Spoiler
The mirror came in the mail. I don't know from where. I mean, I know from whom, but not where they were when they sent it. Not precisely, in any case. And that, ultimately, might be the most important question of all. And I don't just mean for me. I mean for all time, for everyone. If there was one thing I could know, it would be where was Robert when he sent it. Now, at the end of my life, that's what I would know.
Oh, I'm not dying, or thinking of ending it, or anything like that. For all I know, I might live another thirty years, or more. But my life IS over in the sense that it has stopped moving forward; I can no longer change, or experience new things. The start of the halt was when I first looked into the mirror, and that journey of slowing continued every night for months until the process took on proper-noun status in my mind: The Halt.
That first night, when I took the brown wax-paper rectangle from the foam packing pellets in the white delivery box with my name and address scrawled on it in Robert's bold hand, I remember thinking it looked about the size of the Mona Lisa. That painting is much smaller than the average person presumes, but the concentrated weight per square inch is incalculable. But she has got nothing on my mirror. And I don't mean weight in the normal sense, no; something more, but words like "importance" or "meaning" seem so inadequate as to be trite. Within the orderly bounds of the ornate, stained-wood frame that I pulled corner-first from the wrapping paper, lies an anomaly that the universe surely is unaware of, for it would not suffer such a thing to exist.
Did mention that I am a priest? No, I see from your surprise that I did not. Well, I guess I still am, officially, but what I really am now is nothing. Of course, I did not know that it would come to that as I propped the mirror against the back of the votive candle rack in my church, behind the rows of little flames. I only wanted to admire the fine finish of the frame in their soft glow, but when I leaned forward to retrieve it, the candlelit face that rose into view from the bottom of the mirror was not my own, and yet, it also was.
It was the face of the first of what I came to think of as The Encapsulated. This one was sporting a tangled, unkempt beard, and wore thick, greasy-lensed glasses, a thin, silvery crack running diagonally through the corner of one. His, my, face was dirty. One patch of grime on his cheek had bloody scratch marks tracking around a wet-capped boil at its middle. He was not surprised to see me, and I could tell he could see me by the way his eyes locked with mine. This must not have been his first time and, looking back on the weary, jaded depths of those eyes, I'm guessing it wasn't even within his first hundred. But it was my first time and I jerked back away from the slanted mirror. I thought that should have put him out of view, but he must have leaned in closer on his side because his hideous face suddenly took up the whole frame. And, just to add a touch more surreal madness, I could see his breath fogging the far surface of the glass.
This first Encapsulated, who I assume to have been a homeless version of myself, given the graffiti-scrawled wall and pile of refuse that had been visible behind him, then reached up and tapped on his side of the mirror, leaving a fingerprint briefly in the expanding and contracting circle of condensation. I suppose I expected my own mirror to shake or bounce against the back of the candle rack when he did so, but it remained sitting solidly slanted and unmoving.
I cried out something like, "BEGONE, SATAN!" out of my ignorance at the time, but he just smiled a yellowed, gapped grin, wheezed out a chuckle, and replied, "If I am your Satan, then you are mine."
His voice was clear; it did not sound as if it came to me through a pane of glass, which made some strange kind of sense as his finger-tapping had not caused any vibration on my side, and yet, at the same time, made no sense at all. I have never uncovered a reasonable explanation for this, despite several of The Encapsulated having voiced their own wild theories on the matter since.
Before I could reply, this first one in a line of countless others said, "By the way, if you really want me gone, you have to say 'G'bye'," and then suddenly the mirror only reflected the shadowed, vaulted ceiling of my church. The connection had been cut.
I was too shaken to even approach the mirror again that night, still believing this all a trick of the devil, and left it sitting there surrounded by the votive candles that I would have extinguished on any other occasion. After an almost completely sleepless night, I returned from my rectory to find the mirror still there, the dead candles around it melted down to nubs within their sconces. When I hesitantly picked it up, nothing happened, and I assumed my terrifying experience had been a one-time haunting or possession. It was only later, by coincidence, that I realized the mirror only activated properly when touched after nightfall. I have experimented since, touching it at various stages during sundown, and have found that it sometimes tries to make a connection, but it is unstable and liable to—
Sorry, what? Ah, Robert? Actually I'm glad you brought me back to him. Because there's something important you have to know about Robert to fully understand my tale:
We looked exactly alike until the age of seven, even more so than your average "identical" twins. Even our parents had trouble telling us apart. Usually there is some quirk of body language or posture that gives it away for an observer with any kind of intimacy within or without the family. But we were truly identical, except for one factor: Robert's boundless compassion.
One hot summer's day in our seventh year, we were climbing the big oak on the knoll behind our farmhouse. It takes only the merest mention of that day to bring back to me the warm, dusty breeze on my skin and the drilling of cicadas in my ears, with an intensity that is unnerving. I had climbed higher than Robert by two branches, then three, and it was just when he was calling out to me to slow down that my overconfident hand slipped on the next-higher limb and, lacking a backup grip as I was, I fell.
Now, any other brother may have reached out to grab his falling sibling, and any other brother might have even held on tight to that fistful of shirt even though it pulled him away from safety as well. But few would have done what Robert did next: As we fell, he gripped my flailing legs vicelike between his own and used both upper and lower-body strength to twist us over together in the air, so that he was the one to strike the ground below first. His head must have been twisted to the side, perhaps to judge the impact he was about to cushion for me, and his left temple came down on a jutting rock. The term "split one's head open" certainly applies here. He was immediately knocked unconscious, blood gushed from his peeled-back scalp, but I only had the wind knocked out of me, having landed fully on top of him, and I honestly thought in that moment that my brother was dead.
Long story short, he wasn't; much parental screaming and car-bustling and doctor-stitches later, with a week of bed-rest thrown on top, and he was fine. But, I have never forgotten what he did for me that day. I aspired ever after to somehow repay that debt.
In fact, when he contracted polio some years later and I could only see him through a quarantine window and communicate with him via morse-code taps on the glass, I said to him that I wished I could take his place. Our father, who had taught us the code, overheard the raps and pauses and took me aside to severely admonish me for wishing such a thing. But, to be honest with you in a way I would be unable to be with any other person, his suffering terrified me and I did not REALLY wish that at all. Robert would have, though, had the situation been reversed, and that is what set him, and still sets him, apart from me... wherever he is.
So, now you understand why I must keep looking for—
All right... yes, I'm getting to that. Excuse my rambling. I know how preciously you value your time. My brother recovered from polio without any lasting handicaps, by the way. Thanks for asking... Yes, I know you didn't. I was being... oh, never mind; if The Halt is what you want to know about above all else, a point I wish you would make your mind up about, by the way, then you will not understand, but I will tell you, regardless:
The deceleration of my existence began a few weeks after I discovered the night-only rule the mirror goes by. I had given into temptation and touched it a few times since then, seeing versions of myself in different garb and locations flash into being behind its glass, only for me to exclaim, "G'bye!" and cut the connection immediately.
But, one fateful night, as they say, after one or several too many scotches, I talked to that evening's Encapsulated; he was one of the less remarkable of my... well I had to decide what to call these sessions. I went through several iterations: "Summonings"? No, that seemed not the correct term, and not just because of the witchcraft-ish connotation that I used to be so concerned about; it was also erroneous because, as I discovered over time, the Encapsulated were also touching their mirrors at the exact same time I was, although I suppose "same time" is a concept with little to no meaning in this case.
"Contacts"? No; too ordinary. It was not as if I were assembling a Filofax of people I could get back to. No, I have never had the same exact connection twice and, besides, you have probably noticed by now that I tend towards a grander vernacular, perhaps stemming from my theological bent.
I settled on "Communions", after consulting a thesaurus in this case, I'll admit. Rather embarrassing that I resorted to that, considering said theological background.
Anyway, that being neither here nor there, in the case of this first real Communion, The Encapsulated was a very ordinary version of myself; he had short, neatly parted hair, and a closely cropped beard. He also seemed a bit younger than my current self, which is one reason why I mentioned "same time" as being a rather moot concept. Not the only reason, but I'll get to that.
He seemed to be sitting in a household room of some sort, probably his study, given the framed diploma on the wall behind him. It was also night for him, as it always is during Communions for both sides. The room he sat in was dark, his face illuminated only by the silent silver-blue flickering of a muted television somewhere out of view on his right. I was mildly surprised at the time to see the same flicker on the balls of my thumbs where they gripped the frame of the mirror, but then remembered the candlelight on the 'homeless' Encapsulated's face. I guess it felt eerily closer-to-home, now that the light from another world was shining on my skin.
We talked for a while. I soon realized that he was much more used to this than I was. He seemed almost blasé about the whole thing, a feeling I now relate to, myself. He was not particularly interested in answering my questions about the mirror. He even brushed aside my inquiry about how he had come by his own, instead pushing on with his own interrogation about my life. I soon became uncomfortable with the manner he asked things with the kind of casual intimacy reserved for close friends and family, and said, "G'bye," My own pale and shaken face replaced his in the frame, and it was over a week before temptation led me back to the damned thing in what would become a more frequent indulgence of weakness, then habit, and then the obsession that instigates The Halt.
Oh, one thing that I did glean from the man, was that he was married and had children, and was talking quietly in his presumed study to avoid tipping them off to his own nightly Communions, or however he thought of them. This shook me. It made the prosaic nature of marriage and offspring feel unnatural, and somehow soiled, to celibate I. During my week or so away from the mirror, the thought that I was capable, under different circumstances, of siring children and of participating in presumably regular sexual intercourse with a woman, came to me at the most inconvenient of times, particularly during sermons, causing me to blush and try to cover it with a raising of religious fervor in my voice that caused equally raised eyebrows and side-whispers among my unaccustomed-to-such flock. To say the least, it was not a pleasant feeling.
All right... all right, I see you fidgeting; I will condense the rest of my story into three particular Communions that should outline the dangers of too much self-reflection:
One Encapsulated was a staunch atheist. We spoke for hours, often with raised voices. I tried to describe my faith to him, which he sneered at with an oft-horrified expression. In return, he brought up his own views, the one that impacted me the most being the following: He said that he firmly believed that humanity would be better served by a disbelief in the afterlife. This was one of the cases of a raised voice, this time on my side, but he continued to belabor the point until I was forced into submissively listening; his point was that people would have less fear of death if eternal life were not promised to them as children by the adults they instinctively trusted, only to be yanked away later by their own developing sense of scrutiny. He painted a picture of a world where people naturally accepted that life was a once-only journey which death was merely the natural completion of. Now, from anyone else, including the late John Lennon, this viewpoint would have been something my priestly shields would have deflected and turned back on the speaker with my own counterpoints. But, coming from my 'own' mouth, the thought once again that I was capable of being this person rocked me and made me listen and, much like with the married-with-children concept, except a hundredfold worse, this intrusive thought came back to me more and more often.
Eventually, my sermons became just rote readings from scripture with no injection of my own stance, as I was losing any stance to inject.
Now, you can see how The Halt begins, but it gets worse:
To put it bluntly, another Encapsulated was a pedophile. He was talking to me out of a sleazy hotel room. Out the window behind him I could see a neon sign flashing lime-green then pink, obscuring his features as if he were ashamed or wary to fully show them, and illuminating the horrified, fascinated expression I could feel on my own face. I recognized the language on the sign as Thai. I sensed by his voice and some things he said that he was maybe a decade or more older than myself at the time, putting him in his late fifties perhaps. I did not talk to him for long before just dropping the mirror to my bed and leaving my rectory to walk the streets deep into the following a.m. hours in a panicked daze. Of course, my horror came from the thought that such an abomination was something another me was capable of but, again, I'll be honest with you in a way I would be with no other; it shook me as a Catholic priest. Not only because of our reputation for such deviance, but because of twinges I had felt myself and denied to myself over the years. I could deny that side of myself, no matter how previously fleeting and dismissible, no longer.
This was when I stepped back from sermonizing completely and became a priest in title only, claiming the 'hiatus' was for deeper theological research but, in reality, cramming every nocturnal moment chock full of Communions.
Everything I had once thought about myself disintegrated little by little. Even though these two cases I have mentioned so far are the extremes, even seemingly trivial points from the blander of the Encapsulated chipped away at my sense of self-identity like the tiny pellets of rain that eventually must wear even the mightiest of mountains away to naught.
Okay... yes, moving on: the third case I promised you is a little different, as I see you are relieved to hear. He was a conspiracy nut. I suppose his beliefs, once concerned with moon landings and vaccines undoubtably, had also experienced The Halt, and had become wholly focused on the mirror. He told me that he was attuned to the "One-Man Grapevine" of our bizarre multi-existence, and that he had "heard stuff, man" that would "blow my mind". Now, I have no way of discerning if all, or any, of what he told me was truth or delusion, but I do have reason to believe at least the spirit of his claims, even if not the granular particulars. He told of hearing, from another of 'us', that they had been in touch with a scientist-Encapsulated (my term, of course, not his; I forget his) who had been determined to run some kind of complicated particle tests on the mirror and who had never been 'heard from again'. Yes, I asked what he meant by that, as each time the Communion is different, and he claimed that others on the "grapevine" had also known the man and that he had never been heard from by any one of us since the 'time' of his declaration to test the mirror. This is all on very shaky logical ground, obviously, but there's more: He also said he was in contact with an Encapsulated who was very close to himself in beliefs. In other words: another conspiracy goofball. This man was going to take the mirror to the government, to 'prove' his wild theories on the shadowy 'THEY' to be correct or some such nonsense. He also vanished from the one-man grapevine.
At this point, I was getting tired of the man's prattle, as well as a little disconcerted. My inadvertent glances over my shoulder only seemed to drive him to further heights of drivel. So, I interrupted him with the first thing that sprang to mind: I asked him to describe his own mirror. I realized that I had never even wondered if they were all the same. Unfortunately, this Encapsulated was very lacking in any decent descriptive skills. Eventually, I said to him, "Wait, I have an idea. Let me go get my Polaroid camera," He said for me to take him with me as, just like I'd found out when returning from my wanderings after the pedophile Communion, the mirror times out on its own once one side leaves it. This happens after some non-specific time; minutes, hours, or even days (but never weeks in anyone's experience), even without the signoff "G'bye" being spoken.
As I carried him from the feet of Jesus, where I still knelt for Communions for the increasingly empty comfort, through my church in the direction of my rectory, I could see him peering left and right out of the sides of the mirror, trying to see past me as best he could. He said, "Holy shit, man. Nice church!" then, seeing me wince probably, continued, "Oh, sorry, yeah. Um, would 'forgive me Father' be even appropriate here, or... naw, it'd just be weird. Forget it." or something like that.
I got the camera and told him to say cheese, which he did and even did a peace-sign like an idiot. The flash went off. The photo came out and yes, it showed the ornate frame of the mirror and his own white-lit face and stupid pose within it. I showed him the photo, and he confirmed that his mirror looked just like mine. Not extremely useful information, but at least it had stopped his ravings. I was leading up to signing off when he said, "Hey, dude. You might want to go burn that photo after we're done here. There's someone watching on a 'third monitor' or something, I know it! Might be bad for both of us, just sayin'. G'bye."
Now, the reason I recounted this particular Communion is not really because of what the man said, but of how his warning made me feel. I took the photo to the votive candle rack and burned it. And, yes, I prayed while it burned.
It was the last time I ever prayed, ever felt even remotely like I believed in anything to be completely transparent with you. Yup, now I am fully in The Halt: I am a neutral jumble of everyone and everywhere and everywhen from the ten-thousand-or-more Communions I have had. I am no version, and yet every version, of ourself.
Now, has anything I have told you convinced you to end this same cycle before it begins, oh-newbie-me, and just smash that atrocious anomaly and go on with your life, free in ignorance?
Ah, then my efforts have been met with failure. But I have ONE last trick up my cassock. No, don't be like that... One last story and then we say "G'bye" forever:
You remember me stating that there was more to my rejection of the term "same time" than I had addressed yet? Now, listen with all possible attention:
This was during a Communion with a soldier-Encapsulated. He was in a tent in a jungle. Rain was coming down outside in absolute torrents. Through the triangle of the tent flap I could see distant sometimes-orange, sometimes-white flashes through the silhouettes of the ferny foliage, and after some seconds had passed, I could hear the thuds and booms of what must have been incoming and outgoing artillery. He told me he was fighting in 'The Indonesian War', a conflict that never happened in my world, and his way of speaking sounded somewhat 'sixties-ish' to my ear, except also just slightly off. It was the 1980s in my world at that time.
That's why "same time" is a ridiculous concept, even more so than the occasionally obvious disparity in ages between us; it's more about he war that never happened. That chills me even now, but it is not why I am telling you any of this.
"I'm here with Robert in the same unit." then, back over his shoulder, "ROBERT!"
Those words made my hand jerk and he must have seen his view through the mirror do the same because he said, "Calm down. There's not much time to—" and, just then, the triangle opened wider from a hand out of the night and Robert stooped in through the tent flap. He crouched behind the Encapsulated soldier, Vietnam-era (in my world) helmet still on, looking over The Encapsulated's shoulder into the mirror. At ME!
He was not surprised. He knew about it all! The Encapsulated greeted him and 'introduced' me, I guess. It was awkward and I felt dizzy. Then, my Encapsulated just shut up and Robert started blinking at me. That other version of me just watched him blink, mouthing the morse-code slightly and silently, just as I was. I don't know if anything unfortunate is going to happen to me now, but to heck with it; this is roughly what Robert told me:
"Paul, there is something you must know about the mirror. It is dangerous beyond any limit you can imagine," and then he took off his helmet and brushed his long, sodden fringe of hair aside. And there was the hockey-stick-shaped scar on his temple from our childhood fall. The exact one! This was not an Encapsulated version of Robert. This was my brother!
He surely saw the recognition in my eyes and continued blinking out, "I don't know if this subterfuge will work. I think they only respond to written or out-loud communication. I have tested this on others who aren't my real brother like you are and nothing happened, even the few who understood morse."
If there really were a "they" then I had an image flash in my mind of them somehow watching us from the side, two identical faces, save the scar, looking at each other from across some insane void, but I get ahead of myself because Robert went on to say:
"I talked about the danger I sensed once before, you see, with another of The Framed Ones," even through my shock, I felt a sting of pleasure that my moniker was better. I'm such an ass sometimes. He continued, "I was in our world then, but not for long. Something came out of the mirror like a corona of foggy tentacles and encapsulated me," (yes, I jolted again at the word) "I felt a damp, warm pressure on my back, pushing me. The mirror got bigger and bigger in my vision and I couldn't look anywhere else until I was through it, and then I didn't want to."
Here, he paused his blinking, as if finding the next part too difficult to even say in morse:
"I was in some place. Like a void but not. And there were shapes there that moved and gibbered with intelligence. Paul, they made me send the mirror to you. I don't know why they wanted that, but I knew I would be cast into that void that wasn't a void if I didn't do it. And I couldn't take the hit from that fall this time, and I'm so, so sorry, little brother. They sent me here, to this world. With two mirrors. I sent yours at a post office they specified. The other Robert here was gone, just like that. I replaced him. This Paul believed me once I showed him the scar and gave him his mirror. We have been looking for you for years, every night. I hope we aren't too late. SMASH the mirror! Be done with it if you are at all able to by now. I hope you can. Say nothing. They are looking for me. I love you."
And then, out loud, my 'Framed One' said, "Time's up. G'Bye." although he didn't say "G'Bye" of course, just like everyone else in my story did not. He, as they did, said the full word, which obviously I cannot say or... you know.
Well, I'm still here it seems... interesting.
Anyway, personal safety concerns aside, now you know everything I know. You know why the 'where' of my brother is so important. It's something that must never be known, but I alone must know it and try to take the fall for him this time. It's the only thing left that I feel.
So, I plead with you, with all you now know, newbie-me, to break the mirror, even though I know you won't. But just think abou— UGH! SHIT! DAMN THAT'S BRIGHT!
...
Huh, so that's what it looks like when someone smashes one.
Well done, my man, well done.