fantasy

I’ve had time to think. The panic has mostly gone now. I’m just bored.

I bought the house without really paying much attention to the mirror in the bathroom. I mean I saw it, but it wasn’t memorable. I don’t remember it being cracked when I looked through, but it was cracked when I moved in.

It was badly cracked. Right down the middle, not straight of course, a kind of jaggedy edge thing. The seller had taken it down and it was resting on the floor. The wall where it had been was just blank.

It was one of the first things I did, replace that mirror. When I think about it now sitting in this tiny little space, it was like someone had opened up a seam and climbed through. I thought the mirror was too big for the space anyway, so I bought a smaller one. I hung it up and I thought it was a lot better.

I came home on the third day and there it was on the floor, the new mirror, shattered. Completely shattered. So much for my DIY hanging skill. I went out again and bought something slightly different. I had a friend help to hang it.

A few days later same thing again. I thought nothing of it at that point.

I don’t know when I first heard the howling, I was maybe three mirrors in and I think I was in the shower. I’d bought a slightly bigger mirror and the howling was quite low level. Enough to worry me and make me exit the shower. But I couldn’t see anything. I checked the whole house but there was no one but me.

Each day after that the howling got louder, I just got used to it. I had the plumber check the pipes but of course when she was there, the howling was silent. It wasn’t a dog, it was quite a human sound, like someone screaming into the wind. I think they were words but I couldn’t make them out.

Then one day whilst I was in the shower the mirror came down again and shattered on the floor. Aside from the conundrum of bare feet and shattered glass, I swore I saw something push it off the wall, as if something were behind it. I checked and double checked that wall. It was solid.

Another mirror, and this time it was just as I was turning off the shower and I heard it howling, and then it said something. Really. Clearly. ‘You need a bigger mirror’, like ‘You need a bigger boat’ -straight out of Jaws but in the bathroom. I don’t know what I thought really. In the movie do they get a bigger boat. But as soon as it was said, ‘Off the wall went mirror number 6 or 7 or something.

I should not have listened, but I did. I bought a bigger mirror and put it there. I was something of an expert now in hanging mirrors, and in navigating broken glass in the bathroom.

This time I was ready, and to my surprise while I stood there in the shower a spindly arm came through, just pushed through. My first thought, thank goodness its not a shark, which is a ridiculous thing to think, but Jaws was playing on my mind after the bigger mirror, bigger boat thing.

I got out of the shower and I grabbed the hand at the end of the arm and pulled. It clung on to me and I pulled but nothing really happened. I mean what would you have done? Yeh, turned and run. Put a mirror somewhere else in the bathroom. Just not had a mirror in the bathroom at all. Yes I understand that I did keep going when I could have stopped.

It wailed back at me again. ‘You need a bigger mirror’, before once again, another mirror shattered on the floor as well. At this point I did actually think about a home renovation. Just add an extra layer of plaster, but also when I examined that wall there was nothing out of the ordinary about it. So was it the mirrors, it made no sense.

For the next mirror I travelled. I literally went away for the weekend to somewhere 200 miles away to buy the next mirror, because who knows maybe it was where I was buying the mirrors. Plus there is no way I could face the same mirror shop again, or even have another one delivered. I wanted anonymity when I bought this mirror. Particularly since the mirror they sold me was quite large and not recommended for bathrooms.

I had to lie about it, saying I was putting it in the bedroom. The whole thing was ridiculously out of control and my budget app, my banking app was sending up warnings when I paid about how many mirrors one person could buy. If my whole life was properly connected I am pretty certain the 10^th or 11^th mirror would have resulted in a medical referral and perhaps that would have been a good thing.

But I did buy a bigger mirror, when really I should have called pest control or an exorcist, renovated, sold, gone to a doctor, anything but put that oversized mirror on the wall.

Because you know then, it happened. The howling. The arm. And I pulled. And I pulled her through. I think it was a her. It all happened so quickly. There she was in front of me, withered and dirty, greyish from a lack of sunlight, limp hair. Ghastly. I really wished for a shark in that moment. And the smell was unbearable. But the mirror did not shatter, there was just a crack, like a seam. Jagged and twisty, but just a seam.

I guess I expected a thank you but that is not what happened. She was quick. She grabbed me. She was surprisingly strong and I was struggling but so surprised! I felt myself being thrown and I saw the mirror and I felt the jagged bits of glass as I went through it.

I was stunned. I sat there for a moment in murky darkness. The only light was from where the mirror was. Where was I? And then I heard it, I heard her removing the mirror, lifting it off the hook and setting it on the floor. And I heard her laughing. And then I was in total darkness. In a small room that I couldn’t really stand up in and it was cold.

I panicked but that did nothing. In the darkness as I felt with my hands I realised someone had written something. I traced the word with my fingers, PATIENCE.

And now I am sitting here in the darkness and there are walls, but not my walls. Its like a little cave and I can see where the mirror is supposed to be but its not there. My fingers trace over and over that word PATIENCE.

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I swear that this is a true and honest account. My right hand was the last thing that I lost control of and these are my last words.

I think I saw it long before I touched it. Every night for so long, that slight, barely visible creature in the darkness. A shape, an outline, not bright beady eyes, but dull grey ones that barely registered on its face. I was never afraid of it. I was never anything but curious about it.

Slotted in between a wardrobe and a box, it was an odd looking shrivelled little creature. Familiar yet unfamiliar. Maybe someone I knew once. Each night when I got up to use the bathroom, it was there. I would walk past it. I thought I should be frightened but also I needed the bathroom. Even when I was going back to bed though, I wasn’t scared. It wasn’t menacing. It was just, there.

It was on the way back one night that my hand brushed its hand. It must have pushed its hand slightly forward or something. That hand was cold and bony and I felt a deep sense of loneliness spread through me as I climbed back into bed. The next night I brushed the hand again, more slowly.

It felt like human skin still, just wrinkled and used. It wasn’t a smooth touch of hands. There was a moment of friction. I still wasn’t scared, just curious. I must have done that for a week, just brushed its hand lightly. Each time the same thing, a deep sense of loneliness inside of me, a coldness, an abyss inside my belly. It was momentary though. I still managed to drift off to sleep.

I looked at that spot during the day, there was nothing there. No sign of a way in or out. No sign anything real lived between the box and wardrobe or in the box or wardrobe or under the bed. Yet I saw it each night and I had touched its hand. It felt real.

I don’t know what prompted me to grab that hand and hold it one night. It didn’t seem to object. I held that hand for just a second at first. Its important to know that I grasped it. It did not grasp me. I held that hand and I felt the loneliness, the sadness, darkness, a void, a something. But I still did it. And then I did it again, every night. And slowly I held that hand for longer. I held that hand for longer. Me. And I think I knew but I still did it.

It was a long time before I noticed the other thing. I always grasped it with my right hand. It was a Tuesday morning when I noticed that the nail on the little finger of my left hand had gone an odd colour. I couldn’t remember how I had injured that. Later that day I noticed that the whole top of the finger had gone a mouldy grey colour. I should have gone to the doctor. Instead I took a bath and poked and prodded the finger, to no avail.

It was at least a week before the whole finger had changed colour. Then I went to the doctor. The doctor had no answers, some kind of infection, antibiotics, hospital. They could not fix it and it did not seem to spread so they sent me home to consider amputation. Extreme I know. I was desperate to get home, to get back to my creature in the dark. I told no one about the midnight hand holding, even though I knew.

And that night I held its hand again and the next morning another fingernail went the same full grey colour. You get choices in life. And I chose. Consciously now. Each night. I held its hand. Each morning another finger. Then my whole hand, half an arm eventually. And the loneliness, some days it felt like it lived inside of me. No one could reach me. I couldn’t explain what was happening. The doctors were baffled, there was talk of CCTV to see if I was self harming and I guess in a way I sort of was.

But it had gone so far and I couldn’t stop. I knew, but I couldn’t stop. Something about the void, the emptiness, the need to give succour to that soul kept me going. Kept me holding that hand. Every night. And the greyness, the dying skin, it kept spreading.

I was bedridden and there were carers coming in and no one knew what to do as the greyness just seemed to spread across my body. They wanted to take me to hospital but I wanted to stay. I argued and fought to stay. To not be saved. Inside I felt cold and shrivelled, but I was committed.

And in the dead of night, in the darkness it would creep out of the gap between the wardrobe and the box and hold my hand. For hours on end. And I knew. I knew. But I didn’t resist. I let it happen. On and on I let it happen.

So if you’re reading this I guess I’m gone now. Don’t feel sorry for me. I chose. But please leave this for the next person who lives here. I chose, right until my last dying breath. This is my true and honest account of what happened.

If you see me, if you think you recognise me beside your bed, in your room somewhere, in the darkness. Familiar yet unfamiliar. Don’t reach for me. Don’t reach for me. Don’t squint and try and make out what I am. Roll over. Go back to sleep.

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The Mirror

A Hand in the Darkness