Abigail's Mirror first chapter

CHAPTER 1
The rotted and splintered wood of the shutters hung on either side of the door like sharpened daggers, and the faded blue paint on the siding blistered from years of morning sun and no fresh paint. Even today's clear, breezy sky and uncommonly warm weather failed to brighten the look of the store. With November just around the corner, she thought, all the rest of the street would soon be drab as well, so this place wouldn't stand out like such an open sore.
Ravine stood at the bottom step, running her fingers along the rusted railing, and watching a handful of customers through the large front window. This place never had more than a few browsers at any time, and she watched as they picked up trinkets and other old junk, turning them once or twice before placing them back on the shelves. As usual, these shoppers looked around to be sure no one was watching as they discretely wiped their hands.
Ravine started up the steps, hearing the familiar creaking of the rickety wood beneath her sneakers. But she stopped half way, already seeing through the window the disappointed expressions of the shoppers.
Grabbing tightly on the railing, Ravine headed for the front door.
Above her head, a big sign hung dangerously by a single hinge, banging loudly against the weathered siding. She looked at the familiar old sign. Maybe Antique, it said. As it swung in the breeze, she hoped no one would be underneath it when the wind finally brought it down some day.
Suddenly the door flew open, and two women swept past Ravine as if she weren't there, carelessly pushing her up against the railing.
"Well, Agatha, that was a huge waste of our time, don't you think?"
"Yes, it was. It was most certainly not like the antique shop we saw earlier. This was just a heap of trash."
As they quickly headed down the steps, Ravine heard the second woman say, "Why on earth, Hildy, did you buy that piece of junk, anyway? What on earth are you going to do with it?"
A disgusted look crossed over Hildy's face. Then, at the bottom of the steps, she took the brown bag containing her pity purchase, and threw it into the garbage can at the curb.
"That's what," she said. "That's where it belongs."
Ravine heard them laugh as they hurried away, and she stuck out her tongue, even though she knew they couldn't see her.
A bell tinkled as Ravine opened the door, and she stood at the doorway looking in. The clutter of the place always fascinated her. There was stuff everywhere; lots of trinkets were scattered across desktops, coffee tables, and shelves. The bigger items that littered the floor added to the chaos and confusion. The aisles were narrow and laid out like a maze, almost as if designed by accident. Some of the big floor items were packed so close together that there had to be little paths between them. Here and there were little alcoves, and a couple of side-rooms that led off the main area. They were full of more stuff, and an old treasure chest full of tattered and dusty old books sat in the middle of one of these rooms.
This place had been here since long before Ravine was born, and even though she had been in and out of it a few times long ago with her mother, it was only in the past year or so that she had started coming here a lot on her own. She had made friends with the owner.
"Good morning, my dear," said Onna. Golden bracelets, on both arms, clanged against each other as she waved to Ravine.
Ravine smiled when she saw the bright red ribbon in Onna's hair and the diamond studded glasses balancing on the tip of her nose. Today, her silver hair hung loose to her waist. The diamonds weren't real, and neither were the matching rings Onna wore on every finger. And she was wearing the same outfit she had on when Ravine visited last Saturday. She looked grand.
"Hi, Onna."
Onna's sapphire eyes sparkled when she smiled, a smile that lit up her face and chased away the wrinkles.
Onna was always known to everyone as Ollie Owen's wife. Even though he was gone now, people still called her Ollie's wife. This was Ollie's store, and Onna only had only kept it open this past year to keep her memories of him near.
'Honestly, woman,' Ravine remembered hearing him say, 'you care more about gossiping than you do about the business!' Ravine guessed that probably wasn't true, but she knew Onna only worked in the store before Oliver died because it made him happy. Onna told her one day how out of place she felt amongst the antiques and collectables. Almost everyone else, Ravine knew, would think of Onna as a walking billboard for the store because she looked like an antique herself.
Ravine knew what it was like to feel different.
Onna did her best now that she was on her own to take care of the shop, but she didn't have a head for business, nor a mind for sales. When Oliver was alive, her only job was to count the cash, which she got wrong every time. Oliver would always step in to finish the sale.
Before Oliver's death, the store was called Small Antiques. But after he was gone, Onna made a new sign by scratching out 'Small' and painting the word 'Maybe' over top. Everyone knew that Ollie had the eye for antiques, and she knew she couldn't fool anyone. Gradually, people began to use the shop as a place to drop off their junk. Onna never refused any donation, and 'Maybe Antique' turned quickly into a disorganized mess.
"Anything new, today?" Ravine asked, poking around the dusty selves. She wiped her hands on her jeans.
"Only that mirror, dear," Onna said, her eyes twinkling.
Ravine glanced in the direction Onna was pointing.
The mirror was leaning against the wall of death. Well, that's what Ravine called it, anyway. The faded red paint looked like there was blood oozing through the cracks of the aging wood.
The mirror was a heavy old thing, a little taller than Ravine. It had a beautiful, but aged, wooden frame and a hand-carved angel graced its top. Although it hadn't been in the store last Saturday, it had already gathered a Maybe Antique layer of dust.
Even when the sun was shining outside, it was always dim inside the store. But today, as the sun peeked through the small window above the book alcove, the dust sparkled. Ravine thought the dust dancing in the sunlight made the mirror look magical.
"Where did the mirror come from," she asked. Standing close to it, she felt a coldness fall upon her. She rubbed her arms and glanced at Onna, who didn't seem to notice the sudden icy air around them.
"Mr. Baldwin dropped it off," she began. "You know Mr. Baldwin. He owns the pastry shop around the corner. Oh, Ollie used to love his scones. Every morning he'd say to me 'Dear, run over and get me some of those things that I like over there.' I always knew what he was talking about, so I would --"
"The mirror, Onna. What about the mirror?"
"Oh yes, the mirror. Well, a strange story, I'd say. No one in the family knows where the mirror came from. After Mrs. Baldwin passed away, that's his mother, not his wife, because you know, dear, Mr. Baldwin's wife never took his last name. I don't know why women do that these days. They get married and don't change their names. I was honored to take Oliver's last name. Owen, that's a very strong name you know."
Onna took a breath and gazed at her reflection. She straightened out her purple sequined sweater and ran her fingers through her hair. Her rings reflected off the glass, creating an image that reminded Ravine of the bright lights on a Ferris wheel.
"What were we talking about again, dear?"
"The mirror." At this rate, it was going to take all day for her to find out anything about the mirror, Ravine thought.
"Oh yes, the mirror. Well, after Mrs. Baldwin died, that's his mother now, the family auctioned everything off. You know, at the auction building down on Superior Road. The big silver building. You can't miss it. I always think it looks like a great big soup can with the label peeled off. You know, I would imagine it gets really hot inside there in the summer --"
"Onna, please!"
"Yes, of course," Onna sniffed. "Well, Mr. Baldwin told me that when the auction was all done, they went in to lock up the house. They aren't sure what they're going to do with the old place, you know. But they found this mirror sitting inside an open closet. It was the strangest thing, he said. The mirror just showed up out of nowhere. No one knows how it got in the house, and no one could recall ever seeing it before. Mr. Baldwin had a copy of the auction list, but the mirror wasn't on the list neither. Everybody was so sure it just wasn't there before the auction. So, instead of taking it back to the auctioneer, they brought it here."
"But how does a mirror just show up? Things just don't appear out of nowhere," Ravine said.
"That's exactly what I'm saying. And I told Mr. Baldwin that. I said 'things just don't appear out of thin air', but he assured me that this one did. The mirror appeared out of nowhere, he said."
Onna paused.
"I really think that someone just forgot to put the mirror on the auction list, and no one wanted to admit they missed something this big."
Ravine and Onna stared at their dusty reflections for a moment. Ravine watched as Onna went back to her seat behind the counter and started to pat Timmy. He rolled on to his back, stretched in a sunbeam, and began to purr.
Ravine continued to look around the store.
Maybe Antique was full of clocks. Most of them worked, but only one actually showed the correct time. It was the big grandfather clock that stood in front of the wall of death, right beside where Onna had placed the mirror. Ravine was suddenly reminded of the one accurate clock, when it began to chime loudly, five times, and startled her into realizing she was already late for supper.
"I gotta go," Ravine said. "My mom is probably already pacing the living room wondering where I am." She quickly headed towards the door and added, "I promised her I wouldn't be late." She slipped out as a few more customers came in.
"Bye, Onna," she yelled as she ran down the stairs. She stopped just long enough to clean the dust from her glasses, and then hurried home. Even running as fast as she could, she was still going to be in trouble.
She opened the door and walked into an empty living room. Her heart slowed to a normal pace. The clock over the fireplace showed it was already quarter past five, so she went to kitchen for the lecture she knew she was going to get.
The table was set, but no one was sitting at the table. Her mom stood near the counter with the phone cradled on her shoulder, talking softly. She lifted supper out of the oven, smiling at Ravine as she placed the steaming dish on the table. A few more words were said into the phone, and then she hung up.
"Hi, honey. Just in time," her mom said. She threw her oven mitts on the counter. "Dad will be a few minutes late. He got called into the office today."
"On a Saturday?"
"Yes, on a Saturday. This is the third weekend in a row," her mother sighed.
Ravine sat at the table as her mom fiddled at the counter. So where's the responsibility lecture, she wondered. Last summer, if she had been just five minutes late, she would have had to endure the speech. Maybe even from both parents.
While she watched her mother getting things ready, Ravine thought how things had changed over the past year. Life in the Crawl house was finally getting back to normal. Sure, they all thought about Rachel and visited her grave frequently. But, slowly, things were changing. Her mother was busy again. Ravine was never really sure what her mother was busy with, but it felt the same as it did before her sister died. Mostly, it meant that her mother was giving her a little more space, instead of constantly worrying where Ravine was or what she was doing.
Ravine's mother was even experimenting in the kitchen again. Something she had always loved was gourmet cooking. And now she was at it again. Ravine liked that too, because her mom botched most of the recipes, and they often needed to be rescued by the pizza delivery guy. Ravine didn't see any problem there. Pizza was always a good thing.
"So what did you and Derek do this afternoon?"
The front door opened and slammed shut.
"Oh, he was at his grandma's today, so I just hung out with Joannie," Ravine fibbed. Her mother didn't like Maybe Antiques and she didn't want to get into an argument. She tried not to look at her mother as she helped set the table, just in case her mom could see the fib on her face.
"Linda, sometimes I wonder why I even have employees," her father growled, as he came into the kitchen and sat down. He didn't look happy.
"Do you know why they called me in? Because they didn't know how to work the new fax machine," he added, without waiting for an answer.
Ravine's mom listened with her elbows on the table and her chin resting on the back of her hands. This was her 'listening to Robbie's long speech about work' position.
"Did you get it figured out for them?"
"No, I gave them a book. The one that came with the fax machine. It's called How to Use Your New Fax Machine. I told them it probably wasn't a real good sign that the book was still wrapped in plastic. Then I left."
As he started helping himself to supper, he smiled at Ravine.
"Hi. How was your day? Hang out with Derek?" he asked.
"He's at his grandma's."
While her parents chatted, Ravine coasted in and out of the conversation. And her thoughts wandered back to the mirror in Onna's shop. It was a weird looking thing, but beautiful all the same, she thought.
As her parents continued to talk, she carefully lined up the green beans on her plate like little soldiers, separating them from the enemy carrots with a pile of mashed potatoes. As her fork made tracks in the potatoes, she wondered if the carrots and beans could see each other behind the potato barricade.
Then she had an odd thought. When she was looking into the mirror in Onna's shop, something had seemed a little off, but she had no idea what. When you look into a mirror, it's always you looking back at you. But thinking about it now, she wasn't sure if it had felt like it was only her looking back. And there was that sudden feeling of cold.
She shook her head. This is nuts, she thought. Of course it was me looking back at me in the mirror.
And of course the beans and carrots can see each other.



After dinner, Ravine helped clean up and then waited for her parents on the front verandah. Finally, they all piled into the car and drove down the wide street, heading to Summerhill Drive.
It wasn't a long trip, and even with her eyes closed Ravine knew each winding turn and stop. They had been here many times. And Ravine had been here often without her parents.
Her dad parked the car outside the gates of Summerhill Cemetery. This late in October, it was getting dark early, so they would only have a few minutes before the cemetery closed for the night.
They got out of the car and all three doors seemed to slam shut in unison. The iron gates loomed over them in the dim light. From here, you could see towering gravestones to the west, looking like dark sentries ready to watch over the smaller gravestones until the morning light. But the Crawl's headed up the path in the other direction, toward the older part of the cemetery.
Ravine slowed once in awhile, brushing her hand over century-old inscriptions. Dates and names of people long ago. Some of these graves were almost hidden under overgrown shrubs, and most of the stones were cracked and slowly decaying. She wondered why nobody came to look after them. Wasn't there any family to remember these people?
By now, Ravine was walking quite a few paces behind her parents. She stopped beside a gravestone and touched the familiar name carved in it: Isabel Roberts. She felt a lump in her throat. No, Isabel, I will never forget you.
Ravine continued on, touching the names and whispering the dates under her breath. Suddenly, she thought she felt a zap of electricity shoot through her fingers as she touched a small stone. She jerked her hand away, but a chill swept over her as she cautiously reached out to touch it again.
In the cool autumn air, the stone felt warm under her fingertips. She knelt down. Abigail Baldwin. Her spine tingled. She remembered this grave. It was one that she and Derek had talked about during the summer when they visited the cemetery in search of answers about Isabel. One of them had commented that there was a Baldwin family that lived on the street next to theirs, and they wondered if it might be the same family.
And then today she saw this beautiful mirror that came from a Baldwin family. That's a lot of coincidence, she thought.
She stood up just as a sudden gust of wind howled in her ear. She zipped up her jacket, pulling it closer to her. Her head began to throb. This was not the first time Ravine had experienced something like this.
"Are you coming," her mother called. She was heading back towards Ravine, seemingly unaffected by the chill or the sudden wind.
Ravine backed away from the gravesite.
"Yes, mom ... I'm coming."
Ravine hurried away from Abigail's grave, running to catch up to her parents.



Rachel's grave was well maintained. Ravine drew in a breath. The fragrance of the fall chrysanthemums reminded Ravine of the way Rachel used to smell before she became sick. The mums had spread quickly over the past year, and the two shrubs she had planted were now about three feet high.
The Crawls stood in silence. There were no words needed. Ravine's father had his arm around her mother's shoulder, and Ravine was squeezed in between, holding her mother's hand.
After a short while, they simply turned and left, heading back down the hill to the car. As they went, Ravine felt another gust of wind pick up around her. A howling sound whipped by her head. She looked at her parents, but they didn't seem to notice.
Then, just as they reached the gates, she thought she could hear a voice crying out behind her. Ravine stopped and turned around, but no one was there. She hurried to the car, but she was sure she could still hear crying and whimpering behind her.
"Honey, are you okay," her mother asked. "Do you have a headache?"
Ravine realized neither of them could hear the cries. She shuddered.
"It's okay, I'm fine," she said as they reached the car.
"I know it doesn't get easier, sweetheart," her dad began. "If you don't want to come next week I understand."
"No, dad. Really, I'm fine." Ravine opened the car door.



The ringing in Ravine's ears didn't stop until they were just a block from home. And by the time they pulled into the driveway, she really did have a headache. That was the perfect excuse to lock herself in her room for the rest of the night. But as she climbed the stairs to her room, she realized she really was tired.
She got into her pajamas and crawled into bed. Clean sheets, she thought. Cool and crisp. It took a few minutes for her to feel warm.
As Ravine closed her eyes, she could hear the cries in her head once more. This time, it was more like a whimper.
Then she could hear Onna's words in her head. "That's exactly what I'm saying. And I told Mr. Baldwin that. I said 'things just don't appear out of thin air', but he assured me that this one did."
Ravine fell into a restless sleep. Hazy images of Maybe Antiques and that weird mirror filled her head. The whimpering sound became louder as the mirror came into focus. Ravine was standing in front of it, looking. But the blurry image looking back wasn't her.



Sunday morning was grey and cloudy. Ravine woke with a dull pain still inside her head. And she could remember her dreams vividly.
Rolling over, she thought about the mirror in Onna's shop. And the more she thought about it, the sharper the pain in her head became.
She needed to go back to see the mirror.
Ravine dressed quickly, in her best ripped jeans and her most faded pink t-shirt. As she started downstairs, she could hear her parents in the kitchen. Halfway down the stairs, she yelled.
"I'm going out! I'll be back later!"
Her mother was waiting for her in the hallway.
"Don't you want any breakfast, sweetheart?"
"No, mom. I'm not really hungry this morning." Actually, she was famished.
"How's your headache?" her father asked. He looked out from the kitchen, holding his coffee in one hand and his newspaper in the other. Ravine could never figure out how he could hold up an open newspaper with one hand.
"Good. Good. Much better!" The pounding in her head continued.
"It's a little cooler today, sweetheart, so take your jacket."
"No, I'll be okay."
She opened the front door and ran down the steps. Almost immediately, she realized she should have brought her jacket, but she didn't want to waste time going back to get it.



It took a little longer to get to Onna's, because she wasn't running. Without looking, she walked up the stairs and grabbed the doorknob. It was locked.
Oh no, she thought. I forgot Onna told me she was never going to open on Sunday anymore.
She stared in through the window, hoping if Onna were around that she would be let in. She could see Timmy snoozing on the counter, but there was no sign of Onna. She tried knocking, but all she managed to do was make Timmy yawn and roll over.
"Oh, dear, I'm going to start closing on Sundays," Onna had told her. "I don't know why I ever started opening. Just to keep myself busy, I guess. Ollie was never open on Sundays. He always said it was a day to rest. If God rested on Sunday, then we should rest on Sunday. Ollie would roll over in his grave if he knew I was opening on Sunday mornings."
Ravine left the shop, still thinking about the mirror, and headed back to Water Street. She crossed the road to avoid the construction site, and headed up Derek's front lawn. She rang the bell and it was a few minutes before his mother answered.
"Oh Ravine, Derek's not here. He's over at Sunil's."
Walking home, Ravine thought about calling Joannie or Lisa. But something about yesterday's trip to the cemetery was bugging her.
Even though it was cooler, the sun had at last come out and it was a gorgeous day. Ravine decided to get her bike. On a day like today, it wouldn't take long to get to the cemetery.
It was a crisp ride, and she regretted again that she hadn't brought her jacket. But she rode easily through the winding roads and up the hills. She hopped off her bike at the gates and propped it up against a tree.



This time she wasn't going to visit her sister's grave. It was Abigail's she wanted.
As she approached, the wind picked up again, just as it had yesterday.
"Abigail Baldwin," she whispered as she touched the stone. And like yesterday, she could feel a tingle from the stone, like a small electric shock. It felt warm to the touch.
"Abigail Baldwin," she whispered again.
Then as the dull ache began in her head, the wind picked up again.
"1872-1882," Ravine said, out loud.
A couple of months earlier, when she and Derek were here looking for information about Isabel, this grave only caught their attention because of the short life of this girl. She was the same age as them when she died. Her and Derek were now eleven. Both of them shared their birthdays at the end of summer.
But today was different. The sudden rising breeze, the voice she heard on the wind yesterday, hearing the Baldwin name repeatedly, made her wonder. What was drawing her to Abigail Baldwin?
Ravine stood up and left the cemetery. This time, the wind and the voice didn't follow her.