The Horror and the Wild

I. A Mirror Without

November 07, Saturday

The woods rang with a shrill, sad cry, fading into the foggy pines. He ran toward the source of the sound. Ran until his breath tore ragged holes in his throat. Ran until the ringing turned to music, humming strangely from behind a shifting door— standing alone in a field that hadn't been there a moment before.

He slowly walked to the door, treading softly over the world sleeping beneath the fog. The door was an impossible thing that looked different every time he blinked. It swung open the moment his fingertips grazed the handle.

Blackness there, and nothing more.

He turned to look around the towering trees surrounding the otherwise empty field. They stretched so high the tops were swallowed up by the mist. The wind called to him as he turned back to the door. The blackness had become a mirror, but the reflection was not his.

The wind caressed his ear with a whisper. 'Nil sa saol seo ach ceo...'

There is nothing in this life but mist...

The figure in the mirror was hidden in the shadows of a hooded cloak that was such a dark green he had initially mistaken it for black in the half-light. The cloak was trimmed with decorative golden embroidery on every edge, and it hung all the way to the ground. Dew from the grass darkened the hem. A hand clad in a black leather glove reached for him as he reached for the mirror.

'Is ni bheimid beo,' the wind murmured in the muted tones of a ghost, 'ach seal beag gearr."

And we will only be alive for a short time.

His pale fingers met the dark-gloved hand of the reflection and there was a loud bang as a spiderweb of fractures splintered from the touch. More bangs shot the hairline cracks deeper and longer.

The figure's hood fell to reveal a pair of wide, frightened eyes. And then the glass broke apart with one final clap of noise.

Cillian woke up and realised the racket was coming from his own front door. Annoyed and unable to remember what colour the eyes in his dream had been, Cillian pulled on a hoodie and went to get the door.

It was rather ironic, Cillian thought, that it was a priest who was practically banging down his door at such an un-Godly hour of the morning.

Though, perhaps it simply seemed un-Godly because Cillian MacDuff was not a morning person by any stretch of the imagination. Anything before ten in the morning was criminal, if you were to ask him. At that moment, it was minutes before seven on a brisk Saturday morning at the beginning of November, and the sun was only just beginning to peek out from behind the buildings across the street as Cillian had shuffled to the front door with every intent to hex whatever asshole was on the other side into next week.

The man on his doorstep was, in Cillian's opinion, far too attractive to be a priest despite being dressed like one. But then he opened his mouth and Cillian immediately rescinded that statement.