The Razor’s Slumber

My childhood home sat on the outskirts of a dying mill town in the Pacific Northwest, where the fog rolled in off the river like a shroud. We called it the Finch House, after the family who’d built it a century ago, but by the time we moved in, it was just a drafty, decaying wreck with peeling wallpaper and a basement that breathed dampness. My father, Arthur, was a man of routine, shaving every morning in the small bathroom off the hallway, the scrape of his straight razor a metronome for the house’s creaks. My mother, Evelyn, spent her days in a haze of pills and sherry, and my three brothers—Dale, Marcus, and little Tommy—had learned to walk softly and speak in whispers. We were a family torn by years of hard living: Arthur’s fists, Evelyn’s neglect, and the secrets we all carried like stones in our pockets.

On the morning of my seventeenth birthday, I was up before dawn, lacing my running shoes for a cross-country meet. The air in the hallway was cold, and the floorboards moaned beneath my weight. I passed the bathroom where Arthur stood before the mirror, his face lathered with cream, the razor scraping against his jaw with a sound like a hungry insect. I nodded to him, but he didn’t meet my eyes—he was staring at something in the mirror, something behind his own reflection. I continued toward the kitchen to get a glass of water, but a flicker of movement in the living room snagged my attention.

I turned. The living room was dim, lit only by the gray light seeping through the curtains. And there, hulking in the corner near the dead fireplace, was a shape. It was massive, darker than the shadows around it, a pillar of blackness that seemed to drink the light. It had no discernible features, but it was solid, a presence that pressed against the air like a held breath. I froze, my heart hammering. The thing tilted—if it had a head—and I felt it *looking* at me. Then, with a sound like a sigh, it dissolved, leaving only a faint smell of burnt oil and something ancient.

I didn’t scream. I couldn’t. I backed away, my hand finding the kitchen doorframe, and I stumbled through, panting. Arthur’s razor had gone silent. The house was still. I told myself it was a trick of the dawn light, a shadow cast by an old coat rack. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that it had been waiting for me.

That evening, after the meet—which I ran poorly, my mind elsewhere—I returned home to find the house oddly still. No smell of supper. No sound of the television. Dale and Marcus were in their room, door shut, and Tommy was sitting on the stairs, his face pale. ‘Dad’s been in the bathroom all day,’ he whispered. ‘He won’t come out.’ I climbed the stairs, each step heavier, and knocked on the bathroom door. No answer. I pushed it open.

Arthur was seated on the edge of the tub, his straight razor in his hand, bloodless. His beard was half-shaved, and his eyes were fixed on the mirror, which was fogged with condensation despite the cold. ‘Dad?’ I said. He didn’t turn. He just raised a hand, pointing at the mirror. I stepped closer, and through the fog, I saw it: a word written in reverse, as if inscribed from the other side. It read ‘MORROW.’ I didn’t know what it meant, but the hair on my arms stood up.

Over the next weeks, the house changed. Dal got a night terror that made him claw at his own face, screaming about a weight on his chest. Marcus started sleepwalking, found standing in the backyard at 2 AM, covered in mud. Tommy refused to sleep alone, and Evelyn’s pills stopped working—she’d stare at walls, muttering about ‘the visitor.’ Arthur grew quieter, his shaving ritual lasting hours, the razor slowly carving patterns into his skin that he didn’t seem to notice. I tried to ignore it, to focus on school, but the house was like a sick animal, breathing its illness into us all.

One night, I woke to a sound like a wet cloth dragging across the floor. I followed it downstairs. The living room was bathed in moonlight, and there it was again: the dark figure, now more defined, with long limbs and a head that tilted at an unnatural angle. It stood over Tommy, who was asleep on the couch, its shadow falling across his face. I screamed. The figure turned to me—I swear it had a face now, a face of nothing—and spoke in a voice that was my father’s and not my father’s: ‘You should have left me buried.’

I ran to wake everyone, but when we turned on the lights, the figure was gone, and Tommy was gone. We searched the house, calling his name, until dawn. In the basement, we found him curled in a corner, covered in dust, babbling about ‘the man in the mirror.’ He’d been down there all night, yet we’d searched that basement first. The door had been locked from the inside.

After that, we decided to leave. We sold the house to a young couple, who moved in with their baby. But a week later, we got a call: the couple had fled, leaving everything behind, claiming the house made them sick. The police found nothing. But when Arthur and I went back to collect the last of our belongings, I saw it again—the figure, now standing in the bathroom doorway, holding my father’s razor. It raised the blade, and I saw my father’s face reflected in it, but older, gaunt, and weeping. ‘It’s not over,’ it said.

We never spoke of the house again, but I carry it with me. Every morning, I look in the mirror, and for a second, I think I see a shape behind my own reflection, waiting. And sometimes, in the quiet moments, I can hear a whisper from the other side of the glass: ‘Morrow.’ I don’t know what it wants, but I know it’s patient. It was buried once, and it will never be buried again.