Beneath the Surface

There was only one rule: don’t look in the mirror after midnight.

Simple, they said. Harmless, even. But we knew better.

The house was older than the town itself, standing like a sentinel at the end of a long, narrow road. We’d inherited it from some distant relative, one whose name no one cared to speak of. When we first arrived, the whispers had already begun. People warned us, with eyes that darted nervously, about the mirrors. About the nights when the moon hung low and silvered the windows like frost.

"After midnight, cover them up. Whatever you do, don’t look."

At first, we scoffed at it—urban legends, small-town nonsense. We settled in, trying to ignore the way the mirrors seemed to glimmer strangely in the dark, like they were watching us back. But as the nights grew colder, something changed. The air inside the house grew thick, oppressive. The mirrors... warped, just on the edges, as if the glass was melting inward. It was subtle, but undeniable.

Then came the night everything shifted.

It was a little after midnight when we heard it—the sound of glass, faintly humming, vibrating like a tuning fork. My sister Sarah was the first to notice. She stood frozen, staring at the hallway mirror, eyes wide, lips trembling. I rushed to her, but she didn’t move. Couldn’t. Her reflection stood still in the glass, but something was wrong. Something was missing.

The eyes. Her eyes in the mirror were gone. Just hollow, dark pits.

“Don’t look at it!” I shouted, but it was too late.

She reached out, fingers trembling, drawn to the glass as if it was pulling her in. The moment her fingertips brushed the surface, her body jerked back, and for a moment, she was gone—no reflection at all. The glass swallowed her. And then, just as suddenly, her image reappeared, but it wasn’t... her.

In the reflection, her lips twisted into a smile that didn’t belong to her, eyes still hollow but glowing faintly. Slowly, the image raised a hand and pressed it to the glass. The real Sarah, the one next to me, gasped and stumbled backward, clutching her chest as if something was squeezing her from the inside.

The reflection moved closer, pressing its face against the glass, grinning that awful grin.

I ran to cover the mirror, throwing a blanket over it, heart pounding in my throat. The hum stopped. The air felt lighter. But Sarah... she never spoke of it again. She avoided mirrors after that, wouldn’t even look at her own reflection in the window. But I could see it. Something had changed. She wasn’t quite... herself anymore.

We tried to go on, pretending everything was normal, but at night, I would hear her pacing, whispering to herself. Or was she whispering to someone else? I never asked. I was too scared to know the answer.

But last night, the rule was broken again. I woke to find Sarah standing in front of the hallway mirror, the blanket torn away, her hand pressed flat against the glass. Her reflection stared back, smiling that awful, wrong smile, eyes glowing like coals.

“Sarah?” I whispered, my voice trembling.

She didn’t respond. Her hand began to sink into the mirror, the glass rippling like water. And then, slowly, her body followed. I lunged forward, grabbing her by the arm, but it was like trying to pull her from quicksand. The reflection grabbed back.

The last thing I heard was her voice—but not from the real Sarah.

The voice came from the mirror: "It’s time to come inside."

Now, I stand alone in the house, every mirror covered, every window blackened. But I know it’s not over. I hear the mirrors humming again.

And this time, there’s no one left to pull me back.