“-They called it the grave lens.” Elliot was listening again. “See here?” The curator said as he pointed towards the mirror’s black glass. “The Mayans believed you could see the dead through this glass. Spiritual leaders performed funeral rites with this present. They believed the dead would hear their own eulogies and they would be pleased.”
“Did it work?” Elliot asked as he took in the artifact. It looked like the hand mirror of an ancient princess, inlaid with gold and precious stones, only the glass was all wrong.
The curator, a owlish man named Nigel, chuckled to himself at the question. “Of course not. The Mayan’s were bound by the same rules of time and space as us.”
Elliot looked down at the mirror, and then at Nigel. “May I?”
Nigel nodded and held out a hand. “Yes. Of course, there’s a strict you break it you buy it policy.”
Elliot nodded and he wrapped his fingers around the soft gold handle. Lifting it to eye level, he gazed into the translucent black glass. Can you hear me? He thought. I miss you, and so does mom. Even your stupid jokes. You were’t always home, but we still miss you because it was good when you were.
“I’ve got to run over to the Egyptian exhibit Mr. Raines, be back shortly. Just let Sean know if you need anything, he’ll be right outside the door.” Elliot nodded and looked down at the mirror again.
Outside, Nigel leant towards Sean the security guard with a cupped hand. “Make sure he doesn’t try to sneak out with the artifact. Has a dubious look to him.”
Why had Elliot thought this would work? Desperation perhaps. The screwball logic of those who have exhausted all other options. A plus B equals C.
Elliot’s father had stolen the mirror from a collector. He then rented a motel room under an alias Elliot and his mother had recognized. The mirror had been there, but Elliot’s father vanished. Police thought he’d made a run for it. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. His father had been a hard man to find, and even harder to control. His mother had often told him that was why she fallen in love with his father.
Elliot needed to know. How should he feel? It was all contingent on whether the old man had run away, or died. There was no evidence either way.
Every time he went to visit her, he was almost driven to drink himself. Watching her commit suicide by the glass. Then there was the smoking. She’d quit thirty years before, but with her husband gone - It seemed like she had just let go.
Elliot picked up the mirror again and held it close to his face, looking into the milky black depths, trying to find the bottom. “Hey.” Elliot said as he looked into the mirror. “Andrew.”
Outside the room, Sean arched an eyebrow as Elliot spoke to himself.
“Dad, if you’re there, just say something.” Elliot could almost see his father’s face in the inky lens. “We need you.” Light twisted and curved within the mirror, forming the rough outline of a face. Elliot shook his head and it was gone. A wishful perception.
Maybe his father was dead in a ditch somewhere, a casualty of greed. Or living a new life in South America, a new wife, a new family. Elliot ran a hand through his hair.
It was the possibilities that never let it rest. Sitting on the couch with mom after she’d had her second screwdriver. The theories got out of hand. “Well maybe he just got hit by a car.” She’d suggest with the brightness of someone who’d won five bucks on a scratch and win.
“They’d have found a body.”
It went on for hours, the theories getting worse with each drink. “Maybe he found another woman?” Mom would say, her face melting in despair. Ice cubes clinking inside her glass as she shook silently with tears.
There was nothing Elliot could say either way. There was no proof. Maybe he had found another woman. Of course he would never say that. Elliot always lied.
“No, of course not mom, he loved you.” He’d say, an arm around her.
Elliot snatched up the mirror again, face screwed up in anger. “Say something. Say something, you-” Elliot had no words for him and devolved into growling.
Only viscous darkness swirling within the golden frame.
Elliot dropped the mirror into it’s display and walked towards the window. On the street below a merchant shouted “Fish. Fresh fish.”
Angry beyond words, Elliot ground his teeth together and stared out the window. Why was he wasting his time?
It was the only thing that made any sense.
Elliot smirked to himself. What was it about human beings that made them so susceptible to believing the absurd? Some things simply don’t have an answer. It doesn’t have to make sense.
Elliot returned to the mirror. As he picked it up in his hands and gazed into the darkness where nothing was clear he felt a tugging within him. There was a sense in Elliot. More deeply ingrained than the marrow of his bones. The bond between parent and child, between blood, that is beyond understanding.
Within that darkness, his father looked up at him, eyes full of longing. Sense. It didn’t have to make sense. “I’m leaving boy.” His father’s voice came with large hand on small shoulder. “Take care of your mother now, you’re the man of the house.”
A man at five. Elliot lost himself in the mirror. He saw his own face. He was his father, his mother and Elliot Raines. They were all one another, in some arcane way.
It blindsided him again that he was very much the same man as his father. Before he vanished he had not seen them often. A couple times a year, during the holidays. Things had been tense. You could know a person to their soul and still have nothing to say.
Mom was cooking, and his father was cracking jokes. He’d never ceased with them, no matter how tense or silent their engagements became. He’d always soldier on, it didn’t matter if they laughed or not. Often the response was silence. The hurt on his face was always satisfying. To Elliot, the failure of his father’s jokes was the karmic force of the universe righting itself for past pains.
What he’d give to hear one of them again.
“Leave here son.” His father’s voice, “They ar-“
He had no memory of his father telling him to leave. Within the darkness of the mirror the smoke had become more violent. The shapes more dynamic.
His father lay on a rack of bones. Eyelids ripped in the middle, bursting like grape skin. “Leave now, I beg of you.” Even in the darkest night, a candle glows.
Elliot’s fingers sank into gold as his grip tightened on the mirror, but he was unaware. Teeth dropping out like hail. The gaping cavern. Mouth of blood.
Tears dripped down Elliot’s face silently as his mouth worked. “-let them communicate with their dead.” Nigel’s voice. “Let them tell the dead how much they missed them. Throw the baby out with the bathwater. The dead do what they please.”
White-hot metal burns from the sun. From the son. From the sun. Mah me-nah-ahn eehn paahlal.
A hawker on the street. “Heads. Fresh Heads.” The sun aligned with the Silio moon and the knife tore into it’s chest. Sharp teeth removed the soul. That red bumping, pump, wet with life. Ate it and tasted the vitality. Feasted on Silio.
“LEAVE SON RUN AWAY NOW.” Words echoed off Elliot’s brain growing quieter with each bounce. Sense. His senses were fading.
The afterlife existed, believing didn’t make it otherwise. A child’s voice rang out. Pain in Elliot’s spine. A scream louder than birth. Wailing like the man on the rack. A sound torn from the stomach, pulled like teeth. Dad on the rack. “Heads. Fresh heads.”
“Where should you go in your house if you’re dying?” A grinning skull. “The living room.”
The door opened and Nigel entered, busily fingering his way through a stack of paper. “Hello Mr. Raines. As a fellow enthusiast, I’m sure that you’re ve-“ Raines froze and dropped the stack of papers.
The mirror lay on the tiled floor, deep groves in it’s hilt from being squeezed.
Within the black glass, the violent storm stilled.
There was no sign of Elliot.