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This writing was accepted for publication in the 84 page perfect-bound issue... Down in the Dirt magazine (v111) (the October 2012 Issue) You can also order this 5.5" x 8.5" issue as an ISSN# paperback book:

Order this writing in the book Falling (a Down in the Dirt collection book)		get the 230 page Sept. - Dec. 2012 Down in the Dirt magazine issue collection 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

The Black Mirror

Lasher Lane

    After donning only black for almost a decade as the honorable wife who’d long surpassed Italian-Catholic mourning etiquette, my grandmother had finally given up the label of third wheel-slash-lonely widow. She had remarried, this time to an eccentric German man named Gerhard. Not only did he inherit her extremely loud snoring, which we were all thankful for, but she inherited his horsehair mattress, which he refused to part with, and she admitted took some getting used to because it was so lumpy it felt like the horse was still in it. She also acquired his massive relic of a house on the corner of 87^th street in North Bergen, a town that was home to two Revolutionary War sites: The Battle of Bull’s Ferry and the Three Pigeons Inn.
    My grandmother’s name was Antoinette, but she’d rather have been called Nettie. The year was 1964, and she’d been living with us for the past seven years in our refurbished basement, while caring for my terminally ill grandfather until he died that same year. Terribly lonely for male companionship, she’d just about worn out all the grooves on her sentimental Dean Martin and Perry Como records, listening to them alone every night, crying in her underground apartment that is, until she finally met Gerhard.
    While they were dating, Gerhard would telephone, and when my mom answered, he’d ask, “Is Nutty there?” his thick German accent getting in the way. My mom often took pleasure in replying, “She sure is!” Her obvious, resentful attitude wasn’t because her mother had found love again with someone other than her own father, but I think it was due to my grandmother placing Gerhard on a much higher pedestal than she’d even placed her first husband.
    Gerhard was a lonely widower too, but always mild-mannered and calm, unlike my deceased, much older, excitable Irish-tempered grandfather, who finally had reason to make good on his promise to come back as a fly and “bug” us, especially now that my grandmother had remarried.
    While my father instantly welcomed Gerhard as a second dad, my mom held back. She hated the way my grandmother would refer to him as her “Santa Claus.” Not that Gerhard was hairy and overweight, but like Santa he was always jovial and he did have a gut, which I’m sure he acquired from his love of beer. Besides being German like my dad, it was one of the reasons he and my dad got along so well from the moment they met; both men never seeming to be seen without beer bottles as appendages.
    My grandmother had once again become an enthusiastic new bride who’d forgotten how much she loved to entertain, so she and Gerhard would invite us, along with many of our relatives to weekly Sunday dinners. While the snow fell quietly outside, and the house was filled with the smell of a roast she was cooking that steamed up all the windows, the adults would entertain themselves with small talk and cocktails, while my brother and me, being bored-out-of-our-mind teenagers and having no interest in their topics of conversation would wander the enormous rooms. Just as the way Gerhard dressed himself, each room was like stepping decades into the past. The house was a sort of museum-like curiosity shop with its elaborately carved, though well-worn antique furniture, Egyptian statues, taxidermied animals, and stones and crystals in colors we’d never seen before. But an even better, more interesting place was the spacious attic with its secretary that contained books about astronomy and astrology, but there were two very old books with peculiar titles having to do with the soul and cosmic conception.
    The endless attic was filled with more antique furniture, not placed in a way that looked like it was being stored but like a room that was still in use. While Will continued to explore the immense space, opening and closing doors and drawers, I grabbed a chair and sat down at a desk. I carefully took one of the old books from the secretary shelf, and a pamphlet fell from inside its pages, almost as if it wanted to be discovered. I retrieved it from the floor and began leafing through it, reading certain parts out loud to Will. “Hey, listen to this: It says here something about scrying, an ancient practice for seeing into the past, present or future by using a reflective surface like a mirror. It says that mirrors are linked to the Moon, so they should always be backed with silver. A black mirror is best for eliminating all outside interference, as it acts as a portal to other planes in the universe. Nostradamus used one, and the Aztecs’ were made of obsidian. It also says that scrying is not easy since the subconscious and conscious must be mastered first, usually through meditation.”
     “It sounds like some kind of witchcraft; do you think Grandma married a witch?” Will asked as he opened the doors to a very large, burled wood armoire.
    As I looked up to answer Will, I found him holding the exact object I’d just been reading about. Of course we’d both seen mirrors before, but we’d never seen one like this, a black one. It was oval-shaped with an ornate frame.
    Just then our grandmother called to us from the bottom of the attic steps. “Henry, Will? Are you up there? Dinner’s ready.” She started to ascend the steps, flipping on the attic lights, saying that she’d been looking all over for us. She’d heard us talking and saw the attic door slightly ajar.
    Will had time to shove the mirror back into the armoire, but it was too late; she’d already seen me holding the book. When I asked her about it, her nervous, desperate reaction, pleading for us to leave it alone and never touch it again, only sparked my curiousity further. She said that it was Gerhard’s book. He was a Rosicrucian and believed in stuff like reincarnation, auras, and using mirrors to see into the past, present and future.
    With that said, I looked over at Will, neither one of us mentioning the mirror we’d found.
    “What are auras?” I asked.
    “I don’t know, some weird hocus-pocus stuff,” she said, shaking her head as she rolled her eyes. Everyone supposedly has their own color surrounding them that means something. Let’s go, boys. The food is getting cold.” From the way she acted, she seemed embarrassed, dismissing our new grandfather’s choice of faith, as if the mystic rituals of our own faith, Catholicism, were any less bizarre.
    We reluctantly joined the company downstairs as she followed. “Any other room is fine, but promise me you boys won’t go up there again?” she said, making sure to close the attic door tightly behind us. I didn’t answer her; I wasn’t promising anything.
    The next Sunday we looked forward to our adventure. Since I was determined to attempt using the mirror to see if it really worked, I had persuaded Will to sneak off to the attic with me. My plan was to follow the scrying ritual word for word. First, we took out the votives we’d found in a drawer along with some stick matches, lighting and placing them on either side of the mirror. Then, using a small flashlight I’d brought from home as light to read by, I’d dictate, almost whispering, as Will sat halfway across the attic, facing the black-as-coal gateway to another realm, which was promised to be a key to the past, present or future where one world ended and another began. Per my instructions, Will sat in front of the mirror with his eyes closed, breathing deeply, as I told him to silently call on the angelic presence.
    Will forgot for a moment that we were supposed to be quiet. He couldn’t stop himself from giggling, then yelled out loud, “Angelic? As in angels? You want me to talk to angels? ”
    “Sssshhh!” I whispered back as loudly as I could. “We’re not supposed to be up here. Remember? Now...open your eyes and look into the mirror. Don’t look with your eyes but with your mind’s eye.”
    My saying that caused Will to have another uncontrollable giggling fit.
    “Look. If you’re not going to be serious, then forget it.” Sometimes I had to remind my brother to practice self-control, to not act immature or overly dramatic.

***

    Nothing had happened on our second attempt, but that didn’t mean I was about to give up. While everyone around me, including Will, was becoming obsessed with this new group from England, the Beatles, I was becoming obsessed with this strange devotion I’d discovered. I even went so far as to sneak one of the books home with me on certain weekends. It became all I thought about, this weird “religion” that believed we all were born from the Sun and died from the Moon, that we were aided by Planetary Angels, that all the souls that would ever be created resided in mansions since the beginning of time, eternally recycled yet infinitely connected toone another, each sharing a sixth sense, that Silver Cords were attached to our physical bodies and only in death would these cords be severed. And that by looking in a mirror we could see another time. Not only did I start imagining everyone I saw walking around like marionettes attached to the Heavens by strings, but I also wondered who I might have been a hundred years ago and if the mirror would ever show me. I even began meditating daily as the book suggested.
    While most fourteen-year-old boys spent hours locked in the bathroom obsessed with a certain part of their anatomy, I began locking myself in the bathroom for a much different reason, obsessed with a glimpse of my past or future self. I’d sit in the dark, staring into the mirror with the streetlight shining through the window as my only illumination.
     Will really didn’t care one way or another. He wasn’t obsessed like I was, but he went along with me because I was his older brother. And as a winter of Sundays slowly crept by, so that no one would be looking for us, our excuse to use the mirror became that we’d pretend to take long walks before dinner since the attic entry and stairs leading outside were both situated together on the opposite side of the house from everyone else. We’d gotten so good at our charade that when we were done with our attic antics, we’d sneak downstairs, put our coats and boots on and step outside for a few minutes to stand in the snow, waiting for our noses to turn red from the cold, then as loud as we could, we’d deliberately stamp the snow off our boots, leaving the hall door open a little longer than it should have been to let the smell of winter back inside.
    Finally, after months of successful deception, Will saw something. The vision had terrified him so much that it made him want to stop scrying. Before the vision, I remember him asking if I was standing right behind him because he’d seen a shadowy silhouette directly in back of him, which reflected in the mirror. I was at least ten feet away and had never moved from my chair. Then he told me that within the mirror he saw a lot of flames surrounding water and that he saw himself in the middle of that water, drowning. My first reaction was to laugh. Will had quite an imagination. So I dismissed what he said at first until I saw the look on his face and then realized how genuinely scared he was. He begged me to go back downstairs. I relented, snuffing out the candles, and we returned to our relatives.
    During the Sundays that followed, I’d sit at the dinner table noticing that neither Gerhard or my grandmother shared his supernal beliefs with the rest of the family. I wondered if he and my grandmother ever discussed the tenets of the Rosy Cross when they were alone. I studied Gerhard’s unflappable posture, always serene, content, and contemplative. And I think I understood why. The Rosicrucian faith was a lot for any mortal to contemplate.
    In the weeks that followed, I forced Will to continue our trips to the attic, taking his place as seer. I was determined to see something...anything. Hesitant, he agreed only if I allowed him to sit on the attic steps with the flashlight should he want to make a quick escape. Nothing ever happened other than winter had turned to spring. I never saw anything.
    Although, as the years passed and my interest turned away from mirrors and towards the opposite sex, I did see one thing, and that was that the mirror never meant to be malevolent, but by then it was too late. At the time, Will and I didn’t realize the mirror had offered us a gift, it had tried to forewarn us of an event four years into the future involving fire and water that would take my brother’s life. It wasn’t until that tragic event occurred that I’d be able to recall Will’s vision and understand.

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