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The Reflecting Eye
Copyright © 2003, S. Y. Affolee

26

Unknown Checkout


The atrium at the entrance of the Rothburne Institute was silent. It was Fasting Day and the receptionists were either home or at one of the services at the Corvus. Verity walked across the hall, listening to her own steps. She had not wanted to stay at home, waiting. Unsure thoughts and doubts had started to creep into the edge of her mind. What if he decided not to come back? What would she do then? She refused to dwell on it. So she needed to do something.

She recalled the boxes that Quinn and Bob had hauled out of the sub-basement. Perhaps she would look at those. She ventured down into the archives and unlocked the door and turned on the lights. Her co-workers had not come in—after all it was the holiday. She placed her coat in her office and noticed the blank book and the box of strange doorknobs that Quinn had unearthed earlier. They were curiosities, she thought, perhaps nothing more.

She went into Bob’s office. A ring of keys sat on his desk. She took these and found the master key, silver and oblong. When she tried it, it fit easily into the lock on the door to the sub-basement that she initially had thought was a custodian’s closet.

The interior was dark. She touched the walls and felt only stone and mortar. The sub-basement was probably not wired for electricity. She went back to her office to grab a flashlight. But when she turned it on, the weak light illuminated little. There was a stair downward and a cold draft billowing upward to her ankles. Down the stairs was a small room filled with the boxes that Quinn and Bob had talked about. They had initially thought that these contained even older records than the ones shelved in the archives.

Verity placed the flashlight on one of the boxes and tried to lift up the one closest to her. It was heavy. So she opened it instead. A cloud of dust spewed outward when she lifted the lid. She coughed and angled the flashlight to examine the contents. The only object in the box was a large, ugly brass vase. She closed the box and shoved it aside.

The next box contained a leather-bound book. She flipped it open and saw handwriting. It was a hasty scrawl as if the author was trying to write everything down before he forgot it. She tucked it under her arm. The rest of the box held more of the strange doorknob-shaped objects except for the bottom where she found a leather pouch. She opened the pouch and saw something that looked like metal disk.

She climbed the stairs back up to the archive proper and locked the door to the sub-basement. She went back to her office to examine her finds.

The metal object in the pouch was like a round mirror without its frame. When she looked into it, though, her reflection looked odd as if it were emitting brighter colors or that it was skewing the colors that it was reflecting. She blinked, hoping that she wasn’t imagining things. Was the metal disk actually rippling like a pond? She passed her hand over it, but it felt smooth and cool. She put it back into the leather pouch and turned her attention to the book.

She opened it up in the middle.

I told Delia about the family legacy this afternoon.

At first she didn’t believe me. She told me I wasn’t serious. But when I did say that I was serious, she told me I was mad. She left, telling me not to expect her the next day. I suppose I did have it coming to me. The family legacy, to say the least, is a bit outrageous to anyone who doesn’t understand how this whole place works. If she decided not to stay, even to try to convince me that I was wrong, I suppose she probably only wanted to talk to me because of my connections.

So why does my heart feel like it has been bruised?

Perhaps I should try being upfront with the family legacy to any of my new acquaintances.

At any rate, the last week of the year is fast approaching. I have a gut feeling, an intuition, that I may have to use the Eye. I wish Grandfather was still alive. He would know what to do. And I wouldn’t feel so anxious and foreboding.
She flipped a couple more pages, but one line caught her eye.

Even in my sleep, I hear it whispering to me.

Verity abruptly closed the journal and noticed that her hands were shaking. It was nothing, she told herself. Just a coincidence. Just the mind playing tricks on oneself. But even with those thoughts, she did not open the journal again. Instead, she put it into one of the drawers in her desk and shut it. She wouldn’t have to think about it if she didn’t see it.

She put on her coat, and she took the leather pouch with the strange mirror and put that into her coat pocket. She turned off the lights and locked up the archives. For some reason, she did not want to go back to the sub-basement to rummage around in the institutes leftover artifacts.

Upstairs in the welcoming atrium, it was still empty although there was one older woman in a large green parka and a red cap sitting in the waiting area reading a magazine. Verity crossed the atrium to the second set of stairs that led up to the second floor. She could already hear voices drifting down from the recreation room.

The recreation room itself was lit. All the interior lights were turned on. The curtains at the windows had been pulled back, letting in the tepid winter sunlight. The tables in the recreation room had been pushed back to the edges of the room and the chairs and couches were lined up in makeshift pews. All the seats were taken up by patients who were watching the priest at the head of the room with bored and detached expressions. The priest was a younger man dressed in a white vestment and a golden collar. He droned on about the nameless one and his purpose during the nameless days from memory. The priest appeared rather bored himself.

Verity examined the audience and could not find Aeneus. Puzzled as he had told her once before that he had been looking forward to the Fasting Day sermon, she edged past the audience and found herself in one of the upper level corridors which contained patient rooms. She had visited Aeneus in his room once—as good as his word, he had lined his tiny living space with strips of protective aluminum foil.

Aeneus’s room was one of the rooms further down the corridor. Verity easily found it, but the door was opened. She peeked inside and saw the fat, bewhiskered custodian slowly mopping up the floor. The aluminum foil that had lined the ceiling, the window, and the walls were gone. Originally, Aeneus’s room had one bed, a bedstand with some academic books on religion, and a desk with a pad of paper which he sometimes used to write letters and a large quartz paperweight that he had told her he kept for sentimental reasons. But now, all those personal effects were gone. The bed was meticulously made as if it had never been slept in.

She stepped out of the room before the custodian noticed that she was there. She stopped a passing orderly, a boyish-looking man dressed in a white uniform.

“Excuse me, but what happened to the patient who used to live here? What happened to Aeneus?”

“The old man with the obsession with aluminum foil?”

“Yes.”

The man looked at her suspiciously. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’m his friend,” she explained. “I work at the archives here. I talk to him sometimes.”

“Ah,” he said, finally understanding. “Well, he checked out this morning.”

“Checked out? Can patients do that, check themselves out?”

“Well, only if their doctor pronounces them fit. One of the old man’s relatives came to get him. Some holiday family reunion I think it was.”

“Which relative?”

The orderly shrugged. “I’m not sure. His son? His brother? The man was wearing a scarf over his face from the cold outside so I couldn’t tell very clearly. He said his name was Cochran or something like that.”

“Aeneus only one nephew and his name was Kenny.”

He shook his head. “Sorry, but that didn’t sound like it.”

It was only after Verity had walked out of the Rothburne Institute to head to her car that it finally occurred to her that perhaps Aeneus might not have checked out of the institute willingly.