The Mirror in the Hall

I never believed in doppelgangers until the summer I turned sixteen, when they started appearing in the most ordinary places. The first time, I was in my apartment, alone, sorting through a box of old photographs in my bedroom. My bedroom door was always shut, and the window was sealed shut, painted over years ago by the landlord. I had a cat named Jinx, a scrawny tabby who usually ignored me unless she wanted food. I hadn’t seen her all morning, so when a blur of gray and black shot past my peripheral vision and dove under my bed, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

I crouched down, peering into the dark space beneath the bed frame, expecting to see two glowing eyes reflecting the light. But there was nothing. The space was empty, save for a few dust bunnies. A second later, I heard a faint meow from the living room, and when I hurried out, I found Jinx sitting by the sliding glass door, meowing to be let in. She must have been out on the balcony all along. I remember feeling a chill crawl down my spine, but I shrugged it off, blaming my imagination.

The second time was at my grandmother’s house, a sprawling Victorian relic in a small town three provinces away. I was spending the summer there with my mom and my grandmother, who was slowly losing her memories to dementia. The house was a labyrinth of creaking floorboards and heavy oak doors, and I had a habit of reading in the hallway because the light was perfect.

One afternoon, I was sitting on the floor, my back against the wall, a book open in my lap. My mom had just gone into my grandmother’s room to help her with her afternoon nap. The hallway was quiet, and the only sound was the ticking of the grandfather clock at the end of the hall. Then I saw it: my mom’s door opened, and she stepped out, wearing a pale blue dress that I remembered her wearing days ago. She walked past me, so close I could have reached out and touched her, and then she turned into my bedroom and closed the door behind her. I was startled, because I knew I was the only one who used my bedroom, and my mom never went in there.

‘Sarah, what are you doing?’ I called out, scrambling to my feet. But there was no answer. I walked to my door and knocked. No response. I slowly turned the handle and pushed the door open, expecting to see my mom inside, maybe tidying up. The room was empty. The window was still latched, the bed neatly made. I stood there, my heart pounding, and then I heard my mom’s voice from down the hall. ‘Elena? Did you call me?’ I spun around. She was standing in the doorway of the hallway, wearing a faded floral apron, a dish towel in her hands. She had been in the kitchen all along.

I tried to explain what I had seen, but my mom laughed it off, saying I must have seen my reflection in the hallway mirror. But there was no mirror in that hallway. I knew what I saw. The woman I saw was my mother, but she had walked with a strange, deliberate gait, and her eyes were hollow, as if she was looking through everything, not at anything.

For the next few days, I couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. Every time I turned a corner, I expected to see another double. My grandmother, lost in the past, would sometimes call me by my mother’s name, and when I looked into her eyes, I saw a flicker of recognition, but also something else, something like fear. ‘There’s a mirror in the hall,’ she muttered one evening, as I tucked her into bed. ‘But it’s not for you to look into.’

I asked what she meant, but she just shook her head, her gaze drifting to the doorway, where a shadow seemed to linger. That night, I couldn’t sleep. I got up to get a glass of water, and as I passed the hallway, I noticed something odd. The grandfather clock, which had always been against the far wall, was now standing flush against the wall where the mirror used to hang. The mirror itself was gone. I remember it had been there for years, an ornate oval piece with a tarnished frame, but now the wall was bare, and a faint rectangular outline in the dust showed where it had once hung.

I ran to my grandmother’s room, but she was fast asleep, her breath shallow. I called my mom, who was already in bed, and she said she hadn’t touched the mirror. When I asked her about it the next morning, she said maybe my grandmother had taken it down, but when we asked her, she looked confused and said, ‘That mirror was never here.’

But I had seen it just the other day, catching my own reflection as I walked past. Or had I? The more I thought about it, the less I trusted my memories. That’s the thing about doppelgangers: they make you question what’s real. And the weirdest part? After that day, the mirror reappeared, hanging in the same spot, as if it had never moved. My mom said I was just tired, but I knew what I saw. And in the mirror, for just a second, I saw a woman who looked exactly like me, but her eyes were not mine. They were empty, like the hollow gaze of my mother’s double. And I knew, somehow, that she was still there, waiting in the house, waiting for me to look again.

I never looked into that mirror again. But sometimes, late at night, I think I hear the faint echo of footsteps in the hallway, and the quiet sound of a door clicking shut. And I wonder if the woman in the mirror has finally found a way out.