The Mirror Room

My tía Clara’s wedding in the highland town of San Miguel de Allende was a week-long affair of mariachi bands and cascading fireworks, but I was fifteen and allergic to celebration. My parents had dragged me, my twin sisters, and my older brother from our flat in Austin to a colonial city that smelled like roasted corn and burnt sugar. By the third hour of the reception, I was counting tiles on the hacienda floor, and my sisters, Luna and Stella, were slumped against each other like wilted flowers.

My father, seeing our collective misery, offered an escape: ‘We’ll drive to your abuela’s house. It’s empty, but it’s quiet. You can rest, draw, whatever. Just don’t ask to come back early.’ I nodded, already dreaming of a dark room and a sketchpad. The drive wound through cobblestone streets and arid hills, past churches with peeling bell towers, until we reached a crumbling villa at the edge of town, half-swallowed by bougainvillea.

The house was a labyrinth of mismatched furniture and religious paintings with glassy eyes. I had only visited twice, as a very young child, and the memory was a blur of cool tiles and the smell of mothballs. My father, in a hurry to return to the festivities, gave us a brief tour: the kitchen with its ancient stove, the living room with a piano nobody played, the hallway of locked doors. ‘Stay upstairs. Don’t wander,’ he said, and then he was gone, and the engine of his rental car faded into the night.

I claimed the corner room on the second floor, which had a wrought-iron bed and a window overlooking a courtyard of dead roses. I told Luna and Stella to stay put and be quiet. ‘Don’t play on the spiral staircase. It’s old.’ They rolled their eyes but obeyed, settling into a game of cards on the floor. I lay on the bed, sketchpad open, but the exhaustion of travel and the drone of distant cicadas pulled me under.

I woke to a silence so profound it felt like a held breath. The light through the window had turned a sickly orange—sunset, or perhaps something worse. My sisters were gone. Their cards were scattered, but no game was unfinished. I called their names, but the house swallowed my voice. I stepped into the hallway, where the only light came from a single bulb swaying at the far end, casting long, wavering shadows. The spiral staircase, a coil of iron and wood, descended into darkness. I didn’t want to go down, but I needed to find them.

I crept down, each step creaking like a complaint. The air grew colder, and the smell of dust turned to something metallic, like old coins. At the bottom, the hallway stretched in both directions, but on the wall where I remembered a window, there was now a door. It was slightly ajar, painted a deep green that seemed to absorb the light. I had never seen it before. I pushed it open.

The room beyond was a paradox: it was larger than the house could possibly contain, and it was filled with mirrors. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors, angled in impossible ways, reflecting not the room but other rooms—corridors with peeling wallpaper, staircases that went up and down in impossible spirals, doorways that led to more doorways. In the center of the room stood a single chair, and on it sat a doll—a porcelain child with cracked cheeks and buttons for eyes. At its feet were two locks of hair, one blonde, one brown. My sisters’.

I stepped back, but the door was gone. The mirrors now showed me at every angle, but my reflection was wrong. In the mirror to my left, I was older, my face gaunt and desperate. In the mirror to my right, I was a child, crying. And in the mirror directly ahead, I was not alone. A figure stood behind me—a woman in a white dress, her face a blur, her hands reaching for my shoulders. I spun around, but no one was there. When I turned back, the mirrors had changed. Now they showed my sisters, Luna and Stella, wandering through identical mirror rooms, calling for me, but their voices were thin, as if from far away.

I realized the house was a trap, a mirror maze that fed on the lost. The doll was a guardian, or a warning. I remembered my grandmother’s stories of ‘la casa de espejos,’ a place where the dead could peer through the reflections, where a careless wish could trap you forever. I wished I had never come. And the mirrors rippled.

I started running, but every turn led to another mirror room. I saw my sisters in one, but when I approached, it was a reflection of a reflection, and they were already gone. I saw the woman again, closer now, her face beginning to form—it was my own, but twisted. I screamed, and the mirrors shattered, but instead of glass, they bled light.

I woke in the corner room, my heart pounding. The sketchpad was on my lap, and the window showed a pale dawn. My sisters were asleep on the floor, their cards still scattered. I breathed a sigh of relief. I turned to the window, and in the reflection, I saw the mirror room behind me, and the doll, now holding a third lock of hair. It was mine. But the story doesn’t end there. I never told my parents. I never went back to that house. But sometimes, when I look into any reflective surface—a window at night, a polished spoon—I see the mirror room, and the doll, always waiting. And I know that one day, it will come for the rest of me.