The Looking Glass Page 12

  But I read it anyway.

  A girl in New Hampshire has been swindled by a man who said he wanted to elope with her. He took all of her valuable items to the boat, promising to come back for her the next evening. He never did.

  After I read that, I threw my glass against the wall, just to hear it shatter. Lillian came into the room, wearing a smile that reminded me very much of the witch’s.

  “Did William take all of your jewelry too, Lizzie?” she asked me.

  And that is the moment when my patience with her ran out.

  I think that I would have killed her had Father not interceded. I had her pinned to the wall, my hands wrapped around her scrawny throat, but he pulled me away. Father has always been a strong man. Although I fought hard, he soon had me back in my bed. Lillian screamed terrible things then. She called me mad. She called me a murderer. She said that I should be hung. Then she grabbed Mother’s favorite vase from my drawers and flung it at my head.

  I don’t remember it hitting me. I just remember waking up to my father’s face staring down at me many hours later. Poor man; he was quite beside himself. The doctor apparently would not come to tend to me—I do not know why. Father didn’t even believe that I would wake.

  Lillian would have liked that.

  I looked at my face in the mirror tonight. My left eye is bruised and so swollen that I can hardly open it. It is red now, almost purple. Tomorrow it will be darker. There are cut marks all over my cheek and forehead.

  I can no longer tell whether it is my face that is distorted or the mirror.

  When I saw what Lillian had done to me, I knew what to do. In a court of law, crime is punished. Theft is met with retribution. Injustice with justice. Murder with death. I am the judge and the jury, the victim and the executor. I will repay.

  ***

  There was a crash from the real lobby and Alice jumped so hard that the book tumbled from her hands and fell to the floor. She sat up, glancing in the mirror. It was still dark—probably about five in the morning. Tony and his dad were bending over a box of equipment that one of them had just dropped.

  “Damn,” said Tony’s dad, “I’m going to have to replace this lens.”

  Alice’s breath was fogging the glass. She wiped it clean with her shirt.

  “I’m sorry. It just slipped right out of my hands.”

  They both looked very tired, staring at one another with matching dark circles under their eyes.

  “It’s okay,” George said with some difficulty. He was clearly trying very hard to be patient with his son. “I needed a new one anyway.”

  Tony looked relieved. “Okay. I’ll gather everything up. You go ahead without me.”

  George gave a tired nod. “How about we try setting up in the garden next time? I know you wanted to set up near the pool, but it seems like a pretty dead area. I could have guessed. Spirits generally avoid the water.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “Absolutely. I’ve never caught one by a pool. Not once.”

  “Oh,” said Tony. He looked as though he wanted to say more, but he just bent down to pick up a piece of glass.

  George started to head up the stairs, then turned around to look at his son. “Tony?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Look, I’m sorry we didn’t come up with anything tonight. We’ll pick up something tomorrow for sure.”

  Tony just smiled. “Don’t worry, Dad. It was … fun anyway.”

  George looked about ready to fall down the stairs in surprised pleasure. Somehow he managed to regain his balance and fumble his way up to the second floor. As soon as he disappeared into the hallway, the smile slid right off Tony’s face and he sat down on the floor with his head in his hands.

  Alice watched him.

  “Tony?” she whispered.

  “Alice?”

  She was so surprised to hear him answer that she jumped and her forehead bumped against the glass. Cringing, she called again.

  “Tony! Can you hear—?”

  But before she could finish, he started speaking over her, and she realized with a pang of disappointment that she had misunderstood. Tony was talking to himself, not to her.

  “Alice, if you can hear me, if you’re here somewhere … I have something to say to you,” he said. He was looking at the ceiling now, as if he expected to see her floating around up there, ghostly and white.

  “Look, I don’t know what’s going on.”

  She pressed her palms against the glass; she could feel it bend under the pressure.

  “I don’t understand what’s happening with you. I don’t know if you’re dead or alive, or just … something else, but if I can help, just come talk to me again, okay? I want to help you if I can.”

  A wash of relief, so strong it nearly made her cry, swept through her. She might not be able to touch the real world, trapped behind these mirrors, but here—reality was stretching out a hand for her to grab hold of. Tony’s hand. And just knowing that someone out there knew she was in here, someone hadn’t given up … Until now, with hope flooding back over her, she hadn’t realized how little she’d been holding onto.

  “I’ll be by the pool all day tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll be there, so you can come whenever you want, and we’ll talk about things. I can be alone if you want me to be.”

  Some of her relief went up in flames; if he was by the pool, she wouldn’t be able to see him. How would she know what he was doing? And what good did it do her to have him out there when there was no reason to believe she’d ever escape this mirror house again?

  And, a small voice in her head admitted, the thought of facing a whole day without seeing him was brutal. It felt like losing her only friend.

  “I’ve got to go now,” he said, gathering up the rest of the glass on the floor. He picked up the box, looked around the room, and sighed. “You probably can’t hear any of this anyway.”

  Alice pushed harder on the glass, wishing more than anything that she could somehow force her way through to the other side. Tony stopped halfway up the staircase, just stood there perfectly still. He hung his head and muttered something under his breath; she leaned in to hear, banging the side of her head against the glass.

  “I’ve never met anyone like you before, Alice.”

  Then he disappeared around the corner and Alice slumped onto the lobby couch. She pulled her knees to her chest. She should still be feeling relieved—she knew that. Tony was going to help her. She had an ally. She had a chance. But fear—cold, bone-chilling fear—was sweeping through her like winter, and her fingers were so cold. Alice touched her face, felt her icy skin, and all she could think of was her aunt’s funeral, standing by the coffin, reaching inside and touching her hand … it was cold.

  No. No.

  Alice tried to shake the thought away, but it had settled on her now and it was so heavy. She buried her face in her arms. Her body was in a hospital somewhere. She was lying there. She wasn’t moving. Were her hands cold as a corpse? She wondered and she didn’t know.

  I’ve never met anyone like you before. But he hadn’t met her. Her was lying on a hospital bed like a dead person. Would she ever meet him—really meet him? She imagined what it would be like, escaping this place. She’d wake up and get better and find him and thank him … then what? Would they hug? They would shake hands. Her hand would be real and warm and solid.

  It stung to think about it—she had never wanted something so badly in her life. Alice told herself that she just wanted to live, that this was perfectly normal, but underneath the mere desire for survival—she couldn’t deny it—was a different kind of heartache. And it had to do with Tony. Not that he felt anything more than normal curiosity about her. That was what he had meant, she was sure. Never met anyone like you. Well, he hadn’t met a ghost before.

  So why was it that when she thought of him, she wanted so badly to be alive, wanted it more than she knew she could want anything? Maybe he reminded her of herself somehow—what she wa
s before the accident. That was probably it. He was, after all, a lot like her in some small ways. She saw herself, sometimes, in the expression on his face, heard herself in the way he spoke. … He had a nice voice, a very nice voice—

  “‘The course of true love never did run smooth.’”

  The girl’s voice was heavy with sarcasm. Alice looked up. This was the one thing she wanted least of all right now.

  “Leave me alone,” she whispered.

  “Oh, but you are very much alone,” said the girl, and when Alice—only moments later—dared to look in the mirror, she was nowhere to be seen.

  May 15, 1883

  I am preparing. Goodness, it’s so marvelous I want to write it all down. I want to tell you all about it.

  But I won’t. Not yet. “Patience,” says the witch. She speaks to me now—sometimes for hours. But today she says but one word. Patience.

  Sometimes the witch knows best.

  Today I glanced in the mirror and saw nothing beautiful at all. I saw black and blue and a swollen eye and a gaunt, misshapen face.

  It is as I feared. I am not beautiful. No man can ever love me. No one can love me! I felt lost for a while then, because beauty is all I have lived for. My beauty, my talents—they are all I have.

  And I have lost everything.

  I picked up the scissors and went to the window. Snip! Snip! My hair is short now—it brushes my shoulders. A foot of long black curls went tumbling into the pond. They float on the surface, gleaming and making the water ripple in awful, strange ways.

  My eyelashes were long and black and thick. I snipped them off too and sent them into the water with the hair. I tried to cut my eyebrows, but I only managed to cut myself and I gave up.

  I look in the mirror. Now I am truly hideous.

  The witch is grinning at me. You know, I’ve never noticed how ugly she is before. Now I see it, though. She has a cut on her eyebrow. Her hair is shaggy and tangled.

  But she is still smiling that crooked smile.

  Lillian came to check in on me. She screamed and ran away when she saw my face, my hair, my eyes. I laughed at her and moved my wardrobe to block the door. Now she and Father are banging on the door, yelling at me, begging me to open it.

  Oh the noise! There is so much noise! I curled up against a wall and covered my ears, but it did no good—no good at all.

  Please go away! Go away!

  They are gone. They have given up. It’s quiet now and I can think—I can prepare my curse. I sit in front of the mirror and the witch and I work together. I do most of the work myself, though. I don’t need her as much as she thinks I do.

  Don’t tell her that.

  Stop screaming, Lillian! I’m not going to open the door!

  Go away!

  I must think about my curse.

  ***

  Elizabeth’s handwriting was becoming more and more difficult to decipher. The first pages in the diary had been hard to read, but they had also been beautiful, with an artfulness all their own. Now Alice was nearly halfway through the tiny book and the pages looked as if a child had scribbled all over them with her hands tied together and her eyes closed.

  She had trouble focusing. For a long time she sat downstairs, waiting to see if Tony would come back down dragging a pillow and blanket, off to spend the night by the pool. She knew, of course, that that would be a bad thing (she couldn’t watch him if he were out there), but part of her wished he would. She wanted to know how committed he really was.

  At one point in the dead of the night when everything was dark and quiet, she found herself staring blankly at the wall. Her thoughts kept returning to him. Finally, dying of curiosity, she jumped to her feet and ran up the stairs. The mist shone through the open doors on the second floor, shedding enough pale light for her to walk down the hallway without hitting any walls. Holding her breath, she opened the door to Tony and George’s room. But the mist had eaten up the mirror entirely; there was nothing left to see. Heavily, she walked back down the stairs.

  Alice’s mood went in cycles, shooting from hopeful to angry, then plummeting to despondence. The same thoughts went circling through her mind, like ugly horses on a never-ending merry-go-round.

  It might be okay, now that Tony’s helping.

  Tony.

  But what can he possibly do? He doesn’t know any more about this curse than I do. He doesn’t even know there is a curse.

  It isn’t fair. What did I do wrong? What did I do to deserve this?

  I’m a good person.

  I’m a terrible person.

  It’s no good. I’m not going to get out. I don’t get to win this game. It’s just no use. The diary—all of it.

  Burn it all.

  By morning, Alice thought she might be losing her mind. Her thoughts were spinning in such disarray and she couldn’t control them. … She tried. She was huddled against a wall with the book clutched in her hands, her eyes exhausted from squinting at the tiny rows of text. Her body, however, wouldn’t do her the favor of actually being tired. She craved sleep the way she craved food—she didn’t seem to need it, but the taste of it hung on her tongue.

  Her brain was like a wild animal in a cage, throwing itself against the walls.

  Focus.

  She tried, but she couldn’t.

  Finally, the sounds of morning started to come from the mirrors—the crashing of doors, the clomping of feet. The hotel manager arrived at his desk at 7:30 sharp. At 8:13 he got a phone call, lost his head, and started yelling into the receiver about lawsuits and his three children.

  After a few minutes, his yelling became a meaningless drone. Her mind wandered to her parents. Just the thought of them was enough to send her spiraling down so deep into memories that she wondered if it were possible to lose her way in her own mind. It was funny the things she remembered—not the happy things, not the big things, not the good things either. Just the things that cut her deep somehow, that made an impression. Like the time she, thirteen years old and self-conscious, asked her mother if she was pretty.

  “You’re not unattractive, honey,” her mother had said casually, unaware that her answer would haunt Alice for years.

  There were the presents her dad would bring back from his business trips for her and Jeremy—so many gifts. The way his eyes would light up when he gave her a hat or jewelry or a doll … she remembered that. He would get the strangest look on his face as he watched, a hungry kind of look, as though he needed to know that they loved him. Gifts, she realized now, had been the only way he could show them that he cared.

  And Jeremy. When he was younger—only four years old—he would come running into her room during thunderstorms and climb into her bed and wrap his skinny arms around her.

  “Why are you afraid?” she would ask. “Don’t be afraid.”

  “I’m not afraid. I’m never afraid.”

  And he would fall asleep huddled against her. She never told him to leave—not once. Because though thunderstorms didn’t scare her, the warmth of his body against hers was so comforting and so real that she wondered how she ever slept without him.

  Alice didn’t understand how these thoughts could affect her so deeply, but somehow they did. They worked their way inside of her, twisting like knives—good memories, bad memories. Memories were all that was left of her life and it terrified her.

  Tony and George tromped downstairs at noon, carrying their equipment in big plastic tubs. The manager glanced up from his computer and exchanged a tense grimace with George.

  “Hunting?” he asked.

  George merely nodded. The manager’s lips thinned, but he too remained silent.

  Alice watched Tony until he disappeared from sight. The waves in his dark hair caught the light in a way that made her heart beat fast. She imagined the sunlight in his hair—the sunlight in the water. She hadn’t seen real, blue, daytime blue sky in what felt like years. When she closed her eyes, she could imagine it. And she could imagine him in it, waiting for he
r by the pool as the wind blew the trees and the birds sang and …

  She wanted to claw the walls. Was this what claustrophobia felt like?

  There was nothing left to do but sit and try not to lose hope entirely until midnight rolled around again. As much as she wanted to appear again tonight, she felt that she had very little reason to hope. Or perhaps she simply didn’t dare to wish too hard anymore. The house felt like a jinx. If she wanted something, it would make sure that it didn’t happen.

  But still she wore the dress.

  ***

  May 16, 1883

  I found the knife in the kitchen—stole it right out from under the cook’s nose when she wasn’t watching. For now, it is hidden under my pillow. Lillian mustn’t know that I have it.

  She hasn’t come to see me today. Perhaps she is frightened. She should be frightened.

  While I wait for nighttime, I write my curse. It has never been done before. The witch herself did not discover the secret of binding soul to object, but I have. Many hours have I pondered this, and I believe that I have the answer.

  No human being lives forever, and, just like a human, a bound soul fades with time. The curse that an object carries becomes weaker every minute, just from the burden of existing. A curse’s power, the soul, must be replenished.

  The witch wrote that the bound soul must help to execute the curse. I believe that she was wrong. Must wood consent to be burned in a fire? No. A soul is nothing more than living fuel. The curse is the rider, the soul is the horse—more physically powerful, but tied up and forced to do the rider’s bidding.

  The only question is how to replace the old souls with the new.

  The answer is in the curse.

  If I am correct, and I believe that I am, I can cast a self-renewing curse—a curse that kills to satisfy its own need for survival. This house will carry a curse forever—a curse on all women who hope for love. Not all will pay the price, but some will be sacrificed to keep the curse alive. A few deaths alone can remind the world of the fragile balance on which it turns.