Green eyes

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn't my own. At first, I thought it was just a trick of the light, my tired eyes and sleep-deprived paranoia setting in. I squinted and leaned in closer for a second - before stepping back suddenly. The figure staring back at me had became more distinct. It was a woman with tangled dark hair and piercing green eyes. Her faded white dress was flowing gently, even though I felt no breeze. She had a sly smile on her face.

I tried to shake off the feeling of unease that washed over me as I studied the reflection. It had to be some sort of trick. I knew the mirror had been in my family for generations - when I was younger my grandmother told me how it had been passed down over the years. She also said that the original owner had dabbled in dark magic. Despite its eerie history, I had never noticed anything odd with the mirror before. Until now, it had been just another piece of antique furniture, collecting dust in the attic. I had figured I may as well get some use out of it, which is why I had brought it down into my bedroom. It was a similar height to me, old glass in a timber frame, a standard full length mirror with nothing too noticeable about it, beyond a few scratches in the aged wood. But now, as I looked into the woman's eyes, there was no mistaking it for a normal mirror.

A knock came at the front door. I threw the old bedsheet back over the mirror and went downstairs. Some real estate agent was canvassing the neighbourhood. We chatted briefly, enough to distract me and, subsequently, I forgot about the mirror for the rest of the day.

That night, as I lay in bed, I heard a tapping sound coming from somewhere over near the wall that the mirror was standing in front of. Tap. Tap. Ta-tap.

At first, I figured it was just the wind outside. But as the tapping grew louder, I realized it was something else entirely. It wasn't coming from near the mirror, or behind the mirror. It was coming from the mirror.

After a few moments in absolute stillness, trying my best to subdue the panic, I decided to get out of bed and made my way towards the mirror. As I approached, the tapping grew more insistent, and I could see that the woman in the reflection was now tapping on the glass, from the inside.

"Let me out," she whispered, her voice barely audible.

I stepped back, my heart racing. Blinking furiously a few times, I tried to focus again on her face.

She was gone.

Standing where she had been was only my own startled reflection. I slowly moved my arms up and down, my head side to side. Definitely just a normal reflection.

I scanned around the room, half-expecting to see her figure somewhere. I double-checked the mirror again. No sign at all. Letting out a long sigh, I wasn't sure whether I was more relieved or more confused. As I climbed back into bed, I picked up my phone from the bedside and began scrolling for distraction, falling asleep who knows how long after.

The next day went past with nothing happening that involved the mirror. Or the next. I had become convinced it had been my imagination. The stress of work, trying to renovate and clearing the attic out in preparation for selling the house, lack of sleep - all of the above. I figured that was probably also why things were going missing from my room. I was just misplacing them. The photo of my cousins. A few of my old journals. Some spare change from the dresser along with a necklace one of my exes had given me that I never wore, but hadn't thrown out.

Three nights later, however, the tapping woke me again. It was louder, clearer, and I immediately knew what it was. I had placed the bedsheet over it, but that did nothing to muffle the sound. The tapping grew frantic, more like slapping or banging. I couldn't ignore it. I pulled the cover away. She looked frantic too - her hair wild, eyes wide and chest heaving as she pounded her fists onto the glass. I stood, almost frozen, watching.

Her voice was faint to my ears, but she appeared to be screaming.

"Let me out," she begged, raspy and desperate. "Let me out, please!"

I began to bend down, thinking to myself I should cover it and go call someone for help. As I lowered to the ground, reaching for the bedsheet, I heard a quiet but distinct cracking noise. We both stood back, surprised, staring at a faint, splintering line on the surface of the mirror. Our eyes then slowly lifted from the newly-formed crack until our gazes met.

Her eyes were no longer filled with fear or desperation. They were filled with a fierce determination. Her intent was clear, her wry smile returned as she drew a deep breath and tightened her fists.

She threw herself towards me with renewed vigour, raining wild, careless blow upon blow upon the mirror. She only stopped to claw and scratch at the mark she had already made. It started to grow. With each impact, chaotic lines fractured outwards, sprawling across the top, right quarter of the mirror. Whenever she picked at it, flakes of black glass fell to the floor on her side of the mirror. Somehow, in unison with each, identically-sized flakes of clear glass fell on my floor.

I tried to grab the wooden frame of the mirror, to take it out of my room -but it was too cold to hold on to for long, and was now too heavy to lift, too heavy to even budge. It felt as though the mirror itself was resisting, refusing.

I quickly grabbed the bedsheet and threw it back over the mirror. It felt pointless but there was nothing else I could do. I stepped back, trying to see if it had made a difference. To my surprise, there was quiet now. Silence. As I turned my ear a little, a firm hand grabbed my shoulder.

I let out a scream, spinning around and thrashing it away.

"Woah, woah! It's only me," my neighbour Andy said, looking concerned, even if a little entertained.

I must have looked like an idiot, open-jawed and speechless for well beyond your typical awkward pause. Maybe it was the sweat, being out of breath, or the glass on the floor near my bare feet, but he picked up that something was actually wrong. He broke the silence. "Well? What's going on? You've been screaming 'Let me out!' for the past twenty minutes."

"I... I have?" I clarified, sheepishly. Honestly, I could have been repeating her words in the panic, but I didn't think so.

"Yep. I didn't know if it was, er, you know..." - he avoided eye contact at this point, "one of your Tinder dates, a bit of roleplay. But then it started to sound serious."

"Oh, no, just me here. I'm sorry, I'm really not sure what is happeni-"

And there she was. Behind him. Not in the mirror - in my room. Between us and the door, looking at me over his shoulder. I gasped then froze again.

Andy cocked his eyebrow, noticed where I was staring, and slowly turned his head. As he did, the woman from the mirror, who had taken one step backwards out into the hallway, stepped again, this time sideways, to appear out of view beyond the doorframe.

I darted past Andy and glanced down the hall. Empty.

"Hey - come on, what is happening here?" he demanded.

My shoulders slumped. I was so confused, but I couldn't admit what I saw, or thought I saw, to him.

"I'm really sorry. I must be seeing things. This has never happened before. I think I'm just... I must just be stressed out. I'm very sorry I disturbed you. Let's just leave it."

We walked down to the front door, I saw him off, keeping a cautious eye open the entire time as I made my way back up to my bedroom.

I walked over to the mirror looking at the glass on the floor. It was perfectly still, but I could hear a sound, like scratching on glass. I stared at the flakes, glimmering in the moonlight, bewildered about how they were making a sound. Until I realised. The sound wasn't coming from the mirror at all. It was coming from the window.

I peered through the pane and my entire body went cold in an instant. It was her. Standing on the grass out the front of my house, staring up at me with her piercing green eyes.

The cool night air was blowing in. I moved to try to shut the window, but she was somehow already there. Her hand shot out and grabbed my wrist. Her skin was ice-cold, and I could feel her grip tightening around me.

"You can't keep me out," she whispered. "Just like you couldn't keep me in there." She pointed to the mirror with her other hand.

I struggled to break free, but her grip was too strong. And as I looked into her eyes, I saw something that chilled me to the bone. It was a desire, a hunger. A thirst.

"I've been trapped in that mirror for centuries."

No longer confined to the mirror, and I had no idea what she was capable of. At first, I tried to reason with her, to convince her to go back to where she came from. But she refused to listen, insisting that she had finally found a way out of her prison.

As she spoke, the shadows in the room became darker. The streaks of moonlight became brighter. Hints of colours in the pale light became more vibrant, and objects seemed to be in constant motion, swaying and pulsing. She was warping my reality, replacing it with her own.

She now had both of her skeletal hands clenched around my wrists. I pulled back, we fell to the floor. She was eerily strong, barely my height but gaunt and waifish. I tried to wrestle, tried to roll her to one side, but I couldn't. I could feel her cold breath on my skin. I continued to scramble.

My left hand brushed over some of the shards of glass that had fallen from the mirror. I felt the sharp edge on the outside of my little finger. I quickly palmed the largest piece I could feel, and continued attempting to wrest her off me. Enough of her weight shifted to my right so that I could lift my left arm. I plunged the shard deep into her shoulder, near her neck, just above her collarbone. I could feel the piercing pain as the inside of my own hand was cut. She let out a shuddering scream and flew back.

Whether it was her sudden movement or the night's wind blowing through, the bedsheet fell to the floor, half on top of me. My head was uncovered and, yet to get up from the floor, my eyes were right next to one corner of the mirror's frame. I realised something I had not noticed before. Some sort of symbols, scratched into the wooden panel. As I scrambled to my feet, I saw they actually went up and around the entire frame.

The woman was still hunched over my bedside table, pulling at the glass in her flesh. I grabbed each side of the mirror and began to pull it so it shielded me from her. It was still unnaturally heavy, but it scraped across the floor. I noticed she was beginning to stand up again, just as I finished turning the mirror to face me, between us.

I could hear an evil snigger making its way behind the mirror. I stood in upright, scanning the inscribed markings. Runes. I don't know how I recognised them. Perhaps one of my grandmothers old books, also collecting dust in the attic. I had skimmed through them as a child. I had not studied them. And yet, as my eyes moved from one to another, to my surprised my mouth was uttering foreign sounds aloud. It wasn't even a conscious act, but I could read them.

"You don't know what you're doing," the women warned, sounding almost anxious. "It's too late. I'm out now. Stop. We can be together. I won't try to harm you."

There was an ever so slight tremble in her voice, which I took as an indication this might be my last chance to send her back inside.

I drew a hard, shallow breath and spoke each rune, quickly and shakily, working my way across the entire frame. The more of the incantation I uttered, the darker the shadows in the room grew. The symbols began to glow, bright like the moonlight. My voice grew more confident, as I could feel the magic building. I felt... powerful. She had climbed onto my bed in an attempt to come around the mirror to stop me.

"No. Stop! You can't!" she pleaded, losing balance and tumbling off the bed, right on the other side of the mirror. But her frantic scrambling was too late, and as I spoke the name of the final rune, a faint, faded image of the woman started to appear in the glass that stood between us. Gradually it became clearer. It was as though I was looking straight through the mirror at her now. She still seemed real. Too real. I reached my hand out, expecting to be able to touch her. It stopped at the cold glass.

"She's gone." I sighed to myself. "On the other side again. The inside. Whatever side it is. She's gone."

I collapsed down onto my bed, my room still filled with shadows. Something cold and metallic was under my hand. A few coins, a small chain. Before I could inspect them her voice came through the mirror.

"No, I'm not," she softly whispered, calm and steady.

I leapt to the mirror. She was still on the other side of the glass. I walked around, she was not hiding behind it. She was definitely inside. I also noticed that the cracks and missing shards had all been restored. The mirror stood, perfect again with a bright warmth in the middle of my cold, dark and shadowed room.

Wait. Why is it still so dark? I thought to myself.

"You should have listened," the woman called through the mirror to me, her voice growing more faint, like a vast distance was being ushered in between us. As she slowly faded away, the only thing I could still see clearly were haunting green eyes.

Soon, in the reflection stood only me, surround by shadow and dark. Shivering in the cold, I looked around my room and - a sickening feeling washed over me as I was overcome with a sense of unfamiliarity. This was not my room enveloped in dark shadow as I assumed. This was not my room at all.

As far as I could tell, this was not even any room.

There was only shadow. There was only darkness. There was only cold.

The incantation. I realised. Time seemed to slow as I threw myself at the mirror. Lashing at the glass and the timber frame with my fists, my open palms, elbows, shoulders - I let out scream after scream. Even though she had faded, perhaps she could hear me. I glanced over my shoulder, and then the other - I could not let myself stay trapped here - it was nothing but endless black in all directions.

My panic grew the longer there was no response. I kept flailing limbs at the glass, scratching it too, trying to find any signs of the original cracks - there were none. Kicking at the mirror did nothing. I grabbed the sides again - it would not budge. I threw my entire body at the cold glass, it did not give in the slightest. I slumped down against it, still beating with what little energy I had left. Eventually the punches became little more than sluggish slaps. The physical effort and the sustained terror had both exhausted me completely and in time I slumped further towards the floor, barely able to muster anything more than a slow, distinct tap of my finger.

I thought for a second I saw a flutter of her dress. A brief billowing of something less than black, anyway. I could hear a faint sound as darkness blanketed the mirror from top to bottom. A fluttering swish. The bedsheet. She had covered the mirror again.

There was nothing I could do except...

Tap. Tap. Ta-tap.