Keith Cadieux

Gaze: Fear and the Mirror

Keith Cadieux

A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of

The University of Manitoba inparlial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of English, Film, and Theatre

University of Manitoba

Winnipeg

FACULTY OF GTìADUATB STUDTES

COPYRIGFIT PERMTSSION

Gaze: Fear and the Mirror

B)'

Keith Cadieux

A Thesis/Placticum sulrmitted to the Faculty of Gr¿rtlu¿rtc Studies of The Univcrsity of

Manitoba in ¡rartial fulfillment of the requirement of the degree of

Master of Arts

I(eith C¿rtlieuxO2009

Permissio¡t h¿rs been gr:rntecl to the University of M¿rnitoba Libl'¿rries to lentl ¿ì cop\¡of this tltesis/¡rrncticurn, to Libr'¿u'r' ¿rnd Archives C¿rnarl¿r (LAC) to lcnd â copy ol'this thcsis/¡rr:rcticuur, ¿rnd to LAC's:rgent (UMI/ProQuest) to microfilrn, sellco¡ries ¿rntl to ¡rublislr ¿rn ¿rtrstr¿rct of this thesis/p r:rcticum.

This re¡rroduction or copy of this tltesis has been m¿rde ¿rvail¿rble lrv authority of the copyright ownet'solely for the purpose of ¡rrir,:rte stutly and reserrch, antl may only be re¡rrocluced nnd co¡ried as permitted b¡' co¡ryrigltt lan,s <¡r rvitlt cxpress rvrittcn ¿ruthoriz¿rtion fro¡n the co¡r1'¡'ioht ou,ner. Cadieux I

Gaze

Keith Cadieux

September 20, 2008

Mirror mirror on the wall...

- Snow White

It's called a psychomanteum. Don't roll your eyes just yet. I know how this is going to sound. The idea stretches further back into history than you might expect, though it was the Vic- torians who really ran with it. But always, it has had to do with mirrors. The Victorians also grew obsessed with spirit photography, seances and other supernatural practices. They just so badly wanted ghosts to really exist that they let themselves believe almost anything. However, in this case, I think they were really on to something.

It's a room lined with mirrors: the walls, the floor, ceiling. Everything. It didn't have to be a big room. In fact, I imagine that most of the time it wasn't. As long as the space was iso- lated, leaving whoever was inside alone with only the reflections in the tnirrors. You would sit inside in total darkness and if you stayed in the chamber long enough, spirits would start to appear in the dark glass. "Apparition booth" was another name for it.

I used to think of myself as an eyeroller. Skeptical. But not this time. I suppose I've always been the kind of person who couldn't believe without seeing. The very notion of the psychomanteum and its unique power is fascinating enough, but my interest is a little more personal. Cadieux 2

Practical may even be the best word. I've seen something in the mirrors. Something that won't be ignored any longer. So I've taken on this kind of experiment and decided to document it in this journal. I've never kept anything like this before, but I figure if I keep track of everything, record the steps of the project, I rnight have something by way of proof. Something halflvay scientific. And it may even help me better understand what's happening. I suppose, deep down, I'm writing this document as much for rne as I am for anyone else who might be willing to read it.

The first "incident" that set all this in motion occurred a number of weeks ago. I've spent most of my time since then reading up on mirrors and concepts like scrying and mirror gazing.

My hope was that through research I might be able to make sense of my experience. I suppose I do understand better now than I once did. But I'rn still unsure about most everything. That in ir self really outlines the need for this experiment. There is still much to explain if you are going to understand what I'm trying to do. I find it hard to put all this down on paper but I've resolved to divulge all that I can. The doors and windows are locked, the phone disconnected. I hope that I have at least made clear the basics of my psychomanteum experiment: I'm going to build one..

As I was saying, this incident occurred some time ago. It happened one night while I was working late. I work at a big-box hardware store and they only have part-time available at the moment. I have to wear an orange smock. It's only a temporary arrangement, I assure you. It does pay the rent on my little one bedroom apar|ment though it certainly isn't the kind ofjob I had in mind while I was trudging my way through grad school. I can't stop myself from thinking that I should be well beyond retail jobs by now. Living in a house of my own. I certainly didn't imagine living alone, either. Cadieux 3

On this particular night, I had been scheduled to work until closing time and my supervisor presented me with a rare but completely unenviable opportunity.

"I need one more stock person to stay late tonight and rearrange the last two sections of housewares," he said. He wasn't making a request. There was no one else for him to ask and he had already started pulling on his cheap windbreaker before he had even finished his sentence.

Of course I didn't want to stay there any later. Part of me wanted to refuse just out of spite.

Leave him in the lurch. Let him stay late and rearrange the aisles, if he wanted it done so badly.

But I needed the money, even though it wouldn't be much. And let's be honest, I didn't have anywhere else to be. I told him I would stay.

"Good," he said, as though there were no other possible answer for me to give him. "Kyle and Mandy are staying too, so it shouldn't take you guys long. And even if it does, you're only authorized one hour of over-time pay. Tops." He made a swift horizontal motion with his hand as he said that last word. He even raised his eyebrows. Then he ducked under the half-closed security gate that spanned across the main entrance. I pulled it down the rest of the way. The lock is rnounted into the floor so I had to get down on my knees to use the key and secure the gate for the night. Just then the clocks hit 11:15 and the store switched to safety lights. It's an automatic system meant to save po\iler while the store is closed, but there's no way to get the main lights back on if there are still people inside. The only illumination came from small emergency bulbs fixed atop metal boxes bolted high up on the wall. Only inches from the 25 foot ceiling. They gave offa dull yellowish glow in comparison to the unnatural white of the regular fluorescent bulbs. Feeling the last burst of late summer heat and looking through the metal slats and bars of the security gate,I could see that it was acf'sally brighter out in the parking lot. Even that late, Cadieux 4 there was still a hint of daylight just offthe horizon. I dusted the front of my pants as I stood and put the gate key back in my pocket. Standing in the dark then, with no idea how much longer I might be stuck at the store, hoping I wouldn't miss the last bus of the night, I sincerely regretted having the good sense to stay and put in some overtime.

My two co-workers for this late-night task were Mandy and Kyle, the store's newest ill- conceived romantic pairing. Mandy's not so bad, I guess. She's pretfy, in a heavy metal kind of way. Kyle, on the other hand, has held the same position at this store ever since high school.'We went to the same one. That made it hard for me to even take a job like this, once it became clear that things were not going to turn out according to my plan. I've always tried to ignore people like Kyle. The schoolyard alpha male. I'm sure you know the type. The guy who would push you hard into the lockers if he passed you in the hallway. Or even slap your face and stare you down.

Just so that anyone watching would see you back away and he could stand there, triumphant. It was always so infuriating that I was never able to ignore it cornpletely. And once I was accepted into grad school and I knew he was still working at the hardware store, for the first time it made me feel superior. Like finally I could stand triumphant. That I had won. But we seem to have ended up in the same place, though he hasn't taken the disappointing detour that I have.

The boss hadn't even driven out of the parking lot when Mandy and Kyle started groping each other and making breathy giggling sounds. Whenever I was present for this kind of display,

Kyle would put his hands all over her and look me right in the eye with a cocþ smile. He hadn't mafured over time. I rolled my eyes to deflect the look he shot at me, then I headed offto get the dolly out of the back stockroom. Cadieux 5

What needed to get done that night was basically trading items between certain sections

so that the aisles "flowed better," if you want to use my boss's terminology. It was mostly bath-

room items like fixtures, small cabinets, and mirrors. There was some bedroom furniture too that

needed shuffling around. It made sense to me to start with the mirrors, since they would likely

take up the most room. There were mirrors scattered out over a few different areas and the three

of us gathered them all and stood them up in the long space at the end of the aisles. We couldn't

stack them flat on top of each other because the ones on the bottom would crack under the

weight and we needed to put them somewhere while we cleared space for them in the proper sec-

tion. I already had the dolly out but it was easier to just pick the mirrors up and cany them over,

one at a time. The only tricky part was leaning them at an angle that would keep them from ei-

ther toppling over face down or sliding out along the floor.

And so, after some careful cooperation, there was something like a tall corridor at the end

of the aisle, lined with mirrors on both sides. Each one reflected back the reflection in the oppo-

. site mirror, making the same images bounce back and forth endlessly. This is to be expected, of

course, but the darkened store lit only by the safety lights made it difficult to pick out particular

objects in the reflections. This was only made worse by the nonsensical variety of items the store

actually sells. I could vaguely make out the shapes of packaged tools hanging from metal hooks,

bins filled with lawn care chemicals and others filled with pet food. And further down I thought I

could see frilly window coverings and embroidered pillow shams. Most of the place was

shrouded by the dim light, but still the mirrors dutifully reflected back the darkened images, only

making them more and more shadowed as the reflection made its way over and across each pane

of glass. At first, it didn't really bother me much. But after I walked a few times down this reflective hallway, between all those mirors, it started to creep me out. Have you ever looked at a mirror in the dark? It's weird to think of what it might be reflecting that you're not able to see. Per- haps not always visible but still there, the minute elements or essences that are unable to stimulate our senses. Each time I went past I tended to walk slower and slower, though I tried not to look at the mirrors. I could see the movement of rny reflection in the corner of my eye but when I turned my head to look it was too dark to make out that it was me in the mirror. The glow from the high-mounted safety lights gave a general sense of shape but somehow managed to obscure details. Then at one point I did stop and look at one of the mirrors closely. I could see the vague outline of a person and this outline turned its head at the same time and in the same way as I turned mine. And even though I couldn't exactly see it, I knew that as I stared hard at my own reflection, it was staring just as hard back at me.

It made me think of this one time when I was a kid and I met a blind person. I remember staring at her eyes, taking in the celor and shape, how the pupils moved and how she blinked, and marveling at what they could never see. It was odd for her eyes to point right at me and for me to know that I was not seen. This dark reflection in the mirror was just the opposite. I knew it wasn't actually looking back at me. I couldn't even see the eyes for all the shadows. And yet for all that escaped my own vision, I sensed that I was seen.

I wanted to get some more lights on in the store, rather than try to decipher the eerie images that paraded through this hall of mirrors. I managed to f,rnd Mandy loading plastic hooks and light switch covers into a cart. "What do you think of turning on some more lights?" I asked her. There was a slight srnile on her face as I approached. Cadieux 7

"How do you figure?"

"Vy'hy don't we plug in some of the living room lamps that the store sells. There must be working outlets in here somewhere. It will make rearranging the shelves a lot easier. Might help keep us from bumping into anything." I chose that explanation carefully, rather than tell her that the mirrors were starting to scare me. Before she could ans\¡/er, Kyle came around from the other end of the aisle, his arms full of more store junk that he dumped into the cart.

"It'll just take more time to get any lights on so why don't we just get this shit done so we can get the fuck out of here," he grumbled as he took the cart he and wheeled it over to the next aisle. I didn't want to admit it, but he did have a point. She shrugged and followed after him and

I looked down at my shoes and got back to shuffling things around.

All of this took place over the course of an hour or so. And for that amount of tirne it actually seemed as though everything rnight be accomplished without any complications. But then it started to feel like everything was getting done a whole lot slower. And I hadn't seen Kyle or

Mandy for a good little while. It had started to feel like I was doing all the work myself. I thought of stopping to look for them, but I wasn't sure I wanted to walk in on whatever it was that they had gotten up to. Nor did I want to sound too much like a supervisor, tracking them down and forcing them back to work. I doubt I could have been that confrontational, anyvvay.

As it turns out, I was doing all the work myself. I needed the dolly again to move some of the boxes of unassembled cabinets and I was on my way back out of the stockroom with it. I turned the corner into the row of mirrors, going slowly so that I wouldn't clip the edges of any of them, and I could see the reflection of Kyle and Mandy up ahead. They were four or five aisles up but I was standing at just the right angle so that the mirrors brought the image over to me. Cadieux 8

Zigzagged across the mirror-lined corridor was the image of Mandy with her arms and one leg around Kyle's body and his head buried against her neck. If either of them had looked up they probably would have been able to see me too, but they were preffy engrossed in what they were doing. I wonder if they would have even cared that I could see them? Kyle would probably have given me that same cocþ grin he usually did and gone right on tasting her neck.

Even in the dark I could see that Mandy had kicked off at least one of her shoes. As she kept lifting her leg higher to get it around Kyle's waist the white of her sock became a focal point. It kept drawing my gaze. And while I watched, she undid the loose knots on either side of

Kyle's smock, rolled the front of it over his shoulder and then reached for his belt. The store was silent except for the two of them, and I held my breath to keep it that way. I could hear their stut- tered and heavy breathing and the soft metal clink as she undid the belt. Then a zipper going down. I bit my lip and concentrated hard on holding my breath and not making any kind of sound. But just then, something else in the mirrors caught my eye.

There was something very faint in the reflection directly across from me and I turned my head quickly to look. I just wasn't fast enough. I couldn't see the stockroom fornicators as clearly in this mirror, but that wasn't what I was focused on anymore. The mirror in front of me was darkened, but gave a crisp irnage as I stared at it. The reflection looked entirely ordinary. I could see the vague, dark outline of myself in the foreground, of course. Also part of a toilet that was at the end of one of the aisles a little farther down the way. I saw a bit of the far wall behind me and the metal box that held the safety bulbs atop it. But there was something strange about the whole thing. Even now,I can't pinpoint exactly what. Then something rnuch more noticeable happened. Cadieux 9

I stood looking atthat one mirror, trying to piece together in my head what exactly I had seen. For some reason, I couldn't get away from the idea that it had been in the top comer of the mirror. I don't remember any change in the light, whether it be the movement of a shadow or a flash of illumination. There wasn't any sound, either. I'm sure of that. But there was something.

It's hard to describe what it looked like, since I never got a good look at it, but I still remember exactly how it felt. It was like someone had swiped very gently at the corner of the mirror, as though feeling for the edges.

I tilted my head, arched my neck, trying to see more of the aisles in the reflection. I walked right up to the mirror. Close enough to touch it. The store seemed even quieter noq as though it was feeling even more anticipation than I was.

I touched the glass gently with my own fingers, wondering if the swipe I had perceived was only some trick of the dust and the low light. The surface of the glass felt colder than I thought it should have. I reached up to the corner of the mirror, and then it happened again. It was different this time, though. There was a violence to it. Before, it had felt like a gentle touch.

But this was as though something from behind the glass had smashed up against it. Well, not the glass itself. The reflection. The actual mirror hadn't moved, I knew that right away.It felt like something behind or maybe somehow within the reflection, something that I couldn't see, had pushed hard against it. Had wanted out.

I tore my hand away from the glass and leapt backward. I wanted to get far away from it but I only managed to move two or three steps before my back hit something hard. I still remember the sound very clearly. Like a car crash without the shriek of road-bumt tires. The echo f,rlled my brain as I started to fall, the bursting sound of broken glass reverberating from aisle to aisle. Cadieux l0

The concrete floor made the sound bounce and pierce through everything and there was a shooting pain in my ass as I hit the ground. I let out a rush of air as I heard the scraping of two more mirrors, their bottoms sliding out from under them. Then there was the same smashing sound and the glass burst upward into the air as it broke apart- The louder crash still echoed and there were similar though smaller sounds as all the pieces of glass fell back to the floor. This gave way to a quiet tinkling, a crystal rain, as all the tiny particles of mirror settled on the cement. There was a brief moment of relative quiet, and then "what the Christ?" in Kyle's gravelly tough-guy voice rang out over the echoey walls.

Somehow, even when the tiny airborne shards came falling down around me, I had managed to keep from being cut. At least until I pressed my palms onto the ground so I could get back up. Oddly enough this didn't hurt, but don't ask me how or why. Once I had stood up and looked around melrealized just how much damage I had done. When I jumped away from the mirror I had leapt directly back into the mirror behind me and knocked it to the ground. The other two must have shifted when I fell and they too smashed against the concrete floor.

I looked quickly at the glass strewn around the floor, then right back at the mirror in front of me. Whatever I had seen wasn't there anymore. I looked for it, scanned over the glass, though

I sincerely hoped that I wouldn't see it again. I heard the scuffling of shoes as Mandy and Kyle came to see what had happened. I suppose as a kind of cover, they each came around opposite ends of the aisle but Kyle was still rearranging his smock. I was looking hard at the mirror when they found me, but I quickly turned to face them.

"What'd you do, dumbshit?" he blurted.

I didn't feel the need to answer him. Cadieux I I

Mandy didn't even look over at him. She just asked, "are you alright?"

"I guess," I said after a second. "I must have turned the comer too fast." Even if there was a srnall chance she would believe me, I could not think of words to describe what had just happened. "I must have caught the edge of the dolly on one of the mirrors."

Easier to be clumsy than crary. While I talked to her, I kept my eyes on the ground and started pushing the broken glass into a pile with my foot.

"Don't use yoì.r shoe," she said to me and then she went offto get a broom and dusþan.

Kyle just kept his hands in his pockets and I could hear him muttering under his breath as he started to walk off.

"Be careful, okay?" Mandy said after she came back and handed me the broom. I started sweeping. I nodded to her without smiling and she rubbed the top of my head, the way you might pet a puppy. I cleaned up all the glass, never taking my eyes off that one mirror for more than a few seconds. By now, there wasn't anything more to see. Whatever had happened was now long over but.I was not comfortable being in the store. I didn't like being in the same building as the mirrors and whatever they were hiding.

Once I had the glass all swept up I brought the broom back to the staff room upstairs, where Mandy had gotten it from. I put the keys to the security gate on the lunch table. I felt bad at first. Not because I was leaving them to do rny share of the work; I had already done almost everything myself. But because I had no way to explain why I needed out of the store right then.

Mandy would surely wonder what was wrong, but I needed to be somewhere that felt safer.

Anywhere else, really. I headed out the service door that was at the bottom of the steps and Cadieux l2

walked to the bus stop. I remember pacing around the little bench but I don't remember the bus

actually arriving.

When I was on the bus I tried hard to keep myself from trembling. Maybe people would just think I was cold, I thought to myself. I looked at the other passengers but the few people tak-

ing the bus that late weren't paying any attention to me. One lady was knitting. I heard the

crackly, cranked-volume music coming out of the headphones of the guy sitting behind me. I re-

laxed a little bit, took my hands out of my pockets and saw that I had been cut lvorse than I

thought. I had wanted out of the store so badly that I hadn't noticed how deep or how many cuts

there really were. It still didn't hurt, but it tickled where the blood ran down and dripped offmy

fingers and into the inside of my pockets.

When I did get home, I held rny hands under the warm tap and picked out a few little

pieces of glass with tweezers. I had to scrub hard to get offthe blood that had already dried and

this made the cuts start bleeding again. I put bandages over the bigger ones. As I got undressed, I

found that there were bits of broken glass in.my pockets.

I got very little sleep that night. I suppose I kept myself awake, trying to make sense of

what I had seen. I worried about having to go back into the store the next evening. I had just

done all I could to escape that place. Would I be able to saunter back inside after only one night?

And somewhere in the back of rny mind was a worry about the trouble I'd be in for breaking the

mirors and then taking off.

I may have dozed in and out of sleep a little bit, but for the most part I was awake until

morning. I pored over rny jumbled thoughts as the dark night's sþ started to brighten, when I

seemed to finally begin to calm down. Then I was able to interpret the event and my recollection Cadieux 13 of it more clearly. In the light of day, there seemed to be so many logical explanations for it. The store had been so dark and this had all happened late at night. Maybe I was simply overtired.

What if the movement I had seen was part of an exhausted dream and I had jolted myself vio- lently awake, knocking the mirrors behind me? Or it could have had something to do with sheer boredom, not being able to break out of the mundane. Was it possible that rny brain had come up with some sort of more exciting scenario to keep itself alert while I was trudging my way through the same aisles over and over? All that morning I paced around the kitchen sipping coffee, calmly trying to convince rnyself of all these things. I just didn't find any of these explanations very convincing.

I spent the whole day like that. Putting on fresh pots of coffee. Not eating. Softly wearing a sock-smoothed path into the kitchen floor. Before I knew it, it was time to head back out to the hardware store for my evening shift. I changed but didn't bother showering and crumpled my orange smock into my hand as I headed out onto the street.

As I walked through the main doors, straightening my smock over my sþoulders, I stopped thinking so much about the mirrors and started worrying more about what kind of trouble I was sure to be in. I walked to the back and up the stairs to the staff room, swiped rny card and punched my code into the time clock and headed back down to the floor without bumping into anyone. Once back downstairs I walked past my boss and he nodded just like normal, without a word. And it didn't look like either Mandy or Kyle were working that night. They must not have said anything. And I didn't have to explain to either of them why I had taken off. I was thankful for that. Cadieux l4

I performed my usual tasks, heading up and down the store, fetching certain items or helping customers out to their cars. As the night went on, the sky got darker and the streetlights grew brighter, but inside the store it remained the same tint of fluorescent white. At first, I did rny best to avoid the whole section where Kyle and Mandy had arranged the mirrors. They were all on one side of the aisle, standing up, facing out from the shelves. Avoiding that one row of items soon became too much of a chore. I hadn't noticed before how many times I could be sent around the space of that store in a four hour period.

The mirrors looked very different with all the store lights on. First of all, they were no longer arranged in a corridor. In each one, the reflection was bright and clear, the opposite of the kind of images they had been showing the night before. No longer was it only the silhouette of myself that I could see. Everything seemed utterly ordinary back to normal. I walked through the aisle slowly, trying to pick out the particular mirror that had so startled me. But I couldn't tell them apart now, completely rearranged and bombarded by the store's houselights, though I did look at each mirror carefully. At least the ones in front. They were arranged in rows and there

\ilere so many that I couldn't see unless I started moving everything around. I lingered in that aisle for quite a long time but no customers or anyone else seemed to pass by me. The store may as well have already been closed. Eventually I did regain my sense of time and quickly hurried rnyself along. Someone was sure to wander into that aisle eventually and it would be better if they didn't see me walking up and down the row, pressing my hand from mirror to mirror. I didn't want to seem creepy.

Soon enough, my shift was over and I went home. But I was still thinking about it. I envi- sioned the gentle swipe and then that hard push against the reflection. When I first got home I Cadieux 15 was still thinking hard, engulfed in this headspace of trying to explain such a thing to myself. I'm not sure how long I had been back in the apartment, but at some point I found myself inside the bathroom standing in front of the mirror over the sink, just staring. I was still feeling a little nervous. Whatever it was I had seen the night before and had been incessantly thinking about ever since, I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to see it again. But still, here I was, looking for it.

There wasn't anything to see in my bathroom mirror anylvay, and I headed back out to my living room and got back to my usual routine. There was a message from my mother on my outdated machine. "Just checking up on you." She said that every time. I hadn't been calling her back lately. But it was too late at night to call now. No calls after 10:00, ever since I was a kid.

I didn't have to work at all the next day, or even for the next few days actually. I stood looking at the bathroom mirror a few more times, often standing there so long that my legs started to get sore. I looked for something differenr, anything that for whatever reason wasn't supposed to be there. But after a few days of this, all I had managed to see was the slow progress of my patchy, dirly blond whiskers. I hadn't seen anything. It was just like looking at the mirrors in the store under the full glare of the fluorescent lights; there wasn't anything to see now. Still, I wondered. I set aside part of my day to stare at the mirror, look closely at my reflection. The more I scanned my face and predicted the mirror's perfect mimicry of my movements, the more I began to feel that there was something not quite right about it. About the very idea of it.

It's weird when you think about it, what a mirror does. There's something unnatural about being able to look yourself in the face. We've managed to turn them into such everyday objects, but mirrors have a way of upsetting the natural order of things. Only in recent history have they started to lose something of the mystique and wonder which once surrounded them. Think of a Cadieux l6 goldfish, for instance. Quite possibly one of the least threatening creatures on the planet. But if you put a mirror in front of it, there is an instantaneous change. It will attack the reflection, a primitive ferocity suddenly awakened, the fish is unable to comprehend that it is only lashing out at an image of itself. Birds often react in the same way. Maybe there is some innate desire in humans to do the same, but over time we've learned to ignore it.

If you think about it, a human being is the only creature that knows what it looks like.

And we attach so much importance to how we think we look, how we appear to other people.

The mirror seems to speak to an inherent human vaniry whatever it was that kept Narcissus so fixated on the reflecting pool. Is this vanity responsible for the appearance of a device like a mirror? Or did the mirror itself somehow spawn such vanity? Outside of still water, there are very few naturally occurring objects or substances that can function as a mirror. Perhaps this is why the natural world simply fails to notice its own reflection and carries on without it. When you think of how distorting and imprecise ancient or medieval mirrors would have been, it becomes apparent that humanity has gone to an awful lot of trouble throughout history to create an accurately reflective mirror. It is an obsession all our own.

My interest was quickly expanding well past the limits of mere casual curiosity. I knew already that I would be unable to stop thinking about these things on my own. And though I was spending time looking at the mirror in my bathroom, I did try to go about my day as normally as

I could. The mirrors kept popping up, refusing to let me forget about them. There was something which they all possessed, a common element between the mirror I had in my apartment, the mirrored domes which hid the security cameras in the grocery store, even the tall rearview mirrors mounted on the side of the bus. It gave me the same sensation as the mirrors in the hardware Cadieux 17 store. This made me think that it wasn't anything about the store in particular, or even a specific mirror, that possessed this feeling or energy or whatever. It was just mirrors. Wherever I came across them. And they were everywhere.

As I thought, I came to see that it wasn't even the reflections themselves that were bother- ing me. I didn't get the same feeling from other sources like water or the reflections off of windows. But with mirrors, maybe we're not meant to have such a pristine reflection. Maybe the mirror reflects too much.

There were so many questions and I had so much more to learn. But even now, with all that I have learnt, I still struggle with the information I've uncovered. I began by searching for sorne kind of explanation, and yet I haven't managed to explain much of anything. I sit here noq trying to condense and describe these events that have completely changed the way I perceive the environment around me. I must find some way to compress hours and hours of internet searches and days spent in the university libraries hunting out information. When I first began this research into p.henomena related to mirrors, my main goal was to discover some rational explanation which would allow me to dismiss what I had experienced that night in the hardware store. But I must confess that my reading has had the opposite effect.

I began with online encyclopedias and their various and varying entries on mirrors. They offered plenty on the history of glass making and silvering, but I also learned completely new and odd-sounding words that would prove to be essential in my later searches.'Words like catoptromancy - divination by means of a mirror, frorn the Greek katoptron, meaning mirror. Or scrying - to predict the future by means of a mirror or crystal ball. Mirror gazing. As I clicked through several entries, I started to feel a profound sense of time. Not of how long I was spend- Cadieux 18

ing there reading. I started thinking how, for ages, different cultures from all over the world had used the mirror to predict the future or view an altemate world. To contact the dead. Though the mirror is a human invention, as I read the different descriptions of its supposed power,I couldn't help but think of it as something impossibly old. As though the mirror was something already in

existence that humans had stumbled across, and that perhaps they shouldn't have.

During my many long stints of reading, I often recalled playing Bloody Mary when I was

a little kid. The idea was that you would stand in front of a mirror in a room that had to be dark

except for one candle. And facing the mirror, you had to close your eyes and call out "Bloody

Mary" three times. After that third time, when you opened your eyes, the ghost of Mary would be

standing in the reflection, holding her head in her hand. When I was nine or ten, this became a popular dare. Some of the other kids would brag about how they called three times but the ghost never appeared. Others swore up and down that they had seen her but that she didn't really scare them. I remember trying it by myself a few times, alone in the bathroorn with the door closed and the lights off. I never did manage to say her name a thjrd time. Once, there was a sleepover where four of us had crammed into the little bathroom, hours after we were supposed to have been asleep. We had to relight the candle three times because it kept blowing out as we jostled

around the room, joking and shushing each other. I pretended not to be afraid and I even laughed,

like I didn't believe the story in the slightest. I volunteered to be the one who called her name, the summoner. Everyone else grew quiet and I kept my voice steady as I recited "Bloody Mary"

in a voice as low as my little-kid vocal chords could manage. As I spoke her name the third and

final time, I squeezed my eyes shut tighter and tighter and prayed with all my heart that when I Cadieux 19 looked in the mirror, she wouldn't be there. It was hard to disguise from the other kids how glad

I was that she didn't appear. Though deep down I bet they were just as relieved as I was.

When I was young I had a very detailed imagining of what Bloody Mary would look like, should she have actually appeared. As I read through the different entries and snippets about mirrors and their connection to the dead and other magical or supernatural properties, this image often came to mind. I always pictured her in an old-fashioned dress, with a ruff collar or a strong elongated shape to the neck. Something that might have been worn to an Elizabethan ball.

Though the dress was always ruined, soaked through with blood from the stump atop her shoulders. And there was still blood dripping from her head, as Mary lifted it by the hair, raising the eyes to shoulder height.

I suppose the notion of summoning the ghost of Bloody Mary through the mirror is a good example of catoptromancy. There's something in that word; catoptromancy. So close to necromancy. I wonder if that's a coincidence, given that there are so many connections between mirrors and the dead. Though maybe I'm simply attaching a morbid sense to the phenom_enon, fed by my particular childhood experience.

It was while I was researching that I first found the psychomanteum. It was only mentioned vaguely, a footnote to an entry on a different topic. There was little description other than

"a dark mirror-lined room lit with candles or lamps used to summon forth the spirits of the dead." I wasn't able to f,rnd any photos, even as I began searching with the word "psychomanteum" itself. But I had a clear image in my head right away of what one of these chambers would look like. If you're having trouble picturing it for yourself, I suppose a funhouse would be the closest correlative. But a psychomanteum is more complete and confining. And because it is Cadieux 20 meant to be experienced in the dark, somehow more sinister. As I searched more specifically for this device, the descriptions did not get much more detailed, but it was apparent that it was a very old idea. The earliest version dated back to ancient Greece, where they used a mirror and the reflection off a pool of water inside a small cave. And the uses for such a chamber varied as the basic notion passed into different epochs. For the Greeks it was a kind of divination, a prediction which would show itself in the mirror. But as the production of glass and mirrors became more sophisticated their connection to the dead seemed to increase. By the Victorian age, the "apparition booth" was used not only to see spirits, but also to serve as a portal between the dead and living realms. The psychomanteum worked almost as a beacon or doorway for something on the other side-

I started bringing a little coil notebook with me to jot down useful terms or tellings of occurrences that struck me as relevant to my own experience. The more I searched, the more the focus of my findings shifted from exclusively mirrors to all things ghostly. Though occasionally I would find something that involved both. I managed to find the story of a kind of haunting from

China. It was about apair of twin sisters. They were in a car accident when they were five and one of the twins was killed. In the weeks after, the parents and other family members became convinced that the surviving girl was being watched over by her sister. What worried them was that no one knew whether the intentions of the girl's spirit were protective or malevolent. The family posted part of a home movie taken a few months after the crash. It showed the little girl brushing her hair in front of a mirror. In the reflection the father was holding the camera and he kept beckoning his daughter to turn and face him. After a few seconds, she did turn her head, but Cadieux 2l her reflection did not. In fact, when the reflection should have shown the back of the little girl's head, instead there was her face still staring into the camera.

Videos of this kind need to be taken with a grain of salt,Irealize. And yet there is something in the expression of this "reflected" face. I can't describe this quality as something I can see, but I had felt it once before.

Over time, I kept coming across stories or practices or interests or evidences that came mostly from nineteenth-century England and I came to realize how obsessed with spirits and ghosts the Victorians really were. They spent a good deal of their time at seances or using spirit boards but there was one phenomenon that I found particularly interesting: spirit photography.

Commercial photography was just coming into being in the Victorian era. It was a new technology and people were excited about it. And it was commonly believed that photography was able to capture images of things normally unseen. These spirit-obsessed Britons were dying to get their hands on photographs of ghosts. They called them spirit photos.'What I find so interesting is how easy these photos were to fake. As easy as exposing the same negative twice. The second image would be dominant in the finished photo, but there would still be a ghostly trace of the image from the original f,rrst exposure. Or there were also photos taken during seances that showed the flow of ectoplasm, a sure sign of contact with the other side. It actually looks like cheesecloth carefully arranged around the medium before the photo was taken. I simply can't imagine that anyone believed these images to be genuine. Maybe these pictures had a kind of kitsch value, which would account for their popularity and help convince me that the Victorians were not simply horribly gullible consumers. Cadieux22

Though I do have to admit, even knowing how easy it was to produce and manipulate these photographs, some of them are just plain scary looking. Often, the eyes of the ghostly figure are washed out, seerning to glow a dull white. Even the posture of the people posing in these photos is odd. Usually there is someone sitting in an armchair or standing beside one, arms awkwardly pressed to the fumiture. People's faces are usually stiffened in an expression of discomfort. Posing for a photograph back then would have to have been very different from today, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that the people appear so different. But still, it lends the photos an air of distance. Like they were taken in a world separated from our own by more than just time. As I pored through the images, unsettled but unable to stop staring at them, I started to think that perhaps mirrors and photographs are not all that different. They can show us to our- selves in a way that the rest of the world simply can not. We f,ind both technologies remarkable for their honesty, trusting whatever they present to us as truth. But the spirit photos show that even in the early days of photography, this simply wasn't true. And mirrors, too, can distort.

Something like a funhouse mirror really brings the question of honesty to bear. Actually, funhouse mirrors give a preffy good idea of what kind of reflections were possible with early examples of glass mirrors. Even plain, modern mirrors do not show us a perfectly replicated image, but rather a reversal. My left hand is not the reflection's left hand. Thinking about it now as I write, it strikes me not as truth but as a kind of trick. We have grown so familiar with this inver- sion that to lose it is completely disorienting. Perhaps that is why seeing yourself on film is so uncomfortable. Despite all this room for manipulation and effor, we have concocted these very established expectations of what photographs and mirrors will show us. But I grow nervous now Cadieux 23

of what might happen should they show us something that we don't expect. Or something that rrye're not able to understand.

Several times I spent a few hours scrolling through internet pages and scribbling notes as

I made discoveries of this kind and then I would have to stop to put my orange smock on and wander around the hardware store for the evening. I always found it hard to pull myself away

from the computer screen but it was even harder once I found the psychomanteum. I thought

about the device all through my shift. When there were quiet moments at the store I snuck off to

look at the mirrors while I pondered. They were not as captivating under the bright fluorescent

lights, but they helped me to re-imagine the corridor of mirrors that was set up when the store

was dark, the environment that had managed to produce such an odd occuffence. I was still apprehensive about the mirrors, but I retained a kind of morbid curiosity which drew me towards

them. And now I had discovered this idea of the psychomanteum. A dark room where the reflec-

tions were everywhere, never ending, for the express purpose of seeing what normally can not be

seen. I had never heard of a¡rything like it. But it was exactly what I had been hoping to find. Cadieux 24

September 24, 2008

The slightest inkling will be sfficient to convince anyone who has an eye at all of the ill effect of numerous looking glasses, and especially of large ones.

- Edgar Allan Poe

The psychomanteum had managed to fuel an interest which I wanted to explore further, not abandon. Now that I was aware of such a device, I was overcome with a desire to experience a second incident. The problem was that the circumstances which led to my first experience were strange and rather unique. They were not beyond recreation, but it would require staying late aÊ ter the store was closed and rearranging the mirrors back into a makeshift corridor and there didn't seem to be any way of doing this without arousing suspicion. At that time, it didn't seem as though the store would be able to provide me with any rnore help.

I began to think that maybe the psychomanteum was thp key. I turned my focus away frorn the mirrors in the store and found myself looking more and more at the mirror in the bathroom of my apartment. I brought one of my two kitchen chairs and set it down facing the mirror.

It just barely fit between the wall and the little cabinet that covered all the pipes under the sink.

'When I sat there my knees pressed uncomfortably against the cabinet handles, but it was better than standing. By now my notebook already had pages of messily scrawled paraphrasings of legends and mirror stories that I had uncovered while scouring the internet. In keeping with something of a research method, I thought that if I hoped to have any success at triggering another incident, I would need to start approaching everything rnore like an experiment. I had to f,rnd out Cadieux 25

what element was present during the first incident that had now been lacking in my other interac-

tions with mirrors. So I brought the notebook into the bathroom with me to record whatever odd

happenings might occur and what factors might be responsible. I fumbled myself into the chair

and I stared at the mirror, notebook and pen ready.

I scanned over the glass, up and down, from corner to corner, looking for anything like

the gentle swiping I was finding so hard to forget. For the first while I sat there, I kept diligent

records of the time, the least flicker of the lightbulb or trick of the shadows. But this would all

tum out to be useless information. I tried this a number of times over the course of a few days,

sitting for maybe an hour, sometimes longer, without seeing any kind of result. I started to won-

der if I was wasting my time. Maybe it was like the spirit photos. Just because the idea was so

intriguing and alluring while at the same time being genuinely unsettling, it was not necessarily

true. But I rationalized that disproving the incident could be important too. Even if only for my

own benefit. Even if the experiment turned out negatively, I wasn't ready to abandon it just yet.

Thinking back, I wonder if it was really me who didn't want to give up, or if there was some-

thing else that wouldn't let me.

I spent a number of evenings whiling away my time seated uncomfortably in front of the bathroom mirror. Sometimes I tried to sit with my knees up, saving them from vying for space

with the cabinet handles, but my back couldn't hold this position for long. The hour or so I

would spend in that chair was divided into sections of five or ten minutes of sitting still and then

shifting around in a pointless attempt to get comfortable. Even so, I still kept rny notebook at the

ready. I started playing with the lights, hoping that might trigger something. After all, the store

had been quite dark. I used the door as well, testing whether or not the light from the rest of the i Cadieux 26 apartment had any effect. I started with all the lights on and the door opened wide. I sat back and watched both the mirror and my own reflection for anything out of the ordinary. Of course, there was nothing worth noting. But I jotted something down anyway. I tried the same thing with the door shut, and still nothing. I closed the door and tumed off all the lights. That didn't actually make the room all that dark. The window over the toilet poured in light from the street lamp. It was so close to the building I could probably reach out the window and touch it if I really stretched. It had never occurred to me just then to cover the window up. Complete darkness didn't seem all that necessary.

With the only light coming from outside, it still wasn't anything like the environment in the store during that first occurrence. I did spend more time looking at my reflection this time, though. There was an odd sensation that wasn't completely unfarniliar,like the atmosphere of the room had changed ever so slightly. As I looked closely at my face in the mirror, I thought it strange how less light was actually accenting certain features that I normally didn't notice. There were circles of shadow around and under my eyes but rather than making them look sunketr, ffiy eyes actually appeared to be too large. There were dark lines that ran from the curve of my nos- trils down to the corners of my mouth and my cheeks looked as though they were pulled tightly against my teeth. It was still recognizable as my own face but it felt like the mirror was showing rne a different version of myself. One that was perhaps much older, or sickly. I found it hard to look away for quite sorne time but eventually I flicked the lights back on and opened the door again. The sensation within the room changed and my reflection no longer appeared so different.

I still had the notebook open on my lap, but I couldn't think what to write down this time. I recorded the tirne in quick blotchy lettering and decided that I'd had enough for the night. I closed Cadieux2l the book very gently and stretched myself stiffly out of the uncomfortable chair, often glancing untrustingly over at the mirror.

That night was when my sleep became erratic. Ever since, I have often found myself awake in the middle of the night for no apparent reason. As my imaginings of the psychomanteum and the clues hidden in my research start to fly through my waking brain, I find it hard to get back to sleep. Cadieux 28

September 27, 2008

These ideas are associated with the prohibitíons o.f gazing at oneself in the mirror at night. If this

is done, one loses his own image, i.e., oneb soul. As a result, death is a necessary consequence,

an idea based in East Prussia upon the belief that in such cases the reflection of the devil appears behind one.

Otto Rank

This past Saturday, I was scheduled to work until the store closed. As I'm sure is clear to

you by now, quite some time had passed since the first incident and despite my best efforts I

hadn't managed to provoke anything like a second occurrence. It was nearly midnight by the

time I got home and when I finally did get there, I was more exasperated than usual. I had spent

the last thirry or forly minutes of my shift covering for Mandy. She cordoned herself off inside

thç staff bathroom to get herself ready for a night out at the bar with Kyle. My whole shift, I had

to hear about how excited she was. When closing time finally did arrive, Kyle showed up in his

dad's old car, the same one he used to drive in high school, and started wailing on the horn. It

didn't seem to me that the sound carried all that far and I certainly didn't expect Mandy to be the

type of girl who would come running when she was honked at. But I heard her hurried steps as

she came rushing to the main entrance where I was bringing the gate down. Just before she

pushed through the little service door beside the big opening she turned to me, a little out of

breath. Cadíeux29

"How do I look?" She even pursed her lips a little bit as she gave me time to look her

"Really great." I tried not to smile too wide or blush while I stared at her.

She tilted her head just a touch. "You're sweet," she said, and touched me lightly on the arm. Then she went straight through the door and shouted back over her shoulder. "LateÍ, dude."

There was a loud click as the store went dark and the safety lights kicked on.

I rearranged the pallets in the stockroom on my own, and did a couple of other minor tasks that needed to be done before I left. Once I had finished I was in no real hurry to leave the place. I sat in the staff room for a few minutes, surprised at how quiet the store could be, if you were there at the right time. Then I trudged noisily down the steps and made my way over to the aisle where the mirrors were kept. I'm glad there are no surveillance cameras. When I first started working at the store, I was surprised that such a big company wouldn't have more security, but I was told there was simply too much ground to cover. It would take a legion of cameras to cover all the angles within the spape of the store and that was simply too expensive. Walking over to the mirror aisle in the dark store, I was thankful that there would be no record of my behavior, except what I've decided to write down here.

They looked different now, without the bright fluorescent lights overhead. Just like on that earlier night, I could see the shape of my reflection but the features of my face were kept shrouded. I paced back and forth in front of them, staring at each glistening pane as I passed. A few times I stopped to graze the edges of the glass softly with my fingers. I touched them so lightly I didn't even leave fingerprints. Moments like this were so captivating, filling my chest with a sinking feeling of wonder. But sitting in an uncomfortable chair in my cramped bathroom, Cadieux 30 playing with the lights and staring at the mirror was growing tiresome. I resolved, right then, that if I could not induce some sort of event, phenomenon, or what have you, this night would mark the end of my so-called experiment. I walked through the aisle once more, first up then down, enjoying the sensation of the mirrors in the near-darkness. Pressing my palm so gently in the cen- ter of each one. I wanted my new-found interest to be worthwhile. I needed everything I had read and contemplated to be true. But sometimes, the real world does not allow for such things. And my unfinished master's degree was testament enough that I had already wasted too much time. I had to keep myself from getting carried away. And it was already much later than I had realized.

Glancing down the aisle once more, taking in the dull glint that pushed off from each mirror, I hurried to set the store alarm and ducked out the back way listening to the electronic beep through the thick door. I had to nrn to catch the last bus of the night.

There was a late-autumn rain as I walked off the bus and once I got inside I was soaked through and cold. And I was hungry. Despite the weather outside, the apartment was humid and wann and I opened all the windows. Once I had changed into dry and mpre comfortable clothes I moved into the kitchen. I didn't feel up to actually making something but when I opened the cupboards wide and stood back, I didn't have many options anyway. There was a loaf of bread, only about a third of it left. There was an opened box of crackers that I hadn't touched since I moved in. Stray packages of instant oatmeal. This is when I first realized just how distracted I had been. I couldn't even remember the last tirne I had done any household errands. My week was filled up with a few work shifts and the rest of the time spent researching or sitting before the mirror. Something hot to eat would have been nice, but I made do. I settled on a sandwich, Cadieux 3l store brand baloney and slice cheese that I still had in the almost-bare füdge. The bread was past its date but it hadn't turned moldy yet. Dry and crumbly, but edible.

I took a bite and turned, chewing loudly. It only took two paces for me to step over the linoleum of the kitchen floor and onto the dingy carpet of the living room. The controller for my game console was resting on the arm of the couch. Given my frustration that night, what with

Mandy and the rain, I thought it might be kind of nice to shoot some people in the face. But I also saw my notebook on top of the TV tray that normally served as my dining room table. I didn't want to ignore my ultimatum; tonight the experiment would either produce some sort of result or I would give it up. It was time I got it over with. So I picked up the notebook, grabbed my pen, and headed for the bathroorn with the sandwich still in rny hand.

I didn't bother switching the bathroom lights on. Plenty of illumination from the rest of the apartment spilled in through the open door. There was still the window and the streetlight, too. It wasn't all that dark. Dim, sure, but bright enough to write by. I dropped the notebook on the countertop with a loud slap and slumped into the chair that was still perched in front of the sink, facing the mirror. I watched myself as I finished the last two bites of my sandwich.

There I was, in the scratched-up bathroom mirror. My big Saturday night plans. My hair was still matted down from walking in the rain and it had dried like that. I was wearing old sweat pants, loudly chewing on a cold sandwich made with stale bread. The last swallow went down slowly. A lot of different thoughts culminated at that moment. I thought of how long I had spent in this little one bedroorn apartment, sinking money on rent because I couldn't seem to save up enough all at once to do anything else. I had first moved in during my second year of university, so proud to have a place of my own. I loved when my folks would come over and I could show : . cadieux 32 them changes I'd made, how well I could do by myself. Now I'm ashamed to have them over to the same, unchanging old place. Or even worse would be bringing someone who's never seen it before. I can't say that I'm finished university now, but I no longer attend. And this apartment is something that I haven't managed to outgrow. I'm tired of living like a student who can't afford a real adult life. The chair grew more uncomfortable and I thought of all the time I've spent here alone. I thought of how Mandy patted me on the head and called me "dude." How it was guys like Kyle who got noticed, even though high school was over and this was supposed to be the

"real world" now. The working world, where guys like me were worth something. I could see rnyself in the dull light, a reflection in the mirror. But outside, I was invisible.

I think I must have sat there at least an hour after I had finished my sandwich. Semi- numb, thinking but not really thinking. I absently flipped open the notebook without lifting it up, slowly making my way to a blank page. I clicked my pen. I had to provoke the experiment. I knew there must be some way to do it, and I had to. Or even as an alternative, if I was going to abandon it altogether then first I was going to exhaust what few options or choices I had. There was sure to be some variable I hadn't explored yet. In retrospect, I wonder if I wasn't still thinking of Mandy, about how I had done all her work for her while she labored in front of the mirror, applying her make-up and fussing with her hair. How I had watched her expend all this effort to make herself pretry for someone else. But something made me think of a little vanity mirror.

With something like that, I could manipulate the angle of the glass and adjust how the light hit the reflection. Maybe that was all I needed. After all, the mirrors in the store had been leaning at an angle and the safety lights were way up near the ceiling. I certainly couldn't do anything like that with the big mirror over the sink. I didn't have a vanity mirror, though. I did, however, have Cadieux 33 a shaving mirror stuck to the tiled wall in the shower. It was made of anti-fog plastic that fogged up all the time. And I can't tell you how many times the darnned thing has fallen, whether it hit my foot while I was rinsing the soap off my face, or tumbled into the old iron tub with a deafen- ing crash in the middle of the night. But just because I needed it, this time the glue was deter- mined to keep the thing stuck to the wall. I had to go out to the kitchen and get a butter knife so I could pry the little mirror off of the tiles.

I sat back down in the little kitchen chair, facing the large bathroom mirror, with my knees pressed against the doors of the cabinet under the sink. I held the small shaving mirror out at arm's length and tilted my wrist, watching how the light hit the clear plastic, looking for the same things I had been looking for in the larger mirror. Anything that shouldn't have been there, anything odd or unexpected. I held the mirror high over my head and angled the reflection toward my face. I brought it down almost to the floor and aimed it upward. The bathroom door was still open and it was a little surprising just how much of the rest of the apartment I could make out by changing the angle of the mirror. It was'still so far from what I was hoping to see.

I breathed loudly through my nose and stood up slowly. I kicked the little chair out into the hallway between the kitchen and the bedroorn, squeezing the mirror in my hand so hard that my palm started to hurt. I turned rny back to the sink and the big mirror over it. The street noise coming in through the open window was getting louder as the drunks left the neighborhood bars and stumbled home. I could reach the window without moving my feet and I slammed it shut, even though I knew it wouldn't take long for the apartment to get sfury and hot again.I brought the little shaving mirror up near my face, not even meaning to look. Cadieux 34

In the reflection of the plastic shaving mirror I could see over my shoulder to the bigger rnirror behind me. And in that mirror I could see myself the reflection of my tumed back. And

not beside me, but beside my reflection, a man was standing. The light coming in from the win-

dow was enough for me to see that it was a male shape, but I couldn't make out any of the fea-

tures of his face. This moment could probably only be measured in milliseconds, if I were to

look at time objectively. But when it happened, it seemed to last so much longer, at least insofar

as I perceived it. In that split second, I saw him turn his head and though I couldn't see his eyes, I

knew that he was looking right at me.

I threw the shaving minor to the ground and spun to face the larger one over the sink.

There was nothing in the reflection now, except myself. I moved over to the window and pressed

my forehead to the glass, trying to see out and down both sides of the street. There was nothing

out there, either. Just the faint and fading sound of drunken laughter.

I turned on every light in the apartment and started checking all over the place, anywhere

that it seem.ed something could hide. I looked in the hall closet and then in the smaller one in the

bedroom. I looked under the bed. In every drawer of my dresser, every cupboard in the kitchen. I

even peeked quickly inside the refrigerator. What was I looking for, exactly? I don't know. It

took me a few minutes to slow my thoughts down to a point where I could actually process them.

As the adrenaline in my blood began to thin out and the raw fear wore off, I tried to force myself

to think more clearly. I really had seen something.

With careful steps, I headed back into the bathroom and picked the shaving mirror up off

the floor. I kept its face pressed against my leg and then stood just as I had before. After a few

deep breaths, I looked in the little minor again, angling it so I could see the other mirror behind Cadieux 35 me. He wasn't there now, but that didn't change the fact that he had been there only moments before.

My experiment was actually starting to work. Much like after the first incident, I didn't manage to get much sleep. Instead, I lay in bed with all the lights on until morning. My thoughts jumped between the little I had learned in my research and what I had experienced during these two incidents. Was it possible that I had seen a ghost, and if so was there some way I could find out who it was? Did asking who even make sense? l4/hat had I seen? Though there was no logical reason to make such a connection, I felt sure that whatever it was that had made itself known to me in the hardware store was the same presence that had just appeared in my home.

These thoughts kept me awake all night. I couldn't keep from shaking, though I had pulled the covers all the way up to rny chin. Despite my first instinct, I knew that I couldn't stop the experirnent now. It was working. All my common sense told me it was time to stop. But in my bathroom, of all places, using only two mirrors I had managed to provoke this apparition.

That was reason enough.

And then the whole principle behind the psychomanteum fell into place for me. It was the reflection of a reflection. That was the common element between the two incidents that I had been missing until now. In the store on the night of that first appearance we had managed, purely by accident, to arrange the mirrors so that they all reflected back and forth into each other, creating the ideal environment for the emergence of this apparition. This was done with only a few dozen mirrors and a psychomanteum, depending on the size, could be made up of hundreds.

That was two days ago. Almost three, since I can see the sun rising through the window.

And now that I have recorded everything thus far in this journal, I suppose I'm free to continue Cadieux 36

on to the next phase of the experiment: building a psychomanteum of my own. To think that this device has become all but forgotten in our own time. And perhaps all that I've found in my research - the stories, legends, superstitions, and misgivings - might be true. Is it so diffrcult to believe that the mirror might serve as some kind of bridge? A piece of technology we have never fi.rlly understood nor have we ever witnessed the full extent of its reach. What might I see if I had a device like this of my own? My own fears about this do not in the least outweigh the possibility of unlocking such an age old mystery. And to know that those of you who read this will understand what I have uncovered. Cadieux 37

September 30, 2008

For now we see through a glass, darkly, but thenface to face: now I know in part; but then shall

I lcnow even as I am lcnown.

- lCorinthians, I3:12

A number of days have passed and I'm able to think things through rationally and objectively now. I can't downplay the importance of the mixture of exhilaration and uneasiness I felt after my second encounter, but it is imperative that the experiment continue when I am of bal- anced and sound mind. At this point, the best course of action seems to be to intensi$ my research. I still have many more questions than I do answers. And now that I've begun this joumal and set out to record the experiment, I feel accountable for providing such answers.

Over the last few days I've pored through any and all kinds of books and literary treatments that make significant mention of mirrors. If nothing else, my earlier reading on the intemet gave me a glimpse ofjust how far-reaching the mystery of the mirror is. I mentioned back at the beginning how the idea of the psychomanteum stretched far back into history. Earlier today I was leafing my way through translations of ancient texts which might mention the special properties of this device. Perhaps the most useful was a travel book written in the second century. In Pau- sanias' Guide to Greece, he mentions an oracle who made predictions about the sick. Inside a dark cave, a mirror on a string was lowered to the surface of a pool of water and the face of the sick person was reflected in both. The reflection of a reflection. And from this, the oracle could predict whether the sick person would recover or succumb. Cadieux 38

During these many trips to the library across the span of a few days, I had hoped to find a

concrete exatnple of a true psychomanteum: some historical instance of a mirrored room and not just a dark room with a mirror in it. Perhaps even images or diagrams. But there was no record of

this kind, only brief mentions of the word or short definitions in histories of supematural prac-

tices. What I found so frustrating about this is that I still had no idea how I was going to build my

own version of such a device. My first idea was to construct some kind of basic chamber or sim-

ple room, maybe abare wooden frame, and use mirrors as walls. The size of a phone booth or

maybe a refrigerator box. I knew I would be able to fit inside a structure of this kind but I

doubted that I would be able to put it to proper use. I would have to remain standing inside and

the walls would be only inches from my body. It would be far too constraining to observe the

reflections. And how long would I be able to stay in there? I've never had any problems with

claustrophobia before but considering the anxiety I already feel, I don't want to put my phobic

fortitude to the test. And also, I'm not very excited about trying anything that will require a

hammer and nails. It's never been a strong point of mine.

Because the store closes at 6:00, Sundays are usually the only time I get an afternoon

shift. It's a lot more pleasant to come home while there's still daylight, though the changing sea-

son may not allow such a circumstance for a while. And one of the perks I've discovered of us-

ing the university library is that it is open much later than a public library even on Saturdays.

Last night I closed the place down and even once I was home it took quite some time to quiet my

thoughts enough to fall asleep. I didn't sleep too late this morning, but I spent a good deal of

time flipping through rny notebook, trying to compile ideas. Before I knew it, I had to get ready Cadieux 39 for my afternoon shift and so I reluctantly closed the book and plodded offto the bathroom with heavy steps.

The little shaving mirror was still face down on the sink and I carried it out to the kitchen and left it on the counter. I wanted my shower to be free of surprises. I turned the water on and undressed while I waited for it to heat up. I tried to ignore the squealing of the pipes and laid a clean towel on top of the closed toilet seat. The water was still cold. I looked over at the big mirror over the sink, in much the same way as I have been doing for weeks already. There was my pasty, weak-chested frame and the sandy colored crop of hair that had grown greasy ovemight. I tried to concentrate more on the physical mirror rather than the reflection.

The glass was scratched in places and there were some splatters of dried toothpaste right at my head level. In the bottom right corner the undercoating, the reflective film under the glass

(what essentially made it a mirror and not a window) had been rubbed off and I could see through to the drab beige wall. The mirror was large, but not overly so. Maybe three feet across.

And it seemed a little taller than it was wide, so four feet from top to bottom. Three feet by four feet sounds about right. I was trying to frgure out if I could lift myself, and it looked as though I could. What caught my attention was how it was fixed to the wall. I certainly hadn't noticed before, nor had I ever particularly cared. But now this kind of information was useful to me. Along the top and bottom of the mirror were small metal brackets, about eight inches apart. The glass rested in the lip of these brackets. They didn't fit loosely but I could feel the mirror move slightly if I pushed it at either end. These metal pieces were glued or cemented straight to the wall. The mirror itself was just the plain undercoated glass without a frame and it was pressed flat and tight against the plaster. Cadieux 40

I realized that I could put this to good use. Instead of building some slipshod frame with the general shape of a room, I could simply affix mirrors to the walls of an existing room here in the apartment. I knew the bathroom wouldn't really work. It had almost an L-shape to it and I would have to work around the bathtub, the sink, and the toilet. The bedroom, however, was much better suited. I took a step out into the hall so I could look through the door I had left open, keeping one foot inside the bathroom. The bedroom is slightly rectangular, but still a usable square shape. And it's size is not overwhelming. There's hardly any space between the foot of the bed and the dresser. And the walls are smooth all the way around except for the window over the head of the bed. It would work perfectly.

I went back to the bathroom mirror over the sink and tried to wedge rny fingers befween the wall and the glass. The bottom of the mirror slid a little inside the brackets but when I did manage to get my fingers under the glass the top came completely away from the wall. By some miracle of hand-eye coordination I managed to keep it from falling. I had to reach out and hold the mirror at both ends and it seemed impossible to find a place to set it down because the reflection was pressed close to my face and was all I could see. It was at this moment, standing naked with my arms stretched wide, trying to hold on to the edges of the mirror, that I remembered the shower was still running. The glass \¡/as even getting a little steamy. Somehow I managed to maneuver myself out into the hallway and set the mirror down gently, leaning it against the wall.

Then I finally got into my shower. I had to move fast because it wasn't long before the hot water ran out. I had to wipe the soap from my eyes with only the cold tap.

And once I got dressed I was very nearly late for my six hour shift. I was a little hungry but I didn't have time to grab anything. I tossed my smock over one shoulder and crouched down Cadieux 4l in the hallway in front of the mirror, running my hand over my wet hair until I got it to the desired messiness. Then I had to hurry out the door I couldn't help but smile a little to myself as I speed-walked to the bus-stop. The quiet bus ride to the store has proven the perfect place to write out this entry. The experiment really seems to be coming together. Cadieux 42

October 1,2008

Certainly solitude is dangerous þr active minds.

- Guy de Maupassant

It's after midnight now, so it is technically the next day, though it has not been very long since I closed the last entry. But the practical obstacles to my experiment are falling away rather quickly and I need to keep my recordings up to date.

Returning to my Sunday afternoon shift, working during the day has a different feel than evening shifts. People are in more of a hurry. For some reason, it always seems that when the store is about to close, when everyone working is anxious to get home, that's when the place fills up with casual wanderers who aren't really sure what they've come in for, just browsing around.

But during the day, people have other places to be. The hardware store is just one of many errands and they're gone within minutes of having come in. And when this is the case, there is more for me to do. The faster pace makes the shift seem shorter. If they keep me busy, before I know it the day is over.

Mandy was also working on this particular Sunday and when I first got to the store and headed for the back, she stopped me to chat a little. "You have a rough night?" she asked half- smiling, her head cocked to one side. As you already know, I had been up most of the night but she must have been assuming that I was out getting drunk. To be fair, I also assumed that she had been out the night before too, most likely getting groped by Kyle, but she certainly looked better than I did. I rubbed my eyes a lot while I stammered and tried to avoid giving her an answer. Cadieux 43

"Not really," I started, not sure where I wanted that statement to lead. I was still excited about the breakthrough I'd had for my experiment, but my body was too tired to keep up. How could I possibly explain to Mandy why I had been awake all night, without sounding utterly in- sane?

"Here." She took four aspirin from one of her pockets and placed them in my hand. "I knew you were aparty boy." She ruffIed my hair gently and pushed past me out to the floor. I slipped the pills into my smock pocket. I was so exhausted, they would probably just make me lighrheaded.

About an hour into the day, as the regular routine started to kick in, that exhaustion really started to take over. I could feel it most in my legs and back as I was sent around the store on different fetch errands and soon some of the other people working started to make comments about how haggard I looked. None of them were able to phrase it as coyly or playfully as Mandy had.

The worst part of the day was when I got an unexpected visit. Around 3:00 or so I felt a light tap on my shoulder and turned to see that my mother had come into the store to see me.

This wasn't the kind of place where she might do any of her regular shopping. I hadn't seen her or dad in quite some time, and I suppose I should have known that she wouldn't let me go on ignoring her phone messages forever. You'd think that maybe she would start with "hello," or "nice to see you." Well, that's what I thought at least.

"You don't look good, son," were the first words out of her mouth.

"Hi mom. What brings you here?"

"You don't answer your phone anymore." She looked around the aisles, awkwardly reaching out to touch items on the shelves or feign interest in something nearby. The weather had Cadieux 44 certainly turned to fall, but she lvas already bundled in her winter coat and mittens. "This is the only way for me to see you anymore." I suppose she figured that if she came to the apartment I might pretend not to be home. Certainly a possibility. "At least you still work in the same place, otherwise I might not have found you." She has a remarkable skill with sarcasm. "How are things with you?"

"Fine."

"Well, I hope so, dear. It's been so long since you talked to either me or your father." In a way, I wish it had been my father who had paid this little visit. He would never try anything quite so confrontational. It would have been easy to send him back along on his way. But I suppose that's neither here nor there. "I suppose you've been with busy with school lately," she said, simultaneously a question and an accusation.

"About the same, mom."

"Is there any change on the horizon? How much longer until you're finished? Have you started looking for more appropriate work?" I was tired of having this same talk with her. Even when I was an undergrad, there was talk of this "appropriate work." Though, in all honesty, I suppose what I really hated was keeping up the charade. It was months now that I had let my parents believe that I was still trying to finish school. I had only meant to keep it to myself until found something else, whether it be a better job or some opportunity, maybe even a girl, something they might consider as a good enough excuse to change the direction of my life. But that still hasn't happened yet. And keeping this up with her again only made me even more tired. It was all I could do to keep from dozing off right there on the floor.

"School is good, mom. I've actually come across something of a project lately." Cadieux 45

"I suppose that is something." Her face seemed to soften just a little bit. "You are doing okay, aren't you?" This wasn't unlike her, but I was still a little surprised. Maybe because she wasn't with my dad, she was a little less restrained. She pressed her hand on my cheek gently.

"You're getting prickly."

I looked around, hoping there was some customer I could rush off to help, but the aisles were pretty bare. Even so, I told her, "okay mom, I have to get back to work now." She took her hand away and nodded. "I'11 call you guys soon. I promise." I pecked her lightly on the cheek and turned and walked to the stockroom. I wanted to stay away from the floor for a little while. I found the push-broom and started sweeping the concrete floor, in case anyone should come in and find me standing around.

The broom made an abrasive sound as I pushed it mindlessly around the enormous stockroom. I swept the same five-foot square over and over, trying to stay out of sight as long as possible. In one corner of the stockroom is a rather large pile ofjunk. It's all items that have been returned but that we can't put back out on the floor to sell, either damaged, or out of season, or something the store no longer carries. Sometimes the store never carried the stuffat all. Garbage that customer service should never have taken back, but here it is just the same. It tends to build up in this one corner of the stockroom until someone takes it upon him or herself to haul it all out to the dumpster. I'm sure you can imagine how often that actually happens. Interestingly enough, it's these hardware store middens that are going to furnish the construction of my psychomanteum.

While I was sweeping around this mound of opened boxes and various mismatches, I noticed that there was nearly a dozen mirrors mixed in among the jumble of discarded items. It's Cadieux 46 funny to think how this job I've grown to resent so much is providing me with virtually everything I need carry out my experiment.

Once the work day was over and the store was finally closed I dawdled along, moving slowly, trying to be one of the last to leave. For about the last hour of my shift I tried to come up with some plan to get at least one of these mirrors out of the store without being noticed. But once the time to head out actually came, no one was paying any attention to me. Even Mandy had left without a word or a wave and everyone else was intent on getting themselves out of the store and on their way home. I could have driven out the front gate on a riding mower and no one would have noticed.

With no need for secrecy I went up to the staff room, took off my smock and punched my employee number into the digital time clock, then pushed "OIJT." And then straight back down the stairs and into the dark stockroom. The safety lights had already kicked on. The mirrors in this pile of returns, all on their way out to the garbage, were dusty and smeared with hand and forearm prints. A few had sustained some minor damage, but this was mostly on the frames. All I needed was the mirror itself and once I got the thing home I would be popping the glass out of the frame anyway.

Though I knew that in order to complete a psychomanteum I would eventually need every one of these mirrors and quite a few more, I was very selective about this first one that I took. The dustiness and various smudges made it hard to tell if any of the glass was scratched or cracked. I chose the tallest one, about the size of a bedroom door, with an ugly gold-colored frame around it. I held it under one.ann, using my other hand to keep it steady, and headed straight for the main entrance. The security gate hadn't been closed all the way yet and I crept Cadieux 47

carefully underneath it. I was out of the building and grateful that the managers were too cheap

to spring for surveillance cameras. The mirror started to feel heavy while I waited at the bus stop

and I had to switch arrns several times. My hands were getting sweaty, too and I tried to keep

from touching the surface of the glass. I started to imagine the questioning stares and glances I

was sure to encounter and my mind raced to think of some kind of response should anyone ask

what I thought I was doing. But the bus came and I sat down near the front, holding the mirror upright beside me. I turned and looked to the back and saw the same people I always do. There was the guy with his headphones. The lady knitting. I coughed loudly and no one even raised their eyes. The glass was tilted toward me and as my paranoia wore off, I smiled a little to the reflection of myself. Cadieux 48

October 5, 2008

Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things beþre brealcfast.

- Through the Looking Glass

I've officially moved the experiment out of the bathroom. The bedroom is much better suited. To make the most of the limited space, I've moved the dresser out into the living roorn and pushed the bed lengthwise against the wall farthest from the door. This only leaves about a foot of space at either end of the bed. Trying to make more room has only emphasized how little space there actually is. At the same time, that's what makes it so perfect for a psychomanteum.

I've moved my bedside table out, too. The only things left in the room are the bed and my alarm clock, which I've left on the floor for now.

I haven't had many opporÍunities since the last entry but I've got a steady supply of mirrors coming home with me whenever I'm scheduled at the store until close. No one keeps track of the junk in the dumpster pile. Over the last couple of days I've managed to bring enough mirrors home to start the actual construction. During my shift earlier tonight I gave some serious thought as to how I could fix them to the wall. I wanted something sturdier than the brackets which once held the bathroom mirror in place. I also didn't think drilling or nailing through the glass and into the wall was avery good option. So while I wandered around the store with my hands tucked into my smock, moving up and down the same aisles, I paid attention to what was on the shelves. I came up with a combination of adhesive and bathroom caulking. On my break I Cadieux 49

bought a bucket of adhesive for laminate flooring, a caulking gun and three tubes of extra-

sealing-power caulk (10% employee discount).

Once I got home, now that I had all that I needed to get started, I got straight to work. I

decided to begin at the end of the room opposite the bed, right near the doorway. I took the bathroom mirror first and slathered the back of it with the adhesive and pressed it tightly to the wall, making sure the bottom edge was flush against the floor. I leaned against it gently until I was

sure it would stay on its own, then I used the caulking gun along the edges. I suppose if I ever

take all this down I'll have to at least repaint, if not completely replace all the drywall, but there's

not much point in worrying about that now. Once I was finished with the caulking I pressed the

glass against the wall for about half an hour rnore. I wanted to be sure it would hold. The pile of

returns doesn't even have enough mirrors for me to frnish the psychomanteum, so I certainly

can't afford to break any.

The mirrors I had brought home still had frames around them so I had to pop the glass out

before I could use them. The first one came off easily, but the second mirror was glued into the

wooden frame. I had to break it apart at the corners and then I left the various frame pieces by

the front door. I have to remember to find some place to stash them later. I brought the bedside

table back into the bedroom so that I could lean something against the mirrors while the glue set,

instead of standing there holding it. I did two mirrors one by one but I stuck them on the wall

directly across from where I had stuck the bathroom mirror. I put a pillow between the glass and

the little table to avoid scratching and let them sit for half an hour each. I tried to play some

videogames to pass the time, but I just couldn't concentrate. I paced in and out of the bedroom

and up and down the srnall hallway until I had set three mirrors altogether. At the end of the Cadieux 50 room opposite the bed, I had a smaller version of the hall of mirrors effect I had first experienced

at the hardware store. It fills rne with an odd sense of anticipation now. I'm waist deep into this

experiment I've created for myself, and there may be no way back. I suppose it's only natural to be a little apprehensive. I have reflections of reflections now, but I think a proper test of my the-

ory behind the psychomanteum will have to wait until I've had some rest.

I write this now, perched on the edge of the bed, occasionally looking up at the odd arrangement of mirrors glued part way up the wall, each one reflecting back at the others. It's not a psychomanteum yet, just a poorly decorated room. I'm starting to wonder if the mere presence of the mirrors will be enough, whether or not I will have to do something to stimulate a reaction or

occurrence. I'm thinking, too, of what I saw in the shaving mirror. If such a tiny mirror and one

other could produce such a reaction, how much more powerful might the completed psychomanteum be? And should this device tum out to be exponentially more powerful than anything I have yet experienced, will I still be the one in control? The more I think about it, the more I feel that I

am meant to be an observer. As for any immediate worries, the psychomanteum is far from complete. These are concerns that don't need to be dealt with so late at night, especially when I'm

finding it so hard to keep the pen to the page. But I'm sure it won't be long before there is more

to add. Cadieux 5l

Later

He turned round and, walking to the window, drew up the blind. The bright dawnflooded the room and swept thefantastic shadows into dusþ corners, where they lay shuddering. But the strange expression that he had noticed in theface of the portrait seemed to linger there, to be more intensified even. The quivering ardent sunlight showed him the lines of cruelty round the mouth as clearly as if he had been lookíng ínto a mirror after he had done some dreadful thing.

- Oscar íïtilde

They're changing. These incidents. Or visitations. I'm not sure what to call them anymore. I can't make sense of all the research I've done, all the accounts I've read and pondered over. Not if what I've seen rnyself is able to change. Maybe writing it out, trying to explain it in my own words, will help me better understand. It's only been a few hours since I put this journal dowq and tried to get some rest. After closing the last entry I was really hungry but I was even more worn out. I had decided to eat once I woke up but I don't feel the need to anymore. My ap- petite has vanished.

I was asleep almost before I put down my pen and I slept soundly for a couple of hours.

There wasn't any reason for me to wake up after so short a time. Until recently I've always been a heavy sleeper and very rarely do I wake up in the middle of the night, not to mention when I'm especially tired. I lifted my head a few inches offthe pillow and listened, thinking maybe there had been sornething in the street noise that had managed to rouse me. I couldn't hear anything out of the ordinary. It's late in the season but I had left the window open. The breeze was cold Cadieux 52 but I was wann under the covers. A car went by and, if I strained,I could hear a farntbtzzing coming from the streetlights. None of this should have been enough to wake me up. The green

LED display of my alarm clock glowed 3:14 up at me from the floor. The blinds were down and only a small bit of the all-night glow of city streets pushed itself into the room. But this was enough for me to see the reflections in the mirrors.

It's only five or six feet from the side of the bed to the edge of the closest rnirror. I could see the reflections in all of them clearly, though darkly. In the back and forth of their glassed-in images,I could see an angled view of the closed door directly across from me. The window over the bed isn't centered but far off to the right side of the wall, only inches from the comer, and somehow it was still visible in the mirrors on both sides of the room. I looked all around the rest of the small space but I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Anything out of place should have been fairly obvious in a room that was now so empty. The breeze picked up a little and in the reflections I could see the blinds moving in the wind, the plastic slats seeming to roll upward as the brisk air passed through them. Thç whole apartment felt silent. Even the street outside seemed to have grown quiet in those few moments. I was still half under the blankets, not quite sitting up in the bed. My attention was caught once again by the mirrors, since there was nothing else to focus on. The reflections were all virnrally identical. Except that the figure I had seen before was standing in the mirror on the left.

I could see him much more clearly this time. He had both feet planted near the very edge of the reflection. He was leaning forward slightly, holding both his hands behind his back. His head was at such an angle thatlrealized he was looking over toward the bed and he seemed to be unable to step any closer. He was looking over at me and he was nearly pressed up against the Cadieux 53 glass. As close as he could get. I looked him in the face for what seemed like a long time, unable to move or even look away from him. And now I was sure that he was looking back.

I took two or three very slow breaths. The light switch is across the room, right next to the door. I would have to pass in front of the mirrors to get to it.

I rolled the covers back, making sure my legs wouldn't get tangled in the blankets when I moved. My muscles were getting sore with the effort to stay still. This turned into a tearing feeling as I sped across the room. There was a burst of my own motion and the single light bulb lit the small room as best it could. He was gone. But I had seen him. I have expended all this effort to see, but I wonder now what I have brought down upon myself. Even as I write this, I struggle with new explanations. All that I have discovered and explained seems undone. I try to rational- ize what I saw. It was far too dark to see clearly, how can I be sure of any details? I was still half- asleep and I had been so tired and I wanted so badly to see something. But this won't get me anywhere. The truth is there and I can't be convinced of anything else. I don't even want to write it out here, but denial won't help. He looked like me. Exactly like me.

When I looked around, the bedroom was so very empty and the reflections showed just the same empty room. V/ith the lights on, I stood in front of the mirrors on the left wall, my reflection now standing just where he had been. In sleep pants and a T-shirt I leaned toward the glass the same way he'd done. Holding my hands behind my back. I've wanted so badly for the mirrors to show me more than I could expect to see. All I can see now is what shouldbe there.

And now that I've seen that there is more and not everything is revealed, when the mirror shows me only what is expected, as it does now, I feel a kind of cruelty. A conscious denial. And it seems as though the mirrors are smiling at me. Laughing just as much as they are lying. Cadieux 54

I've been sitting out in the living room since then, glancing over at the halÊclosed bedroom door while I try to keep my hand steady enough to write this out. I don't think I'll be sleep- ing in there anymore. I've left the bedroom light on but haven't bothered checking anything else around the apartment like I did last time. Before the sun started to rise I simply sat on the couch in the dark, looking over at the light in the hallway that spilled out of the bedroom. Once morning came it was light enough to work on this entry though it has been slow going as I've fought with my own words, trying to explain effectively. Even fighting with the explanation itself. I suppose I haven't really explained much. Already the morning light is dulling to an afternoon haze.It's almost time for me to go to work. I'm actually glad. It might help me clear my head. Cadieux 55

October 8, 2008

Looking Glass: A vitreous plane upon which to display afleeting show manb disillusion given.

- Ambrose Bierce

Getting through the day with no sleep is an odd experience. That need for rest has a very

distinct sensation. The incident last night left me severely shaken up and that coupled with ex-

haustion made for a unique day, to say the least. I was oblivious to everything as I rode the bus

and my brain tried desperately to piece together what was happening. Even considering all that I

have come to believe about the mirrors and whatever abilities may lie in them, I had never quite

imagined anything like this. Strange to think that after all that time in front of the mirrors, the

thing I least expected to see was myself.

Though I suppose that isn't an accurate description. I know that it was not meI saw

standing in the mirror while I was still in bed half-under the covers. It tore through my thoughts;

to see myself, only knowing it wasn't me. Even more than that, it was the way he looked atthat

first moment I saw him. Standing so close to the glass, looking over toward the bed. Watching

me. It's changing the way I've conceived of the experiment up to this point. Despite the amount

of time and effort I've put into trying to see hirn, it never entered my mind that he might be try-

ing to see me.

I imagined myself lying under the covers in the bed, fast asleep, then suddenly roused,

the mirrors staring hard into me, enough to wake me up. While I was thinking this over I lost

track of where the bus was taking me. By the time I noticed, I was already two stops too far. I Cadieux 56 was half an hour late once I finally got to the store, but I was thankful for the extra time it took rre to walk back along the bus route. When I did walk through the automatic doors, my smock slung loosely over one shoulder, Mandy came over to greet me.

"I thought you were supposed to be working today," she said as she adjusted her pace to walk beside me. I headed straight up the stairs to the staffroom so I could swipe my card and she came along with me the whole way, chatting about something that never managed to penetrate my haze of thoughts. After I had punched in my code and finally turned to face her while she talked, she quickly blurted out, "Jesus, you look terrible."

"Thanks." She thought I was being sarcastic and she apologized through a shy, pierced- lip grin. But I'd said it without thinking. I was just glad I hadn't let slip what I had actually been thinking about. I don't want to say anything that I can't take back.

"Livin'it up again, were we?" she started, after I didn't say anything more. She contin- ued, "and on a Sunday night, too. I'm impressed." She straightened my smock over my shoulders, smoothing out the wrinkles on my chest, and tucked a liule curl of hair behind my ear. With a quick wink she pushed past me and back out to the floor. My cheeks felt warm as I tried to suppress a smile. What I really needed was to be alone with my thoughts and I would need to tread carefully around other people. Should someone manage to coax any information out of me,

I won't be able to regain any semblance of a normal, sane reputation. Especially with Mandy. I have to keep my experiment to myself, at least for now. If there was anyone I might blurt out the experiment to, it would be Mandy. That shift was the first time I really tried to avoid her.

The evening went by surprisingly fast, though it may only seem that way because I don't remember any of it. I can only vaguely picture walking the dark streets from the bus stop to the Cadieux 57 apartment. The only reason I recall any of that is because I began to dread, more and more with every step, actually setting foot in my bedroom again. All throughout the day and even still now, my thoughts are held hostage by memories of last night. As soon as I had left the apartment to head to work I had pictured the nearly bare bedroom and I could not get away from that image. I pictured the empty bed, left unmade that moming, pushed against the back wall. And in the mirrors at the opposite end of the room, the reflection too showed the bed. The sheets and blankets messy in the same way, drooping to the floor in the same places. But the reflected bed is not empty. In the mirror,I am lying in it. Me but not me. While I walked hotne, I thought that maybe this time I was too spooked to continue with the experiment. What if he was waiting?

At the same time, the thought of completely losing my nerve also worried me. I went inside the apartment, the wooden frames from around the minors still leaning against the wall.

They slid to the ground when I shut the door. I left them lying there and tossed my smock over to the couch. I hadn't brought any mirrors home with me this time. Filled with resolve, I headed straight into th_e bedroom. I did keep my eyes closed until I had turned the light on, to make sure

I didn't look into the mirrors before I was ready. They only reach to about chest height, so I had to crouch down to see my reflection. I stayed mid-way between the two walls, looking alter- nately to each side. I couldn't see him. At least, I don't think I could. I could see myself, though I don't particularly trust such an image anymore. Maybe it was him. I stayed crouched until my leg muscles started to feel sore. Then I stood slowly, cracking my spine as I arched backwards. I wasn't quite as terrified as I'd thought I would be. I could stand to be in the room. However, I did decide to move the bed out into the living roorn. I would never get any rest if I was nervous the whole time I tried to sleep. The living room is getting to be very cluttered. I have to step over Cadieux 58 the back of the couch to get onto the bed, but I suppose it's fine for the time being. I won't be inviting anyone inside in the near future, anryay.I took my notebook and pen frorn the kitchen counter where I had left it earlier today. I went back into the bedroom and sat carefully on the floor between the partially mirrored walls. And that brings us to now.

Writing in this journal really does help me think. It's been nearly twenty hours now since

I saw my "self in the mirror. Twenty hours spent mulling over and contemplating such a curious

experience. And my thoughts have only begun to crystallize and gain focus since beginning to write out this very entry.

So what have I f,rgured out?'What have I been seeing in the mirrors? I don't know yet.

But whatever he or l¡ is, it must have a mind of its own. And I wonder still, whether he has been trying to get me to see him, or only trying to see me. He seems to have singled me out. Maybe

ever since that first incident, where he seemed to pound on the glass of the rnirror, he's been hop-

ing to get my attention. Maybe that's why he's started to look like me. Well either way, I'm cer-

tainly paying attention now.

But perhaps it is too easy for me to say that he has taken my form. The nature or purpose

of it all still eludes me. Could there be something in the reflection, something he can manipulate?

Is he free to come and go? As I sit now before the mirrors, I don't see him. There is only me,

scribbling quickly. Though I do feel that some of my earlier assumptions were not quite right.

The previous occurences all felt like discrete, separate visitations. He would appear ever so

briefly, and be gone. And if I go by what I see in the rnirror at this moment, there is no visitation

now. I don't see him. But that's exactly the point of the psychomanteum. What I see isn't

enough, because I don't see everything. He is here. I wonder if I am seeing him or me right now. Cadieux 59

I look up periodically as I write this and it seems as though I can see my own face pointed down toward the page, eyes still focused on my messy lettering. Or even if I look past the reflection in the foreground to the reflected image in the mirror behind me. I should have my back tumed in this second reflection, since I am not facing the mirror that gives this image. But for only an instant, when I look up I see rnyself facing the mirrors. All of the rnirrors, all at once. It happens impossibly fast and when I turn to look directly behind me, all is as it should be.

He may seem to be gone. Between incidents it's as though he has somehow disappeared.

But now I think that he has been here all along. With me. Waiting for specific moments when I would be able to notice him. And if I can complete the psychomanteum he won't need to wait for those opportune moments anymore. And I wonder if he knows about my experiment, if he realizes what I am building. Perhaps I can just halt the experiment here and now, get rid of the mirrors, bum this book, put my apartment back the way it was. Though if he has been with rne this whole time, I suppose it won't really matter whether or not I stop the construction. It won't have

any effect on him. He would be here anyway.

It seems clear that I can't so easily extricate myself from what I have already set in motion. I know now that I will complete the psychomanteum. The experiment will go on. Cadieux 60

October 24, 2008

Under tlte strain of this continually impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now

condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by feve4 languidly weak both in body and mind, and

solely occupied by one thought: tlte horuor of my other self.

- Robert Louis Stevenson

Such a long interval between entries has made me realize how accustomed to this journal

I've become over these past weeks. I've missed it. And on top of that, since my last entry, I've

started to notice some changes. Changes in me. But more about that later. It's taken me a number

of shifts at the hardware store to come away with enough materials to really make any noticeable

progress into the construction of the psychomanteum. Now that I have a suitable stockpile of

rnirrors I can attach thern to the walls with some regularity. It's much more rewarding than wait-

ing through long stretches of downtime while hoping for the opporhrnity to take just one mirror

at a time. The number of mirrors in the pile ofjunk retums is dwindling almost down to nothing.

But I arn pleased with how the room itself is turning out.

I was nearly halÊfinished covering one wall before I even thought of the ceiling. It

seemed preffy clear that I couldn't use the same combination of adhesive and bathtub caulking to

defy gravity. I worried, too, what might happen if I were inside the room and one of those mir-

rors fell... Cadieux 6l

And even if I wasn't in the room, such a disturbance would be sure to athact unwanted attention. I was still worried that one, or possibly even both, of my parents might pop in after the random visit I'd gotten at work. The last thing I needed was the landlord coming by as well, pok- ing in to see what I'm up to. Recalling the metal brackets that were once around the bathroom mirror, I decided that they would be the best way to securely attach the mirrors to the ceiling.

They might be too heavy for the amalgam of glues that I've been using, but they wouldn't be heavy enough to pull bolts or screws out of the ceiling. I would need bigger brackets, of course, and I would have to be sure to anchor them properly. Luckily, I often find myself at a place where items of this kind are readily available.

I should admit something, though. Solving the physical or logistical problems of the psychomanteum has been relatively easy, but they are a welcome and much sought-after distraction from other wonies that have plagued me. There are times when I desperately need to turn my rnind away from questions that I am not yet equipped to answer. Or that I am not even prepared to. Before I go on, I don't want to ignore or even underestimate the power of suggestion. After so much effort trying to come to some understanding, to get the psychomanteum to work, my experiences of its effects are hardly unbiased. At the same time, I can't help but wonder if these effects are taking a negative toll on me, that perhaps whatever it is that makes the psychomanteum work is not meant to be manipulated or provoked. Maybe the power of the device, whatever connection it has, lies in more than the mere visual perception of something normally intangible.

There are very few treatments of the supernatural or the ghostly thatare positive. I might even go so far as to say almost none. The very ideas conjure a kind of dread curiosity and I don't want to allow myself to be affected by this pervading negativity. We want to grasp all that there Cadieux 62 is to know about these other-worldly beings, even as we are terrified that they may actually exist.

And should their existence turn out to be arcality, what kind of detrimental effect do they have on the natural world? On our world? On us? Could the psychomanteum be having this kind of effect on me?

I don't mean to suggest some silly kind of physical health threat, like the radioactive properties of ectoplasm or the cancer-causing influence of the other side. Any effect would have to be much more mysterious, more ethereal. If there even is an actual effect. Like I said,I don't want to downplay the power of suggestion.

There are two elements which I came across in my research that I have in mind. Merely reading about these may have pushed me into a kind of psychosomatic paranoia about the progress of the experiment. The first would be the ancient Greek version of the psychomanteum, and in particular what it was used for. This is the oracle that I mentioned in an earlier entry. The account itself makes explicit mention of the appearance of the face in the reflection. The oracle's prediction came from whether "the reflected face appeared fresh and healthy, or of a ghastly as- pect." Each tirne I enter my own incomplete psychomanteum, whether I'm adding more mirrors to the walls or merely sitting among the multitude of images of myself, I wonder if my own reflection is not as fresh and healthy as I remember it. My reflected face seems to be slowly and subtly giving way to some kind of sickness. Dulling eyes and sinking cheeks. Clammy looking skin. The reflection seems to descend further and further from physical realiry but so slowly that

I can not be sure I am actually perceiving any real change. Still, my reflectionfeels as though it is growing tired and thin. Sicker. Ghastly, even. But I wonder if this would have ever occurred to Cadieux 63

me had I not read the ancient account of this Greek oracle. Is the deterioration that I see genuine, or merely a trick of the eyes. Or maybe even a trick of å¿s.

I can't forget about him. This kind of thinking confronts me with the idea of the doppelganger. Technically, the doppelganger isn't a mirror image, but an actual double. Living, breathing. Such a figure appears many times in literature, a few examples of which I've read myself.

But this figure that I'm seeing, the one I glance at sporadically over my notebook even as I write about him, is he a doppelganger? He's not merely my reflection. And if you've been reading this all the way through, I'm sure you've come to realize that as well. He is a separate entity that, perhaps, has adopted my shape or that can manipulate the image of my reflection. He is not me.

But he does look like rne. Is he confined entirely to the mirror? Does he live and breathe? Maybe he is a doppelganger. I suppose he could be. That's what has me worried. According to the examples I've encountered myself, it's pretly clear a doppelganger and the original person can not coexist, at least for long.

Before I had read any of these fictional treatments, I had always pictured an encounter with a doppelganger as immediately destructive. You can't both exist in the same space and time, and so contact with the double effectively cancels out both existences. Possibly even in a blinding flash or an implosion. But in these stories, fictional though they may be, there is nothing so sudden or dazzling. The doppelganger certainly brings about the destruction, whether physical, mental, social, of the original. But this happens slowly. The original deteriorates and the doppelganger gains influence over time. In the classic story Dr. Jeþll becomes addicted to Mr. Hyde, until the darker counterpart is all that remains. And what of my own situation? Everything about Cadieux 64

the psychomanteum has been slow and deliberate. If the deterioration of myself that I see in the mirror is genuine, am I watching myself sinking, thinning away...

Maybe it is still a negation of some kind and my instinct of an immediate reaction is v/rong or misinformed. Maybe it happens through a kind of fading. A stretching away into nothing. As the psychomanteum moves towards its completion there are more and more reflected images of myself. Could they work as some kind of drain or siphon, exponentially gaining power as the experiment goes on? Helping him to gradually wear me thin? Or is the change I see in my reflection more like what the Greek oracle saw? A prophecy of sickness, perhaps even a warning.

Arn I projecting dread and fear onto something hannless, maybe even well-meaning? I need more time to be sure of anything. I must continue on, slowly and deliberately. Cadieux 65

October 28, 2008

We should differentiate between tlte uncanny that we actually experience and the uncanny that we merely picture or read about.

- Sigmund Freud

It was to be expected. I've now taken every one of the mirrors from the dumpster pile in the back of the stockroom. There are still some retumed every once in a while, but it's rare.

Hardly the steady source of materials that I need to keep up the pace of construction I've been following. I suppose the only choice I do have at this point is to find some other way to make sure more mirrors f,ind their way into that pile.

At least I've managed to get started on the ceiling. I borrowed a tall step ladder from the superintendent and I've been filling the front pocket of my smock with metal brackets and plastic anchors before heading home. It's not a hammer and nails, but it's certainly testing my handy-. man abilities.

My last few shifts, as I've wandered around the store, I've made a point of visiting the aisle that holds the new mirrors. And as long as no one is watching, I have plenty of opporluni- ties to inflict some minor damage. With just my hands I can easily pull apart the frame at the corners, leaving it hanging loosely over the glass. Or if I'm pushing the dolly it's easy to find myself drifting too close to the mirrors, arranged so elegantly, standing in even rows. It doesn't take much to scratch the color off the frame or put a scuff or even a full-on crack in the glass itself, though I prefer to avoid doing that. And more often than not, whatever mirrors I've dam- Cadieux 66 aged will have ended up in the stockroom's dumpster pile by the next time I show up for work.

But this process, too, is slower than I had hoped. Cadieux 67

November 2, 2008

I lcnow always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still

men. This I have lvtown ever since I stretched out my fingers to the abomination wíthin that great gildedframe; slretched out my fingers and touched a cold and unyielding surface of polished glass.

- H. P Lovecraft

I started noticing that it was getting easier to avoid bumping into Mandy while I was

working. For a while, there were a few times when she would ask how I was doing, or rnake little

remarks about how I wasn't looking well. She said these few things in passing, but the way she

said them, it was more like teasing. She always said it playfully, like the change was noticeable

but not a big deal. Though I haven't heard even anything like this from her lately. There are still

times when I try to avoid he¡ mostly when I'm particularly absorbed in my thoughts, in case I

should let anything slip. But it's not only on my end anymore. She doesn't seem to look around

the store for me like she once did, or go out of her way to chat. What few encounters between us

there are have a different sensation than they used to. Less friendly, somehow. Though it isn't just her I've tried to avoid, it's everyone.

It's been easier to avoid some people than others. I used to dread shifts when Kyle and I

would be working together. His cocþ grin never left his face. And if he caught my eye he would

click his tongue and wink or slap me hard on the back should we happen to pass each other. But

now I barely see him. And the few times I have, he hasn't acted this way. A couple of times I've Cadieux 68

even noticed him come into the same aisle as me and then quickly turn back out. I like not having to deal with him.

One big change is that for the last week or so, rny breaks have actually been the worst part of my shifts. I used to watch the clock, waiting for the hands to point towards a half hour that I would have to myself, time I could use to really think. I've never been a popular personality around the place and if Mandy's break didn't line up with mine I was usually on my own, whether it be by choice or not. But more recently, I haven't needed the break time to really work out my thoughts. Working as a stockboy requires very little concentration or even attention, so while I fetch different items or reaffange the shelves, the experiment is always in my mind. Out on the floor, there is little distraction from other workers. But now, the break room has become an unwelcome distraction. It seems there is'always someone who has got it into their head to ap- proach me, who wants to sit and chat. No matter how uninviting I try to make rnyself appear.

And if I do get a few moments alone in the staff room, the minutes drag as I hope that I won't have to deflect anymore chit chat or "shooting of the bfeeze." And I have to hold off any real contemplation because I will likely just be intemrpted.

I've gotten into the habit of bringing this notebook into the store with me. I never write in it while I'm there, for fear of having to explain or reveal what I'm working on. But if I just read it, it's easy to quickly tuck away out of sight. I read it over, reacquaint myself with the evidence and research and experiences I've accumulated thus far. Get a sense of the real progression of the experiment. Under a different circumstance, seeing me pore over a hand-written notebook might serve as a deterrent for anyone looking to strike up a conversation. Perhaps even give the impres- sion that I don't want to be bothered. But that seems to have never even occurred to any of the Cadieux 69 people who work here. If anyone does happen upon me while I'm reading these pages, I'm always quick to tuck the book away. No need to give anyone the chance to read over my shoulder.

When I was working earlier this afternoon, sure enough this is just what happened. I had been thumbing through the early pages when one of the older lady cashiers came in on her sup- per break. Karen. Or Kathy, maybe. I guess she's always been perfectly nice to me, but I'm losing patience with any kind of distractions or intemrptions. She dropped her lunch bag on the table and noisily pulled out one of the nearby plastic chairs while I placed the now-closed notebook under my thigh.

"'W'ere you reading?" I suppose the book must have given me away.

"Nothing irnportant," I said as I fingered the softened edge of the book I was now sitting on. She talked about the weather briefly, how the number of customers was starting to dwindle as fall really came in. She thought everyone on cash could expect a drop in hours, at least until

Christmas time came around. Every few statements I answered with a bland "yep" and tried to look distracted. I tried to will her to sense my disinterest.

"Is everything alright with you?" she mouthed around a glob of banana. "Is there something you need to talk about?"

I didn't want to answer too rudely or sharply. Normally, this was a perfectly nice lady. I tried to distract myself while I reined in my aggravation so I focused on how the reflection of the lights overhead made the line of her bifocals really stand out.

"Why do you ask?"

"You don't look good, is all." I made every effort, but I couldn't hold back a slow, exasperated blink. She went on, "I mean, have you looked in a mirror lately?" Cadieux 70

I laughed. It must have been pretty loud because I saw her jump just a little bit in her seat.

She looked at me funtty as I walked past her, rny shoulders still shaking. I headed back out to the floor without saying anything more to her. My break was over. Cadieux 7l

November 10,2008

If, infact, onyone notices the reflectìon of anotherface beside hís own, he will soon die.

Otto Rank

The mirrors on the ceiling have made a noticeable difference. The whole room has taken

on a feeling I didn't predict. I had not been following any kind of method or order when I started

fixing the mirrors to the walls. I suppose I was anxious to get a sense of the panoramic feel of the psychomanteum and I had been placing the mirrors somewhat erratically around the room.

There's at least a few on each wall, but now there are concentrations of mirrors in some places

and lonely panes in others. Perhaps this is partly why no feeling of completeness has yet de-

scended over the chamber.

When I started the ceiling I had little choice but to establish a kind of pattern, beginning

at one corner and fanning out until all was covered. To place the brackets properly I had to make

careful measurements and screw in everything by hand. This has made my wrist and foreann in-

credibly sore, making writing a little bit strenuous. And though the ceiling is still unfinished, the

rooln is just beginning to fill with that sense of completeness I've been waiting for.

I'm writing this now by the fading daylight seeping in through the open window. I had to

completely remove the light fixture in order to get the mirrors flat against the plaster. So now I

have to make use of the daylight while it lasts. I suppose it works out well that my job only has

use for me in the evenings. I'm sitting down to rest on the hardwood, under apart of the ceiling Cadíeux'12 that is now covered. Soon enough this floor will be covered, too. I wonder if the mirrors will be

as cold to sit on.

Though the psychomanteum is so near completion now, it's the unfinished appearance that creates an interesting effect. From where I sit I can see myself in the mirrors directly across

from me. and even in other mirrors around the room, where no line of sight could bring me to

them. The farther mirrors too have absorbed the reflections around them and they show my im-

age even though, according to any kind of law of physics or of light or of seeing, this should be

impossible. There are even one or two mirrors that seem as though they should show my reflec-

tion, but all I see are the empty corners of the room. An illusion of vacant space. As I bring the

device nearer to completion, it's beginning to feel less like my own construction and more like

something I've stumbled upon. As though it has been here, occupying this small apartment

space, for much longer than I.

I didn't predict that the ceiling itself could make such a change. It seems to enclose eve-

rything, even when I am still far from frnished. The parts of the ceiling that have been covered

feel closer now. It makes the room seem to shrink in, though the actual thickness of the glass

must be only a quarter of an inch or so, at the very most.

Given all that I have seen and experienced so faE I consciously try not to have any expec-

tation or prediction of what may appear in the mirrors. Even if I do see only what is to be ex-

pected, the sensation is often entirely different and unforeseen. When I look up at the ceiling

now, on a purely visual level, I suppose I see what is to be expected. I see myself, of course, sit-

ting cross-legged on the floor, the long scratches on the hardwood where I dragged the dresser

and the bed frame out of the room. There is the notebook laid open over my lap. I see myself Cadieux 73 looking, neck and face angled up. But this is somehow disorienting. Consciously, I know that I am looking up though it feels just the opposite. It does not feel as though I am looking toward the ceiling but instead that I arn looking down at myself, somehow hovering well above where the limit imposed by the ceiling should be. I see myself scribbling in the notebook, but I don't feel my hand moving or hear the rustle of the pen on the paper. I see the room fading as I lose what is left of the daylight and there åe is, sitting on my scratched and dulled floor, surrounded by stolen mirrors. It's like an out of body experience. But outside of which body have I found myself: his or mine? Cadieux 74

November 19,2008

He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communica-

lion.

- Michel Foucault

I've had to become a little more drastic in order to keep getting mirrors for the experi-

ment. Hoping for returns and putting chips in the frames doesn't yield a great enough volume. I

need more, and I'm getting tired of waiting. One miror every work shift just isn't cutting it and

the construction of the psychomanteurn moves forward with baby steps when what I really want

is bold strides.

Instead of waiting for the dumpster pile to replenish itself, I've stafted taking new mirrors

out of the aisles. It's no different to walk out of the store with a new mirror than one that I've

scrounge.d from the returns, though there is perhaps a greater risk that someone will notice them

going missing. When it comes down to it,I'm not very concerned. Soon the psychomanteum will

be complete and my need for materials and secrecy \¡/on't be a factor anymore. But only two or

three mirrors a week when I have shifts to work leaves too much time where I am sitting idle

rather than pushing the construction forward. It only takes a few minutes to attach a mirror to the

wall, now that I've fallen into a rhythm. The ceiling is more complicated, but I still need to bring

mirrors in faster.

The hardware store is part of a big chain, and there are two other locations in the city. On

days off, I've traveled out to those other stores, wearing my familiar orange smock. For custom- Cadieux 75 ers who are shopping, there's no reason to think that I don't work there, and it's only natural to see me carrying merchandise out the door. And for the employees who don't recognize me, they do recognize the smock. Even if they do happen to see me walk in the door, pick a mirror up off the shelf and head right back out, by the time it's occurred to thern that something is amiss I'm already half-way home. Though I doubt I'll be able to get away with this for long. As soon as someone realizes what I'm taking, and that I'm always taking the same thing, I'll be easy to spot.

For tonight, though, I got to do things the easy way. There \¡/as a mirror returned. The lady said it was too big to go over her dresser. But it was the perfect size to cover my bedroom window and I almost tore it out of her hands when she came in. After close, once again I rode the

11:46 bus home carrying a mirror with me, this time a particularly large one. I haven't been keeping an exact count, but it must be nearly two dozen times that I've done this. The faces on the bus aren't as anonymous anymore. Always the same people. Same driver, too. He never says

anything, but every time he looks first at me, then the mirror, then me again while I drop my fare

in the box. The passengers look at me with puzzled faces, or try vehemently not to look at me at

all. It's funny to think that I was once so afraid of looks like that. When no one noticed, I was so

cautious about drawing attention. But now that they are looking, I realize just how little they

matter. Maybe it's time I started walking home, though I usually feel more tired at this time of

night than I used to. Anticipation and excitement can really drain your body's energy, and every

time I head home I have even more anticipation for the completion of the psychomanteum. I

suppose it's hard for my body to keep up with my own enthusiasm. Cadieux 76

November 25, 2008

It was as bright as at midday, but I did not see my reflection in îhe mirror! It was empty, cleati profound, full of light! But myfigure wos not reflected in it - and I, I was opposite to it! I saw the

large, clear glass from top to bottom, and I looked aî it with unsteady eyes; and I did not dare to

advance; I did not venture to make a movemen\ feeling that he was there, but that he would es-

cape me again, he whose imperceptible body had absorbed my reflection.

- Guy de Maupassant

The ceiling is finished now and I've gotten rid of the step ladder and started laying some

mirrors over the floor. I'm still nervous about walking over them. I've laid them flat against the

hardwood so they should distribute my weight evenly. Still, I slide along them in my socks rather

than step and I try not to put both feet on the same mirror, if I can avoid it. No cracks yet.

Completion is in sight now, though these last stages of the psychomantqum have pre-

sented some complications, My placement of the first few mirrors created a disorganized and

chaotic mess, and covering the walls completely has tumed into something of an upright jigsaw

puzzle. The irregularities in the shapes and dimensions of the mirrors has become a nuisance. For

the corners of the room, I came across a solution purely by accident. There \ryas no need to keep

the mirrors flush against the wall to the very edges. Instead, I could span one mirror across the

corner, diagonally connecting two walls. This way, my measurements did not need to be quite so

exact. And this also gives the room a rounded feel that I soon came to like. Cadieux 77

But still there were gaps of odd measurements that none of the mirrors could adequately

fit. The solution was to break bigger mirrors into more manageable pieces. My first try I only

managed to shatter a sizable mirror that could have been put to much better use. But with a crea-

tive application of masking tape, I managed to come up with a method that could be surprisingly

exact and did not require some kind of saw or power tool. After taking measurements, I scratch a

line in the glass using a straight-edge and glass knife from the stockroom that I "forgot" to take

out of my smock pocket. Then putting masking tape on both sides of the cut and on both surfaces

of the mirror keeps the glass from cracking away from the cut or just plain shattering. There is an

old picnic table out near the dumpster and it is easy to line up the mark in the glass with the edge

of the table and swat the unwanted portion of mirror clean off. Though this leaves the edges of

the mirrors mercilessly sharp.

I suppose ever since the beginning of the experiment I've had to pick and choose which

legends or stories about mirrors were true and held some real value. I hope the one about seven years bad luck is just superstition. I've had to break quite a few and there is already quite a bit of broken glass littered in the snow around the liule picnic table. And inside and all around the

dumpster are the frames which I've removed from the mirrors. I may need to clean this up and

find another place to stash all this stuff, before it starts to draw any attention. Cadieux 78

November 26, 2008

The Ganzfeld ffict (Germanþr completefield) is a phenomenon of visual perception caused by staring at an undffirentiated and uníformfield of color. The effect is described as the loss of vision as the brain cuts offthe unchanging signalfrom the eyes. The result is "seeing black," apparent blíndness.

Covering the bedroom window has brought the psychomanteum another level closer to completion. Without the ceiling light fixture and now blocked from daylight as well, the room greedily holds darkness within it. Even with the bedroom door open and all the aparfment lights on, it does little to reach inside the mirror chamber. I bring a flashlight in with me now. I need it, of course, to properly apply the caulking around the new rnirrors, but it also lights the pages of rny notebook as I add new thoughts and worries for you to read.

The withering sickness I see in my reflection has only gotten worse. And in this new darkness, I struggle to see how severe the changes have become. I sit in the room wearing only socks and underwear. It's easier to slide along the glass in socks rather than step in bare feet. And the thinning I first noticed in my cheeks can be seen all over my body now. In just boxers I can see the wiry tendons in the back of my knees or the shallow spaces between each rib. And perhaps stranger, my reflection does not appear in every mirror. I've noticed this before, and mentioned it briefly in earlier pages. At first it seemed normal enough, probably an illusion caused by the erratic covering of the semi-mirrored walls. But as the room draws closer to being cornpletely covered, this phenomenon is much more pronounced and not as easily explained. I still see my- Cadieux 79

self in most of the mirrors but there are some, where there are no longer any obstructions or other

intemrptions between the glass and I, that do not show my reflection.

The only possible irregularity comes from the open doorway. It serves as the only source

of illumination other than the flashlight. And because I've removed the doorknob to keep a

smooth plane of mirrors all around, if I close the door behind me it takes lne some time to find

my way back out. This kind of disorienting isolation is the desired effect of the finished psycho-

manteum, but while the last phases of construction continue I don't want to waste much time

searching for the way out.

Now even more wary of the power of suggestion, I doubt my mind's ability to truly comprehend everything. I look back in my notebook often. Today I've been rereading the bits about

sensory deprivation, psychological explanations for rrirror gazing. But is sensory deprivation

enough for such an outright dismissal? Perhaps such circumstances reveal more than they distort.

Is it irnpossible to irnagine that by ignoring more obvious stimuli, the senses become perceptive

to less tangible elements? But the reality is that the room is not complete, so actual sensory dep-

rivation shouldn't yet be possible. But just how revealing is the light corning from the rest of the

apartment, creeping in through the half-open door? And only the one flashlight. As the withering

of my image grows more severe, I still don't fully trust it as a reflection of reality.And sensory

deprivation and also the possible effects of isolation only give lne more reason to doubt what I

see.

The brain is indeed an imperfect, physical organ but the mind is rernarkably adept at selÊ

preservation. It can do almost anything, not only to keep functioning, but to convince itself to

keep functioning. Think of a repressed memory. Something so terrible happens to a person that it Cadieux 80

renders them unable to function normally. As far as I know, nobody represses minor trauma. But the mind is able to completely block out sensory information of this kind; the sights, sounds, smells that populate memory allowing the brain and the person to carry on like normal. It can't obliterate the memory only cordon it off, but as long as there is not some kind of trigger to recall this information to the conscious mind that person might never know that memory even exists.

Or even more extreme would be multiple personalities. In case of a personality that is too weak or somehow unequipped to handle certain severe stresses, the mind creates a personality that can meet such demands. Though this latter example is so rare that there is still debate as to whether or not it exists at all. Neither of these conditions are perfect or normal processes; however, they do manage to sustain a mind that would normally collapse. I wonder, too, if this rnight not partly explain near-death or out-of-body experiences. The will to survive is often regarded as a major factor in people who recover from various life-threatening conditions. As the brain begins to die, perhaps the mind struggles to come up with some way, any way to convince itself that it will continue to live. The mind needs to believe it can survive bodily death, even if the truth of the matter is quite the opposite.

Might then this sickly version of myself be an effect of some kind of turmoil in my mind?

Could what I see in the mirror be an effect of rny mind's last few gasps? But if that were true, the frailty I see may be all too real. Maybe I've failed to see reality in the reflection, looking too hard for something else. Or the mirrors really could be prophesying to me. Warning me. Then again, perhaps not. When I'm not writing out these concerns in this book, I mull them over in my mind, trudging slow laps around the roorn. Sometimes I slow my pace to stare into particular mirrors or to press my palm gently to the glass. And watch as he touches the glass, too. And looks back. He Cadieux 8l is always present, but he bides his time. Becoming visible only when he chooses, something I haven't yet learned how to predict. Though it begins to happen more often now. I seem to appear in fewer and fewer mirrors, but him...I can see him in all of them. Cadieux 82

December 5,2008

This tíme there could be no error, for the man was close to me, and I could see him over my shoulder But there wos no reflection of him in the mirror!

- Bram Stoker

It was, of course, only a matter of time before my method of acquiring mirrors was found out. I think now that I may have prompted this to happen by turning to several locations all at once though I do hope that I'm still anonymous for now.

Earlier this evening I was on the closing shift and it was my turn once again with the gate keys. When I first arrived, along with everyone else on the evening shift, they called everyone not working on cash to come into the staff room. There was a tall man wearing a suit and he had a tie clip with the store's logo on it. He was very calm and even friendly to everyone. He nodded to me as I came in. Once everyone had sat down or found a wall to lean against, he begair.

"Most of you are probably unaware of a gradual loss of stock," he said. "At first, this was only a minor concern but more recently the same types of items have begun to go missing at the other store locations."

"What might these items be?" I asked. I put my hand up and everything.

"Well, that's where things seem to turn a little odd. Mostly, this person seems to be only after mirrors, but there could very well be other items, too." He looked me right in the eye as he answered and though I had instigated it, I didn't like having the attention in the room turned to me. I kept my head down for most of the rneeting after that. "There aren't any security tapes to cadieuxS3 : - _ back this up because, as you rnay know, none of the stores use cameras, but it seems that this person simply walks into the store, grabs what he or she wants, and walks right back out again.

Admittedly, it would be rather easy to do this without being noticed."

I already knew this, of course, but I wonder if disclosing the store's lack of security measures put ideas into anyone else's head. "This is difficult to prevent," he went on, "but it does give us a particular behavior to watch out for so we at head office ask that everyone keep their eyes peeled for anything odd."

And that was all. No one took me aside and no one watched me closely as I headed back out to the floor. They didn't even take the gate keys away from me, so they were perfectly aware that I would be the last one to leave the store. However, I knew that I wouldn't be able to avoid

suspicion for long, unless I posþoned work on the psychomanteum. This would probably be my last chance to get whatever materials I still needed.

When my shift ended I left the security gate half-closed until I was sure everyone was

out, like I'm supposed to, then I locked it up like normal and left the keys in the staff room. And working under the faint glow of the safety lights, I brought two shopping carts over to the proper

aisle and stood as many mirrors as I could straight up in the carts without risking some breakage.

There was no way to get these on the bus so I walked home. The distance itself from the

store to the apartment isn't bad but there's quite a bit of snow on the ground now, so my progress

was slow. The shopping carts don't maneuver well on smooth concrete and they didn't gain any precision in the sloppy mess that glazed the sidewalks. The wheels made a wet scratching noise when they dug deep enough to touch the pavement. I had to move the carts along in single file, pushing one ahead of myself with one hand and dragging the second cart behind me with the Cadieux 84 other. This worked the muscles of each arm differently and I hadn't worn gloves so I had to stop fairly often to switch arms and warrn my hands. A couple of times of my palms stuck to the metal but the numbing bluntness of the cold kept it from hurting. About halfivay home it started to snow a little bit but the exercise was keeping everything but my hands plenty rvarrn. My lungs burned as I sucked down the cold air.

It took me quite a few trips up and down the steps to get the mirrors into the apartment and once I was done I didn't want to leave the two carts outside the apartment door. I walked them over to a parking lot a couple of blocks down the way and left them there. I was tired, but also eager once I finally sat down to rest in my apartment. I had a real stockpile now and there was no more need to delay the construction. I didn't rest for very long. I worked under the focused blaze of the flashlight. It's hard to use among all the mirrors. If you point it right at the glass, it reflects back a blinding burst. The trick is to use the light indirectly. I have to point it at the mirror itself when I caulk the edges, but if I want to see my reflection I point the light toward my chest or down at the notebook to avoid blinding myself. Even pointing it down to the floor causes the same eye-searing reflection.

While I waited for the adhesive to dry, he seemed to be watching me with a curiosity that

I hadn't noticed before. I walked around the room impatiently and so did he, though his pace was not impatient. When our eyes did meet, when we looked at each other face to face, he seemed to smile. As though he knew the lengths to which I had gone in order to continue the experiment.

And just as quickly I knew I was staring at myself and not him any longer.

I've been writing this while I wait for more glue to dry, but now it's probably time I move on to the next mirror. Cadieux 85

December 7, 2008

There is a spring in front of Demeter's sanctuary with a dry stone wall on the temple side and a

way down to the spring on the outer side. There is an infallible oracle here, notfor all purposes

butfor the sick. They tie a mirror onto some thin kind of cord, and balance it so as not to dip it

into the spring, but let the surface of the mirror just touch lightly on the water Then they pray to

the goddess and burn incense and look into the mirror, and it shows them the sick man either

alive or dead. The water is as truthful as that.

- Pausanias

There isn't just one thing that keeps me inside this room. There has to be more than only

a single reason why day after day I cautiously tread over the mirrored floor, sliding across the

glass in sockfeet and boxers. Trying to spread my weight out over as many mirrors as I can. But

if I did have to point to one reason over the others, one element of special influence, it would

have to be the words in this ancient account. With everything I've read and learnt, I have a real

compulsion now to know whether or not this oracle outside Patras was right. What is the truth

behind the changes I see in my reflection? The search for this answer often leaves me shaken or

nervous about reentering the chamber. But still, I want to know. I need to know. A morbid curios-

ity for the presage of either death or recovery.

I've given up on using the flashlight. It's simply too hard to keep my eyes adjusted to the

dark when the reflection keeps blinding me. I've been using small tea candles that have been un- Cadieux 86 der my sink for ages. The tiny flame gives the reflections a quivering, orange quality. Even still, my eyes never seem to adjust quite enough to the dark. And this weaker light makes the knob- less door even more difficult to find.

There is one comer of the room still uncovered. It stands out appallingly, reflected over and over in the finished portion of the chamber. But the darkness at least helps me to ignore this glaring area for a time. Maybe it's only because of the dark and this constant need for my eyes to readjust, but I'm never sure anymore of exactly how my reflection will look. The deterioration

I've been seeing is only getting worse.

At fîrst, as you likely know by now, there were no real surprises. I saw what I expected to see, at least in the image of myself. The changes have been gradual, but I know that I'm meant to notice them. In the darkened reflections, sometimes my eyes are too large, staring back at me with a peeled intensity. My mouth might be drained of color, dull lips pinched tightly closed. Or skin so white it is almost purple, stretched too thinly and tightly around rny bony shoulders. Like a tired blanket. The reflectiqn deteriorates while my physical body remains static, seemingly un- changed. And it varies from mirror to mirror. Of the dozens that I've managed to acquire, only one at a time shows this bodily decline. Whichever I look at with the most focus.

But I mustn't forget that this all happens in the dark. Trying to decipher minute details using only a candle in a room that reflects both blackness and brightress endlessly. I simply can't trust what I'm seeing. Can I? It makes me understand why the Greeks needed an oracle to make sense of what they saw. The mirrors I have are pristine, of remarkable clarity. At least when compared to what the ancients might have used: beaten and polished bronze, or flat glassy rocks.

These objects might reflect an image, of course. But probably more like how you see yourself in Cadieux 87 the concave part of a spoon. And holding this reflection over a shallow pool, light shimmering and distorting off the gentle ripples of the water. Trying to make out all the details in someone's face, through a glass darkly. I doubt even the oracles really made much sense of it.

And I struggle, too, to f,rgure out what the mirrors are trying to show me. And the image they reflect keeps seeming to change. I understand the need for darkness inside the psychomanteum now. In fuIl light, the chamber would create an utter chaos of images reflected back and forth and over each other. Over and over. It would be incomprehensible. But the low candlelight makes the image bearable. I see reflections in the mirrors in my immediate vicinity and in the

ones further off I can see the bead of light created by the candle and sometimes the faint outline

of rnyself or him. The mirrors are not neutral, blindly tossing back a reflection without thought.

The figure I see adopts a form so close to mine. Nearly identical, but different in very precise ways. Does he make the changes deliberately? Is he choosing to bulge out my eyes, pull the flesh

tighter against my bones, to make me understand something I wouldn't see otherwise? Whatever

he is trying to communicate, he can only do it through showing.

The mirror is adapted to only one of our senses. Only sight can trigger it. And in a way,

sight is the only sense that it can fool. What is the sound a mirror might make? There is nothing

to taste. Only the cool of the glass to touch. But the mirror does something very different with

what we might see. Or might not see.

And whatever he is, he relishes this power. Knowing that all I can do is watch him. Every

tirne I move, the reflection follows along. Repeating the same gestures. At least technically. It

took me some time to notice that he moves slower than I do. I wave my hand smoothly over the

glass and he does the same, though trailing ever so slightly behind. If I move quickly or use jerþ Cadieux 88 movements the difference is no longer noticeable. It is too fast to dissect details. But the slower I lnove, the longer I draw out the motions, I can see him shaining to keep up the mimicry. And when I know that my own face shows a kind of uneasy discomfort, he looks back with piercing and gleeful eyes. Eyes that know impossibly more than I do.

If he is just my reflection, then my sight really has been fooled. My mind, too. In the mirror, I see this being that is visibly identical to rnyself, but I have to imagine the input my other senses might have. I can press my hand to the glass and my palm will soak in the mirror's cold.

But what I can see is that I should know the touch of the rough callouses of his hand. I should feel that his skin is a little colder than mine. I see and know that my hand is touching his, but without feeling it. We sit in identical cross-legged postures, pressed palm to pahn. Mirror images. Except when he smiles and I don't. But every now and then, and more and rrore often, I catch myself wanting to smile back. Cadieux 89

December 10,2008

His cue, which was to perfect an itnitation of myself, lay both in words and in actions; and most

admirably did he play his part.

Edgar Allan Poe

I need one more mirror. Not even a whole one. My shopping cart stockpile fumished me

with nearly the perfect amount of materials and now there is only a small rectangular space of uncovered wall that blocks the completion of my psychomanteum. At long last, I will see and

experience the finished chamber. With the door closed and under the faint glow of the tea candle,

the hole seems gaping, and it's reflected over and over. It draws my eye away from the reflec-

tions even more than when the room had only a disorganized and uneven covering. But there is

only one place I can think of that can provide rne with this last mirror.

Yesterday and today there were some uncharacteristic knocks at my door. I thought it might have been my mother at first, but today the pounding was followed by a gruffmale voice I

didn't recognize that asked for me by name. Before the knockings on the door started, there were

long-ringing phone calls that I left unanswered. The red light on the machine is still blinking.

There won't be any messages I'm interested in hearing. But this is all evidence enough that my

deeds at the hardware store are no longer anonymous. At least they aren't willing to break down rny door just yet. It would surely be unwise to walk right back into the store under these circum-

stances. Especially to go in and do exactly what they are expecting. My one hope is that Mandy

is probably working tonight. She's usually in on Mondays. I'm hoping to slip in and out unno-

ticed, but if there is some kind of confrontation, maybe I can talk my way out of it. Cadieux 90

Later

It seemed like an especially long walk back. My arms ache from carrying the mirror,

switching it frorn side to side as the weight numbed my hands and wrists. I've set it down in the

living room and I need this journal now, to write this out for the same reasons I started writing

things down in the first place. I need it to help me think.

I was right. Mandy was working. Though no one seemed to be watching for me. I had

hoped to make it in and out of there without encountering anyone. All in all, I suppose it turned

out fine. Things with Mandy have never gone quite the way I've wanted, but after tonight I think

I see things a little more clearly.

Once off the bus I went straight for the main sliding doors. When I went to the other locations I had worn my smock, as a kind of decoy. But this time the more anonymous I could make myself, the better. I wore just a heavy sweater instead of a coat but I barely noticed the cold. I was focused. I went through the door, headed straight for the right aisle and picked out one of the mirrors. I lifted it by its edges to avoid leaving fingerprints, then tucked it under one ann. I was

on my way back out. Clean. Then Mandy appeared at the end of the aisle. It was as though she had followed me through the store, choosing a good time to pop out. She said my name as she blocked my path. Despite the hurry I was in and the risk of being in the store, it was nice to see her. To hear her say my name. I don't know that I'd ever heard anyone say it so softly before.

"What they're saying is true, isn't it?"

I could see her hands moving around inside the pockets of her smock and she was \ /orry-

ing at her lip ring with her tongue. There were deep creases in her brow. But as I stood in front of Cadieux 9l

her she seemed to try hard to slow herself down. I could see her eyes move as she took her time

looking me over. The sleeves of my sweater were rolled up and the strain of holding the mirror

this way made the tendons and veins on my arm stand out. And next to the bunched sleeves of

the thick sweater, my arms must have looked emaciated. The creases in her brow turned to small

folds in her forehead and her eyes softened. "What's happened to you? What are you doing back

here?"

I always thought Mandy was a nice girl. I think that's what I liked most about her. It may

sound a little silly, but I can't think of any other way to put it. Somehow, I knew that she was a

genuinely nice girl. She tried so hard to look tough, with the piercings and the red streaks in her jet black hair. The heavy metal T-shirts and the leather arm bands. But I saw through it. Even

when she started things with Kyle, I always thought that nice girl was still there somewhere, and

would eventually win out. A nice girl that might actually feel something for someone like me.

And I felt then that she was worried about me. That she was concerned.

"'What's with the mirrors? What have you been doing?"

Things never tumed out the way I may have wanted, but there was still a connection

there. When we would stop to chat or even just when we passed each other in the store there was

always some kind of contact. She would pat me gently on the shoulder, or reach across the table

to my arm. But that connection, that contact, was gone this time. I missed it. And I wanted to as-

sure her that I was fine. That she didn't need to worry about me.

Her eyes kept drifting to the mirror as she stood in front of me. I took a very slow step

toward her. "Look, Mandy," I started, reaching my fingers out to reassure her. To comfort her.

But the second before we actually touched, she recoiled. She tried to hide it, but her hand came Cadieux 92 out of her pocket and she held it behind her back. She breathed in fast but didn't breathe out. She closed her eyes. Then she tried to regain a casual pose. I saw the truth clearly then. This nice girl is scared of me.

When her eyes opened again they looked past me to the other end of the aisle. I tumed to see, and there was Kyle. He was standing with arms crossed, trying to look menacing. I almost laughed. She had brought him along, to protect her from me. His aÍns came uncrossed and he started to take a step forward, then I turned back to Mandy.

"'Wait," she said as I pushed past her, careful not to catch the mirror on anything. She made no physical attempt to stop me. In fact, she moved out of the way.

Once out the door, I laid the mirror down carefully in the snow on the edge of the parking lot and turned to face the rnain entrance of the store. I was hoping Kyle would be stupid enough to chase after me. Who was going to protect him? But after a few minutes there was still only the predictable comings and goings through the sliding doors. I was wasting my time waiting for him. I retrieved the mirror and rather then deal with the odd looks on the bus I walked back to the apartrnent. I'm ready now to place the mirror that will complete my psychomanteum. Cadieux 93

December ll,2008

gives one more turn of the screw...

- Henry James

I like to think, now that it's finished, that somewhere in this chamber is the very same

mirror from my first experience. The mirror that he first used to get my attention. I sit now in the

completed psychomanteum, lit only by one tea candle and completely surrounded by mirrors.

And as I watch the many reflections or even put down my pen and trudge slow laps around the

room, gently touching the glass, the many reflections seem to fade away. Many of the rtirrors

appear entirely dark, no image among them. And I see him clearly now The other reflections are

unimportant as I focus my attention on this mysterious figure. And still he looks like me, though

even more sickly and withered. Though he is not holding a notebook, oÍ atea candle. He just

stands there, looking back. As I pace slowly, or as I sit down on the mirrors to write this, he

stands still. And smiles. Cadieux 94

December something, Daylight

mrror mlrror mlrror mtrror mrror mwor mrror mtffor muror mtror mrror mrror müror mirror mÌrror mirror mirror mirror mimor on the wall

I know now what he is. I have been in the psychomanteum for what feels like days. And over this period of time, I've seen him show himself. I've finally recognized the hate in his gleeful eyes and the greed that dribbles fiom that smile. He's done it through showing, though I realize now that this isn't the full extent of his ability. It's a game. It has been fun for him, to give me the illusion of control. To watch me build this device, when all the while it would serve as an instrument to carry out his own plan,

He's used the mirrors to show me. I've seen images of myself in his grip. Up near the ceiling, I could see my body hanging down. A rope around my distended and broken neck, shit running down my legs. Or along the mirrors on the floor, I could see myself laid out in a funeral posture, arTns crossed over my chest, unseeing eyes open and staring. I've seen myself lying face down, my skin a sickening cross of blue and green and with an unearthly puffrness. The blood vessels around my eyes all popped. Other times the tiny flame of the tea candle bursts with great gusts of heat and consumes me and the tightly drawn skin around my bones draws even tighter until it splits and bubbles. The Greeks were wrong. There was never any presage of recovery only a promise that he would come. And then he stood in front of me, my own corpse brought face to face with my living self. My eyes drained but blazing. Lips blue and mocking. And that smile. -Ë1ls smile, not my own. Cadieux 95

I am no longer in control. Maybe I never was.

After seeing this, I had to take action. The mirror over the window was raised up a little

from the rest of the wall, the only part of the room where the smooth plane of the glass was al-

tered, and I tore it away hard. The light that burst in hurt my eyes. In one motion I had the win-

dow uncovered, spun to face the other way and hurled the mirror at the opposite wall. The glass burst apart and my head reeled from the noise. Such a small space, enclosed completely in glass,

made the sound stab into my ears. Still my eyes had not adjusted to the light and the mirrors were

reflecting it as fully and intensely as they could. All I saw was filtered through a painfully white

blur. The broken shards of glass slid over the mirrored floor and made a soft scraping noise over

the glass. I stumbled blindly over them, cutting through my socks straight to the soles of my feet.

The mirror easily sliced through the rough callouses of my heels and the shreds of sock soaked in

the blood and squeaked loudly as they rubbed the glass-covered floor. The pain made it hard to

stand, as I tried to shift my weight offof where I was cut. I was starting to bleed all over the floor

and the glass was slick. Finally I slipped down and lay uncomfortably on my side, raising my

feet offthe ground.

My eyes slowly started to adjust to the daylight I had gone so long without, but I was

only more terrified by what I came to see. Handprints! Smeared all around the walls, crawling

along the floor. Where he had pushed against the glass, trying to get out. The experiment has

only given him strength by taking it away from me. And now he is coming. Even in the light of

day my reflection still appeared to me as corpse-like. My ribs visible through purplish, sickly

flesh. Falling to the ground had cut my arms too and the blood was near-black as it dribbled

down and off my fingers. I forced myself to stand. The pain didn't matter anymore. I had to take Cadieux 96 everything back, to regain control from the mirrors. I reached for the broken and exposed edges of the ones which had already been broken, tearing my fingernails as I clawed and pulled the glass away from the wall. Many of them broke in pieces instead of coming away whole, still held-fast by the glue. I cut myself more and more until there were millions of pieces of glass, granules and great shards over the floor, and all the mirrors were gone.

There are big, glassy pools of my own blood on the floor. And in them I still see his face reflected. I have sat down on the floor to regain what little strength I can. I tried to sweep the glass away to make myself a space to sit, but in the end I had little choice but to rest atop the broken glass. Looking around at the smears and puddles of blood, I stare at him often, hoping that he is aware of my challenge.

This will be rny last entry,I'm sure. Without the mirrors,I am his only connection. This will be my only chance. I will force him out. It's a matter of will. Amatter of putting down the pen and picking up a piece of the glass. Cadieux 97

Keith Cadieux 6794628 Creative MA Thesis Advisor: Dr. Warren Cariou

Gazez Fear and the Mirror

Horror, as a genre, has something of a mixed reputation. At its worst, it is pure pulp enter- tainment, an implausible stretch of the imagination with only the hope of rousing a little bit of excitement. But when done well, horror can expose deep-rooted social, psychological, indeed human fears and anxieties that are normally left unexamined. Horror can be intellectually chal- lenging, bringing to the surface difficult questions and then refusing to offer any solid answers.

And an object which often appears in horror literature is the mirror. Its recurrence is not acciden- tal, as mirrors have been sources of mystery and apprehension throughout history. Mirrors are now common everyday objects but this easy accessibility is quite recent, only corning about in the last century or so) while the device itself has existed for millennia. The mirror was once an item of immense value but also a mystical, otherworldly creation and the power of reflection was at once enlightening and terrifliing. This supernatural otherness has faded in modern conceptions and contemplations, though mirrors still retain the ability to reawaken older anxieties. Even when we see them every day, rnirrors expose (or perhaps only hint at) a psychological fear that we still have not managed to work out. Horror, as a literary genre and form of expression, seems the best way to explore this fear. Good scary stories manage to frighten us while at the same time encouraging us to analyze just what it is that we are afraid of. "Gaze" is a story which explores the mirror's power over the human mind and the fears which are aroused by the reflected images.

As I mentioned, mirrors are in no way alien to horror, but they have not been treated in quite this way before. Cadieux 98

My story is centered around the construction of a device known as a psychomanteum, a mirrored chamber used to achieve various supernatural ends. The concept is obscure but not altogether foreign. The device seems to have appeared around the same time as attractions like the funhouse or Versailles'famous Galerie des Glaces, though particular historical examples are difficult to find. One recorded historical instance of a psychomanteum appears in a footnote in Otto

Rank's "The Double" (73) wherein he recounts the 1913 case of a young London woman placed in such a chamber as punishment for infidelity. Another example is the room Raymond Moody describes as part of his experiment in Reunions: Wsíonary Encounters with Departed Loved

Ones, which was first published in the 1970s. But as Moody himself points out, along with Rank

and Sabine Melchior-Bonnet, the basic concepts behind the psychomanteum appear over and

over throughout history and in numerous cultures around the world. A good example of something similar to a psychomanteum which appeared in the ancient world would be the oracle's

cave that Pausanias mentions inhis Guide to Greece (283-4).

The psychomanteum is an advanced cre.ation based on the principles of catoptromancy,

divination by means of a mirror. I say advanced because of the scientific and technological ad-

vances required to make such a chamber functional but also because of the multiplicity and re-

finement of so many theories and superstitions surrounding mirrors that resulted in the imagining

of such a unique contraption. Because mirrors are now so readily accessible, it is far too easy to

forget the great value they once held and the allure and mystique that people once felt towards

their reflections. It is partly this far-reaching human obsession with mirrors that compels the nar-

rator to carry out his own experiment. His first experience rouses a curiosity that is only fed by

his discovery of so many varying treatments of mirrors and this leads him down a path of obses- Cadieux 99

sion as he continues to explore what mysteries are contained within the mirror's reflective sur-

face.

The mirror is something of a dichotomous creation. Throughout history it has received both negative and positive interpretations. Sabine Melchior-Bonnet describes in great detail how mirrors have been viewed as both wondrous and disturbing objects (101). In medieval Christian belief especially, the mirror holds a spiritual duality. She points out that "God is the infinite model, the perfect, unique mirror without boundaries, containing all faces, all images and joining

all opposites, and he alone has the capacity to offer himself up to be seen" (Melchior-Bonnet,

1i9). Physical mirrors can offerthe image of the mystical union (118) but they are also the tools

and paraphernalia of witches and demons (187). She adds that "the brilliance of the instrument prevents the onlooker from fixing his gaze on anything else and with his attention captured, blinded, and turned inward, he begins to perceive supernatural communications, sometimes from

God, but more often from the devil" (189). When thinking of mirrors in this way, it is important to remember that modern-day mirrors are very different from what would have fuqctioned as mirrors in earlier periods. Likely the earliest possible example would be a reflecting pool but

Classical Greek or Roman mirrors would have been made from beaten and polished bronze, of- fering a very distorted reflection. Even in the Middle Ages and leading into the Industrial era,

glass mirrors \ryere extremely expensive and technological limits kept them quite small. V/ith this

in mind, it becomes clear that humanity has gone to considerable lengths to create an accurately reflective device. The narratoÍ ol"Gaze" is indeed particularly intrigued by mirrors but he soon realizes that he is connecting with a long and rich history of human interest in the mirror and what it reflects. He does not begin with the psychomanteum but, after researching mirrors and Cadieux 100 their connection with various supernatural beliefs, he becomes drawn to that specific device. The narrator's constant contemplation of his own reflection, while extreÍre, is not without precedent.

People have been drawn to their own reflections for avery long time.

Our own reflected images not only provide a way for us to observe our appearance but they are inextricably bound up in human psychology. This becomes clear in Melchior-Bonnet's history of the mirror but there are other psychological studies which focus on the reflected image, one such example being Otto Rank's work "The Double." An early instance of this kind of psychological connection to the reflection would be the story of Narcissus, the most prevalent version of which appears in Ovid. Sabine Melchior-Bonnet argues that this story can be seen as an archaic belief in the existence of a double (102). Indeed what the reflection reveals is a human fixation on a sort of duality between a person and some kind of counterpart. In Rank's reasoning,

"the primitive concept of the soul as a duality (the person and his shadow) appears in modern man in the motif of the double, assuring him, on the one hand, of immortality and, on the other, threateningly announcing his death" (xvi). At its most basic, the mirror can be seen as a means to visually perceive, or possibly even bring about, this doubling.

In"Gaze," the narrator's first two experiences offer a multiplicity of interpretations. In- deed, the narrator himself struggles with the possibility that the first encounter in the hardware store could have been brought about by exhaustion or other stresses. When the mirror f,rgure first appears its identity remains mysterious. At this point in the story the narrator has not worked out what he perceives as the mirror's mystery because the occurrences do not offer definitive answers. A shift in the story occurs when it becomes clear the f,rgure in the mirror is indeed the Cadieux 101

mirror-image of the nanator himself. The nature of this entity remains unexplained but one defi-

nite possibility is that it is some form of a double or a doppelganger.

It should come as no surprise that the double is just as prevalent a motif or element in lit-

erature as the mirror, as they are related concepts. While the double may appear in various gen-

res, it is well-suited to horror stories. Most stories that deal with such a figure end badly and are

often filled with a sense of tension and suspense. Likely the most effective and well known liter-

ary example of this appears in "The Strange Case of Dr. Jeþll and Mr. Hyde" but other examples would be The Prívate Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinnerby James Hogg as well

EdgarAllan Poe's stories "William Wilson" and "The Fall of the House of Usher." The appear-

ance of the double is at the very least a threat, if not a promise of death but this inherent threat

posed by the double is not exclusive to a physically tangible body. The reflected/doubled image

provided by the mirror can exact the same kind of menace. The young woman placed in the mir-

ror chamber, as mentioned by Rank, is a perfect example of this. As punishment for infidelity to

her lord, this woman was placed in a mirror-lined room for a period of eight days, so that she

might contemplate her own image and mend her ways. But in this case, by reflecting the ob-

server's gaze,the mirror becomes confrontational. On the eighth day the woman began smashing

the mirrors with her bare hands, unable to endure her own accusatory glance any longer (Rank,

73). The reflected image can become an identity in itself, functioning as an enemy or rival to the

original identity of the observer. In this way, the mirror can become a doppelganger all on its

own.

For this reason the shift in"Gaze" I mentioned above, wherein the mirror figure is re-

vealed as a double of the narrator, triggers a sense of increased threat for the narrator but for the Cadieux 102 reader as well. For the rest of the story the naffator wrestles with whether or not he believes that threat to be a tangible danger to himself. At the sarne time, his obsession with this figure grows until nothing else in his life is of any consequence. All that matters is solving the mysteries of the mirrors and of this mirror-man. The story tracks the growth of the narrator's obsession and his psychological descent into possible madness.

The narrator's psychology is foregrounded, in large part, because of the first-person perspective of the story. However, the link between human psychology and the mirror is a natural one and not chosen at random for narrative purposes. The mirror and the mirror-image are important to many literary psychological, and social theories. One example of considerable importance is Jacques Lacan's theory of the mirror stage as outlined in his essay "The Mirror Stage as

Formative of the 'I'Function as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience." This is an incredibly intricate psychoanalytic theory but, for brevity's sake, in a few of Lacan's own words: "the function of the mirror stage thus turns out, in my view, to be a particular case of the function of ima- gos, which is to establish a relationship between the organism and its reality" (78). In his exami- nation of terror literature, Terry Heller provides an effective breakdown of Lacan's mirror stage, noting that

the child, looking into the mirror or some equivalent (e.g. the gaze of others), conceives

of the possibility of being a hannonious whole like those he sees around him. Then the

child comes to recognizethat this image of desire is the image of himself. To appropriate

the image, he must symbolize it, give it graspable form. This symbolizingrequires the

mastery of language by which the idealized self becomes available to the child. However, Cadieux 103

in symbolizing the image, the child creates a pennanent split between his self (subject)

and his "I," the image that he strives to duplicate (90-91).

There is a polarity of emotion here, as the child is jubilant to discover it is himself who is re-

flected (Lacan,76) while at the same time there is the anxiety of being a single self thrust into a word of other selves over which the subject has no control. According toLacan, the mirror stage

comes about at a particular stage of a child's infancy. It is a formative experience, but one that is

completed early in life. However, the dread of a double or doppelganger may serve as an example of the lasting anxiety of the mirror stage, an anxiety which remains well after infancy and indeed rnay never fully work itself out. The separation of the "self ' and the "I" is a form of doubling, one that possibly gives way to a struggle for control over the single body between them.

For the narrator of "Gaze," the fear of the mirror f,rgure increases once it becomes clear that the image is recognizable as himself but that he is unsure of his own control over that image. The figure in the mirror, despite the visual similarity, is not a "self' that he has created or that he can control. He becomes Qonvinced that the mirror-man is not simply his own reflection but a separate entity. By the end of the story he no longer sees his own reflection; he recognizes only the mysterious mirror figure. Melchior-Bonnet describes a situation like this in which a divided subject no longer recognizes itself and actually deserts the body, dismissing the reflection, in order to escape the persecuting double (257). Perhaps such a crisis recalls the anxiety of the mirror stage, the infant's inability to exert total control over the self. And the mirror irnage, if not under the control of the observer, is potentially dangerous. This fear seems to exist in certain animals

(i.e. birds or fish which attack their reflections) and while it may seem that humans have gained control over this kind of impulse, by the story's end the narrator, too, attacks his reflection. Cadieux 104

The narrator's struggle with his constmcted self is a major element of the story. Heller out-

lines how the achievement of identity through such a construction is a simultaneously pleasur-

able and painful process. On the one hand it is a uniquely human ability to become a self, but

there is also the pain of giving up certain desires and potentials that do not coincide with the self that is ultimately chosen (Heller, 195). It seems natural to suggest, then, that even after the initial

construction of the self there is still the possibility for anxiety and pain should the chosen self be revealed as unsatisfactory. Indeed this is likely to give way to a serious identity crisis. In"Gaze," the odd occulrences with the mirrors begin when the narrator is most fully confronted with the

dissatisfaction he feels with his own life. The self he now inhabits has failed to fulfill his desires

or potentials and it is through a confrontation with the mirror, with his o\¡/n accusatory gaze,that he fully realizes this.

But the construction of a "self is not a self-contained process. To return to Heller's discus- sion of the mirror stage, the gaze of others functions as an equivalent to the mirror. Melchior-

Bonnet argues that the conflict in the Narcissus story aris.es from his refusal of the mediation of others in the construction of his self (106). By virtue of reclusiveness, the narrator in"Gaze" loses the mediation of others as he retreats further into himself. This process began before the actual beginning of the story as he secluded himself partly out of shame about his failed aspira- tions, but it is greatly aggravated by his growing obsession with mirrors and the psychomanteum.

As he loses the gaze of others, sinking deeper into his own solitude, his own reflected gazebe- gins to stand in for this lack. Not only is the narrator dissatisfied with his constructed self, but the very process of constructing his self is also disrupted and arguably tainted by these factors. Cadieux 105

The first-person perspective of the journal form as well as the inquisitive nature of this particular narrator pulls these fears into the foreground of the story. The narrator writes the joumal

in the hope that it will one day be read. He uses the journal not merely to record, but in an effort

to better understand and explain his own experiences. While this could be interpreted as a symp-

tom of his growing obsession with his own experiment, the journal also suggests a certain provo-

cation towards disclosure. The narrator needs to tell what is happening to him. In discussing sto-

ries with first-person narration, Heller notes that "the need to tell may be seen as the narrator's

hope to achieve distance over time and to become an object for himself or herself'(179). The

occunences with the mirrors and the confrontation with the mirror-man are horrifying experi-

ences for the narrator but he is able to imagine an outside influence (the reader of the joumal)

who can corroborate the events. This behavior recalls what Freud refers to as "reality testing" in

his theory of the uncanny. In the face of an experience beyond frightening and reaching into the

realm of the uncanny, there is a need to question and prove the rnaterial reality of the strange

phenomena (Freud, 949). As the narrator feels a growing separation between his self and his. im-

age, he uses the journal and the idea of an objective reader to veriff his own experience.

Though even the need to tell may not do enough to explain why the narrator is compelled

to push forward with the experiment even once it has begun to so utterly teniff him. But much

as his obsession with the mirror taps into an existing human interest, his desire to seek out some-

thing so horrifuing is not completely alien. Hurnan curiosity is often drawn to what we con-

sciously find displeasing. We are often compelled to witness what we do not want to see. Perhaps

more helpful than this is the notion of cosmic fear, exemplified in the stories of H. P. Lovecraft.

Noel Carroll discusses Lovecraft's notion of cosmic fear as an "exhilarating mixture of fear, Cadieux 106 moral revulsion, and wonder" (Carroll, 162). Not unlike the uncanny, cosmic fear goes beyond simply being afraid. It is somewhat akin to the sublime: a sense of awe and wonder so vast that it arouses terror. This feeling, while producing some anxiety, is not devoid of a certain kind of enjoyment. The narrator begins to experience this when he first begins his research but it only be-

comes more and more powerful as the occurrences with the mirrors continue and grow in inten-

sity. And even as he becomes more afraid, he is drawn further into the experience. He does not

conquer fear, but the awe aroused by his experiences allows him to push past it.

The construction of a self and the confrontation of the mirror double may do much to explain why the narrator might be afraid, but this is not the same as explaining why "Gaze" works

as a scary story. To bring up Freud once more, he notes that "we should differentiate between the

uncanny that we actually experience and the uncanny that we merely picfure or read about"

(948). The constructed self of the narrator is besieged in the story but there is also a separation of

constructed selves involved in the act of reading. This occurs between the real reader, the irnplied

reader, and often the narrator of a work. The real reader is, of course, the actual person sitting

down with the physical text of the work. The implied reader is the reader imagined by the author,

for whom he is creating the work. It could be argued that"Gaze" has two versions of the implied

reader as there is the implied reader to whom I, as the author, have presented the work but the

narrator, too, imagines an irnplied reader. And then there is the narrator who functions as another

self as a result of the f,rrst-person form of the story. Already the reader is bound up in a confusing

mass of constructed selves and this confusion may trigger an anxiety not altogether dissimilar

from the one aroused by the mirror stage. Cadieux 107

Other than this jumble of readers and selves, the first-person perspective of the journal form achieves a number of effects over the real reader of the story. The journal form sffengthens the connections and blurs the distinctions between the various selves (implied/real reader and narrator). In discussing terror literature which uses the journal form, Terry Heller argues that one purpose of such a form is "to identifrT the narrator and the implied reader for as long as possible.

Insofar as the narrator reacts plausibly to his situation, he seems reliable. The longer this reliability continues in a daily joumal, the more fully the implied reader identifies with the writer" (96-

97).He continues that fiction of this kind mirrors the mirror stage, in that "it offers the reader a version of an 'I'to try" (182). Within the jumbled confusion of created selves, the "real" reader experiences a connection with the narrator in a way that allows for a convergence of experience.

The real reader adopts the "I" of the narrator, if only for a time.

But herein lies something of a cornplication. Salomon points out that, in horror fiction,

"diaries, journals, letters have the strength of concreteness, vividness, emotional intensity, but they are forever tainted by the possibility of subjective bias" (78). Throughout "Gaze," there is the question of the reliability of the narrator. Do the occurrences with the mirrors really take place or are they entirely a product of the narrator's troubled mind? Are the psychological and physical changes in his character symptoms of a mental illness that has manifested partly in visual hallucinations in the mirrors, or are these changes the result of real encounters with a mirror double? The journal form is able to raise these questions without ever answering them. Because the narrator's own words are all that is presented, there is no way to either corroborate or refute them. His version of events is all the reader has, and thus the reader must arrive at some conclusion with only this limited and likely biased infonnation. Following in Todorov's line of think- Cadieux 108 ing, it is this ambiguity which most greatly affects the real reader of the work. This particular reading circumstance can have a real effect on the reader because "only when there is troubling ambiguity about how to interpret the events does any kind of discomfort threaten the implied reader" (Heller, 32).Thejournal form, because of the unverifiable quality of the events and the strain placed on constructed selves, is able to make the uncanny experiences that are read about into a genuinely uncanny experience for the reader.

It is this kind of narrative effect that Heller is most interested in as he examines works that he considers as pure fantastic tales, using Todorov's terminology from The Fantastic.For Heller, the terror of such tales reaches out to the actual reader of the text, not simply acting as a reflection of the feelings of characters in the work. He notes, "in uncanny tales of terror and in horror thrillers of various kinds, if the real reader is really terrif,red, it is by accident. Most popular horror fiction aims to instill a sense of thrill in the reader (or viewer depending on the medium) but still employs strategies of distance. The reader is engaged but protected from any feelings of true fear. Those tales desire an audience susceptible enough to the images they present to be thrilled, but not so susceptible as to be unprotected by the strategies of distance and closure they employ"

(Heller, 107). He discusses more explicitly the notion of anti-closure, tales that deny the reader a

conclusive either/or explanation of tenifuing events. His examples are Henry James"'Turn of the

Screw" and EdgarAllan Poe's "Ligeia" and "The Fall of the House of Usher," none of which

completely support or deny supernatural explanations and all of which have proven to be influen-

tial upon my own story. He argues that this anti-closure actually breaks the boundary between the

reader and the text and the real reader experiences real feelings of terror. And much like cosmic

fear, this inability to arrive at a satisfying conclusion is at once troubling and pleasing. Salomon Cadieux 109

argues that "we now read not to solve or interpret mystery so much as to acknowledge or perhaps even succumb to it" (84).

"Gaze" makes use of this sort of anti-closure. As already mentioned, it is not clear whether or not the experiences with the mirrors actually happen or whether they exist only in the narrator's troubled mind. One implication of the journal form, especially when dealing with stories of suspense, is that the narrator survives whatever troubles arise. After all, he has managed to survive long enough to write the journal. Though the story contained within the narrator's journal comes to a definite end, the overall outcome is not definitively settled. He survives long enough to write the last words, but there is a suggestion that he will not survive long, or even irnmedi- ately, after that. Because the narrative effectively ends when the joumal does, this question is never resolved. It is up to the reader to decide which explanation he or she finds more satisfoing.

If Heller and Salomon are correct, it is exactly this lack of closure which accounts for both the feelings of fear and the sense of enjoyment evoked by a good horror story.

Throughout the writing of this story I was greatly influenced by the ghost stories of the

Victorian period and other authors of the nineteenth century such as EdgarAllan Poe, Henry

James, Ambrose Bierce, H. P. Lovecraft and many others. Interestingly enough, it is during that period that the psychomanteum became most popular. Though "Gaze" is set in the present day, the journal form and the epigraphs are very old-fashioned, serving as something of an homage to the many stories and dark tales that have served as my inspiration. I hope that my story proves as unsettling, scary and ultimately enjoyable, as these classic tales. Cadieux I l0

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