(Continues from Gigil)

She scribbled the last note–another plea for help. Setting down the pen, she listened hard but heard nothing. Ghosts don’t breathe, so no sigh of relief left her pale lips. She glanced around the dingy attic where she’d found herself after that womanish thing had hauled her soul through the mirror. Every story she’d ever read claimed ghosts could walk through walls but not here. Behind the mirror, the fleshless had a curious solidity preventing wall-walking and other phasing tricks. So the lock on the door barring her egress kept her imprisoned until her captor returned.

And her kidnapper was a strange one. Dressed like a Victorian woman out for a stroll, she’d even had a parasol hanging off her arm during the abduction. The instrument of her doom still hung in all its silvered-glass, antique glory both here and back in the old Victorian house where her corpse lay.

Turning her to face that monstrosity, she pocketed a small notepad and a pen. Both items were dear to her since they’d made the crossing through the mirror with her. Picking up her letters, she walked to the antique mirror. Its heavy gilt frame allowed it to loom over her. Were those gargoyles up in the left hand corner laughing at her? Squeezing the papers in her hand, she squared her shoulders and confronted the mirror.

 Outside something howled, and its anguished cry rattled the rafters of her prison cell. She hadn’t dared peek out of the window yet, but she could do that later. Right now issuing a distress call by any means was her top priority. So she rushed the mirror and shoved her first missive at the reflection of an empty room that rippled. The paper passed through silvered glass that had become liquid and sticky like taffy.

It rejected her hand. But it accepted the paper because it didn’t belong in this mirror world of ghosts, ghouls and the devil knew what else. She watched with satisfaction as her note dropped onto a floral carpet. In the slice of hallway reflected in the glass, she saw bookcases. Hope rose in her chest as she read the backward titles of the latest bestsellers. Let that be the bookstore where she’d bought the notebook. Let someone pick up her note and read it.

Let it be the bookstore where she’d purchased the notebook. Let someone pick up her missive and read it. And let the reader not think the note was a hoax or some vatic piece of frippery. For on that page lay a fortune cookie-esque warning–don’t stand too near a mirror or something will pull you through.

to be continued…

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Other short stories related to this one: Gigil, Yugto or Through the Mirror