Backward Glass Read online

  I was a curiosity like that for a few weeks, but while I was living it up on stories of that dark hole and the crystalized newsprint flaking away from the corpse of the baby, I held back that list of names and dates. Something about that piece of paper was mine and mine alone. Even when the other kids lost interest in me around Christmas, and I realized I hadn’t actually made any real friends out of my notoriety, I wasn’t tempted for a moment to bring out the note. I told myself I was just being practical. Who would believe I hadn’t just written the list myself and stained it with tea to make it look old? But it was more than that. I hadn’t shown it to my parents either. That was me on that note. It was my own private piece of impossible. It wasn’t asking for anyone else’s help, just mine. Help me make it not happen, Kenny. Help me stop him. Clive is dead all over again.

  In any case, my dad certainly wouldn’t have wanted to hear anything more about the carriage house. The only definite thing that had come out of the police investigation into the dead baby from the carriage house wall was that the little building itself was closed pending a further investigation into its building code violations.

  The same cop who shut the carriage house down came by, trying to stay friendly with my dad, and let us know the case was going into the cold file. “Coroner—couldn’t set a date of death. Without that, there’s a million ways it could have gone. He says that baby could be anywhere from thirty to a hundred and thirty.”

  “Surely you could narrow down a list of potential parents,” said my mom.

  The detective shook his head. “Kidding me? You know how many owners this place has had? I did a search.” He got out his notes. “Guy called Hollerith built it in 1889. One wife, one daughter, one son. Old money. German or something. War breaks out, the first; he joins up on our side, but gets killed in a training accident before he ships. Widow sells it in the late twenties. Guy called Huff—wife Joan, daughter Lillian

  —buys, but only lives here a couple of years before moving out and leaving it empty. Eventually it’s bought by a family, name of Garroway. Garroway’s daughter, Margaret, went missing in 1947, age seventeen. Looks promising, right? No go. She would have had to have had that kid real young, then figured out how to take apart the wall to put it in. We’ve got a bunch of people that can tell us that wall was around long before forty-seven. Which gets us to the creepiest part of the whole thing. You take a look at the newspaper covering that—you know, the baby? Dateline 1947. Couple of days after the Garroway girl went missing. Best suspect? Not so good.”

  I sat motionless through the mention of the names

  from my list. My mother hadn’t wanted me around for any discussion of the baby, but I flat refused to stay away. This was all right in the middle of my dead-baby popularity at school.

  The detective went on to explain that Margaret Garroway had only one surviving relative, her father, now in his eighties in a retirement home. “And that guy—numero uno when she disappeared, but no proof. Says she was rake-thin all the way up to when she went.”

  “So not the Garroway girl,” said my mother. “Who came next?”

  The detective shrugged. “Truth is, could have been anyone, anytime. That carriage house was too easy to get into, too hidden. Another funny thing, though. The newspaper was odd enough, from ’47 like I said, even though the coroner figures the body’s older than that. The baby was also wrapped in cloth, swaddled like. Coroner says we gotta start looking later. Says the polyesters in the cloth weren’t even made until the mid-sixties. So I say, first you tell me forty-seven. Then you tell me the body’s at least fifty years old. Now you’re telling me fifteen?” He waved his hands. “Crazy as nothing.”

  Then it all went away. When my dad shut up the carriage house, it was like he was closing off the story itself. He started tearing up carpets in the main house and running the floorboards through a planer. Any mention of the other property would be met with his warning to stay away. My mom was happy to back him up on this.

  But I couldn’t give up on it. Despite the new lock and boarded-up windows, I often squeezed through the hedges that cut the carriage house off into its own little postage stamp of land, sat on a pile of lumber, and enjoyed the silence. After Christmas, nobody at school talked much to me anymore. On the first day back, I went for lunch at the same table I had been guided to on my first day. The girl who had sung the skipping song raised her eyebrow at me and went back to her pizza slice. A couple of minutes later, her friend showed up, carrying a tray. “Is there any chance you could let me sit there?” she said. “We were going to study for a science test.”

  “I’m good at science,” I said.

  “You’re in grade nine,” she said. “This is grade ten science.” She looked her tray and shifted as though it were heavy. “Most of the grade nines sit over by the back doors.”

  I looked over at the three kids from my math class who were seated just a few feet away, but all of them were studiously involved in a card game.

  The note mentioning my name, which I always kept in my back pocket, carefully transferring it whenever I switched jeans, burned for attention. “I found something in that carriage house,” I said, scooching over to make room for her to join me at the table. I bumped into a card player who pushed back, but there was still enough room for her. “It’s a note with dates on it, and somebody asking for help.”

  “Just find another table, okay?” said the skipping-song girl. “Nobody wants to hear you make up more stories about your haunted house anymore.”

  One of the card players giggled. Nobody met my eyes except the girl with the tray. After another moment of silence, I got up and took my lunch over to the garbage. Only one bite taken from my peanut butter sandwich, but I threw it and my whole apple away.

  I then realized something that would come to me again and again that year, the year I found the backward glass and went inside: if the note was meant for me, then it was mine alone. Nobody else, not my parents, not the police, and not the kids at school, could be expected to care about it. The urgency of that note, the Help me make it not happen, Kenny—that was meant for me. Nobody else was supposed to be obsessed about it but me.

  Which is how I ended up there, on a Sunday near the end of January, after three weeks of eating my lunches alone, looking at footprints in the snow leading out of the tiny door. I was all alone in the forbidden yard. My dad was rehanging doors and my mother reading a mystery novel.

  I examined the tracks. They went up to the front door, which was hanging slightly ajar.

  Heart pounding, I closed it again, and looked back at the footprints.

  One set.

  Leading away.

  I stepped back. Had the guy gone in a window? There were only two on the ground floor, boarded up tight. The hayloft window was clear, but it was fifteen feet up and there were no ladder marks in the snow, nor any easy handholds for climbing.

  I called out a couple of hellos.

  Nothing.

  The creepiness that had made my hair stand on end began to give way to annoyance. This was my place.

  I looked back toward the main house, but it couldn’t be seen through the high, unruly hedges.

  I pushed the door to the carriage house open and stepped in, holding it open behind me to admit the weak January light.

  “You’re crossing a police line,” I said, trying to sound bold and official.

  Nothing.

  I waited, letting my eyes adjust. No one.

  The lower floor was bare now, the musty old couch long since left by the curb, but upstairs the jumble of disused tables and desks remained. I walked up in the dusty light and looked around. My eyes kept wanting to come back to the dark hole left by the last panels my dad had torn away. Help me make it not happen, Kenny. Help me stop him. Clive is dead all over again.

  Nobody there. An odd, low dresser with a full-length mirror stood near the back. Was there
dust scuffed away from its surface? Maybe with a flashlight I could have been sure.

  This was stupid, I told myself. My dad forgot to lock the door. Somebody came up and went inside, then it snowed while he was there, and then he walked away again.

  But the snow had fallen yesterday, and I had seen it untrammeled last night.

  I walked back downstairs and dragged my feet to the door.

  Snap. Rustle.

  The sound came from the hedgerow. “I hope you know you’re trespassing,” I said.

  No reply. I looked into the thick hedges, snow-blind after the dim mysteries of the carriage house. But I could still tell height, and this was a kid, no taller than me.

  I strode forward, shielding my eyes. “You’re not allowed to come here,” I said, maybe a little louder and harsher than I had intended, but I was trying to build up steam. “Cops closed it off.”

  The figure withdrew to the other side of the hedge and took off toward the creek.

  “Stop!” I hesitated for a moment, then ran to the boxwood shrubs my dad had planted, the easiest part of the hedge to slip through.

  The guy was a good runner. He sprinted ahead of me, dodging trees and jumping bushes. When he reached the creek, I got a better look. A dirty white jacket, too thin for January. A foolish-looking orange woolen hat with one of those knit balls bobbing on top.

  It’s funny how you can switch from feeling one way to something totally different. I had wanted to catch this kid and give him a shake, tell him he better get off our property or else.

  Then, in the middle of running—I was lonely. Just like that.

  “Hey, wait,” I shouted, gasping. “I just want to talk.”

  The kid veered away from the creek again. We were coming up on the fences that separated us from the subdivision, and it was either climb a fence, go back to our house, or descend to the muddier ground near the trickle of water that was Manse Creek. He headed to the house.

  I tried to cut him off, but he was too fast, and I was breathing hard.

  Then I got it. He was doubling back to the carriage house. I’d been tricked. I put on a burst of speed, but then slowed. Why hurry? There was only one way out.

  I switched to an out-of-breath jog, keeping him in sight through the winter-bare saplings that dotted the ground. He twisted sideways and slipped through the hedge, losing his hat on the way. I saw a hand flash back through and grab for it, so I put on another burst of speed.

  The hand disappeared, leaving the orange hat caught in the hedge. I snatched it when I got there.

  Before I had even begun to worm my way through, I heard the door slam. I rounded the front of the little house, pushed open the door, and stepped through.

  The dark was almost total, cut only by the dimness making its way through the hayloft window. I was worried that the guy might be right beside me, but then I heard a scrape from the second floor.

  “Who are you?” I said.

  “Are you the one?” came a gruff voice from the shadows. Was he trying to disguise his voice from me, trying to sound older than he was?

  “Am I what one?”

  “The one the mirror chose? This time, I mean. It’s me in ten years.”

  “Who are you?” I said again. “Look, it isn’t safe up there. I’m sorry I scared you before.”

  The shadowed figure above made a dismissive sound. “You didn’t scare me. This is 1977, right? Are you the one who scratched that message in my drawer?”

  “What message? What drawer?” I was beginning to wonder if this was my first encounter with a junkie. “I don’t know what you mean,” I added. “Look, my name’s Kenny Maxwell. I live here. Well, not here, but in the big house.”

  There was a long silence. “You’re Kenny.” It was something halfway between a question and a statement. The kid rattled a piece of paper. “So you did write out those rules.”

  “What rules? What are you talking about?”

  “The note Melissa brought back. That she got in the mail.” He sounded impatient now, and the gruff was slipping out of his voice. “Do you know what’s going on? Have you gone back?”

  I held out my hands to calm him down, but I didn’t step any closer. “Back where? I don’t know any Melissa.”

  “Don’t know much, do you?” I didn’t answer. After a long pause he spoke again. “I’m going. It’s your note, so you can have it back, I guess. Jeez, I thought you’d have more answers. Help Kenny. What am I supposed to help you do? I guess we’ll figure it out, but I’ve stayed too long as it is. Bye.”

  Bye? “Wait,” I said. I held out my hands, ready for him to rush me, but there was a quick rustle above me behind the furniture.

  And then nothing.

  “Do you need help or something?” I said after a moment. There was no reply. “What’s your name?”

  But I knew I was alone. That way your voice is when it’s only you in a room. It was impossible, but I knew it was true. I walked up the stairs.

  My dad hadn’t finished stripping the lath, so the dark space where the baby had been still dominated the back wall. To the right as you came up the stairs was the cluster of old furniture, much more carelessly placed than in my room. A bed had been ruined with a pile of chairs and two well-worn school desks. I picked a path between dressers, chests, and a pile of splintered remnants.

  I wasn’t at all scared of the kid jumping out at me. He was gone, I was sure of that, however impossible it was.

  It was the note that guided me. He said he was leaving it, and there it was, a new piece of paper sitting on the top of that same low dresser I had noticed before. I picked it up, but couldn’t read it in the dim light.

  I looked at the mirror, then down at where I had been standing. Yes, this was the thing the kid would have ducked around. I squatted to open its four stubby drawers. Nothing. I ran my hands over a surface that looked to have been finished and refinished several times. The wood framing the mirror at the top was scroll-cut in fancy loops, but everything else was square and functional. I guessed the idea was that the lady of the house would sit in front of it to put on her makeup and jewelry. But if that was so, why did the mirror need to be so tall? It rose a little more than four feet above the dresser. Had it been tacked on later? Maybe. As near as I could tell, it didn’t have single scratch on it, and it threw back the dim light perfectly.

  No kid hiding. No ghost jumping out.

  “I just wanted to talk,” I said again, but my voice sounded stupid to me in the empty place, so I went back down and into the light, feeling the paper between my fingers as I went.

  As soon as I got outside, I closed the door, sat down on the step, and looked at it.

  The first thing that struck me was the lettering. Clean, like letters printed in a book, not punched into the paper the way a typewriter does.

  The Rules

  The mirror works January to December, on years ending in seven. It takes you backward from eleven until midnight. If you’re in an even-numbered decade (like the eighties or the sixties), it opens for you on an even-numbered day. Odd decade (seventies or nineties), odd days. Once you’ve gone backward, you have to wait until after midnight to return. The mirror picks one person every decade, and never picks older than sixteen. But you can turn seventeen and still use it.

  There are other rules, but I didn’t say them before, so I shouldn’t this time.

  Good luck,

  Your friend for all time,

  Kenny Maxwell

  Two

  The Rules

  2. From an even-numbered decade, you can go back on even-numbered days. Same for odds.

  What do you do when you’re confronted with something that’s obviously crazy?

  You don’t talk about it, that’s for sure.

  I put the note and the orange hat with the list under my mattress, and spent the day think
ing about how nuts I was for not throwing it all away and telling my dad I had seen some kid trespassing.

  It was the twenty-third of January, so don’t think it wasn’t lost on me that at ten-thirty that night I was supposed to be half an hour away from … something. Odd day. Odd decade. Takes you backward.

  My parents are strict early-to-bedders, so the house was quiet. I sat by my window and looked out, though not at the hedges and the carriage house, since my window faced the street. A new snow was falling.

  I continued the argument I had been having with myself for hours, one voice insisting that there was a rational explanation for all of this, the other pointing out all the irrational and unexplainable elements. Whenever that hopeful voice, the one that wanted something magical in the carriage house, finished with its best arguments, rational me would simply shrug his shoulders and say, Then why aren’t you out there? It’s because you don’t want to be disappointed, isn’t it?

  And that was it. All these weeks I had been keeping the list secret, telling myself stories about what it was, how I fit into it all. I didn’t believe in ghosts that needed to be saved or set free, but I wanted to. If I went out there, and nothing happened, my ticket into the story I had been living in my head would turn out to be a forgery I had made myself. But if I stayed here, I would always have the ticket to look at.

  I stayed.

  Eventually I fell asleep.

  School the next day was hell. Every moment irritated me. Normally, I just did as I was told, and tried to finish my work quickly.

  But not today. I failed a math quiz, fumbled at marking another kid’s when we were supposed to take it up, stumbled when I was called on, and actually grumbled slightly when Mrs. Bains told us to take out our grammar exercise books. Why hadn’t I gone out there? An odd-numbered night. It takes you backward. It opens for you.