Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Epilogue
When I was in junior high, I bought a full-length mirror at a garage sale. It looked like it was made to imitate an antique, but instead of a big heavy metal frame, it was just a thin wooden cut-out. It didn't matter to me. I just liked the mirror because of the style.
I was kind of creeped out by the lady who was selling it, though. She looked like an antique. She had on this dark, dingy, old-fashioned dress that looked like it belonged more on the set of Little House on the Prairie than on a lady having a garage sale in 1987. She didn't have on a silly bonnet or anything, but she did have ankle boots that buttoned up, and this humongous bible with gilded print on the cover and the edges of the pages sitting on the table in front of her. She wore these odd glasses, too. It looked like someone had cut them in half at the tops, and there were no ear pieces, just a chain that went around behind her ears and under the big fat salt-and-pepper bun she had in her hair. It looked pretty much like the glasses were just perched on her nose with nothing to hold them there. The only thing normal about her was the newspaper sitting in her lap, and even that was weird.
"Bloomingham Mental Health Facility Closes" read the headline, followed by the sub-headline, "Patients released and re-housed over past few months in preparation for building demolition." There would be an article about a mental hospital in the lap of such a strange looking person. There just would.
Even more odd, she seriously stared at me the entire time I was there, giving me this old school-marm-over-the-glasses look like I'd done something, or at least she expected me to. I almost left without buying anything because of how creepy her stare was. It was a shame, too, because she had a ton of books I wanted to look through and see if anything was interesting enough to buy.
It was as I turned to leave I that saw that mirror and became totally distracted by it. I really couldn't say what the draw was, just that it was pretty. Back then, I was a frilly, lacy kind of girl. If the lady's outfit had been pink or some other light color, and she hadn't been watching me like that, I probably would have found her enchanting instead of creepy, too.
I went over and looked at the mirror. Nothing was even chipped on it. The wood was cheap, but it was in good shape. It was like it had just been taken out of the box. I looked for a price, but I couldn't find one. It was probably more than I could afford, but I had to ask. I tried to not be afraid to speak to the owner. I thought, maybe she's watching me because of my age. Other kids my age goof off and break stuff, shoplift, and things like that. Maybe she's just making sure I don't cause trouble in her garage.
When I turned to ask, though, she was gone. There was no one at the table, no bible, no nothing except a cash box with money in it. I looked around the garage. I saw my mom going through some clothes on a table, and another lady going through the books I'd been looking at, and no one else.
I was going to give up and go over to that table, when a voice beside me asked, "Do you like that mirror?"
Startled, I spun around to see yet another lady standing beside me. She was dressed pretty normally, in jeans and a t-shirt, with one of those stupid irregular shaped, over-sprayed hairstyles like we all had back then. Heck, my bangs were styled and sprayed into a sharp-looking point over my left eye, like that was natural or pretty. Ha!
I said I was interested, but needed to know how much it would cost. She sold it to me for ten dollars, which wasn't too bad. Mom didn't find anything worth buying, so we got the mirror and decided to leave. On the way out, I asked what happened to the other lady who had been here, but the lady I was talking to just gave me a funny look. I elaborated, "You know, the lady with the bun?"
She told me, "Sweetie, I'm the only one home today."
Odd. I knew I'd seen that woman. She had been right there.
Mom said, "Maybe someone shopping in here just got tired and sat down there for a minute."
I decided to accept Mom's opinion. It sounded reasonable. I lingered for a moment, looking toward the table with the books, but Mom called me out to the car. "Get a move on, Sarah. We've got things to do."
At home, I hung the mirror on my closet door. For several days, it remained there and I used it regularly. I totally forgot about the garage sale and the strange lady. Things like that just kind of fade away when you're young.
Then, one night while getting ready for a choir performance at school, I caught something odd out of the corner of my eye. I could swear that I saw reflected in the mirror someone slightly taller and heavier than myself standing behind me. I spun to look, but there was no one there. Looking in the mirror, I saw nothing more than what was in the room, though my bedpost was also reflected from this angle, and I did have a bunch of clothes hanging from it. Combined with my dresser, maybe that had played a trick on my mind. I laughed at myself, and felt like a total goof, scaring myself like that. Obviously, I needed to clean my room. Still, I couldn't seem to get rid of the goosebumps on my arms.
As with the garage sale, that incident faded quickly from my mind. It happened a few more times, creeping me out for a while each time, but every time it happened, there would be something to explain it away. The face I thought I saw was the photo of my parents hanging on the wall. The movement behind me was the headlights of a passing car going across the room. The goosebumps were a sign of immaturity, of my tendency to attribute everyday experiences to things that go bump in the night. I needed a distraction, that was all. If I forgot about it for a while, it would stop bothering me, and I'd forget about it for good.
I found one. I got a new book, and that pretty much took my mind over. I don't so much read books as ravenously devour them. I used to sit in the big yellow beanbag I had in my room and read a whole novel in a few hours. When I was doing that, you could run a train through my room, and I wouldn't notice.
That's what I was doing when I noticed movement in the mirror. It's odd that I even saw it, because I was so sucked into that novel I shouldn't have seen anything... but I did. I was sure of it. It looked like the bottom of one shoe of a person running away from me. It moved forward "into" the mirror and then disappeared before I could lift my head and look directly at it. All I could see was the reflection of the window, and some of the stuff I had piled onto my desk.
I was going to shrug it off as my mind playing tricks on me again - maybe I'd seen a bird flying away and my mind had misinterpreted it - but something bothered me. I had goosebumps again, and I didn't know why. Annoyed with myself for getting creeped out like a little kid, I shook my head and picked up my book. The ends of my braids whacked me in the face. Ow!
Braids? I didn't have braids when I came in here!
I looked in the mirror to see that indeed, my hair was neatly parted in the middle and drawn into two nice, tidy braids hanging down behind my ears, with a pretty, wide pink bow on each one tied from ribbons that weren't mine. My skin felt prickly all over. Who had braided my hair while I was engrossed in my book?
I tried to convince myself that maybe Mom had come in and done it. I know that was a dumb idea, but I was trying to act older and be braver, and it seemed much older and braver to assume that my mother had, unnoticed, opened my door, walked through my room and around behind me, parted and braided my hair, and tied it in ribbons, than to think about what else might make them appear.
I went downstairs to ask her, but couldn't find her anywhere in the house. Finally, I asked my Dad, who told me she was at the store. Nope. Mom didn't braid my hair.
But who had?
Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Epilogue
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