The Thing Beneath The Mirror

CHAPTER FIVE

The Thing Beneath the Mirror

The laughter came from beneath the floor.

Not from the passage. Not from the room behind me.

Beneath us.

It was a woman’s laughter, soft and breathless, the kind that belonged to someone hearing a private joke. There was something terribly familiar about it, though I couldn’t have explained why.

The hooded man heard it too.

His expression changed.

“Whatever you do,” he said, “don’t answer her.”

I tightened my fingers around the dagger. “Answer who?”

The laughter stopped.

A voice rose through the stone beneath my feet.

“Adrian?”

The name struck me like a hand closing around my throat.

Adrian.

I knew that name.

I knew the shape of it in my mouth, the way it felt against my tongue, the way my heart seemed to recognize it before my mind could.

The man in front of me went deathly still.

Then the voice beneath the floor spoke again.

“Adrian, darling. You promised you wouldn’t leave me down here.”

I looked at him.

“Who is she?”

“Don’t listen.”

“You keep saying that. Don’t listen to the mirrors. Don’t listen to Mara. Don’t listen to whatever is under the floor.” I stepped closer, anger finally overpowering my fear. “Is there anyone in this miserable place you actually want me to listen to?”

His jaw tightened.

“Yes.”

The answer was so quiet that I almost missed it.

“Who?”

“Yourself.”

I stared at him.

For one absurd second, I thought he might reach for me. His hand lifted slightly, fingers curling as if he were fighting the urge to touch my face.

Then he lowered it.

“Run,” he said.

The floor split.

A thin black line appeared between the stones, stretching from the wall to the tips of my shoes. Cold air rose through it, carrying the smell of wet earth and something metallic.

Blood.

I stumbled backward.

The hooded man caught my wrist.

“Stay behind me.”

I hated how easily my body obeyed him.

He pulled me towards the passage, but the laughter erupted again, louder this time, followed by a violent pounding beneath the floor.

Three knocks.

A pause.

Three more.

Then a voice whispered directly beneath my feet.

“You left me to die.”

My grip on the dagger loosened.

For a heartbeat, the room disappeared.

I was standing in a garden beneath a blood-red moon. My dress was soaked to the knees. Someone was crying behind me, and my hands were covered in blood.

A girl stood at the edge of a stone well.

She had Mara’s eyes.

Not her face. Not exactly.

But those eyes.

The girl held out her hand.

“Please,” she begged. “I can’t see anything.”

I tried to move towards her.

Someone seized my waist from behind.

Adrian.

I knew him without seeing his face.

“Don’t,” he whispered into my hair. “If you save her, you’ll lose everything.”

I turned towards him.

“Who is she?”

His arms tightened around me.

“You.”

The memory shattered.

I gasped and nearly fell. The hooded man caught me before my knees struck the stone.

For a moment, neither of us moved.

His face was inches from mine beneath the shadow of his hood. I could see the tension in his mouth, the fear he was trying to hide, and a faint scar running from his left temple towards his eyebrow.

I wanted to ask him why he knew my name.

I wanted to ask why his voice felt like a memory I had buried alive.

Instead, I whispered, “You were there.”

He didn’t deny it.

“You saw what happened to that girl.”

His eyes flickered.

“Yes.”

“Did I kill her?”

Silence.

I shoved him away.

“Answer me!”

“Yes,” he said.

The word seemed to suck every bit of warmth from the room.

I raised the dagger.

He didn’t move.

“Then why should I trust you?”

“You shouldn’t.”

That answer frightened me more than any lie could have.

He reached inside his coat and pulled out a small brass key. It was old, tarnished, and engraved with a symbol I had seen before: a circle split down the middle, one half polished smooth, the other jagged like broken glass.

He placed it in my palm.

“The oldest mirror is at the end of the passage. Behind it is a staircase. At the bottom, you’ll find the room where this began.”

“Mara told me about my first death.”

“Mara doesn’t know which death was first.”

“And you do?”

He looked at the key in my hand.

“I was there.”

The pounding beneath the floor became frantic.

Something scraped against the stones.

A fingernail.

Then another.

A hand pushed through the crack.

Pale fingers, stained black at the tips, curled around the edge of the broken stone.

I screamed.

The hooded man dragged me towards the passage just as the floor burst open behind us.

I looked back once.

A woman was climbing out of the darkness.

Her hair hung over her face in wet, tangled strands. Her nightdress was torn at the shoulder, and a dark stain spread across her chest.

She lifted her head.

I saw my own face.

Not a reflection. Not a resemblance.

My face.

The same mouth. The same eyes. The same tiny scar beneath my chin.

Except her eyes were entirely black.

She smiled at me.

“There you are,” she said.

The hooded man slammed the door between us.

Something struck it from the other side hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling.

“Move!” he ordered.

We ran.

The passage twisted sharply, then opened into a circular chamber lined with mirrors. Some were tall and narrow, others small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. Every one of them was covered in a thin film of dust, except the largest mirror at the far end.

That one was spotless.

I stopped in front of it.

The glass reflected the chamber, the dagger in my hand, and the hooded man standing behind me.

But it didn’t reflect my face.

Instead, a young woman stared back.

She wore a white dress. Her hair was pinned loosely at the back of her neck, and a delicate silver chain rested against her throat.

She looked calm.

Almost happy.

Then she lifted her hand.

I lifted mine.

She pressed her palm to the glass.

So did I.

Her lips moved.

I couldn’t hear her, but I understood the words.

He isn’t Adrian.

My heart lurched.

I turned towards the hooded man.

“Who are you?”

He stood motionless, staring at the mirror as if it had just revealed something he had spent years trying to forget.

“I told you,” he said. “I’m the man who remembers.”

“That isn’t a name.”

“No.”

“Then give me one.”

He slowly reached up and pulled back his hood.

I had seen his face in the photograph.

The man standing beside the girl beneath the blood-red moon.

The man whose arm had rested around her waist.

The man who had looked at her as though she were the only thing in the world worth saving.

But the photograph had been old.

This man looked no older than thirty.

His eyes were dark, his features sharp, and his expression held a grief so deep it seemed to have changed the shape of his face.

“Adrian Vale,” he said.

My fingers went numb around the dagger.

The name beneath the floor.

The name my heart had recognized.

The name the mirror had just rejected.

“Then who was the man in the photograph?”

Adrian’s gaze dropped to the key in my palm.

“Your husband.”

I laughed.

I couldn’t help it. The sound came out sharp and broken.

“My husband is standing in front of me.”

“No,” he said. “Your husband died a hundred and twenty-nine years ago.”

The chamber tilted.

“That’s impossible.”

“Most things about you are.”

I turned back to the mirror.

The woman in the white dress had moved. She was no longer standing calmly on the other side.

She was pounding on the glass.

Her mouth opened in a silent scream.

I stepped back.

Words appeared across the mirror, one letter at a time, as though an invisible finger were writing from within.

HE STOLE YOUR NAME.

Then another line appeared beneath it.

ASK HIM WHAT HAPPENED ON OCTOBER 19, 1897.

I looked at Adrian.

He had gone pale.

“What happened that night?”

He said nothing.

“What happened?”

The mirror cracked.

A thin line split the glass from top to bottom, stopping directly between the reflection’s eyes.

Then the woman inside smiled.

I felt the same awful recognition I’d felt when I heard the voice beneath the floor.

She wasn’t a stranger.

She wasn’t even a dead version of me.

She was the part of me that remembered.

And she was terrified of the man standing behind me.

“Adrian,” I whispered. “What did you do to me?”

He stepped forward.

I raised the dagger between us.

“Don’t.”

He stopped immediately.

For the first time, he looked at me without trying to hide his grief.

“I loved you,” he said.

“That isn’t an answer.”

“No.” His voice cracked. “It’s the reason I did it.”

A sound came from behind the mirror.

Three knocks.

A pause.

Three more.

The same rhythm that had come from beneath the floor.

Then the woman in the glass pressed her mouth to the crack and whispered a single word.

“Remember.”

The brass key in my palm grew hot.

I cried out and dropped it.

It struck the stone floor.

The mirror swung open.

Behind it lay a narrow staircase descending into absolute darkness.

At the bottom, a faint light flickered.

And from somewhere below, I heard a man sobbing.

Not Adrian.

Someone else.

Someone whose voice I recognized more clearly than my own.

“Please,” he begged. “Don’t let her wake up again.”

I stared into the darkness.

Adrian reached for my hand, then stopped himself.

“If you go down there,” he said, “you’ll remember everything.”

“Good.”

“You won’t like the person you remember being.”

I picked up the key.

“Then it’s a good thing I don’t like the person I am now.”

I stepped onto the first stair.

Adrian followed.

Behind us, the mirror slammed shut.

And the woman trapped inside began to scream.

Not in fear.

In laughter.

Because as the darkness swallowed us, I finally remembered one thing.

The girl in the garden hadn’t been begging me to save her.

She had been begging me to stop.

And I had smiled at her before I pushed her into the well.