The Image in the Mirror

The Image in the Mirror

It was an imposing mirror, with gilded framing and shaped like a large emerald stone, which fitted well into the front room. It was this that made my mother buy it at the auction. 

On that afternoon, Steve happened to glance at the mirror, and from the corner of his eye he saw something that shook him up. He could make out a girl’s face. He stood there wide mouthed for a few seconds and for a moment his mind went blank. Was he having some kind of hallucination? He wondered. He looked again but the girl has disappeared.  Had he imagined it? He didn’t believe in ghosts, and this would be difficult to explain to anyone, so he kept it to himself. There was something special about  this mirror that had come to their house. Was there  some sort of message? He took it down and examined it carefully. There was an address at the back. Maybe the previous owner could shed some light on what he’d seen. Was the girl in the mirror a real person and what had this to do with him? No one else had seen anything strange.

It didn’t prove difficult in finding the address.  What was difficult though, was to make any sense of the person who answered the door when he went there. The lady was foreign, and not too keen to answer my questions. He didn’t bother pressing her. He went home and got to thinking. This time though something stirred inside him. The girl’s face was not much older than himself. Who was this person and what connection could she have with him? He thought about it, and he decided to seek advice from a medium. He’d seen an ad in the local paper about a Madame Zion who offered her services concerning unexplained appearances. He phoned and made an appointment. He’d nothing to lose - he still thought that there must be some logical explanation to this but he had an open mind. This thing had got to him; it had become an obsession.

 

Madame Zion lived in a nice part of town. She had a small bungalow, with a trim garden in a tree lined street. It was obvious that she ran a profitable business. He rang the bell and a woman came to the door.  A little portly lady, with a pleasant inquisitive round face, she was wearing a gown and had her hair in a bun. She had a broach around her neck, and rings on her finger. Steve thought that she had an oriental air about her, which added to her credibility.

“Good morning, I am Steve Edwards. I called you yesterday, and made an appointment for 2 o’clock,” he said looking at his watch.

“Oh, Yes, you are the young gentleman with the face in the mirror, please come in dear.” She led him into a room that was heavily draped with cherry red curtains and a table and chairs in the middle but little other furniture. There were pictures of star constellations and artefacts of astrology on the walls which presumably were there to help the customers acclimatise to their surroundings. She offered him a chair. “Please make yourself  comfortable,” she said as she unwrapped some small instruments from a blue velvet cloth. “Now tell me exactly what you saw and we’ll take it from there. I need to hold your hands while you explain what you have seen. As you talk, the energy waves from your body will flow out to me and that will make it easier to visualise the Omni-sphere surrounding you.”

It all sounded matter of fact and nothing like I had imagined, so I proceeded with my story. I explained that I had seen the face of a young woman who seemed to smile at me. I wanted to find out who she was and why did she appear to me. Madame Zion closed her eyes and while she was falling into a trance, I could just make out her face because the lights had been switched off and the room was in darkness.  Then I heard her talking quietly, but I could not hear the person she was talking with.  From what I could see though, she was now smiling so I gathered that nothing sinister was happening and waited patiently till she finally came to, and opened her eyes. She switched on the lights and the whole séance was over. She looked up at me; I was anxious to hear what she had to say, but I stayed silent. “Young man, the person that has been haunting you is none other than your mother.”

“It can’t be, I already have a mother,” I protested.

“The girl in the mirror is your biological mother. Thanks to the mirror, she has found you at last, and can now rest in peace. Her little baby that was snatched from her outside her house. She lived in a terraced house opposite the Odeon cinema by the water front. She’d left you in your pram while she went in to get some milk for you. When she came out, you had gone, the pram was empty. She fainted. People came to help but it was too late, her heart gave up on her. Before anyone could call for help she was gone. Her spirit has looked everywhere hoping to find you.  The mirror was hers, and after her death all her belongings were sold off.”

“If I am that child, how did I get to where I am now? My mother is not my mother? Maybe the ghost of that girl has it wrong. Maybe I am not her lost child, how can I be sure?” 

“I can only tell you what I saw and heard from her.” 

“Thank you, I know what I have to do.” Steve now had some doubts but was concerned enough to try and find out as much s he could at home. He went down by the water front and found the house. The thing to do was to ask if anyone still remembered the girl with a baby who’d lived here 20 years before.  Maybe the present owners could shed some light about the young girl and her baby. When he got there, as he expected no one knew much about the past, but they told him to ask the old couple who lived across the street. They would perhaps remember the girl.

He went across and knocked at the door. After a while, an old lady appeared.

“I m sorry to trouble you, but I am looking for someone who lived here a long time ago. I’m trying to trace a young girl who lived here 20 years ago.” 

“Let me see now,” the old Lady said. “I ‘ve lived here for the last thirty years and I do remember. Very sad. Yes there was a girl who lived across the street; she had her baby snatched and she collapsed and died. They never found what happened to the baby.”

“Can you tell me anything about this girl, was she married? Did she have any relatives?”

“No, all I remember is that she was very pleasant and she adored her child. She lived alone but the baby was well looked after."

“Thank you, you have been very helpful,” Steve said as he went off to consider his situation. Taking stock of the circumstances he decided that it wasn’t necessary to search anymore. It was obvious that he was the baby and that he had been adopted. He would raise it with his mother; she would fill the gaps as to how he came to them. His present parents had brought him up as their own child and had given him the love of a mother and father. Never the less, it was time to clear things up.

 

He went home and he approached his mother. “We need to talk,” he said to her. You know how much I love you as my mother and maybe you have things to tell me about my birth.”

His mother looked at him suddenly surprised. “What do you mean by that?” she said. 

“I know now, thanks to the mirror you bought, that you are not my biological mother.”

“Oh dear! What has happened Steve? Yes… it is true that I am not your mother. We adopted you. Someone had left you in a church, and we were offered the chance as I could not have a baby. I never met your real mother.” 

“I can tell you all about her,” I said. She loved me so much, that she collapsed and died when she found that I was snatched from outside her house. That mirror you brought into the house held the  deep secret. I don’t know why the abductor left me in the church but she was the cause of my mother’s heart attack. My mother’s spirit is now calm having found me even after her death, and she’s happy that you found me and brought me up. Nothing need to change, I am a big boy now and I can understand.” 

They embraced and tears flowed between them.