by Byron Craft
The mirror at the top of the stairs had been shattered and all that remained was the frame and the thin wooden backing. Blood was splattered along the wall and carpet. There were cuts on the sides of her hands leading up to the elbow and clutched in her right hand, beneath her crumpled form, was the old knife.
I carried her to the sofa. After cleaning her wounds I found them only to be superficial, thankful that none of the glass had severed a vein. I applied a dressing to the arms with some bandages out of our first aid kit and brought her around with some smelling salts.
She reacted like she was coming out of a bad dream. I held her in my arms until she was fully conscious. It was several moments before she could talk, but when she did, the words poured out of her. I listened to her story never doubting a word, trying to reassure her that it was safe. I hoped I sounded convincing.
I don’t have to tell you what happened as I am sure you already know. Whatever was after her wasn’t the same thing that appeared in the mirror. It was larger and from the size and weight of that stone urn it must have been very strong. The front door was two inches thick and constructed of oak planking and the bolt of heavy wrought iron. Even with this testament to its strength the door showed signs of cracking down the center and the bolt had been bent slightly inward. If Janet hadn’t reinforced it with the desk and fire poker she might not be alive today.
The little creature in the mirror even though its appearance was supernatural by design, was actually less baffling to me. If a being who on one occasion could appear solid and real, while at another be invisible to the naked eye, but not the lens of my camera, could possibly just as easily cross the boundary of a looking glass into a mirrored world.
The cab driver had refused to stay no matter how much I had offered to pay. I knew that the fog would delay Jim and the Doctor just as it had me and we would have to wait for the two of them before leaving.
Everything was quiet by then. I hoped that my presence had scared the intruder off and we would be spared another visit...at least until reinforcements showed up. I pretended to be calm, at ease and in control of the situation for Janet’s sake, all the while keeping my ears open and an eye peeled for anything that may have been lurking about.
I tried to restore some order to the living room and at the same time cheer up Janet. I started a fire in the hearth after rolling the urn aside. The heat from the fire dissipated most of the mist, driving it to the ceiling where it condensed to precipitation dripping from the plaster.
I put on a pot of coffee and letting it brew, I swept the glass into two piles. The window would have to wait until the others arrived. I didn’t want to let Janet out of my sight even if only for a minute to go down to the cellar for some lumber to board up the opening. Without saying so, I knew that she felt the same.
The back door was also in need of repair. The jam had been broken when I kicked it open. The screen door was unharmed so I bolted it shut.
Janet’s spirits were gradually lifting and she required less and less comforting. She was still nervous about me being out of her sight for more than a few seconds so when I started making the sandwiches to accompany our coffee I kept jabbering across the room in light hearted tones about any silly thing that came to mind.
I would pop my head in and out of the parlor every minute or two so she could see me and carefully shifted our conversation to thoughts of returning home and seeing New York once again.
I had picked up the knife while cleaning and slipped it between my belt and trousers at the hip so it hung there in case I would need it. It was probably the best weapon if not the only one in the house. All the time that I swept up the glass and tried to bolster Janet’s spirits I remained alert. I was careful to always keep a smile on my face or an assemblage of good cheer. Janet had been through a lot and she was just starting to believe that it was safe again.
It was while I was caught up in those thoughts of our homecoming that I became careless. The taste of our return was sweet. I imagined us back home in our little apartment surrounded by our friends. Janet was clearly caught up in the charm of the idea and almost beamed. Some color had returned to her cheeks.
I stacked the cold meat sandwiches on a serving tray along with two steaming cups of coffee and headed toward the living room. “I’ll bet Harry and Emma will be surprised to see us,” I hollered across the room.
The bottom sash of the kitchen window exploded behind me and I was lifted off my feet by a powerful force. The tray of coffee and sandwiches I was holding scattered across the linoleum. A huge scaly powerful arm had me about the chest and was lifting me up. My feet kicked and dangled in mid air. Its grip was crushing, suffocating me. My back was to the thing so I had no idea what it looked like except for the arm. It was gigantic. The size of a man’s leg. It rippled and curled with muscles all in the wrong places. The scaly flesh of the thing continually fanned open and closed, back and forth, it was breathing through the pores of its skin. The hand or claw shaped paw was as big as a bear’s and I noticed the lack of any outward signs of joints at the elbow and wrist. The thing’s structure must have consisted of an interlacing of cartilage that flexed and bent like rubber.
Its grip was tight constricting my wind pipe. I fought against blacking out. My head swam and the room spun.
It could have easily crushed me to death with its one arm but instead with the other free hand it grabbed the knife from my belt. I thought it intended to slit my throat when the blade whizzed by my shoulder. I realized that it wasn’t after me. It wanted the damn knife.
I heard Janet scream. If I had been facing the window I would have also seen the car coming up the drive because while the thing still had me in its clutches Dr. VonTassell appeared. He was standing outside on the back porch behind the locked screen door calling my name. He took a step backward, then with a violent lunge he kicked the door open and looked about. His jaw slacked and his eyes bulged. Thinking fast the Doctor grabbed an empty Coca Cola bottle off the kitchen counter and sent it hurdling over my head with surprising force and through the upper sash.
The bursting glass must have shattered into the face of the thing because it released me from its grip and I fell to my knees. It bellowed with a blood curdling roar that trailed off into a woman’s scream. The knife dropped to the floor beside me. VonTassell was at my side and grabbed my shoulder before I could fall into the broken glass. From outside I heard gunfire; several rapid shots as if fired by an automatic weapon. The noises were followed by the familiar barking of Vesta. I tried to stand up and had difficulty breathing. The Doctor gave me a hand up with orders to breath deeply.
“Where did it go?” I said.
“Around the front towards the road,” he said while helping me to my feet.
“The road! Why the hell did it go that way?”
I turned in time to see the car door slam and Jim at the wheel cutting doughnuts in our lawn with his back tires while quickly turning around. The bright beams of the headlights burned into the fog as he raced down the drive in hot pursuit. A hunched shadowy figure retreated into the distance.
Jim and Vesta must have scared the thing out onto the open road. I heard his car at the end of the drive skid into a turn then roar northward down the road in the direction of Valsbach.
I bent over and picked up the knife. My left side ached. My ribs were bruised, other than that, I was more rattled than hurt. It was the Doctor that found Janet. In the excitement I had forgotten about her. I slipped the knife behind my belt and dashed to the parlor sofa where she laid. The shock had been too much for her. She was unconscious. Her body quivered with small jerky movements of the hands and feet.
VonTassell tried to call for an ambulance but the phone was out of order. We carried her upstairs instead, making her as comfortable as possible, bundling her up to keep her warm. The Doctor stayed at her bedside monitoring her condition when Jim came back.
He and Vesta were on foot looking a bit lost and confused. Jim wore a Mets ball cap on his head and a vint
age World War II M1 slung over his shoulder. Vesta looked chipper as if she had just come back from chasing rabbits bouncing back and forth on her front and hind legs trying to get Jim’s attention. It looked as though the dog was attempting to cheer up the Sergeant.
He was evasive, stopping at the kitchen window when coming in to look at the broken glass. “Whatta mess! What happened anyway?” He was lost in thought.
“It grabbed me through the glass,” I said.
He leaned over and examined the broken window feeling the serrated edges. “Oh, yeah...whatever that thing was, it must’ve been pretty anemic.”
His comment puzzled me. He kept stroking the smooth flat sides of the shattered pane between the thumb and forefinger. Then briefly startling me he thrust a finger in my face. “There isn’t a drop of blood on this glass!”
I had to admit it was more than strange that any living thing could mangle a window so badly without sustaining even a slight cut. Maybe it was tough skinned or it had a different kind of blood. I didn’t know, but one thing was obvious, Jim was trying to find something else to talk about other than the chase. I knew that what had happened had gone against his simple logic but I was anxious to hear about it.
He probably thought I would think he was crazy but after getting him to sit down and pouring him a glass of cooking sherry, the only liquor we had in the house, I managed to get him to open up.
It seems that when he and the Doctor drove up they saw a large dark form at the kitchen window. It was several seconds before they understood what was happening. The Doctor of course ran around to the back door and Jim got the M1 out of the trunk. He had brought it along to show me part of his collection, hoping to do a little target practice in the woods. Little did he know that it would be live targets.
Before he had a chance to use the weapon VonTassell made his move driving the creature screaming past him. He squeezed off a couple of rounds at the thing but wasn’t sure if he had hit it. Vesta, out of the car by then, chased after the thing yapping at its heals. It ran into the tall grass alongside the drive with the dog behind. Jim jumped into his car and tore after it. Halfway down the drive the thing came out of the grass and headed towards the road with huge bounding strides. Jim stopped long enough to allow Vesta to jump in. He said the dog kept snorting and blowing air through her nostrils rubbing her snout against the seat cushions as if she was trying to rid herself of a bad scent.
The story ended less than a quarter of a mile down the road. With the creature still in sight he raced across the gravel, the accelerator pressed to the floor.
“I slung the M1 across the fender holding it in place with my left hand, while steering with the right. I was going to charge it like a friggin Panzer and empty the full clip into it.”
But Jim hadn’t gotten a clear view of the thing before. He took a big gulp of the sherry.
“Damn it, Faren, it just stopped. Stopped running in the middle of the road with its back turned toward me. It turned as if it was casually strollen’ down the street and looked over its shoulder. I guess it was a shoulder. It was big. It had these big dead white eyes. It scared the crap right out of me! I must have been doin’ sixty by then and there was no way I could stop in time. That’s when it happened.”
“What happened?,” I said.
He took another pull on his drink then stared at me not sure if he wanted to continue. I nodded for him to go on.
“It...It sprouted wings and took off. Straight up.”
I think he expected me to laugh but I didn’t. I could tell that Jim had been drinking earlier that evening but I knew that this was no hallucination. What Jim saw was real. It was probably a good thing that he had a few drinks before he came otherwise the overall effect it might have had on an otherwise sober mind could have been too much for him.
“Where’s your car?” I said.
“In a ditch. I couldn’t believe my own eyes. I stuck my head out of the open window as we sailed by and watched it until it was over the top of the car and in a second out of sight. I didn’t watch where I was goin’ and plowed straight into a drainage ditch. I think the axle’s broke.”
This presented a new problem. Jim’s car was out of commission and I recalled uneasily something that Janet had told me.
Without offering an explanation I asked Jim to follow and we ran out to the garage. We were outside and across the yard in less than a minute and before we entered the old shed I could see the faint amber glow from the headlights of our car. Janet had left the lights on when she fled from that corpse thing earlier and there wasn’t enough current left in the battery to turnover the engine.
There was no auto club out there. The phone didn’t work and we were fifteen miles from town. There were neighbors, of course, just a couple miles away and even if I could find my way there in the dark and the fog, I doubted that any of them would be willing to help. They were a strange and isolated group of people. My one visit there to return the school books told me that.
It was very dark outside but darker in the garage with no electricity. The garage was also small presenting a space too cramped to work in. Shifting the car into neutral we pushed it out into the open. There was a slimy residue crawling with maggots smeared across the hood. I shuddered, remembering what Janet had told me. With a handful of rags I swept the wet lump to the lawn.
We tried jump starting the car. The both of us pushing and when picking up speed I would quickly slip into the driver’s seat, throw the shift lever into first with the ignition on, and engage the clutch. After four or five unsuccessful attempts we gave up. The battery had been run down too low to even start the car that way.
Jim suggested that we leave the car sit for a couple hours and the battery may recharge itself. I wasn’t about to wait. His car may have had a broken axle but the battery would be good. We settled on Jim walking up the road to his car after we got the spare flashlight from the kitchen and some tools from the cellar.
VonTassell was coming downstairs when I unlocked the cellar door.
“She will be all right now,” he said. “She’s awake and feeling much better. I gave her a sedative to relax her and make her sleep.”
He asked what we were doing and I explained. His expression exhibited objection even before he spoke. He thought it unwise to move Janet and offered to stay the night to look after her.
“There may not be another night in this house after this one if we don’t leave. The minute the car is fixed we are getting the hell out of here!” I had raised my voice and was shouting. Baffled, Jim just stared. VonTassell on the other hand appeared surprised as if I had revealed a hidden truth.
His demeanor was shaken. The large frame that normally towered diminished slightly and his shoulders sagged as if a great weight had been laid upon them. His voice cracked. “It’s tonight?”
The two words shot through me. The old fossil had known everything all along. He knew exactly what I was talking about and from the look on his face I guessed that he knew more than me. If there would have been time I would have forced him into an explanation but getting the car running with the four of us in it was foremost in my mind.
As if in answer to the rage that was building up inside of me he began to tremble and shake. I couldn’t bare to look at him any more. Jim was shaking too, a bottle on a shelf fell and broke in the kitchen. The room, the entire house was shaking. Jim shouted “earthquake” and toppled onto the sofa. I had to grab hold of the doorjamb to keep from falling over. A rumbling sound vibrated beneath my feet followed by a grating noise sounding like the tearing and splitting of masonry. The ceiling in the parlor opened up raining small chunks of plaster and dust from the cracks. The unseen force halted abandoning the tremors to a deafening silence.
My ears still rang in the quiet. I noticed a hole had opened in the ceiling spilling plaster dust on to the sofa where Jim Ruttick was sprawled. His head and shoulders were covered with the chalky dust. Vesta barked and yelped frantically. The barking came from the cella
r. The three of us clamored downstairs. Her barking had faded into the distance, echoing as if coming from a vast empty chamber.
Jim had the flashlight and I grabbed the other one off the work bench the moment we hit the bottom of the stairs. We searched the great stone walls and floors for a sign of the dog. He at one end of the cellar and me at the other sweeping the area with beams of light. Centuries of dust that had adhered to the overhead floor joists was in the act of settling. Clouds of the falling matter were as thick as the evening fog outside when struck by the lights.
I called to Vesta and was answered by a faint receding whimper. I thought that it came from the small hidden chamber. I ran to the west end of the cellar. The stone door was open, left as it had been the other evening when we were unsuccessful in closing it. I groped my way along the short corridor, blindly stepping into an open hole in the floor, falling forward and striking my head on the wooden reading stand. My surprised cries brought answering calls from the others. I had skinned my ankle on the rough concrete surface and my head seared with pain. My nerves had been on edge all evening and this only made my blood boil. I stood up cursing the oak stand and my own stupidity. There was a large crack in the floor, a crevice had split the magic symbol in two.
I knelt down next to the opening and saw that it ran the length of the room and down the narrow corridor. It must have been dumb luck that kept me from stepping into it sooner because it crossed the same path that I took in getting there.
Calling to Jim and the Doctor and urging them to be careful of the crack, I summoned them to the chamber. By my flashlight and the advancing beam of Jim’s I could make out the extent of the damage to the floor. The crack that had once been small, hairline in some spots and had traveled from the east end of the foundation disappearing behind the stone door to the alchemist’s chamber, had now opened severely. As wide as three feet at the center of the small room and no narrower than one foot at the other points, it was dangerously deep. The effect of the settling dust wasn’t as heavy there although the combined illumination of our lights were unable to penetrate the blackness of the hole. The flashlight beams picked up an occasional dust swirl in the air but they didn’t strike anything solid. A cool musty breeze filtered up from the crevice and for a brief moment I thought I detected a rustling movement and the faint smell of decaying flesh.
