One Last Gaze

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn’t my own.

It was another man’s face, sharp featured and gaunt. The absence of light in the living room cast the reflection amongst shadows, darkness filling each deep, concaved crevasse of the face. His sunken eyes swallowed by black waters, only the smallest of piercingly bright white dots peered out from his sockets. He stared back at me. His expression vacant, cold and unsettling. I swallowed when I saw this face; it was the first of many that began to appear in place of my own six months ago. It frightened me the first time I saw it, and it frightened me now.

Funnily enough, I don’t think it was the old, worn-out face that frightened me—I had my own seventy-two-year-old face with heavily wrinkled skin that hung around eyes, showing life slowly escaping me like the flame of a candle burning out atop melted, bubbling wax. Nor was it his piercing eyes staring back with a grave, unwavering gaze that seemed to stare into my eyes like they really were windows to my soul. It was the dead stillness of it all. The still, cold face staring amid a dark dreary backdrop of the living room; where the antique mirror hung atop the carved Victorian mantel over the fireplace, seeming to grow colorless and greyer by the day.

I remembered each one of their faces as they appeared. The first was two months after Norma died. I remember looking up after prodding the logs into place and thinking of her. Instead of seeing my own tiresome, mournful face, I saw him. The second was a woman, about the age of my eldest daughter. Her eyes were heavy, her lips pursed tightly into a frown, not of sadness but of sympathy. Maybe even empathetic, almost like whoever the woman in the mirror was could feel my pain. I blinked and she was gone. My face appearing in reflection stained by the red hue of the fire. It was a while before I saw another. But they came.

And he came. Again, and again, and again.

As the days drew on, his visits became more frequent. That night, six months later, I woke from my chair across the other side of the room. Since my last few doctors’ visits, after I had a fall, it was requested that I refrain from moving around so much. I heeded the advice, even remaining on the ground floor, rather than sleeping in my bed I’d take rest in my chair in the warmth of the fire. It was my favorite room of our great Victorian era home—Norma and I would sit for hours in it. Though, it felt warmer and more comfortable with her there by my side. The light during the day would pour in through the tall windows, brightening the room and bringing the heat of sunlight with it. Of a night, the redness of the fire burned bright enough to make it feel like forever late afternoon. But now it felt cold. Always dim, dark, and cold. The colour of the room was greying, like shadows crept from its walls and clawed their way inwards into the room, despite the roaring fire meant to burn them away.

Usually when I woke, it was from a coughing fit. At least the last few months. My lungs barely worked like they used to. Just like my legs that would suddenly forget to stand strong and tumble me over. Or my heart pounding slower and weaker, and forcing my doctor to write me a prescription every month. Like my body slowly began to forget what it was supposed to do. To keep me breathing. To keep me alive. I knew it deep down. I was told six months ago. I just didn’t want to accept it.

This night I didn’t wake in a coughing fit. My eyes blinked open, and I was awake. It took a while for them to adjust to the dark. The fire had gone out, and the room was in the blackness of night, the air thick with cold shadows filling the room like an encumbering, suffocating fog clouding the view from my old, failing eyes. The only light seemed to shine from the intricate silver frame of the mirror, what shined on it to reflect the light, I don’t know. But it was enough to lead me to it. Once my eyes adjusted, I could see it clearly, as if the silver frame levitated amid an indistinguishable abyss of darkness.

Though, as I approached it, his face became clearer, staring back at me. The white dots piercing into my own like a butcher’s knife driven into flesh, unsettled anxiousness and fear of the confrontation spilling out like blood from the entry wound. My heart beat harder in my chest, a feeling I had not felt in a long time. As age had weakened the organ, I surely felt it now, pumping boiling blood through my veins. I thought the anxiousness and fear would make me feel warm, but I shivered instead of sweated. I was cold. I jittered and shook uncontrollably. My teeth chattered when I swallowed.

I stopped.

I was frozen in place. My eyes widened. He moved. He stepped closer, his face enlarging in the reflection of the mirror. He raised his chin, peering down at me. Then extended a hand, opened, palm facing upward. I shook my head. What did he want? He shook it, raising his opened palm higher in the air, like he wanted me to take something that did not exist in his empty hand. His brows furrowed, the thick bushy, greying lines sinking heavy over his sinister eyes. Then he turned his hand over and reached forward.

The mirror was shrouded in shadows.

The seeping darkness spilled from the reflection like an overflowing bathtub, a waterfall running down the mantel and pooling on the floor as it slowly filled the room. The light reflected from the silver mirror frame slowly dimmed before it was completely snuffed out like a candle pinched by wet fingers. The room thrust into an abyss. The color drained like a slaughtered animal hanging in a cool room. Grey darkness. And cold.

Then the shadows lifted off the ground.

Two long skinny limbs rose upward from the darkness. The tops split into five sharp spikes, the thin, narrow finger contracted into clawed hands.

He smiled, behind the darkness, in the center of the mirror. The corners of his mouth pulled from ear to ear in an unnaturally wide, exaggerated grin. His head dropped, his sunken eyes only bright white dots amid the black sockets again stared from the mirror.

I stumbled backward. My heart pounded. I shook in my skin.

The arms shot from shadows. Two black clawed hands stretched out, reaching for me. I tried turning and running, but I tripped; my old, shaky legs failing me. I cried out. Screaming for it to stop. Telling it to leave me alone.

It didn’t.

I felt the weight of the two clawed hands fall onto my legs, snatching hold of me by the ankles. The grip tightening around my ankles was cold, I feel it through my pants like it was an icepack applied directly to my skin. It was so cold, it hurt. Then it went numb.

I screamed as it tugged me backward, toward the mirror. I reached out for the coffee table, just barely taking hold of the leg with my fingertips. But the claws pulled and pulled. Tears filled my eyes. I had never been so frightened in all my life. Was this the way I was going to die? I hoped to God that it was just a dream. My eyes clenched tight as I held on for dear life.

Then I opened them. And I saw it.

Across the room, in the corner, was my chair. And sitting in it, was me. Eyes closed. Asleep in death. Then I felt nothing. No pain from the clawed hands around my ankles. And heard no sound whatsoever. Just laying on the floor, in the dark, fingertips still grasping the coffee table leg. And I stared at myself.

Dead.

And I knew. It was all over. It was always, all over.

So, I let go.

The clawed hands pulled me into the shadows. Into the mirror on the mantelpiece.

Then suddenly I was standing on the other side. In front of the mantelpiece. I looked into the mirror, and there I was in the dark reflection of the room on the other side of the mirror, in the chair. I closed my eyes, rubbing them gently, before I opened them again with the courage to turn around.

The room was exactly like my living room. But it was grey. There was no color whatsoever. It was like an old noire movie on the TV; black and white. Directly behind me was him, the man with the piercing eyes, his tall, slender frame visible in the grey room. He wore an all-black suit, shirt, tie and all. The sharp features of his face seemed a little softer now, and he wore a blank expression. The sinister grin was gone, but his brows still furrowed slightly as he watched me. Scattered around the room were what must’ve been a dozen or so people. Men, women, children. I remembered them. I remembered each of their faces, all of them having appeared to me in the mirror before. They just stood and stared. Frowning with sadness at me. I was starting to understand where I was. Then I saw her standing by my empty chair in the corner, one hand sat on the headrest.

My Norma.

She was the only one smiling, softly. Gently. And she nodded to me. The anxiousness vanished from me looking into her eyes again.

I turned and looked back in the mirror one last time. The image of the dark living room where I sat alone slumped back in my chair, asleep in death, slowly faded; replaced by the reflection of the room with all the dead people. I saw him place a black brimmed hat on his head and nodded to me in the reflection. I turned back. He placed one hand on my shoulder, the other stretched out, indicating toward an opened doorway into a bright white light.