Paper
Kimberly Siverling
ENGL 121-001
Short Story for Midterm Paper
October 19, 2009
The Mirror
If you would have told me a year that I would be taken out of my comfort zone, thrust into a strange new world and all without the slightest idea of what was going on , I would have said you were crazy. Unfortunately, if you were to tell me that now, I’d ask you if you have been following me since the day I arrived here. I should probably start back at the beginning, since you probably have no idea who I am or what happened to me. Yes, let’s start here.
My name is Sara Tomeo and I am a sophomore at Spring Valley High School. I live in the small town of Spring Valley, Vermont and lived there my entire life with my mom and dad and cat, Benji. My next door neighbor, Nick, was my best friend all through school. In fact, if it wasn’t for him, then I’m sure none of these events would have transpired and I would not be where I am today.
It all started during the first two weeks of summer vacation. While most of the kids in our small town spent the summer doing very unproductive things, Nick suggested that we check out this website and try to investigate some urban legends.
“Come on, it’ll be fun!” he suggested, nudging my arm playfully.
“It could be very dangerous, especially if we have to do anything at night. You know how the locals are.” I was never the type to dabble with anything that might get me in trouble with the law or worse…my parents.
“Well, at least check out the site with me and we’ll see if there are any…uh, legends that don’t seem to do too much harm.”
After some thought, “Oh all right, fine. As long as it does not get me into trouble,” I said, giving my long time buddy a look that told him I meant business.
“Trust me, Sara, when have I ever steered you wrong?” Nick gave me that soft smile that made him look so innocent. I knew better than to be fooled by that sly smile.
“Only all the time!” I said, smirking as I got off of the cement slab that was my stoop. My parents weren’t going to be home for another hour or so, I thought that I would indulge him by checking out this website.
After nearly forty-five minutes of searching the site for any urban legends that would fit our criteria, we finally came across one in our town. It was a legend surrounding the old Victorian manor a few streets down from ours, near the railroad tracks. “So…” I read aloud as Nick taunted Benji with his catnip mouse, “It says here that the Sterlings used to live there around the turn of the twentieth century. Carter Sterling was an officer in the United States Army and his wife, Carrie Sterling was an heiress to coal mining company based out of Pennsylvania.”
“Well that explains why the house is so freaking huge!” Nick exclaimed, finally tossing the catnip mouse.
“Before Carter Sterling left for war, he had given his wife a full length mirror that belonged had belong to his mother, and her mother, and so on and so forth.” I continued to read, knowing that Nick wasn’t really paying attention. It wasn’t until I read the next paragraph did I notice a change of interest from him.
“Wait, what was that? What did it say?” He asked.
“It says that they believe this mirror to be cursed because shortly after Mr. Sterling left, his wife became more and more reclusive. She appeared less and less frequently around town in the months following his departure until she barely left the house. One day, the child that was running errands for her returned to the house to receive his pay, and she did not answer the door. Worried, the child entered the house to see if Mrs. Sterling was all right-”
“And? AND?!” Nick seemed to be falling off my bed with anticipation.
“He claimed to have seen Mrs. Sterling sleeping in her armchair and another Mrs. Sterling standing above her!” I quickly reread the last sentence just to make sure I read it correctly in the first place. “And the second Mrs. Sterling turned to look at the child with cold dead eyes, he later told the townsfolk.” I sat back in my chair, letting go of the mouse. “This seems rather far fetched if you ask me…” I was beginning to get skeptical because I was failing to see how this was an urban legend until Nick practically booted me out of the computer chair.
“Wait….it says that when the local journalist went to check out the kid’s story, he too saw the Mrs. Sterling with cold, dead eyes, but the other one, the one that the child said was sitting in the chair was no longer there.” Nick rubbed his chin and seemed to be deep in thought. “Well the guy was obviously a chicken, because he says he never went into the manor. He just played the part of the peeping Tom and trying to piece things together through what he saw in the windows.”
I shook my head. “Nick, I know you thought this was a fun way to spend our summer, but seriously, this is the only local legend we found, and it’s a total piece of crap! It’s just a silly ghost story!”
Nick didn’t seem to hear me at all, and just kept reading. I figured he was done when he turned around in my chair to look me in the eyes. I patiently waited for him to answer, but whatever he was going to say he seemed to be playing it over in his mind before he did so. “I think we have our urban legend.” he finally said, that sly smile playing back over his face.
The weeks after he decided that we were going to take on this project were uneventful to say the least. All we did was spend hours on end formulating ideas on what happened to Mrs. Sterling almost a hundred years ago. Well, I should say he was formulating the ideas. I was just humoring him by writing them down in this notebook. He had come up with a great number of ideas, but there were only three that ended up being plausible. 1) She was either murdered by cold hearted twin sister; 2) She had grown very ill and to keep up appearances, her husband hired a look-alike to pretend to be her until he returned; or 3) she hightailed it out of the state for one reason or another. One of the ideas suggested she was murdered, but when the two of us looked into the obituaries in the newspaper, there were none for any Carrie Sterlings. We even checked to see if any articles were written about a missing woman, seeing as prominent as she was and still nothing.
It wasn’t until all of our searches in the local archives came up empty-handed that Nick decided to suggest the most craziest idea ever. And if could go back in time, I’d smack him so hard in the head he’d forget about the suggestion entirely! “Sara, I think we need to get into that house and check it out for ourselves.” he said.
“You’re kidding me, right?” I said, starring wide-eyed into my best friend. He looked like he wasn’t kidding at all. That spelled bad news for me.
“Sara, we can’t find anything at all in the written records available…maybe she had a diary or something and wrote about it? We could solve a hundred year old missing persons case!” Nick was always the type to want to play hero if he could. And because he was my best friend, I agreed to sneak into the manor with him. Looking back, if I would have just put my foot down and said “No way, Jose!” I would not be in the sorry shape I am in right now. Unfortunately, there is no chance to go back now.
We waited until around midnight that night before sneaking over to the mansion on Baker Street. Once we got there, Nick hoisted me up over the wrought iron fence before jumping it himself. We crept across the lawn, which had not seen any landscaping since the early 1900s. We had to sneak around the back and climb in the window there, because it was the only part of the house that was not facing the street where we could be seen. The last thing I wanted was to be spotted by the police breaking into an old house around midnight. Everyone knew that the house hadn’t seen a person since the Sterlings lived there. Mr. Sterling never returned from war, so the house had kept all of its valuables locked away behind those oak doors. Of course, everyone thought the house was terribly haunted so no one dared to break into it. Except for us. Except for Nick, who was already finished prying the window open. “Come on, we’re in!” he ushered me closer and then gave me another leg up through the window.
Luckily the wood floors were still in great shape because I didn’t have time to catch my footing and took a major fall belly first onto the floor. Not only did it hurt, it also knocked loose dust that had settled on all of the furnishings about the room and before I knew it, I was engulfed in a cloud of dust.
“You okay?” came Nick’s voice as he climbed in right behind me, helping me up off the floor.
“I think so…You gotta give me some type of warning or something.” I scolded him, dusting myself off with my hands. It was quite the eerie feeling being in a place where it seemed like the people who once lived there just up and left. If the furniture hadn’t been covered in cobwebs, I swear to you that it would have seemed as if someone was currently living there!
We decided to start with the first floor first, seeing that it was where we came in at. Once we have cleared the first floor, we took the stairs up to the second floor. It was here where all the activity was supposedly to have happened. After clearing a bathroom, a two bedrooms, and a small sitting room, there was only one room left in the north wing of the house that had yet to be examined. That was the master bedroom, or Carrie Sterling’s room. “Well, if there is any room in the house that would have any clue to what happened to Mrs. Sterling, it would be this one…” I said to Nick as I sighed. I was pretty freaked out about checking out this room, but I didn’t want to show it.
“Yepper…” He said, sounding a little more frightened than I did. Oh well, I thought, as I pushed open the bedroom door. What lay beyond that door didn’t seem out of the ordinary at all. There was a bed, a small seating area, a few bookshelves, a dresser and a full-length mirror. At first the mirror scared the crap right out of me, because I thought I saw Carrie Sterling’s ghost, but it was just my reflection. I let out a nervous laugh, turning to Nick. “I totally thought that mirror over there was a ghost! But it was just my reflection!”
As if to prove to myself that there was no other person in this room other than Nick and me, I strolled up to the mirror and placed my hand on the glass. “See? Ha-ha, it’s just a sill-” All of a sudden the glass disappeared and I was falling into the mirror! I saw Nick rush to help me, but he was too late. Just as he had reached the mirror, something scared him to the point where I saw more fear in his eyes than I had ever seen before. Without even attempting to reach through the mirror and pull me back out, he took off out of the room! At first I was angry, but then it hit me that something really scared him because he was trying to save me, so I let it go.
Then, as quickly as it opened up and swallowed me, the mirror closed up, shutting off my access to my world. I screamed, I cursed, I jumped up and down in a temper tantrum! I was beyond pissed off, but there was nothing I could do. I sighed heavily and turned around to see….well, I saw exactly what I saw on the other side of the mirror, only everything was reverse! It truly was a mirror image of the master bedroom. I will say, I was a little freaked out, but at least it was just me in there.
At least, I thought it was just me. As soon as I sat my bum down on the sofa, I heard a soft “hello” come from the hallway. My blood ran cold. Who could possibly be in here with me?! A moment later I got my answer. Stepping into the bedroom was a woman that looked exactly like the portrait of Mrs. Sterling down in the parlor. I had to blink a few times to make sure I wasn’t just dreaming it all up. “Uhm…Hello?” I called back, just as wary of her as she was me.
It has been almost a week we guessed since I fell into the mirror. Mrs. Sterling informed me that she too, was sucked into the mirror. She insisted that it was cursed, but until we get out of here, we can only hope that someone else comes along to let us out
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1.
siverlingkimberlyrqyn |
October 19, 2009 at 5:13 am
Obviously this story could continue on with the theme of the monomyth. I chose to end it with the Meeting of the Goddess stage because that was the farthest we were when I started to write the story. For the sake of space, I decided not to continue past that point, because my paper was at the very bottom of page 7. Also, for some odd reason the double spacing did not show up on the blog either.
2.
marlen |
October 19, 2009 at 11:13 am
YAY!!! “A”