Diane

Diane,

I’m sorry for contacting you this way. I know I should have talked to you after we had our falling out. I’m sorry I hounded you when we lived together. I did want the best for you, but I think I ended up sounding like a troll. I should have called you when I found out he died. I wanted to, but I was scared of what you would say to me. I didn’t really know what to think when I heard the news myself. We should have gone out for a drink when I got the call from his lawyer saying our father, Clarence Willis, had passed away.

It was a few weeks ago, when I got the call and flew out to the old farm house we grew up in. I wish I hadn’t taken the lawyer’s advice to collect any of his personal affects for “memories”. I didn’t want of them. However, I thought I could get some closure and maybe get a few bucks out of his junk laying around the house.

I was in the attic. It hadn’t seen attention in years, which made me wonder how long the lawyer waited to inform everyone of dad’s passing. Made me think he picked the place clean of anything of value. Everything in the room was hidden away in cardboard boxes or covered in a thick layer of dust. So, I spent the majority of my day splitting open boxes to find old sketchbooks, notebooks, and dozens of glass jars and vials. It was like something out of Frankenstein’s laboratory. He had jars of organs tucked away in different boxes. Others contained small vials filled amber liquid with tendrils of red or black pieces of flesh in them. I shudder to think the contents of these containers were attached something that was once alive.

Half of my day was spent looking through this stuff. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. It felt like looking through a stranger’s life. I had no idea whose life I’d been digging through for the past day but it didn’t look like the neglectful alcoholic we’d grown up with together… Like it was a final “fuck you” from Dad. I still can’t fathom how we didn’t notice any of this. Was this after we left? Or was he drinking away some kind of insane obsession?

It wasn’t until late at night that I made it toward the back of the attic. It was the white powder on the ground forming a circle around the mirror what caught my attention. It was so odd that this was still here after who knows how long. This section of the attic had dozens of books in a language I didn’t understand or recognize. After closer inspection of the books, the covers just felt… strange. Like the book covers were made out of old leathered flesh stitched together. Seeing how old and how strange the books appeared, I thought they might be worth something… same with the mirror. I pulled the sheet off of the mirror to get a better look at the frame and the quality of the glass. The frame was painted a golden colored with runes or something etched into the wood. It barely looked like it was touched at all, but what bothered me was my own reflection staring back. It ebbed like it was made of water, like I could touch it and wet my fingertips. I felt so uneasy looking at myself, but I felt like I was cemented into place. That’s where I saw him, Diane. I saw Dad.

It felt like he was right beside me, but I after a quick glance to the side I still found myself alone. The image of Clarence Willis wasn’t the picture of life. It was a skeletal perversion of him. His smooth skin melted away to sickly ecru bone. His hair stayed the same bristled and thick with grime. There’s a whiskey bottle in his hand, but I doubt he can taste the burn of liquor down his throat. Even without his baby blues resting comfortably in his sockets, I know he could see me. I stare at the reflection of myself beside him. I can see the horror in my face. I can hear his voice calling out my name from a mouth with no tongue. The more I gape into the mirror the more I see myself becoming like him. In the mirror, my skin was fading away like his and I swear I could taste the dust of the attic through the open slits of my cheek.

I don’t remember screaming, but I’m sure I was. He kept repeating my name with a voice that shouldn’t exist through bone alone. His free hand reached out to me in the mirror image. I shoved the mirror back against the wall and ran. I heard a shriek of a man’s voice and the loud clatter of the antique crashing to the floor as I ran to the front door. I peeled out from the house and didn’t look back. The image still haunts me and has since gnawed at the back of my mind.

I’m so sorry, Diane. I’m so sorry. I don’t want you to go there. If the lawyer calls you, hang up. He’s been calling me daily since I left the house, asking why I didn’t take anything or stay in the house. He keeps calling and leaving messages and calling again. He won’t leave me be. Do me a favor. Just one last favor. Change your phone number; shred your mail from this lawyer; move if you have to. There was something very wrong about that house and everything connected to it. There was something wrong with our father and it’s safe to say we probably knew nothing about him. I pray that I’m just crazy and I’m imaging all this nonsense. Imagining it in my head as I dream, I can’t shake the image I saw in the mirror. I don’t want this to be real. I hope it’s not real.

Megan