The Mirror in the Attic

When we moved into the old Harlow house, I thought the attic would be my sanctuary. It was dusty and smelled of mothballs, but it had a single dormer window that let in the golden afternoon light, and a sturdy oak desk where I could sketch in peace. I was fourteen, and my birthday gift had been a set of charcoal pencils and a brand new leather-bound journal. I spent hours up there, listening to the creaks of the house settling, the occasional rustle of mice in the walls.

It started about a week after we moved in. I’d be absorbed in shading a tree or a face, and I’d catch, out of the corner of my eye, a flicker of movement near the attic doorway. I’d turn, expecting to see my mom calling me for dinner or my younger brother Aaron sneaking up to spy, but there’d be nothing. Just the empty, dark rectangle of the door frame. At first, I dismissed it as a trick of the light or my overactive imagination, but it persisted. Every time I looked up, I’d see the faintest impression of a person just beyond the threshold, barely there, like a breath on a windowpane.

One evening, as I was finishing a sketch of a crow perched on a branch, I felt a distinct presence behind me. I turned sharply, and there, standing in the attic doorway, was a girl. She looked exactly like me – same auburn hair, same freckles across the nose, same faded green sweater I was wearing. For a split second, I thought it was a mirror, but there was no mirror there. She stared at me with a cold, detached expression, then simply dissolved, like smoke dissipating. I ran downstairs, heart pounding, and found my mom in the kitchen. ‘There’s someone in the attic,’ I blurted out. She looked at me with concern, then calmly said, ‘It’s probably just a draft, dear. The house is old. Maybe you need to get out more.’ But she gave me a long, searching look that made me feel like she didn’t believe me.

Things escalated. I started seeing my own double everywhere – not just in the attic, but in hallways, at the end of corridors, even outside my bedroom window at night, just standing there, watching. The most unsettling was when I walked past the bathroom and saw, reflected in the mirror, a version of myself brushing her teeth. I froze, but when I leaned in, the reflection was my own, but it wasn’t. The mouth curved into a smile that wasn’t mine, and then it was normal again. My heart raced, and I refused to use that bathroom alone for days.

My brother Aaron, who was nine, had his own encounter. One afternoon, he came running to me, pale as a sheet. ‘There’s a ghost in my room,’ he whispered. ‘It looks like you, but it’s not you.’ I followed him, and there, on his bed, sat a figure that looked exactly like me. It turned its head slowly, smiled at us, and then vanished. Aaron burst into tears. I tried to comfort him, but I felt the ground shift beneath me. This wasn’t just my imagination. We both saw it.

I decided to write it all down in my journal, as a way to keep track. I noted every occurrence, every time, every place. I began to notice a pattern: the doppelgangers appeared more frequently when I was feeling anxious or stressed, and they always seemed to be in peripheral vision, never quite in focus. But sometimes, if I was lucky, I could catch a full glance for a few seconds, and they’d stare back with a blank, eerie calm.

One night, I woke up to find my double standing at the foot of my bed. It wasn’t a flicker – it was as solid as I was. It looked at me with a deep, hollow sadness, and then mouthed the words, ‘You’re not the one.’ I screamed, and my parents rushed in. But by then, it was gone. They saw nothing but my terror. ‘I think we need to get you a therapist,’ my mom said, her voice tight with worry. ‘Maybe it’s just stress from the move.’ But I knew it was more than that.

Determined to find answers, I went back to the attic, where it all began. I searched every corner, and behind a loose floorboard, I found an old, tarnished mirror. It was antique, with a carved wooden frame that depicted swirling vines and eyes. I’d never noticed it before, even though the floorboard had been slightly loose since we moved in. As I picked it up, I felt a shiver run down my spine. The glass seemed to ripple, like water, and I saw my reflection, but it was in the movements – my reflection was a half-second behind. It opened its mouth as if to scream, and I dropped it. The mirror didn’t break. It lied on the floor, face down, and I didn’t dare touch it again.

I told my parents about the mirror, but they dismissed it as a dusty old thing I’d found, and they refused to acknowledge the paranormal events. They insisted I was overtired, imaginative, maybe even a little from that horror book I’d been reading. But I knew the truth. The mirror was the key. It had something to do with these doubles.

In a desperate attempt to end this, I took the mirror up to my room, propped it against my desk, and sat down to study it. As I stared into its dark surface, my reflection slowly changed. It began to mimic me, but then it started to move independently. It smiled, then it laughed, a silent, malicious laugh. Then it reached out, and its hand pressed against the glass from the inside, and I felt a cold, clammy pressure on my own hand through the mirror. I yanked away, heart hammering.

I realized that my doppelgangers were all connected to this mirror. They were fragments of another version of me – perhaps a version that had died in this house, or was trapped in the mirror, seeking to escape. The thought that I was seeing a ghost of myself was terrifying, but also oddly pitiful. Was it a soul searching for release? Or something more sinister?

One evening, I gathered all my courage and brought the mirror to the attic, to the exact spot where I had found it. I said aloud, ‘Whoever you are, wherever you’re from, please leave me and my family alone. We just want to live in peace.’ And for a moment, the mirror shimmered, and I saw my own face looking back at me, but with tears streaming down its cheeks. Then the mirror cleared, and the regular me looked back. Since that day, the sightings have stopped. I haven’t seen my double in weeks. Aaron says he hasn’t seen anything either. The house feels lighter, somehow.

But every time I pass by the attic door, I feel a pull. Sometimes, in the silence of the night, I hear a soft knocking from above, and I know it’s not the wind. I left the mirror there, face down, buried under a tarp, hoping it stays quiet. But I can’t shake the feeling that I haven’t truly escaped. That mirror is waiting, and it knows I’m still in this house. Maybe it’s patient, biding its time, and one day, it will reach out again. And maybe, just maybe, it’s not done with me.