his brow furrowed. Another mirror was placed on the wall directly
opposite so the two reflected each other. Now that they stood
between them, it created an eternity of Thomas and Arthur in a
dark flickering tunnel. The candle leeched the color from their
faces so their features were all contrast — pale cheekbones and
lips, dark holes for eyes. After the second image repetition, the
details were hazy enough that the boys could have been each other
or no one at all.
“Looks a bit like my vision of hell,” Thomas whispered.
“At least there’s good company.” Arthur’s reflection gave a
ghost of a smile, and Thomas’s met it.
“What’s that?” Thomas leaned forward, touching a pendant
hanging from the top of the mirror. “A bug?”
Arthur grabbed Thomas’s hand, surprising the other boy into
dropping the candle, which sputtered out. The walls of books
leaned in, leering, and the old familiar breathless terror Arthur
hadn’t felt since his mother had died now twitched through his
muscles, begging him to run, run, run into the night, find a new
town, find a new life, find a new place to hide.
He had seen a necklace like that before. The green beetle fig-
ure at the end of the chain was featured in every portrait his father
collected, was scribbled in the endless, illegible notes Arthur had
flipped through as a child, was even engraved on an ancient book
his mother had used to prop up their kitchen table.
His father had been clutching a necklace just like it the last
time they’d ever seen him.
Seeing the necklace here ended all his nights trying to tell
himself that his father had been crazy, had poisoned his mother’s
mind, had merely abandoned them instead of meeting a horrible
fate. The green beetle meant that whatever dark secrets his father