The Mirror in the Void

I’ve read countless tales of the unexplained, but none have prepared me for the truth of what happened that summer when I was eleven. My family had moved to a remote village in the Pyrenees, into a stone house that had stood for centuries. My room was at the end of a narrow corridor, and its only window faced a sheer rock face, so the room was always cool and dim, even at noon.

On my first night, I couldn’t sleep. The silence was overwhelming—no traffic, no neighbors, just the wind whispering through the cracks. I stared at the ceiling, tracing the beams with my eyes, when a faint glow caught my attention. It came from the small mirror on the wall opposite my bed. At first, I thought it was a reflection of the moonlight, but the moon wasn’t up yet. The glow was soft, like a candle behind frosted glass, and it pulsed gently, as if breathing.

I sat up, my heart beginning to race. The mirror was old, its silver backing tarnished, but in that moment, it seemed impossibly clear. The glow intensified, and within it, I saw a shape—a child, maybe my age, standing in a misty field. The child turned, and its face was blank, featureless, yet I felt it looking at me. I wanted to scream, but my throat was frozen. Then, as quickly as it appeared, the glow faded, and the mirror returned to its dull surface.

I told my parents the next morning, but they dismissed it as a dream or a trick of the light. I tried to forget, but each night, the same thing happened. The child in the mirror grew clearer, and I began to notice details—the torn clothes, the bare feet, the way its head tilted at an unnatural angle. It never spoke, but I felt its loneliness, a deep ache that pulled at my chest. I started leaving a small lamp on at night, hoping to banish the glow, but the mirror seemed to absorb the light, making the room darker.

One night, I decided to confront it. I approached the mirror and placed my palm against the cool glass. The child’s image wavered, then reached out its hand, pressing against mine from the other side. For a moment, I felt a cold, tingling sensation, and then the mirror rippled like water. Before I could pull away, the glass softened and my hand slipped through, into a void that was both empty and full. I yanked back, and the mirror solidified again. But now, I could see a crack running from the corner, and the child had vanished.

The next day, I noticed the crack had grown, and a strange smell lingered in my room—like damp earth and old wood. I began to have nightmares, not of the child, but of a vast, dark expanse where I was falling, and something was watching. I told my grandmother, who had come to visit, and she grew pale. ‘You’ve opened the window,’ she whispered, ‘to the place between. Now you must close it, before it finds a way through.’

She gave me a small pouch of herbs and told me to place it behind the mirror, then to say a prayer to the saints. I did as she said, but the crack continued to spread. One evening, as I sat on my bed, I heard a faint tapping from inside the mirror. The child was there again, but now its face had features—hollow eyes, a mouth stretched in a silent scream. It pressed its hands against the glass, and I saw the cracks begin to spider outward, like veins.

Panic seized me. I grabbed the mirror, intending to smash it, but as my fingers touched the frame, a cold hand gripped my wrist from inside. I screamed, but no sound came. The child pulled, and I felt myself being dragged toward the glass. The room spun, and I saw my own reflection in the mirror, but it was not me—it was the child, wearing my face, smiling. The last thing I remember was the sound of glass shattering, and then darkness.

I woke up in a hospital bed, my parents crying with relief. They told me I had fallen from my bed and hit my head, and that I had been unconscious for three days. The mirror was in pieces on the floor, and they had already thrown it away. But when they left, I looked at my reflection in the window, and I saw it—the child’s hollow eyes staring back at me from my own face. I blinked, and it was gone. But now, whenever I pass a mirror, I see it for just a fraction of a second, waiting, and I know that it found its way through after all.