He felt like a prisoner in his own body. After touching the mirror, he'd felt an almost electric buzz, then seemed to lose control of his body. He could hear himself talking and feel himself moving, but he didn't have control over it…and he wasn't alone.
After the first few panicked moments of trying to gain control, Ezra finally stopped and did one of the things he did best…he observed. It seemed the girl whose reflection he'd seen had somehow entered him and taken control. He felt and heard himself tell Vin that her name was Felicity and that he was sleeping. Maybe, since he'd stopped fighting, she didn't think he was conscious any longer.
He took in the story of woe she told Vin, but it didn't feel right. Although Felicity may have been innocent when this Thomas Dudley person tried to force her into marriage, the impression he had wasn't that she was simply an innocent victim, but that she was a malevolent presence. Perhaps all the time she's spent in this in between had warped her somehow.
"You can't do that," he heard Vin say. "There are people who are going to look for us."
He felt and heard himself let out a chilling laugh. "Then I'd have more to keep me company." He felt his body whirl around until he was once more facing the mirror. He was able to see Felicity's image superimposed over his own as if they were both in the mirror and outside of it. There had to be a way to undo this. He just had to figure it out…all while keeping the girl unaware.
"Felicity," Vin said as he grabbed hold of Ezra's shoulder and turned him back around. "This isn't right. Think about how you felt when Thomas was trying to force you to marry him. That was against your will. You're doing the same thing to Ezra…and me now. You know it ain't right."
"Right and wrong matters not. I've been waiting for someone to come on this day year after year and the two of you were finally sent to me. This is as it should be."
Vin couldn't believe this was happening. This was supposed to be a simple search, but here he was trying to rationalize and convince a ghost that had been stuck in a mirror for 241 years to give up the body of his friend and let them leave.
"It's All Hallows Eve," Ezra's voice continued. The veil between that which is living and that which is no longer is at its thinnest this night. None of the others who saw me ever came on All Hallows Eve. When the clock strikes the midnight hour, I'll be separate from this looking glass."
"You'll be separate." Vin looked uneasily between Ezra and mirror. "What's that mean?"
Ezra again turned toward the mirror and ran his hand over the reflection. "It means this man," she looked back over her shoulder at Vin, "Ezra, you say his name is." She didn't wait for Vin to answer before looking back to the mirror. "Ezra and I will be together for always. I'll never be lonely again. He'll wake then, and we'll be companions forever more."
"That's all well and good," Vin said trying not to let any uneasiness into voice. "But we're still stuck in this room. Like I said with no food and no water, you're only going to be companions for a real short time."
Caressing the mirror gently, Ezra smiled at Vin. "We can return to the looking glass then. He is quite handsome. I think I should like to have been wife to him."
"Wait a minute. Hang on." Vin was quickly concluding that this ghost wasn't of sound mind. He almost laughed out loud at the thought. Who'd have thought he'd be analyzing the sanity of a ghost. "I thought you wanted out of the mirror. Now you want to hang around inside of Ezra until he keels over dead from lack of water so you can take him back in the mirror."
"And you. We will be companions for all eternity."
"You're nuts, lady. I ain't hanging around her 'til I'm dead just to be with you in a mirror and I'm not going to let Ezra do that either."
"You've little choice in the matter. Tell me of this man…this Ezra."
"Why don't you wake him up and ask him yourself," Vin suggested.
Ezra's shoulders raised in a shrug. "If you won't tell me of him, I can wait until the clock chimes the midnight hour."
"Got a while 'til that happens," Vin responded as he pulled out his phone to check the time. He was surprised when he saw it was already 11:30 at night. It had been just after three in the afternoon when he and Ezra arrived at the house. It hadn't taken them long to search it. He didn't think they'd been locked in the room for that long. Yet over eight hours had gone by. That left the question of where the others were. There's no way Chris would have let this much time go by without trying to contact them, and, not getting an answer, he and the others would have been here looking for them hours ago. "What the hell," he muttered.
"What a curious time piece," Ezra said as he watched Vin check the time. "Time can move quite quickly," he added seeing the shock on the other man's face. "Soon. Soon."
Vin moved back to the door. Echoing Ezra's movement from earlier, he traced his finger over the barely seen gap between it and the door frame. He had half an hour to get himself and Ezra out.
He noticed that even if Felicity moved around the room, she always brought Ezra's body back close to the mirror. Something was telling him that if he could get them out of the room, whatever hold she had over Ezra would break as soon as he was out of proximity of the mirror.
"You said another man would come into this room. What was he doing?" He hoped if he could get her to talk, she might reveal something.
"As I said. He would hide boxes under the floor and then he would leave. Sometimes, he would take the boxes out again."
"Has he been here recently? What part of the floor did he hide these boxes under?"
"He's not been here for days." Ezra pointed to a corner of the room. "He'd hide the boxes there."
Vin went over to the corner of the room and squatted down to look at the floor. He ran his hand over the floorboards but didn't find any way to lift them up. Logically, he realized, unless there was a sub-basement, there shouldn't be any room below the floorboards to hide anything. He was just turning to say as such when he saw Ezra behind him. He held a piece of the broken chair above his head ready to bring it crashing down on Vin's head.
"What the hell," Vin exclaimed as he rolled away from the piece of wood.
"I won't let you take him." Ezra's arm raised to strike another blow, but instead of coming down, his arm shook. It was as if one force tried to bring it down while another tried to hold it back. His face twisted as opposing forces tried to control the body.
"Fight her, Ez," Vin called out seeing the struggle on his friend's face. "You're stronger than her. You can do it."
Unexpectedly, the piece of wood Ezra held was flung to the side and he fell to the ground where he stayed hunched over breathing heavily. When he looked up, Vin could have sworn he saw his friend's eyes turn from their accustomed green to brown then back again. "You will not win," Ezra's voice snarled as he crawled back to the mirror. He sat with his back against it breathing heavily for a moment before getting up. "The time is short. Soon, we will be together for eternity."
Vin checked the time again thinking he still has most of the half hour. He sucked in a breath when he saw time seemed to have jumped again and he had less than five minutes to figure a way out. If Ezra had been able to gain control once, he had to be able to do it again. Vin just had to reach him. "Fight her, Ezra. We need a way out of this, but you've got to fight her."
Again, a struggle for control showed on Ezra's face. "Vin," he gasped out. "Help me."
"I'm trying to, Ez. You gotta tell me how. She knows how. Tell me."
"The mirror," Ezra gasped out. Again, there was an internal struggle as Felicity took control again. "No!" Ezra's voice shouted. "You will not tell him."
"Fight her, Ezra." Vin looked at the time again. "We're running out of time. You've gotta tell me." He grasped his friend by the shoulders and shook him. "Let him go, damn you. Let him, go."
"The mirror," Ezra gasped as he regained control again.
"Yeah. What about the mirror."
"Break it, Vin. You must break it."
"How?" Vin demanded. Did Ezra mean just the glass of the mirror or did the frame have to be broken as well.
"Please!" Ezra begged as time ran out. "You must shatter it." He wrenched himself from Vin's hold as Felicity gained control again. "Nooooo!" his voice called out.
Knowing there was no time to waste, Vin pulled out his weapon and aimed at the mirror. Just as he pulled the trigger, Ezra's body came toward him trying to stop the shot. Not wanting to shoot his friend, Vin pulled his arm to the right and his shot barely nicked the frame. The two then began to struggle for the gun. It felt like a clock was ticking in Vin's head. Suddenly, he started hearing chiming and knew time was just about up. Wrenching the gun from Ezra's hold, he took aim and pulled the trigged four times in quick succession and the mirror shattered. When it did, a blinding flash filled the room. Vin and Ezra were flung apart and were now…
M7 M7 M7 M7 M7 M7 M7
…descending the stairs into the basement of an abandoned Victorian home on the outskirts of the city. They'd spent the last several hours searching the abandoned the building and they'd still to find any sign of the counterfeit wine they'd received a tip about.
Both men were eager to finish the search. Not only was it Sunday, but it was also Halloween. Vin had promised to help set up the costume party at the youth center and he was eager to get there and get started. Ezra was looking forward to a night spent giving out candy to the neighborhood trick or treaters. He'd bought several pumpkins and wanted to carve Jack o'Lanterns to put out before the children started to arrive.
As they reached the bottom of the stairs, Ezra abruptly stopped and shook his head. "I've the strangest feeling that we've already come down these stairs."
"Like déjà vu?" Vin asked. "Cause I got that feeling, too…and that we were somewhere else just a second ago."
"Yes. Me as well," Ezra agreed. He looked all around as if he expected someone or something to materialize. "Perhaps it's just this house and day."
"Yeah. It does have that haunted house kinda feel to it." They'd reached the bottom of the steps and saw a room at the far side of the basement. The door was open and there was a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling illuminating it dimly. The only contents they could see from the doorway was a wooden chair and a mirror that looked antique. Just as he was about to step in the room, Ezra grabbed his arm and pulled him back. "What?" he asked.
"It's a trap," Ezra said then pointed to the door. "If it closes, we've no way out."
Vin looked to where Ezra was pointing and saw there was no doorknob on the inside of the door. As Ezra had said, if the door closed behind them, they'd have no way out of the room. "Good catch. How'd you know?"
Ezra shook his head. "I don't know. I just had a feeling." A chill went through is body that he tried to suppress. "I have the oddest feeling about this room…like something…malevolent is here."
"Yeah. I know what you mean," Vin agreed. "I say we call in to Chris that we didn't find anything. DPD can secure the place until a more thorough search can be made. Let's just get out of here."
Ezra looked warily into the room then quickly looked away when his gaze stopped on the mirror. "I completely agree with you, Vin." As the two men backed away from the room, he swung the door closed blocking the mirror from his sight. As he did, he thought he caught sight of a shadowy figure in the mirror…a girl with dark hair and eyes dressed in clothing from the 18th Century. As the door snicked shut, he shook his head. He had to have imagined it. As Vin had said, the house did give off a haunted house vibe and it was Halloween. "Let's get on to our holiday plans," he said as he led the way up the basement stairs.
M7 M7 M7 M7 M7 M7 M7
As the door swung shut on the room, the image of Felicity appeared in the mirror again. She barely caught a glimpse of Ezra just before it snicked shut. "Next time," she whispered then disappeared.
