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 10th or 11th 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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A Tuesday Latte 