The Mirrors Memory

The lines on the sketchbook bled darker as they climbed.

Upward now. The stairway from the drawing was narrow, cut into the stone with the same sharp curve as the one below, but everything here felt newer and not freshly built, but freshly revealed. Like the house had shifted again to make room.

Sloane led the way, the flashlight trembling slightly in her grip. Theo followed close behind, his steps measured but quiet. Neither of them spoke. The silence wasn’t empty. It was strained. Listening.

They passed through a low arch at the top. A heavy door stood before them, not wood, but iron, the frame fused into the stone. Ivy crept in from somewhere above, brittle and dead.

Sloane pressed her hand to the center of the door.

It gave way instantly.

The room beyond was quiet. Choked in shadows.

The light from her flashlight flicked across the space. Bare stone floors, shelves that held nothing but dust, and in the center of the far wall:

A mirror.

Seven feet tall. Ornate frame twisted with iron and blackened gold, shaped like thorns or vines. It didn’t shimmer. Didn’t reflect. The glass was dull, dark. Waiting.

Theo stepped beside her, breath shallow. “That’s the one.”

She nodded. “From the sketch.”

They moved closer.

Sloane stood directly in front of it. She should have seen herself. She should have seen both of them.

But the glass was black.

Then…

It pulsed.

The surface rippled, as though wind stirred it from behind. Light flickered across it once, and then suddenly, she was looking at something else.

A familiar hallway. Faintly lit by gas sconces.

In the center of the frame: a woman.

She wore red. A coat cinched at the waist. Her hair was darker than Sloane’s, but her face…

Sloane inhaled sharply.

It was her face. Or nearly.

The woman turned her head slightly, listening.

Behind her, a child watched from the shadows.

A little girl in a white nightdress. Her face half-hidden, eyes wide. She didn’t blink.

“Is that…” Theo began, but Sloane lifted a hand to stop him.

The image shifted again.

Now: a study. Pages scattered across a desk. A fountain pen resting in an ink pot. Someone hunched over the pages, writing furiously. The face was obscured, the candlelight flickering just so.

Then…

The door creaked open behind the figure.

A second woman entered. Older. Pale. She crossed to the desk, read the page. Her hands trembled.

And then she began taking the pages.

One by one. Stuffing them into a leather satchel.

The candle flickered.

The child appeared behind her.

And then the vision went dark.

Sloane staggered back a step. The air in the room had changed, thicker. Her lungs ached.

Theo caught her arm. “What did we just see?”

Sloane’s voice was hoarse. “A memory.”

“Whose?”

She turned to the mirror again. This time, her own reflection stared back at her, pale, wide-eyed, covered in the dust of the house. But something behind her was wrong.

Too tall.

Too still.

Theo stepped in beside her and gasped.

“I’m not in the reflection.”

He was right.

In the mirror, only Sloane stood.

Alone.

She blinked. Her mirrored self moved, but slightly out of sync.

And then the words began to appear.

Drawn across the mirror’s surface in faint, smoke like strokes.

FINISH IT.

SHE WAS LEFT BEHIND.

ONLY BLOOD REMEMBERS.

Sloane felt her knees weaken. Her hand gripped Theo’s sleeve.

“This isn’t just a haunting,” she whispered. “This is a warning.”

Theo’s jaw tightened. “What does blood remembers mean?”

She didn’t answer.

Because part of her already knew.

The girl in the vision. The woman in red. The pages.

She wasn’t just channeling the story.

She was in it.

Or part of it.

The mirror pulsed again.

This time, it flickered through more images rapidly, disjointed. The child, reaching through a mirror. A door slamming. A woman screaming. A buried journal. Hands covered in ink. And in the final flicker:

Sloane, standing at the top of the grand staircase eyes open, but empty.

She turned away.

“I can’t…”

The door behind them slammed shut.

Theo moved quickly, wrenching the handle. It wouldn’t budge.

Sloane pressed her palm to the door again, but nothing happened.

They were sealed in.

And behind them, the mirror whispered with new lines forming:

SHE KNOWS YOU’RE CLOSE.

DON’T TURN AWAY.