The Refraction of the Fenwick Glass

The first time I noticed it, I was nine, standing in the kitchen of the old house on Ashworth Lane, watching the rain streak down the window. I saw a reflection over my shoulder – a tall, thin shape, like a dried-up tree, just at the edge of my vision. I spun around, expecting my father’s lanky frame, but the kitchen was empty, the only sound the drip of the sink and the patter of rain. I blinked, and it was gone, but the feeling of being watched remained, a cold sliver under my skin.

That feeling never left. It grew with me through the years, a constant companion in that creaking, drafty house. When I was twelve, my belongings started to vanish – a pencil, a hairpin, once my favorite scarf. They’d reappear days later in the most unlikely places: inside a sealed jar in the pantry, under the loose floorboard in the attic, or wedged between the pages of a book I hadn’t touched in months. I began to suspect the house itself, with its crooked doors and sloping floors, was playing tricks on me.

It wasn’t until I turned fourteen that I found the source – or at least, a clue. My mother, a quiet woman who collected antique oddities, had a locked cabinet in her study. I’d always been forbidden from opening it, but one afternoon, overcome by curiosity and a growing sense that answers lay inside, I picked the lock with a paperclip. Inside, among dusty vials and yellowed journals, was a small, ornate hand mirror. The glass was not silver but a strange, smoky green, like the bottom of a bottle from another era. Engraved on the back was a name: ‘E. Fenwick’ and a date: ‘1887’.

I took the mirror to my room, and that night, when I looked into it, the reflection was wrong. My face was there, but behind me, the room was not mine – it was a different place, with peeling wallpaper and a child’s bed in the corner. And in that reflection, I saw a figure – a woman in a dark dress, her face blurred, standing in the doorway. She was not looking at me, but at the child in the bed. I dropped the mirror, and it clattered to the floor, landing face down. When I picked it up again, my reflection was normal, but the room behind me felt colder, emptier.

I became obsessed with the mirror. I spent hours studying it, trying to see the reflection again, but it only showed my own strained face. Meanwhile, the disappearances grew worse. My mother’s locket vanished, then my father’s pipe, and my own diary, the pages that described my fears. I began to fear the mirror, but I couldn’t destroy it – it seemed to wield a pull, a gravity of its own.

One night, at the peak of my teenage desperation, I decided to confront the house. I brought the mirror to the attic, where the air was thick with dust and the smell of decay. I set it on a crate, facing the wall, and began to speak to whatever was in the reflection. ‘Show yourself,’ I said, my voice trembling. The mirror remained dark, but a draft passed through the attic, and the door slammed shut. I was trapped.

In the darkness, I could hear a faint cry – a child’s sob, muffled, as if from behind a wall. I followed the sound to a corner of the attic, where a loose floorboard creaked under my foot. I pried it up with my fingers, and beneath, I found a hollow space. Inside, wrapped in a yellowed cloth, was a photograph: a Victorian family, a stern father, a weary mother, and a young girl with a haunted look. The girl’s eyes were scratched out, and on the back, in faded ink, was written: ‘E. Fenwick, 1887. Taken by the glass.’

I realized then that the mirror was not a mere object – it was a prison, a gateway. Fenwick, whoever she was, had been trapped inside, her soul refracted into the glass, and she had been trying to escape ever since. She had chosen me, because I was sensitive, because I could see her. And she wanted out.

I decided to give her what she wanted. I broke the mirror with a hammer, the glass shattering into a thousand green shards. But in the instant of the break, I saw the room around me dissolve into a gray void, and I felt a cold hand on my neck. I screamed, but the sound was swallowed by a deep silence. When I came to, I was lying on the attic floor, my head throbbing. The mirror was intact, resting on the crate, as if I had never touched it. The photograph was beside me, but the girl’s eyes were no longer scratched out – they were black, and they were looking at me.

I tried to dispose of the mirror – I threw it into the river at the edge of town, but the next morning, it was on my nightstand, the glass fogged as if with breath. I wrapped it in chains and buried it in the woods, but a week later, it was under my pillow, and the foggy smear on the glass looked like a mouth, open in a silent scream.

I realized then I could not escape it. The mirror was a part of me now, a second skin. When I looked into it, I saw myself, but my reflection was not my own – it was her, superimposed, her features overlaid on mine like a mask. And behind me, the room would shift, showing the Victorian bedroom, the child’s bed, the door opening.

I am twenty-five now, and I have not left the house on Ashworth Lane for years. My parents are gone, dead in a car accident that I now suspect was no accident. I live alone, and I keep the mirror in the center of the living room, on a small table, as if it were a shrine. I talk to it sometimes, to her, and she talks back in broken whispers, just out of hearing. I have grown used to the disappearances – my wallet, my keys, my sanity – all vanishing and reappearing in impossible places.

The last time I saw my own reflection clearly was a year ago. I was washing my hands in the bathroom, and in the mirror, I saw a woman with gray skin and hollow eyes, her hair falling in greasy strands. She smiled at me, and I smiled back, not because I wanted to, but because she did. Now, when I look at the Fenwick glass, I see her – fully formed, her hand reaching out of the silver surface, inches from my face, and I know the time is coming when she will pull me in, and I will become the watcher in the glass, waiting for the next person who is curious enough to look. I have left this note pinned to the mirror, in the hope that someone will find it and understand. If you are reading this, do not look into the glass. Do not believe the reflection. And whatever you do, do not break it – because it will break you instead. But I know you will look. They always do.