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Title: The trap
Author: Henry S. Whitehead
Release date: March 23, 2024 [eBook #73243]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: The Clayton Magazines, Inc, 1932
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRAP ***
The Trap
By Henry S. Whitehead
A subtle evil lurks in Canevin's
antique Copenhagen mirror.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror March 1932
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was on a certain Thursday morning in December that the whole thing
began with that unaccountable motion I thought I saw in my antique
Copenhagen mirror. Something, it seemed to me, stirred--something
reflected in the glass, though I was alone in my quarters. I paused
and looked intently, then, deciding that the effect must be a pure
illusion, resumed the interrupted brushing of my hair.
I had discovered the old mirror, covered with dust and cobwebs, in an
out-building of an abandoned estate-house in Santa Cruz's sparsely
settled Northside territory, and had brought it to the United States
from the Virgin Islands. The venerable glass was dim from more than
two hundred years' exposure to a tropical climate, and the graceful
ornamentation along the top of the gilt frame had been badly smashed. I
had had the detached pieces set back into the frame before placing it
in storage with my other belongings.
Now, several years later, I was staying half as a guest and half
as a tutor at the private school of my old friend Browne on a
windy Connecticut hillside--occupying an unused wing in one of the
dormitories, where I had two rooms and a hallway to myself. The old
mirror, stowed securely in mattresses, was the first of my possessions
to be unpacked on my arrival; and I had set it up majestically in the
living-room, on top of an old rosewood console which had belonged to my
great-grandmother.
The door of my bedroom was just opposite that of the living-room, with
a hallway between; and I had noticed that by looking into my chiffonier
glass I could see the larger mirror through the two doorways--which was
exactly like glancing down an endless, though diminishing, corridor. On
this Thursday morning I thought I saw a curious suggestion of motion
down that normally empty corridor--but, as I have said, soon dismissed
the notion.
* * * * *
When I reached the dining-room I found everyone complaining of the
cold, and learned that the school's heating-plant was temporarily
out of order. Being especially sensitive to low temperatures, I was
myself an acute sufferer; and at once decided not to brave any freezing
schoolroom that day. Accordingly I invited my class to come over to my
living-room for an informal session around my grate-fire--a suggestion
which the boys received enthusiastically.
After the session one of the boys, Robert Grandison, asked if he might
remain; since he had no appointment for the second morning period. I
told him to stay, and welcome. He sat down to study in front of the
fireplace in a comfortable chair.
It was not long, however, before Robert moved to another chair somewhat
farther away from the freshly replenished blaze, this change bringing
him directly opposite the old mirror. From my own chair in another part
of the room I noticed how fixedly he began to look at the dim, cloudy
glass, and, wondering what so greatly interested him, was reminded of
my own experience earlier that morning. As time passed he continued to
gaze, a slight frown knitting his brows.
At last I quietly asked him what had attracted his attention. Slowly,
and still wearing the puzzled frown, he looked over and replied rather
cautiously:
"It's the corrugations in the glass--or whatever they are, Mr.
Canevin. I was noticing how they all seem to run from a certain point.
Look--I'll show you what I mean."
The boy jumped up, went over to the mirror, and placed his finger on a
point near its lower left-hand corner.
"It's right here, sir," he explained, turning to look toward me and
keeping his finger on the chosen spot.
His muscular action in turning may have pressed his finger against the
glass. Suddenly he withdrew his hand as though with some slight effort,
and with a faintly muttered "Ouch." Then he looked back at the glass in
obvious mystification.
"What happened?" I asked, rising and approaching.
"Why--it--" He seemed embarrassed. "It--I--felt--well, as though it
were pulling my finger into it. Seems--er--perfectly foolish, sir,
but--well--it was a most peculiar sensation." Robert had an unusual
vocabulary for his fifteen years.
I came over and had him show me the exact spot he meant.
"You'll think I'm rather a fool, sir," he said shamefacedly,
"but--well, from right here I can't be absolutely sure. From the chair
it seemed to be clear enough."
* * * * *
Now thoroughly interested, I sat down in the chair Robert had occupied
and looked at the spot he selected on the mirror. Instantly the thing
"jumped out at me." Unmistakably, from that particular angle, all the
many whorls in the ancient glass appeared to converge like a large
number of spread strings held in one hand and radiating out in streams.
Getting up and crossing to the mirror, I could no longer see the
curious spot. Only from certain angles, apparently, was it visible.
Directly viewed, that portion of the mirror did not even give back a
normal reflection--for I could not see my face in it. Manifestly I had
a minor puzzle on my hands.
Presently the school gong sounded, and the fascinated Robert Grandison
departed hurriedly, leaving me alone with my odd little problem in
optics. I raised several window-shades, crossed the hallway, and sought
for the spot in the chiffonier mirror's reflection. Finding it readily,
I looked very intently and thought I again detected something of the
"motion." I craned my neck, and at last, at a certain angle of vision,
the thing again "jumped out at me."
The vague "motion" was now positive and definite--an appearance of
torsional movement, or of whirling; much like a minute yet intense
whirlwind or waterspout, or a huddle of autumn leaves dancing
circularly in an eddy of wind along a level lawn. It was, like the
earth's, a double motion--around and around, and at the same time
_inward_, as if the whorls poured themselves endlessly toward some
point inside the glass. Fascinated, yet realizing that the thing must
be an illusion, I grasped an impression of quite distinct _suction_,
and thought of Robert's embarrassed explanation: "_I felt as though it
were pulling my finger into it._"
A kind of slight chill ran suddenly up and down my backbone. There
was something here distinctly worth looking into. And as the idea of
investigation came to me, I recalled the rather wistful expression of
Robert Grandison when the gong called him to class. I remembered how he
had looked back over his shoulder as he walked obediently out into the
hallway, and resolved that he should be included in whatever analysis I
might make of this little mystery.
* * * * *
Exciting events connected with that same Robert, however, were soon
to chase all thoughts of the mirror from my consciousness for a time.
I was away all that afternoon, and did not return to the school
until the five-fifteen "Call-over"--a general assembly at which
the boys' attendance was compulsory. Dropping in at this function
with the idea of picking Robert up for a session with the mirror,
I was astonished and pained to find him absent--a very unusual and
unaccountable thing in his case. That evening Browne told me that the
boy had actually disappeared, a search in his room, in the gymnasium,
and in all other accustomed places being unavailing, though all his
belongings--including his outdoor clothing--were in their proper places.
He had not been encountered on the ice or with any of the hiking
groups that afternoon, and telephone calls to all the school-catering
merchants of the neighborhood were in vain. There was, in short, no
record of his having been seen since the end of the lesson periods
at two-fifteen; when he had turned up the stairs toward his room in
Dormitory Number Three.
When the disappearance was fully realized, the resulting sensation
was tremendous throughout the school. Browne, as headmaster, had to
bear the brunt of it; and such an unprecedented occurrence in his
well-regulated, highly-organized institution left him quite bewildered.
It was learned that Robert had not run away to his home in western
Pennsylvania, nor did any of the searching-parties of boys and masters
find any trace of him in the snowy countryside around the school. So
far as could be seen, he had simply vanished.
Robert's parents arrived on the afternoon of the second day after his
disappearance. They took their trouble quietly, though, of course, they
were staggered by this unexpected disaster. Browne looked ten years
older for it, but there was absolutely nothing that could be done. By
the fourth day the case had settled down in the opinion of the school
as an insoluble mystery. Mr. and Mrs. Grandison went reluctantly back
to their home, and on the following morning the ten days' Christmas
vacation began.
Boys and masters departed in anything but the usual holiday spirit;
and Browne and his wife were left, along with the servants, as my only
fellow-occupants of the big place. Without the masters and boys it
seemed a very hollow shell indeed.
* * * * *
That afternoon I sat in front of my grate-fire thinking about Robert's
disappearance and evolving all sorts of fantastic theories to
account for it. By evening I had acquired a bad headache, and ate a
light supper accordingly. Then, after a brisk walk around the massed
buildings, I returned to my living-room and took up the burden of
thought once more.
A little after ten o'clock I awakened in my armchair, stiff and
chilled, from a doze during which I had let the fire go out. I was
physically uncomfortable, yet mentally aroused by a peculiar sensation
of expectancy and possible hope. Of course it had to do with the
problem that was harassing me. For I had started from that inadvertent
nap with a curious, persistent idea--the odd idea that a tenuous,
hardly recognizable Robert Grandison had been trying desperately
to communicate with me. I finally went to bed with one conviction
unreasoningly strong in my mind. Somehow I was sure that young Robert
Grandison was still alive.
That I should be receptive of such a notion will not seem strange to
those who know of my long residence in the West Indies and my close
contact with unexplained happenings there. It will not seem strange,
either, that I fell asleep with an urgent desire to establish some sort
of mental communication with the missing boy. Even the most prosaic
scientists affirm, with Freud, Jung, and Adler, that the subconscious
mind is most open to external impression in sleep; though such
impressions are seldom carried over intact into the waking state.
Going a step further and granting the existence of telepathic forces,
it follows that such forces must act most strongly on a sleeper; so
that if I were ever to get a definite message from Robert, it would be
during a period of profoundest slumber. Of course, I might lose the
message in waking; but my aptitude for retaining such things has been
sharpened by types of mental discipline picked up in various obscure
corners of the globe.
* * * * *
I must have dropped asleep instantaneously, and from the vividness of
my dreams and the absence of wakeful intervals I judge that my sleep
was a very deep one. It was six forty-five when I awakened, and there
still lingered with me certain impressions which I knew were carried
over from the world of somnolent cerebration. Filling my mind was the
vision of Robert Grandison strangely transformed to a boy of a dull
greenish dark-blue color; Robert desperately endeavoring to communicate
with me by means of speech, yet finding some almost insuperable
difficulty in so doing. A wall of curious spatial separation seemed to
stand between him and me--a mysterious, invisible wall which completely
baffled us both.
I had seen Robert as though at some distance, yet queerly enough he
seemed at the same time to be just beside me. He was both larger and
smaller than in real life, his apparent size varying _directly_,
instead of _inversely_, with the distance as he advanced and retreated
in the course of conversation. That is, he grew larger instead of
smaller to my eye when he stepped away or backwards, and vice versa;
as if the laws of perspective in his case had been wholly reversed.
His aspect was misty and uncertain--as if he lacked sharp or permanent
outlines; and the anomalies of his coloring and clothing baffled me
utterly at first.
At some point in my dream Robert's vocal efforts had finally
crystallized into audible speech--albeit speech of an abnormal
thickness and dullness. I could not for a time understand anything he
said, and even in the dream racked my brain for a clue to where he
was, what he wanted to tell, and why his utterance was so clumsy and
unintelligible. Then little by little I began to distinguish words
and phrases, the very first of which sufficed to throw my dreaming
self into the wildest excitement and to establish a certain mental
connection which had previously refused to take conscious form because
of the utter incredibility of what it implied.
* * * * *
I do not know how long I listened to those halting words amidst my
deep slumber, but hours must have passed while the strangely remote
speaker struggled on with his tale. There was revealed to me such
a circumstance as I cannot hope to make others believe without the
strongest corroborative evidence, yet which I was quite ready to
accept as truth--both in the dream and after waking--because of my
formed contacts with uncanny things. The boy was obviously watching my
face--mobile in receptive sleep--as he choked along; for about the time
I began to comprehend him, his own expression brightened and gave signs
of gratitude and hope.
Any attempt to hint at Robert's message, as it lingered in my ears
after a sudden awakening in the cold, brings this narrative to a
point where I must choose my words with the greatest care. Everything
involved is so difficult to record that one tends to flounder
helplessly. I have said that the revelation established in my mind
a certain connection which reason had not allowed me to formulate
consciously before. This connection, I need no longer hesitate to
hint, had to do with the old Copenhagen mirror whose suggestions of
motion had so impressed me on the morning of the disappearance, and
whose whorl-like contours and apparent illusions of suction had later
exerted such a disquieting fascination on both Robert and me.
Resolutely, though my outer consciousness had previously rejected what
my intuition would have liked to imply, it could reject that stupendous
conception no longer. What was fantasy in the tale of "Alice" now
came to me as a grave and immediate reality. That looking-glass had
indeed possessed a malign, abnormal suction; and the struggling
speaker in my dream made clear the extent to which it violated all the
known precedents of human experience and all the age-old laws of our
three sane dimensions. It was more than a mirror--it was a gate; a
trap; a link with spatial recesses not meant for the denizens of our
visible universe, and realizable only in terms of the most intricate
non-Euclidean mathematics. _And in some outrageous fashion Robert
Grandison had passed out of our ken into the glass and was there
immured, waiting for release._
* * * * *
It is significant that upon awakening I harbored no genuine doubt of
the reality of the revelation. That I had actually held conversation
with a trans-dimensional Robert, rather than evoked the whole episode
from my broodings about his disappearance and about the old illusions
of the mirror, was as certain to my inmost instincts as any of the
instinctive certainties commonly recognized as valid.
The tale thus unfolded to me was of the most incredibly bizarre
character. As had been clear on the morning of his disappearance,
Robert was intensely fascinated by the ancient mirror. All through the
hours of school, he had it in mind to come back to my living-room and
examine it further. When he did arrive, after the close of the school
day, it was somewhat later than two-twenty, and I was absent in town.
Finding me out and knowing that I would not mind, he had come into
my living-room and gone straight to the mirror; standing before it
and studying the place where, as we had noted, the whorls appeared to
converge.
Then, quite suddenly, there had come to him an overpowering urge to
place his hand upon this whorl-center. Almost reluctantly, against his
better judgment, he had done so; and upon making the contact had felt
at once the strange, almost painful suction which had perplexed him
that morning. Immediately thereafter--quite without warning, but with a
wrench which seemed to twist and tear every bone and muscle in his body
and to bulge and press and cut at every nerve--he had been abruptly
_drawn through_ and found himself _inside_.
[Illustration: _He felt a strange, almost painful suction._]
Once through, the excruciatingly painful stress upon his entire system
was suddenly released. He felt, he said, as though he had just been
born--a feeling that made itself evident every time he tried to do
anything; walk, stoop, turn his head, or utter speech. Everything about
his body seemed a misfit.
These sensations wore off after a long while, Robert's body becoming
an organized whole rather than a number of protesting parts. Of all
the forms of expression, speech remained the most difficult; doubtless
because it is complicated, bringing into play a number of different
organs, muscles, and tendons. Robert's feet, on the other hand, were
the first members to adjust themselves to the new conditions within the
glass.
* * * * *
During the morning hours I rehearsed the whole reason-defying problem;
correlating everything I had seen and heard, dismissing the natural
scepticism of a man of sense, and scheming to devise possible plans
for Robert's release from his incredible prison. As I did so a number
of originally perplexing points became clear--or at least, clearer--to
me.
There was, for example, the matter of Robert's coloring. His face and
hands, as I have indicated, were a kind of dull greenish dark-blue;
and I may add that his familiar blue Norfolk jacket had turned to a
pale lemon-yellow while his trousers remained a neutral gray as before.
Reflecting on this after waking, I found the circumstance closely
allied to the reversal of perspective which made Robert seem to grow
larger when receding and smaller when approaching. Here, too, was a
physical _reversal_--for every detail of his coloring in the unknown
dimension was the exact reverse or complement of the corresponding
color detail in normal life. In physics the typical complementary
colors are blue and yellow, and red and green. These pairs are
opposites, and when mixed yield gray. Robert's natural color was a
pinkish-buff, the opposite of which is the greenish-blue I saw. His
blue coat had become yellow, while the gray trousers remained gray.
This latter point baffled me until I remembered that gray is itself a
mixture of opposites. There is no opposite for gray--or rather, it is
its own opposite.
Another clarified point was that pertaining to Robert's curiously
dulled and thickened speech--as well as to the general awkwardness
and sense of misfit bodily parts of which he had complained. This, at
the outset, was a puzzle indeed; though after long thought the clue
occurred to me. Here again was the same _reversal_ which affected
perspective and coloration. Anyone in the fourth dimension must
necessarily be reversed in just this way--hands and feet, as well as
colors and perspectives, being changed about. It would be the same
with all the other dual organs, such as nostrils, ears, and eyes. Thus
Robert had been talking with a reversed tongue, teeth, vocal cords, and
kindred speech-apparatus; so that his difficulties in utterance were
little to be wondered at.
* * * * *
As the morning wore on, my sense of the stark reality and maddening
urgency of the dream-disclosed situation increased rather than
decreased. More and more I felt that something must be done, yet
realized that I could not seek advice or aid. Such a story as mine--a
conviction based upon mere dreaming--could not conceivably bring me
anything but ridicule or suspicions as to my mental state. And what,
indeed, could I do, aided or unaided, with as little working data as
my nocturnal impressions had provided? I must, I finally recognized,
have more information before I could even think of a possible plan for
releasing Robert. This could come only through the receptive conditions
of sleep, and it heartened me to reflect that according to every
probability my telepathic contact would be resumed the moment I fell
into deep slumber again.
I accomplished sleeping that afternoon, after a midday dinner at which,
through rigid self-control, I succeeded in concealing from Browne and
his wife the tumultuous thoughts that crashed through my mind. Hardly
had my eyes closed when a dim telepathic image began to appear; and I
soon realized to my infinite excitement that it was identical with what
I had seen before. If anything, it was more distinct; and when it began
to speak I seemed able to grasp a greater proportion of the words.
During this sleep I found most of the morning's deductions confirmed,
though the interview was mysteriously cut off long prior to my
awakening. Robert had seemed apprehensive just before communication
ceased, but had already told me that in his strange fourth-dimensional
prison colors and spatial relationships were indeed reversed--black
being white, distance increasing apparent size, and so on.
He had also intimated that, notwithstanding his possession of full
physical form and sensations, most human vital properties seemed
curiously suspended. Nutriment, for example, was quite unnecessary--a
phenomenon really more singular than the omnipresent reversal of
objects and attributes, since the latter was a reasonable and
mathematically indicated state of things. Another significant piece of
information was that the only exit from the glass to the world was the
entrance-way, and that this was permanently barred and impenetrably
sealed, so far as egress was concerned.
That night I had another visitation from Robert; nor did
such impressions, received at odd intervals while I slept
receptively-minded, cease during the entire period of his
incarceration. His efforts to communicate were desperate and often
pitiful; for at times the telepathic bond would weaken, while at other
times fatigue, excitement, or fear of interruption would hamper and
thicken his speech.
* * * * *
I may as well narrate as a continuous whole all that Robert told me
throughout the whole series of transient mental contacts--perhaps
supplementing it at certain points with facts directly related after
his release. The telepathic information was fragmentary and often
nearly inarticulate, but I studied it over and over during the waking
intervals of three intense days; classifying and cogitating with
feverish diligence, since it was all that I had to go upon if the boy
were to be brought back into our world.
The fourth-dimensional region in which Robert found himself was
not, as in scientific romance, an unknown and infinite realm of
strange sights and fantastic denizens; but was rather a projection of
certain limited parts of our own terrestrial sphere within an alien
and normally inaccessible aspect or direction of space. It was a
curiously fragmentary, intangible, and heterogeneous world--a series
of apparently dissociated scenes merging indistinctly one into the
other; their constituent details having an obviously different status
from that of an object drawn into the ancient mirror as Robert had
been drawn. These scenes were like dream-vistas or magic-lantern
images--elusive visual impressions of which the boy was not really
a part, but which formed a sort of panoramic background or ethereal
environment against which or amidst which he moved.
He could not touch any of the parts of these scenes--walls, trees,
furniture, and the like--but whether this was because they were truly
non-material, or because they always receded at his approach, he was
singularly unable to determine. Everything seemed fluid, mutable, and
unreal. When he walked, it appeared to be on whatever lower surface
the visible scene might have--floor, path, greensward, or such; but
upon analysis he always found that the contact was an illusion. There
was never any difference in the resisting force met by his feet--and
by his hands when he would stoop experimentally--no matter what
changes of apparent surface might be involved. He could not describe
this foundation or limiting plane on which he walked as anything more
definite than a virtually abstract pressure balancing his gravity.
Of definite tactile distinctiveness it had none, and supplementing
it there seemed to be a kind of restricted levitational force which
accomplished transfers of altitude. He could never actually climb
stairs, yet would gradually walk up from a lower level to a higher.
* * * * *
Passage from one definite scene to another involved a sort of gliding
through a region of shadow or blurred focus where the details of
each scene mingled curiously. All the vistas were distinguished by
the absence of transient objects, and the indefinite or ambiguous
appearance of such semi-transient objects as furniture or details of
vegetation. The lighting of every scene was diffuse and perplexing, and
of course the scheme of reversed colors--bright red grass, yellow sky
with confused black and gray cloud-forms, white tree-trunks, and green
brick walls--gave to everything an air of unbelievable grotesquerie.
There was an alteration of day and night, which turned out to be a
reversal of the normal hours of light and darkness at whatever point on
the earth the mirror might be hanging.
This seemingly irrelevant diversity of the scenes puzzled Robert
until he realized that they comprised merely such places as had been
reflected for long continuous periods in the ancient glass. This also
explained the odd absence of transient objects, the generally arbitrary
boundaries of vision, and the fact that all exteriors were framed by
the outlines of doorways or windows. The glass, it appeared, had power
to store up these intangible scenes through long exposure; though it
could never absorb anything corporeally, as Robert had been absorbed,
except by a very different and particular process.
But--to me at least--the most incredible aspect of the mad phenomenon
was the monstrous subversion of our known laws of space involved in
the relation of the various illusory scenes to the actual terrestrial
regions represented. I have spoken of the glass as storing up the
images of these regions, but this is really an inexact definition. In
truth, each of the mirror scenes formed a true and quasi-permanent
fourth-dimensional projection of the corresponding mundane region; so
that whenever Robert moved to a certain part of a certain scene, as he
moved into the image of my room when sending his telepathic messages,
_he was actually in that place itself, on earth_--though under
spatial conditions which cut off all sensory communication, in either
direction, between him and the present tri-dimensional aspect of the
place.
* * * * *
Theoretically speaking, a prisoner in the glass could in a few moments
go anywhere on our planet--into any place, that is, which had ever been
reflected in the mirror's surface. This probably applied even to places
where the mirror had not hung long enough to produce a clear illusory
scene; the terrestrial region being then represented by a zone of more
or less formless shadow. Outside the definite scenes was a seemingly
limitless waste of neutral gray shadow about which Robert could never
be certain, and into which he never dared stray far lest he become
hopelessly lost to the real and mirror worlds alike.
Among the earliest particulars which Robert gave, was the fact that
he was not alone in his confinement. Various others, all in antique
garb, were in there with him--a corpulent middle-aged gentleman with
tied queue and velvet knee-breeches who spoke English fluently though
with a marked Scandinavian accent; a rather beautiful small girl with
very blonde hair which appeared as glossy dark blue; two apparently
mute Negroes whose features contrasted grotesquely with the pallor of
their reversed-colored skins; three young men; one young woman; a very
small child, almost an infant; and a lean, elderly Dane of extremely
distinctive aspect and a kind of half-malign intellectuality of
countenance.
This last named individual--Axel Holm, who wore the satin
small-clothes, flared-skirted coat, and voluminous full-bottomed
periwig of an age more than two centuries in the past--was notable
among the little band as being the one responsible for the presence of
them all. He it was who, skilled equally in the arts of magic and glass
working, had long ago fashioned this strange dimensional prison in
which himself, his slaves, and those whom he chose to invite or allure
thither were immured unchangingly for as long as the mirror might
endure.
* * * * *
Holm was born early in the seventeenth century, and had followed
with tremendous competence and success the trade of a glass-blower
and molder in Copenhagen. His glass, especially in the form of large
drawing-room mirrors, was always at a premium. But the same bold mind
which had made him the first glazier of Europe also served to carry
his interests and ambitions far beyond the sphere of mere material
craftsmanship. He had studied the world around him, and chafed at the
limitations of human knowledge and capability. Eventually he sought for
dark ways to overcome those limitations, and gained more success than
is good for any mortal.
He had aspired to enjoy something like eternity, the mirror being his
provision to secure this end. Serious study of the fourth dimension was
far from beginning with Einstein in our own era; and Holm, more than
erudite in all the methods of his day, knew that a bodily entrance into
that hidden phase of space would prevent him from dying in the ordinary
physical sense. Research showed him that the principle of reflection
undoubtedly forms the chief gate to all dimensions beyond our familiar
three; and chance placed in his hands a small and very ancient glass
whose cryptic properties he believed he could turn to advantage. Once
"inside" this mirror according to the method he had envisaged, he
felt that "life" in the sense of form and consciousness would go on
virtually forever, provided the mirror could be preserved indefinitely
from breakage or deterioration.
Holm made a magnificent mirror, such as would be prized and carefully
preserved; and in it deftly fused the strange whorl-configured relic he
had acquired. Having thus prepared his refuge and his trap, he began
to plan this mode of entrance and conditions of tenancy. He would
have with him both servitors and companions; and as an experimental
beginning he sent before him into the glass two dependable Negro slaves
brought from the West Indies. What his sensations must have been upon
beholding this first concrete demonstration of his theories, only
imagination can conceive.
Undoubtedly a man of his knowledge realized that absence from the
outside world if deferred beyond the natural span of life of those
within, must mean instant dissolution at the first attempt to return to
that world. But, barring that misfortune or accidental breakage, those
within would remain forever as they were at the time of entrance. They
would never grow old, and would need neither food nor drink.
* * * * *
To make his prison tolerable he sent ahead of him certain books and
writing materials, a chair and table of stoutest workmanship, and a
few other accessories. He knew that the images which the glass would
reflect or absorb would not be tangible, but would merely extend around
him like a background of dream. His own transition in 1687 was a
momentous experience; and must have been attended by mixed sensations
of triumph and terror. Had anything gone wrong, there were frightful
possibilities of being lost in dark and inconceivable multiple
dimensions.
For over fifty years he had been unable to secure any additions to the
little company of himself and slaves, but later on he had perfected
his telepathic method of visualizing small sections of the outside
world close to the glass, and attracting certain individuals in those
areas through the mirror's strange entrance. Thus Robert, influenced
into a desire to press upon the "door," had been lured within. Such
visualizations depended wholly on telepathy, since no one inside the
mirror could see out into the world of men.
It was, in truth, a strange life that Holm and his company had lived
inside the glass. Since the mirror had stood for fully a century with
its face to the dusty stone wall of the shed where I found it, Robert
was the first being to enter this limbo after all that interval. His
arrival was a gala event, for he brought news of the outside world
which must have been of the most startling impressiveness to the more
thoughtful of those within. He, in his turn--young though he was--felt
overwhelmingly the weirdness of meeting and talking with persons who
had been alive in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
* * * * *
The deadly monotony of life for the prisoners can only be vaguely
conjectured. As mentioned, its extensive spatial variety was limited to
localities which had been reflected in the mirror for long periods; and
many of these had become dim and strange as tropical climates had made
inroads on the surface. Certain localities were bright and beautiful,
and in these the company usually gathered. But no scene could be fully
satisfying; since the visible objects were all unreal and intangible,
and often of perplexingly indefinite outline. When the tedious periods
of darkness came, the general custom was to indulge in memories,
reflections, or conversations. Each one of that strange, pathetic group
had retained his or her personality unchanged and unchangeable, since
becoming immune to the time effects of outside space.
The number of inanimate objects within the glass, aside from the
clothing of the prisoners, was very small; being largely limited to the
accessories Holm had provided for himself. The rest did without even
furniture, since sleep and fatigue had vanished along with most other
vital attributes. Such inorganic things as were present, seemed as
exempt from decay as the living beings. The lower forms of animal life
were wholly absent.
Robert derived most of his information from Herr Thiele, the gentleman
who spoke English with a Scandinavian accent. This portly Dane had
taken a fancy to him, and talked at considerable length. The others,
too, had received him with courtesy and good-will; Holm himself,
seeming well-disposed, had told him about various matters including the
door of the trap.
The boy, as he told me later, was sensible enough never to attempt
communication with me when Holm was nearby. Twice, while thus engaged,
he had seen Holm appear; and had accordingly ceased at once. At no time
could I see the world behind the mirror's surface. Robert's visual
image, which included his bodily form and the clothing connected with
it, was--like the aural image of his halting voice and like his own
visualization of myself--a case of purely telepathic transmission;
and did not involve true inter-dimensional sight. However, had Robert
been as trained a telepathist as Holm, he might have transmitted a few
strong images apart from his immediate person.
* * * * *
Throughout this period of revelation I had, of course, been
desperately trying to devise a method for Robert's release. On the
fourth day--the ninth after the disappearance--I hit on a solution.
Everything considered, my laboriously formulated process was not a very
complicated one; though I could not tell beforehand how it would work,
while the possibility of ruinous consequences in case of a slip was
appalling. This process depended, basically, on the fact that there
was no possible exit from inside the glass. If Holm and his prisoners
were permanently sealed in, then release must come wholly from outside.
Other considerations included the disposal of the other prisoners, if
any survived, and especially of Axel Holm. What Robert had told me
of him was anything but reassuring; and I certainly did not wish him
loose in my apartment, free once more to work his evil will upon the
world. The telepathic messages had not made fully clear the effect of
liberation on those who had entered the glass so long ago.
There was, too, a final though minor problem in case of success--that
of getting Robert back into the routine of school life without
having to explain the incredible. In case of failure, it was highly
inadvisable to have witnesses present at the release operations--and
lacking these, I simply could not attempt to relate the actual facts if
I should succeed. Even to me the reality seemed a mad one whenever I
let my mind turn from the data so compellingly presented in that tense
series of dreams.
When I had thought these problems through as far as possible, I
procured a large magnifying-glass from the school laboratory and
studied minutely every square millimeter of that whorl-center which
presumably marked the extent of the original ancient mirror used by
Holm. Even with this aid I could not quite trace the exact boundary
between the old area and the surface added by the Danish wizard; but
after a long study decided on a conjectural oval boundary which I
outlined very precisely with a soft blue pencil, I then made a trip to
Stamford, where I procured a heavy glass-cutting tool; for my primary
idea was to remove the ancient and magically potent mirror from its
later setting.
* * * * *
My next step was to figure out the best time of day to make the crucial
experiment. I finally settled on two-thirty A.M.--both because it was a
good season for uninterrupted work, and because it was the "opposite"
of two-thirty P.M., the probable moment at which Robert had entered the
mirror. This form of "oppositeness" may or may not have been relevant,
but I knew at least that the chosen hour was as good as any--and
perhaps better than most.
I finally set to work in the early morning of the eleventh day after
the disappearance, having drawn all the shades of my living-room
and closed and locked the door into the hallway. Following with
breathless care the elliptical line I had traced, I worked around the
whorl-section with my steel-wheeled cutting tool. The ancient glass,
half an inch thick, crackled crisply under the firm, uniform pressure;
and upon completing the circuit I cut around it a second time,
crunching the roller more deeply into the glass.
Then, very carefully indeed, I lifted the heavy mirror down from its
console and leaned it face-inward against the wall; prying off two
of the thin, narrow boards nailed to the back. With equal caution I
smartly tapped the cut-around space with the heavy wooden handle of the
glass-cutter.
At the very first tap the whorl-containing section of glass dropped
out on the Bokhara rug beneath. I did not know what might happen, but
was keyed up for anything, and took a deep involuntary breath. I was
on my knees for convenience at the moment, with my face quite near the
newly made aperture; and as I breathed there poured into my nostrils a
powerful _dusty_ odor--a smell not comparable to any other I have ever
encountered. Then everything within my range of vision suddenly turned
to a dull gray before my failing eye-sight as I felt myself overpowered
by an invisible force which robbed my muscles of their power to
function.
I remember grasping weakly and futilely at the edge of the nearest
window drapery and feeling it rip loose from its fastening. Then I sank
slowly to the floor as the darkness of oblivion passed over me.
* * * * *
When I regained consciousness I was lying on the Bokhara rug with my
legs held unaccountably up in the air. The room was full of that
hideous and inexplicable dusty smell--and as my eyes began to take
in definite images I saw that Robert Grandison stood in front of
me. It was he--fully in the flesh and with his coloring normal--who
was holding my legs aloft to bring the blood back to my head as the
school's first-aid course had taught him to do with persons who had
fainted. For a moment I was struck mute by the stifling odor and by a
bewilderment which quickly merged into a sense of triumph. Then I found
myself able to move and speak collectedly.
I raised a tentative hand and waved feebly at Robert.
"All right, old man," I murmured, "you can let my legs down now. Many
thanks. I'm all right again, I think. It was the smell--I imagine--that
got me. Open that farthest window, please--wide--from the bottom.
That's it--thanks. No--leave the shade down the way it was."
I struggled to my feet, my disturbed circulation adjusting itself in
waves, and stood upright hanging to the back of a big chair. I was
still "groggy," but a blast of fresh, bitterly cold air from the window
revived me rapidly. I sat down in the big chair and looked at Robert,
now walking toward me.
"First," I said hurriedly, "tell me, Robert--those others--Holm? What
happened to _them_, when I--opened the exit?"
Robert paused half-way across the room and looked at me very gravely.
"I saw them fade away--into nothingness--Mr. Canevin," he said with
solemnity; "and with them--everything. There isn't any more 'inside,'
sir--thank God, and you, sir!"
And young Robert, at last yielding to the sustained strain which he
had borne through all those terrible eleven days, suddenly broke down
like a little child and began to weep hysterically in great, stifling,
dry sobs.
* * * * *
I picked him up and placed him gently on my davenport, threw a rug over
him, sat down by his side, and put a calming hand on his forehead.
"Take it easy, old fellow," I said soothingly.
The boy's sudden and very natural hysteria passed as quickly as it had
come on as I talked to him reassuringly about my plans for his quiet
restoration to the school. The interest of the situation and the need
of concealing the incredible truth beneath a rational explanation
took hold of his imagination as I had expected; and at last he sat
up eagerly, telling the details of his release and listening to
the instructions I had thought out. He had, it seems, been in the
"projected area" of my bedroom when I opened the way back, and had
emerged in that actual room--hardly realizing that he was "out." Upon
hearing a fall in the living-room he had hastened thither, finding me
on the rug in my fainting spell.
I need mention only briefly my method of restoring Robert in a
seemingly normal way--how I smuggled him out of the window in an old
hat and sweater of mine, took him down the road in my quietly started
car, coached him carefully in a tale I had devised, and returned to
arouse Browne with the news of his discovery. He had, I explained,
been walking alone on the afternoon of his disappearance; and had been
offered a motor ride by two young men who, as a joke and over his
protests that he could go no farther than Stamford and back, had begun
to carry him past that town. Jumping from the car during a traffic
stop with the intention of hitch-hiking back before Call-Over, he had
been hit by another car just as the traffic was released--awakening
ten days later in the Greenwich home of the people who had hit him. On
learning the date, I added, he had immediately telephoned the school;
and I, being the only one awake, had answered the call and hurried
after him in my car without stopping to notify anyone.
* * * * *
Browne, who at once telephoned to Robert's parents, accepted my story
without question; and forbore to interrogate the boy because of the
latter's manifest exhaustion. It was arranged that he should remain at
the school for a rest, under the expert care of Mrs. Browne, a former
trained nurse. I naturally saw a good deal of him during the remainder
of the Christmas vacation, and was thus enabled to fill in certain gaps
in his fragmentary dream-story.
Now and then we would almost doubt the actuality of what had occurred;
wondering whether we had not both shared some monstrous delusion born
of the mirror's glittering hypnotism, and whether the tale of the ride
and accident were not after all the real truth. But whenever we did
so we would be brought back to belief by some monstrous and haunting
memory; with me, of Robert's dream-figure and its thick voice and
inverted colors; with him, of the whole fantastic pageantry of ancient
people and dead scenes that he had witnessed. And then there was
the joint recollection of that damnable dusty odor.... We knew what
it meant: the instant dissolution of those who had entered an alien
dimension a century and more ago.
There are, in addition, at least two lines of rather more positive
evidence; one of which comes through my researches in Danish annals
concerning the sorcerer, Axel Holm. Such a person, indeed, left many
traces in folklore and written records; and diligent library sessions,
plus conferences with various learned Danes, have shed much light
on his evil fame. At present I need say only that the Copenhagen
glass-blower--born in 1612--was a notorious Luciferian whose pursuits
and final vanishing formed a matter of awed debate over two centuries
ago. He had burned with a desire to know all things and to conquer
every limitation of mankind--to which end he had delved deeply into
occult and forbidden fields ever since he was a child.
He was commonly held to have joined a coven of the dreaded witchcult,
and the vast lore of ancient Scandinavian myth--with its Loki the Sly
One and the accursed Fenris-Wolf--was soon an open book to him. He had
strange interests and objectives, few of which were definitely known,
but some of which were recognized as intolerably evil. It is recorded
that his two Negro helpers, originally slaves from the Danish West
Indies, had become mute soon after their acquisition by him; and that
they had disappeared not long before his own disappearance from the ken
of mankind.
* * * * *
Near the close of an already long life the idea of a glass of
immortality appears to have entered his mind. That he had acquired
an enchanted mirror of inconceivable antiquity was a matter of
common whispering; it being alleged that he had purloined it from a
fellow-sorcerer who had entrusted it to him for polishing.
This mirror--according to popular tales a trophy as potent in its
way as the better-known Aegis of Minerva or Hammer of Thor--was a
small oval object called "Loki's Glass," made of some polished fusible
mineral and having magical properties which included the divination of
the immediate future and the power to show the possessor his enemies.
That it had deeper potential properties, realizable in the hands of an
erudite magician, none of the common people doubted; and even educated
persons attached much fearful importance to Holm's rumored attempts
to incorporate it in a larger glass of immortality. Then had come the
wizard's disappearance in 1687, and the final sale and dispersal of his
goods amidst a growing cloud of fantastic legendry. It was, altogether,
just such a story as one would laugh at if possessed of no particular
key; yet to me, remembering those dream messages and having Robert
Grandison's corroboration before me, it formed a positive confirmation
of all the bewildering marvels that had been unfolded.
But as I have said, there is still another line of rather positive
evidence--of a very different character--at my disposal. Two days
after his release, as Robert, greatly improved in strength and
appearance, was placing a log on my living-room fire, I noticed a
certain awkwardness in his motions and was struck by a persistent
idea. Summoning him to my desk I suddenly asked him to pick up an
ink-stand--and was scarcely surprised to note that, despite lifelong
right-handedness, he obeyed unconsciously with his left hand. Without
alarming him, I then asked that he unbutton his coat and let me
listen to his cardiac action. What I found upon placing my ear to his
chest--and what I did not tell him for some time afterward--was that
_his heart was beating on his right side_.
* * * * *
He had gone into the glass right-handed and with all organs in their
normal positions. Now he was left-handed and with organs reversed, and
would doubtless continue so for the rest of his life. Clearly, the
dimensional transition had been no illusion--for this physical change
was tangible and unmistakable. Had there been a natural exit from the
glass, Robert would probably have undergone a thorough re-reversal and
emerged in perfect normality--as indeed the color-scheme of his body
and clothing did emerge. The forcible nature of his release, however,
undoubtedly set something awry; so that dimensions no longer had a
chance to right themselves as chromatic wave-frequencies still did.
I had not merely _opened_ Holm's trap; I had _destroyed_ it; and at the
particular stage of destruction marked by Robert's escape some of the
reversing properties had perished. It is significant that in escaping
Robert had felt no pain comparable to that experienced in entering.
Had the destruction been still more sudden, I shiver to think of the
monstrosities of color the boy would always have been forced to bear.
I may add that after discovering Robert's reversal I examined the
rumpled and discarded clothing he had worn in the glass, and found, as
I had expected, a complete reversal of pockets, buttons, and all other
corresponding details.
At this moment Loki's Glass, just as it fell on my Bokhara rug from
the now patched and harmless mirror, weighs down a sheaf of papers on
my writing-table here in St. Thomas, venerable capital of the Danish
West Indies--now the American Virgin Islands. Various collectors of old
Sandwich glass have mistaken it for an odd bit of that early American
product--but I privately realize that my paper-weight is an antique
of far subtler and more paleologean craftsmanship. Still, I do not
disillusion such enthusiasts.
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