The smile behind the glass

They will never believe me, no matter how wide my eyes get, no matter how my voice breaks…
they will say I imagined it all. They will whisper behind closed doors that I lost my mind the moment I inherited that cursed house on Willow Lane.

But listen, listen closely and you will understand what I saw, what I heard, what felt me back. I alone felt the dreadful, I was not nervous. I was not unstable. If anything, my senses were sharper than ever so sharp they sliced me open from the inside, pulsing life in that single room at the end of the hallway.

My senses they were heightened then, sharpened to painful perfection. It was that very sharpness that damned me. You can think I am insane, my mind is retarded… no no that’s not true…..an ugly truth…an ugly face……oh that’s killing me.

The house was an ordinary from outside, one floor, a corridor stretching like a stiff bony spine, and that room, that room at the end of the hallway waiting to engulf me with an open mouth.

The moment I stepped inside, I felt it, a faint vibration under the floorboards  
a trembling beneath the floorboards, a whisper, a tremor light like the throb of a heartbeat buried in the walls as a dying breath.
I told myself it was old wood but I lied to myself.

I tried to ignore it, honestly, I did. But when night fell, and the silence thickened pressed against my ears, heavy, suffocating.
And then I heard it,heard it.

Thump.
Thump-thump.
Thump.

Soft.
Steady.
Deliberate.

Like something pacing behind the wall, waiting for me to come closer.

I am not afraid of shadows. But that sound crawled into my skull on cold fingers.

Lamp in hand, I crept toward the room. The bulb above the doorway flickered like a dying eye. Inside, the room was barren, a chair, a naked bulb dangling by a wire, and the mirror nailed into the wall.

Nothing else.
And yet the air was thick, the room felt crowded like someone was standing too close behind me, breathing on my neck, as if I could hear the breath.

I looked at the mirror, and the mirror looked back,my reflection blinked…

It’s head tilted. Not like a curious person, but like a broken puppet.

A cold certainty percolated through my spine, when I saw that shadowed devil smile peeking against the red lipstick.

It laughed, laughed harder, a laugh cracked  the throat of the thing in the glass though I had not moved my lips it squeezed out my heartbeat and held it in its hand.

My reflection was not my own.

My lamp trembled in my grip. The bulb above us flickered again once, twice and then steadied, bathing the room in sickly yellow.

I tore my eyes away, backed out of the doorway, and slammed it shut.

But the heartbeat followed me.

Thump.
Thump-thump.
Thump.

Louder now, urgent… hungry. It followed me like a predator learning the rhythm of my fear.

For hours I listened. I pressed my hands to my ears, but the sound burrowed inside my skull. It was the room breathing. It was the room watching.

I should have fled. Any sane person would have fled.
But I am not merely sane I am rational, driven by reason. Compelled to understand.

I returned, yes, yes I returned the laugh. Call me mad if it pleases you. But I could not rest until I knew the truth of that room.

When I opened the door, the mirror was uncovered. I had draped a sheet across it yet there it stood, bare, as if it had thrown the cloth aside with contempt.

My reflection smiled again.

Not a pleasant smile ,a knowing, cruel one. A smile that said it had been waiting.

The heartbeat rose.

THUMP.
THUMP-THUMP.
THUMP.

I clutched my head, sinking to my knees. The walls seemed to swell with each beat, expanding and contracting like lungs drawing breath. The floor vibrated with life mocking me.

I stumbled to my feet.

My reflection with cold steep voice said:
“Come.”

The chair slid forward with a scrape that clawed at my spine.
The bulb swung wildly, the shadows chopping and twisting across the walls.

The sound was a shriek and whisper combined.

I backed into the door it would not open. The knob twisted uselessly in my grasp.

The heartbeat grew so loud the room itself shook. I screamed but my own scream drowned beneath that monstrous pulse.

My reflection stepped closer from the other side of the mirror though my feet had not moved. Its eyes were hollow, its grin stretched impossibly wide. The mirror pulsed, and the suddenly shattered inward, sucked into a swirling black void that opened like a starving throat.

My throat tore with a scream yet I could not hear it above the pulsing roar.

Somehow by instinct, terror, or divine intervention I forced the door open. I ran. I ran until the night air slashed at my lungs. I collapsed on the street, trembling, sobbing, begging the darkness to leave me be.

The neighbours found me like that wildeye, incoherent, trembling violently.

The police searched the house.

They found the room empty.
No chair.
No mirror.
No shards.
No heartbeat.

They called me unstable.
Exhausted.
Delusional.

But I know what I saw.

What I heard.

What still lives there.

For even now when the world grows quiet and the night presses close, I hear it again:

Thump.
Thump-thump.
Thump.

Oh, you may think it is my own heart betraying me, but no.

No, no, no!

It is the room, the void, the mirror. Calling me home. Beckoning me back.

Deep in my heart I know what it was, and a dreary thought comes to my mind, I feel like I should reach out to the room and face the tethered reflection and pin it and press it’s throat, hard…harder until it’s shriek stops, blood drips until its last drop, the sickly yellow light ,turns red, dark red that no one has ever seen and piercing through the void would be a smile, and slowly the teeth would reveal, not all at once but one after the other, in a creeping reveal and the sound louder, louder than the reflection…..