Reflection of Murder
After four years of living in crowded, sparsely decorated dorm rooms, Katy O'Hanlon and her fiancé, David Knotts, were both anxious to move into a more spacious and comfortable dwelling. Upon graduating from college, Katy landed a teaching job in Livingston, New Jersey, while her future husband joined his father's accounting firm in Morristown. Given their combined income, they were financially prepared to take on the responsibilities of homeownership.
"One good thing about being an elementary school teacher," Katy said, after she and David submitted an offer on a three-bedroom Cape Cod in Rockaway, "I'll have the summer months off to organize our house. Then once we're settled in, I can start planning the wedding."
"Remember what we discussed," David reminded her. "Keep things simple and narrow the guest list down to under a hundred people."
Limiting the number of invitees proved to be easier than Katy had imagined, for despite her best intentions to the contrary, she gradually lost touch with most of her friends from school. Many of them left the area after graduation, and her only contact with them was via Facebook.
The following May, one month before Katy's wedding day, Charlene Ranor, her best friend and future maid of honor, threw her a wedding shower at The Meadow Wood. Many of the guests gave her practical gifts, such as a crockpot, a deep fryer, or a set of cookbooks. Some of the women preferred more sentimental items. There were even a few gag gifts, including naughty lingerie and a rolling pin for training her husband.
After most of the gifts were opened and the cake was about to be served, Katy's sisters revealed one last unopened package. The brown cardboard box held only one clue to its contents: the word fragile printed in large letters on both the front and back. The bride-to-be cut the tape with a dinner knife and removed a layer of packing material. When she saw the wings of a brass eagle, she uttered a cry of delight.
"An antique convex mirror!" she exclaimed, trying to free the gift from its wrappings. "You shouldn't have!"
"Don't be silly," her older sister replied. "We knew you always wanted one."
"Thank God for eBay," the younger sister added. "None of the antique stores in the area had one."
When she freed the mirror from the box, Katy placed it on her lap and peered at her reflection. As was typical with convex mirrors, the reflected image appeared smaller than its real-life counterpart.
"Hopefully, you won't use that when you're putting on your make-up," Charlene joked.
"Have no fear of that," Katy assured her. "This is going in the home office, right above my Queen Anne writing desk."
"An eighteenth-century style mirror to match all the Colonial furnishings you have," her younger sister teased. "Honestly, when I go over to your house, I expect to find a sign proclaiming, GEORGE WASHINGTON SLEPT HERE."
As Katy laughed, her green eyes twinkled merrily, and her coppery red curls bobbed up and down with the movement of her head. Of the three sisters, only the middle one had the father's Irish coloring.
"You girls can talk home décor all you want," their mother declared. "I'm going to have a piece of that delicious-looking cake."
Once dessert was eaten, the sisters helped pack the presents into Charlene's minivan and Katy's Subaru wagon. Afterward, the future bride's aunt and two cousins, who had a long drive home to New Hampshire, were the first to say goodbye.
"I'll see you at the wedding next month," the older woman promised, hugging her niece tightly.
"Thank you all for coming, and thanks for your wonderful gifts. I'm sure David and I will put them to good use."
When the last of the guests departed, Katy left The Meadow Wood and headed home. Although she and her fiancé had decided to temporarily store all the gifts in the guest bedroom, she insisted on hanging the convex mirror above her desk that night.
"I don't see what the big rush is," David grumbled as he searched through his toolbox for hanging brackets.
"I can't wait to see what it looks like when it's on the wall."
His task completed, he stepped away from the mirror and turned toward his fiancée for her reaction. Katy smiled and nodded her approval.
* * *
Over the next four days, Katy made progress in putting away her gifts. She also found time to send thank-you cards to everyone who attended the shower. It was not until the fifth day that she had the opportunity to sit at her desk and grade her students' book reports. Halfway through the task, she put down her red pen, stretched her neck and went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of coffee.
When she returned to the office, mug in hand, her eyes went to the convex mirror where she glimpsed what appeared to be a blond woman whose hair was swept up in an old-fashioned chignon. She squinted her eyes and leaned forward to get a better look at the mirror, and her own freckled face squinted back at her.
I must be getting tired, she thought, attaching no great significance to the weird occurrence.
Katy worked for another two hours, occasionally glancing into the mirror and seeing nothing out of the ordinary. After evaluating the final book report, she scooped up the graded papers and put them in her briefcase. When she headed toward the kitchen with her empty coffee cup, she heard David's car pull into the driveway. She greeted him at the door with a kiss.
"I stopped and got Chinese," he announced, holding up the take-out bag.
"Great! I really didn't feel like cooking tonight."
"Hard day at school?"
"No harder than usual," Katy answered, getting silverware out of the kitchen drawer. "When I got home, though, I had to grade a stack of book reports."
"School will be over in another month, and then you'll have the whole summer off."
"Are you forgetting about the wedding?"
"Not the wedding or the honeymoon. Two weeks on a tropical island is just what I need after shoveling snow all winter."
"I'm looking forward to catching up on my sleep. I think the last time I got more than five hours in a night was spring break of my senior year in college."
Katy then laughingly told David about her strange experience with the convex mirror.
"You saw a blond woman instead of your own reflection?" he chuckled. "I hope you're not getting any ideas about dyeing your hair. I like you as a redhead."
"I'll keep that in mind should I ever decide to try the Marilyn Monroe look."
After finishing their dinner, the couple went to the living room, cuddled up on the couch and watched a DVD. Halfway through the movie, Katy dozed off. In her dream, she walked into the office, turned on the light and stood in front of the mirror, looking at the reflection of a blond woman who appeared to be pounding on the glass with her fists. Her lips clearly formed the words help me, but no sound escaped the mirror’s surface.
Katy picked up a paperweight off her desk and hurled it at the mirror, but before the weight could shatter the glass, David gently shook her shoulder.
"Wake up, honey. You're going to miss the best part of the movie."
The startled woman sat up and dutifully stared at the television screen, but she could not concentrate on the events unfolding in the film. Her mind kept wandering back to the terrified face of the blond woman in the convex mirror.
* * *
With some difficulty, Katy forced herself to concentrate on her job and wedding plans and put the incident with the mirror out of her mind. Time passed quickly in a whirl of end-of-school-year activities and last-minute preparations for the big event.
The final day of classes had been tentatively scheduled for June 22, and the wedding was to be held on Saturday, June 30. The number of snow days that had to be made up extended the school year right up to the 29th. Thankfully, the last day of school was only three hours long and consisted mainly of the students receiving academic awards and turning in their textbooks.
After the dismissal bell rang at eleven o'clock, Katy removed her personal belongings from her desk, wished her fellow faculty members a good summer and headed toward the parking lot.
When I come back to work in September, I'll be Mrs. David Knotts, she mused like a lovesick schoolgirl as she put the car key in the ignition.
She drove home, changed her clothes and went to meet Charlene for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory.
"I can't believe you went to work today when you're getting married tomorrow," the maid of honor said after greeting her friend with a kiss on the cheek.
"I'm glad I did. If I'd stayed home, I would have paced the floor all morning."
"Got the pre-wedding jitters?"
"Oh, yeah. Major league jitters. I don't think I can eat," Katy confessed to her friend as they studied the menu.
"You'd better," Charlene cautioned. "You don't want to drink on an empty stomach."
When she returned to her house, the bride went directly to her office to put away the items she removed from her classroom. As she opened her bottom desk drawer, her eyes looked up at the convex mirror. Her heart fluttered when she again saw the face of the blond woman rather than her own reflection.
How strong was that drink Charlene bought me?
Unlike the previous occasion when she had seen the strange woman, this time the image did not vanish. Katy was able to follow the blonde's movements as though watching them on television. The door behind the woman opened, and in walked a handsome young man with dark hair, a mustache and a pronounced cleft in his chin. The two were apparently in love because the woman eagerly went into the man's arms, and the couple enjoyed a passionate kiss. When they separated, the man and woman sat down together on a sofa.
As the couple held hands and talked, Katy—unable to hear any sounds from their silent world—studied them more closely. Both were dressed in Victorian-era clothing, the fine style of which indicated the obvious affluence of the wearers. The furnishings and accessories in the room were likewise from a time long gone by and also spoke of great wealth.
Katy was so absorbed in her innocent voyeurism that she was not aware that more than an hour had gone by. She was abruptly brought out of her revelry by the jarring sound of her cell phone.
"Hello?"
"Hi, honey," David said. "I'm leaving work now. I called to see if you wanted me to pick up anything on the way home."
Katy felt a sense of loss and disappointment when she saw a red-haired woman with an iPhone held to her ear in the mirror's reflection.
"I had lunch with Charlene at the Cheesecake Factory, so I'm not that hungry. But if you want to pick up a pizza, I'll probably eat a slice or two."
"Okay. I'll see you in about forty minutes then. Love you."
Katy remained at her desk, staring at her own reflection in the mirror. Part of her brain warned her that seeing the strange images might be a symptom of a serious mental or neurological condition, but another part was fascinated by the experience nonetheless. She wanted to know more about the young couple. Was she seeing actual images from the past, or were the two people simply figments of her imagination?
* * *
Despite getting sunburned in the baking Bahaman sun, Katy had a wonderful time on her honeymoon. Two weeks of fun-filled days and romantic evenings. Eventually, it was time for the lovebirds to return to New Jersey.
"Now I know how Cinderella felt the day after the ball," David moaned when he saw that the grass was in desperate need of cutting.
"It can wait until tomorrow," Katy suggested. "Let's relax and enjoy our first evening in the house as husband and wife."
After ordering takeout from the China Garden, the newlyweds enjoyed a bottle of wine while watching a suspenseful thriller on HBO. When the movie ended, Katy washed the glasses, and the two of them headed upstairs to bed.
The following morning, David woke at nine, rested enough to take on the task of mowing the lawn.
"What are your plans for the day?" he asked his wife over breakfast.
"After paying our bills, I have two weeks' worth of laundry to do. Sadly, the honeymoon is over!"
"At least you've got the entire summer off," David pointed out, rising from his chair. "As for me, I go back to work the day after tomorrow. What do you say we go out to lunch when I'm done with the lawn?"
"Can we go to Miller's Ale House?"
"Sure."
Once her husband was out of the house, Katy headed to her office, sat at her writing desk and opened her laptop. As she waited for the Windows desktop to appear, her eyes went to the convex mirror where she saw the blond woman and her handsome suitor. What began as a tender moment between the two must have been destroyed by a disagreement. From his actions and facial expressions, it was clear the man was agitated. The argument escalated, and he got up from the sofa and bounded out of the room. When the door closed behind him, the woman put her head in her hands and wept.
What was that all about? They seemed like such a happy couple. What could have upset them so?
* * *
It was another nightmare, the fourth one that week. Like the previous three, it involved the antique mirror that hung above her desk. This time, Katy was not on the outside looking in; she was on the inside looking out. The view from inside the mirror was distorted. Items were elongated beyond proportion.
What am I doing in here? she wondered, feeling the first inkling of fear.
When the door opened, and her husband entered the office, her mood improved. Surely, he would set her free. She called to him, but there was no response. He sat down at the desk and began searching through the desk drawers.
"David! Help me!"
After finding a pack of AA batteries in the bottom drawer, he rose from the chair to leave.
"Don't go! Help me, please!" his wife screamed, pounding her fists on the glass, not caring if it might shatter.
Katy felt relief wash over her when David stopped, turned and looked into the mirror.
"That's right, darling. I'm in here. Pick up something heavy and break the glass."
As he tilted his head from one side to the other, his eyes stared into the mirror, examining his own reflection.
He doesn't see me, Katy realized with panic.
When her husband turned back toward the door, she shrieked with such force that her throat ached.
"Noooo!"
"Honey, wake up."
David's words pierced the veil between sleep and wakefulness.
"You were having another nightmare."
It took several moments for Katy to fully comprehend that she was lying in her bed and not being held captive behind an impenetrable wall of mirror glass.
"I couldn't get out," she wept, relief flooding through her as she sought the safety of her husband's arms.
"Get out of what?"
"The mirror," she replied before drifting off into a peaceful, restful slumber, free of dreams and terror.
* * *
At breakfast the following morning, Katy idly announced that she intended to postpone the usual Saturday morning grocery shopping until Sunday. The news seemed to disappoint her husband.
"I wanted to stop at Lowe's in Morris Plains afterward and pick up a spool of string for the weed whacker."
"Can't that wait until tomorrow? I wanted to wax the floors today."
"It's supposed to rain tomorrow, so I need to trim the lawn today. Besides, maybe you ought to take it easy today."
"Why do you say that?" Katy asked, in a tone much sharper than she had intended.
"You've been running yourself ragged since we returned from the Bahamas, and now you're having nightmares."
"One nightmare," she argued, not bothering to mention the other three. "It was probably the result of eating before going to bed. When I was in college, I always had nightmares when I fell asleep on a full stomach."
David tried a new method of persuasion.
"We can stop at Five Guys for lunch afterward. You know how much you like their hamburgers and fries."
"I've got a better idea," Katy said after considering her options. "Why don't you go to Lowe's and bring the burgers back with you while I start writing out the thank-you cards for the wedding gifts?"
"All right," he grudgingly gave in.
As her husband sulked over a second cup of coffee, Katy quickly made the bed and put the laundry in the washing machine. David was just finishing breakfast as she blew into the kitchen like a nor'easter and swept the cups and silverware into the dishwasher. After a quick pass of the Swiffer sweeper over the hardwood floors, she headed into the office, closing the door behind her.
Katy had no intention of wasting her time writing out thank-you cards. The real reason she put off grocery shopping was to gaze into the convex mirror and watch events unfold between the blond woman and her suitor. As she waited for the woman to appear, she heard David leave the house and unlock the door to the garden shed. She experienced a sharp pang of guilt. She had been married for barely a month, and already she was lying to her husband and keeping secrets from him.
Maybe he's right. Maybe I have been working too hard. I should go to Morris Plains with him. We could shop, have lunch and ....
The door in the mirror room abruptly opened, and the blond woman appeared. She was evidently distraught, for she held a lace handkerchief to her tear-stained face.
"Why are you so upset?" Katy whispered to the reflection, although she knew the woman could not see or hear her.
The morning passed quickly. While David was busy cutting the grass, his wife sat mesmerized at her desk, staring at the mirror as if she were watching a soap opera on television.
Shortly after eleven o'clock, David called in through the closed door, "I'm going to Lowe's now. Are you sure you don't want to come with me?"
"I'm positive," Katy answered, not taking her eyes off the blond woman's face.
"Okay. I'll see you later then."
Moments after her husband's car drove away, Katy's patience paid off. The door of the mirror room opened again, and the handsome young man joined his sweetheart. While she could not read his lips, she could see the love he felt for the woman in his eyes and could tell from his solicitous actions that he was worried about her.
As the man cradled her in his arms, the woman at last calmed down—at least enough to speak. Whatever she told him caused him to immediately pull away from her. His face contorted in anger, he crossed the room and pointed to something on the far wall. Katy recognized the antique convex mirror immediately.
"Why, it's exactly like mine," she declared in amazement. "It must be the same one. That's why I'm having these visions. I'm seeing one of the mirror's former owners."
When the irate young man tried to take the mirror off the wall, the woman's grief turned to fury. She assailed the man, pummeling his head and back with her balled fists. He raised his arms to ward off her attack and refused to retaliate. The enraged blonde, beyond thinking logically, grabbed the fireplace poker and struck her lover over the head, not once but repeatedly. Finally, exhausted, she dropped the poker, turned away from the battered body at her feet and stared into the mirror. What she saw terrified her. Her hands went to her mouth, and she screamed.
The silent movie aspect of those surreal and horrifying images frightened Katy more than if she had been a witness to an actual murder.
* * *
David unlocked the front door to his house, walked into the kitchen and placed the bag of hamburgers and fries on the table.
"I'm back. Come and eat," he shouted as he got two glasses out of the cabinet.
He then went to the refrigerator, took out the pitcher of iced tea and poured it into the glasses. Since his wife had not come out of her office, he walked down the hall and knocked on the door.
"Honey? I've got your Five Guys."
The door slowly opened, and David was shocked by his wife's appearance. It was as though something had terrified her.
"What the hell happened?"
"She killed him," Katy whimpered, fighting back her tears. "She killed him and then she ... she ... killed herself."
"Who? What are you talking about?"
"The woman in the mirror and her suitor."
"You must have fallen asleep and had another nightmare," David assumed, looking for the most logical explanation for his wife's hysterical outburst.
"It wasn't a dream."
"Come on," her husband urged, leading her to the kitchen. "I'm starving. Let's go eat, and then you can tell me all about it."
But Katy did not want food, nor did she want to listen to her husband try to explain away the visions she saw in the mirror. She knew, contrary to every law of science, that she had observed actual events that took place in the past. She saw what previously only the convex mirror had witnessed.
"The woman bashed in her lover's brains when he tried to destroy the mirror," she continued, "and then whatever she saw in the reflection led her to hang herself afterward."
"Calm down. None of it is real."
"Remember, not long after the bridal shower, I told you I thought I saw the reflection of a blond woman in the mirror?"
"Yeah, but you were tired and overworked at the time."
"It wasn't a one-time thing. I've been seeing her—and her suitor—ever since."
"Let me get this straight: you've been seeing people in the mirror all this time?"
"Yes. A man and a woman. They're in love—or at least they were. Something upset them, and the man walked to the wall to take down a mirror—my mirror."
"You see these people walking around in your office as well?"
"No, the mirror was in their room, which was inside my mirror."
David closed his eyes and shook his head, as though he could erase the madness with a simple denial.
"Honey, you're not making any sense."
"The woman I've been seeing owned the mirror at some point before I did. She saw something in it that terrified her. Maybe she saw herself with her victim's blood on her hands and realized she was a murderess."
"Stop it!" David said, grabbing his wife by the shoulders. "You know what you're saying is impossible. You can't see reflections from the past."
He refused to believe that Katy's mental state was beyond hope. Determined to talk some sense into her, he took her hand and led her back to the office.
"Look!" he told her, pointing to the convex mirror. "There's no blond murderess or battered corpse in there. It's just your face and mine.
It was true. The woman in the mirror had red hair, but the green eyes held the same spark of insanity as the blue eyes of the blond woman who had murdered her lover. Turning away from the disturbing sight, Katy saw the laptop on her writing desk and, under a compulsion she could neither ignore nor understand, she picked up the computer and repeatedly struck David over the head with it.
Afterward, her face awash in tears, Katy focused her eyes on the chunks of blood-stained, shattered plastic that littered the floor.
"What have I done?" she sobbed, feeling as though she were on the precipice of a vast abyss where all the torments of Dante's hell awaited her.
All thought of the mirror and its macabre reflections left her mind. She leaned forward and took David's hand in hers.
"I can't live without you. And I can't live with myself, knowing what I've done."
Katy kissed her husband's fingertips, released his hand and walked to her writing desk. She spied the laptop's AC power cord still plugged into the wall.
That ought to be strong enough to hold my weight, she thought, driven by the same suicidal impulse as the one that had led the blond woman to hang herself.
* * *
Penelope Coddington paced the floor of her parlor, stopping every so often to peek through the heavy velvet drapes out onto the street. She saw several horse-drawn carriages pass her home, but none of them was his.
With a heavy sigh, she opened the gold locket she wore around her neck and gazed longingly at Lucius Matheson's miniature portrait, admiring his handsome face with his dark hair, full mustache and cleft chin. It had been more than six months since he went to Europe on business. With a maidenly blush, the love-struck young woman recalled the night before he sailed. It was the same night he had asked her to become his wife. Now, after the long separation, Lucius was at last returning.
As she gazed out the window, Penelope saw a carriage stop in front of her house. Her heart fluttered with joy when she recognized Lucius's driver at the reins.
He's here!
The ecstatic woman wanted to race to the door, throw it wide open, dash out to the street and run into the arms of the man she adored. Nevertheless, being a proper Victorian lady, she forced herself to remain demure. She walked over to the convex mirror she had recently inherited from a great aunt in New York, looked at her pale reflection and pinched her cheeks to bring color to them. Then she tucked an errant blond curl back into her upswept coiffure.
Suddenly, her own reflection was gone, and in the mirror was the face of a redhead with green eyes. The unknown woman—dressed in the most scandalous and bizarre attire Penelope had ever seen—opened her mouth and silently cried for help.
At the sound of the doorbell, the disturbing image vanished, and Penelope left the parlor to greet her beloved. However, Katy O'Hanlon Knott's reflection would return and haunt Penelope until it pushed her over the brink of insanity, as it had in the past and would continue to do so in the future for as long as those two tortured souls were bound by the deadly spell of the antique convex mirror.
When it comes to Five Guys, you can always count on one cat showing up: Salem!
