The Hollow Gaze

My aunt’s cottage, nestled deep in the woods of Pine Hollow, had always felt like a place outside of time. The walls were dressed in dark, crooked timbers, and the floors creaked with the secrets of ages. I loved spending summers there, despite the unsettling air that clung to the corners. Dad always said I could sense things others couldn’t, but I never understood what he meant until the summer Lena came to visit.

Lena was my best friend from the city, a girl who believed in logic and order. I thought the cottage’s oddities would amuse her, not disturb her. We spent the first day exploring the attic, where my cousin Marcy kept a collection of antique dolls with chipped faces and missing limbs. Lena laughed at their eerie smiles, but I noticed her hands trembling when she picked up a porcelain baby. I didn’t think much of it.

The next morning, we were heading downstairs to leave for a hike. Lena had left her bag in the room we were sharing, so she ran back up to fetch it. I waited by the heavy oak door, watching the sun filter through the lace curtains that lined the front windows. The staircase was opposite a wall that was entirely a mirror, an antique piece that my aunt had installed to make the narrow hall seem bigger. I had always found it unnerving, the way it reflected the stairs and the old grandfather clock, making everything feel doubled and skewed.

Then I heard the scream. It wasn’t Lena’s usual playful shriek; it was a raw, primal sound that cut me to the bone. I rushed inside, my heart hammering. Lena was collapsed at the foot of the stairs, her back against the wall, her hands clamped over her eyes. She was breathing in ragged gasps. When she finally opened her eyes, they were wide with terror, and she whispered, ‘There was a girl in the mirror. A little girl with no mouth.’

I helped her up and guided her outside, away from that haunted glass. She couldn’t stop shaking, and she begged me to take her home. But I needed to understand. I asked my cousin Marcy, who had grown up in this house, if she had ever seen anything in the mirror. She turned pale and said, ‘You saw her too, didn’t you? I’ve tried to tell Aunt Rita, but she thinks I’m dreaming.’

Marcy told me that she had seen the girl multiple times over the years. Always the same: a small figure with light brown hair, wearing a white dress, standing on the stairs, reflected in the mirror. But the most terrifying part was that her face was blank, smooth, where a mouth should have been. Marcy said she once tried to touch the mirror, and the glass felt cold as ice. She also noticed that the girl always seemed to be pointing at something beneath the old oak tree in the backyard.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed listening to Lena’s restless tossing. The next afternoon, while everyone else was out, I crept down to the mirror. It was just a sheet of silvered glass, my own reflection staring back. But as I stood there, the air grew frigid, and the reflection began to shimmer. Slowly, a small shape materialized on the stairs behind me—a girl in a white dress. She had no mouth, but in the mirror, her eyes met mine, and they were filled with a bottomless sorrow.

I spun around, but the stairs were empty. When I looked back at the mirror, she was gone. I took a deep breath and walked outside, my legs trembling. The oak tree stood silent, its limbs like gnarled fingers reaching for the sky. I dropped to my knees and started digging with my bare hands, just beneath the spot the girl pointed to. After a few minutes, my fingers hit something hard—a wooden box, rotted and crumbling.

Inside, wrapped in a tattered cloth, was a child’s diary. The pages were yellowed, the ink faded. It belonged to a girl named Elsie, who wrote about playing in the woods, about her pet rabbit, about how she missed her mother. The final entry, dated over a hundred years ago, said: ‘Father says I must be silent, that my voice will bring ruin. I don’t understand. I only wanted to sing. Now I never will.’

I looked up at the cottage, and for the first time, I saw its true face. The house had been built by Elsie’s father, a stern man who believed that children should be seen and not heard. He had, in a fit of rage, cut out his daughter’s tongue, and she had bled out on the stairs, her final scream swallowed by the house. Her spirit had been bound to the mirror, forever pointing to her hidden diary, begging someone to break the silence.

I held the diary close, feeling a cold wind wrap around me like a shroud. I knew then that my dad’s words were true: I could sense things from beyond. And realized that some secrets are better left buried. But it was too late—the mirror had already seen me, and her gaze was now fixed on my reflection, waiting for me to speak.