Waters and Mirrors
Brian S. Wheeler
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Fallen Stardust: A boy, an outcast and an alien must find salvation in a world of ruin. Samuel must find a medicine to cure the fever ravaging his village. Markus must find the motive that murdered those he loved. And an angel must find a future in a city crumbled into debris. But something lurks beneath the wasted world, and waking it may doom what little of humanity survives.
The Sisters Will Dance: Blaine Woosely claws his way back to the living. He has cleaned his blood of his addiction, and an unexpected, family farm home rewards his efforts. Only, the country acres isolate Blaine when a sharp-toothed monster hunts to bring Blaine back to dark. The sad history of Blaine's blood brings magic to the country home's new master, but in the end, only Blaine himself can break his chains.
Mr. Hancock’s Signature: The dead walk in Monteray. The corpse of a nearly forgotten farmer named Hancock arrives via train. Ian Washington remembers Mr. Hancock and vows to return the body home. Yet Mr. Hancock's body will not rest while Ian works to reopen a cemetery, and the corpse staring each morning upon the doorstep forces the town to choose between the isolation of their fear or the hope of their fellowship.
Waters and Mirrors
Brian S. Wheeler
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2014 by Brian S. Wheeler
Contents
Waters and Mirrors
Help Spread the Story Across the Flatland
About the Writer
Other Stories at Flatland Fiction
Waters and Mirrors
Larry McPeak’s soul wavered, and so the shade of the man fidgeted as he claimed his seat at the crimson table.
Perhaps an eye more familiar with hurt may have noticed the sinister imbalance in Larry’s figure. Much of the man’s frame appeared strong, with wide shoulders and thick arms, with a back that sat upright in the wooden chair, with a jawline and chin carving a handsome face unencumbered by excessive flesh.
Still, a keener eye would not have considered Larry healthy. Heavy, gray bags hung below faded, brown eyes. Patches of hair randomly dotted an otherwise bald crown. A yellow pallor tinged his skin, and the flesh upon Larry’s hands tightened until the knuckles swelled into bulbous knots.
A keener eye would notice the suffering written all over Larry McPeak’s face. A sadder eye would realize how hurt had brought Larry McPeak low.
But little sympathy any longer coursed through the cold hearts gathered around the crimson table. Those around the table had lingered in the surrounding darkness for too long. Those who shared the crimson cloth with Larry could not risk taking the time to see another’s hurt by letting empathetic eyes stray towards that man’s direction, not when the crimson table required their full attention if any of them hoped to recognize the signal they all so craved.
“Beg pardon, Miss,” Larry’s voice thundered in the quiet, “have I missed something? Will I still get a turn to look into the waters even if I don’t wear a mask?”
The figure to Larry’s immediate left didn’t answer. She gave no clue that she had heard Larry’s question at all.
Larry supposed the figure to his immediate left was a woman. He imagined enough of a figure beneath the costume of cloth and feathers to stir such a feeling within him. But too much of the form who sat to his immediate left remained disguised to know for certain. Strange gloves protruded from the figure’s cloak and rested on the crimson table, gloves knitted so strangely that the hands looked more like claws than fingers. Tangled, black feathers fell upon the figure’s shoulders, and though the plumage looked frayed and dull, Larry wanted to imagine that lustrous raven hair flowed beneath such exotic garb.
An oversized mask of a vulture’s head loomed upon that neighbor’s thin shoulders. Larry couldn’t understand how the woman’s thin neck managed to support the large mask’s weight. Specks of rusty brown dotted the plumage as feathers flowed around a pair of tiny, obsidian eyes. Red stained the tip of the mask’s beak, and Larry shuddered to guess what yellow, carrion teeth populated the creature’s maw. Only a few feathers reached the mask’s domed top, a gray patch of leather, a spot of ugly bald.
Larry’s fingers trembled as the vulture regarded him.
“I say,” Larry began, “am I going to be punished because I don’t wear a mask?”
Larry peeked around the table when the vulture turned her face away and ignored him. No one else seated at the table appeared to have heard his questions.
Soft illumination rippled upwards from the table’s center. Such rays were too weak to penetrate the darkness beyond the table, and Larry couldn’t determine if they gathered in a cavernous or cramped space.
“Will I be prevented from looking into the water because I don’t wear a mask?”
Several of those seated at the table shifted in their chairs. The pale light rising from the table danced shadows across the masks surrounding Larry. A set of antlers rose into the looming dark, branching from a mask resembling a great stag’s skull, its eye sockets empty and dark, the lower jaw lost.
“This is the séance, right?” Larry peeked at the stag skull. “Am I at the correct table?”
Fabric shuffled from across the crimson table, and Larry turned to see his tiny image reflected in a hundred small mirrors on an insect’s mask, reflected in a hundred insect eyes glimmering in the table’s rising light. Larry flinched at the sight of his reflection. The mouth behind the mask emitted a low murmur Larry couldn’t understand.
Larry squirmed. He felt increasingly desperate for assurance that he had not drifted for so long in pursuit of a vain goal. He gathered what courage remained to him to look once more upon those who shared his table, looking for only a nod of a mask to let him know he might look into those special waters.
A slender figure in a dress with a very low décolletage sighed, and wisps of steam wafted from a pair of unicorn nostrils. Larry thought the unicorn mask was the most magnificent of all those around the table, but the movements of the giraffe-like neck that rose from such narrow shoulders started to unsettle Larry’s stomach as he watched the mask sway.
The long neck nearly knotted as the unicorn mask turned to look away from Larry. Larry gazed at all the masks that refused to answer his questions: the savage minotaur whose sharp horns glistened in the table’s soft light, the cyclops, whose eye never blinked at the table, the alligator whose long teeth sent shivers racing along Larry’s spine. None of the masks betrayed a single care for the man who sat at their table without any mask at all.
Of all those gathered around the crimson table, only Larry McPeak exposed a face not shrouded by a mask. Only Larry’s naked face showed the anxiety that creased his features. An empathetic neighbor would have recognized the suffering etched in the wrinkles that radiated from Larry’s eyes, would have pitied Larry for the fear that turned his lips pale. But none seated at the table cared to give Larry any attention. They remained content behind their masks.
“Be assured. You too shall look into the water.” br />
Larry jumped at the voice that echoed in the darkness. A cold hand gripped him, and Larry looked upon thin fingers resting on his shoulder.
“My table requires no payment, oath or code. You must only bring the desire, the foolishness, the
