The Green Dress

I never thought much about the mirrors in my grandmother’s house until I moved in after the funeral. The place had been in the family for generations, a sprawling Victorian on the edge of a salt marsh in Maine. The air inside always smelled of mothballs and old wood, and the light came in through dusty leaded glass, casting long, distorted shadows. My grandmother had been a collector of oddities, and among her things were two pocket mirrors, framed in tarnished silver, which she kept on the vanity in the guest bedroom. I found them dusty in a drawer and set them on the nightstand out of habit, because I liked how they caught the morning light.

A week later, I started noticing a discrepancy. The larger mirror, which I’d hung on the wall opposite my bed, showed my reflection perfectly aligned with the room, but the smaller one, propped on the nightstand, sometimes displayed a view that seemed a few seconds delayed or shifted. At first, I chalked it up to poor lighting or my own fatigue. But then I began to see someone else.

It was a woman in a green dress, the kind of flowing gown from a century ago. She was always in the corner of the small mirror’s reflection, just beyond my shoulder, even when the wall behind me in the large mirror showed nothing. I’d turn to confront her directly, but the space was empty. When I looked back, she was gone, but the mirror felt colder.

I tried to ignore it, but the sightings grew more frequent. I’d be reading in bed, and I’d glance at the small mirror to see her standing over my shoulder, her face obscured in shadow, her hand reaching out toward my back. Once, I caught her mouthing something, but I couldn’t read her lips. I convinced myself it was a trick of the mind, a grief-induced hallucination. I even covered the small mirror with a cloth, but that only made it worse. The next morning, the cloth was on the floor, and the mirror was face-up on the nightstand, gleaming.

One night, I woke to the sound of a woman weeping. I sat up, my heart pounding. The weeping came from the small mirror, which was glowing faintly in the dark. I approached it, and I saw the woman in the green dress, now clearly visible, her face tear-streaked, her eyes filled with a desperate plea. She mouthed the words, ‘Help me.’ I didn’t know what to do. I reached out and touched the glass, and at that moment, the room tilted. I felt myself falling forward, into the cold surface, and the next thing I knew, I was inside the mirror.

I stood in a foggy landscape, the Victorian house far behind me, but spectral. The woman stood beside me, now solid, and she took my hand. Her grip was cold. She led me through the mist to a small, hidden room under the staircase, where I found a journal. It belonged to my great-grandmother, and in it she wrote of her sister, who had disappeared in 1937 after being accused of witchcraft. The family had bricked her up in a wall, and her spirit had been trapped in the mirror ever since. The woman in the green dress was my great-great-aunt, and the mirror was her prison.

I woke up on my bedroom floor, the small mirror shattered beside me. I had a bloody cut on my hand. I never saw the woman again, but now, whenever I look into any reflective surface, I see a faint outline of a woman in a green dress in the background. And I have the nagging feeling that she’s not trapped anymore. She’s out. And she’s following me, waiting for the right moment to make me her companion in the void. I never leave my house without covering every mirror in a dark cloth. But last night, I was walking past a window, and I saw her reflection in the glass, smiling. I’m not sure how long I can keep her out.