Lies And Tricks

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn’t my own. We were standing inside the entryway to the mysterious haunted house. I told Lucy this wasn’t a good idea, as I was staring at a figure in the full-length mirror that resembled me, but not exactly. I looked older; it didn’t make any sense and it was creepy.

When we accepted the challenge of staying in a haunted house for twenty thousand dollars, I told her it had to be a prank. But we signed up anyway and got an email with the instructions we needed to follow to claim the money. I figured if anything, it would just be a fun night and easy money.

There were two strict rules.

One, we had to remain inside, we couldn’t leave once we went in, and we had to lock the door upon entering. The lock on the door was new, it was one of those digital type locks with a code, so I was guessing it was connected to a remote device that alerted someone if it had been unlocked before the morning.

Two, we had to stand in front of this depressingly ancient mirror three times, once when we arrived, once at ten o’clock at night, and then again in the morning before we unlocked the door to leave. Maybe it was more proof that we stayed. I had guessed maybe someone put a camera in it.

Anyway, if either rule was broken, we would forfeit our reward money.

“Look at this mirror,” I said. Looking at what seemed to be a future me. My smooth twenty-two-year-old skin was now wrinkled and sagging around my eyes, the corners of my mouth drooped downward, and my hair was gray, it was the image of someone in their seventies or eighties I thought. “Crazy, right?”

I looked at the camera on my phone to confirm that I was still the same hot girl that just walked inside here. It had to be a false mirror front, maybe a computer screen with something similar to a Snapchat filter. We looked it over but didn’t find any wires leading to or from the mirror.

Lucy pushed me aside and looked at her reflection, the same results filled the antique glass in front of her. We just laughed it off and tossed our stuff on the floor and had a look around. The smell wasn’t very pleasant inside, but the odor was hard to place. It looked like the typical haunted house you’d see in the movies. Cobwebs hung everywhere, as well as dirty white coverings over a handful of furnishings that were still in one piece, and many layers of dust that proved that there hadn’t been a living soul in this place for years.

“Whoever set this place up was a genius,” Lucy said. “It’s very believable.”

As we walked through the house to get acclimated to our surroundings, we noticed that our footprints were the only ones inside. We got to the kitchen and put the cooler with the drinks and food in it, on the counter.

The house allowed just enough light in through the dirty windows to navigate through the rest of the house. It was still pretty dim and hard to see. Each careful step woke up the planks of wood, creaking in agony as if the floorboards had come to life.

I found a few candles dispersed around the house and a box of matches laid beside each one. I realized that we were without a heat source, so I looked around for a fireplace and hoped for some wood. We brought plenty of blankets, so one way or another we would be ok. As I came across the candles, I lit them, it would be dark soon. I slipped one of the matchboxes into my pocket, you never know when you might need light or a weapon.

Lucy called from the other side of the wall. I made my way to her using the sound of her voice. We pretty much played Marco Polo until we bumped into each other. We were standing right next to the biggest fireplace I’d ever seen. Deep cracks in the stone wall towered over us. The depth was comparable to a coat closet you would find under a set of stairs and the width was just beyond my outstretched arms. But it hadn’t seen or felt the warmth of a fire in what I believe to be decades. The metal fireplace grate that held the wood was so thick with rust that it would probably flake apart into dust if we stacked even one piece on it. But considering there wasn’t even one splinter of wood to be found, that wouldn’t be a problem. The deep black soot that remained would probably tell a lot of stories if it could speak. One story it was telling now, was a tale of loneliness and abandonment.

“We should probably look for a place to sleep and put our stuff before it gets too much darker,” I said.

Lucy snatched up her bag and grabbed one of the tapered candles from the curtain of cobwebs that were spun around it. Our shadows danced around playfully against the walls behind the flickering candlelight. We headed up the winding staircase that curved up the entryway wall. This place had to have been beautiful back in the day. We decided that sharing a room would be best, you know, in case there’s any truth to this place.

We passed a few unlikely candidates until we came across a large room that could have housed royalty at one point. The tall, vaulted ceilings overlooked a four-poster bed, and a large ornate armoire, both beautifully carved with what looked like thorned branches and roses. One thing struck me as odd though. The room was cleaner than the rest of the house. The furniture wasn't covered, the surfaces were only lightly dusty, and the walls were free of cobwebs. Maybe we weren’t the first to choose this challenge and someone had stayed here already. I just couldn’t make out how the differences in the rooms were so, well, different. Then again, Lucy did say that someone most likely had to set this up, so maybe they had a way to make it look this way.

Along with those two pieces of furniture, there was a dresser with a ceramic wash basin and a large empty wooden frame where a mirror would be. Strange that it was missing. I guess it had broken at some point but wasn’t replaced. I set my duffle bag on my side of the bed and Lucy did the same with hers.

Another yet smaller fireplace sat quietly in the corner. I realized the room wouldn’t offer any warmth tonight. Our body heat and the blankets we brought would be the only source of warmth and comfort.

I decided to gather as many candles as we could. We put them on the fireplace floor and would light them tonight. Any heat would be better than none at all.

I sat on the edge of the bare mattress. I was getting hungry, so I pulled my phone out to check the time. It was six fifteen. I went to open up Instagram because I wanted to write about the beginning of our haunted adventure, but I realized that I didn’t have a signal.

“Hey, Lucy, check out your phone. Do you have bars?” I asked.

“I sure don’t, Angela,” she replied while holding her phone skyward in a sweeping motion, trying to produce at least one bar. “That’s odd,” she said. “I was pretty sure I had a signal when we first arrived.”

“Well, I guess I’ll have to post tomorrow after we leave here,” I said.

In the meantime, I opened my camera and took a few shots of our room. Soon both of our stomachs sounded in agreeance that food was needed right about now. So, we headed downstairs, each with a candle in hand.

Once back in the kitchen, I unzipped the cooler and pulled out drinks and the two premade sandwiches that I made for us. We set the candles on the little round kitchen table after using some napkins to wipe off the dust. We cracked open our cans of cola and tapped them together.

“Cheers! Here’s to twenty grand. Now we can take a real vacation together,” I told my best friend.

We ate up and finished our drinks so we could check out more of these old bones.

Knowing where we were, made it a lot easier for our minds to play tricks on us, and for random noises to make hairs stand on end. It made me a little antsy walking around corners into new rooms. Lucy was tensely peeking around corners, and then I could see her shoulders relax after she got passed it. It was pretty funny. I decided to slip away and get ahead of her. I rounded through a side room and waited at the end of the hall leading to the doorway she was headed to. Just as I saw the top of her head breach the door frame, I leaped out yelling the traditional, “Boo!” Lucy screamed and fell on her ass, now crossing her legs and rocking.

“What are you doing?” she asked in a scolding tone. “You almost made me piss my pants,” she said as she started to laugh.

“I thought I needed to give this place a kickstart,” I said jokingly.

“Well, you surely gave my heart a kickstart,” Lucy said, still resting her hand against her chest.

I helped her back up onto her feet again. I relit her candle with the matches in my pocket…see, I told you they would come in handy. Next up…find a bathroom. We found one just passed the room I was hiding in. After that was taken care of, we roamed around hoping to find something, anything, to scare us. For the most part, it was just like walking through a very old, run-down, dusty home that any normal person would be ashamed to have visitors in. But this seemed all too easy. I was waiting for something big to happen. Maybe once we went to bed. Or at three a.m., “the witching hour”.

I pulled my phone out of my back pocket, it was only good for a flashlight and a clock now. It was nine forty-five already. Fifteen more minutes until we had to make our appearance in front of the mirror. I thought a snack was in order while we waited. So, we headed back to the kitchen and pulled out the bag of cheddar popcorn. We sat at the little round table and watched the time change minute by minute, while we made bad throws at each other’s mouths. Pieces of popcorn bounced off our faces and littered the dusty floor.

“I think this is kinda silly. We’ve been here for about five hours and the only scary thing was you jumping out at me, and all the years of dust we’re breathing in,” Lucy said, dragging her index finger around on the tabletop, drawing spooky little eyes in the dust. “I was hoping for real ghosts. I guess that’s only something for TV ratings.”

“Well, the night is still young,” I pointed out “for ghosts that is,” I said as I laughed.

Just as that was said, the time changed to ten p.m.

“Time for our meeting with the strange mirror. I still can’t figure out how they make us look old. It’s pretty creepy, but I hope that’s not the only scary factor they thought up. Especially for twenty grand. Well, here goes nothing,” I said, as I stood up and pulled Lucy up by her hand. “Well, this is it. Tomorrow, we go home a little richer.”

This time I let Lucy stand in front of it first. I didn’t know if we had to show ourselves for any specific length of time, so I just let her enjoy the weirdness for as long as she wanted, then I would take my turn. Lucy didn’t giggle this time, and as she moved towards me and away from the mirror, for me to look into it again, she looked truly scared. She didn’t say anything, just gestured at the mirror for me to take my turn.

I was a little concerned now. I stepped in front of the mirror with my eyes closed. I didn’t want to see what she had seen. I didn’t want to see my face old and wrinkled again. But I figured it was part of the deal and I didn’t want to chance the loss of all that money over something that could possibly be explained away with technology. I opened my eyes slowly. Then I froze. This time I looked near death, my skin now seeming to hang from my frail bones, my hair only sparsely part of my head. My eyes were sunken in, and my teeth were all but gone. I stood with a slight bend at the waist and a hump on my back. I looked sickly.

I looked back at Lucy; she looked pretty freaked out.

“It’s just theatrics,” I said, trying to convince myself as well. “Pretty damn good ones though, I’ll admit.”

“Let’s go back up to the room,” Lucy said in a shaky voice.

I agreed and we left our reflections to fade away in the darkness.

I have to say, that had us very freaked out. It had me wondering what tomorrow’s reflection had in store. I plugged my phone into my power bank so it wouldn’t die by morning, ironically, since I felt I just might. Then I pulled out the playing cards for a distraction. I didn’t think either of us would sleep after that anyway. At least not until we were so tired that we would pass out exhausted. And then about ten rounds into Rummy, that’s exactly what we did. We dropped onto our pillows and were out like a light until I woke to my phone’s alarm clock.

I stretched my arms over my head and rolled to face the middle of the bed. The dirty windows were still only letting in dim light, but it had made it clear enough to realize that Lucy wasn’t lying next to me anymore. A panic ran through my veins like a bolt of electricity. I sat straight up and called to her. I grabbed my phone for light and ran to the top of the stairs, calling her name, but I heard nothing. The floorboards now screamed under each heavy step as I ran to the mirror. The dust blew past me as I came to a halt a few feet from where Lucy was standing. She was in front of that old creepy mirror that I truly detested now. As the dust settled at our feet, I could hear her crying quietly. She was wearing her hoodie with the hood up, so I couldn’t see her face.

“Lucy, it’s okay, it’s a trick,” I reminded her. Again, I wasn’t so sure myself, but I needed to keep us both calm.

Then she turned to me, and I saw. Her hood gave way to a view of her face. Lucy was old!

“What the hell?” I yelled.

My hands flew to my mouth to stifle a scream. As I did, my hands didn’t recognize what they were touching. My skin was no longer soft and smooth. My hands frantically searched the surface of my cheeks and mouth and then I pulled them away to look at them.

“What’s going on, Ang?” she asked, she was looking at her hands too then back into the mirror. “Why do we look old, and our reflection doesn’t anymore?” she asked.

“What? What do you mean 'our reflection'?” I snapped back. I immediately jumped to her side and looked at both of us. I looked back and forth in disbelief. “How can this be?” I asked. I choked on my own words, as they caught in my throat. Tears started to well up and overflow down my cheeks. We both stood in shock and cried.

I was staring in the mirror when I saw it. A distant figure was getting closer. I finally made out a young beautiful woman walking up behind our young reflections on the other side of the ancient glass. I swiftly peeked over my shoulder but saw nothing on our side. My head shot back to the mirror. She was still there. The mirror had stolen our beauty and replaced it with the old reflections from yesterday. It was never the house that was haunted, it was the mirror. It made sense now. But what did it want from us, why the change? Was there ever any money?

Just then she spoke and my questions were answered as though she read my mind.

“Your money is inside the mirror with me. You must walk through the glass to claim it and return to your beautiful selves,” she told the girls. “If you decide not to, you will keep your new appearance, and leave empty-handed.”

“But how do we walk through a mirror?” I asked. I reached out to touch the mirror, but instead of touching a hard glass surface, my fingertips went through what looked like liquid mercury. The ripples flattened back out when I snapped my hand back to my chest.

“This is a trick!” Lucy cried out. “We need to get out of here! Our bodies will change when we leave!” her voice escalating with each statement.

“But what if it doesn’t, Lucy? How do you explain this?” I cautiously poked my fingertip back through the silver liquid.

Lucy’s eyes were pleading with me, trying to make me leave this place through the door. “We can’t leave looking like this. I don’t believe we’ll change back when we leave this place,” I said as I looked back to the rippling glass, which could very well end up being our grave. I think I somehow knew that we would not be returning home with either choice. “We need to go through the mirror,” I demanded softly.

I took Lucy’s hand and looked at her. Her eyes released one last tear, and she nodded at me. We looked back at the reflections baiting us to enter and walked into the unknown with our eyes shut.

The darkness had swallowed us, and we couldn’t focus on anything right away. We finally looked back through the full-length mirror we just stepped through. A faint light had illuminated the beautiful woman, now standing where we were just minutes ago, with a smile that spread wide across her face. My gut was telling me that Lucy was right, this was indeed a trick. Our bodies were returned to their beautiful forms as promised, but without any money in sight. No visible doors or windows, just darkness beyond the light the mirror provided. The woman stared at us like she was admiring her trickery. I touched the surface of the glass, hoping that it would provide a way back through. No such luck.

I hollered out to the woman, to question the situation. She then told a little tale about a young lady accepting the challenge of staying in a haunted house. Upon the successful night, she would be rewarded with a plentiful pot of cash to boast about to all her friends. Her only rule… to lock the door and stay inside and face the mirror three times. Twice it showed her further into the future, stripping her of her beauty each time she arrived at her reflection. By morning when the last reflection was shown to her and her beauty returned, she was happy, oblivious to the fact that at that moment, her physical body had switched with the old image she was shown at the prior visits.

The mirror had shown a reflection that wasn’t her own.

Once the young lady finally saw her hands as they were, she felt her face and cried out, wanting to know what happened. She was told that for her to return to her beautiful exterior, she would need to climb through the mirror to reclaim her beauty and the money she earned. Disbelief entered her mind as she approached the mirror and it became fluid. She stepped through the rippled surface and realized shortly after; she was trapped. The only way to escape... was to trap another.

Realization hit us with a look of shock. It was about her.

Then she disappeared through the front door without any more explanation. Not even so much as a word of good luck or goodbye. Not that it would’ve made the situation any easier to swallow. The mirror no longer showed us our reflection. It was a window into the house now, like a two-way mirror, and we were on the window side.

“We’re stuck here now, aren’t we?” Lucy asked.

I put my arms around her and held her tight. “We’ll get out of here, somehow,” I said assuredly.

Things started happening around us. We were now standing in a mirror version of the house. We were able to observe it all as the house changed right in front of us. Like a snow globe but without the shaking, dust fell from the height of the ceilings, covering all traces of us. Our belongings had turned to dust and settled into the rest of it. Upstairs, a quick gust of air played through the hallways like a happy child kicking up dust as they went. It swirled through the room we stayed in leaving only a sprinkling of enough dust to erase our footprints, leaving it mostly dust free. The candles returned to where they once were as well as the matchboxes. In that second my hand slipped inside my pocket to find that it was gone.

The house went quiet, the scene appeared to be set again.

We settled into the mirrored room from what we originally stayed in. We weren’t sure what to do, but we needed time to wrap our heads around what just happened. We were mentally exhausted and we fell asleep.

Night after night we waited. For years no one came. All our attempts at escaping had failed. We had given up and were ready to accept our fate. To die here, together in the house.

But then one evening something happened… the door closed and locked. Our feet couldn’t carry us to it fast enough, we got to the mirror just as someone walked up to it. We were staring at a young handsome guy, looking intently into the mirror, but he couldn’t see us. He was touching and looking at his face in bewilderment. That’s when we heard him…

“Woah!” he said. “Check this out, Andy. The mirror makes me look like an old man.”

We slowly turned to each other, and a smile spread wide across our faces. And then practically at the same time, we said. “We’ll finally be getting out of here.”