The Mirror in the Attic

A cursed mirror is found by Lynn and JR.

625 Words.

The Mirror in the Attic.

There are sounds that your mind tries to forget, but your heart never can.
For me it's that beating sound. Soft at first, then quicker, then harder until it beats in time with terror itself.

It began the day I looked into that darned mirror.
We had not yet grown used to the house, that old Victorian thing crouched at the edge of town beneath a patch of big oak trees covered with poison ivy vines.

The locals warned us of the rumored curses. Of course. Don't they always? “Beware of the attic.” We had heard one woman whisper. We laughed then. Fools laugh easily.

On the third evening it called me until I found it. In the back of the attic hidden beneath a rotted piece of cloth, stood an old full length mirror. Fogged by time, tall as a coffin and framed with a twisted old blackened frame, carved with what resembled screaming faces looking at you. Watching, or trying to warn you.

Something in the mirror called me. Something in the mirror grabbed me. With no power to resist I found myself in front of it.

“JR,” I called softly, “look at this.”

He was busy with the boxes so I found myself standing alone in front of the dreadful thing. My reflection blinked when I did not. A tremor passed through me as I watched my reflection age. I had no control. My reflection smiled. I felt myself being pulled by an invisible force tied to my soul.

Then came the pounding sound. Thump…Thump.. Thump…thump! Like a heartbeat pounding beneath the floor.

I tried to turn away. I could not. The mirror held me, body- mind and soul.
I was looking at myself in the mirror… looking at me in the mirror…looking at me in the mirror… looking at me in the mirror… Thump…thump..Thump…Thump.

That terrible beating sound beating faster and faster.

I watched as my reflection began to change. The face in the glass aged by years: Hair whitening, eyes hollowing, skin withering to gray. My knees weakened, yet I stood transfixed, drawn deeper into that endless corridor of mirrors within mirrors each showing me older, frailer, nearer to dust.

I screamed or thought I did. The sound was devoured by silence. Time fell apart.

Then, in a rush of cold, JR’s arms pulled me backwards. The world snapped like broken glass. Air filled my lungs again. I collapsed into him trembling.

“What are you doing?” I gasped. “Why did you pull me out?”
His face was pale. “You were gone, Lynn. Staring at that thing for nearly an hour. You didn’t breathe.”
I turned toward the mirror. My reflection stared back. Young again, but smiling too long, too wide.

We fled the attic that night, but sleep would not come. I heard it in the walls, soft and steady.
Thump… thump… thump..thump.

Like something searching for rhythm.
At dawn, JR went to destroy it. I begged him not to.
“The mirror cannot be broken,” I whispered. “It breaks you.”
He didn’t listen. He swung the hammer. The mirror laughed.
Not loud, not shrill…just a small, knowing laugh that echoed from nowhere.
The glass rippled, swallowed the blow, and stood whole again.
That was when I understood. The beating wasn’t from inside the mirror at all.
It was from me.
The curse had crossed the glass.

We left that house, yet wherever I go, my reflection is not my own. Sometimes, in the dim light before dawn, I see her…the older me…waiting just behind the glass, her lips mouthing words I cannot hear.
Beneath the hush of night, when my heart should be my own…
it beats with another’s rhythm.
Thump… thump… thump.. thump…