THE HAUNTED MIRROR
By Manuel Pardo

The mirror was an antique I bought in an old fashion building yard, one of those chaotic places of which there were few left in the country. The owner was waiting twenty years for planning permission to build offices in the site, but the planes never satisfied the council, so the yard was there as an ugly stain in the middle of the small but very classical Oxon town. During one of my visits to the yard 1 saw the mirror in a shed in the glass section. The mirror had about six feet height by four wide. The frame was mahogany, around five inches wide by three tick. It had elaborated mouldings all around and a few curved flowers on the top frame. It had been n1cely repaired, but even so one could see that the frame had been badly damage on the right hand side, near the top It was noticeable, too, that the wood worms had done some good work in that side, and the holes had been filled with some sort of putty. The glass had a large stain in that side of the damage frame. Those defects, more than taking merit to the mirror, it seemed to give it an added valued, as it happened with antiques whose imperfects give them personality, like wounds to the soldiers. 1 calculated that the mirror would fit very nicely in the dining room, because it would match the beams of the restaurant and give it an illusion of amplitude. 1 asked one of the employees if they would sell it, because the mirror seemed to be there doing nothing. 1 was informed that it was there to see people behind when they were cutting glass, an so to avoid any accident But, after a couple of months, that employee carne to tell me that the yard was closing down and that I could have the mirror, if still I was interested. It was really a heavy thing that mirror. We put it on the patio and there I employed many hours of my spare time to restored it. I used wood filler to mend the damage flowers and fill in some holes of the wood worms. Sanded down the green fungus from the frame, and then I polished it with the real French polish, and the result was a job of which I felt very proud. The job done, to avoid the weather undo what I had done, I put the mirror _with help- in a corner of the restaurant leaning against the wall, and there it stayed for a long time, waiting to be fixed in the place I had reserved for it. But the mirror never carne to occupy its assign place, because, when I was ready to fixed it, a few unexpected problems arouse. I found out that a radiator had to be moved to make room for the mirror, and to move the radiator the boiled had to be emptied, then refilled again, fiddle with the gas and the pump, and waiting for the water to be hot and then to bleed the radiators. Two men a whole day just to move a radiator. So the mirror stayed leaning against the wall in that corner for some time. In that corner was a table where we sat to have a rest when we could, a cup of tea or a meal, after closing time. It was in those occasions, when we would let the dog in. The dog would stay in front of the mirror, moving its head sideways and wagging its short tail. And all of a suddenly it would attack the mirror barking madly as if it had seen some strange person there. The dog was a miniature poodle, very intelligent, and it was for being intelligent that its stupidity in front of the mirror would make everybody laugh. In one occasion we laughed even more with Mrs. Sink. The woman was a Asher up, hence why we call her so. She happened to be one of those persons prone to small accidents, and who they blame the others for everything that happen to them. In one occasion, when we all were having a meal in that corner of the restaurant, in came Mrs. Sink in a terrible state of nervous telling us one of her disasters. Suddenly she looked at the mirror and, jumping ceiling high, shouted,
“Who is that woman?”
Probably Mrs. Sink didn’t recognised herself for the stain that there was in the mirror, but being Mrs. Sink as she was, everybody laugh. But we laughed too soon, for something similar happened to me once and later to my wife. It had been one of those days when nothing seemed to go right and, under pressure, I had a bit of an argument with my wife, then, when we finished working, she went up to the flat without having supper. I didn’t feel hungry either, but, to unwind I sat at the usual table with a bottle of wine, cheese and biscuits. After a while, and as I was lifting a glass to my lips, I saw a woman in the mirror, but I could no see her face because of the stain in that side of the glass. I presumed that she was my wife coming down to smoke the pipe of peace with me but, as I look back to the corridor, nobody was there. As I didn’t believed in ghosts I blame the vision on my state of mind, because I was worry and sorry for the argument with my wife. Then, a couple of days later my wife said to me,
“I laughed of Mrs. Sink and the same happened to me today. I saw a woman in the mirror that she didn’t look like me.”
When a last everything was ready to fix the mirror in its place, one Sunday, the day we closed the restaurant, armed with all sorts of tools, screws and so forth, I put hands to the job. At first the wall seemed harder than stone, and I had to push the drill .with all my strength. Then, of a suddenly, the bit and the drill went through the wall and, as I was pushing so hard my head crashed against the wall and I almost fainted with pain. At the same time I heard a horrendous scream, as if it was the wall the one that cried and not myself. Was that me? I asked. But then, as I pulled the drill out, I realised that it was the wall the one that was screaming. I apply my eye to the hole and saw on the other side what seemed an open oyster with a black pearl in the middle. The crooked object was opening and closing in a rapid sequence, and it soon declare itself to be an eye.
Looking from outside one could guess that, at one time, the adjoined house and mine had been both one and only large house. I thought that nobody was living there, because in six months since I had the business I never saw a soul coming or going there, and neither I heard any noise from the place. For that reason my surprise was greater to see an eye there, because 1 presumed that the eye had to belong to somebody. 1 ran to the street and knocked at the neighbour’s door to apologise for what 1 had done to whoever soul was hibernating there. It happened to be an old lady who lived there alone with her cat She was covered in dust, white as a baker and shaking with fright. She looked more like a ghost than a woman.
“My God, look what you have done” she shouted at me.
“Calm yourself, lady. Let me in, to see the damage and 1 will mend it for you”.
She aloud me in and took me to the kitchen. Soon 1 understood why the woman got such a fright. On that side a large piece of the wall had fallen and the plaster, dry as flour, was spread as far as the front door. The cat, that 1 found out late was brown, at that present was white. The cup of tea was covered with the stuff from the wall, and so was the kettle and everything else over the sink and the cooker.
“Look, look what the devil you have done” cried the woman.
1 couldn’t give credit to my eyes before such a disaster.
“Please do not worry, lady. This is nothing. 1 am going now to the yard for plaster and 1 will leave this wall better than new, you will see. If 1 broke something 1 will pay it.”
The woman started calm down, to the point that she felt sorry for my distress. 1 ran to the yard and soon 1 came back with the material and the necessary tools. By then the woman had the place clean, and the cat already was white, and it was resting on a chair. The woman did offer me a cap of tea and 1 started the job to close the hole. Then 1 told the woman how 1saw her eye from my side and she told me how she saw mine from hers. That was so amusing to her that almost choke on her laughter. So, between cups of tea we talked a lot, being the woman the one who talked more. She told me that she have not talk so much since her husband died twenty years back. The woman had a pleasant way of telling about her life, for she was not boring, as can be the case with those stories of older people. She would put a pinch of salt to the sad bits of her life, helping with a humorous and tender smile. While she was talking, the cat, sat on the chair, would shake its head up and down as confirming that what the lady told was the whole truth. Among all the stories she told me, she said that, at one time her house and mine, were only one house, just as 1 suspected.
“The car park at the back and all the town gardens, used to belong to this house” she told me.
Then she told that those houses were a listed buildings, and she advised me to find out with my insures if the policy had that into account, because would the building burn down it had to be rebuilt again as it was, and that could be very expensive. That was something that my lawyer didn’t told me. The lady knew all .those details because she had work for the council, and she seemed to know everything about the town. She told me that the large property belonged to the same family for generations. The last owners were a middle age couple. They had a servant, a young pretty woman. The landlady suspected, for some time, that her husband was having an affair with the woman, but she could not proved it. One evening the land lord came from shooting game and he left the shotgun and the holster hanging on e peg in the corridor, and went to the dining room where the servant was laying up the table for tea. The land lord asked for his wife, and the woman told him that she was in town shopping. But the land lady was coming home, at that precisely moment, through the back door, and she caught her husband kissing the servant. She saw the gun hanging there and she loaded it and bang. It seemed that the gun was of only one barrel, otherwise surly she would kill both, husband and woman. But she shot dead only the woman. The shot caught her on the face, at so close range that her blood penetrated in the glass of a mirror, and that stain never could be taken out, for the most the tried. The land lady went to prison for manslaughter, and the property was sold the land lord went to live somewhere else. The house was divide into three duelling. Then, many years later, two of the houses were turned into one again to open a restaurant.
“They wanted to by mine as well, but we don’t sale. We lived here since we married and have here our remembrances” said the old lady, talking with a distant voice as if her husband was still with her, and she went on: “The hose in the middle was bought and sold dozens of times, and nobody would stay in it for very long, as if it was a hunted. And then it was known that that was the reason. The ghost was the servant that appeared in the mirror. The last owner got ride of the mirror and with it went the ghost.
“How that mirror looked like” I asked her.
“I don’t know. I never saw the mirror, but I being told that it was a very nice and large one.”
Back in my place I took a pointed knife from the kitchen and started to dig in the mirror’s wooden frame, the holes that supposed to be the work of the wood worms, and there it was, a lead, and then another... I didn’t look farther. I sold the mirror to and antics shop, and made a profit of it. Now, if someone who reads this story sees a mirror of those characteristic remember that you being warned.
The end of:
THE HAUNTED MIRROR
2,300 words.


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