Chapter One: Monsters in the Water

My brain knows that it’s broken. Somehow it knows that young girls are supposed to be afraid of things like the quiet dark that gathers at bedtime. I’m supposed to quiver with fear while imagining that there are monsters lurking in my closet, under my bed, or in the shadows.

Which is ridiculous, of course. Monsters only live in mirrors and other places where the barriers are thin. I think they must feed off the energy of reflected life because I see them in every reflection, just there, out of the corner of my eye. They stalk me through the shiny surfaces of our small town, as if I’m a particularly tasty treat they can’t wait to devour.

Other children splash in puddles for fun. I splash to kill the monsters.

Grandpa is the only one who believes me. I watched one day as he carved me a waterfall into the hillside of his backyard. It fountains up and flows over the rockery, pouring into the waiting pond below. Grandpa knew that I would be able to trap the monsters there. He’s powerful and wicked smart like that.

Every Saturday I make the pond my practice place. I perch on one of the rough brown rocks encircling it and stare into the water. It is here that I teach the monsters to fear me. Their movements are slower in the pond, almost sluggish. I can meet their bestial gazes and match them, stare for stare. They are not used to being seen and slowly I begin to make them nervous.

I clutch a handful of pebbles and toss them into the depths, watching the ripples eat the monsters whole. I’m the one who’s devouring now, and I learn that I can make them ripple and fade while my own world remains untouched. When I sit by Grandpa’s pond, I trade fear for power. I am Grace Armstrong, puddle-splasher and monster-killer, and I’m eleven-years-old.

Grandpa digs his thickly-veined hands into the soil next to the waterfall, and draws out plants and flowering shrubs with the deft movements of his fingers. Grandpa is ashamed of his hands. He does the dishes every day to clean the grime from the garage and the dirt from the garden from his fingernails, and Grandma loves him for it. But I think they are beautiful, wonder-making things.

“How many killed today, Gracie?” he asks, soil-stained hand briefly grazing my shoulder, then hidden wrist-deep in his faded overalls.

“Forty-seven,” I reply, trying to keep the smugness out of my voice.

He crouches down next to me and fixes his gaze on the water, his grey-speckled moustache twitching the way it does when he’s going over something in his mind. I breathe in the smell of him while I wait for his words, the musty odors of earth and engine grease heavy in the air around him.

Grandpa’s words are always slow to come, and when at last they fall from his lips they are heavy, ponderous things. His English would be better if he spoke more but I am glad he doesn’t. I like the Scandinavian shadings to his voice and the way his uncertainty means his words always mean something.

“There never used to be so many,” he finally says. “If there’s more coming each time then that tells us something. More urgency. More need. Cover that mirror in your bedroom, Gracie. You cover everything that shines and keep yourself safe at night.”

He takes a pebble from my hand and casts it into the water. Droplets land, cool and wet on my fingers. “They can’t touch me, Grandpa,” I remind him as I shake the water off.

For a moment it is almost harder to hold his gaze than the monsters’ and a small worm of doubt begins wriggling in my stomach. His pale blue eyes hold mine a moment longer and then he nods, breaking off his silent instruction. Yes, I can kill monsters, but Grandpa has reminded me how foolish it would be not to be afraid of them.

After Mama and Papa pick me up and take me home I stand in front of my bedroom mirror, blanket sliding from my hand to pool on the floor. It is hard to disobey Grandpa, but I decide to be brave. I am a monster killer, and I will not hide from them.

***

When I’m twelve-years-old I see him for the first time. The boy in the mirror. He’s the first image I see straight and true, the first image that is not claws and teeth and blurring shadows. I press my freckled nose against the mirror, fogging it as I drink in the sight of him.

He is paler than the night-darkened bedroom around me, just as everything in the mirror is. Pale and gray, as if his very image suspects that he is not as real as I am. I am not afraid but I tell myself that he is probably only a picture of a person, just in case my broken brain tries to unhinge me.

I can see his lips moving but there’s no sound, and the mirror does not fog from his side. Does he have breath to fog it with? Is he real? Is he a monster in disguise? I dismiss that last thought. Twelve years has taught me that the monsters are not clever beasts.

He steps closer and reaches out to touch the silvery surface that separates us. I think he is touching where my hair is and I tug at it, self-conscious. It is Anne-with-an-e red and repels hairbrushes the way oil repels water. The boy in the mirror seems in awe of it and I resist the urge to scowl.

His hair is boring to me, a dark brown that sets off his light blue eyes. I stare at him hungrily though, worried that he will leave before I have made sense of him. Is he dangerous like Grandpa thinks the monsters are, or is he in danger from them? Can he hurt me or should I be warning him?

My mind is a tumult of questions that the boy can’t give answers to. His mouth is working, trying to tell me something. Ask me something? I imagine that he is demanding to know who I am and what I am doing in his mirror, and the thought chases my questions away, makes me laugh. I see him smile in response and touch the mirror’s surface again, staring questions at me instead of mouthing them.

And then everything is claw and tooth and shadow and he is gone, leaving me to stare angrily at the monsters who have taken his place. I have always hated them. Always secretly feared them. But I have never, never been so angry. I feel as if the boy was a present that they have stolen away and I yearn for Grandpa’s pond and to have fists full of pebbles. Instead, I stare at the monsters till they squirm and edge away into the darkness.

I dream of teleporting and spaceships that night and wake up wondering if he is an alien, this boy hiding in my mirror. Perhaps he is real after all and I will be snatched into his shadowy world to be probed and dissected. I should be scared by the thought, but my broken brain is only concerned with my pyjamas, which are red and faded and have holes in the hem. They are hideous and not at all suitable for being kidnapped in.

The next day I slide myself into the crook of Mama’s arm and tell her that I want pyjamas I can dance in. I want something white and floaty because my red pyjamas simply will not do. They are not right for twirling.

Mama laughs delightedly, as I knew she would, and readily agrees. I am a tree-climber and a dirt-digger, not a dancer. She knows this but doesn’t believe it yet. Mama wants to believe that I will dance ballet like her some day. That I will feel my feet fly off the floor and be carried away by the magic of it. She likes to talk about destiny, as if being born in the middle of a dance studio floor means I have hidden talent and grace.

She named me Grace, hoping I would have some, but maybe she should have named me Hope instead. It gave her hope, seeing how the scene of her daughter’s birth reflected into forever in the studio mirrors. Mama knew the images continued beyond what her human eyes could see, and she tells me often that it had to mean something. That I was meant to be born in such a place with images of eternity crowding around me. She explains away my fixation on mirrors and monsters with this story of hers, and it makes a sort of sense.

My imagination swallows her stories whole and then throws them back up onto my mind-canvas as monster shadows and now as a boy who hides in my bedroom mirror. It’s impossible to know what real is when you’ve been born into a made-up story.

Mama and my broken brain. What a pair they make.

***

The stand mirror in my bedroom is enormous and there is too much room for monsters in it. Sometimes I drag it to my window and tilt it upwards, watching it fill with stars and darkness. I pretend that if I fill it with other things then the monsters can’t get in, but I know it doesn’t work like that. Neither does covering the mirror with a blanket the way Grandpa advises. When I can’t see the monsters, I begin to hear them. I start to think that I can feel their hot, fetid breath on my cheek as I struggle to sleep.

I prefer seeing them to smelling them. Anyone would, really.

My new nightdress has lacy sleeves with pale pink ribbons woven through the cuffs. It is the sort of thing that only the very young or the very old can wear, and I giggle as I hunch over and pretend I am wrinkly and decrepit. And then I spring up, pirouette, and turn to stare myself down, daring the monsters to come.

I’m a rough and tumble girl. I am usually dirt-dusted and rumpled. But tonight my hair is sleek and damp from my evening bath and I am swathed in white flannel. I wonder if the monsters will recognize me, but mostly I wonder about the boy. It has been eleven days. I tell myself that I didn’t ask for the new nightdress because of him, that I just want to do the human race proud in case there are aliens in my mirror waiting to pounce.

It’s all planned out in my mind, the way I’ll react if the aliens do come. The way I’ll struggle valiantly, chin high, hazel eyes sparking with defiance. I even have a speech planned out, denouncing their subversive attack on our planet. My voice will throb with indignation and they will be moved to whatever the alien equivalent of tears is, and my simple, heartfelt speech will pave the way for peace between our peoples.

Either that or they’ll whack me over the head or death-ray me before I get two words out.

The patchwork quilt Mama made me swallows me whole as I sink into the bed. I dig my fingers into the worn fabric and breathe in the scent of lilac laundry soap, trying to keep the mirror out of my line of sight. Once again I’m playing pretend, but not the way twelve-year-olds usually do. I am pretending that I don’t want to see the boy again, and that I haven’t decided that this is the night he should return. I am pretending not to care, which is a silly thing to do. Why lie to the one person who actually knows the truth of it?

I stay awake past 2am and wake up on the floor a few hours later. The mirror towers above me, and pre-dawn light has turned its surface shimmery and white, as if to match my new nightdress. The frame squeaks when I tilt it away from the window, the dark-stained oak grating against itself. I trace my fingers along the grooves of the rounded edges and then grip it, fingernails pressing painfully against the hard wood.

The mirror is empty. He didn’t come.