Mirror Image

I started this short story for a Vocal Challenge that called for the first line. I didn't finish it in time to submit to the challenge, but I keep coming back to it. A woman loses her earring. A woman loses her earring. A woman's earrings are stolen from her tomb. The connections haven't all been made between the women. The lost earring and the way it was lost is real. I still have the other one. So is the gatehouse, the main house and the antique mirror that has an angry spirit. They are all cobbled together over time and place. I've handled ancient Egyptian tomb beads while cataloguing a fashion collection. Shivers. The rest is imagined, I think.

It isn't finished, but I keep coming back to it. What do I want to say about these women, and the men? Is the maker of the earrings important, or only the wearers? What connects the women in addition to the earrings? Their eras are connected through time by mirrors. Is there some type of personality trait? They were all percieved to be mad but are not. Do the earrings carry a curse? Do you have any ideas about how to make the connections?

******

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn't my own. I felt a menacing anger radiating from behind me and spun around sharply, but no one was there. I turned back to the mirror but the hazy shape had disappeared. There was only my reflection in the ageing surface, silver streaked and uneven in spots. A shiver ran down my spine.

We had moved into the gatehouse, renting, a few months earlier. It was cute and only a ten minute walk to the commuter station. The mansion house it originally guarded, Shadowlawn, was abandoned and overgrown with weeds, but one of the attractions was the promise of gardening in the coming spring in the unused raised beds that stood between the house and the gatehouse. The grounds between the two had a spooky look, especially in the fog, and had a reputation that made people stay away. Its owners had been the proprietors of an insane asylum closed 40 years previously. The current owner, a family descendant, abandoned it after building a modern house closer to the river on former asylum land.

Though tiny, the gate house had two stories.On the first floor a two story living room with a one story kitchen beyond. The steep steps to the second floor were located in the living room. The second floor was made up of a decent sized bedroom above the kitchen and a bathroom. The full length mirror was paneled onto the inside of the bathroom door which swung out into the bedroom. It was not as old as the house, but old enough that the silver had given way to create a spotty and streaked insubstantial reflection.

I shivered again, this time with cold. There was a cold presence in the room with me. I could still feel the waning remnants of its anger.

"Lets go!", my husband shouted from below.

Drawing a deep breath, I took one last look at myself in the mirror, ready for New Year's Eve in my black silk sample sheath scored in a New York City sample sale, high heels, and sophisticated gold and pearl earrings.

~

On the way back from the party, I looked out the car window, watching my earrings in the reflection pick up light from the passing cars.

I fell in love with them and bought them them in a local antique store the week before, about ten times the cost of the dress but perfect for it; each earring composed of a horizontal gold bar swinging from a small golden ball. Four gold verticals attached evenly below the horizontal bar, each adorned at the lower end with a free moving natural pearl on one chain link. The sales person knew nothing about them other than they seemed to be very old.

At home again, gladly substituting fleece slippers and flannel pajamas for strappy heels and silk, I stood in front of the mirror to admire my new earrings again. I unfastened the left one. It fell to the floor, sliding under the open door.

Dropping to the floor with annoyance and slight worry that I might have damaged it, I carefully swung the door back further. No earring. I felt the floor around both sides of the door gradually making my way out in every direction from where I had dropped it. No earring. I went to the night table and got out the note pad I use to record my frequent nightmares and tore off the back cover. I slid this along the floor underneath the door in case the earring had become wedged under the door where I couldn’t see it. Nothing.

A floorboard creaked behind me and I turned, startled, but nothing was there.

I took off the right earring and carefully placed it in the worn purple-blue antique velvet covered box that had been included with my purchase. Then I slippered my way down the stairs to grab the emergency flashlight we keep in the kitchen.

“What’s wrong”, my husband asked, looking up from a bowl of cereal.

“I dropped an earring and can’t find it. Be careful when you come upstairs, I’m not sure where it went.”

He went back to his 3am snack while I went back up the narrow stairway and searched the room with the light.

After about 30 minutes he came up. I was sitting on the edge of the bed after carefully running the flashlight beam over each floorboard in the bedroom and under the radiator in the bathroom searching for some gap in the floorboards that it might have fallen into.

“No luck?”

I shook my head.

“You can look more tomorrow. Let’s get a little sleep.”

My dreams were disordered as always. I was running from the house to the gatehouse, heart pounding, running from something or someone. I stumbled over the hem of my long black dress and dropped an earring on the path. It was sucked into the ground and disappeared. The ground started to pull me in, I couldn’t move my feet. I was screaming. The actual screaming my voice was struggling to let forth in response to the dream woke me up. Winter sunshine was streaming in the windows and I was sitting bolt upright alone in the bed. I leaned back weakly against the pillows and the wall. My often realistic dreams usually flattened me for the rest of the day but I was glad to see the sun.

John entered the tomb first. He was excited. After months of searching they had found the entrance so near to the location he had seen in his mind, that he couldn't believe it had taken them so long to find it.

As he held up the lantern, he noted the position of the woman mummy with painted portrait. Around her were gathered the items she would need in the next life. On a pedestal by her side were her items to dress her hair and a small box. Drawn toward it, he lifted it and it fell open in his hand easily. Nestled inside were a pair of gold and pearl earrings, preserved on a piece of gauzy fabric. They were compelling.

He quickly poured them into his hand, wrapped them in his handkerchief and stowed them in his pocket. His heart beating a little quickly with the theft, he carefully replaced the box. As he did so, he caught a glint in the polished surface of a metal hand mirror laying beside the box. He turned around but no one was there.

A breath of wind blew out the lantern.

Hey, he called up, a slight tremor of fear in his voice. Bring a light, mine has gone out.

~

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn't my own as I glanced across the room toward it. A woman was standing in front of me in the reflection, but she wasn't there between me and it. She was dressed to go out for the evening, black dress, high heels and-my earrings. I shrieked with anger, and she turned around to look behind her, a terrified look on her face as if she had heard me shout. Then she disappeared. I was sure she had my earrings on. I stood quietly, still angry. A gift from my late husband, a noted archeologist, they had disappeared years before, stolen as I reported them on the day I heard he was missing.

He gave them to me with a wink on his return from a long sojourn in the desert. A gift from long ago, he said.

I later read from the article about his work he had done, excaving an Egyptian tomb with his team. The death mask of a mummified woman was unearthed. In the photo of the mask they published, she was wearing the earrings he gave me. A shivery thrill ran down my back. I didn't know it then, but the earrings were the source of every evil that has happened in my life since.

Suddenly as I gazed thoughtfully into the mirror’s depths, something dropped onto the floor. One of the earrings lay at my feet. I grabbed it and unthinking fastened it into my right ear. I felt some of my old power return.

When I looked back into the mirror, the earrings were on her ears. Mine were bleeding.

"John", I went down the stairs. Tears were mixing with the blood dripping from my ears. He sprang up, alarmed. He grabbed his phone as I held out my hand.

"Isis".

The earrings were in my hand. He called 911 and sat with me as I wept. He didn't go in the ambulance that took me away. As it drove by the asylum land, I looked out. There was a woman standing out in the field. She had on a black dress. Gold glinted in her ear.