––––––––
“There you go. Up and looking gorgeous,” Piper’s mother commented after she helped Piper hang the mirror on the wall. She softly let her hand caress the silver frame of the gigantic mirror.
Piper’s mom, Andrea Golden, had instilled a love of old furniture and decorations into her daughter. She owned an antiques shop on the other side of town, conveniently named Golden Antiquities. Although she attracted many customers, her mom hardly sold anything because she had trouble letting go of the things she’d acquired. She only sold items to people who she was genuinely convinced would love them as much as she did—a not so easy task to accomplish.
Golden Antiquities had a solid reputation in their niche and everyone loved her mom’s bright and bubbly personality. Many potential costumers dropped by the shop every month. Nevertheless, due to her mom’s strict policy on only selling her treasures to certain people, she was always struggling financially. Some bad credit and bounced checks had nearly caused her to go bankrupt last year. If not for the help of some good friends and an excellent lawyer, Golden Antiquities would’ve ceased to exist six months ago. Andrea was good about judging people’s personalities, but sometimes she was too trusting of others and too naïve for Piper’s liking. Trusting people to pay her when they could, but never did, was just one example of that. This house was another example.
Andrea had fallen in love with this house the moment she’d laid eyes upon it. She loved the Gothic style, the large double doors with decorative paintings around the doorframes, the enormous staircase leading up to the upper floor, and the impressive master bedroom with the authentic four-poster bed. She adored the tiny details on the window frames and the skillfully crafted figurines on the dark wood of the front porch. She loved it all so much that she didn’t even ask if there was modern-day electricity, when the heating system was last updated, or if the house had been properly inspected for termites. She failed to notice the leaks in the ceiling of the upper-floor bedrooms, the paint peeling off the walls in the living room, or the cheap single-pane windows. Her obsession with this house went so far that she didn’t even bother to ask the real estate agent how much the property cost.
In all ways but one, Andrea was the perfect responsible adult. She provided Piper with decent and healthy meals, kept track of her daughter’s activities, and always showed up on time, be it at soccer practice or at the local library. But when it came to antiques and century-old houses, Andrea lost all her common sense and acted on love alone. She loved the sixteenth-century dressers she displayed in her antiques shop. The Louis Quinze bed she had acquired last month from an antiques display in London enamored her. And she was absolutely smitten with the new house she had purchased. Sometimes Piper was convinced, especially when her mother went on and on about her latest acquisition, that she loved antiques more than she loved her own daughter.
It wasn’t something Piper blamed her mother for. She too felt attracted to this house—the same attraction she had felt toward the other old houses they had rented or bought over the years. She also felt her heart melt when they went to antiques auctions. It was a passion that apparently ran in the family. Piper’s mom had first acquired it from growing up in a house dating back to the seventeenth century, and Piper had inherited the gene.
“How old do you suppose it is?” Piper asked her mom, pointing to the mirror she’d discovered earlier today.
Andrea looked at her daughter as if she had anticipated this question and had been wondering it herself. “I would guess at least a century old” she answered in a professional voice, as if she was guessing the value of an object for a customer rather than guessing the age of something they found in the attic of their new home. “It’s obviously handmade by a very skilled artist. I’ve never seen the design before. I mean, I’ve of course seen mirrors with cherubs before. But this one’s different. It’s not a generic model, that’s for sure. I would say it’s between fifty and eighty years old. Maybe slightly more. I’m not exactly an expert on mirrors.”
“I think it’s beautiful,” Piper commented. It looked even more beautiful now that it was returned to its original state. Her mom had used a special spray to clean the glass, and the mirror looked brand new rather than a century old. Andrea had also polished the mirror frame, inch by inch, and the result was astonishing. The silver frame shone like it was brand new. Piper felt remarkably pleased at having such an impressive mirror in her room. She was ready to throw that pocket-sized mirror out of the window. For some people it might mean nothing to find an ancient mirror in the attic, but for someone so inspired by history as Piper, it was a discovery as momentous as finding the Magna Carta hidden in a dusty corner of her attic.
“It is,” Andrea answered. “Come on, let’s grab a snack. All this cleaning up is making me hungry. Who knew houses this old could be filled with so much cobwebs and dust?”
Piper smiled warily at her mother’s joke. Her mom had seen her share of dirt in old homes. Every time her mother finished redecorating her latest conquest and returning it to its original state, she set out to find the next project. She renovated houses the way she had renovated this mirror: carefully, lovingly, and with an amazing attention to detail. But as soon as a house went through a thorough and much-needed facelift and was ready to inhabit properly, her mother grew tired of it. She felt more alive while bringing a house back to life. As if somehow, if she kept on turning back time for houses, she could keep time from knocking on her door as well.
Andrea Golden was terrified of growing old. She was terrified of becoming like the antiques she often discovered in the most unlikely of places and was afraid someday she would become useless and forgotten, like the mirror Piper had rescued from the attic. It was this fear that drove her from house to house, because somehow she hoped that, as long as those houses stayed inhabited, loved, new, and fresh, part of her would as well.
Piper understood her mother’s fear better than anyone. She’d seen her father go from a healthy forty-year-old man to a practically senile individual who had lost control over his most basic bodily functions. Piper understood the irrationality that drove her mom from house to house, hoping to fix there what she couldn’t fix in her husband. Here she could reverse the process of decay. She could repaint walls, redecorate rooms, and hire contractors to redo the plumbing or fix the electricity. With Piper’s father, her mother hadn’t been able to do anything. The process was irreversible, the damage permanent, his death slow and agonizing.
Piper scolded herself for thinking such grave thoughts. It had been five years ago, but if she focused hard enough, she could still hear her father’s desperate cries as he struggled for the last time against an illness so destructive and ruthless that it turned her caring and loving father into an empty shell of his former self. She had loved him no matter what, and it still hurt her to think of the pain he had gone through before he finally succumbed to his illness. His cries had been so agonizing, the insufferable pain so clearly marked on his face that her mother had begged the doctor to do something about it. Anything. Give him two doses of morphine rather than one, if that was what it took. Even though the doctor eventually agreed, morphine didn’t help against a phantom illness.
Piper still remembered the day when her father was taken to the hospital for the first time. He had been complaining for weeks about severe headaches. They did a CAT scan and numerous other tests, but nothing showed up. The treating doctor was a young woman who had recently graduated from med school, and she was determined to find out what exactly was troubling Piper’s father.
Piper would never forget that doctor. She was the one who ordered test after test, especially when the headaches grew worse and the pain spread from his head to the rest of his body. They tested her father’s blood for poison, drugs, toxins, and whatever else they could think of. Test after test turned out negative. Her dad was in the hospital for an entire month before they finally decided they had no option but to let him go back home. They prescribed medicine, aspirin, some antibiotics, and that was that. But Piper could still remember the face of the female doctor as she ran a hand through Piper’s hair to comfort her. There was defeat and sadness in her eyes. That was the first time Piper realized her father could die from this illness.
When he returned home, her dad began functioning like a normal human being again. At least temporarily. It looked as if the medicines did their job. He went to work–he was a librarian–and although he was exhausted by the time he came home, at least he was up and functioning. For a while, it seemed as if the illness had stopped progressing, until one particular night.
That night, her father started screaming.
The screams never stopped.
Not just one doctor, but an entire team of doctors investigated him. Every test they could think of was run, and run again whenever the results were doubtful. Neurologist after neurologist was assigned to the case, until Dr. Heart, one of the specialists in the field of phantom illnesses, stated that he believed Piper’s suffered from a severe case of hypochondria. People suffering from this illness believe they are in pain, but in fact they aren’t. Much like with phantom limb syndrome in patients who’ve had one of their limbs amputated, but who still feel pain in the missing limb.
It all sounded very strange to Piper. She was eleven at the time, and she couldn’t understand how her could be feeling pain that wasn’t really there. And how he could be feeling such severe pain that he had to scream all the time.
But the doctors had made their conclusions and once again, her dad was sent home. This time with different medications—medication for psychosis and neurological disorders. It was around this time that her mom started to act strangely toward him.
Piper’s mom was distancing herself from her husband, because she had trouble understanding how he could scream ten hours in a row for a pain that wasn’t really there. Andrea had even said as much to Piper. The pain was supposedly all in Dad’s mind, but no matter how much morphine they gave him, he never stopped screaming. Piper tried at first to soothe her father. She sat by his bed for hours, like he had done for her when she had the chicken pox or the flu. She held his hand and told him stories. She read passage after passage from his favorite books, hoping to distract him enough so the pain would lessen. But after trying and trying without seeing any results, she finally gave up.
Guilt began to creep into her daily life. Guilt over the fact that she couldn’t “fix” her dad. She couldn’t save him from the phantom illness that was slowly destroying him. Guilt over what she witnessed.
And guilt because sometimes she wanted him to die.
When he kept on screaming till the wee hours of the morning while she was trying to get to sleep, she sometimes wished that it would just end. That he would be able to leave this earth peacefully, and that she and her mom, who’d been walking on eggshells for the last months and whose lives had been completely dominated by his illness, could finally move on.
The morning after, when she had finally gotten a few hours of much-needed sleep, she cursed herself for even thinking like that. But she couldn’t help it–the next time her dad screamed for hours on end, the exact same thoughts crossed her mind.
Her father eventually died. Although neither she nor her mom were ever truly convinced that the illness he suffered from was hypochondria, the end result was that he died, leaving a very stunned team of doctors and an even more stunned, broken family. The official cause of death was heart failure. Maybe he’d suffered from imaginary pain until one day his heart simply gave up.
Her mother had been a broken shell of a woman afterward, but somehow she found the strength within herself to wrestle through it all. She arranged for the funeral service—a short memorial service with only his closest relatives. She hadn’t cried once during the entire ordeal. Piper couldn’t cry either, but more because she was impressed by her mother’s stature and behavior rather than that she didn’t feel like crying. The tears came afterward, and when they came, it seemed like they would never stop. Her mother held Piper through most of the tears and had cried as well. Back in those days, they had to rely a lot on each other. It was the two of them against the world. In a way, it still was like that, even now.
As the months after her father’s passing turned into years, their grief lessened and life continued as it always had. Her mother found her refuge in renovating ancient houses, cleaning dusty floors and wiping off cobwebs, and Piper found a way to express her feelings by writing in a diary and occasional visits with a psychologist.
However, at least once a month she still awoke to the sound of her father’s agonizing screams. Sometimes the sound disappeared as soon as she’d awoken, but other times she could hear it when she was awake, as if her father was crying out to her from a world beyond, where he was in equally agonizing pain as he had been in life. Her psychologist had told her this was normal, that everyone occasionally heard voices that weren’t there, people calling out to them while no one was present. It was a rational reaction of the mind, a sign of stress and exhaustion. The only reason why it happened to Piper so frequently was because the events of five years ago still had her traumatized. She had been so accustomed to waking up to her dad’s screams in the dead of night that even now, years later, they still tormented her.
“Is everything all right?” Andrea inquired, looking at the pensive look on her daughter’s face. “You seem worried, and a millions miles away.”
“I’m fine,” Piper said quickly.
Too quickly, because she instantly noticed in her mother’s eyes that Andrea had known what Piper had been thinking. Andrea’s eyes narrowed, and the joyful lights that were usually visible in them whenever she had discovered a new treasure to display or a new house to work on faded instantly. The look in her mother’s eyes was sad; filled with a sorrow and regret Piper understood but didn’t want to deal with right now.
It had been five years. Her guilt, pain, and sadness weren’t new, fresh, and unbearable anymore, but that didn’t mean they weren’t still there. They were incorporated into her life just as much as going to school, hanging out with friends, and doing homework. The guilt and the pain had become a part of her, her very own phantom illness.
“How about that snack?” Piper asked cheerfully, trying to change the subject.
“All right,” Andrea replied. She smiled back at her daughter, but the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. Perhaps they each had their own phantom pain.
***
“How are you adapting to your new home?” Marcy asked while taking a sip from the Diet Coke she’d ordered just a minute ago.
Piper, Marcy, and Kristina were at the local shopping mall, looking for the perfect costume for the annual Halloween Ball. Although the ball was still a month away, they had spent the last two weeks preparing for it. Costume shopping was a necessary part of the ball preparations. Alison would’ve come as well, but she’d canceled because of the deadly combination of a math and history test on the same day. Grades were extremely important to her because she was hoping to go to the state university to become a doctor. Piper’s career goals of becoming a history teacher or archaeologist didn’t require an A on every single test, and she was glad for that. Math was one of the subjects she was terrible at.
“Pretty well, I suppose,” Piper replied. “The house is old, but I’m used to that. It's a bit larger than the previous one, and we have all of these spare rooms we don’t have a purpose for. Mom’s thinking about converting one of those into a den where we could hang out, but that might take a while. She’s going to work on the living and dining rooms first.”
Piper rolled her eyes. “Not that it's exactly useful. I mean, sure, the house will look beautiful and sophisticated and all that when she’s done with it, but she’ll get bored within the week and we’ll move yet again.”
“I would go totally crazy if my mom were like that,” Marcy admitted. “And it’s not even real moving, not like another town or something. You just occupy house after house in the same old boring town.”
“Thank God that I’m still here to make this place at least somewhat interesting,” Kristina commented jokingly. “Without me, you’d all be dying from boredom.”
“Or we’d throw a party every day,” Marcy countered, rolling her eyes at Kristina’s form of humor.
Marcy and Kristina were polar opposites. Marcy was the geeky girl with a passion for books, becoming a world-renowned scientist and winning the Nobel prize, and Kristina was the outgoing social butterfly who loved making her own dresses and wanted to become a professional dress designer one day. Nevertheless, they had been best friends ever since Kristina moved to Ashdale about three years ago.
Piper had known Alison since kindergarten, and they had both befriended Marcy when they went to high school. A couple of years later, Marcy had become friends with Kristina and she’d become a member of their friends club fast, which was no miracle. Kristina made friends easily. The four of them usually hung out together, and although they obviously had very different personalities, they got along just fine.
“You’d cry like a baby,” Kristina predicted. “Oh...” she exclaimed, looking at a Halloween-themed dress in the window of Buttercups, a shop specializing in seasonal clothing. “That dress so has your name on it, Marce.”
Marcy took a step closer to look at the dress. The tag read “Dracula’s Bride”, which was particularly fitting. The dress was long and gorgeous, its colors a mixture of velvety black with deep burgundy red. It would look great with Marcy’s red curls and pale skin. No matter how hard Marcy tried, she never got a tan. Piper on the other hand tanned easily, and she was glad of it.
“I have to agree with Kristina on this one,” Piper commented. “That dress would look amazing on you.”
“I predict that the price tag will look amazing as well.” Marcy’s look was sullen as she regarded the dress. It was clear that she loved it, but dresses of this kind were usually quite expensive. And Buttercups wasn’t exactly the cheapest store in town either.
“Maybe you can rent it,” Kristina suggested. “Anyway, you have to try it. Since you’re the class president, you have to be the Queen of the Ball as well. And this dress is exactly what you need.”
“All right then,” Marcy reluctantly agreed. “But only if you tell me what you’re going as. Because you’ve been awfully secretive about it, and you know I can’t handle secrets very well.”
“I’m going as the bride of Frankenstein,” Kristina revealed.
“You do know,” Marcy commented, raising her eyebrows, “that she wasn’t technically the bride of Frankenstein? Frankenstein was the name of the doctor. The monster was initially called Frankenstein’s Monster; ergo, she was the bride of Frankenstein’s monster. Filmmakers gradually changed the monster’s name to simply Frankenstein, but somehow I think that makes Mary Shelley turn over in her grave.”
Marcy was always the one who knew these random facts other people didn’t care about, and she threw them around casually. It was something Piper really liked about her, but it was also the one characteristic that frustrated Kristina the most.
“Who’s Mary Shelley?” Kristina asked.
Marcy gave her friend a blank stare. “The author of Frankenstein.”
“I didn’t even know it was a book,” Kristina admitted, shrugging. “And I don’t care, either. I’m going as the Bride of Frankenstein. End of story. My dress is nearly ready. It’s the hairdo I’m actually worried about.”
“And who are you going as?” Marcy asked Piper, ignoring Kristina’s last comment.
Piper shrugged. “I have no idea. I’ll need to find a dress first, one that actually looks decent.”
“You could go as one of the other brides of Dracula,” Marcy suggested. “I think there were actually three of them.”
“No way,” Kristina countered. “One vampire is enough. You should totally go as a witch. Or better yet, a ghost.”
“You want me to put a white sheet over my head and go boo?” Piper asked. “That will look flattering.”
“You’re way wrong about that,” Kristina answered. “Ghosts are the scariest things out there. Mainly because, well, we all know vampires, werewolves and stuff aren’t real. But with ghosts you never know.”
“Don’t tell me you of all people believe in ghosts?” Piper asked, raising her eyebrows.
Kristina seemed like the last person on earth to believe in the supernatural. She was always so straightforward, sometimes even a bit superficial, and she never seemed to think a lot about the harder subjects in life, let alone whether or not ghosts truly existed.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Kristina answered. “After my grandfather died, his ghost appeared in my room one day. It was really eerie and scary, and I felt like screaming, but then I thought: he’s my grandpa. He loves me. He would never hurt me. And in fact he didn’t, he just came to bring me a message.”
“Clean your teeth before going to bed?” Piper jokingly asked, as she walked into the shop behind Kristina and Marcy.
“No,” Kristina snapped. “I’m being serious here. He said that he had made something for me, and that it was in the old dresser in his house, in the second drawer.”
“You were probably dreaming,” Piper tried again.
“If I was, then explain this to me. The next day I went over to my grandpa’s house, went to that particular dresser he was talking about, opened the second drawer, and found a book underneath a bunch of handkerchiefs. On its first page, it said ‘To Kristina’. It was a picture book with all pictures of Grandpa and me. He’d made it when he knew he didn’t have a lot of time left, but he died before he could finish it or even tell me about it.”
“Maybe he told you sometime and you forgot, then you remembered during your dream,” Piper offered in explanation. She walked over to one of the clothing racks and browsed through the costumes.
“Or maybe I really saw my grandpa’s ghost.” Kristina wouldn’t budge, and she shot Piper a harsh look. “Have you ever seen a ghost?” she asked.
“No,” Piper answered. “And I’ve lived in more than twenty century-old houses during my life. Never seen one. Not even a trace of one.”
“Well then, you’re lucky,” Kristina commented. “But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t believe in them.”
“I’m actually somewhat of a believer myself,” Marcy admitted.
“Not you too?” Piper raised her eyebrows as she regarded her friend. “I thought you were Miss Rationality.”
“I am, but just because we don’t know if something exists, that doesn’t automatically mean that it doesn’t. I’m pretty sure the people in the Middle Ages didn’t believe airplanes could exist either, but look at us now. Airplanes are even old-fashioned. We’ve got the space shuttle and the space station. We’re traveling to Mars.” She shook her head. “I don’t think saying you don’t believe in something is a wise thing to say. I like to think you are more open-minded than that.”
Piper shrugged, defeated. “I’m not saying that I don’t believe in ghosts, I’m just saying I never saw one. If I happen to see one during my lifetime, I’d probably believe in their existence as well. Anyway, you did have a point about ghosts being scarier than most other monsters out there. But still, I don’t feel like pulling a sheet over my head and calling it a costume.”
“An old-fashioned dress and some white make-up could do the trick,” Kristina suggested. “White sheets are for Casper the Friendly Ghost, and he’s the opposite of scary. But if you don’t want to go as a ghost, zombies are always awesome as well.”
“Awesome, yes,” Piper agreed, “but sexy, no.”
“Talk about sexy,” Kristina said, holding a female devil costume with an extremely short skirt and a top that didn’t leave much to the imagination.
The three of them burst into laughter, causing the shopkeeper to cast them a couple of angry glances.
“If those are my only options, I go for the ghost costume,” Piper said.
“I don’t think we’ll find it here, though. Everything is short and skimpy except for that gorgeous Dracula’s bride dress Marcy definitely has to try on.” Kristina seemed lost in thought, but after a couple of seconds, she smiled broadly. “I have an idea! Since you live in a house as old as the town itself, maybe you could find a dress at your place. You know, hidden somewhere in a box in the attic. An actual old dress belonging to an actual dead person.”
“That’s morbid,” Marcy remarked. “But...it’s a nice idea all the same.”
“You two are crazy,” Piper commented. “Are you going to try on that dress or what?” she asked, pointing at the Dracula’s Bride dress and trying to change the subject.
A shiver ran down Piper’s spine and she suddenly felt cold, as if someone had left a door open. Except that, apart from two other girls their age, they were the only ones in the shop and the door hadn’t opened. Piper shrugged, trying to shake off the uneasy feeling that had crawled up on her like a monster in the night.
***
“I can’t believe you found that thing in your attic,” Alison remarked as she shot a rather disgusted look at the large antique mirror. “It is by all accounts hideous. And I can’t begin to imagine why you’d want to have it in your room.”
Piper’s best friend was a cheerful, talkative girl with short copper-blond hair and light blue eyes. Piper considered Alison prettier than she was, but the same apparently went the other way as well, if she had to believe every word Alison said. Whereas her friend was small and petite, Piper looked more athletic and was at least a head taller, another trait she’d inherited from her mother. However, the one thing Alison didn’t share with her longtime friend was her love and adoration for all things old, dusty, and creepy.
“Seriously, Piper, if you ask me, that mirror you brought down from the attic is the epitome of creepy. I’ve seen a lot of strange and weird things in my life, most of them from your mom’s treasure hunts through old abandoned properties, but nothing like this,” Alison continued, shooting the mirror the most evil look she could muster.
“What are you talking about?” Piper asked her best friend as she took another cookie out of the bowl they had snatched from downstairs.
“Your newest acquisition is downright creepy,” Alison repeated. “It has this general feel of evil written all over it.”
“Right,” Piper commented. “And I’m the wicked witch of the west.”
“I’m being serious, P.,” Alison said. “I’m not a psychic, and I’m pretty confident those people don’t even exist, but if I ever had any affinity for being a medium, then it’s now. That thing is totally freaking me out. Just looking at it makes shivers of dread run down my spine.”
“It’s just a mirror, though,” Piper commented, although the look on her friend’s face told her that Alison certainly didn’t think that way.
“Although I have to admit that I can see why you decided to bring it downstairs,” Alison admitted. “The decorations are remarkable, even someone as ignorant of art and antiques as me can see that. And I love the frame. I’m pretty sure a lot of love and care went into creating this thing. But that’s all. That beauty is just covering up the evil inside. I’m feeling nervous even glancing at the thing. And you know me, P. I don’t get scared over nothing.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” Piper looked at Alison in shock. “It’s gorgeous. Old. Hand-crafted, with an insane amount of detail. You don’t think so?”
“Hell no,” Alison replied, shooting her friend a long glare. “Piper, I know you like these kinds of things. But that mirror...it just freaks me out. I’m serious, here. Get rid of it.”
“I happen to like it,” Piper countered. She was getting angry at her friend for bringing this up. She knew that Alison had no love for all things ancient, but that wasn’t a reason to state her hatred so bluntly. Although if she were being honest, she had to admit that Alison had never reacted so strongly to anything before. Not even when Piper and her mom went to live in a Victorian house much resembling the standard haunted house cliché, Alison hadn’t uttered a word.
“You’ll regret this,” Alison told her friend with a serious expression on her face. “Some things aren’t to be messed with. And that mirror’s one of them. Ever wondered why the previous owners would leave an object so valuable in their attic?”
“Maybe they didn’t like it. Modernists,” Piper suggested, but she wasn’t as convinced of her answer as she had been before. Her friend’s comments were making her nervous as well. She was sitting with her back toward the mirror; her body resting casually on the large four-poster bed her mother had baptized “a remarkable and unique piece of furniture”. The bed was at least as old as the mirror, if not older, and yet Alison had no complaints about that.
“All right, Al, so I’ve never heard you complain about any of the junk me and my mom brought home before,” Piper said. “You always say what’s on your mind, ranging from ‘reasonably useful’ to ‘I wouldn’t put that in my trash bin’,” she added with a smile, “but that’s just you. You never went to such great lengths as to state something is evil before to get me to remove it from my bedroom. So maybe you do have a point,” Piper eventually gave in. “But I’m not about to let superstition and feelings get in my way. Do you know how practical having a mirror of this size would be? And how much of an asset it is to the room?”
“Fine. I’ll give you that. It’s practical. And if you want it in your room, be my guest. I’d much rather talk about something else anyway. Like the annual Halloween Ball, for example.”
“Wonderful change of subject,” Piper said. “What are you going to wear?”
“No idea,” Alison replied. “I’m thinking Cleopatra. Maybe not the scariest woman ever, but definitely powerful. I like powerful.”
“You have short, blond hair,” Piper noted. “Your skin is even paler than mine. Wasn’t Cleopatra supposed to be a dark-skinned Egyptian queen with long black hair?”
“Details,” Alison decided, while she casually lay down on Piper’s bed. “I can be Cleopatra as well. I can be a good Cleopatra, even. Now all I need is a Caesar or an Antony. You do realize she had two men swooning over her, don’t you?”
“Yes, but I don’t think that was at the same time,” Piper remarked. “I think it was Caesar first, Mark Antony second. Besides, in order to become queen of Egypt, she had to murder her little brother. Not exactly good family relationships if you ask me.”
As they were talking, Piper was growing slightly anxious. She cast a nervous glance behind her, at the mirror. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting, but the mirror was doing exactly what all mirrors do best: hanging there on the wall, a fancy piece of decoration that reflected one’s image. It didn’t look any more eerie or terrifying than before. Yet Piper’s feelings toward it had changed. She no longer noticed the lovely-looking cherubs on top, or the excellent state the frame was in. The cherubs seemed like little demons now, and the frame itself was a vessel for evil.
“Feeling uncomfortable?” Alison asked, as she noticed how her friend shot a nervous look at the mirror. “Maybe you’ll eventually realize that I’m right about that thing.”
“Your entire rant just got me spooked,” Piper said, her voice edgy. “Can you not do this, please? It’s hard enough having to move around town again, living in another one of these drafty old homes. Yes, I know, I love them, but they’re old, everything makes noise in the middle of the night, and since the heating is over forty years old, it’s continuously cold as well. They’re a hassle sometimes. I don’t want to deal with you telling me ghost stories about a mirror. It’s just a piece of antique furniture I discovered in the attic. Why the previous owners put it there? I have no idea. I don’t care. I don’t believe in things being evil.” She was rambling again, something she always did when she was nervous.
“You’re right. I’m sorry, P. I’m over-reacting. It’s that big math test coming up, and then the way Joey’s been acting as of late. I’m a bit on edge as well.”
Joey was Alison’s boyfriend. At the start of their relationship, he had been the epitome of charming, a gentleman in every way, and Alison had given him a ten out of ten for thoughtfulness, attentiveness, and sense of humor when she and Piper had rated several boys from their class during a sleepover one night. But lately, he was acting strangely. It had started for no apparent reason after Alison and Piper had hung out with Joey and Glen one night.
At first, he just seemed less focused on Alison and their relationship. But as the weeks passed by, he began to ignore Alison’s calls, he hung around more with his buddies, and he even went days without talking to his girlfriend. She had initially given him the benefit of the doubt, thinking it was commitment issues, but she was coming to terms with the truth now. Maybe he just didn’t like her anymore. Or maybe he was just being an idiot. Whatever the reason, it was weighing on Alison’s mood.
Piper didn’t understand how someone couldn’t like Alison. She was the best friend in the world. Gentle, sweet, caring, and always putting others’ needs in front of hers. Joey had no idea what he was missing. He really was an idiot for letting her go. The problem was that he’d never seemed that much of an idiot to Piper. She didn’t know him that well, but when Alison told her she was dating Joey, Piper had never expected this to happen. In fact, her initial reaction was to be happy for her friend, and she only grew more and more convinced of how good Alison and Joey worked together as they continued to date each other for several months. For Joey to suddenly do a one-eighty, well, it was very strange.
“Have you heard anything from him?” Piper asked.
Alison shook her head. Her eyes looked sad, but her smile was brave. “No. But I will. I guess. I hope. He can’t just ignore me. He’s not that mean. I hope.”
Piper gave her friend a reassuring smile. “He’s not. Maybe he’s going through a rough time as well. Relationships can get difficult after a while.” She could hear the doubt in her own voice as she spoke.
“Piper!” her mom shouted from down the stairs. Her yell startled Piper: it sounded like she was standing right opposite the door, but screaming hard enough to reach even the people from across the street. “Dinner’s ready!” she added, her voice equally disturbing in the midst of Piper’s and Alison’s otherwise rather calm conversation.
“I’m coming, Mom!” Piper shouted back. She shot an apologetic look at her best friend, who obviously still had a lot to tell her. “You can tell me the rest tomorrow,” she assured her.
Alison nodded. “That’s quite all right, P. Just do me a favor. Don’t let anything I said about that old mirror scare you. I already feel guilty about even mentioning it. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s that whole Joey thing. My mind is working overtime.” She paused for a moment and bit her bottom lip, something Alison always did when she was nervous. “Really, don’t get scared just because of what I said.”
“I won’t,” Piper reassured her, but she knew that was a lie before she had even said it.
***
After dinner, Piper was back in her room and looking at her math homework with a mixture of despair, defeat, and agony. She hated math as much as the next person. More important, it seemed to hate her back. With a frustrated groan, she threw her pencil on the floor and then threw her assignment right along with it. She grabbed the blanket and pulled it over her head, trying to disappear into a world where math was non-existent or where she was a genius at algebra.
She always studied in bed. It was a habit she’d developed early on in life, when she found out her bed was much more comfortable than a wooden chair. It also helped her to relax, which came in handy when she was forced to study math yet again, knowing that she would get a B tops, and only if she studied non-stop till tomorrow morning. But that wasn’t going to happen today, or any day for that matter. Sleep sounded like a much better alternative.
Turning off her bedroom lamp, Piper finally relaxed in the pitch-black darkness. The blanket was practically over her head, and the only reason why she let her nose stick out was because she needed air every now and then. The nights in this large house were cold. The heating still didn’t work well, and tucking oneself in a blanket was the only possible way to stay warm. But Piper didn’t mind. There was something cozy and inviting about curling tight into her blanket.
Suddenly, a noise disturbed Piper’s peaceful moment of relaxation. She narrowed her eyes, wondering what the buzzing sound could be, until she realized it was her cell phone ringing.
Alison?
No, Alison wouldn’t call her this late, nearly eleven-thirty, unless something was really wrong.
That thought made her panic a little, and she threw the blanket off and searched for her cell phone in the dark.
Her hand touched the warm wood of the nightstand, and after a couple more minutes of touching air, she grabbed hold of her cell phone. The thing was still howling like a fire alarm rather than a cell phone.
“Hello?” Piper asked with worry in her voice.
The only sound she heard was a deafening silence.
“Hello, who’s this?” she tried again.
Starting to think that this was a prank call, she was about to hang up when the person on the other end of the line replied.
“Piper? Hey, it’s me. Joey.”
“Joey?” Piper raised her eyebrows as she clutched the phone closer to her ear. “Joey?” she repeated, frustration growing in her voice. “Why the hell are you calling me? And at this hour...”
“I’m sorry, Piper,” Joey apologized, his voice sounding strangely sincere. “I thought that maybe you wanted to talk. Please, let me talk to you. Not over the phone, but in person.”
“Why would you want to talk to me in the first place?” Piper asked him. She was really angry now. He couldn’t bother to call her best friend, who happened to be his girlfriend, but he could find the time to call her? Was he planning to dump Alison through Piper? No way was she going to let that happen.
“You know why, Piper,” Joey said. His voice sounded less certain now, and she could practically feel his doubt as he spoke.
Well, good. He should doubt himself. Who in their right mind did this kind of thing?
“Listen, Joey,” Piper said, trying hard to remain calm, “whatever trouble you have with Alison, you have to work that out yourself. You should give her a call or something. She’s eager to hear from you. Maybe you could work things out that way. Don’t try to bring me into this, please.”
“You...”
There was something in Joey’s voice, something Piper couldn’t really place. Was it confusion? Guilt?
“You said that...she’s eager to hear from me?”
“Yes,” Piper answered. “So just give her a call, talk to her. All I know is that she really loves you and you shouldn’t treat her this way.”
“Piper, I...I don’t know what to say.”
There was guilt in his voice now, obviously. A mixture of pain and confusion. Piper felt uncomfortable for telling him off like this. She tried to think of something to tell him that would stop him from going on a complete guilt-trip, when her eyes fell on the mirror.
There was an image in the mirror. A dark, grotesque shape. A shape that really shouldn’t be there. She hadn’t noticed it before, but thanks to her eyes growing accustomed to the dark and the blurry light of her cell phone, she clearly saw the mirror reflecting something.
Shocked and terrified, she gasped and scanned the room for any object that could cast that shape in the mirror. And then, as her eyes fell on the mirror again, the dark shape moved.
Piper screamed.
Thoughts blank, mind racing, she jumped for the light switch near her bedroom lamp. She practically threw her clock radio off her nightstand, but she didn’t notice. She found the light switch and turned it on.
“What the hell is going on there?” Joey was shouting in her ear.
As soon as the light switched on, instantly Piper felt safer. She stopped screaming and took a couple of deep breaths. Then she turned toward the mirror. There was nothing there. No reflection, no moving dark shape. She swallowed the tension that had been building in her throat during the last couple of minutes.
“Nothing, Joey. Nothing’s wrong. Good night,” she answered hoarsely, then clicked the end call button and put her cell phone back on the nightstand, all the while without taking her eyes from the mirror.