Reflections. Chapter four Pt two.

Peter pulled up at the side of the house to see his wife on the kitchen doorstep with mascara lines running down her face.

         He climbed from the car as she moved off the step.

         ‘It’s after twelve,’ she said. ‘We’re too late.’

         ‘We can’t be too late,’ he shot back, not meaning to sound aggressive but his nerves wallowed in an Olympic-sized swimming pool of adrenaline.

         ‘Look at your watch, Peter,’ she told him. If we go ahead with this after midnight there’d consequences beyond our control. Isn’t that what she said?’

         ‘It’s only just midnight, Helen. ‘We can make it; we still have time.’

         ‘But−’

         ‘We have to try. We’re not leaving it here. We’ve come this far and we’re going to see it through, whatever the outcome.’

         ‘But we have no idea what will happen.’

         Peter lifted the body of their little girl from the back seat of the car and turned to his wife. ‘Whatever happens,’ he said as he removed the sheet from his daughter’s face. ‘It has to better than this.’ Peter still couldn’t bring himself to look, but what he saw in Helen’s eyes said enough. ‘And besides, I can’t exactly run the risk of taking her back, can I?’

         Helen followed him into the house and closed and locked the kitchen door before she trailed him to Elizabeth’s room where two floor-to-ceiling mirrors stood facing one another, “The Twins” as Mrs Evans had called them,

         She pushed past him and blocked his path at the door. ‘Pray, Peter Ferris,’ she said. ‘Pray for all our sake’s we’re not too late.’

         Peter said nothing because there was nothing he could say. He pushed past Helen and entered to feel the atmosphere thick, almost heavy. The mirrors, which were normal as he stood outside the room, had started to glow a dark shade of red as soon as Elizabeth was brought in, as though they knew what would be asked of them. A peculiar sensation of static caused the hairs all over his body to stand upright. The bedroom wasn’t large by any stretch, but something about it in that moment felt cavernous.

         Helen walked in and stood mid-way between the two mirrors. Peter turned to face her and bent to place a kiss on his wife’s forehead.

         ‘It’ll work,’ he said in a soft voice. ‘It has to.’

         This time it was Helen who didn’t reply, she just turned to face the western twin and blinked many times. ‘I’m ready,’ she said.

         Peter turned to face the eastern twin and finally gathered the courage to look upon his daughter’s face, he knew, above all else, that this was going to work, he knew he was going to see Elizabeth’s smiling face once again. He moved aside the sheet to see her once pink and freckled flesh now pale grey, her slim, bright-pink lips, now blue and swollen. He kissed her forehead as he had her mom’s. ‘God bless you, Lizzie,’ he said, and let the sheet fall to the floor.

         Peter bent at the waist to give his daughter the momentum required to bring her out the other side and into her mother’s arms. Without another thought he straightened his posture, and, with a swift snap upright, he tossed his daughter’s body, still in the blue denims and the “Hello Kitty” T she wore that day, into the mirror before him.

         ‘Now, Helen.’ he shouted.

         As Elizabeth’s body exited the opposite mirror the naked bulb above Helen’s head exploded and left the room bathed in a reddish half-light emanating from within the mirrors. She reached out to catch her daughter but wasn’t ready for the sudden weight that knocked her backward. Peter turned and caught Helen and steadied her. Then both studied their daughter’s face to see she still looked pale and swollen; the reddish hue from the mirrors adding an even more macabre slant to her features.

         ‘She’s not breathing,’ Helen said.

         Peter placed his left hand on his daughter’s chest and couldn’t believe what he felt. ‘There’s a heartbeat,’ he said.

         ‘What? Are you sure?’

         He nodded. ‘She’s alive, Helen. She’s come back to us.’

         Helen moved to Elizabeth’s bed and laid her down as a sharp intake of breath rocked the child’s body rigid. Her arms pushed taut along her sides, her fists clenched, her legs became inflexible, her back forced into an arc. And then, with pupils large and black as the darkest night, she opened her eyes.

         Peter knelt beside the bed and caught his watch in the light from the mirrors, it said two minutes past twelve. ‘You see, it wasn’t too late, the old woman was wrong. Just trying to scare us, trying make out this was all some evil sinister act.’

         Deep down Peter knew that’s exactly what all this was. It wasn’t God’s way; it was the Devil’s way. He felt it, and he knew Helen felt it, too, but he also knew neither of them had the courage to admit it to the other.