The Red Moth Clause

When my father, Elias, finally succumbed to the lung rot that had been chewing through his chest for three years, I was not in the room. My brother, Tomas, was with him, holding his hand as the machines flatlined. I was at home, asleep beside our mother, Amara, in the drafty farmhouse we’d inherited from our grandmother. The call came at 6:03 a.m., the phone’s shrill ring slicing through the half-dark. Tomas’s voice was hoarse, cracked with exhaustion. ‘Cover the mirrors. Now. Don’t look into any of them until I get back.’ He hung up before I could ask why.

Our grandmother, old Mirela, had always been superstitious. She swore that when a soul left the body, it lingered for a day, and that mirrors could trap it, leaving it to wander forever between worlds. I’d always dismissed it as the muttering of a frail old woman. But at that moment, with the phone still warm in my hand, I felt a cold prickle at the back of my neck. I tore the embroidered cloth from the kitchen table and draped it over the hallway mirror, the one that had been there since I was a child. Then the one in the bathroom, the one in the living room, the tiny one in the hallway. I did it all without meeting my own reflection, my hands trembling as I worked.

When I returned to the bedroom, Amara was sitting up in bed, her face ashen. ‘He’s gone?’ she asked. I nodded. She didn’t ask about the mirrors; she knew. We sat in silence, the weight of the house pressing down on us. The air was thick, heavy with the smell of dust and old wood. I tried to convince myself it was just grief, but something else was there, a presence that had settled into the corners, watching.

The funeral was three days later. The village elder, a man named Petros, performed the old rites. He burned dried lavender and rosemary in a brass bowl, chanting in a language that felt older than the hills. When he was done, he turned to me and Tomas. ‘The Red Moth has been seen,’ he said, his voice a low rasp. ‘It circled the house three times the night Elias passed. You must bury the mirror.’ I stared at him, my stomach knotting. ‘What mirror?’ I asked. ‘The one in the attic,’ he said. ‘The one your grandmother never let anyone touch.’ I had forgotten about it, hidden under a dusty sheet among old trunks and broken furniture. I remembered climbing up there as a child, once, and seeing a large oval mirror with a tarnished silver frame. Grandmother had caught me and slapped my hand, telling me it was not for the living.

After the service, we gathered in the farmhouse for the wake. Neighbors brought casseroles and pies, speaking in hushed tones. Amara stayed by the kitchen window, staring out at the fields. Tomas and I slipped away, our hearts thudding, and climbed the creaking stairs to the attic. The mirror was exactly where I remembered it, covered in a white sheet. Dust motes danced in the weak light streaming through the cobwebbed window. Tomas pulled the sheet away, revealing the glass. It was clouded, opaque, but as we watched, a faint swirl moved beneath the surface, like smoke trapped inside. ‘We have to bury it,’ Tomas whispered. ‘But the ground is frozen solid,’ I said. ‘It’s November; the soil is like iron.’ Tomas shook his head. ‘Then we wait until spring. But we cannot leave it inside the house.’

We wrapped the mirror in the sheet and carried it down to the barn, setting it in the corner behind a pile of hay bales. We told ourselves it would be safe there. But that night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed, listening to the wind rattling the windows. Around midnight, I heard a faint scratching sound, coming from the barn. I pulled on my boots and a heavy coat and walked out into the bitter cold. The moon was high, casting silver light on the snow-dusted yard. The barn door was slightly ajar, even though I’d latched it. I pushed it open, and the smell of hay and cold metal hit me. The mirror was still there, but the sheet had fallen off, and the glass was moving. I stepped closer, and I saw my father’s face.

He looked as he did in his final days, gaunt, yellow-skinned, his eyes sunken. But his lips were moving, forming words I couldn’t hear. I leaned in, my breath fogging the glass, and a voice, thin as a thread, whispered in my ear, ‘You did this to me.’ I stumbled back, my heart racing. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t. I was frozen. The face in the mirror began to change, contorting, twisting into something not human, a gaping mouth filled with dark, writhing shapes. I finally forced my legs to move, and I slammed the barn door shut, running back to the house. I spent the rest of the night in the living room, with every lamp blazing.

The next morning, I told Tomas what I’d seen. He went pale. ‘The moth is still here,’ he said. ‘He will not let us rest.’ We decided to bury the mirror, even in the frozen ground. We took pickaxes and shovels and chipped away at the earth behind the barn, an hour of backbreaking work, until we had a shallow grave. We lowered the mirror into it, still wrapped in the sheet, and covered it with dirt and stones. As we packed the last mound, the sky above us turned briefly dark, and a red moth, the size of my hand, fluttered past, landing on a fencepost. It sat there, its wings pulsing, as if watching us. Then it flew towards the house and vanished through a half-open shutter.

That was five weeks ago. Since then, strange things have happened. Amara says she hears Elias’s voice in the kitchen, calling her name. Tomas finds his boots moved from the mudroom to the front door. I have started waking up at exactly 6:03 a.m., the time of his death, every single morning, no matter when I go to bed. And last night, I dreamt of the mirror, deep in the earth, cracking open, and a red moth crawling out, growing huge, filling the sky. I woke up screaming, and my mother was standing at my bedside, her face pale, holding a small, tarnished brass key. ‘What is it?’ I asked. She didn’t answer, just pressed the key into my palm. ‘Grandmother gave this to me,’ she said. ‘She said to give it to you when the time came.’ Her voice was a dry rustle. ‘For the attic,’ she said. ‘There’s something else there you need to see.’

I haven’t been able to go back up there, but I know I must. The key is cold in my pocket, a constant reminder. The moth is still fluttering through the house, leaving a trail of red dust. And every night, the mirror, buried in the frozen ground, waits. I don’t know what I’ll find in the attic. But I know it’s connected to my father’s death, and to the words I spoke into that African medium’s ear. I told him I wanted my father to die, and he did. Now, something else wants me to die too. And I’m beginning to understand that the mirrors are not for trapping souls. They are for letting things in.