The Ethereal Saga - Volume One - The Child of Light

Chapter Sixteen - The Eternity Mirror

Was he dead? This could be hell, he supposed. The cookies smelled too nice for it to be hell. Then again, he thought, they could have ginger in them.
Alex tentatively, step by step, made his way down the stairs, his eyes immovable from Lucy. He had just managed to recall it was her who had tried to possess him back at the Henge. She had, presumably, pieced the black orb back together while they were gone and doomed their chances of a new home. She continued, unwaveringly, to smile at him as innocently as an angel. Alex found this morbidly ironic, given that it appeared she was essentially the exact opposite. As he reached the bottom of the staircase, she led them in to a kitchen with a small dining table. She placed the cookies and gestured for Alex to sit as she did so herself. Alex, checking the seat didn't have a thumb tack on it or some other nefarious seat-based trap, eventually did so. He ate a cookie, anything was better than talking to her.
"Like them?" she asked happily.
They were good, he thought.
"Surprisingly yes." said Alex.
"Oh, thank you!" Lucy cried. She wrapped her arms around him and he recoiled from her embrace.
He realised that the curtains were drawn with no evidence of light coming through.
"Sorry," she said sheepishly, "I think I'm not really used to people."
"It was dawn upstairs," Alex pointed out taking another bite of the cookie.
Lucy sighed, "Oh it's always doing that. I think it's to take the piss out of me. Day lasts about ten minutes here."
"Where exactly is here?" he asked.
Lucy shrugged, "Hard to say. I suppose you're nowhere in particular really."
"Helpful," Alex said sarcastically.
The interior of the kitchen was different to the corridor significantly. The room was well-lit with pristine white tiles on the floor and marble counter tops. The wall paper was a particularly pleasant sky blue.
"Okay," said Alex, "Why bring me here?"
Lucy frowned and looked very offended, "I didn't bring you here. That was her, genius."
"Who?" he asked.
She rolled her eyes at him and shook her head disapprovingly, "Why are the nice ones always so thick?"
"You called me nice, once." he said discerning the clue from her choice of words.
She nodded and winked at him, "That's right champ. I did that."
He thought about what she was saying.
"You're possessed," he thought aloud.
She nodded and reached for another cookie. As she did so, she realised the plate was empty. Angrily, she flipped the plate, hard, and it smashed against the wall.
"Sorry," she said.
Alex looked at the smashed ceramic, "If you wanted the last one, you just had to ask."
She laughed, "You're funny."
"Technically," she continued, "I'm not possessed, my body is."
That made a lot of sense to him.
"So you're trapped here?" he asked.
She nodded without emotion.
"How long?" he pressed.
She shrugged, "Who can tell? I've been here long enough to throw plates at the wall for being empty, put it that way. How old do I look?"
"About fifteen. Maybe sixteen," replied Alex.
She grimaced, "Been here about that long then."
"You've been here your whole life?" Alex asked disbelievingly, "That can't be right because the only way you'd have got possessed that early is if-"
Alex stopped his sentence abruptly.
"Yep," she said as his realisation silenced him.
"No..."
"Yep," she insisted.
"So, not Christian then?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"Come with me," she said as she got up and made for the door. She made a flirtatious 'come here' motion with her finger.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Her room was larger than Alex's. The walls were covered in the numbers one to five painted over and over again. The décor didn't seem like a teenager's usual room, Alex thought. Still, he decided, she is not a usual teenager.
"What's with all the numbers?" he asked.
"I put them there," she explained.
"Why?"
She ignored him. On the wall was a large mirror that went from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. The mirror was majestic in nature, framed by a gold and silver frame that indicated importance. In the bottom right corner, the mirror was jagged. He realised a piece was missing.
"What's that?" asked Alex.
"The eternity mirror," she explained, "This place. It's all to house this."
"What does it do?" he asked.
"It shows you things. At least that's how dad always explained it."
Alex picked up on that, "Dad?"
Lucy frowned, "He's not really my dad but, he took care of me."
Lucy placed her hand on the mirror and the reflection disappeared making way for a display of his bedroom.
"You won't like seeing this," she warned, "but you deserve to know the truth."
He saw his mother there, she was sitting on the edge of his bed. She was frozen still. A tear was on her cheek, sitting there without dropping. Her expression was one of despair. She didn't blink, nor did she appear to breathe.
"What is this?" Alex asked angrily.
"Before," she replied cryptically.
"Before what?" he demanded.
She looked at Alex sadly, "Before Zach, Aaron, Kurt and Christian got there."
Instantly, his mother began crying. Unaware of the freeze that had been put upon her. The sound of squealing filled the air. Alex recognised the sound of burning ghoul well enough. He heard Zach shouting something in the distance.
"You're showing me the past," said Alex.
"Time works funny here," she clarified, "It doesn't really work at all."
He watched the scene in front of him unfold.