The Mirror in the Attic

Three months ago, I saw my own face staring back at me from the antique mirror in the upstairs hallway. It wasn’t my reflection, not really. The mirror was angled just so, showing the door to the guest room behind me, and there I was—except I wasn’t. I had just gotten out of the bath, my hair slicked back in a way I never wore it, and I wasn’t wearing my glasses because I’d taken them off to clean them. But the thing in the reflection had my glasses on, and my hair hung loose and tangled, dripping wet. It smiled at me with my own mouth, and I felt a cold dread that I couldn’t explain.

I live alone in a narrow Victorian house that I inherited from my great-aunt, a woman I only met once as a child. The house is full of oddities—trapdoors, hidden compartments, a bell tower that no one ever rings. But the mirror was the strangest. It was a full-length oval, framed in tarnished silver, and it hung at the top of the stairs where the light always seemed to dim no matter how many bulbs I changed. I told myself it was a trick of the light, a reflection of the window, but I knew better. I’d felt this before.

Fourteen years ago, when I was a student in a cramped dormitory, my parents came to visit after I called them in tears over a breakup. We sat at the tiny kitchen table, eating takeout, when I looked past my mother’s shoulder and saw her standing in the hallway—except she wasn’t. That mother had her hair in a braid, which she hadn’t worn since I was a child, and she was staring at me with an expression of pure malice. I dropped my fork, and when I looked again, it was gone. My mother asked what was wrong, and I said nothing. I looked it up later, in the university library’s dusty tomes on the occult: a doppelganger is a death omen. But nothing bad had happened to my mother. She’s still alive, though she’s never looked at me the same way since.

Last night, I did something different. I let my hair dry naturally, tangled and wild, and I didn’t put on my glasses. I was in high spirits after a long, soaking bath with eucalyptus salts, and I padded barefoot to the kitchen to make tea. As I passed the mirror at the top of the stairs, I caught my own reflection—but it wasn’t me. This me wore glasses, had perfectly straight hair tied in a neat bun, and wore a high-collared blouse that I’d thrown in the donation pile months ago. It stood perfectly still, watching me with an unblinking stare. I froze, my heart hammering. Then it raised one hand and pressed it against the glass from the other side, as if the mirror were a window. My own hand rose to meet it, but I stopped myself. I ran to the bathroom and locked the door, my back against the cold tile, breathing in ragged gasps.

I refused to leave the bathroom until morning, when the gray light of dawn made the house feel less like a tomb. I went to the mirror, but it was just a mirror. My reflection—my true reflection—showed me with tangled hair, no glasses, wearing a worn terrycloth robe. I let out a shaky breath. But as I turned to walk away, I noticed something at the edge of the glass: a smudge on the back of the mirror, barely visible. It looked like a handprint, but not mine. My fingers are longer; this one was broader, with a thicker palm. I’d never touched the back of that mirror. It’s been years since anyone has, as far as I know.

That’s when I decided to do some research in the attic. My great-aunt’s journals were stashed up there in old trunks, and I’d never had the courage to read them. But now I needed to know if this was just a coin or if it was something that ran in the family. The attic stairs creaked, dust motes dancing in the weak sunlight that filtered through a small, grimy window. I found three trunks: one with clothes, one with books, and one with a leather-bound journal, its pages yellowed with age. As I flipped through, I felt a chill. Great-aunt Agatha had written about ‘the twin’—a term she used for the mirror-self that appears in times of emotional turmoil. She wrote, ‘It is not a portent of death, but a reflection of our own fractured psyche. To look upon it is to see what we fear most: the version of ourselves that we could have become.’ She warned never to touch it, never to acknowledge it, and especially never to break the mirror, for ‘to shatter the glass is to release the twin into our world.’

My hands trembled as I read her last entry, dated three days before she died of a heart attack at the age of eighty-nine. She wrote, ‘It has come to me at last, in the form of my youth. I am an old woman, but it stands before me, vibrant and young, with my mother’s eyes. I have lived a long life, and I have no fear. I will look upon it one last time, and I will smile.’ A lock of hair fell from the journal—white and brittle, unlike anything of hers I’d ever seen.

I closed the journal, my mind racing. I thought of my mother, who had always been fine. But maybe she hadn’t been. Maybe the twin she saw had been a warning, not of death, but of a life unlived. I remembered a phone call from my father, years ago, when he mentioned that my mother had ‘changed’ after that visit—she’d become withdrawn, started sleeping in a separate room, and would sometimes stare at her own reflection for hours. I had dismissed it as stress. But now I wondered if she was still seeing it. I called her that afternoon, my voice shaking. ‘Mom, can I ask you something?’ I asked. ‘About that time we saw—do you remember the mirror?’

There was a long pause. Then my mother spoke in a voice I didn’t recognize, low and cold: ‘You should have broken it when you had the chance.’ The line went dead. I dialed again, but it rang endlessly. I tried my father’s number, and he answered, sounding confused. ‘Your mother’s been in the garden all day,’ he said. ‘She hasn’t touched the phone.’

I hung up, my skin crawling. I turned to look at the mirror at the top of the stairs. It was still there, its silver frame glinting. But now, in the reflection, I saw my mother standing behind me, her hair in a braid, her expression a perfect mask of placid calm. She raised her hand and pressed it to the glass, mouthing the words: ‘Don’t break it.’

But I already knew what I had to do. I grabbed the heavy ceramic vase from the hall table, and with a primal scream, I hurled it at the mirror. The glass shattered into a thousand pieces, raining down onto the carpet. The shards glinted like stars, and for a moment, I felt a surge of triumph. But then the fragments began to move—not falling or sliding, but lifting and swirling, coalescing into a shape. It rose to its full height, a humanoid figure made of jagged edges and sharp reflections, and it turned its head to look at me with a face that was my own, but twisted in a grin of pure malice.

‘See the attic,’ it said in my voice, but deeper, as if spoken underwater. ‘See what she left behind.’

My heart pounded as I backed up the stairs, my eyes locked on the form. It didn’t move, just watched. I reached the attic door, threw it open, and froze. The attic was no longer filled with trunks and dusty furniture. Instead, it was a perfect replica of my childhood home—the living room where I’d grown up, with faded floral curtains and the worn orange sofa. And there, sitting on the sofa, was my mother as she was when I was a child, with kind eyes and a gentle smile. She beckoned to me. ‘Come, dear,’ she said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

But my mother was in her garden, miles away. And this—this was the twin. It had already taken her form, and now it wanted mine. I turned to run, but the stairs were gone. The attic door had disappeared, replaced by a blank wall. I was trapped. I screamed, and the replica of my mother laughed, a sound that was pure wrongness—too high, too thin. ‘You should have broken the mirror,’ it said, ‘but you released me instead.’

I don’t know how long I’ve been here. The attic moves with me, shifting from one memory to another, always showing me the faces of the ones I love—only for them to turn and whisper my name with a voice that isn’t theirs. I’ve learned not to trust what I see. I’ve learned to knock on wood, to throw salt over my shoulder, to avoid every mirror in this endless house. But I’m not fooled. The twin walks this place, and it wears my face. And when I finally look into the cracked glass that remains, I’ll see it looking back—waiting for me to give up and let it take my place.