When Trevor, Sabrina, and Derek, who was using Max as a human taxi service, arrived back at the mysterious house that Tuesday morning, they looked around for aliens, or zombies, or black vans filled with government agents. There were none. Everything seemed perfectly normal.
Before dawn, Aubrey had sent them everything she could find on the occupants of the house on short notice. It housed a typical family of four. The husband was a realtor, the wife was a stay at home mom, and they had two kids that attended a local school. If anything, their lives seemed boring. There had to be something they were missing, something hidden. But that was why they had come, to explore the unknown thing that stalked the premises. In this, there seemed an element of risk, but with Nevyn wreaking havoc all over the world, they all agreed that it was a necessary one.
The three continued to stare at the house from the car, trying to gain a hint of any possible threats they might encounter. When they found none, they did the only thing that seemed reasonable when facing a potential life altering, world changing, terror inducing, hope giving thing. They knocked on the front door.
Several muffled sounds happened that let them know the house was occupied. A man seemed to be yelling something, followed by stomping, and a woman, no, a girl's voice saying something back. The man said something even louder then, followed by sudden silence.
Trevor smiled. "I think they're trying to make us think nobody's home."
"Not how I thought this was going to go down," Derek's voice stated from Max's lips.
"Should we knock again?" Sabrina asked. Before anyone could voice their opinion, she did. Silence remained the only response, so she knocked a third time, and then called out, "We're not leaving."
They heard muffled voices again, and then finally, a middle aged man opened the door. He stared at them warily, then adopted a stern expression, as if they had interrupted something very important. Trevor closed his eyes and focused on the thread that connected him to whoever was in the house.
"I'm afraid this is a bad time for solicitors," the man said.
"Is there ever a good time?" Bekka quipped silently to Derek.
"What do you see, Trevor?" Derek asked.
"I don't..." Trevor started, then scrunched his eyes even tighter. He didn't understand what he was seeing. At last he opened them and stared at the man in wonder. "There's definitely something attached to him, but... not to me. He's not why we came here."
Derek nodded Max's head. "Definitely different. I hate it when it's different."
"Are you people high?" the man asked. He stole a glance back into the house, wondering if he should call the police, but knowing that he could not as long as that damned object was on his kitchen table.
"Uh... we've gotten off on the wrong foot, sir," Derek began. "My name is... Max, and this is Sabrina and, uh..." Derek looked at Trevor, but did not offer his name.
Instead of giving it, Trevor gaped and asked, "Who are you? And why are you attached to a thread that isn't attached to me?"
Nobody said anything for several seconds as Trevor and the man stared at each other. The man seemed to have drawn some conclusion as he asked a question of his own. "You're here for it, aren't you?" When he saw the trio share a secretive glance with each other, he knew he was right. "You are! You're the reason it escaped its hiding place this morning. It's only done that when I've tried to get rid of it or leave it behind somewhere. It knew you were coming."
Derek tried to reign the conversation in again. "Sir, we know someone or something is here, and yes, maybe we are here for it, but... we've also got a lot of questions. And since you don't appear to want to murder us, we'd appreciate it if we could come in for a cup of coffee."
"Are you kidding?" the man laughed loudly, then seemed to relax a little. "If you take it with you when you leave, you can have the whole pot!"
The visitors grinned nervously and nodded their heads.
"But first," he continued, "I need to get my kids out of here. You understand." They did not, but didn't stop him as he yelled for his kids to grab their school supplies and get out. At first they argued about not getting breakfast, but they stopped when he gave them each a twenty dollar bill and told them to get breakfast wherever they wanted, they obliged, and left together in the boy's car. Trevor verified that none of them had a thread as they drove away.
"Okay, you can come in now," the man said. "Oh, my name is Brian by the way. Brian Patterson."
Bekka giggled inside Derek's head. "Brian Patterson. Yeah, totally sounds like a villain's name."
As they followed them into his house, Derek resisted the urge to simply hop Brian and find the answers without needing to sit across from him at a coffee table. He didn't dare though. If this man was connected to whatever source had led them here, it could be very dangerous. Brian offered them seats in the living room, and they sat, taking in the simple decor. A few minutes later, a striking brunette walked in and began serving them coffee. When everyone had it how they liked, the woman sat down next to Brian and looked at him with adoration, as if he were the only person in the room. Trevor noted the absence of a thread on this woman, but there was an ethereal glow around her.
Derek pointed to the woman and asked, "Uh, did you want her to leave too while we discuss things?"
Brian laughed. "Oh, my wife, her name is Stacey, she won't care, and I can make sure of it. Then he looked directly into his wife's pretty face. "Honey, you won't be able to hear anything these people say unless I say you can."
"Okay dear," came the prompt reply.
Derek had seen and done enough mind control on people to know that it had just happened to some degree or other. He had to ask. "Are you... are you able to alter her mind without... without being inside of her."
"What?" Brian asked, genuinely confused. "Inside of her? You think I have to be...that I can only control her if I'm... having sex with her? Ha! No, I can do it anytime, obviously. I thought you knew what you were here for?"
Sabrina clenched her fists under the table as her fight or flight instinct began to make an appearance. "Wait, so, you can control people's minds, without possessing them?"
"Possessing them?," Brian asked confused. "Like I'm a ghost or a spirit? No! I'ts not like that at all. I just, well, she'll do anything I tell her. Anything at all, and only her, no one else. You can stop looking at me like I'm some kind of evil super villain."
Derek heard Bekka say to him, "That's what an evil super villain would say. Now you say, 'Super villain says what?' And then if he says what, we got him." Derek didn't know how he managed it, but he kept a straight face.
Brian continued. "But if you don't know all of this already, why are you here? I thought you were here for it, to take it away and...and..." he had been about to say "inflict it on some other hapless person" but cut himself short. "I'm sorry, I appear to have gotten ahead of myself. Would you like to hear what I'm talking about?"
"Maybe start at the beginning," Derek suggested.
Brian did just that, but then seemed to trip over his words. He took a sip of his coffee, as if he would need it to help him give a long oration. While the hot liquid went down his throat, he considered what it might mean if he told the truth. If he told them everything just as it had happened, they might not take the mirror. And he needed them to take the mirror, to take it, and use it, far from here.
So Brian told them an altered version of his story. It was a story of captured reflections, of four childhood friends who made a discovery in the attic of this very house. And there had been a girl by the name of Stacey that Brian had a crush on for as long as he could remember. But from there, the truth and him parted ways. He did not paint himself as a monster that, deep down, he felt the mirror had made him become. He left out the part where the girl in the story ceased to be, at least, the original version of Stacey, the one that had been capable of making her own decisions. And he totally forgot to mention how his best friend, Justin, had his soul consumed in order to become the new version of the girl that would become his wife, and was now totally subservient to him. His version painted him as a hapless victim, swept along by the passions of youth and a magical mirror. And he flat out lied when he told them that an older, strong willed person would be able to control it. Brian knew full well that no one could control it. It did the controlling, and once it had its hooks in you, it was just a matter of time before you bowed to its will.
Brian didn't know why, but he found himself sharing more than he thought he would about some of the intimate encounters he and all of his friends had experienced. He wondered if it was because he had never told anyone even a shred of what he had lived through. But as he went on, he felt the room become sexually charged. Even though he had recently had sex, he grew hard as a rock as he spun his tale. This wasn't like him, but for some reason, he didn't care.
