Joseph and Matthew stared at the bathroom mirror. The light of their gaeite candles revealed a gray fog on the mirror. It was a trace, and they found it on every mirror in the house, but it was strongest in the bathroom mirror. The gray in it was almost dark enough to be black.

Joseph pinched his wrinkled brow and felt his age. “It’s damned frustrating, Matthew.” he said. “I got so excited when we found the trace on Dr. Johns’ hand mirror, and then I got even more excited when we found the ectoplasmic trace here. I thought we were making progress, but we’re still stuck where we were, looking at smoke in a mirror! We can’t pull him out. We can’t even make him appear!”

“It has to be our olprt, like Martin suggested.” Matthew said. “It’s half physical light particles and half ectoplasm. Because the manes exists entirely within reflective surfaces, our Operations fail. The physical light of olprt is reflected back, and with it, its power.”

“I still find it hard to believe that this is the best we can do. We’ve gone up against ghosts that can toss mountains clear over the moon, like the Brute, or Gog and Magog, but it’s glass that beats us. Damned glass!”

Martin entered the room and placed Dr. Johns’ hand mirror on the counter.

“I was outside Margate before it started to brighten,” he said.

“Hm. That’s a large unmanifested body.” Matthew said. “Well, the manes’ size does provide us with a slight advantage. We don’t need to use the Aldi Operation to find it anymore. We know where it is. It’s here and we’re inside it.”

“Great God, is the ghost’s unmanifested body really that big?” Joseph asked.

“It’s not the first manes we’ve encountered with an unmanifested body the size of a small town.” Martin said.

“Then we have a lot of mirrors to collect.” Joseph said.

“I get the idea, Joseph.” Martin said. “I can move fast when the dogs are carrying me. I can use the Aldi Operation on this mirror and turn it into an Aldi compass. Even with the reflective interference, it should be possible to do that. Then I use it to lead me to every mirror in Margate, I bring them here, and with so many points of manifestation, we should be able to use the Zacare Operation to pull the manes to us, reflections be damned!”

Martin smiled. “This is possible now. This is actually possible. We’re going to save the girl. Oh, I love it when I’m wrong about things!”

Joseph chuckled. “I like it when you’re wrong about things, too.”

Martin unclipped his gaeite candle from his belt and held it tight in his hand. “I’ll need to do this alone. With the olprt weakened, the two of you would make mistakes I wouldn’t and spoil the Operation.”

Matthew and Joseph turned off their gaeite candles without protest. It was true that Martin was the strongest among them. The bathroom was momentarily a normal bathroom softly illuminated by candle light from the hallway with a mirror that clearly reflected the bathroom and the three manesologists, but as soon as Martin activated his gaeite candle, the room filled with silvery-white light and the mirror darkened until it was like a beetle’s shell.

A Dyeus Queen pointed to the West. That was where her son had fled. He did not take learning that he was dead well.

The Aldi Operation

The darkness in the mirror quivered like the skin of an animal. Then it started to swirl like a storm in a starless night. There was a sound like creaking glass on the verge of shattering.

And then, faster than a blink, the darkness vanished from the mirror, leaving Martin to look at his own surprised expression.

Bloody Mary had fled deeper into the mirror beyond the reach of Martin’s Operation, beyond the reach of any manesological Operation that depended on photons.

Martin grasped at the surface of the mirror with his fingers.

“Oh God. Oh God, oh god…” he muttered. “I’ve failed. I’ve killed her.”

Joseph touched his shoulder. “Calm down, boy,” he said consolingly. “You must calm down. You’re a magic man.”

“She’s in the mirror and we can’t get her out. It’s not fair. It’s not fair, we were about to save her!”

“There’s still the Zacare Operation. We can do it even without gathering up all the mirrors.”

“That would take days!”

“We may be lucky. The ghost might feel us pulling at him and attack us. It’s happened before.”

“Not with a manes of this temperament, not with a ghost that hides from us in a mirror! There’s nothing we can do! Nothing!”

Martin’s eyes went wide. A sudden thought crossed his mind.

There was something they could do, or rather, something he could do.

There was a certain thaumaturgical trick…

Martin shook his head and banished the thought from his mind. No. No he couldn’t do that. He would die doing it and then there would be two deaths tonight.

Martin sighed. The strength had gone out of him and he wilted. “It’s not fair, Joseph. I thought she didn’t have a chance when we walked in, but she had one. She had a real chance and I wasted it.”

“Excuse me?” Dr. Johns stood in the threshold of the door. The manesologists hoped he hadn’t heard too much.

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Johns said. “But there’s a young lady that needs to speak to you three. Her name is Harriet Blackman and she’s a close friend of Audrey’s. She says that she knows why a ghost attacked her.”

A teenage girl, eyes red from tears, shuffled into view.

Harriet gaped at the three manesologists. “Oh God…you’re Ernst, Morton, and Glass…”

Joseph nodded. “We are.”

“I read about you in Illustrated Phantom Stories…oh, Audrey must be in a really bad state if you three are here. They told me that she was…very ill…”

“Harriet, we won’t lie to you, girl.” Joseph said. “She’s dying.”

‘Oh! Audrey!’ Harriet grimaced as fresh tears swelled in her eyes. “It’s all my fault I ought to be sent to jail for murder!”

She buried her face in her dress sleeve and sobbed.

Joseph placed his hands on Harriet’ shoulders while Martin placed a dog beneath her..

“Calm down, girl. Here, sit on this cushion of air.” Joseph gently leaned her onto the dog. “They told us you had some information that might help explain what’s wrong with your friend. Start from the beginning.”

“Well…yesterday evening, Audrey and I had an argument, not a big argument, but an argument. She said that there was no such thing as Bloody Mary, that she wasn’t a real ghost, and I told her that too many people have seen her for her not to be real. She said she would prove to me that Bloody Mary wasn’t real by trying to summon her, by doing all the things people said would make her appear in a mirror. I…I didn’t think Bloody Mary was actually real! I was just having fun when I told her the steps!”

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

“Bloody Mary is not real. Joseph said. “And we would know. She’s just a superstition. Girls have been looking into a mirror on Halloween night to see the reflection of their future husbands since my grandmother’s time. Someone just came along and retold that superstition with the ghost of a woman added to it, and then as people started to talk about this woman in the mirror they started to say she was this murderess or that murderess. Bloody Mary is a rumor. She is not real.”

“Then what happened to her? They told me that a ghost had attacked her, stole her reflection somehow!”

“A ghost has attacked her. A ghost has attacked her and made her very, very sick. But the ghost isn’t Bloody Mary. Harriet, sometimes ghosts awaken into physical reality very confused. They know nothing about their living bodies, nothing about their past lives. But they remember folklore. They see that they can fly and think they’re angels. They see they can walk through walls and think they’re faeries. This ghost has come to think of herself as the Bloody Mary of legend, but she is what we call a fetch, a pretender ghost.”

“I suppose it doesn’t really matter what she is. What matters is what she’s done to Audrey. Are you helping her? Can you help her?”

“We’re doing all that we can. Please, tell us what you told Audrey to do to summon Bloody Mary. We’re having difficulty making the ghost appear before us through conventional manesological methods.”

Harriet told them everything, and then, not feeling the least bit relieved about the situation, walked home.

The manesologists went through the rituals. They went up the stairs, and down the stairs. They lit candles of wax while their gaeite candles hung dull at their sides. They turned around and around and stared hard into the mirror.

But nothing they did, absolutely nothing, would summon Bloody Mary. The fetch was too clever and too well-protected. She knew she had only to do nothing, only to stay crouched behind the mirrors, to win.

After several tries, the manesologists returned to the hall outside Audrey’s room and resumed the Darsar Operation. The hallway once again held an image of Audrey and her room that allowed them to work miracles upon the girl without risk of spiritual contamination. Then, they worked the Zacare Operation. That it was their only hope went without saying. The Zacare Operation worked through the Astral, which touched every point of physical space. It could call a manes on the other side of the world to face the. It could call a manes out of a mirror. But the Zacare Operation required psychic familiarity. The more familiar one was with the summoned manes, the quicker and easier the Operation. Ernst, Morton, and Glass could summon Esmee or Nick in an instant because they saw them every day. But for a manes they barely interacted with, who resisted the glow of their gaeite candles, the Operation could take days. If they had only a little contact with her, if Martin had only been able to hold her before them for a moment, they could have summoned her in an hour or so.

There was no hope of summoning Bloody Mary before the girl expired, and yet, there was simply nothing else they could do. And so, they stood in the hall, over the little image of Audrey Lewis, and wiped the sweat from their brows as they performed the Zacare Operation and willed with all their might for Bloody Mary to appear before them.

The hours exhausted them, but they continued on, even as the sun started to set and the sunlight faded leaving the darkness of the house to surround their little bubble of silvery white light. Each of them suspected that they would fail, even Joseph, but only Martin knew with unerring certainty that they would fail, for he didn’t dare to do the one thing that could save Audrey Lewis.

“How much longer do you think she has?” Martin whispered to his friends.

“It’s not your fault.” Joseph replied softly.

It wasn’t an answer to the question Martin gave voice to, but it was the answer to the question in his heart.

Martin stared at Joseph.

Joseph put a hand on his shoulder and looked into his bright eyes right through his dark lenses.

“Neither Matthew nor myself could have held her. We knew back in Blackwall that this haunting likely wouldn’t end well. None of this is your fault, boy.”

Martin’s eyes watered. He looked away.

Joseph held him close.

“I shouldn’t have hit you. I’m sorry.” Joseph said.

“You were right to hit me.” Martin said. “This was the right thing to do. We tried to the end. That’s honorable. What I would have done, that would have brought us knowledge without honor, and what good would that be?”

Suddenly, Dr. Johns entered the hall. Mr. and Mrs. Lewis followed close behind him.

“They want to be here.” Dr. Johns said. “At the end.”

Martin looked at Audrey’s parents. Reddened eyes met reddened eyes. Martin saw that Audrey’s parents had expressions of pure despair. There was not a trace of blaming anger or harried fear on their faces. The hours had wrung away those feelings. There was only an accepting sorrow.

“I have to go.” Martin muttered as he pulled away from Joseph.

Joseph held him fast.

“Please, Joseph, I need to go. I’m not…I’m not strong like you.” Martin said over choked sobs.

Joseph looked him in the eye. “What’s wrong, boy?” he asked gently. Joseph could tell that there was something bothering his young friend beyond the presence of the parents, but Martin tore himself away from his grip and bolted out the door.

It was quiet outside. Martin could no longer hear the parents crying and sobbing. His footsteps echoed down the empty street as he walked towards Whistle.

The sun was setting and an orange light made things look warm compared to the silvery-white light of the olprt radiance, though the air was cool and comforting. What was happening inside the house felt as if it were a world away, but even an incomplete thaumaturgist knew that distance was as nothing to ghosts and their effects. What was happening inside the house might as well have been happening beyond the farthest star. Its effects still clung to Martin as close as his own shadow.

Whistle tilted his head at Martin as he approached.

“Hello, horse.” Martin said. He generally didn’t care much for Whistle, or any other animal. He found them unpredictable compared to his ever-reliable dogs. But Martin was in pain, and Whistle was another living creature. Martin envied Whistle’s lower, animal intelligence.

Whistle didn’t have a care in the world. The horse was completely removed from the tragedy unfolding inside the Lewis’ household. It was just another night for him.

Martin patted the horse’s head, fingertips passing through his translucent skin.

“Good horse.”

Martin went inside the carriage and opened the trunk. It was a very special trunk. It was a sea chest once used by a ghost pirate to hold his treasure and was gifted to Ernst, Morton, and Glass after they convinced him that his tireless quest for treasure would no more bring him happiness in death than it did in life. The chest was infused with gaeite and maintained its position in space when surrounded by even the most gossamer ectoplasmic constructs. It didn’t fall when inside a ghost ship and it didn’t fall when inside a ghost carriage.

Martin sifted through the chest’s contents as he searched for what he wanted. He passed over a spare gaeite core, just in case any of their candles were damaged, painted to look like nothing more than a wooden block, a pair of dice carved from a dead man’s skull, a few pages from the Orphicon of Galanis, the black claw of a peryton…

Ah, there it was.

A 1776 bottle of Chateau Lafite Rothschild.

Joseph had placed it. He said that one might never know when one might need a drink. It and several bottles like it were gifted to Ernst, Morton, and Glass after they resolved a haunting in an Italian wine connoisseur’s basement. Someone had walled up a man inside a wall and the man’s ghost was understandably upset. One bottle was kept in the carriage and the rest of the bottles were kept back home in Blackwall, deep beneath the earth.

Joseph had one of his dogs uncork the bottle. He gagged as he downed the bottle. He didn’t normally drink wine, or other alcohol. His teachers at the Ror Raas taught him to avoid mind altering substances. Hashish and morphine might have been the drugs of choice for poets, but thaumaturgists consumed only tea and coffee in keeping with their precept that the workings of the mind should be clarified, not obscured. But Martin didn’t want his mind to be clarified. He only wanted to be numb, and knew that alcohol was a way for men to numb themselves. He did not want to think. As a man of science and philosophy, this was the ultimate defeat.

Martin took another drink.

He wept.

He beat his fists against the side of his head.

“Coward, coward, bloody coward…” he muttered to himself.

It was not only because of his failure to hold Bloody Mary or the parents’ evident despair that he stepped outside, though their suffering greatly disturbed him. He had stepped outside because he had, once again, found himself ensnared by the sacrifice of Odin. There were, once again, things he could not talk about with his friends, things that were tearing him apart. There was something he could have tried, something that could have saved Audrey, something he very nearly did when he saw the despair of the parents, something he feared he would do if he went back inside.

Bloody Mary was protecting herself by protecting herself within mirrors. These reflective surfaces dulled the power of their olprt radiance by reflecting the part of olprt that was light.

But gaeite candles and olprt radiance were tools of manesology.

Not of thaumaturgy.

There was something that he, and he alone, could have done–a powerful, risky gamble that could have cost his life. That something was a thaumaturgical Operation. Martin was no true thaumaturgist, but he knew more about thaumaturgy and came closer to completing the Abramelin Operation, than he had let his friends know.

He could use his very mind as a gaeite candle and his will as olprt radiance.

What gave olprt radiance its power was that it was partly physical and partly metaphysical. It was light mixed with ectoplasm. It was an alchemical tool. Martin understood a great deal of alchemy, Matthew very little, and Joseph none at all. Olprt radiance allowed one, with the proper knowledge and disciplined thinking, to perform miracles in the alchemical direction of fire. The alchemical direction of fire meant that the powers of physical Earth, which meant human thoughts, acted upon the Astral, which meant ghosts, just as smoke from a fire rose from the ground and intruded upon the perfection of the heavens. But more things were physical than photons and more things were metaphysical than ectoplasm, and thus more things could function as a gaeite candle than a gaeite candle.

Martin’s mind was partly physical, part blood and muscle and nervous electricity, but because of his thaumaturgical education, his mind was also partly metaphysical. His thoughts did not write upon the Astral as did the thoughts of general humanity. His thoughts were of the Astral, and the dogs were but the simplest manifestation of this fact. And so, being part physical and part metaphysical, Martin could burn, and be a candle against the darkness that struck at the Lewis family.

If he chose to be.

He didn’t dare tell his friends that he could set his mind afire and become a gaeite candle without light. He feared what they might say to him, because he had no idea what they might say. Would they tell him to do it? Would they tell him not to do it? Regardless, Martin believed that presenting them with such a choice wasn’t right. This was his burden and his alone. This was what the sacrifice of Odin truly meant–being alone with one’s silent burdens.

Martin sipped from the wine. He wished it would work faster on him. The girl would die soon, and then he would no longer have to worry about making any sort of choice. Regret, he hoped, would be easier to live with than indecision.

Martin wiped away his tears. “I hate you.” he muttered to the Whistle “Damned beast. We bring you out, we take you back, Joseph brushes you and feeds you a carrot that falls through your mouth. You don’t know where we take you or why. I wish I was you.”

From the depths of his heart, the words of his old teacher Eliphas Levi suddenly sprang to his mind: “There is nothing more to controlling demons than to do good and fear nothing.”

Those words challenged the decision of his mind and strengthened the protest of his heart.

Martin breathed as he was trained to breathe: in through the nose, and then out through the mouth. It was his first lesson, for controlled breathing led to controlled thoughts, and controlled thoughts opened the door to all the Operations.

He would debate his problem out, as his teachers did whenever they came to an ambivalent impasse. He couldn’t, as they could, interrogate his own soul on his problems, but he could still talk to himself. And so, he held a debate, mind against heart.

“Don’t try it.” his mind argued, “The risk is too great, the cost is too high. Bloody Mary is a formidable ghost to be able to do things you’ve never seen before. You have never fought a ghost with thaumaturgy. You have never fought a ghost alone. You are very likely to die if you try it.”

“But she’ll die if I do nothing.” his heart replied.

“Think of all who depend upon you.” his mind argued. “Don’t for a moment think you are being selfish or cowardly. Think of how many times you’ve saved Joseph and Matthew. They would have died long ago without your help. They will die if you aren’t there to save them anymore. Think of how many people you’ve rescued from violent manes. Think of how many people will die without you in the world. The girl is but one life weighed against countless.”

“But she’ll die if I do nothing.” his heart replied

“Think of what it means to die.” his mind argued. “Think of them having to dress your body, buy a coffin, and set up a funeral. Think of putting all that in the lap of your friends.”

“But she’ll die if I do nothing.” his heart replied.

And his mind had to concede that there was no answer to that one point.

Martin placed the bottle on the ground. If things went wrong inside, he knew Joseph would want to finish the bottle.

He carefully reentered the house. He didn’t want anyone to hear him. He hovered silently off the ground with the aid of his dogs. He opened the doors by having his dogs smother the barriers so that no sound, not even a creak, was made.

He glided down the halls until he came to the bathroom. Then, putting both feet on the ground, he prepared to face the demon in the mirror.