In the mirror world

Chapter 16

Mildew and mold. A smell so unlike anything else, Carolyn thought. It was sharp like the bitterest of coffees. Enough to get your attention, but not enough to wet the eyes. Head pounding, she cracked open her lids just a sliver to confirm her suspicions. A basement. Such a perfect environment for spores to settle and multiply their numbers, she thought.

A thread of saliva hung from the corner of her dry lips and an invasion of cobwebs swathed what little clarity of mind she had, then denied her access. Carolyn tilted her chin down to see her hands and feet bound in coils of rough twine that was cutting into her tender flesh. A scream rose from her throat but was instantly stifled by a handkerchief tied over her mouth. Adrenalin flooding her veins and hot tears welling in her eyes, Carolyn inhaled deep breaths, forcing herself to be calm. She rolled on her back and felt the support of the canvas cot that cradled her petite body. Above her, a small incandescent light bulb dangled from a crooked wire stapled to a board supporting the main floor. Vintage curtains covered rusty windows in wells. A washer and dryer huddled together in a corner being kept company by drainage tubs for wastewater. Footfalls rumbled overhead like bowling balls thrown carelessly down the lane. Voices, low in tone, argued with one another until one reached a mighty crescendo bringing silence to the rest.

A door at the top of a painted wood stairwell opened and a plump golden skin woman with dark hair and eyes gazed down at her.

"Oh, señora!" she exclaimed, lightly trilling the 'r'. "You are awake! I will let them know." The woman's bulky heeled shoes clomped back up the stairs and made Carolyn's already aching head feel worse.

A rapid mix of Spanish and English spilled from the woman's lips to the gathering upstairs. Blair's loafers thudded hard against the wood, barreling his way into the basement. Kneeling beside the cot, he eased her to a sitting position while expletives exploded from Carolyn's mouth, which was muffled by the restricting handkerchief.

"I-I know, Carolyn. The worst is over. I am so sorry. Please believe me," he pleaded.

Blair's arms encircled her despite Carolyn's rigid torso and knifing glare. A tangle of fragmented words shrieked ineffectively from behind her gagged mouth.

"Listen, Carolyn," he started to say. "I'm going to remove the handkerchief from your mouth. D-don't scream or anything. I'll try and help you understand everything." Blair exhaled a weighty sigh, raking his eyes over the gray basement floor. "Heaven knows you deserve some sort of explanation."

Carolyn held her glare as he slid the handkerchief down over her chin. She yanked her face from his hand, diminishing the man with judging eyes.

In the strength of her clenched jaw, she said, "Tell-me-what-is-going-on-here, Blair! Cut-me-loose!"

His heart felt clogged with the sludge of guilt that he could no longer avoid. He held her at arm's length. "I can't. Not yet, at least. Just tell me what you remember, Carolyn."

She blinked as recognition slapped her in the face like a well-aimed hand. Her tongue seized up, the words frozen in place. A lock of blond hair fell forward and covered one eye.

"Helpless," she muttered. Carolyn's eyes reached past Blair and fell on a dry crack in the basement's foundation. "I felt helpless," she repeated. "I thought that it was a bad dream, at first, but it wasn't."

"Go on," Blair encouraged.

Carolyn studied the crack with its adjoining fissures with new-found interest.

"The lights were so bright, I had to turn away. Men stood in the shadow of the lights. I couldn't see their faces. They… they were asking me questions, but I felt… like I was drunk. I don't remember what I said."

Blair wrinkled his forehead and twisted his lips. He dragged a curled fist along his mouth, then nodded before he spoke.

"Carolyn," Blair groaned and massaged his throbbing temples with pressed fingertips. "You were given sodium pentothal, you know, truth serum. They asked you the same questions that I asked you back at the cabin."

A sob welled in Carolyn's throat. "Who are they, Blair?" she asked in a tone barely above a whisper.

Out of nowhere, a telephone sitting on a corner table upstairs rang and an infant in a far bedroom wailed its discontent.

An icy dread spread through his veins and Blair crushed his eyes shut.

"The Mob, Carolyn. They are the Mob."

Captain Gregg stood outside the old white clapboard country church, his eyes full of memory, his heart a cluster of tears.

Scenes and images replayed themselves in the center of his mind, and emotions buried at sea floated their way to the surface.

Wildflowers tucked into her palm, his first wife, Carolyn, skipped through the fields surrounding the clapboard churchyard and poked little daisies into her hair. Her long gauze dress, creamy ivory, trailed behind her like a gown from an era where Kings and Queens reigned in castles of stone.

He caught up with her and she tumbled onto a bed of tall grass. Laughing and falling by her side, Daniel proposed to her with the 'spiritual' wedding in mind. His intermittent corporal state of being would stabilize, he was told, and they could share the intimacies of marriage through this unique bond. After their nuptials, the union was all that they hoped for and so much more.

A crow black as tar perched on the steeple and cawed three times, snapping Daniel Gregg back into the present. The field once bursting with wildflowers lay dry and dying from the first of many northern winds to come.

An ancient wood door, starved of varnish, groaned open against rust-coated hinges. Standing in the doorway, a portly spirit man stood in unadorned pastoral robes. A gentle smile rested on his translucent face.

"Haven't you been standing outside long enough, my son?" he asked while holding the door open. "Come, I've been expecting you, Captain."

Daniel eyed the spirit intently. "Have you now, Edmond?" he stated, nonchalantly.

A temperamental wind spun a dust devil up between the two silent spirits as if deliberately desiring their continued separation.

"Indeed, I have been expecting you, Daniel. Come, let us reason. There is much to say." With his free hand, Edmond motioned the seaman to enter.

Reluctance momentarily gripped the Captain's heart, but his need being greater marched his long legs inside.

It all still seemed the same, Daniel thought, peering from one side to the other. Candles stood in rows much like a glowing parade on the altar's border where a crucifixion cross and Bible resided in the center. Creaking pews, cold from the absence of parishioners, were flocked in spider webs and lined up one behind the other in a sanctuary fit for a country-sized congregation. A wormwood lectern stood off to one side ready to hold notes for the day's message to be given. In the rear of the church, a grotto-like area had been provided with more candles for those desiring a time of personal prayer. Today, an elderly woman spirit lit her candles, kneeled, and prayed with a Rosary draped neatly over her gnarled fingers.

His hands clasped neatly together, Pastor Edmund said to Captain Gregg, "Tell me what brings you to my door, today, friend."

The Captain continued to stare at the altar before him and Edmond. The sun began its daily descent casting long shadows on the wall that danced behind flickering candle flames. Out of the corner of his eye, Daniel watched the cleric and raised an eyebrow.

"Edmond?" he said crossing arms over his broad chest. "I find myself in a place of dire straits and need your help."

"I see," Edmond replied, tightening the cord around his robe. "What is it that you believe I can do for you?"

Anguish twisted Daniel's face as he thought afresh of Carolyn and her children. In his mind, he had let them down and now all three were missing and he alone bore the despair of their fate, whatever that had been.

"Are you aware," he said to Edmond in a voice that belied his pain, "that the link I once had to the realm of living has been severed?"

With his chin tucked in, the cleric answered, "I am, my son, and you cannot tell me that it takes you by surprise."

"No, of course, it does not. When my wife passed, I believed it to be only a matter of time before," he paused, "the inevitable would take place and I would return to the same state that I have been for 100 years."

Together, they watched shadows elongate as tails of dim sunlight reached through old leaded glass windows. Softened by the glow of candlelight, the altar took on a more ethereal feel in the closing of the day.

"Carolyn and her children, from the other world," the Captain went on, "are missing. Abducted, I believe."

"And you would like for me to help you find them, I gather?"

Daniel tugged on his earlobe and mildly coughed into his balled fist. "Yes, Edmond. I need my link re-established through this Carolyn that I may locate them most expediently."

Astonishment opened the pastor's eyes wider than offering plates and if he had had blood in his veins, it would have drained to the tips of his toes.

"You-you know I can't do that, Daniel! It-it takes a consecrated ceremony," Edmond huffed and spun his portly belly to face the seaman. "It is a special marriage that makes the bond between you and a living human possible. I… I… I…" he sputtered like a motorboat with its choke stuck open.

Hands, large and meaty, gripped the spirit pastor's shoulders and the two locked eyes.

After a minute, the Captain said, "What can you do, Edmond?! I must find them!"

Flinging hands above his head, Edmond spat, "I don't know! I-I need to think, Daniel, now let me be."

Captain Gregg sank his tall frame slowly into one of the front row pews and observed the pastor pace back and forth in front of him as if the man were a plump Thanksgiving turkey and he a famished bird of prey.

Pudgy as he was, the spirit cleric was quick and deliberate with his steps. His chunky hands whirled about as if the man were deep in conversation with a presence unseen and he mumbled words too soft to be heard. After several minutes of this repeated action, Edmond turned his flushed cheeks to Captain Gregg who was pulling on the cuffs of his jacket and earnestly trying to reel in his impatience.

"Daniel, my son," he addressed. Meet me back here in… say about 24 hours? There is someone that I need to see."

"24 hours?!" A single thunder clapped above the church causing the old timber roof to groan and dirt, ancient as the timbers themselves rained down on empty pews. "That's absurd, Edmond! Much too long!" Daniel roared.

Through gritted teeth and narrowed eyes, the portly Pastor drew strength and shot back, "You ask no small thing of me, Captain! Once I have some kind of answer for you, I anticipate that myself and a collective of Warrior Angels will have to fight our way back through the principalities. It could very well take longer than 24 hours."

Eyes blazing with flames, Daniel retorted, "Then take me with you! I will fight those hounds of hell myself!"

Edmond grunted and collected his wits to bring back his normally gentle disposition. "No… no, your presence will only draw the demons attention. You must stay here and continue to look for the family while I am away."

And with those last words, he vanished from sight before the Captain could respond.

"Here's your supper," one of the Smith sisters said after doling out four TV dinners to the children seated at a card table with a torn surface. "Eat up and don't make a mess."

The woman, Dorothy, was average in height and had dark brown hair that she wore rolled tight and pinned onto her head in a bun. Her pinched facial features seemed to suggest she was always in a sour mood and if she wasn't, there was no outward indication to the contrary. Dorothy retreated back into the living room where her sisters were already seated, sipping tea, nibbling dessert wafers and watching the evening news.

Seated at the card table with them were 2 other kids that they did not know. Candy ignored their presence for the moment and viewed the dining area that was part of a larger kitchen. Cabinets, painted white, lined a wall with a double sink in the center. Above the sink, a window had been cracked open and in the distance Candy could hear the screeches of seagulls. It was as she suspected. They could not be far from the ocean.

She peeled back the warm foil from her dinner and immediately noticed that the dinner had been overcooked. The slices of meat were crisp on the edges and the instant potatoes were dry and held almost no gravy. She glanced at the deathly pale peas and carrots one time before deciding to abort the idea of tasting them at all. Jonathan, usually ravenous, poked his fork at the dried-up edges and sighed. "I hate burned food," he said.

Using her knife to cut away the crisp edges of meat, Candy looked at the other two children and moaned, "What is this place?"

The boy and girl with empty eyes looked at Candy and shook their heads. The girl was young, very shy and was absent-mindedly spinning her finger in the hem of her outdated dress. The boy, on the other hand, was closer to Jonathan's age and wore a look of defiance that appeared to be natural to his face. He said that his name was Richard and that he, and his sister, Maggie had just arrived 2 days earlier and they were waiting to hear from their parents. Candy and Jonathan introduced themselves as their mother would have wanted.

Candy chewed her piece of meat that reminded her more of the rawhide bones that they would give to Scruffy. She gulped her water from the aluminum tumbler to chase away the aftertaste and started on her cold potatoes.

Squinting both of his eyes, Richard leaned in Candy's direction.

"I can tell you this much," he said in a serious tone. "Whatever you do, do not make a mess! Not ever!"

—-

"The Mafia?!" Carolyn lashed back at Blair. "You can't be serious! What does the Mafia have to do with any of this?!"

Blair rested his hands back on Carolyn's shoulders where his fingers remembered her skin with a long-forgotten familiarity.

"Calm down, Carolyn. Let me explain."

And as he did, Carolyn regarded his thumbs that were caressing small circles on the top of her shoulders in a way she felt was meant to be comforting and not creepy.

"Listen, Carolyn," he said with a soothing tone. "When I got into your car the other night and drove you down here…"

In a cool voice, she interrupted and said, "You mean kidnapped me, Blair?"

"Oh, well. I-I guess so. Anyway, I was hoping to keep you safe from them, but they must have already known about you. My family has been part of this group for a number of years. It's where we've obtained most of our wealth and… well, once you're born into it, there is little choice to be made."

Shadows of grief and discontent fell across his face and Blair's mind appeared to somewhere else other than in a stinky basement with Carolyn.

"When the Carolyn of this world married me, she had not known of my connections and… I thought that she knew, but I was wrong. Since we weren't married long and she was not around any of the dealings, the boys let her go. Now, they think that you faked your death and will turn over some kind of state's evidence, so that becomes a problem."

Color drained from Carolyn's face and her hands began to tremble.

"Are they going to kill me, Blair?" she asked in a low shaky voice.

"No," he answered and turned his troubled blue eyes to one side. "But I had to cut a deal, so I'm afraid it's much worse."

Carolyn screwed her eyes and asked, "Worse? What could be worse than being murdered?"

Blair bit his lip and with a wry smile, he said, "You're going to have to marry me, Carolyn… again."

—-