The Mirror at the Ash Grove

My first encounter with my own ghost happened before I ever knew ghosts could wear your face. I was sixteen, in the summer of ’74, working the Sunday flea market at the Ash Grove fairgrounds with my grandmother. She had a stall of hand-sewn quilts and bottled preserves, and I was the mule who hauled the folding tables and the crate of jars from the rusted Ford Falcon out to our spot under the old sugar gum trees. It was a normal Sunday, the kind where the air smelled of dust and eucalyptus and the distant crackle of a loudspeaker calling bingo numbers.

I was about to heave the last crate onto the trestle table when I saw her. She was at the opposite end of the market, near the broken carousel that hadn’t run since the ’50s. A girl my age, with the same dirty-blonde braid, the same faded denim jacket with the missing button, the same way of tilting her head when she read the price stickers on a jar of honey. I dropped the crate. The jars clinked and grandmother shouted, ‘Sarah, what in God’s name—’

But I was already walking across the grass, between the stalls, past the man selling wind chimes that tinkled like small bones. The girl didn’t see me. She was talking to an old man, her grandmother probably, and she laughed—a laugh I knew from the mirror because it was mine, the same half-choke of a giggle, the same hand covering her mouth as if embarrassed by her own joy. When she turned, I stopped. She looked at me, and for a beat, everything in the world went silent. Then she smiled—a smile that didn’t reach her eyes—and walked away into the crowd, pulling her grandmother by the hand. I tried to follow, but the crowd was too thick, and by the time I got to the carousel, they were gone.

I didn’t tell grandmother. I thought I’d imagined it, the heat playing tricks. But that night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept seeing her smile, the way it didn’t match the rest of her face. It was like looking into a mirror that was just a fraction of a second behind, where the reflection did its own thing before you did.

The second time was worse. It was winter, a year later. My mother’s cousin, Aunt Rosa, had a farm up past the old pine plantation, and she’d asked me to stay for a week to help with the lambing. I didn’t have a licence yet, so Rosa’s son, Danny, was supposed to drive me up on the Saturday. But Danny got drunk the night before, and Rosa called to say she’d send a neighbour instead. The neighbour never showed. I was stuck at the farmhouse, waiting by the window, when I saw the truck pull up at the gate—a little blue ute I recognized as belonging to old Mr. Hagerty, who lived two paddocks over. I grabbed my bag and headed out.

But the person in the driver’s seat wasn’t Mr. Hagerty. It was me. Me at age nineteen, maybe twenty, with a scar I didn’t have across my left eyebrow and eyes that were dark, too dark, like they’d seen too much. She rolled down the window and said, in a voice that was mine but not mine, ‘Get in, Sarah. We’ve got a long drive.’ Her smile was too wide, and her teeth were too white, and the driver’s door had a dent on the handle that I knew about because I’d put it there last week when I’d backed into the gate—but she put her hand on the dent exactly where I would have.

I took a step back. ‘Who are you?’ she asked, and she laughed—that same laugh from the market. ‘Don’t you know? I’m you. Or maybe you’re me. It doesn’t matter. We’re going to fix something that’s broken.’ My blood went cold. I turned and ran back to the farmhouse, locked the door, and called Rosa’s landline with shaking fingers. She said, ‘What’s wrong? The neighbour’s on his way, should be there any minute.’ I told her about the truck, about the girl who looked like me. Rosa was quiet for a long time. Then she said, ‘That’s impossible. Mr. Hagerty’s been dead since Tuesday. That truck’s been sitting in his yard with the keys in it, no one’s touched it.’

I stayed in the farmhouse until dawn, doors locked, windows up, the wood stove burning high. I could feel her out there, that other me, watching from the dark. Sometimes I’d catch a shadow move past a window, always just out of the corner of my eye. Once, I heard her knock on the back door, three soft knocks, the same way I knock when I want to be let in quietly. I didn’t open it.

When the sun came up, Rosa’s son Danny showed up, sober and sheepish. He asked me why I looked so scared. I told him about the truck. He laughed and said, ‘That old wreck? It blew a head gasket last week. Grandpa Hagerty said he’d fix it, but he died before he could. It’s been sitting there, locked, with the battery dead.’ I said no, I saw it drive, I saw it stop. Danny just shook his head and said, ‘You must’ve seen the reflection in the frost glass. I mean, you look at yourself a lot, right?’ But I knew what I saw. I knew it wasn’t a reflection.

The third time, I was the one doing the chasing. It was about a month later, and I was back in the city, working at a corner store near the train station. I’d just finished my shift, walking home through the underpass where the graffiti had been scrubbed clean, and I saw her again—this time older, maybe twenty-three, wearing my grandma’s old coat, the one she’d given me when I turned eighteen. She was standing under the flickering sodium light, and she didn’t try to run. She just watched me. I walked up to her, my heart hammering, and said, ‘Why are you doing this?’ She tilted her head, that same tilt, and said, ‘I’m not doing anything. I’m just living. You’re the one who keeps looking at me like I’m a ghost.’

I reached out to touch her arm, to prove she wasn’t real, but my hand went through her. She laughed—that laugh, my laugh, but now it curdled into something wet, like a cough. ‘You’re not touching me, Sarah. You’re touching yourself. You’re the one who’s a reflection. You’re the one who’s been following me.’ And then she walked away, into the dark of the underpass, and I heard her footsteps echo long after she was out of sight.

I went home that night and looked in the mirror. My face was the same as always—the same mole on my cheek, the same crooked eyebrow. But for a moment, the reflection was a half-second behind. I blinked, and it blinked after. I waved, and it waved after. I stopped moving, and it kept moving for a split second longer. It smiled at me, that same smile from the market, and the smile didn’t reach its eyes.

I don’t sleep with mirrors anymore. I’ve covered them all with old towels, even the ones in the bathroom. But that doesn’t matter now, because I know what I am. I’m not the real one. I’m the one who crossed over from a different dream. And somewhere out there, the real Sarah is still at the Ash Grove market, still hauling crates, still wondering who I am. But she’ll find out soon enough. She’ll come looking, just like I did, and when she does, I’ll be ready. I’ll smile, and I’ll say, ‘Get in. We’ve got a long drive.’