The Lantern in the Static

It began with a flicker in the bathroom mirror, a glint of gold that wasn’t the reflection of the hallway light. I was braiding my hair for bed, and there it was—a comet’s tail in the corner of my eye. I spun, but the wall was bare. The mirror stayed still, and I told myself it was a trick of the fluorescent bulb. But that night, I covered the mirror with a towel, and I knew, deep in my gut, that something had crossed a threshold it shouldn’t have.

The first orb was followed by others, appearing in photographs like misplaced stars. A week in the Scottish Highlands, and of the three dozen shots we took, two frames were littered with seventeen pale spheres, clustered over my grandmother’s favorite walking spot. My granddad had passed a month before, and my mother wept, saying he was ‘checking on us.’ I didn’t argue, but the orbs felt less like farewells and more like scouts—probing, learning our paths.

The final encounter happened on a Tuesday, in my brother’s room. I was leaning against his doorframe, rambling about some code bug, when a globe of amber light bloomed above his head, casting his face in sickly gold. It pulsed once, twice, then vanished, leaving a faint smell of ozone. My brother saw nothing, but my reflection in his monitor showed a pale face and wide eyes. I retreated to my room, locked the door, and sat in the dark, running my fingers over the ridges of my keyboard.

That’s when I realized the orbs weren’t random. They were following a pattern—my pattern. They appeared when I was half-absorbed, when my mind was elsewhere, like they were testing my attention. And the more I noticed them, the more they sought me out. The mirror in my room remained covered, but I felt its gaze through the towel, heavy and patient.

On the third night, I uncovered it. I stood before the glass, the bathroom light off, only the moon through the window. I saw my own face, and behind it, drifting like a fish in a tank, was the orb. It didn’t flee. It grew, filling the reflection, until all I could see was a blinding coin of light. And in that light, I saw shapes—familiar, geometric—like the patterns of static on a dead channel. I heard a whisper, but not in my ears. It was in my thoughts, a pressure like wet wool.

I stumbled back, knocking over a bottle of shampoo, and the reflection shattered—not the glass, but the light. The orb burst into a thousand fireflies that faded as they hit the floor. Since then, no more orbs. But sometimes, when I catch a glimpse of a mirror in my peripheral vision, I see a shimmer, just out of sight. And when I look, it’s gone. But I know it’s waiting, patient, behind the glass or in the static of a turned-off TV, learning to take a shape I can’t ignore any longer.