The Mirror in Room 4

The mirror had always been there, a heavy antique with a tarnished silver frame, propped against the wall of my room in the Marrow House. It was a bed-and-breakfast my aunt owned, and I was the summer caretaker. The mirror was one of those heirloom pieces that seemed to have no origin, passed down from who knows when. I remember my aunt would spend hours before it, styling her hair for guests, but now it was mine.

It started with the music. I’d plug in my old, battered electric guitar, the one with the warped neck and the missing low E string, and I’d play until the notes blurred into each other. The room’s acoustics were odd; they seemed to swallow the sound, leaving a hollow emptiness. Then, one night, as I was improvising some bleak melody, I caught a flicker in the corner of my eye—a shape, long and thin, standing behind me in the glass. I spun around, but the room was empty. My closet door, which I always kept shut, was slightly ajar.

At first, I dismissed it. I told myself it was a trick of the light, or a moth. But it happened again, and again. Each time I played, the glass would blur, and I’d see a figure—sometimes humanoid, sometimes something else: a hunchbacked dog, a wispy tree, a tall man with no face. It never stayed for more than a second, but it always moved toward the closet. I started checking the closet, pulling aside the musty coats and boxes, but found nothing but dust and the smell of old wood.

One evening, I decided to test it. I set my phone to record, pointed it at the mirror, and played the most dissonant chord I could muster. For ten minutes, nothing. I was about to stop when in the mirror, I saw a woman in white, her hair streaming like seaweed, her hands pressed flat against the glass from the other side. She was mouthing something—I couldn’t tell what. I froze, and the image faded.

After that, I couldn’t leave the mirror alone. I began sleeping with it covered by a sheet, but I’d hear sounds at night: a dull thud, like something pressing against the glass from within. Then, one night, I woke to find the sheet gone, and the mirror glowing faintly in the moonlight. In it, I saw a reflection of my room, but it wasn’t my room. The wallpaper was peeling, the furniture was dust-sheeted, and there were scratch marks on the floor leading to the closet. In that reflection, the closet door was open, and something was emerging—a dark mass with eyes like holes.

I knew I had to get rid of it. I tried to lift the mirror, but it was impossibly heavy, as if bolted to the floor. I tried to smash it with a hammer, but the glass wouldn’t crack. I even tried to turn it to face the wall, but it resisted, as if something held it in place. So I did the only thing I could think of: I played my guitar one last time, the same broken chords that had summoned the thing. This time, I watched the mirror, not flinching. The figure appeared, clearer than ever—a gaunt man in an old-fashioned suit, his mouth open in a silent scream. He pointed at the closet, then at me, and then he mouthed three words: ‘Let me out.’

I didn’t wait. I grabbed my keys, my phone, and ran out of the room, out of the house, into the cold night air. I didn’t stop until I reached the town’s diner, where the fluorescent lights felt like a barrier against the dark. I sat there, shaking, until dawn. When I returned, the mirror was gone. The spot where it had stood was bare, and the closet door was open, empty. The house felt lighter, as if a weight had lifted. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had failed something. I never found out who the man was, or why he was trapped. Sometimes, at night, I still hear a faint, discordant guitar chord from Room 4, even though the room is empty and the mirror is gone. And in my dreams, I see the man again, but this time, his mouth is moving: ‘You’ll be back.’ I hope that’s just a dream.