Looking Glass

She set the record on the Hi-Fi and pulled her journal out of her new desk. Her agenda for the day of the twelfth had been all about making the attic space her own. She had achieved all her goals and was feeling accomplished. Cora Cameron was a single woman who could get things done independently.

She pulled on a cardigan as the kettle began to whistle. It was not time to write out her reflections. She poured the hot water into a mug and added a Lipton tea bag. She walked out of the kitchen, set the needle in the record's groove, and turned toward the card table.

Suddenly a faint smell wafted through the air. Something not unpleasant, almost like something sweet baking. She stepped back into the kitchen and wondered if the scent was drifting up from one of the below units.

But it did not seem so present in the kitchen. She stepped back into the main room and sniffed again. "Butter cookies?"

She shook her head and went with her tea to the table. She opened the first deck of bicycle playing cards as a brassy into cued her favorite man from Memphis to start singing "Trouble."

"If you are a ghost, your butter cookies smell vaguely of nicotine," Cora mused.

"If you're looking for trouble," Elvis sang through the Hi-fi speakers. " You came to the right place... If you're looking for trouble... Take a look right at my face...."

Cora pulled two cards from the unshuffled deck, the two Jokers. She placed them carefully together at the center of the card table. She knew she'd been invited to join the Quades and some other tenants for television time every Saturday in the old house's main hall. But she felt this activity helped focus her mind and calm her, like the warm tea.

With the first brick laid, Cora sipped her chamomile, determined not to feel doubt over her new living space or her new job in the rainy but beautiful Northwest.

~October 1, 2022~

Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber had brought up most of the small boxes and the mattress with little more trouble. And now the Dumber of the Tweedles was sucking in vape juice and blasting some top-40 hit, mostly bass-line reverb and repeated non-word phrases.

The whole apartment smelled vaguely of baked cookies and douchebaggery. Ridge forked over the money he'd agreed to pay the two links for helping him heft his belongings up from the U-Haul.

"Sure, you don't want us to come back tomorrow to help you clear out some of this junk?" T-Dumb asked, having to yell over his cohort's blaring bilious beats.

"No," Ridge shouted. He scowled at Dumber. "At least not the both of you."

Dumber sucked at his vape pen and exhaled a long silvery plume. "Chill, man. Don't take out having to squat in a haunted attic on me."

Ridge took Dumber's smartphone and killed the music. "Don't you have earbuds?"

"Keep losing them," Dumber shrugged. "I left the last pair at this sweet little chica's place."

"I'm sure she fondles them and thinks of you," Ridge said, setting the box of journals he'd brought from the bedroom on the ancient card table near the kitchen. "So, who is this ghost supposed to be? The murdered girl from the fifties?"

"Who said she was murdered?" T-Dumb asked.

Ridge shrugged. "Aren't most ghosts murder victims or people who lived tortured lives locked away by evil captors?"

T-Dumber piped up. "Na, man. Some are creepy children who sing in the middle of the night. Like 'La-la la-la la-la.'"

Ridge grabbed up the unfinished journal. "You said she was a researcher? Was she maybe a Ph.D. in the psych department?"

T-Dumb perked up. "Yeah," he supplied. "What did you find?"

Ridge flipped to a page at random. "Summery, September 28, 1963. Viewed Apartment at 23 Harris Way in Myrtle Point. Attic space." Ridge let his eyes dart around them before continuing. "One Bedroom, one bath, kitchen, and office space. Landlords, the Quades, seem an impossibly happy couple overcoming recent trauma. I impulsively signed a twelve-month lease after sampling the wife's sticky buns and learning I could pay $10 extra weekly for laundry service. Plans to move in next weekend. The first night in the new digs is set for October 5. Returned to the motel off Winchester Bay before 7 p.m. This rainy weather makes me want to curl up with my books and records more than anything else."

Ridge sat the notebook down on top of the box.

"Quade, huh?" T-Dumb moved forward to read the neatly formed green letters. "That would be Grandma's first husband. He had some sort of accident when they'd only been married a few years. Left her the money and the house. She met and married my grandfather after being a widow for some years. She doesn't talk about her first husband, but you can tell she loved him."

"You can?" T-Dumber balked.

"By how she hung onto this place." Ridge nodded. "She's kept it up pretty well for a house overlooking an ocean and facing an almost constant barrage of gales and salt air."

"My dad told me he asked Grandma Dinah about her first marriage once, and she said it was like her first husband just slowly faded away. I always assumed he must have had undiagnosed cancer or something."

"Well, you two have been paid for tour services. I've got some unpacking and rearranging to get to. So, until I call, back to prison with you."

T-Dumb gave a soft chuckle. T-Dumber scowled. "Did you tell him about my community service requirements? Honestly, man, everybody around her drives baked anymore. Not like I hit anything but a few mailboxes with my truck."

Ridge nodded. "And on that note, I look forward to giving you both separate reviews on Angi.com as soon as I've set up my Wi-Fi. Am-scray. I want to spray some Febreze and enjoy much-desired air and time devoid of sound and vape pollution."

Ridge bustled the two movers down the spiral stairs and shut the door behind them. As he turned the latch and heard the satisfying click, he exhaled. "Some interpersonal interactions make me miss the goddamned pandemic."

No sooner had he turned from the locked door than he heard something. He then cocked his head as music suddenly came to his ear, playing from above.

"...I was born standing up... And talking back... My daddy was a green-eyed mountain jack! Cause I'm evil, my middle name is misery...."

"Elvis?" Ridge puzzled, taking the spiral stairs back up slowly.

"...Well, I'm evil! So don't you mess around with me."

As he reached the top of the stairs, the music continued as if playing on some unseen old speaker.

He walked around, finding a defunct old HiFi on a dusty desk. He opened it to find it was indeed switched on, but then felt around the back to pull the power cord up and see it striped to the wires and devoid of a plug.

Everything else in the attic seemed still, except dust mots drifting in the waiting afternoon sunlight. The music sounded close, but...

"Must be drifting up from one of the other apartments," he nodded. "Either that or a psychologist who likes The King is haunting your apartment. Interesting toss-up, Ridge."

He grabbed up the large box labeled "bedroom" and heated it through the small maze of attic clutter. He would set up his bed first, he decided. And then he would tackle some shelves and perhaps hang that big mirror he had found.

"Nitimur in vetitum," he heard himself say again upon entering the room. He pulled the mattress cover, fitted sheets, and other bedclothes from the box. Oddly, he found his eyes drawn to the old mirror and its ominous inscription. As he passed, he noticed the glass seemed somehow to reflect the room as darker than it was. An odd optical illusion, he supposed.

The old Elvis song ended in the other room (or wherever the music came from). Then another record selection brought Etta James's voice floating through the dusty air.

"Whoever they are, they love the classics," Ridge nodded, then scowled, realizing his pillows were in a separate box from his linens. Sighing, he went back into the living room and stopped in his tracks.

On the table was a neatly arranged house of playing cards where once there had been nothing but dust and boxes. He blinked at the cards, strolling to the table, eyes darting around the room.

"All right," he called. "This is very funny, and that's an impressive trick. But whoever is in here, just jump out and yell 'boo' and get it over with!"

There was no movement. No sound except Etta singing about how "All she could do was cry...."

Then another sound. Someone was humming along to the tune, an unseen woman walking past him. Then the door to the bathroom moved, and he heard the shower start.

"Okay," he called. "All very convincing. You all should Imagineer at Disney!"

He sidled over to the card table, keeping his eye on the bathroom door. Steam was wafting out now, and there was the distinct sound of a shower curtain being opened and closed. Ridge glanced at the cards on the table and a tea mug beside them.

There was steaming brown tea still in the mug.

He touched it. It was very, very real.

His mind flashed to the scene in The Shining. When he was too young, he'd accidentally seen the movie at a friend's house. The bit with the old rotting corpse in the tub had put him off bath time for weeks.

He stepped further away from the cracked bathroom door and bumped the table. The house of cards collapsed, but somehow, the music seemed louder, and it had an odd effect on Ridge Grey. It turned his childhood fear into soft-core rage.

"Okay," he called. "This has stopped being funny. I'm a guy who can take a practical joke, but... " he moved resolutely toward the bathroom door. "Hello?! Mission Accomplished, shitheads! You two are way smarter than I gave you credit for."

He paused at the door, smelling the steam and ivory soap.... It sounded like a woman's voice humming along with the record.

He paused. It was obvious T-Dumb, and T-Dumber had roped somebody feminine in on this outlandish prank. He weighed the awkwardness of barging in on a strange young woman in the shower.

He then felt stupid for thinking she would actually be in the shower. She would be on the tile floor holding the phone, filming his reaction for some crazy Halloween TikTok or something.

He stiffened his resolve. He would barge in and be, prepared for anything. "Alright, you fuckheads asked for it!"

He pushed open the door.

~October 5, 1963~

"Ahh!"

The door banging open while she was in the shower caused Cora to jump and spin. Her mind flashed to the Cineplex back home. On a double date, she'd gone on to see the latest Alfred Hitchcock.

Janet Leigh gets it in the shower. The killer with the giant kitchen knife.

As she had done in the movie theater, Cora clenched her eyes shut, content to let the stabbing happen. She was no fighter. She would take the horrible, painful death without dignity and then slide to the bottom of the tub, the shower curtain rings pop-pop-popping as she fell. Her life's blood could spiral down the drain. Vera Miles and John What's-his-name would avenge her!

After thinking all this in less than a second, she was somehow disappointed when she felt no knife point piercing her flesh.

She opened one eye. There was no shadowy figure.

She flung the shower curtain wide. No twenty-something man-child in his mother's black dress and dime-store joke wig brandished a knife. There was nothing and nobody.

It had just been a sudden draft.

A gust of wind through an opened window had blown the door, frightening her out of her lather.

Cora felt ridiculous. She closed the curtain and rinsed off before shutting off the water. She grabbed a towel and started laughing at herself. "Got to love that cortisol and adrenaline bump."

In truth, up until Psycho, Cora Cameron could honestly admit that she had always felt ridiculous being dragged to horror movies. The effects were cheesy, the acting campy, and the tension-building music always felt forced.

Although that Christopher Lee fellow playing Dracula wasn't too bad with or without the fangs, when it came to horror movies, things fell abysmally short in Cora Cameron's estimation.

Once dry, Cora wrapped herself in the towel and went to the bathroom mirror. With a handcloth, she cleared away the fog and then ran her fingers through her wet, dark hair. She'd been wearing it in a choppy chin-length bob recently, and it still felt like too much hair for her. Her skin was pale and lightly freckled over the nose and cheeks.

She felt it then. Once again, that odd sensation of someone very close to her. Like a presence just over her shoulder, perhaps even closer. There was something extra this time; the presence was that of a man. A man who smelled like Birchwood mixed with cedar bark and light sweat.

"It's an improvement on the butter cookies," she admitted. "But I'm not the kind of girl who likes to be startled in the shower, Mr. Ghost."

~October 1, 2022~

He had heard the shower. He had seen the steam wafting through the crack in the door. Now he was feeling the heat and humidity of the room dissipating, seeing the water droplets trace down the edges of the cast iron tub. He turned, and the mirror's fog was being wiped away by an invisible hand. Someone had taken a shower in his bathroom, and someone was still in his bathroom, although invisible and oblivious to his presence.

"Hello?" he managed to choke out. "Can... can you hear me?"

The humming he had heard before continued. It was a soft young woman's voice. He found it oddly pleasant despite the situation.

"Um," he searched. Wondering how one went about talking to a ghost. "Um, you have a lovely voice. Where are you from originally?"

Ghostbusters? Did he really just pull an opener from Ghostbusters?

"Seriously, can you hear me or not, Ghost Girl?"

As if to give him a hint, there was a sudden intense feeling, like a cool breeze carrying the scent of Ivory soap walking through him. The light in the bathroom clicked off by itself, and he quickly turned to flip it back on.

~1963~

Cora stopped and turned to look at the lights on in the bathroom. She'd clicked them off, and they instantly popped on again.

"What's the matter, handsome? Don't like the dark?" She flipped the switch off, and it popped back on again.

"Really," she said, turning indignantly. "Alright, if you want to fight about it--" She killed the lights again.

~2022~

"Cut it out!"

He flipped the lights on, and they flipped almost instantly off again. It happened four times more before he jammed his finger under the toggle and held it up firmly.

"I'm still in here. And I'm not ready to come out and face a world with ghosts in it, okay, Slimer!"

~1963~

She pushed down on the switch, but it wouldn't budge. "I'm done in there, Casper! I don't need a friendly ghost running up my lighting bill."

She would have kicked whoever was holding the toggle up in the shins had there been any shins to kick.

She blew an exasperated breath out and relented. "Fine. Just put the lid down when you're done!"

She stormed toward the kitchen and stopped when she saw that her card house had been demolished. "Of all the childish--"

She grabbed her mug of tea and made a bee-line for the bedroom. "Just a heads up. I want no rattling chains or blood dripping down my walls after 9 p.m." She slammed the door and locked it behind her.

~2022~

"The fuck!?" Ridge Grey flipped off the bathroom light and went to the bedroom door. He tried the knob and cursed again. "Okay, not funny! That's my room. I was making the bed up before you started going bump in the night!"

He looked out the window. It was technically still mid-Afternoon. But he was too mad to honestly give a shit about his semantics right now. He raised his knuckles and knocked. "Come on! If this is a prank, it really isn't funny, guys. And if it isn't a prank, have a heart, Deadhead! That's the only new mattress in this attic. Who knows what could crawl out of one of the Sifolis Sealys I managed to dig out up here."

~1963~

The knocking was actually kind of polite, Cora had to admit. Like someone both perturbed but nervous. She sipped her tea and considered.

"Well, my diary is out there. If I want to record any of this for posterity, I will have to open the door sooner or later." She threw off her towel and went to the closet to select a pair of pajamas and a robe. "Honestly, though. I thought most ghosts worth their ectoplasm could simply walk through doors."

The knocking suddenly stopped.

"Well, at least he can let a girl get dressed for bed in peace."

~2022~

Ridge went to the briefcase he'd set on the kitchen counter. The first thing he had brought up that morning. He flipped the locks and flung them open, finding the keys Mrs. Dodgson had given him.

"Ha ha!" he laughed. He flipped through to the skeleton key on the ring. "Why splinter a doorframe when you have the key!"

He rushed to the bedroom door, turned the key in the lock and--

~1963~

She had picked up the silk top of her pajamas and admired the old mirror again. "I wonder if you used to belong to my ghost friend?" She asked. "Is he the one who put that little plaque on you? Nitimur in vetitum?"

As she said it, she heard a key in the lock. She wheeled just in time to see the door opening.

"Holy Sh--"

~2022~

Ridge Grey, an average weight, slightly tall, thirty-three-year-old graduate of Rice University in Huston, Texas, pushed through the door. Then it was like he was being pulled.

Well, not precisely pulled.

Ridge might have described the sensation as an incredible sucking force much like one would expect to experience if one fell up into the heavens, carried by a great cyclone.

The force pulled him forward through the door, across the room, barreling toward the great mirror he'd left leaning against the wall. At such tremendous speed, he had only enough time to pull his arms across his face in anticipation of being sliced to ribbons by the broken glass.

Instead of a dramatic crash as one would expect to hear upon hitting a mirror at high speed, Ridge Grey heard nothing. In fact, for what might have been a second or an eternity, Ridge didn't hear, see, taste, smell, or feel anything. If he did experience any sensations, his human mind probably wouldn't have understood them. And whatever he passed into behind the surface of the mirror, it was nothing, and nowhere that experiences time, place, or sensation in terms a human brain might comprehend.

All Ridge knew was that in one instant, it had been quarter to six in Astoria, Oregon, on October 1st, 2022. And then--

~1963~

The blast of hot air through the open door had been jarring, like a blast from the furnaces of hell. But Cora rushed and grabbed the handle, slamming it shut again. She wedged her still nude body against the door and turned the lock.

"Key or no key, can't you give a girl some privacy while she's getting dressed?"

The thump behind her caused her to jump. She straightened up and felt a sudden twinge of fear raising the hairs on the back of her neck. Someone was behind her in the room. Someone or something.

It's not real, she thought to herself. It's just your imagination. You're a doctor of psychology, for God's sake, Cameron!

"Uh?" A man's voice said behind her. "Where--?"

She turned, and he was on the floor. He'd probably landed on his face, yet as he attempted to scramble up, he seemed more disoriented than in genuine pain. She could see that he was tall despite being in a heap on the floor. As he stood shakily, he was more than a foot and a half taller than her. He had dark wavy hair and a few days' scruffy beard growth.

His eyes spun around the room as if he were dizzy, and then they landed on her face. Then they drifted lower.

"Um, hi?" He said.