He stopped the yell of shock that threatened to escape him when the ground fell out from under him, but could not stop the heavy grunt as he fell hard on a strange, uneven surface. The breath was forced from his lungs and he struggled to catch it again as he tried to figure out in his mind what had just happened. He was not on the hilltop any longer, but was lying on what felt like several thick ropes. The light from above just allowed him to see that these were in fact some sort of plant material.
The light from above?
Newkirk looked up, and to his surprise saw what appeared to be a large hole above him, through which he could see a glimpse of the night sky. His jaw fell open - he must have ran across this hole in the rock face and careened directly into this cave. Luckily for him, the fall was no more than 6 or 7 feet, and this thick plant had broken some of the fall.
Still, he thought, this sort of thing is how a man breaks his neck.
He looked around. Other than the small circle of light trickling in from the moon, the rest of the cave was pitch black. There was nothing he could see in terms of a way out - or a way back up.
The dogs barked nearly overhead.
Newkirk scrambled backwards, out of the circle of light. With any luck, the Germans would pass this hole in the ground without seeing it, same as he had but without his misfortune of having walked on top of it. But if they did see it, they would surely have torches that could light their way down to him.
He needed to get as far into this cave as he could. He went back as far as possible in one direction, but hit a solid wall covered in more of this plant thing. Feeling his way along, he quickly realized that he was in a vaguely circular room, with every inch of the wall covered in what he began to think was some sort of overgrown vine. There were footsteps at the cave entrance now, and he sank down to crouch as close to the wall as he could, pressing himself against it as though willing it to swallow him up and hide him.
He felt the vines give way behind him just as he thought he could see a man's silhouette against the sky above.
He tumbled backwards head over heels, rolling over himself as he slid down a steep slide of rocks. He slammed out his arms in a desperate attempt to slow himself, and finally, blessedly, came to a halt.
Newkirk found himself lying face down on a cool surface no longer covered in the plant material from the first cavern, his eyes tightly shut as he tried to regain the breath that had been knocked from his chest. For a moment he simply lay there listening - had the Germans seen him? Heard him as he fell and crashed his way down to this lower level?
But he heard nothing. Not a footstep, not a dog bark, nothing. To him, it was as if the Germans had suddenly disappeared. Slowly he opened his eyes, rolled himself over to his back and sat up so he could try and see where this latest fall had taken him.
He expected to open his eyes to total darkness, rolling farther into what he thought was a rocky cave as he had. Instead, he found himself in yet another cavern filled with a soft light, yet at first glance he could not detect it's source. There was no hole in the roof letting in moonlight, yet he had no trouble discerning the rock face that made up the walls of the cave surrounding him to either side. In front of him, that rock face was a steep incline and bore signs of disturbance, he assumed from his flailing limbs as he fell down it moments before. Sure enough, at the top of the rock face he could make out the thick, ropy vines that he had unwittingly leaned against moments ago. These however appeared untouched - he expected to see a gaping hole between the ropy mess where he had fallen through it but it appeared thick and entangled.
And altogether unreachable. His boots kept his feet warm, but a mountaineer he was not. Climbing back up to the vines on what was essentially a sheer cliff with loose rocks everywhere you looked would be no easy task. He frowned. He could make it if he had to, though he expected he would have no end of bruises and scrapes to show for it, but if the unexpected light in this tunnel was anything to go by, there may be another, less painful way of getting out.
Hoping he would see a long tunnel to a possible exit, he twisted where he sat and turned to see what lay behind him.
Newkirk's jaw dropped faster than he had fallen into the cave moments before.
The source of the light was not, as he had hoped, an exit to the moonlit forest outside, but instead appeared to be a soft glow emanating from an enormous mirror that filled the other side of the cavern. The mirror had to be ten feet high and just as wide, surrounded by an ornate gilded frame that made Newkirk think of royalty.
"How the bloody hell did this get here…" he whispered to himself.
He stood up, trying as he did so to understand what was happening. Somehow, in the middle of the German countryside, someone for some reason had put an enormous mirror in an otherwise empty cave. How had they gotten it through the infinitesimally smaller entrance? Why was it glowing?
Wait, he thought. The entrance he had come through was far too small to fit this mirror through. Which meant that regardless of the reason it was here or the fact that it was glowing, there had to be another way in. With that in mind, he stepped towards the mirror, intending to inspect every corner to see if there was a hidden exit behind it.
As he got closer, he saw first the top of his head, then his torso appear reflected in the mirror. His black turtleneck looked a bit worse for wear after first his run through the woods and then multiple falls in the cave. There were small tears throughout the fabric that he noted for mending later, plus he looked a right mess with twigs and leaves and bits of the vine clinging to him and in his hair.
"I look a right state," Newkirk said, shaking his head. The rest of him came fully into view as he came closer to the mirror, and he frowned as he took in the rest of the damage.
Then he saw something else in the mirror that drove all thought of his appearance from his mind. Reflected in the mirror was the black silhouette of someone standing right behind him.
Without a second thought, he whipped his sidearm out and spun on the spot, ready for anything and anyone. But when he had fully turned to see who it was who had so stealthily crept up behind him, he found himself facing nothing and no one. He blinked in surprise. He knew he had seen someone just behind him in the mirror, but there was nothing behind him but rock.
"A trick of the light, that's all," he told himself, "Nerves getting the best of you."
He turned back to his task, determined to find a way out of here and fueled now not only by a desire to get back to Stalag 13, but definitely by a desire to get the hell away from this cave.
But as he turned back to face the mirror he found yet another surprise that made him yell out in shock. He had expected to turn back and see once again his ragged clothes and dirt covered face and hair. And while it was himself that he saw - or at least he thought it was himself - everything else had changed.
The dirt and leaves were gone for one thing, but so too were the black turtleneck and pants. He was facing his reflection, but it was wearing simple civilian clothes. And not German civilian clothes like those he sometimes wore on their missions into Hammelburg either. These were clothes not unlike those he would have worn in London before he enlisted. Simple, well made, clean clothing that he could have pulled out of his own closet.
He gaped at the mirror, and the reflection gaped back at him. Coming somewhat to his senses, he glanced down at himself. Whatever this reflection might show, when he looked at himself all he saw were the same black clothes and the same debris and tears he had seen earlier. His brain could not make sense of it. How was the mirror showing him something else? He looked back up at the mirror, and saw that his civilian reflection was mimicking his movements. He raised a hand, and the reflection followed.
Unable to help himself, he took several steps closer to the mirror until he could almost touch it. The logic of it escaped him, for how could it be logical? It was impossible, and yet it was right in front of him, all at the same time. The Newkirk in the mirror stared back at him, blinked when he blinked, breathed when he breathed.
He looked closer, and he noticed there were other differences than just the clothing. The Newkirk in the mirror was also younger. His face was smoother, his posture straighter, and he looked well cared for and full in a way Newkirk hadn't felt since… well since before the war.
And then it clicked - this was him before the war. A while before the war too. The reflection looking back at him couldn't be more than fifteen years old now that he thought about it.
"I must've hit me head on the way down," he said softly, shaking his head as he tried to snap out of whatever injury induced fever dream he was in.
The head of the fifteen year old Newkirk in the mirror did not move. This stopped Newkirk in his tracks once more. Not only was he somehow looking at a reflection that wasn't a reflection, now the reflection was acting completely independently of his own movements. He stared as the reflection smiled at him cheekily, then turned and began walking away from him, towards the back of the cave reflected in the mirror.
"Hey!" Newkirk yelled out, losing his head completely as he leaned toward the mirror and yelled at the retreating back of his fifteen year old self, "Oy! Come back and tell me what the bloody hell is going on here, why don't you?"
He leaned closer, placing his left hand on the frame of the mirror, and raised his right to bang on the mirror, determined to get the attention of this strange apparition in the mirror. His right hand swung down, and sunk directly into the surface of the mirror.
"What the…" Newkirk watched in horror as his hand, then his elbow, then his arm sank deeper and deeper into the mirror. He could see it on the other side as though reflected back at him, a bodiless arm floating in a cave, his fifteen year old self in the back of the cavern, turning to grin at him once more.
Fear rising, he jerked his right shoulder to pull his arm back from whatever this nightmare was.
Nothing happened. His arm stayed stuck in the mirror, and worse than that he thought he felt something pulling on it. That was when he panicked. He pushed on his left arm with everything he had, straining against the frame of the mirror as he tried to pull on his right arm again. He braced his feet against the bottom of the frame, but he watched as his right arm was pulled into the mirror up to his shoulder.
There was nothing else he could do, nothing he could pull on and no one to help, all he could do was hold on to his grasp of the frame with arm and lean as far back as he could. And still the mirror continued to pull him in further, claimed his entire right shoulder and then half of his chest. He leaned his face as far away as he could. He did not know what was happening here, but he could only assume it would get worse once it claimed his head. Yet soon that too seemed inevitable as he found himself up to his neck in the mirror, his right cheek nearly touching it.
There was nothing he could do, he knew. Whatever was pulling him into the mirror was going to have him, one way or another. Best to face it on his feet then. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and let go of the frame. In an instant, he felt a jerk around his middle as though he'd been hooked by a shepherd's crook, and then he was gone.
