The Empty Mirror

By James Lincoln Collier

Nick Hodges had always been a troublesome boy. Growing up an orphan in his Uncle Jack's care in a small New England town wasn't easy. Everyone was a little wary, a little watchful—a little too watchful. One day, while Nick is walking in the woods, a neighbor thinks she sees him miles from where he actually is. Soon a series of events reinforcing Nick's hotheaded reputation unfold. The incidents become increasingly serious until, finally, Nick is the scapegoat for a much more sinister crime, one that he wouldn't even think of committing. As he uncovers history of the town's influenza epidemic, and as he observes a strange occurrence in the graveyard, Nick begins to suspect something out of the ordinary is happening. And when he sees a figure running in the woods wearing the mirror image of his own shirt, Nick starts to piece together some of the answers—answers no one could have imagined. James Lincoln Collier has written a haunting story of a boy and his reflection—and what happens when two souls want to inhabit the same living body.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
• Release date: Mar 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781620646755

James Lincoln Collier

James Lincoln Collier is the author of more than fifty books for adults and children. He won a Newbery Honor for My Brother Sam Is Dead, which he cowrote with his brother, Christopher Collier. Twice a finalist for the National Book Award, he is also well known for his writing for adults on jazz. He lives in New York City.

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Epilogue

Chapter One

Sometime just before daylight I had a real bad dream, and I woke up with my heart pounding. I lay there for a minute, trying to bring the dream back into my mind so I could understand it, but I couldn’t. I went on lying there, filled with the feeling that I’d lost something very important, something I could never get back. The feeling was mighty strong. I kept trying to think what it might be, but I couldn’t. Finally I couldn’t stand feeling like that, and I got up.

I’d gotten feelings from dreams before. Usually they wore off pretty quick, and by the time I’d had breakfast the dream feeling was gone. But this time the dream feeling hung on. I couldn’t shake it.

Being as it was Sunday, I didn’t have to work at our boatyard. Didn’t have anything to do but my chores, go to church at eleven o’clock. Maybe get up a baseball game over at Briggs Pond with Tommy Barnes, Mike Santini, and some of the others.

Uncle Jack made codfish cakes for breakfast, the way he usually did on Sunday for a change from eggs or oatmeal. After breakfast he said he was going down to the boatyard for a while. Uncle Jack didn’t like being idle, Sunday or no Sunday. It didn’t sit comfortable with him. He said, I want to straighten out a few things in the shop. Uncle Jack liked things tidy. We had everything you needed for boats in our shop except engines—marine paint, line, all kinds of hardware and fittings, caulking, whatever. I liked the tarry smell of it. You could always lay your hand on anything you needed. Uncle Jack believed in being tidy, all right. I’ll be back around ten-thirty, he said. Clean yourself up before church. What’re you going to do this morning, Nick?

Maybe I’ll see if Barnes and Santini want to play baseball.

Be ready for church, he said. Then he left.

But that dream was still on me, and I didn’t feel much like playing baseball. I just wanted to get rid of that feeling, so I went out the kitchen door, crossed the backyard, and started off for the hills behind town. I did that sometimes when I wasn‟t feeling good. The hills were covered with pines, but there were places where a rock ledge broke out of the ground and opened up the pines. On a ledge you could see our little village down below, then the bay with the fishing boats leaving white stripes behind them. I liked being there and looking down on everything. It made me feel like a king on his throne.

I hiked up there, stood on a ledge, and looked down at the village and the bay. But that feeling was still on me. I didn’t feel like a king, just a kid who had lost something important. I decided that if I had something to occupy my mind, I might feel better, so I walked down out of the hills, through the village to the boatyard. We had a little dock jutting fifty feet into the bay, the shop, and the yard where we worked on boats. Chain-link fence all around it. As I walked into the yard, Uncle Jack gave me a look. He was never mean to me, never shouted, even though I could be troublesome at times—cutting school, talking back. But I knew enough to watch out when he gave me that look.

What? I said.

Where’ve you been, Nick?

Up in the hills. Up in the pines. I didn’t mean to tell him about my feeling. It was a nice day. I went for a walk.

Uncle Jack didn’t say anything for a minute, but leaned on the big screwdriver he was using to pry the planks loose from the hull of a dory. He was thin, tall, wiry. His hair was gray, but neat. You never saw Uncle Jack with his shirttail out, no matter how hard he was working. Never wanted a shave—wouldn’t even come to breakfast without shaving first. It came from being in the army during the war, I figured. He fought in France in 1918. He was in the Meuse-Argonne battle, they said. Did something brave and got a medal for it, but he wouldn’t talk about it. A couple of times, I asked, but he always said, Best to forget about those things, Nick. Uncle Jack came home from France in the winter of l918 and found that my ma and pa had both died in the flu epidemic, two days apart, and that he had me on his hands. Twenty years old and he had a baby to raise.

Miss Bell came by a little while ago. She said she saw you down by Briggs Pond a while ago. She said hello to you, and you looked right through her and walked on by without saying a word.

I stood there, still soaked with that funny feeling, and tried to remember when I’d been over to Briggs Pond. Not for a week, so far as I could remember—went over there with Gypsy last Sunday just for something to do. When did Miss Bell see me?

A little while ago. Maybe an hour ago. She got to wondering if something was wrong with you, were you sick or something, and came by to ask.

Miss Bell would use any excuse to visit with Uncle Jack. Miss Bell wasn’t my cup of tea. That was an expression I had. I liked having expressions for various things. They made me feel cheerful. Miss Bell ran the Ye Olde Pastry Shoppe, where you could get cake, tarts, and such. The fishermen hung out there sometimes when they were waiting out a storm. I have to say, Miss Bell made mighty good chocolate cake, even if she wasn’t my cup of tea. She was always leaving a chunk of cake off for Uncle Jack. She was sort of pretty, although a little hefty, and sometimes acted in plays over at Millbury. She’d use any excuse to come by the house, and I figured this was another one. Uncle Jack, I’ve been up in the pines. Nowhere near Briggs Pond. She must have made a mistake.

That isn’t very likely, is it, Nick? She’s known you since you were born.

I stood there looking at Uncle Jack, confused. It sounded like Miss Bell really did see me.

She couldn’t have made a mistake like that. Everybody in Stoneybeach knew everyone else. Maybe she misremembered, I said. Maybe it was last Sunday, when I was over there with Gypsy. Maybe Gypsy was talking and I didn’t hear Miss Bell say hello.

She said it was this morning. Hour or so ago. She couldn’t have got that wrong, Nick.

Something was wrong somewhere. Miss Bell couldn’t have made a mistake about who I was, not if I walked past her in broad daylight. But I wasn’t there. Uncle Jack, I wasn’t there. I swear it. It had to be someone else.

He gave me a sideways look. For a minute he didn’t say anything. Then he said, Well, all right. I can understand if you had something on your mind and didn’t hear her, but I don’t like to see a thirteen-year-old boy disrespect a grown woman. He turned back to the dory. There was no point in arguing with him anymore, for he’d closed the subject.

It all bothered me a lot. First the feeling I’d lost something, and then Miss Bell seeing me when I wasn’t there. I had to admit that Miss Bell knew me pretty well. I worked at her pastry shop sometimes, scrubbing floors and such. Had Miss Bell made the whole thing up for some reason? Was she trying to get me in trouble with Uncle Jack in case I tried to get between them? To tell the truth, I didn’t think Uncle Jack was in any rush to marry anyone, especially Miss Bell. Maybe he was, but I didn’t see any signs of it. Or did Miss Bell figure out she wasn’t my cup of tea and wanted to get me for that?

It was bothersome, all right, and after church I decided to go see Gypsy Dauber. I could talk to Gypsy about anything. She liked to talk a whole lot, and it didn’t much matter about what. The Daubers had a little farm back under the mountains. They were kind of mixed up. Gypsy said they were part Indian, which was probably true. Uncle Jack said from the name you’d take them for French-Canadian. Who knows what they were? It didn’t matter to me. Gypsy and me didn’t exactly fit in around Stoneybeach, she being mixed and me being an orphan. Oh, I had plenty of other friends—Mike Santini, Tommy Barnes, Joey Pileski, and such.

Their folks were always complaining that I was the one who got them in trouble—Mike and Tommy especially. Get them to cut school, borrow somebody’s boat and go out to Goat Island to roast potatoes we’d swiped from Barnes’s ma. Things like that. But when it came to being troublesome, Gypsy was always ahead of me. We got along real good.

I set off through the village and the dirt farm road that ran back toward the hills. The road wound through patches of oaks and maples. After that came the Daubers‟ farm—a scratchy little farm with a pig, a cow, a dozen chickens, and a truck garden with tomatoes, pole beans, melons, and such that they carted into Millbury in an old, broken-down Ford truck Mr. Dauber kept going with spit and haywire. I usually went out there to help them butcher the pig in the fall. It’d be a nice, sharp fall day with the leaves all red and yellow. Mr. Dauber would slice the pig’s throat and let it run, the blood splashing out everywhere. It’d make maybe a hundred feet before it fell over on its nose. Mr. Dauber’d gut it out, and then we’d hoist it up with a pulley hanging from an arm that stuck out above their little barn door, dunk the carcass into an oil drum of hot water so as to soften the hairs, and then scrape it down with kitchen knives. I liked helping with the pig. Afterward Mrs. Dauber would give us apple pie and homemade cider that had turned a little and was fizzy. It was a mighty comfortable thing to do on a sharp fall Saturday morning.

Mrs. Dauber was sitting on the front porch out of the sun, stringing pole beans for supper. Hello, Nick, she said. She was on the fat side, and lazy, always ready to take a glass of homemade cider and chat instead of getting on with her work.

Mrs. Dauber, you know where Gypsy is?

She’s in the barn shoveling out the cow stall if she knows what’s good for her behind.

I guess I’ll have a look-see, I said. I went around the house, to the kitchen yard where the chickens were clucking around in the weeds and dust, looking for corn and seeds. Shut up, you fools, I told them. I’m king around here. Then I went on to the barn. The doors were slung wide open, which they usually were except in the worst weather, because