The Cistern’s Keeper

My earliest memory is not of my mother’s face, but of the cold tile floor of the upstairs bathroom in the old farmhouse we rented when I was four. My brother, Samuel, was two, and he had taken to sitting on the counter while Mom did her makeup, just as I had done at his age. I remember the way the morning light slanted through the frosted window, turning the air gold with dust, and the smell of Mom’s rosewater powder.

One morning, I was playing with the plastic figurines Dad had given me, setting them up in a line along the edge of the tub, when I heard Sam giggle. It was a high, giddy sound, and I looked up to see him pointing at the mirror, which was angled so it reflected the far side of the room, where the wall met the ceiling in a seam of shadow. ‘What are you pointing at, sweetie?’ Mom asked, not even glancing away from her blush brush. Sam’s giggle faded, and he said, ‘The man in the mirror.’ Mom’s brush paused. She looked at him, then at the mirror, then back. ‘There’s no man, honey. It’s just us.’ But Sam was insistent, his small finger jabbing the air. ‘He’s in the glass. He’s watching you.’

I shivered, though I didn’t know why. I looked at the mirror myself, but saw only our reflections. Yet, for a moment, I thought I saw a dark smudge at the top corner, like a water stain, but it was gone when I blinked. Mom dismissed it as she had dismissed my own similar fancies—just a child’s imagination. She chucked Sam under the chin and told him not to be silly. But Sam kept staring at the mirror, his face solemn, and he whispered, ‘He said he likes your hair, Mommy.’

After that, the house seemed to change. Not in any obvious way, but in the way a room might feel different when you know someone is hiding just out of sight. Doors that we left open would be closed. The faucet in the bathroom would drip even when we turned it off tightly. And the mirror—that particular mirror that hung over the sink—seemed to have a permanent film on it, no matter how much we cleaned it. Mom started to complain of headaches, and she would often mutter to herself, saying she felt like she was being watched.

Two weeks later, Dad had the attic insulated. It was a dusty, cobwebbed space above our bedroom, and Dad had been complaining about the cold. He spent the afternoon up there, hauling rolls of pink fiberglass. That evening, he came down looking pale. ‘You won’t believe what I found,’ he said, holding out a small, tarnished object. It was an old silver locket, its chain broken. Inside, instead of a picture, there was a tiny rolled-up photograph. When he flattened it out, it showed a man in old-fashioned clothing, with a high collar and a thin mustache, standing beside an old tin tub. The photo was stained and faded, but the man’s eyes were sharp and dark. ‘Must have been from the original owners,’ Dad said. ‘The Wainwrights, before the turn of the century.’ He laughed it off, but I saw Mom’s hands tremble as she took the locket.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in my bed, listening to the house creak and settle. A faint smell, like wet ashes, drifted through my room. I heard Sam’s voice, small and far away, crying out in his sleep. I got up and padded across the hall to the bathroom. The door was ajar, a sliver of light spilling out. I pushed it open. The bathroom was dark, but the mirror gleamed, shot with moonlight from the window. And there, reflected in the glass, I saw a shape in the bathtub—a dark, lumpy silhouette that had not been there a moment before. I could not make out a face, but I knew, deep in my bones, that it was the man from the photograph. He was not looking at me; he was looking at the mirror, as if admiring himself. Then, slowly, he turned his faceless head toward Sam’s room.

The next morning, Sam woke up with a vivid red mark on his neck, like a bruise, but in the shape of a handprint. Mom gasped and called the doctor, who said it was just a birthmark or a strange rash. But I saw the way Mom’s eyes darted to the mirror, and the way she refused to let Sam out of her sight.

We tried to leave the farmhouse. Dad started packing the car, but every time we tried to drive away, the engine would stall, or the tires would go flat, or we’d realize we’d forgotten something and had to go back inside. It was as if the house, or the thing in the mirror, wouldn’t let us go. Mom grew more frayed, her headaches worse. She started to avoid the bathroom entirely, using the kitchen sink to wash her face. But one night, I heard her crying in there. I went to check on her. The door was locked. I knelt down and peered through the keyhole. Through the darkness, I saw her standing at the sink, staring into the mirror. Her hair was undone, and she was whispering to her reflection, ‘I’ll do anything. Just leave my children alone.’ A low, gargling laugh answered her, and the mirror fogged over as if someone had breathed on it.

We finally managed to leave the next week, after a neighbor helped us jump the car battery and we drove without stopping until we’d put a hundred miles between us and the farmhouse. But I knew it wasn’t over. As we pulled out, I looked back at the house, and in the upstairs bathroom window, I saw him—the man in the old photograph—his face pressed against the glass, watching us leave. He smiled, and his teeth were black, like they’d been burnt.

Now, twenty years later, I am a grown man, and I have a daughter of my own. We just moved into a new house, an old Victorian with a cast-iron tub in the master bathroom. Last night, as I was tucking her in, she looked past me toward the mirror on the closet door and said, ‘Daddy, there’s a man in the mirror. He says he’s been waiting for us.’ My blood turned to ice. I turned to look, but there was no one there. Yet, when I closed my eyes, I could see him again—the same high collar, the same thin mustache, and those burnt-black teeth, grinning from the dark water of the tub. He had found us again. And this time, he had no intention of letting go.