The Woman Inside

“The mirror showed a reflection that wasn’t my own,” she says. The words are viscous and thick as they seep out of her mouth. She looks down at her stinging hands, examining all the tears, looking for any leftover shards she may have missed. She can’t believe she’s admitting this to anyone, but she has to explain how such a thing of beauty could be so prominent one moment and completely gone the next.

—

I’d been driving along the interstate for about four hours when I decided I’d arrived at as good a town as any: a small stretch on the eastern bank of Lake Michigan that looked sleepy, just as decades of romance authors have always described. I’d found a few years prior that the best antiquing requires an element of spontaneity, so these trips that came without preordained destinations always got my hopes up. I parked and walked along the high street, with its quaint shops and historic architecture, until the quintessential up-north antique store materialized right before me.

No one I knew would ever accuse me of being a patient person, but somehow the smell of potpourri and memories quelled my usual urgency, and I found myself filing carefully and deliberately through glassware, purses, trinkets, and furniture until the right piece found me. The store was a treasure trove; I paused for a while in front of a polished rococo secretary before moving to a mahogany sideboard with an ornate rocaille pine-framed mirror perched on top.

The mirror’s allure was undeniable, and I knew enough about lumber in west Michigan to guess that the wood of its frame may have lived its first life only steps away from where we were standing. The slight injury on the pine indicated that it likely was once gilded and later restored to its original finishing, implying a pre-1880 manufacturing date. I was merely an enthusiast and no professional, but I’d expect to see a piece like this auction for a minimum of $7,000. I checked for a tag: $350.

“Excuse me,” I flagged a clerk over. “I have a question about this piece. I’m really just a hobbyist so I can’t say for sure, but it seems like this pricing on this mirror just can’t be right.” This struck me as a place that was aware of what they had to share, so I thought it only fair to ask.

“You have a great eye,” the man rummaged in his apron and removed a pair of spectacles. “It really is something remarkable. Unfortunately, I don’t have any provenance documents to provide with it, so I can’t really ask for much on it without proof.”

“You’re sure? There’s not a zero missing, at least?” I’d understand the need for provenance if serious collectors came in or if we were at an auction, but we were in a tiny Michigan town. Who’d be so particular over here?

“It’s been on the floor for ages,” the clerk replied. “At this point, I’m just hoping to move it.”

I didn’t press further. I wanted the mirror. I was pretty confident in my assessment of the value, but resale options notwithstanding, it was just beautiful. We had a deal.

As I returned home, I was giddy at the thought of mounting the mirror in the sitting room. While the structure of my downtown, high-rise apartment was largely contemporary, I’d furnished it exclusively with thrifted and antique pieces, and this was by far the most valuable one I’d brought home to date. It was pure luck that I’d already planned to have a few other art and furniture enthusiasts over for drinks that evening — this mirror was sure to start conversations.

With only a few minutes before my friends were due to arrive, martinis had been mixed and appetizers were prepared and staged, and all that remained was to get myself in order. I’d been so enthralled by the frame in the store that I hadn’t even looked at myself in the glass before buying it, so I decided to apply my makeup using the new mirror. I retrieved a few products from the bathroom and returned to the sitting room, setting the makeup down on a nearby side table and uncapping my lipstick. I walked back to the mirror and gazed up to assess myself, and as my wide brown eyes locked with almond-shaped green ones, I jolted backward.

I looked at the edges of the glass, just inside the frame. Was there warping? That would be expected in a piece that’s nearly 150 years old, but that wouldn’t explain…. I must’ve just been seeing things. As I scanned the perimeter of the mirror, I could see in my periphery my own shoulders reflected back, and my own sandy hair, too, with its kinky and inconsistent waves. I exhaled one sharp breath and tried once again to apply my lipstick. I looked at my lips: mine. I chided myself for being so relieved at the sight. What other lips would they be?

I grabbed my mascara and widened my eyes as I brought the wand up and looked back into the mirror. The green eyes appeared again, and this time a squeak escaped me before I looked away.

With my heart racing, I attempted eye contact with myself for a third time, and for a third time I was met with glinting green irises.

“Who are you?” I asked. What was wrong with me?! Talking to a mirror? Did I seriously think it was going to answer?

As I stared into the stranger’s eyes, a completely new face began to materialize around them. Delicate black eyebrows appeared above the full lashes, and a narrow, flat nose and full lips below them. Fine, silken hair the color of peat developed in a long braid that draped across the figure’s shoulder. I forced myself to keep contact while the image came to life at the edges of my focus.

Wondering if she’d mirror my actions, I brought my hand into the frame. Hers followed. I raised and lowered my eyebrows, and so did she. I opened my mouth to ask a question, and she opened hers, too, and out came a shrill buzzing sound. The front door. I snapped my head toward the intercom, feeling like a sense of satisfaction that was mere moments away was now completely unattainable. I buzzed my friends in, vowing not to look directly in that mirror again. At least not tonight.

As I lay in bed after a stimulating drinks event, my mind drifted back to the mirror. It had, as I expected, been a major crowd-pleaser that evening, and I felt proud beyond compare to have acquired such a winning piece. Curiously, four other people all looked in the mirror, and the mirror showed them each themselves, nothing more. I didn’t share my story for fear of sounding like a lunatic, and I’d read enough gothic horror to know better than to go check the mirror out for myself at this hour, but I couldn’t shake the uncanniness of seeing some other woman’s reflection in it.

It was the stuff of fairytales. How did something like this happen in the real world — and have I now furnished an entire apartment with haunted items? If there was something going on with this mirror, couldn’t there have been something in my desk, too? Or my armoire, or even the bed frame on which I was lying at that moment?

After a fitful night of very little sleep, the sun rose and I was eager to sort out what was going on. I’d deduced the previous night that I could only see the other woman’s reflection if I looked straight in my — her? — eyes, so I’d planned to avoid that for as long as possible while I surveyed every other piece of the mirror possible.

I approached the glass and started with the frame, evaluating the light stains on the edges, my eyes timidly drifting onto the lowest few inches of glass. I saw the purple of my camisole reflected back and dared to advance, searching for my shoulder, which looked cooler and paler than I remembered. I shook my head slightly as if to clear it, and as my own light curls bubbled around my face, the mirror image’s long hair melted into the braid I’d seen yesterday.

“But I’m not looking at her eyes!” I mused to myself. Was this…whatever it was getting more powerful? I faced the mirror full-on and drove my gaze directly into the woman in the mirror. “Who are you?” I asked.

She didn’t answer, which shouldn’t have been as surprising or as disappointing as it was. Testing the limits of our interaction, I put my hand up as I had last time and she mimicked again. The glass was warm as I laid my fingers on it, with a clammier quality than I’d expected, as though I could feel the grains of sand that comprised it. It almost felt as though the glass were actively resisting my touch, and I looked to where my hand aligned with the woman’s, with simply a film of glass separating us.

And then she pushed through it.

The unexpected force from her hand against mine launched me backward and I saw her emerge, freed of the mirror up to her elbow. Her second arm appeared and, grabbing the sides of the frame, she thrust herself out of her looking-glass prison into my living room. Whatever that mirror contained became fully corporeal with a tangible, suffocating presence that rendered me speechless. She took uneasy steps toward me, as though forcing motion into legs that hadn’t moved in a century, never tearing her stolid gaze from my petrified one.

Her approach was steady but not fast, but with so little space to cover I knew my time was limited. I looked for anything I could use as a weapon, urging myself to digest the severity of the situation and look past sentimental value for once! I reached for a vintage crystal vase and my arm was intercepted by hers. With unanticipated strength, she grabbed both my arms and I wrangled to get away, leading in this treacherous partner dance and I, in a stupor, followed. When I next saw her eyes her look was hypnotic, and I yearned to look somewhere else, anywhere else but felt an inexplicable paralysis. It began to span my face, interrupting my breath and reaching down my throat, stealing from inside me the screams I begged to release.

And she led me backward with calculation, never losing the surreal composure she exhibited the first time I saw her face, until my back was to the wall, the mirror behind my head. In this stalemate, she lifted a long-fingered hand to my cheek, pressing it almost lovingly, before guiding me into her half of the world. A sense of lightheadedness came over me that felt as though all my thoughts and memories had simply evaporated. And from my new perch, I watched as she stood in my living room, as her hair lightened and crimped, her eyes widened and became brown, and she became me.

We looked at each other for a moment, and I wanted to speak, but my voice had evaporated, too. She stepped closer to the mirror, raised her arms like a boxer in the ring, and hurled her fists at the glass, plunging me into darkness.