Page 6 of Demonic Delights

“Lovely morning to you, Beatrice,” I say to her cheerfully, only for her to completely ignore my greeting, just as she has done for the past ten years.

Just as well. Whoever Mrs Stubbs doesn’t ignore, she pesters almost incessantly with her “research” into ghosts, evil spirits, fairies, and the like, a bizarre hobby she took up after her husband’s untimely passing. I would rather have her hostile silence.

“Bates says you need to go through Wilson’s back office and take what you want today. Has to be cleared by the end of the week,” she instructs me in a cold, scolding tone of voice.

“Right, Beatrice, thank you,” I reply, clearing my throat, and she walks out, shutting the door behind her before I get the chance to ask her for a cuppa.

Never mind. Given the looks she graces me with anytime I ask her for a hot beverage, chances are that the tea would come with a dash of spit anyway. I’ll make it myself and then head to my first class of the day with bright-eyed Poppy no doubt already waiting for me in a front seat of the lecture hall.

I don’t get to stop by Wilson’s office until the late afternoon, once I’m done with classes for the day. I probably could have used the spare hour I had in the middle of my day to do it. But it’s not like I’m in any hurry to get home. And truth be told, a part of me wanted to avoid the task of sorting Wilson’s things for as long as possible.

The whole campus is rumoured to be haunted by the tortured souls of the asylum era of the building; women who never made it out of here alive, succumbing to torture, abuse, and neglect dressed as ‘innovative medicinal practices’. But after November 30 last year, to me, it’s this particular corner of our history department building that is haunted.

Haunted by the man whom I thought I knew, but didn’t, because within him, all along, there must have been the sinister seed of what he would do, and I never saw its first tentative shoot, nor its full bloom, not until it was too late.

Haunted by his victims, snuffed out so suddenly and abruptly by him that it feels like they did not have enough time to depart in full, and some part of them still lingers like a shadow separated from its caster.

And haunted by me too, perhaps, by a version of me that no longer exists, the one who thought that such horrors only ever happened to other people in other places.

Unlike my cosy nook, Wilson’s office is spacious and split into two parts: the larger front office, where he had his desk and where he saw students during office hours, and the smaller back office, which served more as storage for the various historical artefacts that he studied. Those are the reason I’m here. Wilson acquired them all using a university grant, meaning they are the faculty’s property. I am to go through them and see if I would like to use any of them for my research before they get transferred to the university’s partnered museum in Carlisle.

I cross the rectangular front office. It’s light and airy, its white walls and large windows a stark contrast to the back office, which is oak-panelled and cluttered, with only one tall, narrow window carved into its East-facing wall.

I flick the light switch on, but nothing happens. The room remains dark and full of shadows. I look up and see that all the lightbulbs in the old, rickety chandelier have been shattered. Hard to tell whether that’s due to some electrical shortage or whether Andrew decided to smash them for reasons that would likely make sense in no one else’s head but his own.

The room smells of dust, and its walls are lined with ceiling-high stacks of boxes, which I know will contain carefully wrapped medieval plates and little prehistoric statues. There are a few larger, unwrapped statues, two swords in transparent cases, and nineteenth-century pistol holsters protected by plastic. But my attention is immediately captured by an arched shape to my right, set on a fairly ordinary table and propped against the wall opposite the window. It’s shrouded in a black chiffon veil, transparent enough for me to see that a mirror with a dark, ornate metal frame is concealed within.

The fabric is frail and delicate like black spiderwebs. Focusing on it, I notice it undulates, as if in a draft. But there’s something eerie about that unobtrusive movement.

It’s rhythmical and somewhat syncopated in quality like a heartbeat. Too precisely so to be caused by something as unpredictable as air fluctuation. I swallow hard, my body’s delayed reaction to what my eyes are telling me. The back of my neck is prickling, my hands are starting to sweat, and my blood is rushing loud and fast through my ear canals.

And despite an instinctive wish to recoil, I take a step closer and then another one. The first one is loud in the strange acoustics of the small, high-ceilinged place. But the second one is drowned out by a noise. A noise that’s like a thrum, a humming consisting of a multitude of whispers. Chills run along my spine because the sound is completely unnatural. My mind goes into overdrive, rushing through dozens of hypothetical causes, but none of them can explain it. It is mechanically regular yet organic in quality. It is a sound that is made by something that is ... alive. But in an abnormal, unhealthy, malignant way. It is alive in the way cancer cells are alive.

And yet, despite my instincts telling me to bolt out of there fast, something draws me to that mirror, not curiosity or intrigue, something that feels like a fishhook sunk into a prehistoric part of my soul that I have no control over.

I stop about two feet away from the mirror, and my fingers close around the veil. I tug at it carefully, mindful of not tearing it, but it unwraps and slides off, as if of its own volition, with a whoosh that is faint in volume but still far too loud to be made by such flimsy cloth.

The antique mirror is revealed in all its glory. My eyes are instantly drawn to the top frame centrepiece: a three-dimensional skull tilted forward slightly so that it appears to be looking down on whoever is in front of the mirror. Its eye sockets are hollow, but something seems to flash through their dark depth, and I tear my eyes away in fright.

But still I stand paralysed, unable to move, to walk away. I run my fingers carefully along the edge of the framing. That’s when I notice words engraved in between artful swirls in a language I recognise as archaic Romanian, Roxie’s mother tongue.

A sharp odour assaults my nostrils, something between smoke and the burning scent of winter frost. Ice-cold smoke.

Why can’t I walk away? Why do I feel compelled to observe my reflection in the mirror’s glass, astonishingly undamaged considering that it must be hundreds of years old? Now I would be the first to admit that I don’t hate the sight of myself. My colleagues who look their age more than I do would like to put everything down to genes. And it is true that I have been blessed with a head full of brown hair, a tall, athletic figure, and the sort of sharp-jawed, chiselled bone structure that is considered conventionally attractive. But I also look the way I do because I work hard for it. I watch what I eat and drink, I exercise regularly, I always keep my beard trimmed, and I put retinol on my face at night. Appearances go a long way, especially in our profession. And to be as popular with my students as I am, I make sure I look the part.

Still, this mirror distorts in the strangest of ways. My face seems smoother, shiny with a youthful glow, the teeth in my smirking grin a shade whiter than I know they really are.

Wait.

How can I see my teeth in the mirror? I am not smiling ... only my reflection is!

My heart sinks, and my insides are flooded with acidic fear. My chest constricting, I struggle for each breath, and it feels as if the floor has opened beneath me like a trapdoor, and I’m in a freefall. Almost instinctively, I shift my sight from my smirking doppelganger to his surroundings; the reflection of the room I’m in.

A potent bout of nausea crashes through me, my breath is only coming in panicked, raspy wheezes, and my legs turn to gelatine.

The room in the mirror is empty.

No boxes.