Mirror

My heart beat faster. It was gorgeous! How could I have missed it? Maybe I was distracted! No. That couldn’t be it. Never mind I knew one thing for sure, I wasn’t distracted now!

The tall house with its empty windows and many turrets. It was like some kind of castle. Long stretching palm tree’s laced them selves down the garden soaking up the California sun.

My feet carried me to the garden gate.
“Honey, what are you doing?” my Mom’s voice split my fantasies in half. Whack!

“Mom have you ever seen anything so beautiful?” I sighed lazily, still gazing at this perfect contraption.

“Celest are you okay?” I felt her hand on my fore-head like I was six and I had the tummy bug again.

“What are you doing?” I giggled idiotically. “Mom it’s just a house. Jeeze,” I grinned at my Mom but she looked like she’d seen a ghost. “You okay?” I smiled warmly, for her sake.

Typical of my Mom, I’m almost 16 and she still treats me like a kid. Although, never this bad before.

Maybe she thinks that I want to move out when I’m 16 and live in this house. Not a bad idea, I mean it’s only around the corner but I could never leave her. She’s lost to much in her life. I wouldn’t want to be the reason for any more pain.

“Celest, Hon, there isn’t…” she paused and breathed deeply. I felt a sweeping breeze over my back. Running down my spine, like when you come in out of the rain and stand next to a heater. “There isn’t a house there.”

Mom looked back towards my perfect house. I slowly followed her gaze.

“No…” my throat closed up. The house! Where was it? I’d looked away for 30 seconds and it had disappeared. Gone!

All that stood there now was something of junk yard standards. It was ugly. Pathetic. Worthless. I hated it.

Why had my Mom made me turn away? My perfect house was still printed into my memory. Etched into my brain.

I walked off up the street, a small smile on my face; I didn’t want Mom to think I was some kind of Looney Tune.

But I knew what I saw. I was not hallucinating.

“I want to know what the house was there for.

“Why was I the only one that could see it?” I scribbled my thoughts aimlessly in my lilac diary.

“Mom thinks I’m going insane. I think I’m going insane! I can’t be though. I could still smell the soft scent of exotic flowers in my nose.”

I closed my diary and checked my alarm clock; 12:27am
I wasn’t even tired. My Mom was in bed and my dad was down stairs on the couch. They didn’t even sleep in the same bed anymore.

My family is screwed. Yep. Thoughts changing track again.
House; Family; House; Family; House...

“That’s it I have to see it again.” I whispered to myself. “I have to prove to myself I’m not going crazy!” I hopped off my bed landing on the floor without a sound.

“Thank you for getting the solid wood flooring” I thought as I hopped into a pair of diesel jeans.

After swapping my pyjama top for a plain tee and slipping into a jacket I pushed open my window.

I’m not fearless. I must have been to do what I did next though. Adrenalin raced through me like a fox in a pack of Beagles. Next thing I knew I was not hanging from my window I was sprinting around the dark corner to pursue the house I know was made for me. Feet barely touching the floor I ran with all the energy in the world.

It’s there. It’s more magnificent than it was before. Towering and lean. I could practically feel its importance growing in my life.

It’s like I had to be near it just to feel… alive.
I pushed the gate and it swung forward, welcoming me into the palm tree enhanced garden.

The house was the perfect shad of Caribbean Blue, like just after a storm and the sky is cloud free and perfectly blue.

The tree’s cast looming shadows along the path. They looked like hands reaching to grab me. To pull me, pull me away from the path and into the long haunting garden.

I looked across the land that the house possessed. It lay before me like a termite. Willing to do anything I commanded. The garden lay before me, hauntingly dark and shadows pressed along the side of the house. Stretching and grabbing at then house as if it’d never been there before.

I felt like I was in a trance. Dreaming in a far off place. What if it was a dream? I would never wake up. Never return to the land of the living, I’d stay I this fantasy for the rest of my life. Always and forever.

But even dreams changed. I wouldn’t want for this one to change I’d remember it.
I pinched my leg just to make sure. “Ouch!” I wished I hadn’t now. A stinging, tingling pain shot through my leg.

I lifted my head from looking at the nearest flower and that’s when I noticed that just to the left of the garden, a strangely shaped stone.
I wanted to go over but that’s when I heard a creaking.

The decking was smooth wood as a walked over it. A swinging hammock creaked in a silently stormy wind. The hood blew violently in the tremendous wind.
The window shutters flew open without a sound. I hardly noticed. My eyes were fixed on the gnarled door knocker. I reached for it.

I suddenly noticed that my hand was shaking. Excitement filled me. I lifted the knocked and let it swing down. Nothing…Silence.

Still I didn’t notice. I didn’t’ care either, just as long as this house was as perfect as

I wanted it to be then I didn’t care.

The door swung open just as I reached to knock again.

I stepped into the hall.

“Hello…Anyone here?” I shouted after a second of taking in my surroundings.

A high ceiling, with rooms that winged off in every direction. A small phone table had a stack of parchment yellow envelopes. All addressed. All Stamped. All un-opened.

Oh well, not my business. But never hurts to know a bit more about the owners.

‘Miss P Richards
17 Surfs Bay
California
Z47 PKX’

They all said it. They were all written in the same hand writing. This Miss Richards must have never had the chance to open the letters. Or maybe she was away…No the door was open.

What if the owner of this house was writing to P. Richards? But wouldn’t they of sent the letters by now.

Yes probably but that isn’t important at the moment. I shouted out again “Hello?” No answer again. Maybe their kind of people that go for walks in the middle of the night and leave the door open.

I walked down the hall and into the closet room on the left. A lounge with a modern corner settee with a blanket of fine silk threw over it in a deep purple.

A huge mirror covered one whole wall and little old fashioned gas lamps hung around the room. I looked for a switch to turn them all on. They had to be modernized. No switch. Damn.

It was nice. Cosy it had a feel to it that I liked but it was a bit strange. Cold. The room felt cold.

I left the room and went into the next room down. A study, basic, with a desk and chair and some blank papers on the desk.

The next room on the right this time was the kitchen. It smelt of rotting food and the floor boards creaked a slow mournful tune as I stepped across them to the cupboards, I opened them all to find the source of the smell, finally, I found it, a piece of fruit splattered up the back on the cupboard, coated in a furry green mould.
I quickly shut the cupboard; the smell of rotting fruit clung to me like a leech on skin.

“Urgh” That’s when my eye’s caught on something and the fruit was pushed to the back of my mind. A sheet of delicate red silk draped across the floor leading down a corridor to the back of the house.

I walk steadily across. As I got closer I slowly realised it wasn’t a fine silk. It wasn’t delicately draped. It was smeared, Brown/Red and chipped.
Blood, old Blood, dragged down the corridor and up a separate flight of stairs. Why was it here? In my perfect house, fear filled me. My fantasy was shattered in front of my eyes, I had a feeling of beautifully disastrous things.

Like a storm when lightening strikes beautifully dangerous. Whose was it? I had to find, I felt involved.

Slowly and noiselessly I walked trough the door, leading onto a long hall, decked out with oil painted portraits.

Looking up into the porcelain faces on the canvas, I had to look from one to the other to finally realise it was the exact same shade of emerald green eyes, baring down on me the same dark brunette hair that framed the perfectly shaped face of Pixie Richards. I was positive it was her.

Pixie Richards was pretty. Stunning in fact, perfectly natural curly hair, a high necked Victorian dress and a pendant that hung around her neck. I carried on slowly towards the stairs.

They stale smell in my nose got stronger.

All I could hear was the thumping of my own heart. The steps seemed to increase in number. After about five minutes of climbing I reached a hall way with one door at
the very end of it.

I pushed the door, it did not open, I turned the handle and it swung forwards, admitting me to the interior. I glanced around; no one was in there, a lone mirror stood against the wall across from me. I looking into it, but I wasn’t reflected back out. Pixie Richards glared at me.

I couldn’t move, all feeling had left me completely. I felt numb with shock. Pixie moved her mouth, I didn’t think I would hear her but I did.

“You must leave!” She stated.

“Why?” I questioned. Everything was cold. The door slammed shut and Pixie’s voice screamed at me “Leave NOW!”

I tried to run from the room the door was jammed shut, I felt nothing at all in my whole body and I couldn’t breathe.

A screeching and then a cold hand on my shoulder pulling me backwards, I spun around, Pixie’s evil, beautiful face was inches from my own, her hand morphed out of the mirror and onto my shoulder. Pulling me into the deathly hollow of her captive mirror.

The gilded frame cutting into my sides. No emotion visible in her now cold eye’s.
I was sucked into the mirror with her, but when I thought I could feel her next to me I looked out and she was staring back at me from the other side of the mirror, I was now the captive of the dead insides of it.

I was filled with cold, all through me. Then suddenly I felt powerful and magnificent, like what I thought of the house when I first saw it.

But now I’m trapped in the house forever I still can’t move everything I do is controlled, but when the new owners come, they’ll be sorry they ever brought this house, nothing will ever be right for them, and when the time comes I’ll show myself and they will be trapped, just like I am. But I will free myself. I will have my revenge on everyone that has ever entered this house and not been trapped like me. Pixie Richards was never seen again, she grew frail and old; I stayed young and unchanged for years.

Mason’s wife, Pixie, was, and always be, the person I will never forgive, she drew me into a house that I thought was perfect. I got what I wanted in the end, I did want to move in, and live happily, but now I’m trapped, in a dream like state.

I still have a sense of power but at the same time I also have a sense of loneliness. The new owners should be ready to capture soon. Ready to be my little puppets, I hear voices all the time, the house is speaking to me! Telling me I'm the master of the house when I get out of the mirror.
"I will seek out Pixie Richards first and then be the most powerful beautiful thing in the world!" I told it.
Pixie Richards is dead, I saw to that.
I heard that from the house. I didn't know what to think. The house controls me now. Untill I'm finally free. Though it gets disturbing being trapped and used as a puppet of strings by a house that you fell in love with, you grow accustomed to it as well as the feeling of being lonely. But I never guessed that I would abide by what this house is set to do. The mirror is my captor and I understand that Pixie really didn't have anything to do with my being pulled into the mirror. I almost felt guilty for seeing that she was killed. Almost; but not quite.