Chapter Thirty-Four
The Man in the Mirror
The Innermost
Every word of Maddy’s letter pours into me. Every heartbreaking sentence crystallizes back into the very essence of who I am, reminding me of the thing I most dearly needed to remember.
I loved in life. I was loved in life.
And even though our love did not have an opportunity to grow, nor did it get the chance to become what we wanted it to be, it existed. And that matters. It has to matter.
I have no choice. I have to find her. I have to find Maddy again, or I’d rather join the ranks of the vanquished souls, like poor old Quinn.
I’m not going to fail. I refuse to let anything stand between us.
Through all the moments of my time in the OtherWorld, everything that came after my life, the one memory that never resurfaced was the only promise that ever mattered. The one remembrance is the one I kept the most buried.
Why couldn’t I remember this story until now? Why couldn’t I remember Maddy’s words until this moment?
She knew. She promised me. Every lifetime. She promised me everything that came after, but I never looked for her. I never tried to find her. I never fought for us.
My mother said to me once, “What if the bee believed the universe when it was told its body was not built to fly?”
I understood her message to be about resiliency and not letting others tell me what I was capable of.
When I told her as much, she smiled and said, “And the world wouldn’t be nearly as sweet.”
What if? What if? What if?
But there’s no more wondering now. I’ve come this far, and I must see this mission through.
But how do I get out of here when I cannot see? How do I find my way back to the surface?
As my mind bounces from one question to the next, never waiting for answers, only ever asking more—Quiet, mind. Quiet—I notice, for the first time, the feeling of paper in my hands.
I look down, but the darkness prohibits me from seeing what I’m clutching. How am I holding anything? Where did this come from?
I imagine it must be Maddy’s letter. That somehow, during that remembrance, this paper found its way into my possession. Though I cannot see it, I squeeze the parchment just a little harder, rubbing it gently with my thumb.
And then, without warning, the paper ignites.
The fire shoots up and around me, filling the space with light.
The power of the illumination blinds me, and it takes me a while to adjust to my new surroundings.
When my eyes can take in my surroundings, I see that I am standing on the outer edge of a large domed stone room.
Like the tunnels and passageways of before, all is a dank grey color with rough edges and silver patches of moss-like shrubbery.
The entire space is now lit in a soft glow, yet there are no specific points of light anywhere to be seen.
I turn around to look at the gate behind me and notice a plaque, just to the left of the entrance. I walk over and read its inscription.
There is no turning back.
The only way out is through.
Face what lies ahead
And learn what is most true.
Through what? Learn what?
My mind races with questions and no answers. I start with what I know, what I can control. I turn back around to face the stadium-sized space in front of me and begin to walk toward the arena’s center.
Voices that start as nothing more than a whisper begin to swirl around me.
At first, they sound like some of the voices I heard when I first entered The Catacombs. Voices of those in life who chose to knock me down, to lead with negativity and speak their sadness into being.
But then I realize … the voices are not many.
There is only one.
Mine.
All the negativity swirling around me comes from me. My doubt. My fear. My self-hatred.
As I near the center of the rounded space, the voice rises in pitch and intensity as the temperature in the cave drops, and I feel the chill overtake me.
A cloaked figure appears at the far side of the arena.
I freeze, not sure whether I should step any closer, but the figure is still there. The apparition seems to make the decision for me as it continues to float, closing the distance between us. Eventually, the cloaked figure and I stand toe to toe, mere centimeters apart.
The figure’s face is hidden beneath the hood of his cloak. He stands at my height, his shoulders just as broad.
When I finally find my voice—not the whispering echoing around the room, but my own voice, the one from deep within—I ask the being the only logical question. “Who are you?”
A soft, dark laugh emanates from under the shadowed cloak, sending chills down my spine. The being brings his robed arms up to the top of the hood and pulls the fabric off his head. The face I see is one that I would recognize anywhere. The face I’m staring at is my own.
Though it is not the one I wear now, marred by loss, regret, and pain. Instead, I am looking into the sweet, innocent face of my youth, the one I wore before life and grief took their toll.
“I’m you,” the face says back to me. The hope and innocence in the voice I once knew sends a knife directly through the center of me, and that yearning for that version of myself is suffocating.
“No, you’re not,” I argue. “You used to be.”
“I am always you, Tommy. I’ve been in here; I’ve been a part of you all along.”
Visions from my childhood flash behind my eyes like a flip book—laughing with my mother and father, catching lightning bugs in the yard, playing with sticks and scraps of metal that my father left by the forge.
My mother’s warm smile mixes with my father’s hearty laugh, and a feeling I haven’t known or experienced for so long washes over me—happiness.
But just as that feeling begins to take hold, the face in front of me begins to morph and change.
I watch my own reflection grow and age. The changes are subtle, the passage of time small, but even though the signs of maturity have not reached my smooth skin and rounded cheeks, the eyes tell a story of their own.
I know what he knows. I feel what he feels.
I have seen what those eyes have seen, and the hurt and unimaginable loss slam into me like a battering ram.
The ache of watching the person I loved more than any other creature in this world get sick and die. Boom.
The hopelessness of watching without being able to change any of it. Boom.
The fear of questioning if I’m brave enough to face life without her wisdom and safety to protect me. Boom.
The knowledge that I cannot do anything to protect her or keep her safe. Boom.
The pain sours and turns rancid in my gut. I feel it turn to the anger that I’ve carried with me since those days, physically feel it inside me now, still, even all these many years in the afterlife later.
I sit inside the moment of loss that planted the seed of grief that spread and overtook the whole forest. I wallow in the feeling that the world had wronged me against my will and that the universe owed me something in return.
These thoughts swirl like bile inside me. They pound and pulse around me.
I watch that face—my face—form lines of resentment and hostility against a world that knows no better than to keep on turning.
And just as that feeling of anger warms to the point of boiling and bubbling over inside of me, the face in front of me ages again ever so slightly.
A smile crosses his lips; a twinkle lights his eye.
And I feel what he feels, and I know what he knows—companionship, trust, tenderness.
The many moments of Madeleine wash over me and douse the flames of anger and hatred.
They replace the hurt with hope; they replace the loss with love; they replace the loneliness with connection.
Not because they’ve made those other feelings go away, but because they’ve given them a counterweight.
Maddy balanced my scales. Maddy made room for the darkest, ugliest parts of me and saw the beauty that lay underneath. She would push when all I wanted was to pull. She would whisper while I yelled. She would laugh so I felt safe enough to cry.
Then the face morphs again. To the man I became mere moments before my untimely end.
I stare into that face. I allow my eyes to lock with his and grapple with that energy.
Feel his self-loathing—my self-loathing—recognize the anger and frustration at the world that remained.
I see in those downcast eyes all the wishes unfulfilled, all the actions never taken, all the decisions I did not make.
And for the first time, in any of my lives, I realize finally that what is done cannot be undone.
That there is no sense in trying to undo, unmake, or rewrite the past. That all I have, that all we have, is now, and all I can do is move forward at peace with all the broken, flawed, scarred parts of myself.
That thought crawls into my brain like a spider and instantly wraps its silken web throughout my entire being. I feel the strength and the surety of it. I feel a new sensation, one I had no idea I could ever feel again.
I feel alive.
Finally, the image I am staring at morphs yet again, not to the man I was before I died.
No. Now it has become a mirror, and I find myself staring directly into my own face.
At the end of this journey, I am alone, with nothing but my own reflection.
But the man in this mirror is new. He is a version of me I’ve never known, never could have known.
It wouldn’t have been possible because this version of me belongs to this moment.
I belong to this moment.
I am reborn.
Forgiven.
Absolved.
And loved … By the man in the mirror.
As I stare at my reflection, a single tear escapes from my right eye. And in that mirror, at the exact spot where that moisture appears, a small crack begins to form in the glass.
The crack spreads slowly, splintering out in all directions. But it doesn’t shatter.
And through that fractured reflection, I see something beyond the mirror.
Light. Movement. A way forward.
I am no longer the man I was.
I am something new.
And I am ready to burn down this world and the next to find her.