The Mirror Opened

Hank thought there were times when the house would whisper to him. It stared back through his bedroom window—mocking him with its crooked shutters and overgrown lawn.

And yet, it was the most appealing thing on Grove Street.

He’d been having more nightmares over the past few weeks, and just like all the other times, he couldn’t quite remember what it was that had troubled him. His wife, Laura, was always awake to calm the feeling of dread welling up inside him.

“Another one, Hank?” she whispered, and he felt her arm warm on his shoulder.

“Yep. Another one. I don’t know what’s gotten into me,” he turned over on his side to face the wall. He could still feel the house staring back at him.

“You’ll loosen up, eventually. Just moving jitters, I’m sure.”

He didn’t want to say anything. Actually, he didn’t want to be anywhere near Laura right now—not in this room, not in this house, not on this street. But there was no way he’d tell her that. And even so, a small sliver of his conscious assured him that this was just move-in jitters. Stress can pull a man apart from the seams—boil brains to mush like a pressure cooker.

He’d have to learn how to live again, before he could learn to love.

Hank lay there for maybe an hour, perhaps more, before he fell back asleep.

Laura’s skin seemed to glow a little more each day—her smile wider. The change of scenery and the new house was just what she needed, and all the better being so close to home.

“My father lived on this street,” she told Hank over the dinner table. Their five-year-old son, Cole, was pushing peas along his plate absentmindedly, and their daughter Tiffany, ten, stared out the dining room window—lost in thought. “Well, most of my family has lived near here.”

“It is a very nice neighborhood. Quiet,” Hank said. “We’ll be just fine here, I’m glad you were even able to find this place on the market.”

Laura’s joy crept into her expression as she looked at their family, the beautiful dining room, and then Hank. He wanted to believe that this was the beginning of something great; that’s what her smile indicated. But still it watched him. Looking from the corner of his eye, Hank could see the edge of the house across the street. A crooked shutter and section of warped patio.

He’d seen flashes—bright pinpricks of light peeking out through those shutters now and then. The first time had been during the first rainstorm of the year—only a few days since they’d moved in. He thought it was lightening. There was no reason to believe it could have been anything else. Then the rain stopped, and one clear night, he saw it before laying down for bed. But really, what can you do about a minor disturbance like that?

Ever since then, it had been a game. A game of tracking down just who or what was responsible for the flashes. Hank could lay there long into the night looking at the house from their bedroom window on the second floor, with his eyes drifting over the splintered exterior until he couldn’t keep his lids open. The flashing always seemed to happen whenever his attention shifted the slightest bit out of alignment, and his vision darted to that mocking shamble of a house with a newfound alertness.

He’d asked Laura about it once before. She hadn’t seen it. And neither had the kids, though they had questions of their own.

“Dad,” Tiffany asked as Hank had tucked her into bed the week before, “who lives in that house? The one right across from ours?”

“Nobody, Tiff. I think it’s been a long time since anyone’s lived there.”

“But… Well who was the last person to live there?”

“I don’t know, silly,” Hank smiled and brushed the hair from his daughter’s face. “Probably just another family. But you’ve got a long day tomorrow, best you not worry about it, alright?”

“Alright,” she smiled back at him. He could’ve stayed in that moment forever, but had to, needed to rise to his feet and walk back up the stairs to the master bedroom. He crawled into bed next to Laura, whose dark brown hair flowed off her pillow and hung off the side of the bed. It was a moment like ones they’d shared years ago—years before they’d ever thought about just what their future would be like.

He wished those times weren’t only memories, as he lay there unable to calm his thoughts. Tomorrow? He’d call his agent at the press to talk about the next job contract. Even as he thought about his, he found his eyes drifting to the crack in the curtains, allowing a sliver of the house to show through. Almost immediately he felt a twist forming in his gut, waiting—waiting for a moment that may never come.

He blinked once. Twice. There was a light sprinkle of rain beginning to trickle down, and in the distance the rumble of thunder growled in warning of the coming storm. And though consciousness began to slip away, alarm bells rang in the back of his head at the fading sight of the house…

Flash… Flash-flash…

“So, how’s your mother?” Laura said.

“Don’t ask about things you don’t care about,” Hank said, unflinching. He was paging through a book while the television played on mute.

“God hun, you don’t have to be so rude about it, I only meant well.”

“She’s dying—same old, same old.”

The air in the kitchen fell still as Laura hesitated with her words, “How long does she have?”

“I don’t know,” Hank sighed, “a year? Could be any day. I’d rather not think about it.” The silence prompted him to lift the remote and banish the pervasive silence with the chatter of the afternoon news. Hank couldn’t be bothered to listen to any of it, instead the old thoughts ran rampant through his mind—thoughts from his college years.

He’d been a sophomore when he got the call from Grampa George. The smell of pot was thick in the air along with chatter and conversation, and so it was a total shock that he even heard his phone ringing. He had to rush out the door just so he could hear who the muffled voice was.

“Hank? Hank, where are you?”

“At my buddy’s place, wait, who is it?”

“Grandpa. I’m sorry son, but,” you could tell he was choking up, “I just… don’t know how to say it, but… Your mother’s in the hospital. It’s serious, please call her.”

The moments that followed those words, and the days and months long after they had been uttered, were all but a blur to Hank. He remembered the bustle of the hospital, the gurneys and the chatter floating through the air no matter where he waited. He remembered paper-thin walls, and the burdened wheezes of failing lungs and beeping heart monitors. Hospitals really are ugly places, Hank had thought, and in a way—even long after seeing his mother sitting there, withered and flush in the miserable room—he’d never quite escaped that ugliness.

No, no, I don’t want to talk about my mother, his mind repeated over and over, but the conversation had passed long ago. Laura shifted pots and pans on the stove as Hank started at the television.

The pulsing, red beginnings of tumors grew as coarse lumps on veiny flesh—expanding, filling with newfound life as it drained the essence from the old; veins collapsed and melded together; the fat dripping away to reveal atrophied muscle, and the distinct shapes of bone sticking up under pale skin. Lesions growing over soft biomatter. Fissures in drying skin, hair falling out in thick, greasy clumps. Memories drifting out of sight, never to return—like dust blowing in the wind. The chill breeze whistling through dry bones. Teeth clicking, inexorably moving closer, closer to—

NO, he told himself. Stop. You are NOT going to think about it.

He ran shaking hands through damp hair, catching beads of sweat on his palms as he did so.

“Are you alright?” Laura said, letting something sizzle in a cast iron pan.

“I… Well…” he turned back to look at the TV. He had turned it off mute, hadn’t he? Newscasters spoke about the goings of the world, but no words reached his ears as he hesitated in confusion. “I don’t know… I guess I’m just not feeling well today. Can’t explain it.”

“Hmmm, well that’s no good,” Laura’s voice was closer than he’d expected, and Hank turned to see her looking at him a yard or so from his chair—concern pulling down a corner of her mouth. “Maybe you need some rest, darling. You know, it doesn’t seem like you’ve been sleeping well lately—bad dreams and everything.”

Almost every night, he thought. And that was enough to assure him she was correct. “I think I’ll go for a walk. Just a little bit. Then I’ll lay down.”

“Are you sure? It’s a kinda chilly to be out today.”

“Certainly. Just for a while; it really won’t bother me, you know I like this kind of weather.”

“You’re just a silly goose, love.”

Hank laughed, “I know, I know. But only for a little while.”

And as he slipped on his shoes and prepared to step out onto the wooden porch outside, he thought that—for once—this was a relief. All was well, and would be well as long as he didn’t become distracted. Distressed over nothing.

Against all expectations, she’d made him laugh. That had to be a good sign.

He stepped outside, abandoning the smell of brown gravy and slow-roasted brisket. Instinctively, he reached for his left breast pocket—only to remember it was an old movement. A piece of memory from years long past, when he only stepped into the fresh air to have a smoke. He hadn’t kept a pack there since he’d married Laura… or something like that. He indulged now and then in mid-range cigars, but only for special occasions. And never when she was around.

The sky had been in a hurry to darken, and the street before him appeared to be waiting in anticipation of another storm. The air was humid as he walked down the porch steps, going down until he was only a half-block away from another morbid fascination.

He only remembered it was there because the flashes from one of the upstairs windows. It would’ve been all too easy to miss them if it hadn’t been for meandering, unconscious eyes, and like a damn in heavy rain, the thoughts flooded through him. The most overwhelming feeling was one of curiosity. A part of him that wanted to know, needed to know what was going on in there, and another part of him was too deeply terrified to dare find out.

He found himself walking toward it. Just one more step, he told himself over and over. But one more step wasn’t enough, and soon he had wandered to the fence—paint cracked and peeling off its wood surface after years of exposure.

Just one more step.

Down the cracked pavement leading up the lawn and to the door.

One more look.

He put his eye to a narrow split in the door’s surface. Nothing but pure black.

CLICK.

He’d never snapped his head back so quickly in his life—nearly enough to give him whiplash and knock him on his ass. There were no other sounds as he stood on trembling legs and began to back away—down from the porch, over the concrete walk, and back to the road. He stopped there one moment to give the place a final look over. For some reason, the thought of seeing another one of those flashes terrified him. You stepped too far, buddy, he thought. Too far into something you oughtn’t mess with if you knew what was better for you.

Something about that noise, and the shudder that came shortly after was enough to paint a clammy sheen over his skin. He tried to imagine what it was that could’ve made such a sound, but there was no image he could piece together. All he could think of was darkness. A special kind of darkness that was only found past the door of that house.

He stood on the sidewalk in front of his own home, unable to remove his eyes from the rotting wood and withering grass. Moments before, standing on the street felt almost cathartic. Peaceful. And maybe if he could stop asking so many questions—stop thinking too hard about everything around him—it could remain that way.

But now, outside was the last place he wanted to be. He longed for the aromas of cooking, and the subtle notes of…

He found himself reaching to that left breast pocket again.

But he couldn’t do that. Not now.

It was better now that he was a father. It made the world less cold and lonesome—the type of coldness felt when crawling into the same bed in the same apartment year after year, to feel the sheets icy with last night’s sweat.

But even that hadn’t completely gone away.

Laura undressed across from him—throwing each article of clothing into the wicker bin near the dresser, and pausing occasionally to run a hand nonchalantly over her shoulder, across her neck, over a hip. He looked at a sight that had once brought unbelievable stirrings. That had waned awhile back, though he couldn’t remember a day or year where it had started.

Now, seeing her stripped down, a feeling like a long-lost old friend came back to remind him, you remember how you loved this?

He would sit next to her on the bed, having undressed her as slowly as he could manage. All the while he’d be taking sips from a loosely packed Grabow pipe.

When Laura was stretched out on their bed—nothing but bare skin and food for the eyes—he’d take one last draw from the pipe, blowing smoke over her from head to foot. She asked why he insisted on doing such a thing the first time they’d ever been together like this.

“Old family tradition,” Hank said. “My grandfather was raised around Cherokee culture, and that was something they did to… keep away bad things I suppose.”

“Bad things?” she said.

“Bad luck. Dark energy. Witches. I don’t know…” she moved a hand to caress his leg, “I guess I like the idea of putting a scent on the things that are mine.”

The most gorgeous smirk came over her face. That’s a keeper, he thought, and the rest, as they say, was history.

A year after they were married, and not long before the first kid was on the way, he decided it was time to call it quits on the pipe. No more cigarillos and Dunhills and Virginia Tobacco. She agreed that it would be better for everyone.

Three bowls a day turned to two. He couldn’t resist the occasional offer from a coworker, or the temptation of something new from behind the counter at the gas station. Two months later, the temptation was easier to ignore. A year later, it was the last thing on his mind.

That’s the way adults do things, he told himself. We let go of irresponsible behaviors and indulgences for everyone’s better. Knowing that made the sacrifice a lot easier to bear. Hank thought if he was eight, or even five years younger, such a choice wouldn’t be nearly as easy. That came with its own mild confidence boost.

And then he became a father. The house became a lot less quiet. Conversations became a lot less energetic. And when things were much more still, feelings of loneliness grew larger and larger while he did his best to avoid thinking about them. He’d heard, time and time over, that this would eventually pass. This was just another bump in the road—another season of bad weather. What would be on the other side? A stronger man. A closer family. Calm, vibrant days.

But if that time ever came, it had done so in the most quiet, unintrusive manner. Were these the calm days? Days of worrying if his life’s foundation was rocky, with happiness and pleasure far off in the distance?

These days were anything but calm, in his mind at least. Then he would end his days and start his mornings feeling the weight of horrible dreams ready to consume his consciousness. By the end of it, he hardly wanted to move a finger.

But maybe this was the end of that. Now she’d made him laugh. Perhaps they’d all be laughing together by next year.

Hank came home to Laura in the kitchen once again that week.

“You really should call her,” she said. “Your mother.”

“I’m not sure. It’s… a lot to do that, Darling.”

“But you really should. Poor woman.”

He wanted to scream. He wanted to turn the dining room table over and splinter its wooden frame, spill the pot of boiling water all over the floor, kick over the trash cans, break the sliding glass window—

“It’s a bad idea,” Hank said. “I’m not feeling very well.”

She sighed, pulling the oven mitts over her hands, “Alright then. I just thought it was a good idea.” Hank watched her lift the steel pot off the stove to set it in the oven. Before she could turn around to say anything else, he walked back down the hall and up the stairs to their room. He lay on the bed looking up at the ceiling, unaware of the passage of time.

Once or twice, he looked over to the nightstand to see the phone. Am I the crazy one to not want to do this? He thought. Maybe this was all just a little irrational. Then he imagined it in his mind—reaching over the empty side of the bed to grab the phone. He’d reach over to the nightstand for the address book and dial the number of the hospice. The air would be tense with the phone ringing, waiting for someone to pick up.

Then he’d hear a thin, whispery sound—the pained wheezing of diseased lungs.

Hello? Her voice would say, slow and pained.

What could he say?

How are you? How are you feeling? Hi, it’s your son?

Nothing sounded right.

You were such a horrible bitc—

The doorknob rattled, and the bedroom door swung open. “Hank?” she said, coldness seeping into her voice. “Dinner’s ready.”

“Give me a moment,” he said, likely sounding just as monotonous. He was looking at her, but in his mind he was looking at a frail, old woman—head and shoulders sticking up out of perfect, white bedsheets. He could hardly recognize her as the mother he had remembered growing up with. Her expression was accusatory. Her eyes constantly dilated.

Laura shut the door, and Hank listened as her feet hammered on the stairs on the way down. Then the house was still.

He reached for the phone.

The eerie stillness remained in the air for the rest of that night. Hank struggled to look away from his plate at the dinner table, and while the food was good enough, it was no remedy for the palpable discomfort.

“I thought I heard you on the phone,” Laura said.

“Yes… She didn’t answer.”

“Did you leave a voicemail?”

“The hospice staff made a note. When she wakes up, they’ll have her call me back.”

Again, stillness.

After putting the kids to bed for the night, Hank told Laura he was going out for a walk. “Just a little while,” he’d said.

She seemed indifferent about it.

He found himself out on the porch once again, looking out onto the same house—though the darkness gave the place an entirely different feel. He wasn’t as afraid of it as before, though something about it felt… forlorn. Saddening. Perhaps that was earlier conversation getting to him.

But it felt right. Everything about this felt right, or at least better than the alternative. A family man needs time to himself.

So he had less trouble walking down the porch steps and across the street. He reached the door of the old place, hesitating a moment before turning the knob and finding it was unlocked. It made enough sense, though knowing that gave him pause. Anyone could be in a place like this. Homeless drifters, criminals on the run, not to mention all kinds of wild animals seeking shelter from the storms. Just a little while, he made the promise to himself, and readied the small flashlight he always kept on his key chain.

He stepped into a foyer that led to a staircase. The walls were ornate with darkened, peeling wallpaper and carved molding. There was a chandelier near the stairs, though half of its glass pieces were broken or missing. It would’ve been a nice place twenty or thirty years ago. Then Hank shuddered to think… What if this place was always this way?

A silly notion, but no less unsettling. He walked deeper into the foyer, deciding to travel up the stairs before going anywhere else. He didn’t like how loudly the steps groaned under his weight, nor the layers of dust he unearthed with each movement.

He turned left at the top of the stairs, moving into a hallway that lead to a handful of rooms. What intrigued him most, however, was the light coming in from the end of the hall. Hank could see it was the door to another room that was left open. He moved toward it like a moth to flame, keeping his movements hushed and slow.

When he reached the door, he found himself inside what could’ve been a parlor, or maybe a smoke room. The walls were barren aside crooked shelves and books stacked up against them. Light seeped in through a single window which allowed a view into the front yard, and sitting on a chair almost obscured by the door”…

He gasped, realizing what it was.

He’d thought it was one of those cheap Halloween decorations from a seasonal shop at first—hair thin and white like spiderweb, eyes and nose rotted away to reveal off-color bone. It grinned at itself in an equally dusty antique mirror.

It had to be a real corpse, Hank realized, because the god-awful smell it gave off—compounding with the mustiness of the house. Its clothes were bleached white from what could’ve been eternities out in the sun. Hank looked to the window, seeing the broad daylight outside, and a whole mess of items strewn on the sill. As he approached, he realized it was an old Polaroid-style camera—what brand or make, there was no way of telling, and between layers of dust and miscellaneous hardware abandoned there, he found a collection of photographs.

He dusted one off to get a better look. Most of them were on their way to being completely faded, but a careful inspection showed outlines of a familiar house. There were a few with people in them—standing out front in a family portrait, but their faces were blacked out with messy scribbles. There were others of children, playing out in the grass at an unrecognizable location, then—the curious expression of a man, who he didn’t recognize at all at first.

He remembered putting his face to the crack in the door…

CLICK!

And that’s what he’d looked like.

Deep in the house, something groaned, murmured, shifted in the dark. He couldn’t stand to be there another moment. Hank let the Polaroids fall to the floor, he took one glance out the window—confused seeing daylight at what must’ve been ten–o–clock at night. There his house was, idyllic and beautiful just as he had remembered it. He turned and ran back down the hall—not even caring about the thudding of his feet on the floorboards.

The walls flew past him, his lungs were already burning, and—

“What do you think you’re doing, Hank?”

He froze at the top of the stairs. Laura. She was standing down by the front door, looking up at him with eyes so wide, they were almost lidless.

“L-Laura?” he was struggling to breathe. “Why are you out of bed, Darling?”

“I’ve been waiting for you this whole time, Hank,” she said. Behind her, the door began to rattle in its frame. Laura began to step toward the stairs, and as she did so, the edges of the door began to melt—disappearing into the surrounding wall and becoming flush. By the time she’d reached the first step, it was like there’d never been a door there at all.

He began to back away, seeing no other option but to run down the hall he’d just come from.

“Why would you ever want to leave us, Hank?” Laura said, not too far behind him. “Why would you ever want to abandon your family?”

When he reached the parlor, the corpse was missing from its chair—well, not quite.

The chair sat empty in the middle of the room, but turning to the mirror, the corpse sat just as it had been in the reflection. Grinning at him. Almost mocking. He could see the hall behind him in a corner of the reflection, and he saw in that moment, that whatever was chasing behind him wasn’t Laura—at least, not the woman he’d known.

Its body was formless, elongated, distorted like a shadow in a funhouse, and even in the dim light its flesh glinted as if wet. Hank imagined touching it, and seeing his flesh disappear inside as its body conformed to his, growing larger, consuming him. It crawled forward on countless legs that could’ve been human just as much as spider. Its body nearly filled the hallway.

He turned behind him, and to the naked eye, it was the woman he recognized, walking ever closer. Back to the mirror, and he saw the truth—a nightmare ready for a meal.

In a flash, it all seemed to make sense. Like a dream with its own self-contained logic, the only way to beat it was to play by its own rules. I’ll break that mirror, and the fake Laura will be gone. He took one last look back and saw she was almost to the doorway.

He charged at the mirror, leaning all his weight forward, ready to smash the glass to a million pieces. But when he reached its surface, nothing shattered at all. Instead, he passed right through the frame as if it were a window, and came crashing into the seated corpse—knocking everything to the ground with dust rushing into his mouth, filling his lungs and nostrils. He screamed in pain as he lay there, desperately wishing for the smallest amount of strength to lift himself up.

When he cleared his eyes, the creature was standing before him—more real than he ever wanted to believe, more hideous than his imagination could ever conjure on its own. It spoke to him with a voice that wasn’t like Laura’s at all, but instead like his mother’s. Its face almost looked like hers too, with features that struggled to be anything more than a parody of the human form.

In due time, Hank. In due time…

You’ll realize this is exactly what you wanted.

“Smile for me now,” Laura said, struggling to hold the camera in just the right spot. “Alright, ready? Everyone say cheese!”

They all seemed happy to oblige. There was a loud click, and the square of blank photo paper stuck out of the camera’s metal slot. In a few moments they’d see just how well it came out.

Laura walked over to Hank with the photo, “I’ll be happy just to have something we can put on the mantle,” she said. “Even if it’s not perfect.”

“I’m sure my lack of sleep is starting to show,” Hank smiled. “I just can’t catch a break from the nightmares.”

“You look just fine,” she laughed. “Things will calm down eventually, I’m sure it’s just a phase. A season.” Hank and their two children began to fade into view on the paper.

I look like total hell, he thought.

Laura smiled, “There we are. Just what I wanted. Alright then, it’s about time for dinner. Are you going to have another walk?”

“No, I don’t think so. I’m waiting on the hospice to call me back, and my legs are sore as it is. Don’t know why.”

She wrapped an arm around to rub his back.

She was looking so radiant that day, but for some reason, that didn’t make him feel better.

All in due time, he thought.

Things will settle down.