her like a costume."

  "So, you killed those people because of the thing in the mirror?" Sammy asked as gently as possible.

  "Look, I was never a good person. I'm not going to pretend like I was, but yeah. I killed those people for the mirror. It was them or me, and I didn't want to end up like Lizzette."

  "Is that what it wants from me?" Sammy asked and swallowed hard.

  "I'm guessing that's where this whole thing is going eventually. You now have access to a lot of people who can fairly easily be pushed to suicide, and it has the means to get them in here."

  "It killed Lucy," Sammy said.

  "Yeah. I'm sure that was a warning for you." Henrik said nonchalantly.

  "But, if it can push people to suicide on its own, why does it need me?"

  "Now you're getting into good and evil existential stuff that none of us can really understand, you know?" Henrik said with a shrug. "Who knows? Maybe it's more fun for it. Perhaps it knows you won't do it and it wants you inside with Lizzette. It could be bored with her. She's been in there for a while."

  "What am I supposed to do?" Sammy said more to herself than to Henrik.

  "If I knew that, I wouldn't be in here. My dad's a billionaire, Samantha. There was a much more exciting life waiting for me than this." He said and waved his hand through the air like a spokesmodel showing a prize on The Price is Right.

  "I'm not going to kill people, and I'm not going to end up in the mirror either," Sammy said resolutely. "This isn't my first rodeo."

  "The mirror told me about that. About the demon. I'm impressed, but the mirror claims to be stronger. Who knows if that's true?" Henrik said. "I am relieved to hear that you won't be relenting to the mirror as I'm sure I'm on your list. It hasn't tried to use me for anything for a long while. I was pretty confident that once it had you, I was a goner."

  "I have to go," Sammy said and stood up.

  "I understand. Good luck, Samantha. I hope you win." Henrik said sincerely.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sammy stood in front of the house. She still wasn't sure how to deal with the thing in the mirror. Without a plan, there was no way going into the house would've been an option.

  She sat down on the porch steps and rested her chin against her palm. Sammy worried her bottom lip and wracked her brain about how to get rid of the entity in the mirror.

  "A little help?" She asked while looking at the sky.

  A deep sigh issued forth from her chest when an angel didn't appear. Of course, it wouldn't be that easy again.

  "It seems to be able to go to any mirror, but..." Sammy thought aloud, "it needs that mirror. If I could destroy that mirror without it getting me, I could set Lizzette free and break the entity's tether to me."

  Sammy stood up and paced back and forth over her front sidewalk. She needed to get the mirror to the backyard, so she could shatter the mirror and burn the frame. No, not in her yard. She could take the mirror to the dump and do it there.

  Sammy got a hammer and screwdriver from the garage. She cursed herself for leaving her car behind, but it had been necessary. The thing in the mirror would have most likely caused her to wreck if she'd attempted to drive herself anywhere.

  Sammy called a cab and waited for it to come pick her up. She stashed the screwdriver and hammer in her purse.

  Back at the hotel, she found herself relieved that the parking lot was almost abandoned. Her car was behind the building and not visible from the road.

  Sammy set to work removing the rearview mirror and side mirrors from her car. Once that was complete, she threw them in the hotel's outside waste bin. Even having them in the trunk seemed like too much of a risk.

  The Home Depot was the next stop on her mission. She bought a can of black spray paint and a tarp. The plan was to paint the mirror black, wrap it in a tarp, and transport it to the garbage dump in the trunk.

  Sammy hoped that with no mirrors, the thing wouldn't be able to get to her. She'd wanted to burn the mirror after shattering the glass, but with what? After putting the paint and tarp in the backseat of the car, she walked quickly back into the store and grabbed some lighter fluid and a package of disposable lighters.

  More cars lined the nearby parking spaces when Sammy exited the building. She'd avoided all of the reflective surfaces in the store, but the thing wearing Lizzette followed her in every rear view and side mirror she passed on the way to her car. She walked down the middle of the aisle just to ensure that she didn't get too close the entity.

  She pulled the car up onto the lawn and backed to the porch. When she had the mirror in her hands, Sammy wanted to ensure there was as little time as possible before she could shove it into the trunk.

  As she'd suspected, the thing was waiting for her when she stepped through the front door. Sammy was ready, though. She had the can of spray paint in her hand. Stay far enough back so that the thing reaching out of the mirror couldn't touch her, she sprayed the mirror as fast as possible.

  Once the mirror was covered in black paint, Sammy could hear screaming coming from the bathroom upstairs. A scratching in the walls followed, and then the shrieking eliminated from the downstairs bathroom. As Sam wrapped the mirror in the tarp, the howling spread to every mirror in both sides of the house.

  She fled from the house and threw the mirror into the trunk. Sammy started the car and hit the gas. A few of her neighbors poked their heads out their front doors and watched her peel off the lawn.

  A pounding sound came from the trunk the entire drive to the dump, but that's all that manifested. Sammy figured the entity couldn't do much else. Still, she put the pedal down and raced to her destination.

  Sammy drove to the back of the dump and hid the car behind a massive pile of garbage. She popped the trunk and threw the mirror on the ground.

  Sammy held the tip of the screwdriver to the glass and used the hammer to shatter the mirror. It broke into hundreds of pieces. She then took the hammer and pounded the shards until nothing but fine powder was left.

  When the mirror was nothing but dust,
Sammy stood up and doused the frame in lighter fluid. She pulled one of the disposable lighters from the plastic and cardboard package. It took a few flicks, but she finally got the flame to ignite.

  She knelt down and held fire to the wood. It ignited quickly, and Sammy had to jump back. The flames leaped up and consumed the antique wood fast. Unsatisfied, Sam sprayed more of the lighter fluid on the pyre. The flames danced high enough that the were over her head.

  Sammy stood there until the fire burned itself out. The only thing left was a black stain in the dirt.

  Epilogue

  A red truck pulled up to the spot Hank had seen in his dream. Just like in his sleep, the mirror sat propped against an old grill. He hopped out of the truck and lifted the object out of the dark dirt.

  Instead of his reflection, a beautiful woman stared back at him. Something about her wasn't quite right, but Hank was too enamored to notice. Whereas before he'd been afraid of the woman in the mirror, now he just wanted to make her happy.

  Across town, Sammy got John settled in for the night on the sofa. She went into the kitchen and pulled a pound of ground beef out of the refrigerator and box from the pantry shelf.

  "What's for dinner?" John called from the living room when he smelled the ground beef cooking.

  "Hamburger Helper," Sammy answered back. "Is that alright? I know it's not fancy."

  "Sounds perfect," John said happily. "I love not fancy."

  "Me too," Sammy said.

  Thank you for reading!

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  Copyright 2017© Sara Bourgeois

  The Attic is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.