For the record, I am a mailwoman. I deliver mail. I do not interfere with the dark and immoral and possibly murderous. My nerves are like soft butter, quailing at the slightest things. If there was an active murder going on in front of me, I would turn around and walk in the opposite direction because I cannot handle confrontation of any sort.
Yeah… that didn’t work out.
You never realize how easy it is to get yourself roped into the scariest adventures until you are already waist-deep in the muck.
I’ve had my fair share of close brushes with adventure, but every time I’ve deftly managed to avoid it. I didn’t have many friends, I didn’t talk to many people, and most of all, I kept to myself. I ordered my groceries through subscription service, didn’t need a vehicle to maintain, or get food, so I didn’t interact with other people much. Except for the recipients.
The people I was delivering mail to, were the ones I spoke to the most. They were also the most interesting and suspicious people I have ever met. There was once a Mister Lent I knew, who received three large parcels a week, and his house reeked of sharp (and mildly illegal) oils. I had to call the arson prevention people at the time, and he ended up being arrested. So… yeah.
And then there was Marie, a girl about my age who had a passion for the arts. I was constantly having to carry giant tins of paint and thinner to her house. Then she had a bombastic fight with her parents, while I was there to deliver one such parcel, and then I got roped into helping her march out of the house with all of her belongings. She ended up sleeping on my couch for a week before she went back home, leaving me windblown and confused.
But this wasn’t about Mister Lent, or Marie. There was instead another odd recipient who received a lot of parcels from me. He was a tall man with fair skin, a full head of orange-brown hair and a well-groomed moustache. Every time I saw him, he was wearing a pinstriped suit of a different color. I have never seen him repeat outfits.
He used no name, and only a Customer ID from his favorite clothing brand identified him, so I didn’t know his name, but he lived in the apartment complex of Kingsfold Arch, specifically apartment G-426. But we talked a lot, and he gave me bottles of water when I was out, so I couldn’t not call him something.
So I came up with Fold.
He seemed like a down-to-earth guy, with no machinations attached to him. Ha! Shows what I know.
The day it all went southside, he had three parcels and five letters. Much more than he usually had. Should I have asked him about his catalogue shopping habits?
Instead of ringing him down to the lobby, I simply went through to his floor directly to save time. We had had tea and drinks before this, and he always told me to come right up anyways. It was less work for me to just leave it on his doorstep.
The floor Fold lived on, was lined with mirrors. It feels exposing but is also very convenient.
I was just about to knock on Fold’s door when it swung open and Fold rushed out.
He was wearing another suit, this time blue with yellow pinstripes. His horn-rimmed glasses were set askew on his nose, and his hair was a mess compared to his usual standards but the extra cream coat over his suit, and the briefcase under his arm spoke of his intention to leave. The fact that he nearly ran into me in his hurry to leave helped too.
“Ooh, sorry!” He cringed, backing away, “Wasn’t expecting you, Maddy.”
“Uh… hey?” I stumbled backwards, “You have mail. Were you going somewhere? Cause I can leave this here, it’s cool. Please sign here?”
“No, no, this is great!” He cried, throwing his hands in the air, “Are you free now? Could you do me a solid? I need you to come with me. I’ll pay you fifty dollars for it.”
“…Sure.” I agreed with little thought, “Are you going to sign for this?”
“Right, of course, of course.” He agreed, grabbing a pen from behind his ear to sign it, “Thanks for this, I’ve been looking forward for these. Been months since I ordered them, I totally forgot!” He lovingly placed the parcels inside his apartment, closed the door, and properly locked it.
----------------------------------------
I was the kind of person who shied away from violence and toughness. I had no business being in this situation.
So why, oh why, was I letting Fold lead me into the Medley National Theatre surrounded by police tape?
He seemed to be in his element at that moment, mingling amongst the police and emergency responders as if they were close acquaintances, which was never a good sign. Especially when you weren’t part of the police.
I must have looked quite a sight as I followed behind him, a mousy girl with eyes as big as dinner plates, hair barely shoved under a newsboy cap and a large messenger bag slung inelegantly over my back. At least the bag was empty, or the weight would have taken my arm off by then.
Right now, I was technically off-duty. Fold had been my last delivery before I got to go home and stretch out on my new second-hand couch and snack on the hummus and pita chips I had been saving for precisely such a situation. Maybe even indulge in a bubble bath.
But I wasn’t doing any of that right now. I was following this strange man through the streets of Medley and into the largest theatre in the country, all for the promise of fifty bucks.
An important policeman with shoulder epaulets waved us over. Well, he waved Fold over, but I was sticking close to the man, so it included me as well.
“Henry, thank Heavens!” The man sighed, patting Fold on the shoulders. His face was flushed and sweating, as if he had been standing in an incredibly humid room, “I had hoped you would answer when I faxed you the situation.”
“Yes, of course, Commish.” Fold – Henry, I’m just now realizing – nodded briskly, “And while we’re here, can we discuss your faxing habits? Because a phone call would really be more useful-”
“We can argue later, Henry.” The Commissioner waved off without a care, “Right now there’s a crisis afoot and- who’s this?” It was only just now that he caught sight of me, standing behind Fold, “A secretary? I thought you didn’t have patience for those?”
Fold shook his head hurriedly, “No, no, Brian. This is my… apprentice, of sorts. She’ll pick up the trade after me, but right now she’s just stuck on grunt work.”
Brian the Commissioner squinted at me, a smile twinkling in his eye, “Is that so?”
“Yeah.” I agreed, playing along with Fold’s charade, as if I simply hadn’t been the first person he saw when he charged out of his apartment this afternoon. And also, apprentice?! I was barely a couple years younger than him. I had to fight to keep my composure as I gave the Commissioner a handshake, “Madison Gardner, pleasure to meet you.”
“Well then, Madison, I hope together you two can figure out what happened here.” He sighed, deflating with sorrow as he clutched my hand in greeting.
Right. A murder, I’m guessing, or a mass panic. What was Fold’s job again? It better not be forensics because I was much too squeamish for that.
“We’re detectives, just so you’re aware.” Fold hissed into my ear as we were ushered further inside the building.
“Are you really a detective, or are you lying just like me?” I whispered back.
“I’m a professional, and now, so are you.” He replied, easily staying in stride behind the Commissioner until we were brought to a room backstage with a star on the door. There was a name underneath it, in glittery gold cursive. Celina Minto.
I knew of her. She was a stunt performer-turned-prima donna. Very well-known in reflection diving spaces for the revival shows she put on every other month.
…I had a suspicious feeling that Fold hadn’t brought me here because I was the only person willing to help him.
The door swung open to reveal a dressing room. A simple, heavily adorned dressing room, with all the normal fan-bouquets, light-studded mirrors, and costume racks. Not a ruffle out of place, except for the makeup table right in front of the mirror.
The makeup table.
It was splattered with blood, all the pigments and swabs ruined forever with thick, clotted blood which looked as if it had been doused onto the desk with a hose. And to top off the decoration piece, there was a single high-heeled shoe standing above it all. The foot still inside, hacked off from the leg a few inches above the ankle.
There was no source, no tracks, not even any trace of the leg which the foot had been attached to.
“It’s really a conundrum.” The Commissioner stammered out, wringing his hands, “The door was locked the entire time, Celina, or what’s left of her, is nowhere to be found. There’s no evidence for us to go on at all.”
Fold nodded, a hum rumbling deep in his chest as he surveyed the crime scene. I had had my doubts about his veracity as a detective, but there was experience and knowledge in his eyes as he took it all in, picking out minutia in the crime scene, surveying every exit and considering possibilities most hardened policemen would not. It was all for naught, though. Just a pretty show with nothing to come of it. I mean, a locked room? This sort of thing was made to stump anyone who wasn’t a Sherlockian genius.
“Commish, I think we may need to examine the room in private.” Fold finally announced.
The Commissioner nodded as if this was a reasonable request that was made of him every day, “Work your magic, Maximillian.”
The door clicked shut behind us, and I twitched in annoyance, “Henry Maximillian? That’s your name?”
“Indeed it is.” Fold agreed, already flipping through a notebook he had fished from his pocket, “Why? Were you referring to me by something else?”
“…Fold.” I admitted, shyly.
He barked out a laugh, “I like that. I’m terrible at poker, too, so the name is quite fitting.”
“You’re laughing.” I stared at him, the crimson mess on the table boring holes into the side of my head, “Someone died in this room and you’re laughing?”
“If you really think about, every patch of land in the country has had someone die on it at some point.” Fold shrugged, “Are you saying we can’t laugh anywhere?” I glared at him, already feeling a headache rising. He caught onto my exasperation quickly, “And besides, I bet you’ve already figured it out.”
Ha, good man. I looked around the room carefully, taking stock of all the entry points. The door was impossible, as it had been locked. The vent would require someone of unimaginably small proportions. There was the dumbwaiter for food, but it had been cut out, its rope hanging limply on its own.
All these details were inconsequential.
“It’s obvious, isn’t it?” I shrugged, trying not to betray how perturbed I felt, “The killer came in through the mirror.”
He shot me a pair of finger guns, “Bingo. See where you come in?” I was starting to get an idea.
Reflection-hopping is a mode of transportation like any other. It takes a little more magic charms and a lot more practice, and looks fantastical, but in the end, it is about as crazy as a skateboard. If a skateboard could instantaneously transport you to a pocket dimension where you could slip between any reflection in the world.
I started reflection-hopping young. Must have been, what? Six? Seven? My dad left his charms lying out, and we had a full-length mirror on our wardrobe door, and one thing led to another and suddenly I was lying next to a mountaintop lake on the other side of the world.
But since then, it had all been more responsible. I used it to deliver parcels faster, to cut down on commute times and all that jazz. Fairly innocent stuff.
Except reflection-hopping had the ability to be dangerous. It could be used to attack, spy, or kill. People came to realize that quickly after its unearthing. While there were those who simply used it as a fun hobby or gimmick, reflection-hopping communities were rampant with assassins, mercenaries, and spies of the worst kind.
And one of them had gone and offed Celina Minto, musical theatre’s rising stars.
“You brought me here because you’ve seen me going in and out of the mirrors when dropping your parcels.” I realized.
“Pretty much. I figured I could use the expertise of someone who actually knows what they’re doing.” Fold explained, “This sort of thing… is kind of out of my ballpark.”
A woman was dead. I could help bring the perpetrator to justice. I squared my shoulders and nodded, “I’ll do my best. What’re we dealing with?”
“It has been barely more than seven hours since the attack.” Fold explained, pacing around me as he declared the facts, reading directly from his little notebook, “Any idea where they could’ve gone to in that time?”
Okay, this was it, I summoned up my courage, trying to run through all the information I had gathered in all my sixteen years of reflection-hopping to catch the killer. Trying not to think of the dead, mutilated body they must be carting around. Urgh, I was going to throw up.
“They could be just about anywhere.” I tried to fight down my squeamishness, “But their options would be severely limited than most, because the size of the body would stop them from escaping through the narrower reflective surfaces.” He didn’t ask for the next bit, but I added my own two cents as well, “They were also seasoned veterans, because they never left the mirror during the attack. They must have done it all inside the hallways.”
“Hallways?” Fold frowned.
“The pocket dimension of reflections.” I explained, “It comes in the form of kaleidoscopic hallways.”
“Right, right, I’ve seen pictures, but they were never quite right about portraying the depth of it all.” He hummed, a light in his eyes, “A hallway. How ominous! You think you could look around and see if they left any evidence in these hallways?”
I wanted to ask him what was ominous about a hallway, but I decided to stick to the operation at hand. It was an awkward process of pushing a spindly chair close to the dressing table, sticking a foot over the blood-covered mess, and then slipping deep into the reflective surface, as if it was a liquid membrane and not solid glass.
On the other side of things, I fell in a disheveled heap, my entrance clumsy from the beginning. Thankfully, there was no pool of blood, otherwise I would have screamed myself sick.
In fact, there was no sign of any murder at all.
This was unusual. To me, the mirror hallways looked about the same everywhere I went. They had the same endless bends and turns leading to nowhere and everywhere, all glistening in different colors of the rainbow, and shifting ever so slightly in a way that drove a person to madness. But there was still some consistency. Things you left in the hallways as place markers never vanished. Didn’t even so much as shift. When I was in freshman year, I dropped a corsage in the hallway near my dresser mirror. Skip to senior year, while I was wandering around for a way to get back inside, and I found that corsage again, in the same place I left it, not even wilted.
I had seen the mess left behind by the killers of Celina, up close and personal. If they had been so unbothered by leaving evidence there, why would they bother staging a cleaning operation in the lawless pocket dimension?
No way did the blood just vanish. There was more at play.
I crept up to the walls next, trying to see for smudges or smear in their silky glass images. The walls were always disorienting to look at. Every shard and angle made up a different reflection somewhere in the real world and provided a glimpse into it. From fuzzy upside-down images taken from spoons, to large expanses of wall-to-wall views into dance studios, you could see it all if you wandered through the hallways for long enough.
The constantly moving tapestry of color did well to hide the few marks left behind, but I still caught them. Was it a trap? Most definitely. But still…
I ducked back towards the mirror I had come in from, where Fold still peered in curiously, and put my head through the silky liquid mirror space. Instantly, I was filled with a rush of inertia, willing me to jump out of the mirror, but I held my ground against it. Usually I couldn’t do this, but the macabre display under my nose made me gather the willpower to stop in my tracks. I was not jumping in there.
“You’re back.” Fold sighed in relief, “See anything useful in there?”
“Barely.” I replied, “Seems to be a trail of something, left behind.”
“Well what’re you waiting for? Follow it!” He told me sharply.
“…What if there’s blood?” I asked, fighting the urge to wring my hands. The slightest movement could knock me out of the mirror and into the blood. A crease appeared in the middle of his eyebrows.
“That’s what you’re looking for.” He replied patiently, as if fighting down the urge to scream.
“Right, of course, of course.” I agreed, going back inside the mirror. Needles rippled along my skin as I walked through the hallways. It was always unnaturally quiet in here, but it wasn’t silent. Just… muffled, as if happening underwater.
Even stomping as hard as you could on the ground, only quiet thuds came out. Trust me, I tried as hard as I could.
This was obviously a trap, I knew. Fold probably knew too. But I followed the smears of blood into the funeral-quiet hallway anyway.
One bend and then another, a left, a right, two more. A ramp going downwards, followed by a quick spiral upwards lined by imprints of puddles and blind spot corner mirror.
Still, traces of blood were left here and there on the walls, standing stark amongst the muddy background. Wherever these reflections were from, it was raining heavily there. Sorry, I was only trying to distract myself from what I was expecting to find. It was working well, too, until I found the body.
There was no killer. Just the body of angelic Celina Minto, lying prone on the ground. She was stone cold, and pale as the moon, drained completely of all her blood. I wonder if every drop had ended up on the dressing table, or if the killers had bled her out before this.
That wasn’t the only thing. Her leg was missing, too, scarred up more on this side, with gashes lining up the wound that almost looked like… a bite wound. Not multiple bites. A singular, jagged row of teeth which had ripped her leg off in one fell swoop.
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Yep, bile was coming up. I was only able to stagger away from the crime scene and throw up a safe distance from it.
Something had been gnawing on the body.
----------------------------------------
I rushed back to the Medley theater in a panic, almost losing the trail I had memorized. One wrong move, and I would’ve ended up a fugitive in another country.
But thankfully, I managed to get to the theater in one piece. Instead of leaving through the blood-spattered dressing room mirror, I had the foresight to pop out through another dressing room, scaring the shit out of an investigating officer.
They immediately pulled out a gun as I staggered out of the mirror, hugging my stomach.
“What’re you doing here, miss?” They demanded, gun shaking in their grasp, “This is a closed investigation, which you should not be trespassing in!”
I lurched backwards, trying to wipe away at a leftover strand of puke dripping from my mouth.
Fold rushed in at the last second, waving outrageously, “No trespassers, Sam, she’s been approved!” He explained, pulling me behind him. I followed, staggering on the spot.
“And who would she be?” Officer Sam asked, lowering their gun with much reluctance.
“Madison.” I croaked, “Maximillian called me in as a reflection-hopping specialist?”
“That I did.” Fold agreed.
Officer Sam sighed and stuck their gun back into its holster, “If you’re sure…” They allowed, giving me a wary look.
“Great. Glad to have that handled.” Fold nodded pleasantly, “Now, Maddy, have you got something for me? Any useful ideas about our escaped perps?”
“Well, I found the body.” I offered, sickly green veiling over my sight for a second, “Does that help?”
“Oh, that’s simply splendid!” He clasped his hands together, “I need to grab some samples, scan for fingerprints, maybe look for- wait. Can I do the mirror-jumping thing?”
“I don’t know, can you?” I retorted, feeling entitled to a little bit of prickliness after my arduous misadventure in the hallways.
“You certainly cannot, given that you don’t have the harness required to pull off a trick like that safely.” Officer Sam interjected with a frown, “And it takes three months of training at the very least to be able to do it effectively. And that’s how long it took the greats to pull it off.”
Fold frowned and tapped his chin, “Well, that’s a dead-end, then.” He sighed, “I don’t suppose the police department will have anyone willing to act as a proxy to me?”
“We may have…” Officer Sam thought it over, “I’ll have to ask the Commissioner, though.”
“Oh, and one other thing.” I spoke up, gulping when all the eyes turned towards me, “The body… it looked.” My stomach churned at the mere memory. I could barely force the words out, “Eaten.”
Officer Sam threw their head back and sighed, “Brilliant. Mirror walking cannibals. Exactly what the world needs.”
“What if it wasn’t?” I whispered.
“Well, it certainly wasn’t an animal, was it? We’ve tried a million times with the smartest of animals and not even an octopus can manage it. It had to be a human or zilch.”
Fold frowned, “Hold on there, Sam, maybe the kid’s got a point.” He rose to my defense.
Before the argument could get more heated, the Commissioner burst through the doors. Everyone fell silent in deference to him as he looked around.
“I heard yelling.” He explained breathlessly, “Did you find the body?”
“Yes, sir, in the mirror world.” Fold agreed, stepping forward immediately, before even Officer Sam had the chance to respond.
Commissioner Brian’s eyes widened in surprise, “You can reflection-hop, Henry?” He asked, “How come you never mentioned?”
“Oh, not me, Ms. Maddy Gardner here.” He explained, waving an arm towards me, “I’m not ashamed to admit she’s more adept at it than me.”
“Good girl.” The Commissioner nodded, ruffling my hair affectionately. I softly moved out of his grabbing range, but he didn’t seem to mind as he continued his observations, “It’s an obscenely useful skill for a future detective.”
Right. Because the strange man living in Apartment G-426, Kingsfold Arch was a detective. And he was pretending that I was his apprentice to sneak me into this crime scene of a theatre. I didn’t point out any of those things. Simply smiled and nodded.
“Not to worry, we have an entryway back at the precinct that doesn’t require proper training.” Commissioner Brian continued, “If our friend Maddy here can lead us back to the place where the body was kept, then we can work up from there.”
I paused, thinking his words over, “Wait, what does that mean?”
“An entryway.” Officer Sam replied, “I’m surprised that you wouldn’t know, if you’re so big in reflection-hopping art?” They mimed a shocked gasp, “Oh, wait, you’re not in law enforcement, are you? You wouldn’t have heard of this before now. It’s top-secret info.”
“Hey there, she’s a member of the team. A little green, but she’s got a lot of potential.” Fold nodded, putting a hand on my shoulder, “Make her feel comfortable.”
“What team?” Commissioner Brian asked, “You’re an independent consultant we call in sometimes.”
“My team.” Fold insisted, “I am a high-profile detective that everyone wants and I have a whole fleet of managers monitoring all my requests.”
“You live in a two-room apartment and only get mail from your mother and delivery companies.” I told him drily, “There’s no team of managers.”
Officer Sam snorted as Fold straightened his collar, “Can we stop talking now?” He asked, “Crimes to solve and stuff. Professional things.”
“Yes, please, we’re already paying you by the hour.” The Commissioner agreed, running a hand through his hair, “Are you driving with us?”
Fold wrung his hands, “I don’t use cars. Usually just walk everywhere-”
“My feet are killing me; I’m getting on that car whether you like it or not.” I replied, crossing my arms and glaring him down. I could be soaking in the bathtub back home right now, but I wasn’t. And he was going to have to pay for it.
He sighed, shoulders slumping down, “Fine.”
I brushed past him and began heading outside. Could I ask Fold to pay me for this? It was really hard labor. Not to mention the psychological damage I had already gone through. I was a mailwoman. And I worked minimum wage. Rent needed to be covered. It’s simple capitalism.
Fold sulked in the corner of the car the entire while, while I made sure to bag the window seat. I’ve never been to the police precinct. Most people haven’t. My mother used to say that the only people who would be at a police precinct were bad people.
But a woman was dead, and I had to step up.
I was led through the bullpen and into a vault at the back. Commissioner Fold entered a code, followed by an iris scan, and then a voice-matching protocol. It took more than five minutes for the vault doors to clunk open. Fold and I exchanged exasperated looks.
“You kinda snatched me out of nowhere.” I whispered to him, “Are we going to hash out the details of what you even want me to do?”
He nodded feverishly, “Yeah, we’ll get on it eventually. Outside of where we’re being recorded.” I looked away from him, instead turning to go inside the vault.
Massive overhead lights flickered to life slowly, revealing a massive hangar-like space with white tiles on the floors and walls. On the opposite side of the wall, a circular gate had been fixed into the wall. A portal straight from the movies. It’s never a good idea to bring those things to life.
“You sure this is a good idea?” I asked, meaning to whisper, but the acoustics of the room reflected it all over the room. Fold winced as everyone turned to look at us.
“Not to worry, Ms. Gardner.” Commissioner Brian tipped his hat towards me, “This has been experimented on carefully. Everything from rats to human test subjects have made it through, when they could not do so with regular reflection-hopping charms.”
I hummed in acknowledgement. I wasn’t convinced at all, but it was okay if I played along with it. Fold certainly seemed to be falling in line when it came to this. And I may not have known much about him, but he gave the impression of someone who kicks up a fuss when they disagreed with something.
“We doing this?” I asked, just to clear it with him. Fold nodded sharply. Okay then, the gauntlet had been thrown.
Officers moved around purposefully, attending to control panels and working on the portal. Officer Sam wandered off to monitor some of the readings and hit a large button on the main control. A low whine filled the air, and the circular gate was wrenched open to reveal… a mirror.
Except it wasn’t just an ordinary mirror. It was moving and rippling, so that no clear image was reflected to us. It was also… oddly translucent, at certain angles. It put my teeth on edge. This thing wasn’t safe, no matter what they claimed.
“Okay, who’s going first?” Commissioner Brian asked, “I’ll need to come along to keep an eye on you, but let’s try to keep the squad count low.”
“I’ll observe from outside.” Officer Sam told him, adjusting some of the spectrograms for better reading, “We’ll need a police detective to go along, too, because I’m still not sure about Maximillian’s methods.”
“But I still keep getting hired, isn’t that odd?” Fold snorted. More than a few officers rolled their eyes and scoffed at him.
Commissioner Brian wiped a hand down his face, “Animosity aside, we need one more person to join us on our excursion.” He told the people gathered there, “Who’s up for it?”
I looked around. No one seemed to be as eager as they should be when offered a chance to experience a world they would never get to otherwise. Had something happened during these ‘tests’? It made me suspicious.
“Oh, what the hell, I’m in.” A relaxed voice called out. I craned my head backwards to catch a glance of the person who had spoken up. It was a fresh-faced police officer, looking young for this place. A sheen of naivete that had been missing from the eyes of every other person here.
He elbowed his way through the crowd to raise his hand towards me for a shake, “Hey, Madison, right? I’ve dabbled in reflection-hopping too, so I’m hoping it’ll come in handy now.”
“Let’s hope it does.” I agreed, gingerly shaking his hand. It was uncomfortably clammy, “Who’re you, anyways?”
He wasn’t wearing a police uniform like the rest of them. Instead, he was in plainclothes, a white undershirt with an open black blazer on top.
“Dave is a rookie fireman.” One of the people manning the control panels explained, “Fishing for a promotion, isn’t he?” Laughs rippled around the room as Dave grinned shamelessly. I could see how he was a fireman, with a scrawny but muscular build. Now that I was paying attention, I could see the shiny burns and miniscule splinter cuts adorning his skin.
“Maybe I want to get to see what this mirror world is like.” He shot back, “See what this place I’m training to go to is like. Do you have actual transportation charms?” He turned to look at me hopefully.
I rolled my sleeves back to reveal the black ink spiraling over them, “I tattooed them on.” I explained as he stared at them awestruck.
“So cool!” He fawned, fingers carefully trailing over the patterns.
“When I asked for volunteers, I meant from the police force.” Commissioner Brian frowned, “You’re not police.”
“Hey, we’re both public servants, aren’t we?” Dave replied as I rolled my sleeves back down, “And I didn’t see any officers standing up to take the role.”
Commissioner Brian’s face twitched in a way I could tell was trouble. We should probably try to smooth over his ire before we were all dependent on his device to keep us alive.
“Fine.” He ground out, “Grab some of the beta charms, and we’ll set out immediately.”
Dave saluted excitedly and darted away.
The beta charms I was familiar with were stick-ons, much like regular reflection-hopping charms. Not these. These were bulky padded patches that were attached to the body using suction cups and lit up brightly once activated. Dave and Fold put them on without complaint, but I was very much unconvinced about their effectiveness. Good charms were a must. That was why I had moved on to tattoo versions, when reliable charms had started losing quality. I watched with thinly veiled interest as they went through the painstaking process of applying the charms on both arms and legs. Much more intensive than the ones I had gotten used to wearing.
“You’ll be able to lead us back to the place, right?” Fold asked, sauntering up to me, “Like, the landscape won’t change or anything?”
“Of course it will.” I refuted, “The hallways shift all the time. It’s kind of a given.”
“What?” He asked, looking about ready to tear his hair out, “Are you trying to make me look stupid?”
“Don’t even worry about.” I reassured him, “The routes shift immediately, but it moves along with you if you know what you’re doing. It’ll take us right to the scene.”
He frowned uncertainly, “If you’re sure…” He replied, thinking aloud when he continued, “But if the landscape changes at the drop of a hat, how did the perpetrator’s marks stay constant?”
I froze. He was right. It didn’t make any sense. How did that happen?
Was this playing into their plans? Had this been a plot crafted specifically by people who knew the mirror hallways better than me?
But I couldn’t show my doubts so easily. That would be showing my limited knowledge in a field of study they were relying on me to figure it out. So instead, I squared my shoulders.
“Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth, okay? Maybe they messed up somehow. Maybe the hallways wanted me to find it. We won’t know.”
“So you’re saying the hallways are sentient?” Fold asked, pressing even more, “With some telepathic ability, too, if we consider the fact that they automatically help you find the place you’re looking for…”
“Could you stop?” I frowned, “You’re making stuff up to worry about.”
“Am I, though?” He pointed out, teeth worrying his bottom lip. “We need to be prepared for any possibility.”
“Well, what I’m hearing is that you’re under the impression that the halls are an eldritch abomination.” I replied, “Which it isn’t. It’s really very normal.”
He sighed, shrinking into himself, “Well, since you’re the expert.” He teased, pressing down on the suction cups of the charm on his right arm, “Let’s head in, shall we?”
I pause for a second. Backing out would be easy, wouldn’t it? I could just say know and not go into the scary hell portal and let them go at it alone.
But I didn’t. And was it a bad thing that Celina Minto didn’t even factor into any of the reasons I stayed?
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Passing through the portal wasn’t much different from regular reflection-jumping. It was lighter, I supposed. The portal wasn’t fighting me at all, like an unwanted intrusion. Instead, it seemed to be sucking me in without any hesitancy. It was unnerving.
Not only that, but there was an undercurrent of electricity permeating the entire place. It tingled across my skin, making my hair stand on end. That certainly wasn’t there in regular reflection-jumping.
“Woah…” Dave squealed, looking around, “This place looks better than the drawings made it look!”
Right, because cameras went on the fritz while inside the hallways and refused to take proper pictures, the outside world was restricted to only being able to see artist’s renditions of the hallways. It was such a shame, because no matter how they tried, it was always missing that characteristic something.
“It is nothing like I imagined.” Fold muttered, a glaze of wonder going over his eyes as he took it all in, before glancing at me, “And you come here all the time to transport packages?”
“Hey, don’t diss the lifestyle.” I scoffed, “It’s fulfilling. And that’s how we met, so you should really be thanking me.”
“Of course, I’m thankful!” Fold squawked, “C’mon and start leading the way, already. The body could be rotting already. We don’t have time to be wasting like this!”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s locked in stasis.” Dave and I both corrected him at the same time. He stared at me, startled for a second, until I laughed.
“I constantly have to tell people that!” I told him, making him loosen up and giggle with me.
“Yes, yes, we normies are all dumbasses.” Fold rolled his eyes, “Now do your job, Maddy, and lead us.”
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Despite all the doubts, I managed to lead them directly to the body of the late Celina Minto.
Seeing it again was no better than the first time. It still made me feel faint to stare at her, lying there like Snow White. If Snow White had a leg chewed off.
It was a grotesque sight, and I was worried if I was just being overly dramatic, but the second Dave’s eyes landed on the thing, I was validated by the way he gagged and turned away. Fold and the Commissioner handled it with much more grace, but I was certain that they too felt the gravity of the situation.
“Was the vomit there when you came?” Fold asked, eyeing the puddle with interest, “If it belongs to the perpetrators or some unknown third party, we could analyze the contents and figure-”
“No, that was me.” I muttered, face red. He had the audacity to laugh in my face.
“I keep forgetting how green you are.” He shook his head, quickly sobering back up, “But we shouldn’t make light in front of the dead. It’s disrespectful.”
“What do you make of all this, Henry?” Commissioner Brian asked, taking pictures of the crime scene with his camera, “First glance hypotheses?”
A couple seconds of silence as Fold carefully lifted one of Celina’s arms up, testing how far rigor mortis had travelled. The answer was not much. The body had been pulled in almost immediately after death, so decay never set in at all. That’s what he got for not listening to me.
“…You’re going to call me crazy.” He finally announced, “But let’s review the facts, shall we?”
I felt trepidation rise inside of me as I watched him begin to pace the length of the crime scene, little notebook in hand as he lectured the room as a whole, “The woman was snatched up out of nowhere. She has no known enemies or scandals and was generally adored by everyone who crossed paths with her. No motive from anyone to kill her. Especially not in a way as flashy as a ‘locked room with a mirror in it’ scenario that has haunted the world and cast reflection-hopping in a bad light for decades now. Furthermore, she appears to have been partially eaten by something with extraordinarily large teeth, even though this space is considered inaccessible to anything not human. How strange.”
The trepidation was becoming more intense. I frowned and made to interrupt him, “Hey now, I think we talked about this-”
“No, let me finish.” He continued sharply, “This world as a whole has been suggested to have telepathic properties not just by various scholars and anonymous resources, but also an in-person admission. So… I know this sounds impossible, but we may have to consider…”
“Mirrors can’t eat people, Fold.” I told him, exasperation reaching brand new levels, “That’s actually impossible.”
“Here you go, throwing out perfectly plausible answers!” Fold threw his hands up, “Didn’t even give me any time to justify yourself.”
“You’ve actually been justifying yourself before you even said what you thought was going on, which means you knew how ridiculous this was.” Dave added, shrinking down from the attention, “Like, just putting it out there. Not picking a side at all.”
“Well, you’re doing a very bad job at it.” Fold told him.
The Commissioner sighed, “This is going nowhere, Henry.” He told him, “I thought that I could count on you for your intuition, but if these are the kinds of theories you have to offer, then I think we’re better off asking the detectives in the force for help.”
“Wait, you don’t have to do that!” He spluttered, “Please, let me take some time to gather all my sources but you’ll find the evidence is actually quite compelling…”
“Dave, please help me move the cadaver back to the precinct.” Commissioner Brian shook his head, “I’ll let you use our entry gate to leave the place, son, but from now on, I don’t think it’s a good idea to expose you to all these things. It’s clearly affecting your mental state and wellbeing.”
Oof, that had to hurt. I cringed just by having to watch it, and judging by Dave’s grimace, I wasn’t alone. We should exchange contact information or something, because this level of instant ‘click’ only happened in movies.
Fold bowed his head a little, looking so woeful, even I had to feel for the guy.
“You okay?” I asked, sticking close to him even as Dave and Commissioner Brian opened the stretcher to load late Celina Minto into it.
“Yeah, I just-” He sniffed. Oh god, was he crying? I’m not good with criers, “I just really believed in this.”
Personally, I didn’t buy the whole ‘man-eating monsters in the mirrorverse’ story. It had been cooked up in a slasher horror, in my opinion, and I wasn’t going to lie to Fold about that. I’m sure he would be more hurt by the fact that I was simply humoring him if the truth ever came out anyway.
“Listen, man, that sucks.” I said instead, “Why’re you even so fixated on it?”
Even if lying was a bad idea, this was still a wrong option. Vengeful fire lit up in his eyes as he stared at me and began to rant, “Why aren’t you fixated on it? An innocent woman died. And you don’t even give a shit, already acting as if it didn’t happen. Not concerned in the slightest about bringing her to justice.”
He marched ahead without me, straight through the hallway, out of the portal, and then out of the precinct, almost in a blind rage as I followed desperately after him. Sure, I didn’t even know his name until three hours ago, but I considered Fold a friend of mine. And I didn’t have many, so I couldn’t afford to lose one over something so damn fixable.
No matter how blinded he was by his anger, though, it was impossible to miss the armada of reporters camped outside the precinct, all clamoring desperately for answers and attention.
“Hey, Mister, are you on the Minto Case?”
“Could you tell us about where the rest of her body is?”
“Is it true that reflection-hopper magic was involved in this?”
“Please, an exclusive, Commissioner!”
“Are you going to be cracking down on reflection-hoppers from now on?”
It was like a storm of questions were cascading on top of me, nearly burying me alive with their metaphorical weight. And very physical volume.
“Sorry, ‘scuse me.” I muttered, trying to elbow past them, “I’m just the mail girl, I swear.”
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I do part-time jobs where I can fit them in around the mail job. It’s hard, considering the fact that mail delivery is a very demanding schedule, but I make it work. Newspapers are my favorite go-to whenever I need to make a couple extra bucks.
Because of this, the first thing I read every morning would inevitably be the headlines. Whether I wanted to or not, I simply had to keep up with the ongoing saga of Celina Minto’s death.
It got petty, at first. Reporters taking pot shots at each other and witnesses all implicating each other. But then fans started forming hoards to chase after the latest suspect. Then it became violent.
I didn’t particularly care much. It was a weird day, for sure, but I had weird days all the time. Sometimes I still found Marie’s clothes in my wardrobe to prove that. This didn’t have to become a big deal.
And then one day I stepped into the hallways, and found myself surrounded by whiteness and red lettering. Someone – no, a lot of someones – had hung up banners all over their mirrors. Who even does that?
People who wanted to be heard by the ones on the other side of that mirror, apparently, because the words would forever be etched into my mind wherever I went. Bearing down on me as I tried to take parcels around. Just bouncing around and making their presence felt.
No Tolerance to Smoke and Mirrors – Support Action 210!
Action 210 was a proposed bill working to force reflection-hopping into being outlawed. Production and possession of charms would be criminalized, all research into it would grind to a halt, and humanity’s greatest discovery would simply. Cease to exist.
I’m not a political person. I simply want to keep my head down and my voice low. There are a lot of things that I don’t want to be bothered with doing. But sometimes you don’t get a say in the matter. Sometimes you have to take a stand. Even if I seriously doubted the hallways had come to life and were now eating people, I knew what I saw. Whatever had taken that bite out of Celina Minto hadn’t been human.
But the media was all insisting that that wasn’t the case, and the police were straight up refusing to consider those options. So, I had to turn to the one person I knew was barking up the right tree. And he lived in Apartment G-426, Kingsfold Arch.
Except when I showed up there, it was… empty? The apartment had been put back out for renting.
For a while, I thought that Fold had genuinely vanished into the night. Maybe taken by whatever monster was in the hallways. And then another of his packages ended up on my delivery list, with his new address listed.
I was rushing over there before I even considered that it may have been creepy. Maybe he had moved to avoid the embarrassment I had caused for him and now I was making it worse?
“Actually, I switched apartments after I got my house broken into twice after someone released by private information. Once was by a true crime enthusiast trying to get a primary source.” Fold shivered, “I live in Apartment C-06 now. And there aren’t any nearby mirrors in the corridor.”
I swore profusely as I followed him inside his new apartment. It was in the building right next to his old one, embarrassingly enough. Except on a much lower floor. Good riddance, too, because there wasn’t an elevator and the idea of having to climb it once reflection-hopping became outlawed was already weighing on me.
Not that I thought the bill would actually pass. There was no way it was going to. It was a stupid bill and would get laughed out of the voting.
“It’s not that I don’t have a mirror, it’s just that I don’t want you popping into my bathroom unannounced.” He explained as he let me inside, “I’ll put a mirror in the living room for you to go through?”
“That’d be great-” I started to say, before remembering the situation that had led to this, “Actually, don’t do that. No need to poke the bear. Or the mirror monster, so to speak.”
His head snapped towards me, amazement in his eyes, “You believe me?” He breathed.
I rubbed my neck uncomfortably, “I mean, a little? No the entirety, but I do think you’re focusing on the right things, unlike everyone else involved in this mess.”
“I’d hope so.” He wrinkled his nose, “The Smoke and Mirrors Movement? It’s a crazy world out there and they’re not helping matters.”
“Well, what do you say, Henry ‘Fold’ Maximillian?” I asked, holding my hand out a tad theatrically, “You ready to expose this monster with me?”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way, Maddy.” He grinned, reaching forward to give me a high five.
I was a mailwoman. He was a detective. There was a person-eating monster on the loose. I’m sure we were going to work something out.