I’m here for me. For whatever it is I left behind. Because I still can’t move on. I still don’t deserve what El did, what Mum did; I still can’t find a way to live with myself. I know that I need to shake it: this martyred despondency, this fucking ingratitude. I know the longer I don’t, the more I’m letting El down. But it still doesn’t feel right – it feels horribly, horribly wrong – and I don’t know why.
I walk through the staircase’s shadow, pull open the heavy black curtain. Dust makes me sneeze, allows me to reach the other end of the pantry without having to look or linger. I step up into the cupboard, slide back the bolts, turn on my torch, and step down into Mirrorland for the last time.
The sun breaks white through the cracks in the roof. I smell the damp wood and musty air, feel the hairs rise up from my skin and scalp, hear the echoes of our whispers, giggles, screams. At the bottom, I turn left without looking right, keep going until I’m in the washhouse. Someone has cleaned up Ross’s blood; the Satisfaction no longer has a gun deck or rum store. I walk to the main deck and sit, cross my legs, look up at the green ocean and white frills of waves, at the blue sky and white puffs of clouds. The Jolly Roger with its painted skull and crossbones. The hulking spectre of Blackbeard’s ship beyond the empty lantern hook.
I don’t know how long I stay there. Long enough for those cracks of white to dim, leaving me in darkness except for the fading day through the washhouse’s window. I don’t know who or what I think of, but by the time I come back, I’m stiff, sore, lighter.
I get up, massage the feeling back into my legs and arms. Take down the Jolly Roger and fold it into a square. Run my fingers over the chalk and stone of the washhouse walls as I leave. At the bottom of the staircase, I look once more around Mirrorland: its countries and its borders, its bricks and its wood, its cobwebs and its shadows. And then I climb the stairs.
Close the door to Mirrorland. And bolt it shut.
I start a coal fire in Mum’s Kitchener, and when the flames are hot and high, I hold my hands over them until the heat spreads through me. I open the NRS envelope, pull out Mum’s birth certificate, and the four others I requested all those months ago: Jennifer, Mary, two Margarets. Under Father’s name for Mary Finlay, it says Robert John Finlay; Occupation, Fisherman. And under Date of Birth: Third of March, 1962, at 14:32. I look at Mum’s certificate. Nancy Finlay was born on the Third of March, 1962, at 14:54.
I sit down at the kitchen table. Twins. Mum and the Witch had been twins. Not Mirror Twins like El and me. Not even identical twins. Because Mum was as light as the Witch was dark; as small as the Witch was tall. But still twins nonetheless. I think of the hate in the Witch’s eyes – the hate for her own sister – and another wave of shame threatens to dissolve the small amount of peace that saying goodbye to Mirrorland has given me.
I look across at the bell board. And then out the window. Bright sunlight instead of blood-red colours the high garden wall. I will never know if the bells rang or if HE KNOWS really was painted on the wall that last night with Ross. I will never know if El whispered RUN! hot against my skin. But it doesn’t matter. Mirrorland existed because we believed in it. It was real to us. And that’s how it saved us.
I stand up. Go over to the Kitchener. Drop the birth certificates into the grate, one by one. Including the Witch’s. Without Mouse’s father’s name, I can’t trace Mouse through her anyway. I can only hope that one day, no matter how damaged she is, Mouse will come to find me like she came to find El.
I look down at Mum’s birth certificate, rub my thumb over her name. When I first came back to this house, I remember feeling like my life in Venice Beach – its safety and certainty – already felt lost to me, just a glossy photograph of a place I visited a long time ago. But it was never real. Not even its boardwalk of clowns and mystics and magic. I never believed in it. And that’s why it never saved me.
I let go of Mum’s certificate, watch its edges curl gold and black. Watch it disappear. And I think, You can leave now. Because I know she’s still here too. In all these years, none of us have ever really escaped this house. Or that moment of catastrophe, preserved like a body trapped under pumice and ash.
And then I reach into my jeans pocket, take out El’s last letter. Read it through one more time before tossing it and the Jolly Roger into the fire. I make a sound as they catch and go up in flames: the excited, scared yip of a child. And I look across at that naked stretch of garden wall one last time. I hope he knows. I hope he knows that neither El nor I are here any more. That we will never ever come back. Because his Donkshop was never this house’s heart, its engine room. That was always Mirrorland. And now it’s gone.
I put out the fire, close up the grate, and it feels a little like turning off the ventilator of a patient who has already died. In its wake, the house returns to a tomblike silence. I leave it in peace.
I pause again only once I’m standing outside. I glance one last time into the gloom – red and gold, black and white – before reaching up to
