There was no doubt that the house was far larger than required; a once-great family was now all but withered away, scattered across the globe, with its descendants lost. Some had drifted away from the old lands as they spread their wings to find their destiny; others changed their names through marriage. But now, it was just Julia and Justine, twins, yet the same blood flowed in their veins as had in those ancestors.
Julia was the elder by a matter of minutes and had always been ahead: first to walk, first to talk, but last to leave. The competition that had felt so familiar as children had meant that when the chance came, Justine had jumped at the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of so many of her ancestors and taken a role in Europe, leaving Julia here on her own, rattling around in this old house.
A good 300 hundred years old, the house had been in the family for much of that. Julia should speak to Justine about maybe selling it. Justine had no interest in living here, although she hadn't said so in so many words. Still, there was so much history here that it dragged at Julia like a weight in water, so that she felt it was barely all she could do to keep it repaired, let alone investigate an agent and list it. It wasn't as if keeping it created a hardship; there was always something coming in that meant the upkeep was taken care of, but the effort of organizing it was all too much.
The driveway, which had been clean gravel when her mother and father were alive, was now a mass of weeds that time had nurtured so that each time she left and returned, she felt as though she was crossing a field, adding to the feelings of isolation and making it feel like another country between her and the outside world.
Glennis brought groceries and kept the place tidy while Julia was ensconced in the west wing where her and Justine's rooms were. Although Glennis was growing older, familiarity kept the work manageable, and there was only one person to care for now. It was as much her home as it was Julia's; she'd been here decades. There had never been a reason to change rooms; everything she needed was there, and she'd been there as long as she could remember. It was her little sanctuary, where she was surrounded by dolls, her books, and the knickknacks accumulated throughout her life.
Julia will never forget the day it happened. The day she found Glennis in the East wing, calling out to her to see if there was milk from the kitchen. Julia's voice echoed up the stairwell as though her own voice beckoned her to climb the wide staircase. The dark oak was stained by time and the hands of a dozen generations that had run their fingers over it, so the grain of the wood was ridged like the ripples at the water's edge on a beach.
She'd climbed these stairs a thousand times, speeding up as she was chased by Justine, laughing or running down to dinner; the gong ringing through the halls, the sharp sound piercing the walls. Today, feet were led as she put one in front of the other until she breached the landing, searching for Glennis.
At the far end of the hall, on the east side of the house, the door was ajar. That was her parent's room, dead for over fifteen years. She'd not been in the room since they had been killed. Initially neither Julia or Justine had not wanted to enter the room where they had spent their private time, and later, she allowed it to be clouded in the loss, as though her sorrow had created a fog. The dark door, always closed, had merely blended into the paneling as though it were part of the wall, and she allowed it to shrink back into existence as though it had never been there, not even sparing it a glance.
Gingerly, she approached the opening, her light footsteps on the flooring like water flooding over a dam, casting a light into the corridor that she hadn't seen since her parents were alive. The hinges carried the heavy door smoothly as she gently pushed it open, and stood on the threshold, held by the force of memories. As a child, neither she nor Justine had been allowed inside, and they had only stolen curious glimpses of the space after knocking on the rich wood to gain an audience.
Glennis moved around the room with a wool bonnet duster. The large bed sat made and ready, the dresser arranged, and clean, its chair positioned in from the mirror. It was as though they had stepped out for the day to return for the evening. Glennis moved quickly with the wool wand as though maintaining a spell, cleaning surfaces as light flooded in through the large windows that sat on two sides of the room, reflecting off the large mirror positioned on one wall. "What are you doing?" asked Julia as she slowly entered the room, as though it were still forbidden.
"Cleaning," replied Glennis with a furrowed brow as though the question were nonsensical.
"But there's no one in here.'
"That doesn't mean it shouldn’t be clean," Glennis told her as she continued to dust before replacing the duster with a microfiber cloth and starting to work on the mirror, smoothing the cloth over the frame with deliberate strokes.
Julia could see the mirror from the interior of the room, with its heavy black wooden border and the old glass, pitted and faded on the rear, the silvering marked so that areas looked as if they had been exposed. "How often do you clean?" Asked Julia, drawn to the mirror and the patterned surface.
"Every day," Glennis told her, starting to wipe the glass, "I've cleaned here every day for the last twenty-five years; I didn't see any reason to stop when your parents…well, I thought one day either you or Justine might want to move in here."
There had never been any discussion that one of them would take the room; both girls already had their own rooms, and they were just children when their parents had been killed. Glennis had raised them through their teen years and into adulthood as wards. There had been more staff back then, but they'd dropped off one by one until only Glennis remained, a fixture as much as the dry fountain at the front of the house.
Glennis stopped and stood back from the mirror, admiring it, Julia moving in beside her. "You know, your father told me that mirror was as old or even older than this house."
"Get out of here," Julia exclaimed.
"No, really. He claimed it had belonged to Edward Kelly; he lost it to your great, god knows how far back, in settlement of a debt."
"Who was Edward Kelley?" Julia asked as she approached the silvered surface, touching the glass and feeling the warmth that seeped into her hand. Wasn't glass supposed to be cold?
"You've never heard of Edward Kelley?" Glennis tutted and shook her head. "Don't they teach history anymore? He was an associate of John Dee."
"Was he an old actor or something?" Julia asked as she peered at the mottled surface, where shapes ringed the edge of the glass, patches of light and dark resembling faces; her mind struggled to make patterns, just as it did when looking at clouds in the sky on a sunny day.
"No! He was an occultist; they say he could communicate with angels, and John Dee would write it down. He might have used this very mirror to scry in; there's no telling. Anyway, it's old, your mother used to claim it was cursed, steals souls, although your father denied it as stupid.” The wool bonnet pointed at the frame, “You couldn't even make something like now, which is probably why it's still around. That wood, that's ebony, that is, that's really expensive."
"Looks worn out," said Janice as she attempted to buff a faint mark on one side, as though there was water on the glass, lighter than the other black blotches, but the mark didn't move.
"Let's see how you look after that long," Glennis chided. "Anyway, what do you want?" There was a reason why Julia had come hunting for her, and she wanted to know what it was.
"We got any milk?" asked Julia as she left the mirror. It unnerved her a little, the warmth of the surface, the patterns around the edge; it both fascinated and gave her the creeps at the same time as if there was more depth than the glass itself. She shuddered a little as they left the room, Glennis pulling the door closed with a click as they made their way to the kitchen.
Julia sipped at the fresh tea, holding the mug in both hands at the counter. "Do you believe in angels, Glennis?" Julia asked, thinking back to what she had said.
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe there is something out there, but who knows what it is? It could be anything, just something we don't understand." Glennis told her as she stirred soup in a pan, pieces of mushroom appearing and disappearing as the wooden piece churned up the contents. "Why?"
"I was just thinking of what you said that man did, talking to angels and all. If he really was communicating with something, maybe it was angels."
"Or not. That kind of stuff is best left alone if you ask me. Your father always said the mirror that hung in the east wing carried this family's secrets for generations; didn't do him or your mother any good, did it, if you don't mind me saying. Superstition if you ask me."
"You're right," Julia conceded as the soup was divided between their bowls, and she salted hers without even tasting, knowing from familiarity that Glennis always made it, so it needed seasoning to her taste.
The following morning, the handle to the door turned softly as Julia opened the door for the first time in all the long years since her parents' accident. The door swung as it had the previous day with no resistance, silent and smoothly lubricated by daily use. She was fairly certain Justine had never been in here either, though they had never discussed it, bound by an unspoken accord and understanding.
Nothing had been touched in the bedroom; the dresser still held the hairbrush and perfumes in small glass vials that her mother had used. The leather coin tray on the side of the bed, where her father slept, everything just as they had left it. Glennis had kept it as it was and clean, a living memorial, and perhaps she did it for her own reasons as much as she had for the girls, as she claimed, in case one of them wanted to move in at some point.
Julia moved through the room, touching a few of the objects full of memories, before returning to stand in front of the large mirror, pulling light from the room; the silver surface held a slight copper color. She wondered who might have stood in front of it before her. She could imagine her father standing in this very spot, adjusting his tie, or her mother giving her hair a final preening before gliding down the stairs. Other ancestors must have done the same thing over the centuries if the mirror was as old as her father had claimed.
Her eyes were drawn to the patterns; the mirror's age spots. Julia had seen old mirrors before, and yes, she had seen the mottled, broken surfaces as the silvering aged, but never to this extent. There was an uneasy feeling in her gut as she was drawn into the reflection of herself, but she couldn't look away, lingering on the faded mark she had seen the day before.
In the distance, the sound of the phone faintly announced a call and then stopped. Julia dismissed it, assuming that Glennis had picked it up; it had not rung long enough for the caller to have given up. She moved a little closer, laying her hand on the glass, her palm lying flush against it; the warmth bleeding into her skin, making it appear warmer than the day before. Her fingers were close to the faded spot, and as she watched, it seemed to get darker, as though it were changing right before her eyes. There was a snap, like the sound of a breaking spine, and the mark went black, as dark as the others, so that Julia pulled back with a start, a familiar image in front of her.
Julia heard the footfalls in the hallway, getting louder as they approached, moving quickly and urgently, feeling a rising knot in her stomach as though she had been caught by her mother in the forbidden space.
Glennis' voice was raw and broken, the words leaking from her throat softly. "There was an accident!"
Julia looked away from the reflection of Glennis to the woman herself. There were tears in her eyes, already staining her face, the mascara streaked in such a way that she looked like a morbid clown, and the joy drained from her, leaving her pale.
Glennis repeated, "There was an accident, yesterday afternoon, Justine was killed." Louder now so that the words punched Julia in the gut.
The words pushed into her, a gasp escaping her lips involuntarily, and now it struck her why the shape of the mark on the glass was familiar; it was a representation of Justine's face, her image in shadow, the mirror capturing her in glass forever, and yesterday's words echoed in her ears, "the mirror that hung in the east wing carried this family's secrets for generations…" Justine’s soul trapped in glass, like the others in her line that had died before her, flies in amber.
© Emma Steel