The Whispering Mirror

It arrived in a dust-laden crate, its contents wrapped in yellowed lace and the scent of lavender long gone bitter. The card inside bore a single line in precise cursive: “For when you forget who is really watching.” No name. No sender. Just that.

Eloise held the mirror delicately, afraid it might crumble in her hands like bone turned to ash. The glass was clear, though faintly warped, like old pond water that had seen too many moons. The frame, an elaborate carving of thorns and roses, wrapped around the glass as if it were trying to keep something in.

It had belonged, apparently, to her great-aunt Imelda, a woman whom her family referred to only in lowered voices and half-finished sentences. “She saw things,” her grandmother once muttered, eyes darting toward a corner that seemed too dark for daylight. “Dreamed while awake.”

The mirror found its home in the upstairs hallway of Eloise’s Victorian rental house—a creaky, half-forgotten manor clinging to the edge of a weeping forest. She was staying there for the summer, cataloging estate books for a local museum. Quiet, uneventful work. Until the mirror.

At first, she only noticed small things.

A flicker of movement in the glass that didn’t match her own. Shadows that flinched instead of followed. Then came the whispers.

They were soft, like parchment pages turning in a cathedral silence. Not every night, but often enough to make her keep a light on. The voices were not her own. They spoke in fragmented phrases:

> “Not again—”
“She’s coming down the stairs.”
“Don't let her see you.”
“He never left. He’s waiting.”



Eloise tried to dismiss it. Too much coffee. Too many hours staring at cramped handwriting. But then came the visions.

It was around midnight when she looked into the mirror and saw a girl—pale, barefoot, hair dripping. Not Eloise. Not anyone she’d ever known. The girl was standing in the kitchen. Eloise didn’t even know how she knew it was the kitchen, but she felt it—an awful familiarity.

Then the girl screamed.

No sound reached Eloise's ears, but her throat opened in a silent wail. Behind her, something moved—something large, distorted, inhuman. Its outline flickered like static.

And then—gone.

She ran to the kitchen. Nothing. Just her own reflection in the kettle, the clock ticking like a lazy metronome. No wet footprints. No pale girl. But her reflection now… didn’t quite smile when she did.

Eloise decided to record everything. She kept a journal beside the mirror and began tracking what it showed her.

August 3rd: A man crying blood into a porcelain sink.
August 5th: A boy locking himself in a wardrobe as something clawed outside.
August 7th: An old woman lighting dozens of candles and whispering names until her mouth foamed.

The mirror whispered every night now. Sometimes she could understand. Sometimes it sounded like chanting. Sometimes—sobbing.

She called her grandmother.

“You have Imelda’s mirror?” the woman gasped, as if Eloise had confessed to necromancy.

“She left it to me.”

“She didn’t leave anything. We buried her with nothing. We burned the house. Eloise, burn the mirror.”

“But it shows me things,” she said, voice trembling. “Future things. Not mine. Other people’s. And something terrible always happens.”

There was a long pause. “That mirror never showed the future. Not really. It showed what would happen if no one stopped it.”

Click.

Eloise didn’t sleep that night. She sat before the mirror, waiting. Her reflection stared back, gaunt, silent. The whispers came earlier than usual.

> “He’s coming tonight.”
“Don’t look behind you.”
“Don't let him see your face.”



Then the glass shifted.

This time, it showed her. Not in the hallway. But in the attic.

She was cowering, blood dripping from her hand, holding the mirror in front of her like a shield. Behind her—him. The shadow. Taller than the doorframe. Breathing in rasps that shook the rafters.

And then—

The mirror cracked.

A single fracture down the middle, like a jagged smile.

Eloise dropped the mirror. It didn’t shatter. It laughed.

Not with sound—but with movement. The reflection of her own mouth widened, teeth stretching longer than they should. Her mirror-self raised a hand, even though Eloise had not moved.

Then the mirror-self pointed…upward.

The attic.

Something thumped above her.

The lights flickered.

Eloise grabbed the mirror and ran—not down the stairs, not out the front door, but upward. Into the attic. If this was how it ended, she needed to see. Needed to know.

The attic was empty. Dust. Cobwebs. Silence.

Then the mirror flashed—bright, blinding.

It showed the truth.

This house had seen it before.

Imelda, clutching the same mirror. The shadow stalking her. The attic. The blood. The silence afterward. The mirror, passed again and again. Not to warn. But to feed.

The mirror didn’t show the future.

It made one.

A story. A tragedy. A death.

Unless—

Unless she broke the pattern.

Eloise stepped into the moonlight streaming through the attic window. She held the mirror high above her head. For a moment, the whispers screamed.

Then—

Silence.

She hurled the mirror out into the night. It shattered mid-air against the stone wall below, scattering like silver snow.

The air shifted.

She waited.

No shadow. No scream. No blood.

Only her reflection in the attic window, blinking, human again.