MIRRORS OF THE SOUL

Chapter 3: To Be Or Not To Be...There

He came to an intersection of hallways, taking the right-hand one.  Half way down it, he came upon a door that didn't match the rest of the doors.  He paused.  "Strange," he said softly, reaching out his hand to touch its smooth surface.
******************
He was a cautious man.  Stepping back a couple of paces, he studied the door.  Why, he wondered, would a door so very different from all the others be where it was?  And why had he not seen it before?  He knew he would have noticed it.  It was part of his job to notice things that were different, that didn't belong.  It was how he survived in his chosen career.  

 

Unbuttoning his jacket so his shoulder holster was in easy access, he stepped back to the door, touching it lightly again.  It felt slightly...cool. He frowned. The hotel was well heated.  None of the other doors were cool.  He looked back down the hall. No one was in sight.  Taking out a post-a-note from the little pad conveniently in his left breast pocket, he jotted quickly: "AM GOING TO CHECK IN HERE FOR CORT AND HANDO." He scribbled his name and stuck it at eye-level on the door.

The door opened inward to a small, dimly-lit area, more of a platform than a room, actually, as its single feature was a tightly-spiraling staircase made of metal mesh painted black. The hair on the back of his neck prickled as he stepped onto the platform and peered down, trying to discern...anything.  He knew better than to call out the names of those for whom he searched, knew that would only serve to attract possibly maleficent attention to his arrival.  Scarcely breathing, he slipped soundlessly down the steps, every muscle coiled, ready for action.

 

He stood just out from the bottom step, his left hand still on the railing.
The floor under his boots felt soft, slightly squishy, and he bent, pressing the fingers of his right hand into it.  It seemed to be made of thick layers of black vinyl.  Why? What in the hotel could possibly call for such a flooring?  

At first he thought he might be in some sort of climate control area, some combination of heating and cooling, but there were no sounds of machines working. There were no sounds at all.  He decided the whole space must be well insulated for whatever reason.  Tipping his head, he looked back up toward the distant top of the stairs, but the door had closed behind him and without the light it had permitted, the stairs just disappeared into blackness.  The muscle under his left eye twitched.  It was almost like being in a sensory deprivation chamber.  He didn't like it.  

One hand poised close to his opened jacket, the other extended antenna-like in front of him, he started walking away from the stairs.  It seemed as though he passed from one room into another.  He hadn't encountered any doorways but the flooring had become hard, even a bit slippery.  Again he bent down to touch it. Glass! He was walking on glass now.  Standing, he slid his gun from its holster.  

"Dad!"

He whirled.  A dim shape stood about ten feet from him.  He squinted, trying to take its measure.  The figure was slender, somewhat shorter than a man.

"Dad!"

He sucked in his breath, clamping his tongue between his lips.  It wasn't possible. Not here in Australia.  Not possible at all.  

"Hurry, Dad!"

"Henry?" he whispered hoarsely.  He'd last seen his 13 year old son at the edge of an English rugby field.  He took one long stride forward, his gun hand falling down to his side. "Henry?" he repeated.  "Is that you?"

"Dad!" the figure cried. "Don't let them...!"

The voice was cut off.  "HENRY!" he shouted.  His mind whirled.  Don't let them? Don't let...WHO?  

A frantic cry filled the darkness, followed by the sound of running feet and a door slamming. Terry ran forward, crashing hard into an unseen wall.  He went sprawling backwards, his gun skittering off into the darkness.  His head had slammed into the glass and he lay there blinking, trying to focus.  After a moment he was able to sit up, pressing one hand to the throbbing ache in his temple.  What had he run into? He peered in the direction where Henry had been standing.  

"Son?" he said softly, hesitatingly.  

"HELP ME!"

Terry sprang to his feet.  "Henry!" he shouted.  "Where are you?"

"I'm here, Dad!" came a responding cry that seemed to originate from everywhere at once.  "Find me! Hurry!"

At the sound of more running feet, he turned to look behind himself. But the sound continued up the wall and across the ceiling then suddenly was beneath him.  "FIND ME, Dad!  Before they...."

Terry's eyes were darting in every direction.  "I NEED you, Dad!" Henry called. "Save me! Please, Dad, find me! Save me!"

He moved forward, stepping into and through something, then became aware he was looking at his own back.  "What the...?" he muttered as his form turned, staring back at him.

"When were you ever there when he needed you?" his form said, its voice hard, cold.

"I...I...." Terry spluttered.

"Yeah? You were off to some part of the world saving other people, getting... paid...to save them." His form's lip curled in disdain.  "You've never been there for your own son...never."

"DAD!" Henry wailed, the sound circling around Terry, blowing his hair, lifting the flaps of his collar.  

"Son...?" Terry moaned, his hand extended, palm up, as he turned, trying to locate the source of the voice.

"Know why you can't find him?" his form taunted.  "Because you've almost never been with him.  You don't know him.  How can you find him if you don't know him?"

How could he argue with the truth?  He stopped turning and just looked at the reflection of his own form.  It was dressed in full camo, as he was, but was, additionally, loaded with weaponry, fairly bristling with it.  His reflection began to drop the weapons, one by one, letting them clatter to the floor, smiling grimly all the while.  "All these," it said, "all these... and you can't save your own son.  You can't even find him."  Glaring, it added, "What sort of father ARE you?"  

"NOOOOOOOO!" shrieked Henry.  "DON'T!"

"HENRY!" Terry shouted.  "I'm coming!"

His reflection laughed loudly.  "Coming, are you? Don't you mean...going?  Aren't you always...going?"  Reaching into its pocket, it threw something in Terry's face. "There! That's your most prized possession.  Not your son.  That!"

Terry stooped, picking up the object that had fallen at his feet.  He looked at it, his jaw set grimly.  It was his passport, worn and a bit tattered, every page stamped.  "Choices," his reflection continued, "every single stamp a choice you made to leave, each of them proof of what's important in your life."  Eyeing Terry, it asked, "What proof do you have of Henry's life?"

"He wants to be a pilot," Terry whispered, barely audibly.

"What say?"

"He wants to be a pilot," Terry repeated, clearing his throat.

"Ah! And did his mother tell you that?" the reflection mocked.

"No," Terry murmured, "he told me right before...."

"Right before you left for Hong Kong?"

Terry nodded.

"And why did you even bother?" the reflection asked, cocking an eyebrow.

"Bother?"

"Yes.  Why did you even bother becoming a father? You're certainly no good at it.  Here he is in mortal danger and you don't even know enough about him to know where to look for him."

Terry glanced from side to side.  "Henry!" he called.  "Shout again so I can find you!"

The reflection shook its head.  "The time for that is past.  You must find him now because you know where he would be."

Terry licked his lips, closing his eyes.  "I...don't...know."  He looked then at his reflection, his lashes blinking back tears.  "I have no idea." His shoulders sagged and he pressed one palm over his eyes, shaking his head slowly from side to side.

"You see," the hooded figure commented delightedly, leaning over the back of Himself's chair, "how when each of your characters is taken back to the context of his movie, they all have their particular fault line to which I can apply just the right amount of cracking pressure." He circled around the large chair, jamming his finger into Himself's cheek quite Commodusly.  "Your goosebump factors are nothing more than an outbreak of...zits!" he laughed.  "And now I must go gather my third statue."  He paused, looking back at Himself.  "Who, do you suppose, will be number...four?"

The photography session, such as it was, was over.  Maximus and Joimus walked together back to Himself's apartment to check on Dess.  "How's he doing?" the General asked Franki.

"He's sleeping like a, well, like a baby!" Franki chuckled.  "But I'm glad you're back.  John left a bit ago and I wanted to catch up to him before he got too far into the Botanic Gardens."  She blushed slightly. "Pigeons, you know.  There are a lot of pigeons in the park and he's never really completely gotten over what happened in Niagara Falls." (See: Toronto Tribulations)

Joimus smiled, understanding.  It was, indeed, Nash's mishap in the procurement of peripatetic pigeons within popcorn boxes that had led to his nearly going over the Canadian Falls.  Of course, that was how Franki had met the mathematician, changing her life forever.  

"Whew!" sighed Ute, nudging Laura.  "With a set-up as blatant as THAT, at least my Jeffrey and your Steve will be safe a while longer."  

"You think, then, that poor Nash will be the next character inadvertently to stumble across the strange door?" Laura replied, carefully not splitting her infinitive.  

"Without a doubt!" Ute said, smugly.  "Absolutely!"

"That was one strange photo session," Steve murmured to himself (he couldn't actually be murmuring it to Himself, now could he, as Himself was firmly, um, attached at the moment or, if one were to be being a bit Lachlanesque, for the moment...to a large chair somewhere deep in the mysterious bowels beneath Woolloomooloo Cove) as he walked a bit wearily down the hall toward his room in the W.  "I'm glad that's over!"

Turning a corner to avoid rounding it, a roll of film fell over the edge of his bag, rolling as rolls tend to roll down the hallway, coming to rest against the bottom of a strange doorway Steve had never noticed before.  

He pocketed the wayward roll that had rolled then, as he straightened, his eyes met the little post-a-note that had been earlier torn from the pad so conveniently found in the left breast pocket of a more camofied character.  Steve's seagreen eyes widened as he read the quickly jotted words in Terry's handwriting that was, admittedly, so similiar to his own.  "Cort AND Hando!" he whistled, not having as yet realized that anyone was amongst the great unaccounted-for. Setting his equipment down in the hallway ( a feat much, much, MUCH harder for the person
who had been the author of said note had he, of course, been so inclined ever to DO such a thing in the first place) he pressed the fingers of his right hand on the door. "Whyever would Terry think Cort and/or Hando would go in here?"  He shrugged. There was, was there not, only one way to find out?