Nathan tightened his grip on the violin. “If it’s true? Don’t you believe me?”
“Look,” she said, placing a hand on his arm. “I know you’re my brother now, but I just met you yesterday.” She let her hand slide down as she averted her eyes. “No offense, but for all I know, you might hallucinate on a regular basis. Or maybe you’re so upset about losing your parents, you’re seeing things. All I’ve seen so far is some pics from your dad’s camera. He could’ve easily taken photos of Buckingham Palace and the Taj Mahal, and you could’ve been muttering about them because you visited them recently.”
He tightened his jaw but tried to keep his voice calm. “I wasn’t muttering about them.”
She set her fists on her hips. “I know what I heard.”
With a swipe of his hand, he grabbed the picture pack. “But those buildings were the last pictures on the roll! Dad couldn’t have taken them.”
“The lab could’ve gotten everything out of order, or maybe they mixed in someone else’s stuff.” She shrugged. “Who knows?”
Nathan waved his arm toward the window. “But what about the tree in front of your house? How do you explain its size and color?”
She let her arms droop at her side. “Okay,” she said, her tone now apologetic. “You got me there.” With a quick spin, she began pacing in front of the mirror, making it appear that twin Kellys were marching in stride. “But if my dad even gets a hint that something spooky is going on, he’ll set up a media circus. He’s dying to, as he says, ‘liven up this one-horse town.’ He’s said a thousand times that he’d like to be on one of those reality TV shows.”
She stopped and faced Nathan. “Remember Field of Dreams, that movie about ghosts coming out of a cornfield to play baseball? He’d probably want to make a real Field of Dreams reality show right in your bedroom.”
Nathan tucked the opening flap into the picture pack. “Think he’ll look at the new batch of photos before he brings them home?”
“No,” she replied, shaking her head. “If anything, he’ll be looking through all the sports magazines he probably bought. He likes to do that while he drives. Scares me to death.”
“Try jumping over an open drawbridge in a limo. That was the most scared I’ve been in a long time.”
Kelly narrowed her eyes. “You don’t have to top my story Nathan. I know you’ve been through more scary stuff than I have.”
“I wasn’t trying to top your—”
“Save it,” she said, holding up her hand. “I’m having enough trouble believing you already.”
He lowered his head, feeling a scowl forming in his brow. “At least Clara will believe me.”
Kelly’s lips turned downward as she walked slowly to the door. “Whatever.” She opened it just enough to squeeze through. “I’m gonna put the coffee on.” The door closed with a louder than usual click.
Nathan stared at the knob, mumbling a mimicry of Kelly’s voice. “I’m having enough trouble believing you already.” He sighed and moved his gaze back to the mirror. The reflection wasn’t going to perform on demand and prove to Kelly that he wasn’t going crazy. He had to stop dwelling on it. But what could he do while waiting for the new photos to arrive? Obviously there was no homework. He wasn’t supposed to start at Kelly’s school until Monday.
Her words echoed in his mind. “Maybe you’re so upset about losing your parents, you’re seeing things.” Could she be right? Could he be hallucinating? Maybe he really was going crazy.
He tucked his mother’s violin under his chin. If only Dad were here, then he would have someone who would listen. Or Mom. She’d play something soft while he talked, closing her eyes and nodding her head. She’d believe every word, then, with her eyes open and her bow at her side, she’d whisper poetic wisdom, coating him with comfort whether he understood her counsel or not.
He raised the bow to the strings and began playing “Brahms’ Lullaby,” holding some of the high notes a bit, just as his mother used to do when her strings sang him to sleep as a young child. Tears welled up again, spilling over his lids and trickling down his cheeks, but he didn’t bother to brush them aside. He played on and on, closing his eyes and pretending to nestle in his own bed, in those rare times between Mom’s world concert tours and Dad’s spy missions.
A vision of that bedroom entered his mind. As the mental portrait of his younger self pretended to sleep, the imagined child peeked through his eyelids and watched his mother’s flawless strokes, an angel from heaven sitting in a rocking chair, playing for the King of kings, and he had a front row seat.
Nathan played the final note, stretching it out and softening his touch to make it fade away but when he lifted the bow, the song began again, more vibrant, more beautiful than ever. He popped open his eyes. In the mirror, his mother sat in the old rocker in his bedroom back home, playing the lullaby. He saw himself, a child of about five, lying in bed with the covers pulled up to his chin.
A knock sounded at the door. “Nathan! What’s going on? I hear voices again!”
His throat tightened into a knot. He couldn’t move or speak.
Kelly pushed the door open, then closed it quickly. When she saw the mirror, she gasped, pointing. “Nathan! It’s…” She ran to him and grabbed his arm. “What is it?”
His voice shook as he laid the violin on his mattress. “That’s my mom. And that’s me in bed. This is exactly what I was thinking a minute ago, and it suddenly appeared.”
Just as the sweet music eased to a quiet hum, the door swung open again. Clara barged into the room, her purse in one hand and a laptop computer case in the other. “Nathan, your practice is really paying off. You sound—” She raised her hand over her mouth. “Oh, my heavens!”
In the mirror, Nathan’s mother approached the foreground of the reflection, her eyes seeming to focus directly on him. She reached up and began pulling down a shade. “Good night, sweetheart,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning.” The shade slowly covered the entire image and faded it to black. Seconds later, the mirror returned to normal, reflecting the pale faces of everyone in the room.
Tony’s voice echoed in the hall. “Where is everybody?” He appeared at the door, his big eyes scanning the room. “Oh. Here you are.”
As Kelly turned toward him, her voice shook. “Uh…hi, Daddy.”
“Got your prints.” He tossed a photo package on the bed and crossed his arms. “You all look like you’ve seen a headless ghost.”
Nathan tried to catch Kelly’s eye. He had no idea what to say. And would Clara spill the beans?
Kelly sprang to her father’s side and pushed him out the door. “Nathan was playing a sad song on his violin. It made us all feel kind of blue, you know, with his parents dying and all.” Her voice faded down the hall. “Coffee’s ready. You want some?”
Nathan scrambled for the package, tore it open, and dumped out the photos. He leaned over and quickly arranged them on the bedspread. “Clara, take a look. Recognize anything in these pictures?”
Clara set the computer case down and hobbled over to the bed, her voice trembling. “Nathan, what did I just see? Was that really your mother?”
“I’ll explain later, or at least I’ll try to. Just look at these before Tony gets back.”
“Very well.” She pulled a pair of glasses from her purse and peered at the first photo while Nathan looked on. It showed three laptop computers on a curved desk that abutted an equally curved wall. The room appeared dimly lit, and a Microsoft logo floated randomly across each screen. “No,” she said, pulling back, “that place is unfamiliar to me.”
Nathan held up the second photo. This one was even darker than the first, some kind of large room with a tall cylindrically shaped bulge in the middle of the floor. “What do you make of this one?”
“Is that a telescope?”
Kelly breezed back into the room. “Okay. I got him interested in a rebroadcast of an old Lakers game.” She hustled to the bed and wrapped her arms around Nath
an. “I’m so sorry!” she said, looking into his eyes. “I should’ve believed you.”
He patted her on the back and managed a smile. “It’s all right. I wasn’t sure I believed it myself.”
She released him and turned toward Clara. “I heard voices coming from this room. I know I heard them.”
“Voices?” Clara repeated. “What did they say?’
Kelly sat down next to Clara. “I couldn’t catch it all. A man said, ‘The computers decode,’ then a woman said something about a telescope.”
“Maybe it is a telescope.”
“What do you mean?” Kelly asked.
Clara picked up the second photo and handed it to her. “Does that look like a telescope to you?”
Nathan stared again at the dim room. He tried to twist the central shadow into a telescope sitting on a pedestal. It worked. Sort of.
“I’m not sure,” Kelly said. “Maybe.”
“What else did the voices say?” Clara asked.
“I was out in the hall. I couldn’t understand them.” She laid the picture back on the bedspread. “The voices were pretty loud, Nathan. You must’ve heard them.”
“I didn’t hear anything but Brahms.” He lifted the violin to his shoulder. “When it’s right next to my ear, I can’t hear much else.” He played several quick notes, ending with a high C.
Kelly’s face turned ashen. Her lips parted as her jaw began dropping open.
Clara placed a palm on Kelly’s forehead. “Are you feeling sick?”
“No. I heard it again. Just now.” She pulled Clara’s arm down and looked at her and Nathan imploringly. “Didn’t you hear it? It was a woman’s voice, loud and clear.”
“No,” Nathan replied with a slight shake of his head.
Clara locked her hand with Kelly’s. “I didn’t hear a word. What did she say?”
Kelly’s face fell slack. Her eyes opened wide, and she spoke in an eerie monotone as if trying to mimic a ghostly voice echoing in her mind. “Hurry, Nathan, before it’s too late.”
“Play some more!” Clara said, pointing at the violin.
Nathan laid the bow across the strings. “Brahms again?”
“Anything. Let’s see what happens.”
Nathan restarted the lullaby, trying to play softly enough to hear the voices. He and Clara looked at Kelly expectantly.
Kelly closed her eyes and concentrated. After a few seconds, she spoke softly. “I hear something. Quiet voices, like people whispering to each other.” She opened her eyes. “But I can’t understand them.”
Nathan switched to his part of the Vivaldi duet, increasing the volume slightly.
“How about now?” Clara asked.
She concentrated again. “No. Still just whispers.”
After trying several different compositions and getting the same response from Kelly he finally lowered the violin with an exasperated sigh. “Are you sure you heard words before?”
She set her hands on her hips. “As sure as you were when you saw that weird stuff in the mirror.”
Nathan pointed the bow at her. “Good call.”
“How strange,” Clara said. “The voice seemed to be speaking directly to us.”
“But hurry and do what? What happens when it’s ‘too late’?”
Clara snatched up a photo. “Look, Nathan. Interfinity.”
“Interfinity?” He peered over her shoulder at the picture of his father standing next to a man wearing a white laboratory smock. “Is that a company name?”
“That’s what they’re called now. They’re a research and development company that observes strange astronomical features. At first they were associated with alien hunters, looking for signs of life out in the great beyond, but later they moved into serious science, like figuring out all that stuff about dark matter and axions.”
Kelly scrunched her eyebrows. “What are axions?”
“I don’t know enough about them to explain.” Clara wiggled her fingers as if typing on a keyboard. “I just typed out Solomon’s notes when he took a case for them. Someone had stolen Interfinity’s technology so he had to get it back, some kind of device that creates what they called an interfinity corridor. I have no idea what that is, but I do remember that they used a special kind of mirror.”
Nathan pointed at her. “And that’s the connection. A mirror.”
“And that’s probably why your father gave it to you for safe-keeping.” Clara walked over to the wall mirror and stared at her reflection, but the tall gray-haired lady on the other side just stared back at her with the same skeptical aspect. “Obviously there is much more here than meets the eye.”
“So what do we do?” Kelly asked. “Go to Interfinity and see what’s going on?”
“That’s one option, but I’m thinking we should go straight to the horse’s mouth.” As Clara stroked her chin, her glasses slid down her nose. “Nathan, you can access your father’s webmail account, can’t you? Perhaps we can find out more about his latest project there.”
“Yeah. I think I remember his password.” Nathan kept his gaze locked on the mirror. The lamp in the reflection had dimmed, but everything else looked normal…at least for now. He pointed at the computer case Clara had brought in. “Is that a new laptop?”
“Since yours is sitting at the bottom of the river, I bought you a new one,” Clara said, backing toward the lamp on Nathan’s desk.
Clara’s shadow drew Nathan’s eye to the mirror. The lamp’s light dimmed further, and the walls in the reflection darkened, but nothing really alarming appeared. Shadows always made things darker, though this one somehow seemed denser than most.
Kelly’s eyes darted to the mirror and back. Obviously, she had seen it, too.
He refocused on Clara. “If I can’t remember it, I’ll try some passwords I know he’s used before.”
“Go for it, but if we can’t figure it out soon, we can get the ISP to let us in. I have your father’s Social Security number.”
He turned on the computer and laid it on the bed. “I’ll hack into it tonight.”
“Anyone hungry?” Tony swept into the room with a mobile phone in his hand. As soon as he entered, the lamp in the mirror cast a reddish glow over his reflection. Hunching over and wearing nothing but an animal skin, his image looked like a caveman carrying a slingshot.
Kelly stepped between her father and the reflection, blocking his view.
“It’s halftime,” he continued, “and my stomach’s begging for a liver and anchovy pizza. I could order an extra large if anyone’s got the munchies.”
Nathan edged away from the mirror, hoping Tony’s gaze would follow. He had to do something to keep his attention diverted. “Liver and anchovies? You really put that on a pizza?”
“I guess your dad never fed you a real man’s food.” Tony flexed his bicep. “Stick with me, and you’ll have a set of these in no time.” Now his reflected image grew long hair all over his body and looked like a chimpanzee showing off his muscles.
“Dad,” Kelly said, sliding her arm around her father’s elbow and turning him toward the door, “why don’t you go to the Pizza Ranch and get an extra large with half liver and anchovies and the other half with…” She raised her eyebrows at Nathan.
“Uh…pepperoni?” Nathan offered.
“Yeah. Pepperoni.”
“Pepperoni’s okay,” Tony said, nodding. “It has protein.” He dug a set of keys out of his jeans pocket. “Anything else?”
Nathan suppressed a grin. Seeing a chimpanzee in the mirror holding a set of keys almost made him burst out laughing.
“Sure. Can you pick up some of those fruit drinks at Wal-Mart? They’re Nathan’s favorite.”
Nathan lifted his eyebrows at her, but she shot a keep-your-mouth-shut glare at him. He complied. This was no time to protest.
“But that’s the opposite direction from the Pizza Ranch,” Tony said. “I don’t have time to do both before the second half.”
Kelly pushed him toward
the door. “I’ll record it for you, and we can all watch it together when you get back.”
Setting his feet, he paused and eyed the photos on the bed. “What’s up with the pictures? Did you get something cool?”
“They’re some old ones that belonged to Nathan’s father.” She pushed harder and guided him out the door and down the hall, her voice fading. “You’d better get going. I heard Nathan’s stomach growling.”
As soon as the door closed, Clara’s shadow dimmed, and the reflection returned to normal.
Nathan ran his hand through his hair. “Whew! That was close!”
“I know.” Clara laid a hand on her abdomen. “When I saw that chimpanzee, I strained so hard to keep from laughing, I think I reopened my hernia.”
He touched her shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“It’s a joke,” she said, patting him on the shoulder. “I hope you get your sense of humor back soon.”
“Yeah.” He dipped his head low. “Me, too.”
She slid the photos together into a pile next to the laptop, careful to keep them in order.
She pointed at his laptop bag. “By the way, I put a new cell phone in there and a debit card for any immediate expenses, so make sure you find them and put them away.”
“I will. Thanks.”
Clara turned the laptop on the bed and tapped a few keys. “Better get started on your father’s email as soon as possible. We need to figure everything out before your parents’ funeral on Tuesday.”
“Tuesday? Did the police find them?”
“An anonymous person sent a photograph of their bodies and said he would reveal their location by Monday. If that tip pans out, I want to be ready.”
Nathan swallowed a painful lump. “Do I have to go?”
“Of course you have to. You will be a pallbearer, and I was hoping you’d play something. Dr. Malenkov suggested that you and he should play your favorite duet.”
“No.” Pressing his lips together, he lowered his head. “I don’t think I could handle that.” As he stared at the bedspread, he sensed her sympathetic gaze, the teary-eyed one she always got when something tragic happened.
“I understand,” she said. “I’ll arrange something else.” She reached down and took his hand. “Do you want to be a pallbearer?”