The Night the Mirror Wept

In the autumn of 2009, I moved with my family to a rundown house on the outskirts of a small, forgotten town called Blackwood Hollow. The place was a relic of the 1920s, with creaking wooden floors, peeling wallpaper, and a damp smell that clung to everything. We chose the house because rent was cheap, and my father had just lost his job. My younger sister, Lily, and I shared a bedroom at the far end of the second floor, while my older brother, Marcus, took the room next to ours, and my parents claimed the master bedroom at the front.

Our room had a large, old-fashioned mirror bolted to the wall above a worn oak dresser. It was tarnished and warped, and the glass had a strange, silvery sheen that seemed to shift when you weren’t looking at it directly. My sister, who was sensitive to odd energies, complained from the very first night that the room felt ‘heavy’ and that she could hear faint scratching sounds inside the walls. I dismissed it as the house settling, but secretly, I felt a lingering chill whenever I passed the mirror.

A week into our stay, Lily announced she would sleep on the couch downstairs because she ‘couldn’t stand the suffocating air’ in our room. I was secretly relieved to have the bed to myself, even though I felt a pang of guilt. That night, I locked the door, turned off the lights, but left the window open to let in the cool breeze. The moon was nearly full, casting a pale glow through the sheer curtains. I sprawled across the mattress, enjoying the rare solitude, and soon drifted into a deep sleep.

At exactly 2:47 AM, I was yanked from my dreams by a sound that made my blood run cold: a soft, rhythmic tapping against the mirror, as if someone was knocking from the other side. My heart pounded as I lay frozen, listening. The tapping grew more insistent, then stopped. I forced myself to sit up and look at the mirror. In the dim light, I saw a hazy, dark shape forming within the silvered glass—a silhouette of a woman with long, tangled hair, her face obscured by shadow. She raised a hand and pressed it against the glass, leaving a wet, smeared mark that slowly dripped down like tears.

I gasped and scrambled backward, but my back hit the headboard, and I couldn’t move. The figure in the mirror tilted its head as if observing me, and then it began to mouth words I couldn’t hear. I felt a cold breath on my neck, even though no one was behind me. The mirror’s surface rippled, and I watched in horror as the woman’s face pressed closer, her features becoming clearer: pale, rotting skin, sunken eyes, and a mouth stretched into a grotesque, silent scream. She raised her other hand, and now both hands were pressed against the glass, her fingers leaving long, black streaks that looked like scorch marks.

I screamed, but no sound escaped my throat. The woman’s eyes locked onto mine, and I felt an overwhelming pull, as if my soul were being suctioned toward the glass. I grabbed the bedsheet and threw it over my head, rocking back and forth, whispering prayers I hadn’t spoken since childhood. After what felt like an eternity, the cold vanished, and the room fell silent. I dared to peek out from under the sheet. The mirror was normal again, except for a single, black tear streak running down its center.

I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. When dawn broke, I examined the mirror, but the streak was gone. I told my parents, but they dismissed it as a nightmare or the moonlight playing tricks. My sister, however, took me seriously. She confessed that she had seen the same woman in her dreams, standing in our room, pointing to the mirror. She had left because the figure whispered to her, ‘She is coming.’ We both felt that something in that house was waiting, biding its time.

The next night, I decided to sleep with the light on. I pulled the dresser away from the wall and covered the mirror with a heavy blanket. But when I finally dozed off, I woke to find the blanket on the floor, and the mirror exposed. The glass was fogged up, as if from a hot breath, and the words ‘LET ME IN’ were written in the condensation. I stumbled back, tripping, and hit the floor. My scream brought my brother bursting through the door. He saw the words too, and his face paled. He tried to grab me, but the room turned ice-cold, and the lights flickered.

Marcus and I bolted downstairs, waking our parents. They were angry at first, but when they saw our terror and the mirror in the morning still showing those words, despite no one having been in the room, they finally agreed something was wrong. We called a priest, but he refused to step foot in the house, claiming he felt ‘an evil presence’ in the upstairs bedroom. He gave us a vial of holy water and told us to sprinkle it around the mirror.

Thatnight, my father, a stubborn man, decided to stay in our room, armed with the holy water and a flashlight. He told us to sleep in the living room. We did, but I couldn’t rest. At 2:47 AM, I heard a crash and a scream from upstairs. I ran up, despite my mother’s protests, and found my father on the floor, holding his head, muttering, ‘She almost got me. She almost got me.’ The mirror had shattered into a thousand pieces, but the shards were arranged in a perfect circle on the floor, and in the center was a drawing of a figure with empty eye sockets.

We moved out the very next day, leaving our belongings behind. To this day, I still see that woman in my dreams. She stands by my bed, her mouth moving silently, her hands pressed against an invisible pane of glass. She never speaks, but I know what she is saying: ‘I am still waiting.’ And sometimes, in the dead of night, I catch a glimpse of my own reflection, and for a split second, it is not mine—it is hers.