Things in the Mirror (2 page)

It looked over its shoulder at the other shadows, as if in question. When it turned back to face me it began to push on its side of the mirror. “Come, Ris
sa. It’s our turn on your side of the mirror. In order for one of us to leave, we need to bring someone over to ours. Now don’t be stingy. Let us have our turn,” it said, trying to coax me closer to the mirror as it continued to push on its side of the glass.

I knew it was looking for a weakness in the glass and I also knew, at that point, what the shadows were. They were demons, ever
y last one of them, trying to gain entrance into our realm to wreak havoc on unsuspecting and innocent people. I used to be one of those innocent people, until I went into a bathroom located under a set of stairs. I was aware of the fact that I couldn’t allow those creatures, those demons, to escape the mirror that was their prison. But I was afraid that removing this one mirror wouldn’t keep them from returning to my home. The speaker had pretty much confirmed they were attached to me, not the mirror.

He had given voice to what I had known all along. Those creatures had been following me all my life. I had felt the truth in its words. I didn’t know what to do! I didn’t know where Terry was or how much longer it would take him to get
home. But I
did
know the fate of my life and everyone in it depended on me doing something in that moment. I couldn’t wait any longer.

While it continued to push and poke, seeking a weakness, I tried to come up with a plan that would keep me firmly on my side of the glass
, and be rid of those creatures once and for all.
If I can just hold out a little longer, Terry will be home and he’ll have to admit that I have a very real reason to fear mirrors and the dark,
I thought while moving slowly towards the bathtub.

What the hell
have I been thinking, trying to conquer my fears on my own? How stupid can I be? I should have known something like this was going to happen!
While I was kicking myself in the ass, the demon had found the weakness it had been searching for. It pushed its way through the glass, its arms impossibly long and grabbed hold of my right arm. I screamed in absolute terror, willing Terry to appear in the doorway.

He didn’t, of course, and the demon began dragging me towards the mirror. I dug my heels into the floor, trying to make it harder for it to pull me, but that only seemed to make it that much more determined. I tried to fight, to remove its hand from my upper arm, but only succeeded in allowing it to grasp my other arm. As I got closer to that mirror and my doom, I began to cry and shiver, feeling true terror for the first time in my life. It lifted me off my feet and began pulling me through the reflective surface.

I heard the faint sound of the front door closing and Terry calling out to me as my head passed through the glass and began my struggles anew. I screamed out for Terry to help me, all the while feeling a little like Alice when she went through the looking glass. I knew my predicament was much worse than hers had been because it wasn’t a dream that I could wake myself from. I struggled and kicked my legs when I realized how far the demon had pulled me through. My screams for Terry seemed muted to me and I wondered if he could hear me.

I was halfway through the glass when I saw Terry round the corner and stop short. It was strange
; I could see everywhere on the other side of the mirror, behind me, to either side of me and in front of me. “Hey! What’s happening, Rissa?” he shouted as he rushed into the bathroom. He grabbed my ankles and pulled me towards him. The demon redoubled its efforts, some of the other demons coming to lend a claw in order to get me on their side of the glass, and I felt like I was being ripped apart! I screamed at Terry not to let go, that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in the mirror realm with those demons.

Finally, both Terry and the demon stopped tugging on me. I wiggled, trying to push myself out
, but the demon only tightened his grip on my arms, “Stop! We must stop pulling in opposite directions or we’ll rip her in two.”

Terry nodded, “I agree. But you won’t let her go and I refuse to lose her to whatever the hell you are!” The demon appeared to be trying to catch his breath and he loosened his hold, just
a fraction, on my arms. That was all Terry needed, and he pulled me out of the mirror and into his arms. We landed in a heap on the floor, me clutching him like he was a lifeline.

“NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!” the demon howled in anger, causing the other demons to wail with him. Terry stood, threw a towel over the mirror and turned to me. He offered me his hand for assistance
in standing up. Once I was standing, the noise became too much to bear and we ran out of the bathroom.

****

“What the hell was that, Rissa?” Terry demanded when we stopped in the living room.

I turned to stare at him, “What was that?
That
is what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last seven years!
That
is why I fear being in the dark!
That
is why I don’t like mirrors!” I was terrified and I knew I was taking it out on him. I knew it. But now he had to believe me about the mirrors because he’d seen it himself! Didn’t he?

“Well, just how
in the fuck do we get rid of it?” he demanded of me, as if I had all the answers.

I went to the table where the phone book was located
and pulled it toward me as I sank onto the couch. “Don’t you think that if I had an answer to that question I would have gotten rid of it a long time ago?” I snapped as I began thumbing through the book. I didn’t know what I was looking for but I hoped it would jump out at me if I
did
find it. I would have called my mom, but she had passed away the year before.

Terry took the book from me and set it on the floor, saying, “Let me call a friend from work. She’s Wiccan, maybe she can tell us what we can do about this. Until then, I think it’d be best if we stayed at a hotel.”

He made some phone calls and reserved us a room. When he got off the phone, I told him, “Leaving the house won’t help. There are mirrors and reflective surfaces everywhere and these things seem to be attached to me. They’ll be able to find us anywhere.”

He nodded thoughtfully as he picked up the phone again, “Let me call my friend, then we’re out of here.”

****

We arrived at the hotel and made it up to our room. First order of business was to cover all the mirrors. We’d still hear the demons should they choose to let us know they were there, but we wouldn’t see them and they wouldn’t be able to find any weaknesses in the glass. We set about putting towels over the mirrors in the bathroom and shut the door. There was a vanity right outside of the bathroom that received the same treatment, and was shut in the bathroom.

Terry called the Priestess that his Wiccan friend told him to contact. He made plans to meet her at our house the next afternoon. We both lay down and tried to get some sleep, but I was anxious over the events that had happened at the house and Terry seemed to have something on his mind. So I turned onto my side and looked at him. “What were you thinking, trying to deal with that, that
thing
on your own?” he chided me. Now that the fear was subsiding, anger was beginning to take its place.

His chiding me helped push it that much faster to the forefront
of my mind. “I was thinking that I would conquer my fears so you wouldn’t treat me as if I was a child anymore!” I yelled, turning my back to him and pretending to go to sleep.

Sleep wasn’t forthcoming and about an hour
after our little argument, the scratching sounds began. The demons had, indeed followed us, and were making themselves known.

****

The next afternoon we met the Priestess in front of our house. While Terry went up the walk to unlock the front door, I watched her take a big tote bag out of the trunk of her car. She walked with me to the front porch.

She introduced herself as Sasha, shaking mine and Terry’s hands in turn. She lingered a little longer than was polite when she took my hand and I wondered what she felt. She gazed into my eyes with a curiosity that went
as deep as my soul. I wanted to let go of her, visibly shaking with the need to yank my hand free. Only when Terry moved closer to us and invited her inside did she release my hand. I resisted the urge to wipe my hand on my jeans and followed them inside.

She set the tote bag in the middle of the coffee table and began pulling strange items out of it. As she pulled them out, she named each one and explained a little of its usage. The first item she pulled out was something she called a smudge stick
. “Most people use sage incense, but I prefer to use a smudge stick made of wild sage. You can pick this most anywhere and it’s closer to the Earth’s powers. This form packs much more of a punch.” She turned to me as she finished her spiel. “From what Terry told me over the phone, you need much more than a basic purifying. You need a banishing, followed by a
deep
purifying.” I had absolutely no clue what she was talking about but nodded my head along with Terry.

The next thing she pulled out was a big container of sea salt. She explained that she would use it after her purifying ritual to prevent the return of the demons. “Now, where is the room the demons have been residing?” she asked while looking around.

Terry looked at her in confusion. “Don’t you need to cleanse the whole house?”

She gave a brisk nod and answered, “Of course, but I need to banish the demons before I can do that. I don’t feel any high levels of evil in this room
, so I can only assume they are either residing in another area of the house or they’re trapped somewhere.”

I moved next to my husband and said, “They’re trapped, but not for long. They’ve already found a weakness they’ve been manipulating to escape.”

She nodded with an eager look in her eyes. I began to wonder how many of these rituals she’d performed, and my faith that she could get rid of the demons began to weaken.

I feared I would soon be pulled into the demon realm, never to return. I moved in front of them and began the terrifying trek down the hall, saying over my shoulder, “Follow me.”

When I reached the doorway of the master bathroom, the events from the night before flooded my brain and I froze. Sasha and Terry came up behind me and he started to speak. “This is…”

Sasha held up her hand, cutting him off, “Don’t tell me. I can feel it from here.” She paused in the doorway, “These demons are powerful and
very
angry. You were right about them manipulating weaknesses. They’re in the mirror, correct?” She turned to me. I nodded. She turned back to the bathroom, “They’ve been attached to you, Rissa, for a very long time. Did you know this?” I was speechless and couldn’t answer. This seemed fine with her because she continued to speak. “This is going to take longer than I thought. You may want to return to your hotel until I call you.”

Terry grabbed my hand and pulled me back towards the living room. As we rounded the corner towards the front door, I thought I heard her mutter, “They should have a cat. Why don’t people sensitive to the other-worldly ever own a cat?”

****

It was a few days later when Sasha called to let us know the job was finished, “You should have no more problems with the demons. But in case they happen to find a way around the barriers and
do
come back, get yourself a cat. A dog will do, but a cat is preferable. They will warn you before things get this bad.” She hung up and we began collecting our belongings

We drove to our house expecting to see Sasha, so we could at least thank her, but her car wasn’t in the driveway. We shrugged it off and went into the house. As soon as we stepped inside, I could feel a difference. It was like some oppressive weight had been lifted, but the real test was in the bathroom.

I strode determinedly down the hallway towards the room in question. As I approached the doorway, I held my breath. I took a cautious step over the threshold, my gaze on the mirror. Nothing moved inside; not a single voice or noise could be heard. I let my breath out in a shaky sigh and joined Terry in our bedroom with a smile playing on my lips.

****

A few weeks later, Rissa came of the bathroom and gazed upon a sleeping Terry. She walked silently over to his side of the bed and raised her right arm. The moonlight coming in through the window glinted off the knife in her hand. She stabbed him forty-seven times, all the while screaming with a reptilian voice, “You should have listened to me! Mirrors and the dark don’t mix!” After making sure that Terry was well and truly dead, she went back into the bathroom to take a shower and wash all of the blood off of her naked body. She looked into the mirror that had caused so much trouble and smiled. It was an evil smile, one that did not suit her face. Her eyes flashed red.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DJ Shaw belongs to the part of the Unseelie Sidhe that lives in Albuquerque, NM with her husband, The Vengeance Demon, Terminal, the beast who stole her heart, and together they have spawned five children. They also own an Ocelot and four Hell Hounds. She loves to write about the experiences of her Dark Brethren, and some of her own. Please enjoy some of her adventures. You can contact her and sample some of her work on these pages:

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