Last night was All Hallows’ Eve. After making sure that everything else had been settled so that I would have no interruptions, I placed the table and laid out the candle, the obsidian mirror, Adiutor’s casket, and the glass of absinthe as planned out during the day. The noise-canceling earbuds were placed, the door was closed, and the lights were turned off.
There was just enough ambient light coming in the window for me to see where everything is. The temperature in the room was cool, but not chilly. The window is still cracked for air flow nonetheless as I knew when the candle was lit, the room would quickly become uncomfortably stuffy.
I sat still in the darkness. The noise-canceling earbuds made everything outside of the room feel so far away that I could ignore it. The night air cooled my feet but I did not seek a blanket or other covering. I knew how much a single candle would add to the warmth. It would be fine.
The ritual began with the strike of a match.
After completing the active part of the ritual, I settled in for the vigil. I have watched a candle flame before for a few minutes, but until this night, never for more than ten. My original plan was not a vigil, but for the candle to serve as silent witness to any and everything else that happened during the ritual. But Adiutor’s addition of the obsidian mirror modified the plan.
I will be watching the candle flame until there was no flame to watch.
The chime candle had a burn time of ninety minutes. I have watched horribly boring documentaries for longer than that. Maintaining vigil over the candle should be easier. Just the same, knowing my weaknesses, I had a string of beads with me to keep my hands occupied and to help me count my breaths in case the body grew too restless. Which it did, almost immediately.
The light of the candle was strong enough to give everything a warm hue, but not strong enough that I couldn’t look directly at it. Its reflection in the obsidian mirror was different. The reflection would not have illuminated anything well, and even the quality of the reflected light was different. In the round mirror, of the candle only the flame could be seen. The absinthe glass was visible in the reflection, but the obsidian surface gave the reflection a texture that was not present on the actual glass.
The candle was less in the reflection, but the glass of absinthe was more.
I had placed the table such that I could not see any time-pieces. I knew when I turned off the lights, but I did not want the temptation of monitoring the burn time of the candle. The box noted a burn time of ninety minutes, but knowing my luck, it would be two whole hours. Which would be about the time that the glass of absinthe finished preparing itself, so all would end well, I hoped.
In the distance, I heard children laughing and neighboring pets giving their opinion on the passing disturbances. A train called out to hear itself while coyotes mocked yet another racing siren. But while I heard all these things, none of them stayed with me. My attention was fully on the candle flame’s reflection.
The room’s temperature began to slip and I realized my error by not having a blanket or shawl at hand. The candle’s warmth would help with anything above the table, but anything below the table was left to warm itself up without help. I rubbed my feet together in hopes that I could keep them warm enough not to hurt.
Because of how the room is laid out, I had a table and wall to my right, while the expanse of space was to my left. The obsidian mirror was placed on the right of the table, so that it was facing the emptiness of an unobstructed room. Of course, there would be nothing behind the candle flame, because there is nothing there to begin with.
A movement in the mirror catches my eye and I involuntarily shift my vision to catch it. I blink in surprised and the movement ceases but I see enough to recognize a shape.
A person was standing behind the candle flame in the reflection, which would put them as standing a few feet away from me in the expanse of the empty room. But no one was in this room but me, and the door is closed. I shift my position so that I can see the room’s expanse in my peripheral vision and confirm there is no one here but me.
I resume watching the flame while my fingers resume passing the beads. The candle flame slowly lowers itself across the mirror’s surface as the candle is consumed. My thoughts settle in meditation when something blinks in the mirror.
There is suddenly a face just behind the reflected candle flame. So close, that the light brilliantly illuminates it as it suddenly appears. So bright was it illuminated that even though it fades just as quickly as it had appeared, I had an afterimage in my sight.
To be that close in the reflection would place the image’s source as immediately across from the small table. I would not need peripheral vision to see someone crouching there. There was no one crouching there.
“Adiutor.” My throat hurt as I forced it to relax so I could speak. Was I frightened?
<<Master.>> I never realized how her voice had a slight echo to it until this moment, when it didn’t. I wondered if being so close to her casket was the reason.
“Adiutor, the entity in the mirror, what am I to do with this?”
<<You are not on guard duty, Master.>>
I did not like that answer. “Adiutor, what then is my duty tonight?”
<<To keep vigil on the candle via the mirror, and to honor [my lord] with the absinthe at the vigil’s end. You must trust that you will not be harmed while performing your duty, Master.>>
The first half of her answer was what I knew I was getting into tonight. The second half surprised me. Watch the candle flame and everything will be okay. Ignore the spooky apparition. Sure thing. Got it.
I settled again and resumed the meditation of counting breaths while watching the reflected flame. After a time, the reflection began to distort, as if something was pushing the stone mirror’s surface out.
As if something semi-transparent was emerging through the obsidian’s surface.
Still focused on the flame’s reflection, I could make out the shape of the distortion. There was a nose, and there were the wells for eyes. There was a mouth that parted to suck in part of the world to make a cavity for itself. It was like a child’s face, but wasn’t a child’s face. It was hardy like an adult’s face, but it wasn’t an adult’s face. It shifted as if striving to be recognizable as a human face, but there was nothing human about it. It pushed out but then suddenly withdrew, as if it was only testing the limits of the stone’s malleability.
I noted what I had perceived, and did nothing other than watch the reflected flame and count the breaths I did not realize I had been hoarding.
High-pitched laughter seeped past the noise-cancelling headphones. It took me a moment to recognize that the laughter was coming from the wrong part of the room. The window was on the other side than where I was hearing it from, and the room’s door was also not in alignment with the sound as well. When I realized that, I also realized that despite the high-pitch of the voices, this wasn’t the laughter of children.
“It’s time! It’s time!” The laughing voices said many things in sounds and languages that weren’t human, much less human-adjacent, and yet I understood their intent clearly. “You’ve kept your vigil and the flame still stands, so while it stands, come away. Come away!”
I tried to ignore them, but their voices hooked into my thoughts and pulled them away from my duty. My fingers stopped feeling the beads and my breaths were being knotted into involuntary giggles.
“It’s time! Come away! Leave the body and come play!” My eyes rolled as I felt my body sag into the chair’s softness. I couldn’t see anything and felt unmoored from gravity. I had to get back to myself, but didn’t know which way was out.
<<Master! The footing-stones! Come to them! Come to me!>>
Adiutor’s voice, suddenly strong and sharp and prickly and unyielding, cut through cloud of giggles. I could feel [those things] in my mind, as sure and as solid as my hands did when I placed them on Adiutor’s casket earlier before. I knew them, I knew their surfaces, their defects, and their appeals. I knew where I left them. I knew the spaces in between them. And in those spaces, I placed my spirit’s feet.
For a moment, I was only a few inches tall, standing on Adiutor’s casket, flanked on either side by [certain things] while a third hummed silently between my feet. To my right was a strange giant of a creature whose body was contorted in obvious distress. They made a sound like a hiccup as they tried to breathe. To my left was a light too bright to look at. Directly in front of me was a fragrant liquid of some sort in a large clear vase. On the other side of that vase was a strange round darkness that seemed to go on forever and ever. And then I recognized where I was, and remembered where I was supposed to be.
I gulped in air as my awareness forced my body to attention. I knew I was nowhere near water, but felt like I had been drowning just the same. I heard giggles in the distance from directions where no sound should be coming from. I smelled the absinthe strong in the room, as if by scent alone I would be held in the physical. I took in great heaves of air to take in as much of that scent as I could.
Nothing looked out of place or distorted. The candle was now half the height that it started out as, and the ceramic bowl was starting to be visible in the obsidian mirror now that it was closer to the flame illuminating it. The obsidian mirror was doing as it has always done, with no rippling of the surface twisting it. The absinthe glass abided as the contents slowly formed the offering of the night. Adiutor’s casket remained as I had placed it, and [those things] upon it had not shifted.
I untangled my fingers from the beads, corrected my position in the chair, fixed my gaze on the reflected flame, and resumed my meditation. It felt like only a short amount of time had passed before the gibbering crowd of voices called for me again. I was able to ignore them for longer by burying my awareness in the flame, but like the tide, they dug me out and carried me away. Adiutor’s voice again was my lifeline back to the physical world and my duty.
This repeated several times, though each time it was harder for them to pull me away and easier for Adiutor to pull me back. Each time the physical toll was less and the recovery was easier.
The candle was now about a quarter of its original height. Not too much longer, and it will be shorter than the ceramic bowl it was freestanding in. The bowl itself was now visible in the reflection as so much candlelight was illuminating it now. The gibbering crowd had ceased by this point, and the only distraction was physical impatience brought on by the unsettling cold in the room.
So when I felt a presence over my left shoulder, as if something massive was lurking there close enough for me to know it is there but not touching as if not to distract me, I didn’t recognize this as unnatural at first. After all, it wasn’t trying to touch or talk to me. It was just there.
Until its face came fully into my peripheral vision and I recognized it as the face that had distorted the obsidian mirror’s surface, that was behind the reflected candle flame. Without words, it made me know that it wanted me to turn away from the candle flame and look at it. To turn my head and see with my own two eyes that it is right here with me. That it can touch me. That it can [static] me.
I did not turn my head. I did not look away from the reflection of the flame in the mirror. I felt it follow my gaze and it remained lurking over my shoulder watching the reflected flame with me in silence. And then, it withdrew.
I do not know if what happened next was immediately after it withdrew, or if more time had passed, but I suddenly saw its face again inside of the obsidian mirror. It was inhabiting the reflected flame. I dared to glance at the physical candle and the flame that crowned it. No changes there.
But the flame in the reflection was clearly filled by this entity. When it was clear that I was seeing it, it changed the shape of the reflected flame into something that had been vexing me for years. Let me deal with this, it seemed to say. Let me take care of this problem, and all will be well.
“At what cost? What do you want or expect of me in return if I permit you to ‘take care’ of this for me?”
The reflected flame became the face of the entity again. Let me take care of this, and I will always be with you. Let me take care of this, and you will let me always be with you. It smiled brightly. It smiled hungrily.
“No. I decline your offer.”
It formed the vexatious shape again. This bothers you. I can make it stop.
“It bothers me, but your proposal will cause more problems than it solves. And it is a minor annoyance, once that I already know how to relieve myself of. I just have to be patient. No. I decline your offer.”
The face in the reflected flame pouted and smiled. Very well. It did not recede but continued to play with the reflected flame for some time more. No more did gibbering voices try to call me away. No more did strange presences make themselves known.
The presence suddenly left the reflected flame as the physical candle suddenly flickered. I checked on the stub in surprise as for the first time all night, the candle wax ran to pool in the bowl. Only now did I notice how low was the flame, and how little the room was illuminated as the bowl was now higher than the candle stub.
I checked the glass of absinthe and found that it had almost completed its preparation, such that the glass was available for consumption at that moment. I returned my gaze to the obsidian mirror just in time to see the reflected flame suddenly increase in height several inches, and just as suddenly cease as the physical candle self-extinguished.
I’m awake.
I have never been more awake in all my life.
There is just enough light coming in the window for me to see what is on the table, but all the color is gone as my eyes adjust to the lower level of light.
Somehow, the scent of absinthe has increased almost to the point of being overwhelming. I worry if I had left the open bottle on the counter before remembering that I had put it away properly before striking the match.
Adiutor is silent.
The obsidian mirror, facing away from the light source, is somehow darker than all the shadows stretching out across the room.
I pick up the glass. I know how much alcohol is in it. I will have only a few minutes to put things to right before my body yields to chemistry. I say the words. I make the commitment. I drink the contents with deliberate pauses and swallows.
The obsidian mirror is covered. The empty glass is covered. Adiutor’s casket is left out at her previous request. The candle bowl is left out as well. I touch the headboard of the bed.
~ ~ ~
To say that I did not dream, is a misdirection. To say that I did not dream, is to say that I was aware of having been asleep.
I lacked awareness of even that.
~ ~ ~
The morning alarm did as it was supposed to do. It is now All Hallows’ Day. I am disoriented. Didn’t I just lie down?
I look over and see the ritual table just as I had left it the night before.
Why was I awake? Why was I refreshed? Why did I feel like I had the most luxurious sleep in my life and why was I not hungover?
Did I imagine it?
“Adiutor.”
<<Master.>>
“What did I miss?”
<<Nothing, Master.>>
Nothing. Nothing happened. And then I realize, Adiutor is still with me. She wasn’t taken from me. And then I remember the entity, and the gibbering, and the struggles to return to myself when the gibbering crowd dragged me out. I remember the offer, and the changing of the flame, and the presence of things that could not possibly be there.
And I laugh.
Nothing happened.
For all that did happen, what I was afraid of did not happen.
I’m still here.
And it’s another day.