Speaker 1: The mirror showed my body on the floor. The clock
reflected in its glass red eleven fifty two. Fear pushed
cold air into my throat and made my hands drop
the flashlight to a thudding pulls. I stepped closer, and
the light carved the mirrors frame into a hard, gilded edge,
while the glass kept the same an blinking image. Me
face upon the attic boards, blood duck against the dust.
I tested the room first. My foot hit the warped
floorboard and the sound brickshet. I grabbed the trunk lad
pulled it open, and the smell of mop poles and
old linen rose like a smell that belonged to another decade.
Background facts. I had been sorting my grandmother's house for
two weeks, clearing things to sell, living in the topmost
guest room for short stretches. The attic was the place
had avoided before to night, I went up to check
a leak and found the mirror already shown the scene.
Fear was the engine of my choices that night. That
fear pushed my hands into quick motions. I crouched and
read the reflected clock again. Its hands were frozen at
eleven point fifty two, even though the att o' clock
on the wall showed eleven point forty seven. I said
a sentence a loud because I needed some one to
answer Grandmother, what is this? My voice came out small,
and then I heard the low rustle of the shore
she had always kept in the trunk. When I opened it,
I lifted the shawl. There was a small clock shaped
brooch to the fabricas fold it. Metal had dulled it
all gold and a hail and crackscored one edge tot.
Beneath the brooch was a folded scrap of paper with
two lines written in a height precise hand one scene
only look once, do not become the image. The paper
smelled of cammeele and old ink. I slid the scrap
into my palm like a blade and read the words aloud.
One scene only look once, do not become the image.
I said the words the way people read warnings on signs.
Saying them did not make them truer. I felt a
for a shift in my thinking. Doubt listened into a
hard curiosity. If this came from grandmother, she had known,
If she had known, she had chosen to hide it.
I forced my fingers to move I moved the out
o clock two feet to the left and set the
hands forward. I expected the reflection to valla. It did not.
The image stayed the same. The reflected clock remained at
eleven point fifty two. I yanked at the mirror's frame
as varnish flaked under my nails. The glass did not wobble.
A second emotion change arrived. Doubt hardened into alarm. My
pulse went tight. I tested the mirror's edges with a
flashlight and found a tiny black fleck at the lower
right corner. It looked like a burn mark. But when
I pressed a glove fingered it to the glass, condensation
formed from the inside, as if the temperature just behind
the surface dropped. Grandmother, I said again, because the scrap
of paper meant she had left instructions for someone. I
put the brooch on my palm and tapped it under
the attic light. I remembered her hands pinning the brooch
to her dress. In photographs, memory came in discreet images
Grandmother at the kitchen table, her fingers working the brooch,
humming while she sued the brooch, catching the lates unlike
a small broken clockfish. Those images made the warning concrete.
That memory changed how I felt about the mirrorld responsibility
on to the family. I spoke aloud the question I
couldn't hold on to silently. Did you do this, Grandma?
Did you let it show us? My voice fractured. The
attic answered with a low whine of the house settling.
I anpeered the brooch from the fabric and found a
second scrap taped behind it. The tape had browned. The
hand for rating thore was shorter. Do not move the hands,
do not touch the glass from outside. If you tried
to change the scene, it will change you back m
I read the line three times. My next movement was deliberate.
I put the brooch on the floor, away from the glass,
and walked three steps back. The reflected image remained absolute.
The cobs in the mirror had a small pale patch,
and the left eyebrow or a scar matched a one
air carried. The sight made me flench. I rubbed the
scar with a thumbotelle stung. That physical action grounded me.
My thoughts shifted from curiosity to calculation. I tried experiments,
because panic is useless unless it becomes testing. I stopped
the analog wristwatch on my wrist and checked the other
clock again. The attic flock still announced eleven point forty nine.
I dragged a chair in front of the mirror and
angled it left then right. I switched the flashlight beam
to the under edge of the glass and watched a
reflection of light bent. The image in the mirror never splendid.
The reflected me remained folded on the floor with a fixed,
open mouth and a stiff arm. Another small change appeared
in me, then resolve. The resolve wasn't heroic. It was
a narrow, practical focus determine what the mirror did and
prevent it. I knelt and whispered to the glass. If
that's me, what happens next? Nor answer? The mirror communicated
through permanence and tiny shifts the way the reflected body
turned its head of fraction. When they added clock ticked
forward to eleven fifty one in my real room, the
reflected islets fluttered once, then closed. I felt a new pressure,
an urgent time line. The mirror had shown only one
scene that night. I have little time. I grabbed the
envelope with the old photograph from the trunk and set
it on the floor beside me. In the photograph, grandmother
wore the brooch at her collar and stood on a
porch with two young women. She smiled with the tightness
at the mouth that always meant she was holding back something.
I pressed the photo to my chest like a paper
talisman and said, Grandmother, tell me what you wanted me
to do. The attic offered only air. I set up
simple traps. I spread a sheet of butcher paper on
the floor in front of the mirror and placed the
stop wristwatch on it. I pinned a brooch in the
middle of the paper and left that a dull slightly
ajost so the wholely clock could be seen from the doorway.
I tried to force fury ability into the reflected scene.
Nothing on the other side changed. The reflected wrist watch
date stopped at eleven point fifty one, even when mine
was motionless a foot away. I felt like a technician
watching a machine with one serven failure at eleven point fifty.
When I sat on the chair, face in the mirror,
I kept my back straight and my hands loft on
my knees. My breathing came shallow. I told myself the
actions I took matter I whispered, instructions, as if to
a patient. If you are watching me, do not take
my hand. If you are showing me, stop now. Saying
it a lot altered my internal rhythm. My heart rates
deadd a measure. The emotion in me shifted yet again,
fear and to concentrate brittle control. A noise or from
the trunk behind me, a rustle, and a soft metallic clink.
I turned my head. The brooch was gone from the
paper where I had left it. The brooch lay on
the attic floor, behind a chair, closer to the stairle
than where I had positioned it. I reached for it,
and my hand trembled. A voice, my voice, small and
imitating memory, said you always forget the brooch, dear. It
was the way I remember grandmother speaking when she pretended
I was careless. The line landed like a fact. I
spoke back, in a voice that tried to be reasonable. Grandmother,
did you write the note? I asked? The attic offered
no answer other than the low house settling. I pipped
up the brooch and found the backing pin bent. The
brooch tiny clock face was stopped at eleven point fifty
two by a smear of something like risp but darker.
I pressed a brooch to my palm to examine it,
and a pinch of dust moved from the hairline crack
on the mirror on to my fingers, an impossibility that
I saw but still touched. That's all. A visible transfer
changed everything. I had proof that contact between glass and
skin could cross the threshold. The black flight from the
lower right glass now sat in the hollow of my palm.
It wasn't powdery, it had weight. I bowled my hand reflexibly.
The fleck left a trace of cold metal scent on
my skin. I tasted dust in my mouth. I felt
nolsa in a sharp, precise panic that made my shoulders
pull up. I called out loud, trying to make the
articant a place where people answered, Grandmother, if you left
these notes, who else knew? Who else watched? My voice cracked.
The only reply came from the mirror itself. The reflected
corpse's hand lifted slowly and pressed against the inside of
the glass. The movement matched no motion I made. The
reflected fingers left a faint condensation on the inner surface,
and then the glass rippled, as if something moved behind it.
I reached toward the glass, not to touch, but to
test distance. The mirror's reflection changed in a microscopic way.
Dared Me's wristworts glinted, and the light caught a hair
line on the inside of the frame. I flinched back.
The attic's air felt colder near the mirror. My breath fog.
The third emotions shift arrived. Alarm melted into an edge.
Determination to act before the image completed itself. I pulled
the flashlight strap over my wrist, rose and moved to
the attic stairs. Anuvent forced itself into the sequence. The
house phone and the downstairs table started ringing. The sun
came muffled up the stairs, tinny and urgent. I froze.
The ringing continued. Then some one shouted from below, are
you up there? Are you okay? It was miss Esparlow
from next door. I answered, yes, I'm fine. My voice
sounded too loud. I did not go down. The call
was an external intrusion that demanded choice leave the attic
and risk whatever the mirror showed happening, or stay and
face it. I stayed. The minutes until eleven point fifty
two churned like an engine warming. I made small actions
to keep in control. I pulled my old key from
the cord around my neck and set it on the stairs.
I tested my stopping the watch again. I whispered a
loud fragments of instruction. Did not step through, do not
trade places. When the attic clock take eleven fifty two
in the room, the reflected clock held still. The attic's
reel clock chined once a dull, thin sound, and the
mirrors clock rippled outward, like the surface of a pul
hit by a pebble. The reflection moved first. The corpselike
figure opened its mouth and let an airless sund out
that I could not place a speech. It hand slid
under the inside surface of the glass and pressed to
the mirror from the other side. The pressing left a
wet mark that beat it, and then ran slowly down
the inside face. I lunched forward and slammed the heel
of my hand into the glass. Flash shattered. It sounded
like a collapse set of piano strings. Slavers flew and
stunned my forearms. The sound cut the attic in a clean,
violent line. I reached them with gloved hands and felt
the cold of the inner surface under shouds. My fingers
closed around something that was not glass, but warm and
oddly textured. I hauled, and the mirror assisted, like a
heavy thing that had weigh from both sides. A second
later I had the edge of the frame in my hands,
and the reflected floor beneath the glass was not mine.
It looked like floorboards, but with a different grain, as
if the reflection had a depth beyond simple reflection. I
pulled until my shoulder burned. Then the frame gave. A
chunk of glass fell, and a small black object slid
on to the attic floor with a soft thud. It
mashed the fleck now in the hollow of my hand,
I threw myself backward. I lay among shods, and the
room smelt of copper and wet stone. My wristwatch, which
I had stopped earlier, read eleven fifty one. The brooch
was gone from where I had left it. My palm
blood where I had gritted the frame, and the skin
around the small scar alarm. My left eye bretingled, as
if some one had traced it. Grandmother's voice came into
my head, not as a phantom, but as a memory
of a specific scentence. She had said when I was
twelve and broke a teacup. She you must do something
with what you inherit, hide what can hurt, Name it
when you can, and never looked twice without leaving. Once.
I repeated the line aloud and fel to anchor my actions.
I wrapped my bleeding hand in a scrap of curtain
and forced myself to stand. The mere lay cracked butnot inert.
The largest shod still reflected the attic, yet with the
crack web across the glass, the reflected corpse's features had
been rubbed away into a smudge. The small black fleck
I had found in my palm now looked embedded under
the skin between my thumb and index finger. I probed
it with my other hand and felt a sliver of
cold metal. It did not come out. I forced myself
to move. I covered the mirror with the shawl and
hurt the trunk late over frame. I took the key
I had left on the stair and locked the attic door.
The act was simple and practical, it was also an
offered containment. I left the house light on in the
hallway and set the stair gate so no one would
enter the attic inadvertently. I sat on the top stair
and let my head rest against the door. I tasted
metal and dust, and my breath came in shallow poles.
Then I noticed the brooch was missing from my pocket.
I had the scrap of paper folded in my palm.
When I opened it, the second line had changed. My
eyes were not playing tricks. Where I have red, do
not become the image. There were now two new words
written in the same high hand. Find the ledger. I
whispered the line and heard my own voice. Whoever had
written the note had expected someone to follow the instruction
turned the Knight's problem into a next step and offered
a new concrete object to search for. I stood and
felt the fleck under my skin as if it moved
when I breathed. The final image of the chapter is
an action. I take the attic key from the lock,
slide it into the pocket of my flannel, and clamped
the trunkolid shut over the mere. Then walk down the
wooden stairs and turn the lock once more. The house
downstairs is quiet, the bathroom like clothes. The hallway clock
reads midnight. I press my unto the small scarp of
my eyebrown and feel a pulsey that was not mine.
I know what I must do next. I will search
Grandmother's papers for the ledger she hid. The mirror is covered,
the door locked, but the fleck under my skin and
the missing brooch tell me containment is temporary. I closed
the attic door, and the house swallows the sound in
motion root there the fear at the stark guide of
my tests and my refusal to leave. The first shift
was doubt into curiosity when I found the approach and
the notes. The second shift was curiosity and alarm when
the fleck transferred to my hand. The third shift was
alarm into focused resolve as I smashed the glass and
locked the attic. Each chain shows itself through my hands,
my movement up and down the stairs, the act of
covering the mirror, and the physical pulse under my skin.
The chapter ends with a concrete decision. I will search
for the ledge a hidden among Grandmother's papers. The attic
is contained for now, and the mirror lies wrapped, but
I carry something from it into the rest of the house.
I slammed the kitchen door open with my palm and
drew a stop first watch onto the former car al Hay,
Look at this, I said to voice Tie. I shoved
the photograph grandmother in her crochet shawl, smiling in front
of the parlor clock, across the table, so the edges
hit the salt shaker. Fier sat under my ribs like
a stone. Fear made my hand shake while I barked
the time at him. Ellie blinked at the watch, then
at the photo. Eleven fifty one, he said, naming the
number to buy time. He set his bier down and
rubbed at his jaw. What are you doing here at
this hour of Thomas? The mirror showed me, I said,
It showed me on the attic floor dead, and the
clock in the reflection was stuck at eleven point fifty two.
The knife drawer click shut behind me, with a small
domestic sound that felt wrong. The sentence left no room
for small talk. The problem was concrete. If the mirror's
image resolved into reality at that time, the clock became
a dead lion. Ellie reached for the watch and turned
it in his hand. He actually brought the watch, he asked,
He left it stopped at eleven one hundred fifty one.
He might name the way he always did when he
wanted to pull me back from panic. Quick, familiar, impatient.
I answered by dropping my voice and pointing at the
photograph grandmother's picture. There's a note tape to the backing.
I found it when I was cleaning the parlor. It says,
do not trust the glass. Ellie's eyebrows climbed. Thomas slowed down.
Tell me exactly what happened in the attic. He my name, again,
steading me. His steadiness shifted something in me. Suspicion moved
into focused action. I matched his steadiness with details. I
told him the flashlight had slipped in my hand. I
told him the glass had already shown a single scene,
my body on the floor, eyes opened, my right hand
cul towards a brooch on grandmother's shawl, and the reflections
clock frozen at eleven point fifty two. I described the
condensation culling on the inner surface before the image formed,
and the small black fleck at the lower right of
the glass. I talked fast, ever sentence, a small action,
picking up the photograph, wiping dust from the frame, stepping closer,
and hearing the hum under the attic's boards. Ellie listened
in his mouth thin he saw this before, Ellie. No,
last night, it did Tea show anything but a dark pain.
If this was to night, I said to word tonight
like a fact that could be proven. Fear shifted under
my skin into a low, practical panic. Do something now,
or accept what the mirror predicts. At least stood and
cross to the counter. Okay, okay, we check it. We
go up there and see if the image changes. If
it does, we decide. If it doesn't, Tea, we decide,
But we re not standing around. He my name again, Thomas,
Are you sure you want to bring mart into this?
I had already called Marta once while I was holding
the watch downstairs. I set the phone on speaker and
tapped the green light. Martha answered in the second ring,
voice steady in business like Marta. It's Thomas Lane. The
mirror Thomas Lane. She finished, you sound winded, speak fast.
It showed my body. The cock read eleven point fifty two.
I need to know what it is in whether it
can be destroyed or contained. I kept the sentences clipped.
Marta had handled odd antics for twenty years. She knew
things owners didn't. Who want to know you should Tea
stare at you shouldn't he name what you saw? But
you called me so, I will say. This mirror is
like that, take an observer and make them part of
the image of the has overkeeps watching. They have rules.
Breakage is not a guarantee. I will come. Marda's voice
was flat as a metal edge. She promised to be
there in twenty minutes. She won more thane find anything
her pin to the backing of the portrait, she asked,
I told her I had. I described the note, a
single folded scrap of paper tip brown with the age
handroid and crampton herd. The note had two words and
a scratch time, do not trust in a crossed out
eleven point forty nine that have been overwritten to read
eleven point fifty two. Marta made a small, almost invisible
sand Don't he break the clock in this house? She said,
It ties to the mirror. Ways I can tea say overphone.
Then she clicked off. Allie walked the kitchen once boots
softened the Linoleon then opened the back door and called,
let's go now. He moved like someone clearing a workspace.
His voice carried an uncurrent of commander. Followed. We shouldered
the ladder and the flashlight in the photograph, and climbed
the narrow stairs into the attic, where the air tasted
of linen and old soap. Dad smiled like grandmother's shirts.
Dust had settled into the weave of everything. A single
bare bulbs wung on a pul chain and glowed weakly.
I could see the mirror at the far wall before
the light reached it, an ovalcout of darker shapes in
the gloom. Up close, the frames fill of gree cuts,
more poles of shadow, and the gold had the flaking
texture of varness left appeel over decades. Elie set down
his flask light and ran a hand across the frame.
This condensation again, he said, right where you said he
might name to check how I was breathing. Condensation bloomed
on the inside of the glass, then, in strangely warm
to the touch. These formed and then drained downward in
slow lines. I stepped forward, and the watched photograph slid
from my fingers to the attic boards. The image and
a mirror resolved for a bead assured the attic empty.
Then a condensation peered to reveal a single scene. The
glass held Ellie's body on the floor first, his head
turned under the bulb's light, his hand reaching for the brooch.
Pinterer showl no one more. The reflected clock registered eleven
point fifty one. Ellie made a sound that was half off,
half swallowed. It just switched, he said, It just showed me.
My reaction was fast. I lunged and grad at the frame,
fingers wreaking paint and varnish. Eli shoved my shoulder. Don't
tee do that, he hissed. Thomas stop. I said, we
either break it before eleven point fifty two, or we
find a way to change the reflection. The plan left
my mouth with a brittal certainty. Pierre was still there,
but it had hardened to resolve. Marda's warning about observers
had changed the math. If we stared long enough, the
image might pull its subject into the outcome. If we acted,
maybe we could force a different endpoint. Ellie pissed two steps,
three steps, then stopped and looked at me. Marta rules
did she say any he asked. I told him what
Marda had said on the phone, that mirror is like
these use in observer's attention. That naming the image helped
bind it that breaking the glass didn't he always endue
the image because the frame could keep the pattern. I
left out MARTA's more obscure adjectives. Martha had said observers
became entangled. She had added that sometimes the artifact kept
a small object as payment. The last detail lodged in
the back of my throat. We set up the attic
like a lab. Eli found altea towels and laid them
on the boards. I propped the clock from the parlor
against a crate and wounded so at hands moved again.
We cleared the floor around the mirror and put a
length of rope as a makeshift barrier. Conversation sharpened into directives. Ellie,
you hold the brooch in your hand. Peep it off
the shawl, I said, If the image shows you with
the brooch, then you let go Dante clutch it. Ellie
pulled the brooch from his pocket. He rolled it between
them and Foefinger and said he were you not making
me a target, Thomas, You want me to hold a
thing that might get me killed? I answered, Ellie, I
saw my hand by the brooch in the mirror. If
the brooch is the trigger, we need to control it.
The exchange was quick and practical. The argument had edges,
but stayed focused on a narrow task. Grandmother's photograph lay
face down on the boards now. At one point I
turned it over to examine the note again. The hand
ratting had more pressure toward the end of the incline.
Some one had tried to correct the time on the
back faintly. A partial fingerprint had left a smudge strage
in the corner of the paper. I touched the smudge
and it felt dry. Marta arrived and let herself up
the ladder with a workman's gait. She carried a satchel
and a canvas clove. Her face was the color of
a faded photograph. She looked at the mirror and blink slowly.
Ye too, move fast, Marda, dude, I prefer to arrive
after hayst because haste will make you do the wrong thing.
She kept her voice even her hands worked a small
device from the satchel. The device was a padded clamp
with a felt interior and a small lead strip. Martin explained,
this is for containment more than destruction. I can see
promise it will hold what that glass binds but it
will buy you time. You must not all watch the
same scene at once. One person watches, the others follow
actions outside the field. Marty's rhythm speech carried the authority
of someone who had practiced this choreography. Alice snorted, who
watches one? Thomas always watches, he asks Marda. I said,
you calm down and handle the brooch. I'll be the
watcher if I must. Marty pushed a palm on the
mirror's frame and ran her fingers across the lip. She
smelled faintly of close and oil. Names matter. She said,
I want to say the things. Call it the glass
if you must. And Thomas, keep your hands off the
gloss unless you have a reason beyond looking. She my
named pin me. If the reflection changes when you are looking,
step away and perform a physical action. Break a small object,
drops something heavy that interrupts attention. Understand, I said, yes,
and Eali, I understand. I can drop the bulb, I
can swing the ladder. We arrange the timers and the
physical distractions. Ellie would hold the brooch and candor aloud.
Marta would set the clamp on the frame while I
stood to the side, my back to the wall. The
attic felt smaller now. Each piece of furniture mapped into
roll time moved toward the mark in small clicks. The
parlor clock's hands went forward under our fingers. Each minute,
we worked with our hands tightening rope, testing the ball,
setting the satellite clamp in the widest part of the
frame so we could move if it pulled. The practical
tasks kept fear and check. Five minutes before eleven point
fifty to the glass fogged again. We arranged ourselves. Eli
held the brooch. Marta had one gloved hand on the
frame and one on the clamp. I breathe with my
mouth open to keep from swallowing noise. The attic lights
won a little on its chain, making a thin nock
of shadow. At eleven forty five, the mirror shifted for
a full second. It showed my body on the floor
with a broch pin to or shoal crossed my chest.
I heard Marda hiss my name, Thomas, look away, look away.
Now do something physical. I moved as the sentence arrived.
I kicked the wooden crate and knock the parlor clock
to the floor. The sound fractured the attic's hushed into splinters.
The glass steam broke, and the mirror went blank for
a heartbeat. Alice wore, and the brooch jumped in his fingers.
Marty's gloved hand tightened, and the clown made a small
metal sound. The mirror returned, This time it held Ellie
on the four instead of me. His head lay at
an angle under the bulb's light, his hand out stretched
toward the brooch. The reflected clock read eleven point fifty one.
The air between us felt like a thin waiting line.
It shifted again. Elie keats choosing. Why is it choosing me?
He the question aloud, and the attic answered with a
hum in the glass. His voice rattled a little. Marta
crouch fingers working the clamp tighter. It finds the path
of attention, she said, whoever's attention is steady will be
offered a subject. Stop staring. She used my name in
then said, Thomas, you need to step out and do
something that forces every one's eyes away. Break the bulb,
throw the brooch down the stairs, anything to break focus.
I thought fast. The bulb was on the long chain.
If Ellie dropped the brooch down the stairs, it might
roll into the parlor and be unreachable by eleven point
fifty two. But MARTA's earlier warning that the mirror sun
times who can object his payments sat between the choices.
If we sacrifice the brooch, would that untether what the
mirror claimed? Ali's voice rose, I'm not throwing it down
the stairs. I'm not letting you make that call for me, Thomas,
Elly I started, No, you saw yourself in the glass.
You think you get to decide what happens to my body? Now?
His words hit quick. There were six short shop exchanges
in a row as the argument tightened. Thomas Dante teld
me how to protect myself. Thomas, your panickin that is,
you keep looking at the glass, Martha, do something. All
of them in one breath. I stepped in. Allie, listen,
you are right to be angry, but the glass shows
a time and an image. I'm saying we trade the
brooch for a chance. Mardl What then if the brooch
is removed, can we break the frame? MARTA's fingers paused.
She looked at the brooch in Elly's hand for the
first time with an expression that rude us calculation, not shock.
The brooch belonged she said finally, and used grandmother's name
with an edge. Items tied to the original owner changed
the terms. It could be a tether. If you give
that tether to the glass willingly, you might free the image,
or the glass might take it and still claim a person.
There are no guarantees. Ellie tightened his grip on the
brooch until his knuckles whitened. He saw, now it's about
whether I trust you, Thomas, or whether I trust my
own hands. He tossed the brooch up and caught it,
standing himself with a short breath. I am not letting
the glass make my body upon while he stand here
with your hands clean. Ellie, if it's going to take
some one, it will take both of us rather than
one stupid choice. He dropped the brooch to the floor,
bitter on us, and said, make a cut, break the
glass if you dare. I want to be the only
only one left wondering. His voice had a cracked age
of defiance. Marta reacted faster than I did. She lunged
and scooped the brooch with the gloved hand before it
could hit the boards. The glove made a muffled sound
as it closed. She slid the brooch into a padded
case in her satchel and locked in no throse. She said,
no sacrifices handed to the glass. We contain, we do
not offer a decision, redirected the conflict ellis war, and
then sat down hard on the floor head Bowdy began
to breathe, like someone counting a rhythm. Fine, he said,
contain it. I will not hand it to the thing, Thomas,
I will not be at bate. He repeated his name,
and then breathed my name like an accusation. The minutes
to eleven point fifty two fell away. Each minute we
performed small tasks. Marty titan bolts and the clamp. Elie
checked the rope, I set wages under the crate. Every
action was an attempt to convert panic into measurable risk.
At eleven point fifty to the glass hum under our feet,
the condensation pealed and the mirror tried to resolve its image.
The humm rose from low to pressure in the bones.
The clock in the reflection showed the hands aligning with
our parlor clock. In real time. We were at the
edge of the apparatus. The reflection resolved on eally. The
glass showed Ellie on the floor, his eyes open. One
hand curl towards the brooch inside marta satchel, the other
hand putting up toward where we stood. The reflected ceiling
bulb in the glass was cracked. The reflected board beneath
Ellie's head had a splintered line, much in the crit's
edge in our attic. The mirror made a precise, marchable
copy of the room. Ali's breath left him in a single,
sharp sound. He whispered, Marta, Thummers, do something, Marta says,
gloved hand tighten in the clamb and she pulled a
length of cord free from her satchel. Her hand was steady.
Should thumbers break the glass, if you must, do not
touch the brooch. If the glass attempts to make him real,
you must force reality to disagree. She the last part
in a voice that was close to Anna. Everything went
fast after that, I kicked the crate with both feet,
sending it sliding into the mirror's base. The crate struck
the frame, and the clamps metal gave a chime. The
bub cracked with the sharp, dry sound that spilled light
in different directions. The mirrors Humming collapsed into a terring note,
thus gave it tea shatter outward. It separated inward like
a skin pull free for a second. The reflected Ellie
in the floor and the real alley standing were both visible,
like two frames on the split filmstrip. The reflected Ellie
reached up with perfect slowness. I lunged and pushed Elly backward.
My shoulder hit him, and he stumbled against the ladder.
We collided in a tangle of limbs. Marty yanked the
clamp hard, and a mirror tore away from the wall
with a long, brittle sound. The glass curved inward and
then gave it broke with a noise like ice breaking
along a river. Precise jagged final shawls spread along the boards.
The air filled with a dry, biting smell. Ellie sat
back in the floor and panted. Blood had split at
the corner of his lip, where my elbow had grazed him.
He touched it with a pale hand and spat out
his fingers in the foe. Marta held the broch case
to her chest and looked at the broken frame as
if it had been a living thing. The mirror's image
was gone. Where the glass had been dark hole, and
the frame showed the attic wall behind it, exposed insolation
in old wallpaper. The hummet stopped the parlor clock, which
had been knot by my earlier kick, on its face,
with the hands spinning wildly. The real clock read eleven
fifty four. Ellie laughed, a short sound that trembled between
relief and shock. We did it, he asked, looking at Marda,
then at me. He named us both, and then smiled
in a small rollway. Thomas, you idiot. You kicked the grate.
I sank to my knees and picked up a show
too large to hold without cutting. The shard reflected my
face and slices. I dropped it back into the pile.
My hand shook, but the shaking came from adrenaline more
than fear and air. Fear had shifted again into exhaustion
and a grim sort of clarity. We had stopped the
immediate image, but the mirror had not been contained in
ways Marta had feared. Marta moved through the attic with
efficient motions. She pocketed the brooch and put a soft
cloth over the largest group of shads. This isn't over,
she said. The frame may still contain a pattern. We'll
take the frame, but the glass might hold and imprint
at migrates. You both need to tell no one but
me and the archive. You must never say aloud the
exact image the glass showed. Name's bind. She spoke like
someone delivering a verdict. Eilly's hand went to his mouth
and wiped the blood with the back of his wrist.
He Grandmo, though, would have hated this. She pinned up
brooch and winter sow her showl wouldn't tea slip. She
used to hum in the kitchen and tuck the ends in.
Who would do this to her things? His voice cracked
on the last syllable and turned inward. Memory arrived as
a set of concrete pictures, Grandmother humming, the shawl wrapped
round one shoulder, the brooch glinting under lampley. I folded
the photograph and put it back in my pocket. The
note on the backing remained in my mind, a scratched time,
a hurried hand. The earlier memory from the parlor, the
one I had pulled from the framess backing, now looked
less like a warning and more like a lost attempt
at control. We carried the frame down the ladder in shifts.
Marta wrapped it in canvas and bound it with a clamp,
making it slow. Ritual azsed deaffort to make the frame
in it. Ellie held the brooch case close and refused
to hand it back to me. When we reached the kitchen,
the house fell quieter, as if it had been holding
its breath while we fought with an object in its bones.
The last concrete event of the night came when we
reached the threshold. I knock at the front door. It
sounded once twice, a hard measured tap. All three of
us furs Elly looked at the clock on the wall
eleven point fifty eight. Marta looked at the door, and
then at me. She set the frame down, took a
deep breath, and said, do not answer unless it's me
on the other side. If the house tries to reclaim
what it lost, it will come as a neighbor, a
city worker, or some one you expect. Do not open
the door. She spoke the line in such a way
that it became an instruction with teeth. Ali moved toward
the door and then stopped. He Thomas checked people. I'll
stand back. He spoke my name, and the old muscle, friendship, rose,
trust tangled with fear. I stepped forward and looked through
the people. A dog shape stood in the porch, a
silhouette of some one, small and round, with a should
draped over the shoulder. The shape hunched and rocked a
little under the porch light. I felt my mouth go dry.
I reached for the knob on my fingers, paused, and
the cool metal. MARTA's hand settled on my shoulder. She whispered,
dun tee, it could be a minic, it could be
the house testing you do not open. Her voice was
close and steady. I let my fingers drop. Ellie's ham
moved from the door, and he stepped back into the kitchen.
The knot came again shop at this time, and then silence.
The house stayed silent with us inside. We left the
wrap frame on the kitchen table and the brooch in
MARTA's case. We agreed in quick business like sentences on
what to do nexts Marta would take the frame to
her shop. Ali would sleep in the living room with
the parlor clock wound and set in the table under
a cup. I would stay awake and watch the stairwell.
None of the choices felt RESTful, but they were choices. Outside.
The port light blinked inside, chirscraped the floor as we moved.
The knight had shifted from the immediate possibility of death
to anew grinding reality. Containment, secrecy, and slow wark Fear
had become a planning instrument. Suspicion had turned to action,
and then to a wary patience. We did not speak
Grandmother's name again that night, except in fragments, Ellie humming
a line she used to hum as he sat in
the mound, marked muttering inventory notes, me repeating the scratch
correction on the note like a litany. The house held
the photograph on the table, and the clock ticked with
a soldier's precision. When I finally went to stand watch
beside the stairwell, I touched the old key on my
cord and felt its ridges. I set the stop wristwatch
on anakin and wounded to keep the sound of time present.
The hands clicked to eleven point fifty nine and kept moving.
At midnight plus one, there was no second knock. At
one in the morning, the street outside was bare. The
attic's broken frame sat, and Marda's van with camps and
padding Ellie slept on the sofa with a sweatshirt pulled
over his forehead and one boot and tied. I watched
the stairwell and the tip of my breath fogged in
a kitchen light. We had resolved the immediate conflict. The
mirror's image did not become my body in the attic
floor at eleven point fifty two. But the ending of
that moment did not feel like closure. It felt measured
and conditional. The brooch was gone from the house, the
frame was being moved, and Marda had the brooch locked away.
The house still kept the memory of how Brandola had
once pinned a scholl in winter, and the note from
its backing, still at a scratch time that would not
fully make sense. We had answers, and we had new questions.
The last scene of the night was the slow sound
of glass settling into a padded case in Marty's van,
and the small sound of someone close in a glove.
I stood in the kitchen and felt my hands go
numb from holding the watch. The house made no more noises, then,
very plainly, the brooch case click shot in the back
of Marty's van. The sound was close and final. It
was a situational beat that ended our immediate fight and
set the next step. I put the photograph back into
my pocket and walked to the stairwell. The bubb abo
of the attic's weighed the slightest amount, then sopped. The
night kept its schedule. The watch on the napkin ticked forward.
The hot iron of fear cooled into something we could
work with. We had changed the immediate outcome. We had
not undone what the glass had shown. The brooch was gone,
the frame was leading, and the knock on the door
had not yet been explained. The night still held one
measured sound, Marta locking the van, and the soft shuffle
of her boots on the porch as she walked away,
leaving the house and our decisions behind. Alice won the sledge.
Shimmer in the back door split we tore, A dry
scream of nails and cold air pushed into my face.
My hands drought the flashlight and it scattered along the threshold,
the beam bouncing across the splinters. Fear tightened my rote
and made my voice small when I said it shows
me dead. At eleven point fifty two, the words landed
between us like a thrown brick. Ellie did not look
at me right away. He set his jaw, checked the hammerhead,
and stepped past the broken frame. We had the hammer
because the mirror had shown one clear thing the night before,
my body on the attic floor, a clock in the
glass frozen at eleven point fifty two. That image had
made me stop breeding. I had left the wrist, which
stopped at eleven point fifty one, on the kitchen counter,
and told Elli about the watch and the photograph of
my grandmother with a crochete shawl. He had come because
he had once seen how the house swallowed light, and
because he knew my hands before they shook this badly.
We moved like two people who had rehearsed violence. The
porch light was a dead bulb. We could see only
the gutter teeth and the mildew in the siding. I
went first and climbed through the jagged opening. Ellie followed,
carrying the sledge hammer over his shoulder. Face set the
way it goes when someone decides to do a thing
they think is dumb but necessary. Doubt sat heavy at
the base of my skull as we crossed. The doubt
that this would change anything, that doubt shifted into cold
focus as I pushed a kitchen doll with my palm
and a creaked open on its old hinges. Ellie, look
at this, I said. Once we were inside, I dropped
the stop pristwatching the for micer, and shoff the faded
photograph of my grandmother across the table. The photograph slid
to the salt shaker and stopped with the brooch pinter collar,
catching a dull reflection. Ellie Crouch picked up the watch,
turned it over. It then met my eyes. He had
showed you on the forward eleven point fifty to Ellie,
you want to break a mirror because of a reflection,
not break? I said, stop it. My voice was low.
It shows one thing at night that night, it showed
me Dad, I can tea, I can tea. Just wait.
My hands were flat on the table. I could feel
the old wood grain through my palms. Ali's mouth tightened.
You could be seeing the wrong thing. He had showed
a clock. Was it the eight o'clock? Maybe it was
a trick of light. Maybe it wasn't tea light. I
cut in The glass had condensation inside before the image.
A hand printed on the other side. This is not normal, Elli,
This was grandmother's mirror. She kept it covered free years
for a reason. Remember the brooch, Remember the brooch missing
her portrait. My voice rose too quick, because the memory
of my grandmother adjusting her shawl and the small clock
brooch under her collar lived in the corner of my skull.
Ellie looked down at the photograph, at the brooch in
the picture. He she always had that brooch. You think
she what set some trap? I don't know. I pushed
the photograph back, but I know the mirror shows a
single scene. It showed me dead. I can tea. Let
it be right. The words changed the air. I could
feel my hands steady with the new decision, resolve hardening
into movement. We hauled the ladder and the till books
up the narrow back stairs. The banister carried a smear
of something dark. Ellie paused and ran his thumb along it,
then touched the worn skin of the stair rail where
the varnish had been murved away. He frowned. That's as fresh,
he said, Who else has been here? No one I check.
I should have said more, but my mouth went dry.
We crossed the dim kitchen and the parlor, where my
grandmother's portrait tongue, and the clock stopped at some minute
long before midnight. I rememb but slum in the kitchen
door and anger in the aisle a night. The memory
from chapter two and how the stop wristwat should hit
the from mica with a sharp sound. The memory of
that sound lived under my ribs now and the attic
fresholdaily hesitated. The ladder's rungs groaned under our weight. He
reached out and touched the small pocket watch tied around
my neck with its thin cord, the one my grandmother
had given me. It hung cold and still against my chest.
You don't have to do this alone, Ellie. I want
to be alone, I said. My mouth held the defiant
steadiness that I was trying to feel. If the mirror
shows a thing, I need to force the outcome of
stop it. I can't wait to see if it chooses me.
That sentence felt foolish when I said it, but I
said it because it was the only way to move.
We climbed into the attic. The ladder scraped against the hatch.
The attic smell hit me first, linen and muff balls,
the faint camel that used to be grandmoda s then
a cold metal time. The mirror always carried the single
beard bulbs swung on a frayed cord, and for long shadows,
the mirror stood against the far wall skilled it frame
a darker ring in the dust. The outer burl up
cut had been split and folded back. The glass was exposed.
The mirror was larger than I remembered, the filigree at
thirds appealing barnish, and tiny black specks in the silver ring.
The lower right corner of the glass held that almost
imperceptible black fleck had noticed before as mew marked the
center of the glass. Ware finger tip had rested. Condensation
dotted the inner surface like stray fingerprints. Ellie sat the
sledge hummer down and ran the side of his hand
through his hair. This looks wrong, he said, take its lew.
I walked to the mirror and the bulbs like the
gilded edge into a hard outline. I held the flashlight
at my hip. The last did what it always did
for me. It held a single impossible scene to night.
It did not show my body on the floor. For
a second I felt something like relief. Then the image
folded into a new frame in the glass. The attic
was full of morning light, and my grandmother sat on
the She had just out of frame, holding the photograph
and pointing not at me, but down at the fleck
on the lower right glass. I stepped back. She I started,
Ellie laughed aloud, a short, harsh sum figures. What so
your grandmother arranged this? She used to tinker with things,
I said, My voice shook. She left the brooch behind
a portrait. She knew where the clock stopped. She knew
how to hide a key. Ali bent to pick up
a small tin and rummaged through it. He found the
brooch and held it between two fingers. The metal was
colder than it should be. He if she wanted to
warn you, why keep it like a test. I reached
for the brooch, and my fingers brushed the melted edge
of someone else's print on the glass, and something clicked
in my head. Clardy arriving like a thin knife. The
mirror did not merely predict it Cook's attention. It showed
a thing, and then people acted toward that thing. The
image in the mirror had shifted as soon as I
entered the ground. Moother in the glass had pointed toward
the flack not toward the floor. That change felt deliberate.
It undercut the planeid airyhurst break the glass and the image.
The mirror had set its own derrums. Try the hammer,
I said, break it. If it resists, stop, Eli handed
me the sligh hummer. It gripped the handle. The wood
felt familiar in my hands. I drew back and swung.
The head made contact with glass, and the sand was
not a shattering but a dull, scurrying ring. Hail and
jack spidered across the surface like veins. Condensation bled from
the inner pane and pulled along the lower edge, revealing
behind a glass that had not been in the image
a moment before. Something reaching a saw pushed against the inside.
Illy lunged to stop me dunte He barked Stop. The
hammer glanced off, and the blow did not carry through.
The crack spread the mirror hum to low rise in
frequency that plugged my ears, and the attic seemed to lean.
I staggered back, and the floorboard under my bue gave
a fing protest. Something cold and hard pressed against my
palm where the hammer had struck. The air tasted of
all pennies at eleven fifty one and some change by
my stop for a stortch, the glass showed the floor
in the reflection, and then exactly at eleven fifty two,
the reflected four helped me collapsed in still. I felt
the reflected week before I hit the floor, A hank
came out of the glass, sick with condensation, and shoved me.
The shove did not feel like an image. It felt
like bone on bone. Elli was thrown across the attic
till skittering and hit the rafters before he rolled and
came up on his knees. No, no Eli Elly, breathless.
He was bleeding from a cut on his temple. He
looked at me like a man who realized his moral
calculus had failed him. What the hell was that? My
head hit an ail in the floor, and a white
star exploded in my vision. I tasted metal my right
wrists on and when I looked down there was a
new nick across the skin, a nee crescent where something
had scraped me. I could feel the impact of my ribs.
The attic smelt like warm iron and dust. I tried
to speak, my foot closed. The mirror's reflection still held
me on the floor and inside the glass of small
figure moved my head tilt him the wrong way. My
eyes still opened in a blank stair. The hand that
had pushed me receded back into the pane as if
it had never been. The hairline cracks were brighter against
the white of the reflection. Eli crawled to me, or
you with me, talk to me. I took shallow breasts
and focused on the sound of his voice. Grandmother, I said,
the word was an anchor. She'd a broach. My fingers
closed around the bridge at my chest. The metal was
warm from the outer air. She pointed at the fleck.
She wanted some one to see it. Ali stared at
the mirror. You mean she she set this up. I
did not know what to say. Everything felt rearranged. The
imagery scene in the glass. Grandmother pointing at the fleck
no longer felt like evidence of care. It felt like instruction.
She had known how the mirror worked well enough to
place a brooch in a stop watch, and then to
point a living person toward a floor in the glass.
If she had done that, why toward me to bind me.
Ellie's hands trembled as he helped me to sit. He
we can still cover it, we can rab it. Nella,
we can it moves, I whisper it shows one thing.
If it chooses a different thing because someone looks at
it breaking, it might be doing exactly what it needs.
Fear returned, but it had changed, fear ripening into suspicion.
I forced the next emotion into being through my actions.
I moved to the tool box and pulled out a
length of burl up and some twine. I had to
choose a thing to do. We crawled forward together and
wrapped the mirror as best we could. The verlop soaked
up with the closer condensation, and the cracks cut faint
patterns into the fabric. Ellie tied the twine in a
clumsy knot, and I pressed the brooch into my palm
and then into the hollow at the back of the frame.
With a varnish it flaked away. The brooch fit the
hollow like a key into an old lock. At first
I thought the placement was superstition. But when a brooch
sat in that notch, the humming in the glass quieted
for a half breath. The reflected DiMAGE shifted in a glass.
The attic showed us seated in front of the mirror
with our hands and the bellap. Grandmother, in the reflection,
smiled without moving, and then turned the photograph face down
on her knee. I felt that smile like pressure behind
my eyes. I said, she didn't want the mirror destroyed,
She wanted it contained. The sentence was small and tasted
of defeat. Ellie wiped his hands on his jeans and said,
so we lock it up, seal it, hide it. His
tone had something like steel. Now we burn the brooch,
for bury it. We put the watch away, We keep
anyone from looking at it. We argued in short bursts,
three quick exchanges, where our voices cut and relented as
decisions collapsed into one another. We burn it, Eli, No,
we bury it. No, we keep it sealed in the
attic and pose a sign no one will see it.
The words were half plans, each failing the next logic.
The disagreement held weight because each of our choices could
either end or entangle us. Further, I asked, grandmother, did
she bind something to it? My mouth moved, but the
question felt clumsy. I hoped Ellie would give me a
clean answer. I don't know, Elly, but whatever she did,
it responds to being watched. He sounded like a man
repeating a lesson he'd learn too late. We made a plan.
Cover the mirror fully, nail planks crossed the frame, and
then take the brooch and bury it where no one
would dig under the old apple tree and back. If
the brooch was part of the mirror's attraction, removing it
might server the pattern. We worked quickly. The attic was
full of small noises, the scrape of nil onwood, Elley's breath,
my watch ticking, though it was stopped at eleven fifty one.
Tools cladded. In the middle of nailing a plank across
the frame. A sudden sound made both of us freeze.
A soft, unmistakable humming from the glass, higher than before,
and laid with a thin, clear note. There could have
been hum or voice. It was the sound of my
grandmother humming a tune she used to hum when she
mended socks. I felt panic spike, but I acted. I
hammered the plank hard eely, shoved the bowl up deeper
against the cracks. The humming faded to a single thread,
and then to nothing. We held our breath until the attics.
As the sounds returned, the distant drip of a gutter
and the small scuff of our shoes when the mirror
was bound with blanks and rope. When the brooch was
wedged in and the nails bent into the wood, we
climbed down. The adder catch closed with a thud that
echoed like a verdict. I carried the brooch in my
palm like contraband the sere rail had a new mirror
where someone had gripped it. Eli rubbed a hand across
his jeans and said, get it out of here. Now.
We walked under the old apple tree with the soil
turns off from last week's rain. The ground took the
brooch quickly. I shoved it down and packed outh over
it until my palms axed from pulling at dirt. Ellie
pressed the heel of his hand flat on the soil
and said, there. Stunned, he sounded certain in a way
I wanted to believe. Back at the house, I took
the stop for a swartch and put it in a
small tin with the photograph of grandmother, then slid both
into the floor board in the parlor where she used
to keep receipts. I hammered the board down and replaced
a rug. It felt ritualized It felt like sealing a wound.
We cleaned the kitchen and stacked the tools in a shed.
Iliav I wanted him to stay the night. I hesitated,
fear and fatigue braided together, and then said, no, you
should go. Tell your sister. I might call. He paused,
then nodded at the door. He stopped and looked back
at me. If anything changes, call dawn t come back alone.
His voice had a strained kindness. I locked the back door.
The broken frame hung crooked, and the porchmelt of wet wood.
Ellie walked down the path and into the black. The
house absorbed him inside. I sat at the parlor table
and listened to the house saddle. My heart hammered against
the inside of my roots in a way that sounded
like a mechronym to someone keeping time. The watch still
read eleven point fifty one in the tin. I felt
both hollowed and relieved. The mixture of those concrete, physical
feelings kept me moving. The eyeld Doubt had turned into action,
action into set back, and set back into a plan.
Those shifts had been visible through what I did. I
was passed. I dusted in a chair with a blanket
across my legs and worked. When the house creaked, I
checked the clock. It was a quarter past three in
the morning. I walked to the stowell and ran my
fingers over the banister. With this mere still dried, they
att a catch held to seem a shadow, and I
could not bring myself to open it. I remembered the
small keck I had felt in the attic floor, the
nick on my wrists where something had scratched me. It
had hurt enough to draw blood. The pain reminded me
I was present. I folded this into a quiet decision.
I would not remove the planks again. If the mirror
wanted an audience, it would have to find none. I
put a strip of tape across the hatch and row,
with my hand shaking, do not open. I pinned the
note with the nail, and the clock sounded sharp. In
the parlor morning came slow. Light arrived through the curtains,
thin and gray. I filled a Thermas, checked a garden
where I had buried the brooch, no sign, and swept
the porch. The house felt smaller with the mirror contained.
When I reached the parlor and brushed dust from grandmother's portrait,
my fingers paused at the edge of the frame. The
brooch in her lap was gone in a painting surface,
as if a painter had simply never applied. At fleck
of metal, a clean slice of canvas showed where the
metal had been. That specific hard absence was a new
concrete crew. Grandmother had kept the brooch hidden, or she
had removed it from how she wanted to be remembered.
Ellie called mid morning. He sounded small and raw. You're okay,
he asked, it wrapped and nailed, I said, ivy, buried
the brooch and stashed a watch. I put a note
on the hatch, could, he said, dawnte go up there, dawn?
Te daante touch anything else? I won tea, I promised.
The promise felt like a stitch. Days passed on the
exact calendar. Nothing extraordinary happened on the street. I stayed
with simple tasks, laundry, clearing the parlor of dust, making
the bed. Each time my hand brushed a mirror in
the house at court and I returned my face away.
The wound on my wrist healed into a pale arc.
The stop burst watch her turned to his tin under
the floorboard, like a sleeping thing. When I sat with
the photograph of grandmother, I could almost hear the small
hum she used to make the thread of a psalm.
The photograph had a faint mirror of dust at the
corner where the brooch had once glinted. I took a
pencil and wrote a note one lion, and slid it
behind the photograph. If anyone asks, tell them it's locked
up and not to be opened. I tucked the note
into the hollow and replace photo. Weeks later I found
the small, folded scrap of paper under the door mat.
It was not from Ellah. The handwriting was narrow and careful.
It read, do not trust the clock when it points
at you. There was no signature. The scrap made some
old feeling balloom in my chest, uneasy es, but also
wary clarity. If my grandmother had arranged this, she had
also left others clues in others watchers. I took the
scrap and burned it in the sink. Ash sifted down
the drain. I burned the idea that the mirror had
to be answered by me alone. I told myself that
containing it was containment enough that I had done the
right sequence of actions. Wrap nail removed the brooch. Berrie
hid the watch mark the hatch. Those actions concluded what
we needed to do at night. Sometimes I woke as
if some weight had brushed the bed. Once I went
down stairs and stood beneath the parlor clock, it ticked
on the wall in the quiet. I touched the face
and turned it so the hands read a random minute,
and then left it moving. I did this small sabotage
because I wanted control over an instrument that had shown
me a single minute of dread. Control fell concrete. Ellie
came back once, two months after the night in the attic.
He found me at the parlor table, working on the
garden tolls. He did not press the subject. We both
knew the list of measures taken. He had a bandage
on his temple where he'd hit her. After we drank coffee,
and did not speak of the image in the glass.
The silence was a kind of truce. On the day
Ellie left, he hugged me tight and said he saved
yourself in the way you could. You kept others from
seeing it. You did the right thing. His voice broken
the last words, and he stepped back, quick to hide it.
If any one asks me, I say the attic is
rodden and dangerous. No one goes up there. I watched
him go and fell. The slow fatigue settle into my bones.
The mirror was still in the attic, blanked and nodded
and marked. The brooch lay under the apple tree. The
watch lay under the floor board. The note was pinned
to the hatch. The house had accepted these things as
items of its inventory. A year passed. I did not
open the attic. I replaced the bulb in the porch light.
I met people, kept routines and answered where. Neighbors asked
how grandmother's place was. I said, closed up, need work,
and that answered them. The fear that had driven me
into action turned into a careful watchfulness, a redness born
of muscle memory. That was one emotional shift. Another came
the day I received a small, unsigned packet in the mail.
Inside was a single polaroid of the mirror, wrapped in
bellap planks nailed across the brooch nowhere inside. Some one
had taken a picture before I nailed the planks tight
on the back a single sentence, She wanted you to
know how to lock it. I folded the polaroid into
the tin with the photograph and the watch. Then I
drove to the apple tree and scraped the earth where
I had buried the brooch. The slaughter soil showed only
a thin line where my fingers had pressed it down.
The brooch was gone. The ground had settled, as if
nothing had ever been buried there. My hands trembled. I
could find the place where I had broken the earth,
but the brooch was not there. My stomach dropped, and
a new, colder awareness moved through me. Some one else
had come after us and exumed the brooch while the
brooch had I took the polaroid home and placed it
in the tin. I sat down and wrote a note
longer than the first. This one meant to go in
an envelope and be handed carefully to any one who
might inherit the house. I enlisted the measures taken and
the things that must not be done. Do not break
the glass, do not look for entertainment, do not show
a clock to the room, Do not tell curious people.
I folded the note and put it in the tin
with the photograph and the polaroid. I sealed the tin
and slaid it into the hollow beneath the foreboard, and
hammered the board back. I took the key, grandmother's old key,
and hid it inside the base of the porch step,
where the wood had a knot. I hammered the spot
clothes so the key could not be reached without deliberate work.
That final act felt like a decision that could be
checked by any one who would cry. It was physical
and find I would un not a hammer nail a
key on to a hollow place. When night came. That evening,
I checked the stair rail and found a faint, clean
so much at the same height as the smear that
had been that a night early, and I forced the attic.
This mudge was small and did not match my hands.
I ran my fingers over it and found no residue.
The house held its secrets tightly. I have kept to
the plan. I have not opened the yac again. I
have not told the police because I cannot explain, and
because explanations and bite tests. I leave a list of
instructions for any future occupant in the tin. I locked
the house each night. I avoid mirrors in the home.
I lived with the memory of being and with the
nick across my wrist as a small physical proof of
what happened once late in the year. I climbed the
attic stairs with a flask light and set my palm
on the hatch. I could feel the warmth of the
room below and a distant tappin in the boards. I
pressed the nail of my thumb into the wood where
I had left the tape and the note. I thought
about the photograph where Grandmother pointed to the fleck in
what it meant care, complicity or both. I thought about
the way the mirror had changed when we acted. I
understood then at the finality I wanted would not be perfect.
But the concrete actions we took, wrapping, nailing, removing the brooch, burying,
and then replacing it under the floor board created a
chain of physical barriers that for now hold my wrist,
which still reads eleven fifty one when I went it
to check the out To catch bear is the name
and the note. The tin under the floorboard holds the photograph,
the polari and a folded warning. I sleep with the
coat and shut in the parlor, clock set to a
random minute. I live cleanly and quietly. A final twist came,
not as violence, but as a small order of fact.
The morning I finally stopped feeling jolts when a clock chimed.
I found in the parlor table a single kneat envelope.
Inside was a line written in my grandmother's careful hand,
for those who would bind, bind well. The ink had
faded at the edges. There was no signature beyond her name,
but the cadence of the handwriting was unmistakable. That single
lion altered the story I detold myself. It suggested she
had not set a trap to feed the mirror, but
had left instructions to contain it. She had known more
than she could say aloud, and had given me the
tools to act. I folded the note and put it
in the tin. I hammered the floorboard down again. I
locked the added catch with a new bolt, and drove
the bolt home. Then I sat on the bottom step
and pressed the key hidden in the porch into my
palm until the metal warm for my skin. I set
the key back into its hollow and covered it with
the naughty scrap of wood and a final nail. I
do not pretend the house is safe in any absolute way.
I only know what I have done and how I
did it. I have left warnings physical seals and a
record under the floor. The mirror remains planked and bound,
the brooch hidden, the watch dowed. If some one later
finds what we left, they will read the note, find
the tin, and have instructions to follow. I have given
the next person a set of actions they can perform.
When I close the parlor door at night, I take
one last deliberate breath and check the stair rail with
the pat of my thumb. The small nick on my
wrist has faded into a pale lot that catches the
light like a scar that will not speak. I feel
the h there Sometimes when clocks take another rooms, I
fill also slow and steady resolve. Each time I run
my fingers over the taped hatch. The sequence from doubt
to feart action, from terror to planning to containment has
changed how I moved through the house to night. I
hammered another nail into the parlor foreboard, hard, finishing the
ceiling of the tin below. The nail left a clean
dimple in the wood. Then I close the hatch, push
the ladder up and lays the tape across the seam.
I pined the final note on top with the nail,
and the sound was a small, finite report. I set
the final bolt and turned it twice. I did not
feel absolved. I felt tired in a precise way. I
had answered what I could answer with concrete steps. I
had sealed the mirrors best I could, removed the brooch,
hid in the watch, and left records. I had made
the house a place where someone could follow a list
and not be tricked. Then I left the house and
walked down the path. I paused at the porch and
put my hand against the step where the key lay concealed.
I did not take it. I tapped the knot with
my thumb and heard the small, dry sound of wood
against wood. I turned and walked away, without looking back.
The last thing that happened in the house that night
was the closing of the door. The final act was
not a flourish, but a lock and a nail and
a note. I stepped into the dark and let the
house hold its quire. The mirror is still there in
the attic, bound and battered, contained by our hands and
our choices. The thing that pushed me is gone for
my body, but not from my memory. The brooch absence
and the polaroid in the tin are prooved people came
and left things in motion. I have done what I can.
I documented, I sealed, and I distributed clear and ructions.
If this file is found, use it for the same
simple aim. Do the work, follow the nails, bury the talismans,
and leave clear warnings. If you are reading this, then
you find a bat of varnish frame and a fleck
in the lower write glass. Do not assume the image
is simple. Follow concrete steps, cover nail, remove anything that
attracts attention, hide the keys, and write the record. When
I finally turned the bolt in the attic for the
last time, I did not expect applause. I expected the small,
continuing knowledge that one cannot erase what has been seen,
only arrange the world so fewer people will see it. Next,
that is what I did. That is the end of
the chapter. The atta catch its nailt and the notice pinned.
I walked away and left the keyp barret under the
porch step metal warm and hidden, and the house closed
over its mirror.