Chapter 1: Black Mirror

Collections was always eerily quiet after hours. Once the museum’s doors closed and all of the visitors went home, the building was left almost deserted. Only a few security staff and janitors remained, their footsteps echoing down cavernous hallways and through empty exhibits.

Only three floors of the building were accessible to the public. Below the ground floor were another seven basement levels that played host to the museum’s massive archives. Entomology, archaeology, paleontology – there were enough shelves and glass cases to fill the exhibits above ten times over.

The stairs creaked as Charles made his way deeper, descending into the sub-levels. Naked bulbs caked in layers of dust illuminated his way as he went, the silence pierced by every footstep and creak. It was like being in a cave down here so far below street level, the darkness and quiet taking on an unnatural quality. The archaeology collection was his destination, and the ornate staircase with its curving wooden banister soon gave way to a long hallway with a carpeted floor.

The best way that he could describe the archives was as a library of things. Lining the walls were rows upon rows of tall drawers and shelves that reached up to the ceiling, each compartment housing some precious artifact or specimen. Storage here was long-term – designed to last generations. Many of the items were hundreds, thousands, or even millions of years old. They had to be stored under very specific conditions to prevent further decay, from ancient dinosaur bones that couldn’t be exposed to air, to the pickled remains of extinct animals housed in rows of glass jars.

“Let’s see,” he muttered to himself as he drew a tablet computer from the pocket of his tweed jacket. There was a list of numbers, and those numbers corresponded to drawers and storage areas, Charles referencing the sections as he walked past them.

One of his responsibilities as an archivist was to help develop exhibits where the public could view small sections of the collection, and his task today was to workshop a Mesoamerican-themed display. He passed numbered drawers filled with specimens of stone arrowheads and obsidian knives, pausing to examine an ancient clay bowl decorated with ornate cross-hatching. When he pulled up its number in the database, he learned that it was Mayan, AD 250. Beside it was a plate from a later era depicting a dancer with a feather headdress. Late Classic period, AD 600. He made a note and moved on.

It was easy to see where the newer sections of the archives had been added over time, the pristine, metal drawers with their hydraulic carriages giving way to dark wood. Much of the facility was modern and hi-tech, but these cramped, shadowy areas were probably what most people imagined when they thought of a museum basement.

The condition of the specimens was checked periodically – that was another of his responsibilities – but some of these artifacts might have scarcely been touched in decades. Ceremonial masks mounted on hooks leered down at him, their crude, grimacing visages lit by the glow of faded light strips. They seemed to stare at him through their dark, empty sockets as he passed beneath them, his mere proximity enough to disturb the motes of dust that clung to their feathers.

He was in the Aztec section now, stone carvings of skulls with their tongues extended and turquoise ritual masks grinning back at him. As he rounded a corner in the maze-like rows of shelves, he came upon a large carving of a two-headed snake covered in scales that took the form of intricate turquoise tiles, its sharp teeth and red lips catching the dim light. He started, silently admonishing himself for his alarm. Even after spending so much time alone in the archives, the history of these artifacts hung heavy on the air, as though the weight of every decade could be tangibly felt. Charles didn’t believe in ghosts, but it was sometimes hard to shake the sense that he was being watched, carvings designed to inspire fear and reverence fulfilling their purpose long after their creators had passed on.

He passed by glass cabinets filled with ancient Aztec weapons – round shields and ornately decorated wooden clubs with sharp blades of dark obsidian embedded in neat rows. Some of them were over a meter long, intended to be wielded with both hands, the edge of that volcanic glass as sharp as any razor blade.

The Aztec people had been renowned for their warlike ways, but if he was in charge of pitching an exhibit to the curator, then Charles wanted to deviate from the norm. It was not their weapons, but their art and architecture that fascinated him. The towering steps of their grandiose temples, the beautiful spotted jaguar hides of their ceremonial garb, the myriad colors of their ornate feather headdresses – these were the things that would draw the eye of curious museum goers and inspire them to learn more. How could anyone look upon the city of Tenochtitlan – a Venice of the ancient world – and not feel awed by the sight of its intricate waterways?

He paused to examine a heavy stone sculpture – large enough that its round edges would almost match the span of his outstretched arms. It was a sacred calendar used for divination and to track the holy rituals that were so central to Aztec life. To describe it as elaborate would be an understatement. There wasn’t a millimeter of its surface that wasn’t decorated with a masterful carving, the sun god Tonatiuh staring out from its center with teeth bared and tongue extended, surrounded by symbols charting important days and depicting past ages of the world. The Aztec belief system had centered around the concept of the Universe being in a state of precarious balance. Forces of good and evil fought a perpetual war, one which neither side could be allowed to win lest the world as they knew it come to an end. That balance was to be maintained through careful observance of ritual, fasting, and most famously, sacrifice.

The curator would hate him for having it moved – it had to weigh a ton – but what better representation of their culture and belief system could there be? He marked it down on his tablet, recording the number, then moved on.

In the furthest reaches of the oldest section of the anthropology collection, he came upon something that gave him pause. Nestled at the end of a shadowy corridor was a large object covered in a white sheet, a vaguely circular shape visible beneath its folds. Charles felt somehow drawn to it, a kind of curiosity guiding him closer. As he walked between narrow, towering shelves made from polished wood, a light breeze seemed to disturb the sheet. It fluttered gently, and he stopped in his tracks.

He was underground, and there were no windows. There should be no breeze here. Nor had the little gust of wind disturbed the dust that caked every surface. A little wary now, he drew closer, pulling up his tablet.

“What are you?” he wondered aloud, scanning the records. While all of the shelves that surrounded it were numbered, this item was not. It merely sat on the carpet, pushed up against the back wall. Judging by the ceremonial masks and daggers that surrounded it, it was likely Aztec in origin. Another calendar, perhaps? The stale air grew thicker as he approached, each breath an effort, the tall shelves that surrounded him seeming to press in as though the passage was growing narrower. A trick of light and shadow, to be sure. He was standing in front of it now, finding it larger than it had appeared, reaching about chest height.

He extended a hand, gently raising the protective sheet. Now, the dust swirled in the air, forcing him to hold his breath lest he inhale a lungful of ancient mold and skin cells. As the fabric slid away, he beheld a dark and reflective surface beneath.

This was no stone calendar – it was an obsidian mirror. A single, massive piece of volcanic glass had been polished to a reflective sheen, forming an impressively round disk. It sat upon an ornate cradle that was decorated with unusual Aztec flair. Much of it was made from bone wrapped with leather, its rim decorated with red gemstones and what looked like teeth taken from a large carnivore. There was a prominent skull as its centerpiece – possibly from a big cat like a jaguar. The cradle held the mirror aloft, tilting it slightly backward for better visibility. He could see the light strips on the ceiling reflected in it, along with his dark shadow, the mirror showing him a smoky and indistinct representation of the world.

Although the cradle was clearly Aztec in its iconography, these mirrors had predated their empire by millennia, being used by many older Mesoamerican cultures such as the Maya and Olmec. There was a sense of age about it – moreso than even the pedestal it sat upon or the artifacts that surrounded it.

The cultures that had used these mirrors believed they were windows to the spirit world. They could be used to divine the future, and deities from the other side could peer back through them, watching and judging the actions of their subjects.

Charles swayed back and forth a little, watching his reflection warp. Perhaps the mirror’s surface was slightly concave or not entirely flat, but the way that the reflection wavered almost made it look like swirling smoke. Turning his attention back to his tablet, he made a note of it, reminding himself to assign the artifact a number. How it had gone without one, and how long it had been stored down here, he couldn’t imagine. One of his predecessors had certainly been neglectful in their duties.

Before turning to leave, he gently replaced the sheet, wanting to protect the shiny surface from any scrapes or scratches. Curiously, despite the disturbed dust that swirled in the air, not a solitary mote seemed to have marred the mirror’s pristine surface. Charles began to walk back down the aisle, feeling that strange weight begin to lift as he put some distance between himself and the artifact, as though each step shed another pound.

The air was full of dust, and the shadows were playing tricks on his eyes. Maybe he just needed a good night’s sleep.

Almost at the end of the corridor now, he felt a strange compulsion to turn and look back at the mirror. He paused, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, the shadows that shrouded the artifact only seeming to grow more oppressive. It could not have been so dark only moments prior, could it? He had seen his reflection, as indistinct as it was. Like water pooling in a drain, the shadows seemed drawn to it, flowing towards it and collecting around it. His eyes flicked to the ceiling, where the light strips still shone, but they were somehow distant – weak.

Charles lurched away in alarm as a far stronger gust of wind tore at the sheet, lifting it enough that he could glimpse the pedestal beneath, making the fabric flutter. The suddenness and violence of it made him bump his shoulder into the shelves to his right, shaking their whole length and displacing more dust that remained somehow shielded from this errant wind. In helpless horror, he watched as one of the stone masks that was precariously perched just above the mirror rattled, then fell from its hook.

The heavy mask crashed down onto the mirror, impacting its face with a loud crack, tearing the sheet away as it fell to the carpet. A great scar in the otherwise flawless obsidian surface was revealed, and Charles felt his heart sink. He cursed himself under his breath for having let his childish superstition deface this likely priceless artifact.

Before he could take another step, the dark glass began to smoke. It came as a wisp at first, rising gently toward the ceiling – easily mistaken for a trick of the eye amidst all the shadow. Then came a great gout, bursting forth from the crack like the violent pyroclastic cloud of a volcano. The stench of sulfur stung his nose as the plume gushed into the aisle, filling the air with its acrid haze, forcing Charles to cover his mouth with his sleeve and avert his watering eyes.

His instinct was to rush for the nearest fire extinguisher lest it spread, but as quickly as it had come, the smoke dissipated. In an instant, the dark shadows were gone, leaving the cracked mirror sitting at the end of the aisle with the fallen mask and dusty sheet at its base. He waited for fire alarms to sound, but they never came, and that stench of volcanic sulfur was soon gone.

With his heart racing, Charles crept back down the corridor to examine the damage. The crack took the form of a deep scar in the polished stone, but more than that, the mirror seemed duller now. It didn’t reflect his shadow in the way it had before – the lights above his head barely registering. The mask seemed to have fared better, and he returned it to its hook, taking one last regretful glance at the mirror before covering it up again.

There was no way to explain what he had just witnessed. Maybe he was losing his damned mind. Maybe it was late, and dark, and he had somehow mistaken dust for billowing smoke? Whatever the explanation, the curator was going to have his head tomorrow. Potentially his job, too.

Still wracked by unease and apprehension, he cut his mission short, hurrying back to the spiraling staircase.

“Whether it was an accident or not, someone in your position can’t be making these kinds of mistakes,” the curator chided as he strode ahead of Charles. “Many of the specimens down here are unique – priceless,” he added gruffly. He was a head shorter than the archivist, sporting a bushy mustache and a pair of round glasses, the collar of his white shirt protruding above his woolen sweater. “Where did you say it was?”

“Down here,” Charles replied, wringing his hands nervously as he directed his superior to the corridor in question. “With the Mesoamerican artifacts.”

“I don’t even remember having any such mirrors in our collection,” the curator added as he turned the corner. “None of the size you described, at least. I suppose we’ll take a look and assess the damage – see if it can be restored.”

Charles felt a different kind of weight settle in his belly as he saw the mirror sitting beneath its sheet at the end of the aisle, the curator marching over to it. The portly man lifted away the fabric, then paused, making Charles wait for a few agonizing moments more.

“Are you sure this is the one?” the curator demanded.

“Of course,” Charles replied, leaning past him. “I...”

The mirror was pristine, the crack that he had seen the night before completely gone. It was as though someone had replaced it with an immaculate replica before morning.

“I don’t see any damage,” the curator added, leaning a little closer and adjusting his spectacles.