My first impression of Castle Specfel was of smoke, pillars of both white and grey from what had to be a dozen different fireplaces. I was bitterly cold after a fortnight of travel, and I hadn’t truly felt warm in days. The last week of my journey had been plagued with a thick, dense mist that soaked through all my clothes and put my horse in a foul mood.
Often, when I tell this tale to whatever will listen, I tell of my second impression, about how a cloud cut across the milky sun and cast half the castle in deep darkness. I fancied myself a poet then, as all young men who have tasted the sweet fruit of first love and the bitter antidote of first loss. I thought I saw a line for a sonnet, perhaps an ode, of the bittersweet feeling of a journey ending. Of course, there was nothing bitter in my head about a warm fire and a soft bed. But crafting any poem was an excuse to read it to the lovely Rosa, who perhaps could be persuaded back into my arms if I only had the right combinations of syllables and sentiments.
If I were a better poet, perhaps I would have understood the clouds and their splay of light as a sign, rather than merely waxing upon it.
But then, the cloud drifted away, without the haste and dramatics of a real omen, and I put my heels into horseflesh and rode toward the gate.
Lord Specfel welcomed me at the ivy-strangled gates. A rather disheveled man, for all his supposed wealth, Specfel wore a jacket that reached his knees–an unfashionable length–and the elbows were patched with a slightly too-bright shade of yellow. I refrained from commenting, but his garb made me question the great house as he led me to my chambers. Was that paint peeling beneath the windows? A water stain on the ceiling or just the dancing light from the candles? Dust on the frames of the paintings? This was not the wealthy cousin with whom I’d expected to reside. What else had my mother said of her brother’s son? An eccentric? A recluse?
My host stopped outside a guest chamber that smelled stagnant, though a small fire blazed and clean linens had been laid on the bed. “The bell will sound for supper,” Specfel said. “I expect you’ll want to rest and eat before you start your studies.”
“That would be most kind, gracious cousin,” I said with a little bow and a flourish that I thought made me look the part of a traveling bard. The gesture had had some success with the maidens in the small towns I’d passed through, but Specfel’s mouth tightened, and I felt immediately like a fool. I thanked him and resolved to make myself worthy of his generosity, though it would not be until much later that I understood the complications of that sentiment.
Supper, at the very least, should have been a warning, but I was a young man, intent on seeing only what I wished, and what I wished was to have made the right choice. I’d suffered too much already to turn my back on Specfel. And wasn’t a quiet retreat what I had wanted?
Specfel was already seated in the great hall at the head of a heavy wood table when I arrived. Tallow candles smoked above the tarnished silver platters. “Eat,” he said, not bothering to stand. He was perhaps a decade older than me, but a weariness in his face made him seem much older than that. “There is little ceremony here, I’m afraid.”
“Indeed.”
We ate mostly in silence. I tried several conversations, but Specfel’s replies were abrupt, sometimes even harsh. He answered questions about his library, which was the superficial reason for my trip here. Though his knowledge of his books impressed me, soon I had run out of energy to spin the wheels of his mind, and I finished my meal–a thick stew that was hot and well-seasoned, though the mutton was a bit dry–in silence.
I was about to make my excuses to leave when Specfel, finishing the last sip of his wine, said, “I am a man alone, here. I must apologize for that.”
“That is nothing to apologize for,” I said.
He shook his head. His eyes, a watery blue, were shot with red. Perhaps that was not his first chalice of wine this evening. “I have two servants here, and my shadow. For some, loneliness grows into a kind of strength. For me, it has created a softening, like a tree that rots from the inside.”
I nodded as though I understood. I had no idea, not yet. I thought he spoke of loneliness like I felt, that ache of rejection, of showing one’s soul and seeing it cast aside for another. Heartbreak feels like loneliness to the uninitiated, but it is merely a single loss, one stone removed from a path. A hurdle, but surmountable. Specfel’s suffering held the depth of a crevasse: impenetrable and vast. But I did not see it in his eyes, even though he stared at me so fixedly. I saw only my own broken heart and thought that this man, too, must have loved and lost.
I have said before, I was a fool then.
Instead of pressing my cousin further, I cast around quickly for a change in subject. The great hall, only sparsely lit and even more sparsely decorated, had so little to comment on that I found myself talking about the shape, which was rather shorter than it appeared from the outside. “Is it a solar on the other side?” I asked, pointing to the wall, where a fire sparked in a hearth shaped like a wolf’s snarling mouth.
“Excuse me?”
I explained my observation that this room had seemed elongated and rectangular on my ride to the gates, but now, in the chamber itself, the walls were squat like a square.
Specfel stood up so violently that his chair tumbled backward. “There is no room on the other side,” he growled. “There is nothing there.”
“I’m sorry. I must be mistaken.”
“You are.” He took several great breaths. “Tomorrow, we will go to the library, and your work can begin.”
“Thank you.” I stood so I could bow again, this time without the flourish.
He swept from the room, and I was left alone.
Behind the walls, I heard the scramble of mice. I retreated to my small, stuffy chamber and slept very poorly indeed.
Besides my ominous arrival, the first few days at Castle Specfel soothed me. All havens after a long journey are primed for such comfort, though not so well-primed that I didn’t notice the lumps in my mattress and the cobwebs in the corners. The longer I stayed, the more I noticed the inconsistency of the castle itself, how hallways seemed to end halfway between places, and how rooms terminated, abrupt and blunt, in spaces that should have extended much farther. I had a mild sense of claustrophobia, no doubt brought on by the thick walls and only sporadically placed windows, but more than that, I felt as though I was permanently lost, unable to get my bearings in the strange and sprawling place.
The library became my sanctuary, full of books that, if old, were lovingly cared for. The organization of the shelves, which reached from floor to ceiling, had no logical pattern, or at least none that I could determine. The huge pair of windows seemed the only spot in the castle where the glass was clean. I curled into the armchairs with tea–stale but brewed strong–and whatever book interested me that day. My studies before had swept over a broad range of topics, a superficial dance across academia that had almost no practical use. Old tales and philosophy, a dash of history, but nothing complete or definitive. In Specfel’s library, I pulled books off dozens of shelves, unrelated to anything but my interests, and stacked them on the table by my favorite chair. Perhaps it was my cousin’s favorite chair as well, for the seat caved inward, and the threading on the arms hung long and frayed. The chair opposite seemed to have gone through just as much wear, another sign I neglected to notice, at first.
It took a week before I began to see things for what they were. Books rearranged, not by my cousin’s hand nor by some servant’s, but as if specifically to annoy me. Sounds behind the walls that kept me awake until my eyes grew red and my mind turned round and round, and the first grey streaks of dawn touched the sky. After every meal, generous servings of food were left on the table but gone by the next mealtime. These signs pointed to more than just the work of the two maidservants, whom, the dust suggested, had little inclination to work harder than strictly necessary.
Perhaps, had I been properly suspicious from the start, I would have been able to leave Specfel before anything came of these oddities. Perhaps I would have saddled my horse and bade farewell to my cousin and never thought again of the strange castle and its stranger inhabitants.
Perhaps I would have escaped.
Instead, I met the creature on the other side of the wall.
The man on the other side of the wall, the mirror man, as I came to call him. He first appeared as a shadow, a movement in the corner of my eye, a rustle of curtains in the wake of his passing. I wanted to believe he was no more than a dream, perhaps a nightmare, but then, one night on my way back from the garderobe, I caught sight of his hand, illuminated by a silver splash of moonlight, long-fingered and pale as the belly of a fish. It clutched at the edge of the wall, and I knew if I rounded the corridor corner, I would see him with my eyes instead of merely my mind, and I knew that would be too much to bear.
I withdrew, huddling back into the golden circle of my candle. The mirror man’s hand released, each finger coming undone from the stone, moving in a way that was both brittle and aberrant, hardly of this world at all. I barely dared to breathe as the creature retreated. I had the impression of a wild animal: fierce, but just as afraid of me as I was of it.
I confronted my cousin the following day. “Who else lives here?” I’d witnessed the boarded-up rooms and corridors to nowhere. Plenty of space for a man to live between the walls, but what could drive a man to live like that? Or drive my cousin to abide such a creature living in his own house? Guests were one thing, but harboring some milky monster was another entirely.
My cousin, weary beyond his years, only sighed. “I suppose it is better that you know.”
“Know what?” I’d seen the mirror man with my own eyes. I tried to recall his words my first night at Specfel. Something about his loneliness. Something more about his shadow. However, the mirror man seemed more composed of light than darkness. I recalled the moon-colored skin of his strangely stretched fingers.
My coward of a cousin looked at me, shook his head, and left the room as though I were the odd one.
The mirror man showed himself to me again. Or perhaps I caught him. Late in the library, I looked up from my book to see a flash of naked white disappearing beyond a shelf. I put my book down, splaying it on its stomach to preserve my page, and rushed after the intruder. “Stop,” I called out, but my voice graveled in my throat. Who was I to command the mirror man, who had lived at Specfel long before my arrival and would, most likely, do so after I had abandoned it?
The shadow, the specter, had disappeared anyway.
For a moment, I wondered if I had imagined it.
But he was real, replacing things throughout the castle, eating the remnants of our meals. No one spoke of him, not even the maids, when I cornered them with my questions. He was like a tumor growing on Specfel, sucking the resources and soul of the castle, eating away at what little life it had left.
Specfel crumbled around me, and the mirror man lived on.
I wondered if I could kill him. Surely, no one would mind. But soon, I saw that as a child’s option, brute strength over cerebral prowess, and I had no knowledge of what fell magics the mirror man might have learned in the walls. Murder was too risky, and my best bet was to scare him off somehow, to banish him from my cousin’s castle and life.
I felt no guilt or sympathy as I plotted. What else could I expect but exuberant praise? I might be hailed the savior of Specfel afterward; maybe even, since my cousin was childless, its heir. Pride filled me like wine, warm and cloudy, my dreams of tomorrow surpassing any true goal of the day. It wasn’t until my cousin set a plate for his hungry ghost after meals that my anger returned, just as fuddling as my pride. Here it was, my family’s castle’s meager resources, going to a creature that was perhaps not even a man.
I looked for ways to the mirror man’s abode. I tried locked doors and shifted the boards around blocked halls. I found sloppily made brick walls and cobwebs like gossamer. Filthy from my explorations, I bathed as often as I could, though the maids became decidedly frustrated by the amount of hot water I required.
I kept notes since the castle’s dead ends and weaving corridors were more labyrinthine than my mind could grasp. I kept my notes secret, writing in a little black leather book that fit in my jacket pocket during the day and under my pillow at night. I was afraid the mirror man would find it and learn of my plans. Perhaps he would somehow strike out against me. I was above murder, but was he?
Perhaps a week into my quest, my cousin prodded me on my studies. “You hardly spend time in the library anymore,” he said. “Are you coming to a conclusion, then?”
I had all but forgotten my original intent, or, at least, my excuse for coming. In fact, I rarely even dwelled on the lovely Rosa or the way I had thought my heart forever broken. I had a new fixation, and the mirror man devoured my thoughts while the memories of lovely Rosa’s lips only nibbled.
“Soon, I think,” I told my cousin. “I feel one revelation away from it.” One forgotten door, one hole in the defenses.
My cousin nodded, and I tried to sense his mood through his stoic expression. His jaw set tight. His shoulders slumped. Was this the position of a man defeated? Instead, I had the impression of a soldier tucking his chin and readying himself for the fall of a sword.
“What do you intend to do, then? Return?”
I blinked. First, I had to banish the mirror man, and after that, my wild fantasies took over. “I suppose it will be time.”
My cousin fingered the end of his spoon. Like most nights, dinner was a hearty soup, this one comprised of beans, wild onion, and chunks of stringy beef. “The wide world is a strange place.”
Soup rushed up my nose, and I choked on a laugh. “No world can be stranger than this,” I said.
My cousin’s resolute face hardened, lips pressing together. A pair of furrows appeared on the sides of his nose. In a flash, the expression passed, and I gathered my wits back. The soup burned in my sinuses, and I drank several large sips of wine to wash the sensation away.
“I’m sure you’ll be happy to have the castle back to yourself,” I said, placating as best I could.
Lord Specfel stared into his soup. “Ah, yes. To myself.”
The dread in his voice only confirmed my desire to dislodge the mirror man. The sooner, the better. That night, I lingered outside the great hall, listening as my cousin prepared the rich brown bread and a bowl for the mirror man. His ghost, I kept thinking. His tumor. How free my cousin will be soon, how unburdened.
I crept back into the hall when everyone else had departed, and I found a corner farthest from the massive fireplace, all shadowed and dark. The perfect place to hide until I could spring my trap. I had with me not a sword, but a large carving knife that could certainly get my point across.
I stared at the mantle as the fire dimmed. The marble-carved maw of the wolf seemed to flex in the flickering light, as though the wolf considered snapping down into the great hall at any moment. Only when my feet ached and the fire had spent itself into embers did I notice movement on the other side of the fireplace. It did not back up to a wall, as my cousin had so adamantly declared, but opened into another room. Into, I realized, the forgotten side of the castle. The mirror man’s lair.
Behind the coals, the mirror man’s white, bare feet padded back and forth.
My hand on the knife slicked with perspiration. This was it, then.
But the mirror man, as though he knew of my trap, did not sally forth to his food. The coals grew dimmer, and still his feet paced the length of the mantle. Waiting for me.
If I did not move now, I would lose my nerve. I bounded forward, ducking under the fangs of the carved wolf and keeping my feet light on the hot coal. Still, my soles smoked, but I made it to the other side.
The room I found myself in was a reflection of the great hall, from the beams in the ceiling to the placement of the long table, this one blanketed in even more dust. From the windows to the portraits on the wall, the details were exact, perfect and disorienting, though no wolf snarled into this forsaken room; I had entered the belly of it. My head swam, my bearings spinning as though my internal compass had been shaken.
And when I could grip the world again, before me stood the mirror man.
Perhaps he was as shaken as I, for he stood, watching me with wide, fathomless eyes. His skin was so pale and unblemished, I wondered if he had ever seen the sun. The darkness of the room, lit only by the dying embers, made him all but glow. He wore a tattered robe, stained filthy. It sagged on his small frame, and his delicate collar bones stuck out over the neckline.
My knife clattered to the ground. The mirror man was no man at all but a woman.
Time seemed to speed up, and I lagged behind. I moved too slowly as the mirror man–woman–darted through the mouth of the fireplace. I remained on the reflected side, stunned, trying to understand what exactly was going on.
Then I heard a thump as the mirror woman added a thick log to the fire. By the time I was close, her kindling had ignited, and the flames leapt too high to cross through.
“Stop!” I called out over the crackling blaze.
The mirror woman was a pale shadow behind the flames. She said nothing.
I watched her move about the dining hall, her face hidden by the wolf’s teeth. She bent and sipped the soup, ducking into hazy view. Then she scampered out of the room.
I tried to follow, making opposite turns down the grimy corridors. This side of the castle was less perfect of a reflection than I had first imagined, turning with awkward angles and walls through the centers of some rooms, while leaving others untouched. I watched for glimpses of her white limbs as she made her way expertly through Specfel.
After a minute or so, I lost sight of her, my hall turning in the opposite direction of hers. But I knew where she was going. She was headed to the entrance. She was leaving.
So I had succeeded, though it was not pride that sank into my bones as I made my way back to the reflection of the great hall. I felt tired and used, though I couldn’t place the feelings quite right. I sat in the filthy darkness, waiting for the flames to die until one of the maids came to take the mirror woman’s bowl.
“Help,” I called. “Find your lord. Or better yet, bring water to douse the blaze.”
Instead, she added more wood to the fire. I was sure she saw me on the other side, but she went about her task without comment.
“Help me, please.”
I shouted at her until she retreated, until my voice hurt in my throat, though perhaps that was from the smoke. I sank into a carved dinner chair, the twin of Specfel’s own, and waited.
The maids kept the fire up through the night, ignoring my protests. Perhaps the mirror woman had protested as well. Perhaps they were told to ignore the voices from the other side of the wall, no matter how urgently they screamed. I could wait, I told myself, and dozed fitfully for several hours until my cousin entered the opposite hall to break his fast.
“Cousin,” I called. The fire had been built up again. “It’s me. You must help me!”
Specfel crossed to the fireplace. His face wavered in the heat from the flames. “Must I?”
I furrowed my brows. “Order the fire out, and I shall explain everything.”
He shook his head. “I believe it is I who explained everything to you, dear cousin, your first night here. Did I not tell you of my weakness, that rot within me?”
“Yes, and the mirror man–woman!” I was full of nerves, and I had to shout to be heard over the flames. “She’s that rot!”
He frowned. “She was important to me. My shadow.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “You wanted her here?”
He turned, and his voice dimmed. His shoulders hunched. “I told you that my loneliness had ruined me. How it had turned me weak and soft.”
I could feel tears on my cheeks from the stinging smoke. “You must let me out!”
“I cannot be alone here, cousin. I need a shadow.”
Then Lord Specfel walked to his table and began to eat.
I howled and screamed, and when my voice grew too loud, a maid deposited more wood on the flames, and the roar of the fire drowned me out.
The day passed, long and fetid with smoke. I wept behind the wall of fire, behind the reflection of the castle, shunted into its darkest depths. And I began to understand all the signs laid before me, everything I had ignored in favor of my own interests. I thought again of the cloud above Specfel, that moment when I first arrived. Had it been white as the mirror woman’s hands or dark as the grime on my own? I thought about that cloud, splitting the castle into a half of light and another of shadow.
I should have seen the signs.
| Greta Hayer received her MFA at the University of New Orleans and has work appearing in Podcastle, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Cossmass Infinites, Outlook Springs, and others. She received a bachelor’s degree in history from the College of Wooster, where she studied fairy tales and medieval medicine. She lives in New Orleans with her husband and their three alien cats. Find her online @gretahayer. |  |