Something in the Mirror
A face that should not be there
Emma had been standing before the old hallway for several minutes.
She had been trying to understand the strange fear that filled the house.
If she saw a safe way to leave, she would take it at once.
"If I were braver, I would open that locked door myself," she thought.
The was tall and dark, and it had been hanging there for decades.
For days she had been feeling that someone was watching her from behind.
As she looked into the glass, her own tired face stared calmly back.
Then, for a single moment, another face appeared just behind her shoulder.
It was and thin, with eyes that had been closed for a long time.
Emma spun around, but the empty hallway stretched quietly behind her.
"If you saw what I have just seen, you would not doubt me," she cried.
Tom came running, because he had been searching the cold rooms upstairs.
"I have been hearing voices all afternoon," he admitted at last.
"If I told you everything, you would think I had lost my mind."
Emma pulled him toward the that had frightened her so badly.
In the glass, the face had been waiting for them both.
If the thing wished to them, it would surely have done so already.
"It has been living in this house far longer than we have," Tom whispered.
The face in the opened its eyes, which were empty and grey.
"If we ran now, would the doors even let us leave?" Emma asked.
They had been ignoring the truth for far too many frightened days.
The slowly raised a thin hand and pointed at the locked room.
"If I understood what it wanted, I would give it gladly," Tom said.
The grew dark, and their own faces vanished from the cold glass.
Behind them, the door to the locked room had been standing open all along.
Neither of them could remember hearing it swing quietly wide.