The Reflection Room

The mirror’s words hadn’t faded.

They hovered still on the glass in smoke-gray script, trembling faintly in the dimness

SHE KNOWS YOU’RE CLOSE.

DON’T TURN AWAY.

Sloane stood frozen, her breath fogging slightly in the heavy air. The door remained sealed behind them. No handle now, no seam. Just stone.

Theo paced once behind her, eyes scanning the room, looking for mechanisms, levers, anything.

“There’s no way out,” he said, voice tight. “We’re locked in.”

“No,” Sloane said. Her gaze didn’t leave the mirror. “We’re being kept.”

Theo moved to her side. “By Lenore?”

She shook her head slowly. “Not her. The house.”

As if in agreement, the air shifted. The temperature dropped, not with a rush, but gradually, like breath being drawn away.

And then the mirror flickered.

Not violently. Not even noticeably unless you were watching.

Sloane stepped closer.

The image shifted.

Her reflection was gone.

Now the glass showed a bedroom with soft light, wallpaper faded blue, a dollhouse in the corner. The bed was empty, its quilt pulled back, still warm.

Footsteps echoed in the hallway beyond the mirror. A child’s feet, quick and bare.

And then the girl appeared.

Lenore.

She crossed the threshold, nightdress trailing behind her. She looked toward the mirror, not directly at Sloane, but through her. As if she felt something on the other side of the glass.

“Lenore,” Sloane whispered.

The girl tilted her head slightly. She wasn’t frightened. Just… aware.

Theo’s voice came low. “Are we seeing her memory?”

Sloane didn’t answer. The image shifted again.

Now: a long hallway. Lenore stood at one end, and at the other a woman in red.

Not Sloane. But like her.

Too much like her.

She turned suddenly, and Sloane’s breath caught.

Same eyes. Same jaw. Her hair swept into a low knot.

But this woman looked through Lenore.

And walked away.

“No,” Sloane whispered, her chest tightening. “She didn’t see her.”

Theo turned toward her. “What?”

“She didn’t see her. She left her behind.”

The image wavered. Then another formed.

A storm outside. Lightning throwing shadows across a large, candlelit study. The woman sat at a desk, pages scattered around her. She was crying. Writing. Then pausing. As if trying to remember something she could feel but not reach.

Behind her, the door creaked open.

Lenore stood there again, silent.

Unseen.

Unwanted.

The candle blew out.

The room went black.

The mirror surface rippled again and then cleared.

Now it showed only Sloane.

Her own reflection, returned.

But her mirrored self moved a second too slow.

Behind her, something stirred in the glass.

A second figure forming slow, dark, stretching tall from shadow.

Sloane backed away.

Theo moved between her and the mirror instinctively.

But then the writing returned, this time etched across the top of the frame like a crown:

SHE HAS TO REMEMBER.

Sloane’s hands went cold.

“What am I supposed to remember?” she whispered.

Theo turned to her, voice steady but low. “It’s you. The woman in red. She wasn’t just a metaphor, was she?”

“I thought she was fictional.”

“You wrote her.”

“I was her.”

She staggered back toward the stone wall and sank to her knees, sketchbook clutched against her chest.

Her mind reeled.

Not dreams. Not imagination. Memory.

Rewritten. Fragmented.

The house hadn’t just chosen her, it had always been calling her back.

She remembered the first scene she wrote for the manuscript. A girl watching from behind a mirror, unseen by the world. She’d thought it poetic. Invented.

But it hadn’t been.

It had been real.

And she’d left Lenore behind once before.

Theo knelt beside her. He didn’t speak. Just waited.

Finally, Sloane looked up. “The story I wrote… it wasn’t fiction. It was a confession. Or a warning. I didn’t just channel her. I knew her. I left her. And she never moved on.”

Theo reached for her hand, but didn’t take it.

“You didn’t know.”

“I did. Somewhere I did.”

The mirror flared not with light, but with presence.

The air tightened.

The door behind them groaned open.

Stone cracking against stone.

Theo rose, helping Sloane to her feet.

She turned to the mirror once more. Her reflection stood still. But the figure behind her remained.

Watching.

Waiting.

Sloane stepped toward the threshold, and the moment her foot crossed the door’s edge, the mirror surface shattered, not into shards, but into mist, the frame collapsing inward like a closing eye.

And the voice, not sound, but thought followed her out:

Finish it. Or lose her again.