The Ottoman Mirror

The Ottoman Mirror

written by: Nick Adigu Burke

 

At the foot of Muckleford Row, stood Ali Baba’s Shop of Curiosities – a mystical world of intrigues and exotics, conspicuously placed, between Cohen’s Haberdashery and the old knackers yard.

Midday had pealed its arrival, on the bell of Saint Crispin’s, when the portly Father James Lynch, shuffled from the Church’s vestibule.

In the strong apricot sun, he grimaced, lifting one hand to visor his eyes from the light, and the other to smooth the scraggly strands of his shiny scalp.

Through the low winter sun, he strolled across the cobbled Muckleford row, to the Shop of Curiosities, and entered. A relaxed, languid hush, hung in the shop, complimented by the incense that burnt to cinders on the counter, flavouring the air with their smoky aromas. Around him, trinkets and ornaments from beyond the Caucasus gleamed their intrigues. And over the counter, sat in a mist of his own satisfaction, the shop’s proprietor, Old Babaoglu, with his thick white moustache rolling in time with the bubbles, gargled in the Nargile he smoked.

Old Babaoglu had a face full of intrigue, in as much, that those who knew it, would say it resembled an old leather book, tanned and age-worn, with each line telling a tale of a rakish life. A face he lifted to Father Lynch.

“Welcome to Ali Baba’s Shop of Curiosities,” he pattered with a broad grin, “You find oddities and peculiarities….”

“From across continents and ages,” Father Lynch curtly pre-empted. “I know, I know. I am familiar with the spiel.”

“I see. Well now that I know you know, I rest easy. I sit here. I smoke my tobacco and all is well with the World. You need my assistance? You call, and I assist,” Old Babaoglu replied and dropped his grin. “And remember,” he held up a finger. “What is not found here, I still get, for you – like genie in a lamp. Anything you wish – Opium, tulips, woman, man, pineapple…”

“No… no,” Father Lynch replied, and straightened his dog-collar.

“Boy?”

“Good Heavens! No. Not today. I mean. What I mean to say. I came here for something more savoury. I require a looking glass – a mirror, you see. Last one fell from the wall this morning, shards everywhere. Blasted thing.”

“Seven years. Bad luck,” Old Babaoglu replied with a sharp intake of breath.

“Poppycock! Superstitions are a heathen’s commodity – a Devil’s trick,” Father Lynch growled. “Food for idolaters and blasphemers. Faith in the Lord Almighty, is all the nourishment I need.”

“I have what you want. Perfect,” Old Babaoglu returned the grin to his face, and scurried from behind his smoky counter.

Through the maze of statues and vases, and shrine-like things, beyond the chests filled with silvers and bronzes and vivid glass beads, they reached the far end of the shop. Between a bronze Hindu statue of Ganesha, and a marble sculpture of Neptune or Poseidon (never easy to tell), stood a fine mirror on a stand.

“Perfect for your need,” Old Babaoglu said, and ran his fingers over the impressive silver, jewel-studded frame.

Father Lynch did not reply, could not reply would be a fair guess: trapped in the gaze he gave to the mirror, bewitched, as some men are bewitched by a beautiful, exotic woman.

“Mirror is Ottoman talisman. You look. Mirror is shaped like eye,” Old Babaoglu eagerly pressed his pitch.

“The eye of Horus?” Father Lynch finally spoke.

“No, no,” Old Babaoglu’s jowls wobbled as he shook his head. “Similar. This is Ottoman, remember. This eye is Nazar Boncuk. It protects all who look in glass.”

“Protects? From what?”

“Will save you from seven years of bad happenings, for breaking old mirror.”

“Nonsense!” Father Lynch snapped. “But it is exquisite, I will give you that.”

“Be warned. Talisman not only shows outside, but inside too. It reflects the goodness within a man, so only the good will have good fortunes when they look into glass. Are you a good man?”

“A good man?!” Father Lynch scoffed. “I am a man of God. Of course I am a good man.”

“Some. Some, they say, mirror has power to make dreams come true. Glass reflects dreams into real world.”

“What complete and utter tripe. To sully such a charming artefact as this, with so much drivel, is almost sacrilegious. Forget all that nonsense. How much?”

Old Babaoglu took a deep breath, “lower than twenty shillings, and I don’t eat for a week.”

Father Lynch puffed his cheeks. “How about I give you fifteen shillings, and pray for your soul?”

Old Babaoglu, shook his head, “You are killing me. Fourteen shillings, and you don’t pray for my soul, Alhamdulillah!”

Father Lynch held the smirking proprietor with scepticism, “It’s a deal,” he slowly said, and stared into the dark eyes shining back at him.

When not preaching the word of God to Candlewood’s masses, Father Lynch, quilled away the hours at his writing bureau, avidly writing his beloved letters. And upon that prized writing bureau, is where he placed his beautiful new mirror, “A Turkish delight,” he quipped, then stepped back to admire the large eye, and his reflection that mirrored in it.

“A new purchase, Father?” Ms Crawthorn, the priest’s rosy-cheeked housekeeper said, as she breezed into the drawing room with a mass of logs clutched to her bosom.

“Yes,” Father Lynch replied and moved to make a slight adjustment to the mirror’s position.”

“Very nice,” Ms Crawthorn smiled, “Very nice, and dare I say, cost a pretty packet?”

“If I have told you once, I have told you a million times, Ms Crawthorn. It is prideful and vulgar to talk of money.”

“Apologies, Father. Just a little jest, is all.”

“If that, is all, may I ask to be left alone. I really must write this sermon, for morning mass, and I shall not be disturbed.”

“As you wish, Father. I just came to put this firewood in the basket. Oh, and to let you know, I got a lovely bit of haddock for our suppers tonight.” Ms Crawthorn replied, and placed the logs in the basket beside the fire.

“Now you have let that be known… Goodday, Ms Crawthorn.”

“Goodday, Father,” the housekeeper half-smiled, and left him gazing into the mirror.

“What an exquisite find,” he said to himself. “Fourteen shillings, and no prayer for that heathen soul. How very frugal. How very satisfactory.” He then pulled a purple upholstered chair from beneath the writing bureau, and began to quill his sermon.

Winter’s equinox was in full approach, when the sun, in the northern hemisphere, bends its lowest arc, and night falls before five o’clock. A time of year that frayed Father Lynch’s nerves. Though never feeling the loneliness of a priestly life, as he’d often reassure in letters to his brother (for in the Lord’s company I am forever blessed), those long, dark nights, filled him with doom. Why they instilled him with such morbidity, he did not know. Perhaps the night leads to thinking, and endless nights, to over-thinking? Or perhaps his unease manifested in the rectory’s aged timbers, which cracked and creaked in ghostly mischief? Or perhaps the groan of the wind among the rafters, making freezing spectres of the night, was to blame? Who knows, but nonetheless, those anxieties unsteadied the Father’s hand. Now, he growled a petulant growl at this particular disturbance, conceiving trembling to be the bane of flawless handwriting, a nemesis to the skill that bore him great pride.

From a whiskey decanter he poured a glass of the finest malt, south of Hadrian’s Wall. Medicinal, he’d often quip, to recalibrate an unsteady hand.

However, the gloom and the yellow candlelight, and the medicinal hazes of the whiskey, proved a heady concoction. His eyelids twitched, then flickered with the flirtation of sleep. His head nodded in tune to his weariness, and his quill slowed to a sedentary crawl. He placed the feather on the bureau, “A little catnap never burnt a soul,” he declared. Then, in a tired, tremulous voice, added, “In vain, rise early, and stay up late, toiling for food to eat – for he grants sleep to those he loves – Psalms 127:2.” And with that, his chin settled on his chest and he fell asleep.

The startled priest woke at his writing bureau. He wiped the sleep drool from his damp beard, and made out the comely shape of Ms Crawthorn, who stood in the doorway.

“You were dead to the world, Father!” she exclaimed.

“I beg your pardon,” Father Lynch wearily replied.

“I couldn’t wake you. You were fast asleep.”

“Naturally. What time is it?” Father Lynch asked.

“It’s supper time. Thirty minutes past seven o’clock, Father.”

“Good grief. You mean to say, I have slept for two hours? Never has a cat napped so long. The Lord must love me, very much,” he chuckled.

“What’s that, Father?”

“Oh, nothing. Just a little merriment between the Good Lord and I.”

“Come, Father, before your supper gets cold,” Ms Crawthorn urged.

“Yes. Yes, stop fussing, woman,” Father Lynch snapped. “I’m coming.”

The spacious, rosewood dining table gleamed with the shades and shapes of candlelight. At opposite ends, sat Father Lynch and Ms Crawthorn, cutlery and china, clinked, in the awkward hush. The housekeeper placed her knife and fork on her plate and craned her neck to peer beyond a candelabra.

“Such a fine bit of haddock,” she said, when she noticed Father Lynch had eaten all the vegetable accompaniments, but not the fish. “Do you not like it? But you’ve hardly touched it,” she whined.

“I am sure it is a fine bit of fish,” Father Lynch replied. “The thing is… Foolish, I know. But I had a dream, before you woke me. I dreamt I was sat here, as I am now, eating this fine haddock, when a piece stuck in my throat. As you might guess, I choked, and was only relieved from my terror when you called me to supper.”

“And you fear your dream will come true? Is that it, Father?”

“No. That is absurd. Poppycock. Dreams that come true? That is blasphemy. It is heathen talk.”

“Well, the fish isn’t going to eat itself,” Ms Crawthorn chuckled, while Father Lynch’s face burnt to scarlet.

“Fine. I am eating. Look,” Father Lynch growled, then chewed his haddock with all the vigour of a ravished bear, which left Ms Crawthorn to finish the rest of her supper. However, Ms Crawthorn could not finish. A strange sound disturbed her. To her ear, it was a dog coughing, but no, she then considered, Bess, Father Lynch’s Lurcher was outside in her kennel. Then she thought of a vixen in labour, or a dying donkey braying its final bray from the old knackers yard. But again, no, those tortured resonations were close, sounding from within the rectory.

The housekeeper fixed her attention to Father Lynch, to enquire if he could hear what she was hearing. That’s when she saw his chair crash back and his body double over his plate. That’s when she saw his purpled face, and the veins throb within it. That’s when she saw his eyes bulge, as though fresh pickled onions, and his mouth jam wide, to unleash the most inhuman of sounds – a dog coughing or a vixen in cub-birth, or the dying bray of a donkey.

“You okay, Father? You look a bit peaky!” She said, and when the Father jabbed vigorously towards his throat, she knew he was choking.

All a fluster, Ms Crawthorn raced around the dining table and beat holy hell upon Father Lynch’s back. Harder and harder, she beat, until the wheezed commotion fell to a loud heave. Then silence. The guilty morsel, sat innocently on the plate.

“Such a frightful calamity,” Ms Crawthorn exclaimed, as the Father trembled a glass of port down his gullet. “Seems that dreams really can, come true,” she added.

Father Lynch’s lip curled, “Preposterous! Mere coincidence. Nothing more!” He snapped.

In the wake of his traumatic misadventure, the Father retired to the drawing room, slouching his portly frame in a splendid Baroque armchair, before the log fire. Beside him, on a small table, a snifter of brandy warmed to his want, and on his lap, curled a tabby, warmed to her want, by the amber flames.

From his Bible, the Father read his favourite verses. Though committed to the cast-iron vaults of his great memory, he found reading them to be a cathartic exercise. It made him feel more pious. It made him feel closer to God. Occasionally, he aborted reading, to lift his head, and lower his spectacles to admire his fabulous Ottoman mirror. “Fourteen shillings, and no prayer for the heathen soul,” he chuckled, the jiggle of his round belly, prompting the tabby to knead her claws.

In the warm glow, Father Lynch’s eyes drooped. He stretched his tired limbs, and with a swinish snort, fell asleep. He dreamt, and found himself in the churchyard – his, churchyard. In a moonlit haze, he knelt beside a gravestone, which threw its shadow over the fresh soil of a freshly backfilled grave.

As is the peculiarity of dreams, he did not fear nor query why he was there (not at the beginning). He merely played puppet to the whims of his slumberous mind. In the churchyard gloom, he lifted a lamp to the gravestone. And on that granite face, read its inscription. He reeled back and split the night with the most ghastly of cries – akin to an infant in peril (more than an endangered old priest). In his terror, in his tremulous state, he dropped the lamp, then tried to dash for the gate that separated the church and rectory yards. Part-way across the lawn, he tripped on his black cassock and sprawled, spread-eagled on the dew-damp grass.

Stricken, Father Lynch urged himself to stand. And when he couldn’t, begged the Lord for assistance, “Oh Lord please. Deliver me from this Evil!” But all movement had been devoured by paralysis. Not a toe or finger could be bent or lifted. He then unleashed another infantile cry when the grave strangely tremored, as though a Biblical-sized mole would twitch its pink snout from the dirt.

His eyes exploded with terror, at what did, break the ground. Not the nose of a velvet-coated mammal, but a hand – a man’s hand, vaguely human, deathly blue and parasite bitten, followed by an equally hideous arm, and a head of scraggly follicles, no mother could possibly love. In a flash, what broke from the grave was on him, rancid and bloated, oozing puss, gnashing its broken, rotten teeth…

The priest woke in a fit of screams, his covers kicked and thrown, as though they be demons. “Oh dear God,” he gasped, with the last of his covers, strewn on the floor. “Only, a dream. Only a dream.”

For three nights, the hideous equinoxes of the same dream haunted Father Lynch, risen from the depths of hell like a sulphuric stink. For three nights he awoke to feral screams, and hands and feet that battled his bed covers. Three nights he feared to sleep, petrified of another reoccurrence. On the third morning, as he lethargically dipped soldiers into a scalped boiled egg, Ms Crawthorn remarked how ghostly and haggard he appeared.

“Stop fussing, woman,” was his irked response, followed by a haughty waft of his arm. But as the minutes of the grandfather clock ticked to the count of silence, his heat quelled. “Sleep has been a rare commodity of late. That’s all you need know, Ms Crawthorn. Not a thing to get into a tizzy about.”

“You must get a good-night’s sleep, Father,” Ms Crawthorn, replied. “Sleep is good for your constitutional.”

“Constitution.”

“That’s what I said. It’s good for your constitutional.”

“Yes,” Father Lynch agreed through gritted teeth.

“Lack of sleep makes a man very grumpy. And a grumpy man is no good to anyone.”

“Yes, yes, woman,” Father Lynched snapped.

“Now, don’t you upset yourself. All I am saying, is sleep well, Father – that’s all.”

Father Lynch shook his head and petulantly shovelled the remainder of his boiled egg into his mouth.

“That reminds me, Father. I ran into old Ali Baba. You know. Him who is the proprietor of that shop of curiosities.”

“Babaoglu,” Father Lynch sighed.

“Who?”

“Ali Baba is the shop’s name. The proprietor’s name is Mustafa Babaoglu.”

“Yes. Well, him. I ran into Must Arthur Baba… err. The Turk who owns the shop of curiosities.”

“Yes. What of him, Ms Crawthorn. Please get to the point. I hope he doesn’t want his mirror back.”

“No, no. Not that, Father. Although he did inquire about that Otter’s mirror he sold you. He asked how you were getting along with it .”

“Ottoman.”

“Pardon?”

“Ottoman. It’s an Ottoman mirror, not an ‘Otter’s mirror,’” Father Lynch reprimanded.

“Oh, yes. That’s the one. What am I like! Anyway. He asked me how you were getting along with it. You never told me it was a talisman with magic powers. Now, I’m not one for peering into mirrors, but I might make an exception. He said it’s a bringer of luck.”

“Well, nothing but bad luck, have I had, since I brought it home,” Father Lynch carelessly replied. “Trinkets that purport to be harbingers of good or ill-fortune. That talk is for the Devil. Superstitions are for heathens and blasphemers, not God fearing folk.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Father.”

Father Lynch strolled the short distance to St Crispin’s, the steeple, and gargoyle adorned turrets, resplendent in the morning sun. Inside the deserted church, the priest placed a violet stole around his neck, then entered the confessional, and drew the black curtain behind.

In the wooden gloom, he rued the annual cricket match – Candlewood, and arch enemies, Puddleton. A match he recently referred to as Michael, verses the Devil, for the heathen man. A statement he would later apologise for, after it came to the attention of the Bishop – a fine cricketer in his youth. Cricket day, always made for a quiet confessional, and a Candlewood verses Puddleton day, virtually rendered it pointless – with all and sundry at the Candlewood Oval, or whatever its name was, Father Lynch cared not to remember.

Weariness crept upon Father Lynch. First it gnawed his bones, then drooped his eyelids to a protested closure. He then jolted to his senses. He gripped the booth’s grab-bar, as though the world had tipped-up. “Goodness gracious…” he exclaimed. And was prevented from further exclamation by a woman’s voice, which rose from beyond the lattice.

“Sorry, Father for I have sinned,” she timidly began. For five minutes the sinner spoke, and for five minutes Father Lynch heard nothing of her confession.

If he had listened, he would have known the sinner to be the widow of the eminent archaeologist, Marcel le Faurier, who had died in rather odd circumstances, when he took a cursed mirror from the burial Turbe of an Ottoman sultan. This silver-framed artefact, of ocular shape, studded with gems, she sold to a white moustached Turk for five shillings, fully aware of the cursed danger it posed. But a mind on the drift, has no port, and Father Lynch heard not a jot of her confession, as he prescribed a hundred Hail Mary’s for her troubles. Throughout the sinful admission, his mind had been on his feverish dream. It had him shaken. He dreamt a violent storm had rolled in from the sea, and amid its tempestuous anger, as he left the church, the weathervane, which spun atop the steeple, blew down, striking him on the head.

The sinner left, and Father Lynch gnawed his lip. He swore he’d heard the wind gust, outside. He then laughed. “My ears, they trick me,” he remarked. But his ears were not for tricks. He had the auditory prowess of a bat, and so well he knew. The wind had gusted. But now he was left in no doubt, as the storm beyond the church walls brewed to a more wicked intention. He heard its violent gusts, and the rain throw its watery vengeance at the stained-glass windows. His heart leapt. His fingers trembled.

“You don’t believe in all that hocus-pocus, old boy,” he reassured himself. “Dreams do not come true. None. Not a single one.”

The nervy priest convinced himself well enough to prise open the vestibule door, where his eyes darted left, then right, before he crept from the church. No sooner had he tiptoed onto the storm-lashed steps, when a horrendous grinding caught his ear, as though a violin in tuneless play. The din loudened, and rabbit-like, he looked up, but could not react fast enough to the wrought iron cockerel that spun down from the steeple. It grazed the back of his head, as he ducked, and toppled him down the steps, into a puddle. In painful condemnation, he screamed, and sullied that holy place with enough profanity to redden a sailor’s cheeks.

“You was lucky,” Ms Crawthorn said, as she inspected the bandage, wrapped tightly around Father Lynch’s head.

“Lucky?” The priest winced, and propped himself up in his bed. “How am I lucky? That blasted weathervane so near killed me.”

“So near,” Ms Crawthorn chuckled. “But it didn’t kill you, did it? And that’s where the luck lies. Now rest. You look like you did, die.”

“Thank you for that delightful indictment, Ms Crawthorn,” Father Lynch groaned.

“Much obliged,” the housekeeper replied, and turned to leave. As quick as a leapt viper, Father Lynch grabbed her wrist. He pulled her close, too close. Ms Crawthorn pushed herself free, as the priest tried to kiss her.

“Father James Lynch! What in God’s name has got into you!” Ms Crawthorn screamed and straightened her pinafore. “You can’t go around doing things like that. Think of your reputation.”

“To Hell with my reputation,” Father Lynch snapped. “To Hell with all of it. To Hell with the church and the Holy Bible… to Hell with God.”

“No! No!” Ms Crawthorn fled the room amid a cacophony of shrieks and screams.

“And to Hell with dreams…” He muttered and blew out the thick candle beside his bed.

Shrouded in sleep’s hazy enthral, Father Lynch stood in the dark drawing room. Against his bureau the full-moon – aglow through the window – cast its pale light. And he would have considered the pearly ambience, lovely, if not for his slumberous state.

Unconscious to his actions, he shuffled towards his bureau, and ran his fingers over the silver frame of the Ottoman mirror. At that moment, disturbed from her bed by the commotion, Ms Crawthorn appeared in the doorway. From time-to-time, Father Lynch sleepwalked, and on those occasions, she knew not to wake him. He will return to bed soon enough, she thought. But she thought wrong, and was left with a gaped mouth, in complete and utter bewilderment, as Father Lynch, somehow, inexplicably, miraculously vanished. He had disappeared into the mirror!

Ms Crawthorn shook her head and made the Sign of the Cross. She thought she had gone mad, was seeing things. Thought the Devil himself had tricked her. But no, he really had disappeared into the Ottoman mirror!

In a fit of wheezes and coughs, Father Lynch woke on the soaked lawn of the churchyard. Before him, stood a headstone and the earthy mound of a freshly backfilled grave.

“No. It cannot be,” he cried, as the moon cast its frosty light on the inscription.

Father Lynch knew what had been inscribed, verbatim, he’d read it three times before, in dreams, and a million times since, in his thoughts. Here lies Father James Ignatius Lynch, 16th April 1846 – 18th December 1895. Nonetheless, he read it again, anyway, then for a second time, as though a session of self-flagellation.

“No,” he spluttered, then tried to stand, but slipped and crumpled to the sodden turf. He screamed and shuffled on his haunches, through puddles shallow and deep, petrified, certain of what would follow. His eyes flashed wide. His pupils exploded with terror. The fresh earth on the grave began to tremble – horrifically trembling,

“No!” Father Lynch cried, an infant’s cry, then again in higher pitch; terrified by the death-blue fingers groping from the dirt. They – followed by a hand, then an arm, blown and pulsating with parasites. Then a head of sparse scraggly hair, muddied and bloodied, and evilly abhorrent. In a flash, that thing, that demon was out of its plot. Yes, a demon to you or I, or to the gargoyles, who peered down from the turrets, or the stone angels – custodians of the graveyard, but not for Father Lynch. For him, it was worse – much worse! More hideous than he or anyone could ever imagine. Something worse than even the Devil could hope to conjure. Father Lynch fought to flee, but could do nothing other than crumple onto his back.

Akin to a panther, the demon leapt through the darkness. That fiend pinned him down with its bloated, puss-oozing body, and snaked its legs around him – its putrid, corpse-rotten breath, besieging his nostrils.

The screaming priest fought to push the thing off, but its fight was ungodly, its strength, inhuman. Nothing could be done but stare into a pair of dead eyes, eyes which were his, but black, much blacker. Nothing could be done, but stare at a face, which was his, but more gnarled and twisted with horror. Nothing could be done, but stare at a demon, which was him but unashamedly unleashed from the darkest depths of Hell. Father Lynch shrieked, “Oh dear God! No!” As that thing sunk its teeth into his jugular, a shriek that swiftly gargled and bubbled in his blood-pooled throat. He sobbed, prayed it was all a dream, begged it to be, but the pain screamed it was no dream. The demon howled to the spectral moon, then dragged Father Lynch’s bloodied corpse to the grave it had risen from. And there, that hellhound, committed him – a flesh-sack of bones, buried deep in the ground.

… And with one last howled salutation to the moon, the demon, was off.