main | table of contents The Reflecting Eye Copyright © 2003, S. Y. Affolee 27 The Duplicate Verity drove back home, almost automatically maneuvering her car from street to street as her mind wandered elsewhere. Had Aeneus willingly gone with this person who had checked him out? Was this person a relative or someone else? If Aeneus had not gone willingly, what had this person threatened him with to comply? And more importantly, why did someone come to the Rothburne Institute to discharge an old man who to say the least, wasn’t entirely right in the head? Or maybe Aeneus was right all along and somebody finally paid attention. Perhaps this person wanted to keep Aeneus quiet. She parked her car at the curb and got out. As she was walking to her door, she observed the front door to her neighbor’s house opening. An older, middle-aged woman emerged from the house dressed in an elaborate fur coat and an even more elaborate headdress that was also made of fur. The woman walked passed Verity, not giving her a single glance. Once inside her own house, Verity took out the leather pouch she had found at the archives and placed it on the dining room table. She took off her coat and for a moment, looked at the pouch and the antique mirror frame. She wondered if the strange metal disk could fit into the frame, but did not take the disk out from its pouch. There was something instinctive holding her back. The phone on top of the shelf in the dining room rang, jarring her out of her reverie. She took the receiver and automatically placed it on her ear. “Hello?” “Verity?” Her skin prickled at Gammell’s voice. “I just wanted to call to say that I can’t make it this evening.” Her stomach knotted. Her throat closed up. But she did manage to say one word, “Why?” “Something came up. I promise I’ll come by later.” “All right.” When she hung up, she felt her fingers balling up into fists. She couldn’t breathe. A pressure started to build up behind her eyes. Why do I do this to myself? She thought. They’re all the same. It doesn’t matter to them who you are. You’re just something convenient, the first thing lying around that they use. It was as if everything she had felt before was suddenly escaping and creating a void where she was cold and numb. It was as if she were no longer a person, but an unfeeling automaton. She forced herself to move. She went upstairs to the bathroom. The knife was lying lengthwise on the lower shelf of the medicine cabinet. She took the knife and held it in her hands. It was cool. Sharp. The top was poised above her bandaged wrists. It could cut through all that wrapping to the skin beneath. It was only an inch below. But she hesitated. Her hand began to tremble and the blade wavered. With a cry, she threw the knife into the wastebasket and looked up at the cabinet mirror. A pale woman no longer stared back at her. Instead, this woman was livid; her face flushed with emotion and wet with tears. Verity tore out of the bathroom, slamming the door and stormed down the stairs. She would not let her suspicious nature and her past get the better of her. The next time she saw Gammell, he would have to explain himself more clearly. Otherwise, well, she didn’t dare think about what she might do if history repeated itself. She wiped her face on her sleeve and took her coat. She needed to get out somewhere. Anywhere. Driving seemed like a good idea. She maneuvered her car around the small streets in the city, hands gripping the steering wheel tightly. She still felt angry and despondent, at herself, at her past, at everything in general. So she was surprised when she turned down a corner and found herself at the edge of the business district on the row of warehouses. The sky was already darkening in the afternoon. A solitary crow above flew away, heading south. Verity parked her car in a small secluded alleyway and walked out onto the street. At this time of day, it was difficult to tell if anyone was in the buildings or if anyone simply left the lights on. The Verne Storehouse looked no different than any of the other buildings on the street. She knocked on the entrance wondering what her excuse would be for visiting. Perhaps she would say she was doing research for Gammell, but if the strange little man called Colbrin was around, she probably had no chance of getting in. She had the impression that he was actually jealous. She knocked again, but no one answered. The warehouse was possibly completely closed and maybe the first time she had come here was a fluke that others were also here. Turning the handle of the door did nothing. She saw nothing when she peered into the windows. Each of the warehouses was only narrowly separated from each other so that if one was not looking closely enough, one might have surmised that the entire block was occupied by one building. But there were small alleyways between one building and the next, but these alleyways were only large enough to let one person pass through. Verity slipped into one of these cracks and was immediately engulfed by gloom. The high, close walls effectively closed off most of the natural sunlight. A few paces into the alley, she could make out a door in the wall of the Verne Storehouse. She grasped the handle and tugged. The door didn’t budge. She tried jiggling the handle and with a groan, the door swung inward. Verity regretted not bringing a flashlight—she could have been more circumspect. But to her luck, the light switch was on the wall close to the door. Overhead lights flooded the interior and she found herself in the warehouse filled with junk. What had Gammell tried to look for when they had been here before? He had only mentioned that he didn’t find anything of use. But what if he had overlooked something? After all, this was a large warehouse and it appeared that to look thoroughly at everything, one would need several months. Samuel Verne had somehow accumulated enough knick-knacks to last several generations. She began at the nearest pile and dug through various broken ornaments and faux antiques. Wouldn’t it be easier, she wondered, if Verne or whoever had inherited this stuff to throw all this away? It wouldn’t take up so much space and it would make it easier for her to sort through things. After half an hour of rummaging, she stood up and sighed. Something caught the edge of her eye. She turned her head. Did something move? Dismissing it as a trick of the eye or perhaps a warning that she had not eaten lunch yet, she began on the next pile. What was the use of headless dolls and chipped china? Why keep objects that have lost their function: jewelry boxes without drawers, vases with holes, a lyre missing all its strings? Perhaps a better way to sort through all of these neglected and broken objects was by using a sieve. But how can one construct a sieve to keep something that one doesn’t know to look for? As Verity lifted away a dirty table cloth that was covering something, she suddenly heard the whispering voices. She shook her head. It was tinnitus. She just needed to get lunch. But beneath the cloth she saw something that made her freeze. It was a bronze frame that was slightly taller than herself, but the curious and disturbing thing was that it was simply a larger replica of the antique mirror that she already had in her possession. The frame itself was empty, but she was suddenly sure that if she turned the frame around, she would find the strange, unnatural writing etched onto its surface. She reached out, in a morbid curiosity, to turn the frame over to actually see if there really was writing on the other side when she noticed a dark shadow on her left that hadn’t been there before. She turned to see what it was, but her reaction was too slow. Something hard rammed into her from behind and pain exploded in her head. Darkness clouded her vision.