At 3a.m., Penny stirred. Lifting the duvet she skulked from the bed as quietly as she could.
She stood outside the living room for several minutes. The only light gracing the room was from streetlights outside. Finally, she switched on the lamp.
Folding her arms, she looked at the mirror over the mantle. There was nobody staring back at her, but still she hesitated to approach it. But approach it she had to. It was, after all, the reason for getting out of bed in the middle of the night.
Keeping her arms tightly folded at her breast, she made her barefooted way across the carpet to the mirror. Soon she was able to see all of the room reflected in it. But there was no one looking back at her.
“So do ghosts go to the bathroom?” she wondered aloud, and instantly regretted it. But there was no sudden appearance, no phantom tap on the shoulder, nothing.
Instinct told her that the apparition of the woman was still somewhere in the apartment, and was now waiting for Penny to call to her. And so that is exactly what she did.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
She looked behind her at the room. Then looked back at the mirror.
And there she was.
Penny jumped, gasping so deeply that she nearly choked. Head snapped ‘round but there was no one behind her. Looking back in to the mirror, she saw that the old woman was still standing behind her. Penny could see that she was about the same height as herself, perhaps a little bit smaller. As for her age, it has to be at least seventy. Her face was softly wrinkled. Hair was tightly curled. She wore a pair of amber earrings that Penny couldn’t help but admire.
She cleared her throat.
“Is this the only way I can see you?” she asked the woman.
“Strange how the universe works,” the woman said through an impish smile. “Isn’t it?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Penny began, “but...you’re dead, right?”
The old lady rolled her cygnet-grey eyes. “In a manner of speaking. I don’t exist on your plane, so in that sense I am dead.”
“And ... what er, plane are you on?” Obviously the woman meant plane as in plane of existence.
“Well, you know, I’m not really particularly au fait on this sort of thing. But it has something to do with dimensions.”
Penny narrowed her eyes. There was something about this old woman. Something infuriatingly familiar. “Who are you, though? What’s your name?”
The woman suddenly became very serious. “Now, I need you to listen carefully. I don’t have much time. I am being allowed to do this because I knew that you would be receptive. Receptive and not terrified.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know you. Very well. I know that you are feeling more excited than scared right now. You find this thrilling, and you want to tell Roy but you know that he will think you are crazy. Am I correct?”
“Yes,” Pen confirmed. “You’re spot on. But how –“
“Do you know why I know you so well?”
Penny’s instincts were surging into overdrive. “Because, in some way, you’re a part of me. You might even...”
The old woman in the mirror goaded Penny on with her eyes.
“You might even be me,” Penny concluded.
The old woman sighed. “You are very clever, my dear. But then again, I always was!”
“You’re...you’re me in the future!”
“One possible future,” the older Penny corrected her. “I exist in a future where Luke did not live past his seventeenth birthday.”
Penny felt like she had just been punched in the chest. She’d been bracing herself for some revelation about herself, not about anyone else, least of all her baby son.
“What happened?” she asked desperately. “What happened to him? What will happen to him?”
“If only I could reach out and hold your hand,” future Pen said lovingly. “Now remember, I am from another version of your life, a life where Luke’s nightmares became worse the older he became. So bad that one morning...” Her grey eyes quivered. “One morning he never woke up.”
“How?” asked Pen, distraught. “How is that possible?”
“Cerebral haemorrhage.”
Penny couldn’t believe what she was hearing. The nightmares that their boy had apparently been having for all these weeks were merely the beginning of something much worse.
“What do I do?” she entreated of her dimensional self. “What do I do now?”
“You get him to the doctor and insist that he has a thorough examination. Make sure you mention the nightmares. The doctor will not take it to be anything serious at the point but you must be resolute. Tell him that your sixth sense told you. Tell him it is in the family. Tell him anything.”
“I will,” she said through small sobs. “I’ll do it today. I...I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Just do everything I told you,” the elder Penny said, smiling again. “And if all goes well ... I won’t exist.”