No one in Millbury remembers when the mirrors began showing the wrong things.
They weren’t different mirrors — not at first. Just darker. Slower. They caught the light strangely, like oil over water.
At first, they showed small mistakes. A blink that lasted too long. A smile that arrived a second late. Reflections that didn’t always belong to you.
People laughed. Then stopped.
Now most of the mirrors in town are covered. Except Eleanor’s.
Eleanor lives at the end of Ash Road, in her mother’s house. It’s the sort of place that holds the smell of whoever loved it last. Lavender and dust. The tick of a clock that doesn’t quite keep time.
Her mother’s mirror still hangs in the hallway — tall, silver-framed, its surface warped just slightly, like water under glass.
Eleanor never covered it.
She says it helps her feel less alone.
Lately, the mirror has been quietly wrong.
When she walks past it, she swears her reflection lags. Not much — just a heartbeat. Once, she caught it still smiling after she’d stopped.
She laughed then, a brittle sound that didn’t feel like hers.
At night, she hears murmuring from the hall — not words, just the shape of a voice. It reminds her of how her mother used to hum when she thought no one could hear.
She tells herself it’s only the pipes. Houses talk when they get old.
But the voice knows her name now.
It says it like a memory.
“Eleanor.”
She begins sleeping with the bedroom door shut. She dreams of her reflection waiting just outside, patient, facing the door instead of the mirror.
In the morning, the floorboards near the hallway are cold — as though someone has been standing there for a long, long time.
Days blur. Her groceries spoil untouched. The mail piles by the door.
She starts catching reflections in places there shouldn’t be any — a dark glint in the kettle, the curved back of a spoon. Always the same face: hers, but slightly tilted, eyes too intent.
When she looks directly, it’s gone. But the afterimage stays, like a film burned into her vision.
Sometimes she feels the weight of that gaze even when she’s turned away.
One evening she whispers, “What do you want?”
And the mirror whispers back — exactly the same words, exactly the same tone — but a moment too late.
That delay breaks something in her.
She nails blankets over the windows.
Turns the picture frames to the wall.
Only the hallway mirror remains uncovered. She can’t bring herself to touch it.
Because sometimes, when she does look, she sees the house behind her reflection — not as it is, but as it was. Her mother sitting in the armchair, smiling faintly, watching.
The smell of lavender grows stronger.
The reflection smiles wider.
Eleanor does not.
Three nights before she disappears, she leaves a voicemail for the sheriff.
Her voice trembles but never breaks.
“I keep waking up in the wrong place. Sometimes the house looks… new. Sometimes it’s empty. The mirror keeps showing me things I don’t remember doing. It’s showing me sitting down right now, calling you.
It’s showing me finishing this sentence.”
Static swallows the rest.
When they find the recording, there’s a faint echo behind her voice — like someone softly repeating each word, half a breath later.
The house is empty when they come.
Every reflective surface is gone — stripped, smashed, or turned toward the wall. Except one.
The hallway mirror stands uncovered.
Its surface looks wet, though the air is dry.
And inside it, faintly — as if deep underwater — a woman stands. Her face is pale. Her mouth moves soundlessly. Her hand presses against the glass, fingertips smearing downward.
When the light changes, for a moment, there are two handprints.
One from the inside.
One from out.
Later, when the story spread, people joked about it online—about the woman who vanished into her own reflection. But every now and then, someone would swear the same thing happened to them: their reflection lagged for just a second, a heartbeat late.
Most people laugh it off.
If you stand in front of a mirror tonight, very still, you might hear it too—the faintest breath behind the glass, matching your own.
Don’t turn away.
It hates when you turn away.