The Gilded Looking Glass: Prologue

For decades, the mirror was left undisturbed. It sat, shrouded in white cloth and mystery in the corner of an untidy attic, at the top of an untidy house at the end of a pristine street. Number 8, Steven Street in the unremarkable town of Roebuck. Much like everything else in the attic, the mirror had long been forgotten. Silent music boxes, motionless spinning tops and moth-eaten gowns, along with other disregarded trinkets, kept the mirror company in its silent vigil. And so the attic remained for a long, long time.

The house, for its part, was soundless. Neighbors never saw any faces in the windows, or anybody coming to fetch the newspaper. No one was ever seen mowing the lawn, or taking out the trash. And yet, the newspapers always disappeared, and the grass never grew higher than a person’s ankle. Lights would flicker on, every so often, and Mrs. Filburn, the neighborhood busybody, told anyone who would listen that she’d once heard music coming from somewhere inside. “Strange, it was,” she’d say, “like a violin, but not quite. Saddest tune I ever did ‘ear. ‘Ad me thinking of Bernie, odd enough. Been years since the accident, but all I could think of, ‘earing that music, was my Bernie.” Most people would nod sympathetically to Mrs. Filburn, and immediately dismiss her. She was always thinking of Bernie anyway. And, she wasn’t a very good busybody, you see. Usually got things wrong.

The neighborhood, like the town, was small. Close knit. Which made the peculiar house on the end of the street even more of an oddity than it may have been in any other neighborhood. No one ever ventured past the gate, not even the restless teenagers of the community. Someone had, once, or so the story went. Mr. Smythe, of Number 133, a rather pompous and pivotal figure in the town. He wore a lot of hats in the neighborhood, one of which was head of the Proud Homeowner’s Association of Roebuck, or PHOAR. One day, he noticed that the grass at Number 138 was rather higher than it ought to be, and so he marched up past the gate to Number 138, PHOAR pamphlet in hand, prepared to politely but firmly inform the inhabitants of the offending house of their violation and give them a twenty-four-hour window of time in which to correct their mistake. Upon arriving at the door, he knocked precisely five times, rapping loudly enough to be heard over the typical sounds of a household, but not quite so loud as to seem rude or impatient. He waited, exactly forty-five seconds, according to his wristwatch, and knocked five more times. No answer. He repeated this process twice more, to no avail. Mr. Smythe, with the full might of the PHOAR behind him as well as his growing irritation at being so insolently ignored, made the rather rash choice to cut around to the back of the house and peer through a window, thereby certainly getting the attention of the audacious people within. “Probably dratted young people,” he muttered venomously to himself as he picked his way around the house. He had seen a light come on in an upstairs window as he’d made his way up the street earlier, and so presumably someone was home to respond to his inquiries about the lawn, and respond they must. Even if they were indeed the dreaded young people, or so thought Mr. Smythe. With great effort, it is presumed (as Mr. Smythe was not an athletic man), he hoisted himself up onto the windowsill, by way of a pear tree in the back garden, to peek inside.

What Mr. Smythe saw that day, no one ever found out. He refused to breathe a word. In fact, he refused to speak at all for quite some time. Residents of Numbers 137, 136, and 134 all reported seeing Mr. Smythe running as fast as his rather stout legs would take him from Number 138, not stopping until he had safely locked himself inside his own home. The next day he resigned from all of his posts in the community, including his position as chairman of the Proud Homeowner’s Association of Roebuck. According to Mrs. Filburn, he then promptly moved four hours north to live with his son in the city. The neighbors all labeled it a rather curious affair, and afterwards, most owned up to an uneasiness with Number 138, Steven Street, but as the years passed and nothing else transpired, the residents of the street allowed a partial quietness, if not peace, to settle over them as far as Number 138 was concerned.

And so passed the years. Blankets of dust grew thicker with time inside Number 138, and weeds took over the back garden. The newspapers were collected, and the front lawn remained at an acceptable height (it is worth noting that this only happened after Mr. Smythe’s ill-fated visit to Number 138, years ago). From time to time, in the very dead of night when no one was awake to hear, an unfamiliar, sorrowful tune could be heard coming from Number 138. If anyone awoke in the night and heard such music, they kept it to themselves. Imagination, after all, can be a funny thing, and there’s no use in letting one’s own run wild.