Through The Looking Glass - Part 1

PART 2 | ALL STORY LIST

Author - Leloine

As you are about to discover, Leloine has come up with yet another fascinating story to tell us, and I am sure that you will be filled with goosebumps after you read it.

“See through another pair of eyes, and you can live twice.” That is a quote from Julius Caesar or so I read. I don’t know if he ever said that, but if you believe what I tell you, then you may live twice. The burden then you will have to carry.

My name is James Pincheon and when I first stepped on this trail I was only 17. Strange that it was only 3 years ago almost to the day, and I feel much older, and yet I feel newly born. I was the only son of my father Sean Pyncheon and my mother Mary Pyncheon. Yes, I’m the son of the writer Sean Pincheon, but at that time he had just had his first book published. It was late June and we had just moved into Jacksonville Illinois, with a population of about 20,000. We had just moved into a new house, well it was new to us. It was on North Star Rd. and the houses were nice and large, something I wasn’t accustomed to after living in Springfield all my life. We had lived in apartments ever since I could remember and this would be the first house we had ever lived in. It was a large two-story light gray house and had a large front porch in the front and one in the back that was screened and as my mother kept saying, “So I can sit out here and sip iced tea.” I would be starting school in the fall as a senior, and this was a whole new world to me.

The house was on a large lot, so I knew I would be doing some mowing, especially now since my dad was going to be leaving the next week on a book signing tour and would be gone for 4 months. My mother still worked in Springfield and was on a nursing contract and she had three and a half months left on her contract so during the week I would be pretty much on my own through out the day. I was allowed to pick my bedroom out of the two bedrooms after my parents picked out the master bedroom for themselves. In the down stairs there was a room that my dad was going to use to continue writing. The one that I picked was in the back of the house with three windows. There was two on the back wall and one on the side wall. There was a large old tree right at the corner of the house and it shaded the house and the windows. I was already enjoying looking out of the windows.

There was lots of furniture in the house and my father said that it came with the house. It was all better than what we had in the apartment and my father said that if there was something that I didn’t want he would put it back in the large storage shed. The shed was just about empty except for the riding lawnmower that he had just bought. It was a very large lot and it would be foolish to try and mow with a gas-powered push mower.

The bed I had in my room was a queen-sized bed and a lot bigger than the full-size one in our old apartment. It was really massive and made out of real wood and not the composite crap that I had in the old apartment. Even now the time in the apartment was fading fast into the attic of my past. I had a large chest with 12 drawers that ran along most of the wall with the door being on the end. There was a desk on the back wall in between the two windows where I had set up the new computer that I had just bought, or that my dad had just paid for, but I got to pick it out. Something that I had never had before was a huge mirror in a carved wooden frame attached to the wall you could stand in front of it and see all of you from your shoes to your head. Once again this may sound silly but I never had one of these before and I really enjoyed looking at my whole body, maybe because I could never do that before. That would be staying for sure, and as I looked around I knew that all of it would be staying. We had all the normal modern-day utilities like phone, cable, and internet like everyone else had but it still had the feel of an era gone by. It was just well built and would last for a long time still, the results of quality building. I loved the wooden floors, which was something that I never had until now and I was amazed at the beauty of wood. Oh, and in this new house, we had a real attic that was full of stuff. My father asked me not to go up there as he wanted to go through it with my mom when he returned from the tour. He also was going to get the basement completely redone so that we could use that as a family area as well.

That Friday night we had a really nice dinner of steaks cooked on the grill in the backyard. Something else I didn’t have the pleasure of enjoying because of living in apartments in the city. After dinner, my mom and dad asked me to join them on a walk around the neighborhood in the evening before the sun went down. Something else that was new to me. The sidewalks were about as twice as wide as what we had in the city, and we had never gone for a walk as a family in the city. It was just the 3 of us since my mom could never have any other children after me. I know that she told me when I asked why I didn’t have any brothers or sisters like the other kids that she had tried and I was told that she had two miscarriages and one that died shortly after he was born. I don’t think they even brought him home from the hospital. I was only about 6 then and don’t remember all the details. I could tell that she didn’t like to talk about it so I tried not to bring up the subject.

On our walk, we saw other people in the neighborhood and the man across the street. An old man, Mr. Brian Williams was really nice. He talked with my parents telling them about the neighborhood. It seemed like everyone there had lived in their houses since they were built or had lived in them for a long time. He was born in the house where he had lived in 1954, and after his parents died he just continued to live there. He had an older brother but he was killed in Vietnam.

“All the houses around here were built after the second world war and the family that had first lived in our house had three children, a boy and two girls. The man that bought that house was Greg Hinton and he moved in there in 1950. They moved away in 1971 and after that, the house had gone through 5 family’s until two older twin sisters moved there in 1981. They were in their 40’s and had never married or had any family of which I’m aware”, he told us. My mother asked where they had gone and Mr. Williams told them that one had an heart attack and died in the hospital two days later. “She was taking care of her sister that had a stroke a couple of year’s before that. She is now in an assisted care facility in Jacksonville about three miles from here. I know that they were both born in Jacksonville, and I don’t think they ever lived anywhere else”, he stated. He told us about the other neighbors on the street and talked about the Jacksonville Jaguars which is name of the sports teams of the neighborhood high school where I would be graduating from.

As we walked my father told me that once you left town all there is for 100 miles in any direction are cornfields. He told me that he was sorry the house was so old fashioned but it was just a good deal for what he spent, which he didn’t say how much that was. We walked all over that evening and it was so nice and quiet for a change. We walked by people sitting in lawn furniture on their lawns and they waved and some even came over in introduced themselves. Later after we returned home I remember standing in my room and looking into my first walk-in closet. You may think that this is kind of funny, but if you’ve never had one it is a new experience. From my side window, you could see the neighbor's backyard. It seemed like everyone here either sat in their back or side yards in the summertime. I was so happy that my dad had finally bought a house, and I was quickly falling in love with the lack of humanity, the space, and the new old house.

We had cable like I said before so I stayed up late watching the big screen in the family room with my parents until my father turned in and then, my mother fell out, and I stayed and watched a late-night horror flick from the 1950’s I think. It was one of my favorites as I just love the science fiction movies from that era. It was the invasion of the body snatchers and I could tell that our house was better than all the other houses in the movie. I finally went to bed a little after 12AM. I lay there on the new mattress with my head sinking into the new pillows imagining being king James.

I didn’t fall asleep right away. It was so quiet. You could hear the faint hum of the air conditioner. The house was built before HVAC units were built into houses so we each had our own in-room air conditioning. They were new ones that went along the wall for about 3 feet and were up close to the ceiling. My dad had them put in special and they worked really good. Maybe that was why I didn’t fall asleep right away, as I wasn’t used to the quiet. Finally, I drifted off and woke up later in the night. I lay there in the dark, I knew it was early because our house faced to the south so the light would come in my window. I had curtains but you could still see the light seeping in. I reached over to the nightstand to turn on the light so I could get up and go to the bathroom, and when I turned to the side I saw a strange girl standing over my bed. It shocked and startled me and I turned on the light but there was no one there. I thought at first it was my mother and getting up and putting on my house shoes went into the hallway, but their door was closed, and everything was all quiet. I figured it was just the aliens from the movie coming to get me. You know they always come at night. I went and made my toilet and then got back into bed.

The next time I opened my eyes the sun was really coming in and looking at my clock I could see it was just a little after 9AM. I put on my robe and went downstairs to the kitchen. I could smell bacon and pancakes and mom and dad were reading the paper and drinking coffee. Mom asked me how many pancakes I wanted as she got up and I told her just to sit back down as I could make them myself. I was pretty good with pancakes, spaghetti, and anything that was microwaveable. The bacon was already cooked and in a warming bowl and  I crafted 3 almost perfectly round pancakes almost the same size, got 4 pieces of bacon, and some orange juice, and sat down. I poured myself a coffee and added cream as that was all I used. I liked the way the cream mixture into the coffee more than I liked the taste for some reason. After I had made inroads into the pancakes and made half the bacon disappear I asked my dad what he was reading. Well he said, I don’t know if I should buy myself a new car, buy one for your mother, or buy one for you. He said that I’d be going to college after I graduated from high school, and I’d need one then. Of course, your mother’s SUV is only 2 years old but after she finishes her contract she is going to get another job as a homemaker.

He smiled at her and took her hand and I could see her smiling back at him. They were still in love after all this time and as old as they were. That means she would be quitting work and now that my father was writing all the time they would have a lot more time together. Sometimes they made me glad they were my parents. They didn’t have any bad habits and never argued or yelled at each other. My dad handed me a letter and he said check this out. I wiped my hands and mouth with a napkin and picked up the letter. I could see that it was from his publishing agent saying congratulations as they just sold the second book in the series and forwarded an advance for that book and royalty from the first book in his series. It went on that they had deposited in total $117,432.61 to his account. I looked at him and said the way to go, dad! I was so proud of him. My mother put her hand on his arm and said I always loved you and now I’m so proud that I can call you husband. Dad’s smile was from ear to ear and rightly so. All that time that we had struggled and he finally made his dream a reality. It was great and how can I say how proud I was of him? “What say we drive into Springfield and go to Ken’s Steak House and then see a movie as a family”, he offered. I was all for that idea, and he asked me what I had planned for today. I told him that I wanted to check out some more colleges in the area on my computer. He said that was okay but he and my mother was going to go car shopping. I finished my breakfast and headed back to my room.

I went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth and then came back and sat down at my computer. My parents dropped by my room telling me they were leaving. I started to look at the colleges, and see what different courses were their preferences. My first high school counselor told me that colleges all looked for the hardest subjects. Anything in the math, or science fields was always a good choice for me to apply myself. I took her advice and I excelled in math, biology, and chemistry and with a 3.71 GPA, I was pretty sure that I could get into a good college. I was looking at the University of Illinois at Springfield. It was a good college and they had a great engineering program, which was one of my interests. I was also taking that SAT practice course online and I was doing very well there. I was motivated by not wanting to be living in apartments and to be well off. Actually, in the last year my dad had been bringing in a lot of money and he didn’t have any college at all. But that didn’t matter he is still my dad and I’ve always been proud of him, and now even more so.

I looked at colleges and I figured that I was going to look more at the public colleges because of the larger student body which meant more resources for the college to draw from and more opportunities for life after college, which is the whole purpose. I transferred some of my preferences into a spreadsheet and looked that Illinois University was looking better and better. Since I had this new and more powerful computer I might use some of that power and play one of the new games I had purchased recently. I was enjoying the survival horror genre now that I had a system that had the resources to handle the requirements. That wasted another hour or so and I stood stretching and decided to grab a shower. I went into the bathroom and I had to use the one that was in the upstairs hallway as I didn’t have one of my own, but my parents had their own in their room so this one was kind of like mine. Afterward, I put on a pullover blue shirt and some jeans, and my now standard athletic shoes. I grabbed my brush off the top of the chest and stood in front of the mirror to brush out the hair that came down past my ears.

Looking in the mirror I was shocked and startled to not see myself looking at me, but someone else dressed in a button-down shirt and khakis. I jumped back and looked behind me and then back to the mirror and the image was still there. I was frozen in fright totally unable to move, scream, or do anything else other than look at that image looking at me. Then it changed, slowly but surely the clothes changed to that of a dress. An older out-of-style light blue dress, but still very pretty. The hair grew longer and the face softened but what was the scariest was the face never really changed but now the figure was definitely that of a female. The eyes just stared at me. I moved my arm, but the figure in the mirror didn’t move as I thought it should. I quickly looked behind me to maybe see something that would be reflected in the mirror, but when I looked back the figure was me. I moved my hand holding the brush and the figure in the mirror moved. I stood there unable to move until I felt something and realized that I had urinated in my pants. A fear, an unnamed fear but a fear nonetheless still held me.

I snapped out of my petrified state and whispered, “Shit.” I stood not wanting to sit anywhere and untied my shoes stepping out of them thanking someone for not pissing in my shoes, but just on the outside of them. I slipped my jeans down and then slipped off of my boxers and then socks. Carrying the items to the bathroom dumped them into the tub and then removed my shirt which wasn’t fouled put it on my bed and then back to the bathroom and pushed my jeans and socks to the back of the tub. I rinsed off my body from my waist down cursing myself for pissing my jeans. Well, I had plenty, I’d just throw these into the washer and they would be fine. I dried off and went back to my room and redressed myself in a shirt, socks, and shoes. I didn’t want to look in the mirror again and tried to avoid it as I moved into my room. I was very ashamed of myself for having done this, maybe because I thought that only babies and drunks pissed themselves. I grabbed my jeans and wrung them out and went to toss them in the washer in the basement and use the new washer and dryer for the first time. I tossed in a pod and started it and headed back upstairs. Halfway up the stairs, it hit me.

The girl in the mirror was the same one that I saw standing by my bed last night. So it wasn’t a dream or a leftover from the movie. Fear turned to curiosity, and I had to know more. As I finished dressing I didn’t want to admit the truth to myself and I damn sure wasn’t going to tell anyone else. What the fuck was happening to me? This is 2022 and I don’t believe in aliens, witches, the supernatural, Santa Clause, or the Easter Bunny. What the hell was the explanation? There had to be one. Maybe an image from my computer screen, but the monitor was shut off. Still, maybe someone passing on the street could have reflected off of the black monitor screen or maybe off of the windows and then onto the mirror. Not looking at the mirror I walked into my closet to grab a new pair of jeans and there what I saw was not a vision, a reflection, or a mind trick. They're hanging in plain sight was a dress. An older out-of-style light blue dress. Frozen again, but this time in more control as I looked down to my crotch to make sure that I wasn’t repeating the waterworks. When I looked up at the dress again, I saw something else. The pair of shoes that she was wearing. I picked up the shoes off of the closet floor and took the dress off of the rod in the closet. I took these tangible items back to my bed. I put them on the bed and looked at them even closer. I could see that the shoes were not new. The dress wasn’t new. Both of them were from the past. Maybe they had been there all along, but no I knew that they weren’t there when I put my clothes in the closet two days ago. The whole interior of the house had been painted before we moved in, and people had been in here. I needed to know more about this house, as I was beginning to accept that something was happening to me in this house that I didn’t understand, but where do I turn?

I know that my parents left before I took the jeans out of my closet that I soiled, so they couldn’t have put them in there. Maybe someone came in and put it in the closet when I was putting the first pair of jeans in the washer? I’ll go and check the doors. I went down and checked the doors, and away I flew down the stairs but all front and back doors were locked and I began to check the first-floor windows and looked out the last window as I checked the last window by the front door I saw Mr. Williams from across the street. He was standing there talking to someone that had stopped in the street. He had lived here all his life and he knew everyone that had lived in the house. I could ask him about the house. I went out the front door and trying to hold myself in check I walked down our front walkway now starting to believe what I knew must be the truth.