The Lace Frame

I never told anyone the full truth about the lace frame. My name is Elena, and I’ve been seeing things since I was a child, but not in the way most people do. Most people see shadows or hear whispers. I see the past, or maybe a version of it that should never have been allowed to leak through.

It started when I was ten, in a cramped apartment in the back of my uncle’s pawnshop in the iron-gray city of Meridian. My mother worked long shifts, and I spent my afternoons among the dusty relics of other people’s lives. There was a Victorian mirror, its frame heavy with tarnished silver, that always felt colder than the air around it. One evening, as I was wiping it down, I saw a woman in the reflection—not me, but a young woman in a high-collared dress, her hair pinned in a tight bun. She was standing behind me, but when I turned, there was no one. I turned back to the mirror, and she was holding a small locket, her face sorrowful. I blinked, and she was gone. I told my mother, and she said it was just my imagination, a trick of the light.

But it wasn’t just that mirror. It was every reflective surface in that shop—the glass of a cracked sepia photograph, the polished wood of an antique table, even the wet pavement outside after rain. I would see faces, always from a different era, always with the same look of silent despair. They never spoke, never moved closer, just stared as if they were waiting for me to do something. The feeling was so strong that I began to avoid mirrors, covering them with cloth, and I would never look into the shop’s window after dark. My cousin, Marco, thought I was being dramatic. Then one night, he screamed so loud I thought he was dying. He claimed he saw a man with no eyes in his reflection of his phone screen. He refused to explain further, and our family chalked it up to a nightmare.

As I grew older, the visions became more intrusive. It wasn’t just reflections anymore; it was my own mind. I would dream of a hallway lined with doors, each one slightly ajar, and behind each door a scene from history—a Victorian parlor, a 1920s speakeasy, a hospital from the 1960s. In every scene, the people were frozen, their eyes locked on me, and they would mouth the words, ‘Help us.’ I would wake up screaming, my heart pounding. I researched everything I could: ghost stories, psychological phenomena, even quantum theories about time slipping. But nothing matched exactly. It was as if I was a conduit for the unfinished business of the dead, but they weren’t in a place—they were in a time. And they weren’t anchored to a location, but to me.

The worst experience came when I was twenty-two, attending a college in a small coastal town. I had moved into an old boarding house with a reputation, though I thought it was just local folklore. The house had a large, ornate mirror in the foyer, framed with curling vines of iron. From the moment I stepped through the door, I felt a pull towards it, a cold and heavy pressure. On the first night, I woke up to find myself standing in front of that mirror, my hand on the glass. My reflection was not mine—it was a woman with a bloody gash across her throat, her eyes pleading. I screamed, and the mirror shattered, sending shards across the floor. The next morning, the landlord found the mirror intact, but he noticed a new crack in the wall behind it, and a cold draft from a vent that should have been sealed.

I tried to ignore it, to live a normal life. I threw myself into my studies, became a history major. But the visions grew more frequent. I would see a Civil War soldier marching through my bedroom, a pioneer woman sobbing in the kitchen, a flapper dancing alone in the living room. Each time, they would look at me and mouth the same words: ‘Help us.’ I started to feel their emotions—their terror, their sorrow, their boiling anger at being trapped. I began to fear my own gift, or curse. I consulted a psychiatrist, but he prescribed medication that only made the images more vivid. I found an online forum for people who claimed to see ghosts, but their stories were all about spirits of the dead, not episodes of the past. I felt more alone than ever.

Then came the night that changed everything. I was in the attic of that boarding house, looking for a book I’d left there. The attic was cluttered with old furniture, trunks, and a large, oval frame that held no mirror—just black backing. As I passed it, I saw a swirl of colors in the blackness, and then a scene emerged: a woman in a gingham dress, her face pale, staring out at me. But this time, she spoke aloud, not just mouthed words. Her voice was a whisper, like a radio tuning in. She said, ‘You must break the frame. We are all trapped within it.’

I realized then that the visions were not projections of my mind; they were the trapped souls of people who had been wronged, caught in a rift of time. The mirror had been a portal, but the frame was the lock. I searched for more information, and found a journal in the attic that belonged to a previous owner from the 19th century. It described a traveling salesman who had a mirror that could capture glimpses of the future, and he used it to trick people, stealing their life force. He had sold it to the owner of this very house, and the mirror had been passed down, each owner unaware of its power. But the journal warned that the mirror was not the only vessel; any reflective surface could trap a soul if the conditions were right—death, strong emotion, and an act of betrayal.

I knew what I had to do. I gathered all the reflective items I could find in the house, including the mirror in the foyer, and took them to the town’s church, where a priest baptized them in holy water. As I did, I felt a release, like a thousand sighs, and for the first time in my life, the pressure in my skull vanished. But when I returned home, I saw something that chilled me to the bone: in the polished brass doorknob, a reflection of a man—the same man I had seen in the attic frame—standing in my hallway, a malicious grin on his face. He mouthed, ‘You can’t break the frame, girl. I am the frame. I will always be with you.’

I realized then that he was not a trapped soul, but the originator—the salesman who had made the mirror. He had bound himself to all reflective surfaces, and he was using me as a new conduit to collect more souls. I had to stop him. I knew that the only way was to destroy the original mirror, which I had not yet found. I searched the house, the pawnshop back home, but it was nowhere. Then I remembered the attic frame—the oval with no glass. I had assumed it was broken, but perhaps it was the original container. I went back to the attic and lifted the frame. Behind it was a secret compartment containing a small hand mirror with a tarnished backing. As soon as I picked it up, I felt a burning chill, and the salesman’s reflection appeared in it. He laughed, ‘Finally, you found me. Now you can join the others.’

I knew I had to act fast. I raised the mirror and slammed it against the stone wall, shattering it into a million pieces. The glass cut my hand, but I felt a surge of energy, and the salesman’s scream echoed through the house, then fell silent. The air became still, and all the cold spots faded. I stood there, bleeding, and for the first time, my reflection in the shattered pieces showed only me. I had stopped him, but at a price: my hand was scarred, and I had lost an important part of my past—the memory of my grandmother’s face, which I had always seen in the mirror. But it was worth it to set those souls free.

Now, years later, I live a quiet life, far from that town. I work in a library, surrounded by books, and I avoid mirrors when I can. Sometimes, on a foggy day, I’ll catch a glimpse of motion in a window, but it’s always just my imagination. But I know the truth: there are rifts in time, and some people are born with the ability to see them. I was one of those people, but I chose to close the rift. The lace frame, that oval in the attic, still hangs in my study, but now it holds a photograph of my family—a picture of a future that wasn’t stolen. And when I look at it, I see only the faces I love, and I know that I am not crazy. I am just someone who saw a little too much of the world’s hidden truth, and I survived to tell the tale.