The Porcelain Mirror

I never trusted the bathroom window. It sat high above the toilet, a frosted glass rectangle that seemed to watch me when I showered. The house itself was an old Victorian that had been remodeled so many times it barely remembered its original shape—the turret had been lopped off, the wraparound porch enclosed, and the basement stairs now led to a sealed door that had once been an entrance to a root cellar. The upstairs bathroom, though, retained a ghost of the original architecture: a slanted ceiling that followed the roofline, and that window, which had been added long after the house was built, cutting into the exterior wall at a strange angle. My wife, Clara, thought I was being paranoid when I mentioned it. ‘It’s just a window, Marcus,’ she’d say, rolling her eyes. But she wasn’t the one who saw it.

It started with a flicker. A shadow moving beyond the frosted glass, just out of focus, like someone pacing on the other side. I told myself it was tree branches—we had a massive oak that leaned toward the house, its limbs scraping the siding. But the motion was too rhythmic, too deliberate. And it stopped the moment I stepped out of the shower to look. The window showed nothing but the gray sky and the oak’s skeletal fingers. I shrugged it off, but the unease lingered.

The next night, I woke to the sound of dripping. Not the steady plink of a faucet, but a sporadic, almost measured patter. I got up, my feet cold on the hardwood, and made my way to the bathroom. The door was ajar, which was odd—I always closed it. Inside, the light was off, but the window glowed with a faint, sickly luminescence, as if the moon were behind it, though the sky was overcast. As my eyes adjusted, I saw something that made my breath catch: on the frosted glass, letters were forming, not on the surface but within the fogged moisture, like a finger tracing them from the other side. They read: ‘MARCUS.’ I stumbled back, knocking over the trash can. The letters faded as quickly as they appeared, leaving only the cold glass.

I told Clara the next morning, but she dismissed it as condensation and a vivid dream. I tried to believe her, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was trying to get in. The window had always been in an awkward spot—right above the toilet, angled so that if you were sitting, you could see the reflection of the hallway in its glass when the light was on. But that reflection was wrong. Sometimes, I’d catch a glimpse of a figure standing behind me, but when I turned, there was no one. I started covering the window with a towel, but the figure appeared on the towel’s surface, a black silhouette pressed against the fabric from the inside.

I began to research the house’s history. The previous owner, an elderly man named Mr. Holloway, had died in the bathroom. The coroner’s report said a heart attack, but the realtor had let slip that he’d been found slumped against the toilet, staring up at the window. The house had been built in the 1920s by a man who had lost his wife to a mysterious illness. He’d added the bathroom window to ‘let in light’ for his ailing wife, but neighbors whispered that he’d walled up his wife’s room after she died, and that the window was placed to watch over her grave in the backyard. I dug deeper. The name on the death certificate was Eleanor Pemberton, and she’d been buried in the yard, though the grave had been moved when the property was sold. But the ground beneath the bathroom still held something.

One night, I couldn’t resist. I pulled up the floorboards under the bathtub. The subfloor was rotted in a spot, and beneath it, a cavity. Inside was a tin box, rusted and sealed with wax. I pried it open with a screwdriver. Inside was a woman’s diary, the pages brittle and yellowed. It was Eleanor’s. The last entry, dated a week before she died, read: ‘He thinks I cannot see the window from my room, but I can. It shows more than the yard. It shows the other side. I have seen my own face, but younger, and it mouths words I cannot understand. I have seen the thin man who stands by the oak, watching. He is waiting for the right time.’

I closed the diary, my hands shaking. The bathroom felt colder, and the window seemed darker now, absorbing the light. I looked up—and there, on the glass, a face pressed from the outside. It was not mine, and not Clara’s. It was gaunt, with hollow cheeks and eyes that were black pits. It mouthed something, and I could not hear, but I could read the words on the glass: ‘LET ME IN.’ I screamed, and Clara came running. But by the time she burst in, the face was gone. She saw nothing but my terror.

The next day, I decided to board up the window. I bought plywood and nails, but when I climbed the ladder outside, I saw that the window had been sealed from the outside with bricks. They were ancient, covered in moss, and looked like they had been there for decades. I could not move them. Inside, I tried to nail the plywood to the frame, but the wood splintered and the nails bent. I tried to remove the window entirely, but the frame was fused to the wall, as if the house itself had grown around it. I felt trapped.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, listening to the wind, and then I heard it: a soft tap, tap, tap on the bathroom window. I got up, walked to the bathroom. The towel was gone. The window was clear, and outside, the moon was full. And there, standing in the yard, was a figure. It was the thin man from the diary, and he was waving at me. He gestured for me to come closer. I shook my head. He smiled, and then he pointed at the window. On the glass, in the condensation, words began to appear: ‘YOUR TURN.’ I backed away, and fell to the floor.

Clara woke to find me huddled in the corner of the bathroom, shivering. She called for an ambulance. They said I had a panic attack. But as they wheeled me out, I saw the EMTs glance at the bathroom window, and their faces went pale. One of them whispered, ‘Who’s that?’ I turned. The thin man was there, his hand pressed to the glass, and he was smiling at me.

They say the house is quiet now. Clara left me shortly after, and I moved to an apartment. But sometimes, at night, I feel a draft from a window that shouldn’t be there. And when I look in a mirror, I see a faint reflection of a thin man standing behind me, waiting for me to invite him in. I never use the bathroom in my apartment. I only use the kitchen sink.