The Mirror in the Hall

The townhouse on Maple Court was supposed to be our fresh start. A two-bedroom end unit with a tiny yard, it was the first place we could call ours after years of cramped apartments. My husband, Leo, and I had moved in with our five-year-old son, Toby, three weeks ago. The complex was brand new, still smelling of paint and fresh carpet, and the neighbors were friendly enough, but there was something about the place that didn’t sit right with me from the start.

The layout was modest: you entered into a combined living and dining area with the kitchen to the right, separated by a half-wall. Straight ahead was a narrow hallway leading to the master bedroom on the left, the bathroom in the middle, and Toby’s room on the right. A sliding glass door at the back of the living room opened onto a small, fenced patio. It was all clean and modern, but there was a weight in the air, a stillness that felt unnatural.

Toby had always been an imaginative child, so when he started talking to his reflection in the mirror above the living room console, I dismissed it at first. He would stand in front of it, chattering away, sometimes waving. But then his conversations took a darker turn. One evening, I heard him say, ‘No, you have to leave my mommy and daddy alone. They are my mommy and daddy now.’

I froze in the kitchen, a dish towel in hand. I walked over to where he stood, his small face serious. ‘Who are you talking to, sweetheart?’ I asked.

He pointed at the mirror. ‘The baba.’

‘Baba?’ I said, a chill running down my spine. ‘What baba?’

‘The one in the mirror,’ he said, as if it were obvious. ‘He’s naughty. He wants to take me and you and daddy.’

I tried to laugh it off. ‘That’s just your reflection, silly.’

But Toby shook his head, his eyes wide. ‘No, he’s not me. He looks like me, but he’s not me. He’s old, and he’s angry.’

Leo dismissed it as a phase, saying Toby had been watching too many cartoons. But over the next few days, Toby’s behavior grew more concerning. He would refuse to enter the living room when the mirror was uncovered. He’d yell at the mirror, ‘Go away! Stop staring at me!’ I found him one afternoon, holding a crayon, drawing dark scribbles all over the glass.

‘What are you doing?’ I cried.

‘He keeps looking at me, Mommy,’ he said, his lip trembling. ‘He wants me to come inside.’

I cleaned the mirror, but that night, as I passed the hallway, I swear I saw a man’s silhouette in the glass, tall and still, watching me from the other side. I spun around, but the house was empty. I shook it off as a trick of light. Yet, sleep didn’t come easily.

The next day, I decided to test something. I asked Toby what the baba looked like. He described an old man with sunken eyes and a torn shirt. I’d never mentioned any such figure to him. That night, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. I covered the mirror with a sheet.

But the problem escalated. Toby started waking up screaming, crying that the baba was in his room, standing over his bed. He begged us to stay with him, and when we did, he’d point at the corner, whispering, ‘He’s there.’

One night, I was alone in the living room, pouring a glass of water, when I saw it: a flicker in the mirror, even though it was covered. The sheet moved as if something pressed against it from the other side. I stood frozen, my heart hammering. Then the sheet slowly slid off, dropping to the floor, and in the mirror I saw not my reflection, but the reflection of a dark, boyish shape behind me. I whipped around—nothing.

I told Leo we needed to do something. He was skeptical but agreed to swap the mirror for a small, framed one in Toby’s room. We moved the large mirror to the garage, thinking that would solve it. But that night, Toby pointed at the new mirror in his room and screamed, ‘He’s here! He came with us!’

We tried everything: we threw the mirror out, but the baba persisted. Toby would wake up with scratches on his arms, and I began to see him in my peripheral vision. One evening, I looked into the bathroom mirror and saw a reflection of a boy, not myself, waving at me with a grin too wide. I screamed, and Leo rushed in, but the reflection was normal again.

The final straw came when I was in the kitchen, and I heard Toby’s voice from the bedroom, saying in a low, guttural tone, ‘I’m not your son anymore.’ I sprinted to his room, and he was sitting on his bed, staring blankly at the wall. When he turned to me, his eyes were not his own—they were dark, empty. ‘Mommy, he wants to use my body,’ he said in his normal voice, tears streaming down his face. ‘He says he’s going to wear me like a coat.’

I grabbed Toby and drove to my sister’s place, not looking back. We haven’t returned to Maple Court since. Leo went back to pack our things, but he called me, his voice shaky, saying that as he walked through the empty house, he heard a child’s laughter echoing from Toby’s empty room. And in every mirror and reflective surface, he saw the reflection of a small boy watching him.

We’ve been living with my sister for a week now. Toby still talks to the baba sometimes, but he says the baba is ‘sad’ because he can’t get through to this house. Yet last night, I caught Toby staring into his water glass, whispering, ‘He says he’ll wait. He says he likes us too much to let go.’

I don’t know if we will ever be free. The baba found us once; there’s no telling if he’ll find us again. All I know is that wherever we go, I will never look into a mirror without wondering if that old, angry reflection is there, waiting for the moment I lower my guard.