The Long Afternoon of the Vanity Mirror

Before anything, I’m Mira, fifteen years old. I don’t know if I truly have a sixth sense, but I’ve always seen things that others can’t. This is the story of the most unsettling thing that ever happened to me. It was two years ago, right after my family relocated to a small coastal town in the Visayas. We were staying at my Lola’s old nipa hut on the outskirts, waiting for our own house to be built.

Lola’s place had three rooms. The middle one, which served as our bedroom, was a cramped space with a single window on the far wall. As you walked in, to your left was a small CRT television on a wooden stand, and next to it, an antique vanity table with a dusty, tarnished mirror. Directly in front was an old brass bed with a lumpy mattress, and at the foot of the bed stood an enormous mahogany cabinet, its doors carved with intricate, almost humming patterns.

One humid afternoon, with everyone else outside preparing the new site, I decided to take a nap. The house was deathly quiet, save for the distant drone of insects. I lay on the bed, facing the vanity. My eyes caught the clock on the wall: it was exactly three in the afternoon. The afternoon sun cast long, distorted shadows through the window, painting the room in amber. I closed my eyes, intending to rest for just a bit, but I felt drowsy and drifted off.

I woke with a start. The room was darker now, the shadows longer. The clock showed 3:47 PM. But something was off. The vanity mirror, which I could see from my position, was reflecting the window behind me, but the reflection was not right. In the mirror, I saw the window, but instead of the overgrown garden outside, there was a wall—a solid, dark stone wall, like the inside of a well. And in that reflection, standing by the window, was a figure—a woman in a long, faded funeral dress. Her face was a blur, as if smudged, and she was just standing there, staring at me through the mirror.

My heart hammered. I froze, afraid to turn around. The figure in the mirror didn’t move, but her blurred face seemed to be fixed on me. Slowly, she raised one hand, the fingers splayed, and pressed it against the glass. The mirror rippled like water, and I heard a faint, thin whisper, not from my ears but inside my head, saying, ‘You shouldn’t sit with your back to the window.’

I bolted upright, and the reflection snapped back to normal—just the garden, the wind moving the banana leaves. I scrambled off the bed, backing against the cabinet. The mirror now showed me, my face pale, and behind me, the cabinet’s carved patterns seemed to writhe. I refused to look again. I grabbed my things and left the room, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something in that room was waiting.

That night, I told Lola, who is known for her ‘sight.’ She listened quietly, then said, ‘Mira, that mirror is old. It belonged to a woman who drowned in the well behind the old house. She had a jealous spirit. She often appears at three, especially when someone lies facing the mirror. But don’t worry, I’ll put a cloth over it.’ She covered the mirror with a white cloth, and for a few days, I felt safer.

But a week later, I was alone again. My curiosity got the better of me. I peeled back the cloth. The mirror reflected the room, but the person in the reflection was not me. It was the same woman, but now her face was clearer—pale, with hollow eyes. She smiled, revealing blackened teeth, and mouthed, ‘I see you.’

I screamed and threw the cloth back on. But when I looked again, the cloth was on the floor, and the mirror showed my own reflection, but my face was contorted into a horrible, unnatural grin. I stumbled back, tripping over the threshold, and the reflection in the mirror did the same, but with an expression of glee.

I ran out of the house, my legs shaking. My family found me by the road, babbling. They thought I had a fever. I didn’t touch that mirror again, but the image of my own face with that strange grin haunted me. Even now, in our new house, sometimes when I pass any reflective surface, I catch a flicker of that grin, just for a second, and I hear that whisper: ‘You shouldn’t sit with your back to the window.’

I’ve learned to never lie in a room with a mirror facing me, and I always keep my back to the wall. But some nights, when I’m half asleep, I feel a cold hand on my shoulder, and I know she’s still watching, waiting for me to make the same mistake again.