The Fever That Lingered

The first time I noticed something was wrong was when the lilacs in the garden began to wilt, despite the spring rain. I thought it was a blight, but the flowers on the other side of the house were fine. Then, I saw the girl. She was standing at the edge of the woods, her back to me, wearing a yellow sundress that I recognized. It was the dress I had buried my twin sister, Aiko, in a year ago, when the fever took her. I blinked, and she was gone.

I tried to shrug it off, but my husband, Ryo, saw her too. He came in from the garden one evening, pale as the moon, and said he had seen her peering through the kitchen window. ‘She looked like you, but… not. Her eyes were wrong.’ I told him it was a trick of the light, but I knew better. Aiko and I had always been mirrors, but in death, she was becoming a distortion.

Then the voices started. They were faint, like water dripping in a cave, but they grew louder each night. They spoke in a language I almost understood, whispers that brushed against the edges of my mind. Sometimes, I thought I heard my own voice answering back. Ryo would shake me awake in the middle of the night, telling me I had been talking in my sleep, saying things that chilled his blood. I never remembered.

One night, I woke to find myself standing in the hallway, my hand on the door to Aiko’s old room. I hadn’t opened that door since her funeral. My feet were cold, and the air was thick with dust. I pushed the door open and saw her. She was sitting on the bed, her back to me, her hair hanging in tangles. She turned her head, and her face was almost mine, but her skin was grey, and her eyes were black pools. She smiled, and her teeth were too sharp. ‘You let me die,’ she said, her voice like a scraping of nails. ‘You drank the fever like wine.’

I tried to run, but my legs were rooted to the floor. She stood and walked toward me, her bare feet leaving wet prints on the floorboards. ‘You could have taken me to a doctor, but you were too afraid to admit I was sick. You let me burn until my brain cooked.’ I wanted to scream, but no sound came out. She reached out and touched my cheek, and her hand was ice. ‘Now, I need a new body. And you’re the only one who fits.’

I woke in my bed the next morning, drenched in sweat, Ryo shaking me. ‘You were screaming,’ he said. ‘You kept saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ I didn’t know what to tell him. I looked in the mirror, and my reflection was fine, but I felt a coldness inside me, like a seed of winter had taken root.

Over the next few days, things became worse. Neighbors would stop me, expressing their concern. ‘Are you okay? You looked so tired standing at the window all night.’ ‘You didn’t come to the door when I knocked, you just stared at me.’ I had no memory of these moments. I was losing time, waking in strange places, the taste of copper in my mouth. Ryo grew distant, afraid of me. He started sleeping in the guest room, and I caught him one day, clutching a omamori from my grandmother’s shrine, whispering under his breath.

Then the mirror began to change. At first, it was subtle, a shadow that moved in the corner of my eye. But then, one night, I saw it clearly. My reflection was smiling when I wasn’t. It raised a hand, and mine stayed at my side. The reflection leaned close, pressing its face against the glass. ‘You’re not so strong now, are you? The fever is in you too, you know. It woke something inside you, something that was always there.’

I smashed the mirror. Shards scattered across the bathroom floor, and my hands bled, but the reflection in each shard was still there, dozens of them, all smiling. ‘You can’t break me, sister. I’m in the glass, the water, the screens. I’m in the echoes of your voice. I’m in the space between heartbeats.’

A week later, I stood at the edge of the woods, the same spot where I had first seen her. The lilacs were gone, replaced by dead twigs. I wore a yellow sundress, the one she had died in. I felt a pull, a longing to step into the trees. Behind me, I heard the window slide open. Ryo was calling my name, but his voice was distant, like an echo. I turned just in time to see the face in the window, my face, pressing against the glass, screaming for me to come back. But it didn’t sound like me. It sounded like Aiko.

I stepped into the woods, and the darkness swallowed me. The last thing I saw was my own reflection in a puddle, watching me leave, smiling. And for the first time in months, the voices stopped. But I knew they were just waiting, somewhere deeper in the trees, for the next fever to bring me home.