Winner of the contest: That Old Jacket...

The Price

By ~ShadowMaven (Antoinette McCormick)

The skinny brown barn with the pitched roof didn't look real at all. It looked like someone squeezed the sides of a normal barn together and left it on a deserted lot. But when I saw it from the roadside, something came over me. Like a feeling, but more than that. A wave of... something. I had to stop for a closer look.

It must have been part of Fairyland once...

Fairyland. That was the name of the old miniature golf course. Now abandoned, the winged avatars of Fairyland's eighteen holes looked more like surreal gravestones. Forgotten stones, overrun by climbing ivy, witchgrass, and frowsy-headed Queen Anne's lace.

But, the barn...

Until today, I'd never seen it, even though I rode by the place almost every day. I also never recalled the sign—Deja Nu—yet there it was.

Funny, the things that escape notice.

I rubbed my eyes, then looked at the barn again.

Yep, still there. Deja Nu. Someone had propped open the door with a figurine of plaster angel with a missing nose. As I stared at it, one of those feelings came over me again. A tiny tingle of excitement, the kind you get right before you find a four-leaf clover or a fiver on the street. Maybe something special was waiting in Deja Nu for me?

A chime announced my entrance. At the storefront, two steamer trunks overflowed with moth-eaten sweaters and ratty-looking scarves. Behind the trunks, clothing racks crammed to bursting, divided the store into six sections. The rack nearest me held nothing but vintage t-shirts. The old high-necked ringers with slogans like "Keep on Truckin'" and "Disco Queen" in loopy script.

There were even shirts from Fairyland! Powder blue tees with winged sprites brandishing sparkly putters. "Fairyland, Where Magic Awaits!" Imagining wearing a piece of "vintage history" to school, making my friends turn pea green, tickled me. Though cash poor, I could always ask if the proprietor would save one for me.

If I found them.

Except for me, the place was empty. No shoppers and no one manning the checkout counter at the back, which doubled as a display case. A row of glowing blue jars lined one of its shelves. "Spirit Beacons," according to the placard. None of them looked very "beacon-y." The one dead center definitely needed a new battery.

A flash of color on a dress form near the cash register caught my eye.

To call it a mere coat would have been a sin.

It was a rhapsody in velvet. Purple crushed velvet. Pristine white top stitching accentuated its princess seams, and abalone snaps adorned its front and flap pockets.

The floor length coat was something I'd seen only in dreams. Despite that, I'd been wanting one ever since. My breath stilled and a spark of electricity shivered me from foot to forehead. This was the reason I'd noticed the barn: my dream coat had called to me. It wanted me to find it!

Hands shaking, I eased it off the form with the timidity of a first-time altar boy assisting a priest with his ceremonial vestments. Velvet sluiced over my thighs and shins, ending in a whisper at the tops of my sneakers. Oh, God, it was the perfect length, the perfect fit!

An antique mirror sat in the far corner. An enormous, unwieldy thing, out of place in the shop. Victorian and ornate, it stretched from floor to ceiling.

Wouldn't you know, it was the only mirror in the place!

As I hurried over, the nut-brown faces of an eternal choir watched my progress from its mahogany frame. All had wide eyes and wider mouths, forever frozen in silent song.

There wasn't much light in this section of the store. Shadows slumbered beneath racks of frothy blouses and amassed behind me in strange shapes as I whirled before the wavy glass in my fabulous find, my dream coat.

What if I can't afford it?

What if it's not for sale?

Those thoughts brought me to a standstill.

There had to be a price tag on it somewhere!

With fingers trembling like Aspen leaves, I undid the snap on one of its deep front pockets. My fingers brushed against something rectangular and rigid. Still facing the rack, I pulled it out.

Written in feathery script was not a price, but a message:

What's it worth to you?

Worth? How could I put a price on something I'd conjured from a dream?

"May I help you, dear?"

She stood in the mirror, luminous as a ghost. A woman with milk pale skin and a face as round as a harvest moon. A woman wearing a purple coat.

My purple coat.

The air thickened, and a stale smell suffused the room. That's when I saw the object in her hand. A blue jar, one from the display, only this one was missing its lid.

Her arm shot through the mirror, breaching its dark glass without sound or scratch. Icy fingers, slender and strong, clasped my wrist and yanked, hauling me through the glass into terrifying darkness. An absolute blackness, so frigid, it seemed to burn.

It was—I was burning!

Cloth, skin, bone: each fragile layer crackled, peeled, then whirled away like tattered ash in the moaning wind. A wind that reared itself from the void like a monsoon wave.

A wave of voices.

Those carvings on the mirror hadn't been singing, they'd been trying to warn me!

A sliver now glimmered in that vortex of impenetrable night. The outline of a hollow moon, blue-tinged and hungry.

Whoosh!

The moon yawned, sucking what remained of me into its limitless expanse.

Snap!

Metal grated, sealing my doom.

I raged against the woman, lunging against my prison walls. Glass walls, like sandpaper to a match-head, set me ablaze again.

There, on a shelf in a store where nothing's for sale, in a barn that doesn't exist, I still remain, a spirit beacon only a hapless few will ever see.