The Glass Wardrobe

I never believed in ghosts until I moved into my stepfather’s house, an old Victorian relic that creaked with every settling timber. My room was at the end of a long hallway, furnished with a heavy mahogany wardrobe whose mirror seemed to hold a world of its own. The first night, I woke to a sound like someone dragging a chain across the floorboards. I tried to sit up, but my body was a stone slab, my limbs refusing to obey. My eyes darted to the wardrobe, and in the dim moonlight, I saw a boy—no more than ten—standing beside the mirror, his eyes a sickly red, like embers plucked from a dying fire. He clutched a faded photograph to his chest, but I couldn’t make out the image. Panic clawed at my throat as I lay frozen, and then, just as suddenly, I could move. I turned, and a tall, featureless black figure stood at the foot of my bed, so close I could feel its cold breath on my ankles. It turned and walked through the wall, leaving a chill that lingered for hours.

I tried to rationalize it. A friend mentioned sleep paralysis, a condition where the mind wakes but the body remains trapped in sleep. But I knew what I saw. The next night, I heard footsteps in the attic above my room, heavy and deliberate, though my stepfather and mother were asleep downstairs. I mentioned it over breakfast, and my mother sighed, my stepfather frowned, and they exchanged a look that said ‘she’s losing it.’ But I wasn’t. I started documenting every oddity: the way the wardrobe door would swing open on its own, the faint scent of mothballs that followed me around, the feeling of being watched even in bright daylight.

A week ago, I woke again to that same paralysis, but this time the boy was closer, standing at the foot of my bed. He held the photograph toward me, and I strained my eyes to see it. It was a picture of a woman with a kind face, but her eyes were scratched out. The boy’s red eyes bore into mine, and then he pointed at the wardrobe. The black figure emerged from the mirror, its form rippling like smoke, and it placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder. The boy vanished, and the figure turned to me, its face suddenly shifting into the woman’s—the same scratched-out eyes, but now they were holes that seemed to suck the light. It spoke, not with a voice but with a vibration in my skull: ‘You must see.’

The next day, I couldn’t shake that phrase. I searched the house, following an inexplicable pull to the basement, a room my stepfather always kept locked. I found a hidden compartment behind an old water heater, and inside, a box of photographs. They were all of the same woman, my stepfather’s first wife, who had died in this house years ago. On the back of one, a child’s handwriting: ‘Mommy, I miss you.’ I recognized the boy from my visions. I looked up from the photo to see the boy standing in the basement doorway, a smile on his face, and the black figure looming behind him. The figure pointed to the wardrobe in the corner of the basement—an exact twin of the one in my room. The boy gestured for me to open it. My hands shook as I twisted the knob, and inside, I found a door that shouldn’t exist. It opened into a hallway that mirrored my upstairs corridor, but twisted, walls covered in peeling wallpaper, floors slick with something dark. I stepped through, drawn by a whisper that was not a whisper but a need to know the truth.

I walked down that hallway, past doors that hung ajar, each revealing a scene from my stepfather’s past: arguments, a woman crying, a child hiding. At the end, I found a room with a bed, and on it lay the boy, but not as a ghost—alive, but barely, his chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. The black figure stood over him, and now I saw its true form: it was my stepfather, but twisted, his face gaunt, his eyes hollow. He turned to me and said, ‘You were supposed to see. Now, you must take his place.’ I tried to run, but the floor gave way, and I fell into darkness.

I woke in my own bed, drenched in sweat. The wardrobe stood closed, but I could see faint red eyes glowing in its mirror. I approached cautiously, and when I opened it, I saw not my reflection, but the boy’s, smiling back at me. ‘No,’ I whispered, but it was too late. The mirror rippled, and I felt a cold hand on my shoulder. Now, every time I see someone new in my room, I know what they see: a boy with red eyes, holding a photograph, and a black figure standing behind them. The glass wardrobe holds more than clothes—it holds a cycle, and I’ve just become the next keeper.