The Hollow Frame

The house we moved into that summer was a skeleton of a farmhouse, its bones bleached by decades of sun and neglect. It stood at the end of a gravel road that petered out into scrub grass, ten miles from the nearest town, three from the closest neighbor—a recluse we never saw, though sometimes at dusk we’d catch a glint of his binoculars from his shuttered windows. My parents called it ‘a project.’ We kids called it ‘the prison.’

I was Maeve, eleven that summer, the middle child of five. My brothers, Cal, fifteen, and Derek, fourteen, were old enough to be bored in a way that made them cruel to anything smaller than them. My little sister, Tess, was eight, and the baby, Peter, was three. We were a gang of five, thrown together by circumstance and the isolation that our parents seemed to crave. They never explained why we moved so often, just that ‘opportunities arose.’ I’d stopped asking. We’d learned to find our own entertainment.

That entertainment often involved the house itself. It was a maze of creaking floorboards and doors that swung on their own. The walls were covered in faded floral wallpaper, peeling in strips like old sunburn. In the living room, a massive fireplace sat cold and empty, its mantle carved with faces that seemed to shift in the low light. The previous owners had left behind furniture—a cracked leather couch, a dining table with a wobbly leg, and, in the master bedroom, a full-length mirror with a heavy, ornate frame. It was the only thing in the house that gleamed. It seemed almost out of place.

It was Cal who first noticed the reflection lag. He was standing in front of it, flexing his biceps, when he said, ‘Hey, look.’ Derek and I crowded in. The mirror showed Cal, but a beat behind. He raised his right hand; the reflection raised its left—no, that was normal. But as he moved, there was a fraction of a second where his image just stood there, frozen. Then it caught up.

We tested it. We’d jump, wave, make faces. The reflection was always slightly out of sync. It was unsettling, but in the way of a puzzle, a game. We spent an afternoon trying to catch it, but we never did. That night, I dreamed of the mirror. In the dream, I stood before it, and my reflection smiled back at me, but I wasn’t smiling. It reached out a hand and pressed it against the glass, and I felt a cold pressure on my palm.

The next morning, the mirror was gone. I asked my mom, who was scrubbing the kitchen counters with an intensity that made her knuckles white. ‘It was too creepy,’ she said, not looking at me. ‘I had it taken to the barn.’ But I saw the way she glanced at the empty spot on the wall, and the way her hand trembled as she set down the sponge. I didn’t mention the dream.

A week later, I found the mirror in the barn, propped against a bale of hay. It was covered with a white sheet, and I felt a pull to uncover it. I didn’t. I turned away, but I heard a whisper, like a breath behind me. I didn’t turn back.

The heat of summer settled over us like a blanket. Days were long and bright, and we spent them exploring the wild fields and the ravine at the back of the property. But the mirror gnawed at me. I’d catch glimpses of it in my mind’s eye, the ornate frame, the dark glass. One afternoon, I decided to confront it.

The barn was stifling. Dust motes danced in the shafts of light from the slats. I pulled the sheet off. The mirror was cold, and my reflection stared back at me, but she was different. Her hair was longer, her face thinner. She wore clothes I didn’t recognize. I blinked, and she blinked back. I raised my hand; she raised hers, but hers was a second ahead of mine.

‘Who are you?’ I whispered.

The reflection’s lips moved, but no sound came out. Then she smiled, and it was wrong—too wide, too sharp. I stumbled back, dropping the sheet. I ran out of the barn and didn’t stop until I was inside the house, slamming the door behind me.

I tried to tell Cal and Derek, but they laughed. ‘It’s just a mirror, Maeve. Got your imagination going.’ They saw nothing wrong. They had already forgotten the lag.

But I couldn’t forget. That night, I heard a sound from Tess’s room, a rhythmic breathing. I slipped in. Tess was asleep, but her face was contorted, as if in pain. On the wall above her bed, there was a dark shape, like a patch of shadow that didn’t move with the moonlight. It seemed to pulse, in time with the breathing.

I woke her up. She looked at me groggily. ‘The lady in the mirror said I could come play,’ she murmured, then rolled over. My blood ran cold.

The days grew worse. Tess started talking to herself in the mirror in the hallway, carrying on full conversations. Peter would occasionally point to empty corners and say ‘shiny lady.’ Mom started sleeping with the lights on. Dad spent more time locked in his study, and I heard him yelling on the phone about ‘the previous owners.’

One night, I couldn’t sleep. I tiptoed to the bathroom. As I passed the hallway mirror, I saw her—the woman from my dream, the reflection who was not me, but with my face. She was standing in the glass, not looking at me, but at the doorway behind me. That’s when I noticed the mirror was reflecting Tess’s room, but the hallway behind me wasn’t there—instead, a long corridor that disappeared into darkness.

The woman turned to me, her lips parting. ‘Let me in,’ she mouthed, her voice like a scratching at the base of my skull. ‘I’m tired of this hollow frame.’

I froze. She pressed her hand against the glass, and the glass rippled like water. I felt a cold hand on my cheek. I screamed.

My parents came running. But when they looked, the mirror was just a mirror, reflecting the hallway, the peeling wallpaper, the fear on their faces. They comforted me, said it was a nightmare. But I knew.

Over the next week, I saw signs. Deep scratches appeared on the inside of the mirror, as if something had clawed from the other side. Tess started drawing pictures of a woman with hollow eyes, always in the style of the mirror’s frame. Cal and Derek began spending all their time in the barn, and when they came back, their eyes were distant, their laughter hollow.

I knew I had to do something. I found an old book on the shelf, a history of the area. It mentioned a woman who had lived in this house in the 1930s, the wife of a farmer. She’d gone mad from isolation, been locked in a room, and died in front of her mirror. The local legend said her spirit was trapped in the glass, desperate for release.

I gathered all the tools I could think of: a hammer, chains, a can of gasoline. I dragged them to the barn. But when I got there, the mirror was not where I’d left it. It was propped against the wall, clear of the sheet, and Cal and Derek were standing in front of it, their backs to me. They were chanting, low and rhythmic. ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are.’

I shouted at them to stop. They turned, and their faces were wrong—pale, with dark circles under their eyes. ‘She needs a body,’ Cal said, his voice flat. ‘She’s been in there so long. We’re going to let her out.’

I lunged for the mirror, raising the hammer, but before I could strike, the glass shattered. Not outward, but inward, as if something had broken free. A cold gust of wind blew out, smelling of rot and old dust. The mirror fell, leaving only the empty frame, which stared back at us like a door.

I ran. I ran back to the house, screaming for my parents. They came, but when we returned to the barn, Cal and Derek were normal again, standing over the shards, looking confused. ‘Did you see that?’ Derek asked. ‘The mirror just blew up.’

I told them everything, but they didn’t believe me, or they didn’t want to. We all went back to the house, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had been released. That night, I heard my father’s voice in the upstairs hallway, laughing. When I went to investigate, he was in Tess’s room, sitting on her bed, but his reflection in the window was a woman.

I don’t know how long it will take to get out of here. We’re still in the house, my family, but they’re not the same. Sometimes, I catch them looking at themselves in every reflective surface—a spoon, a window, a glass of water—and smiling that wrong smile. And sometimes, when I look in the mirror, I see the woman staring back at me, wearing my face, and she’s closer than she was before.