The Register’s Reflection

My name is Evelyn Marsh, and I’ve spent my life chasing the strange. As a child, I was terrified of the dark, of the creaks in the old house, of the shadows that seemed to move. But curiosity is a stubborn thing, and it eventually outweighed fear. By the time I was a teenager, I was the one my friends called when they heard bumps in the night. I read everything I could on the paranormal, visited haunted sites, and even joined a small investigative group for a while. But that was then. Now, I’m a mother of two, and the weight of that responsibility has a way of changing your perspective. The unexplained isn’t just a thrill anymore; it’s a potential threat to the little ones I’ve sworn to protect.

My first real test came here in the arid highlands of New Mexico, in a town called Dusty Hollow. It was a place that seemed to exist in a time warp, with a single main street and a general store that had seen better decades. My sister Clara and I had moved there for work, trying to find steady employment after a rough patch. We were still familiarizing ourselves with the area, taking long drives to escape the monotony of our rented duplex. One blistering afternoon, we decided to stop at the only gas station in town, a ramshackle place with a flickering neon sign that read ‘Pueblo Provisions’.

Clara went inside to pay for our snacks and a tank of gas, while I stayed by the pump, fiddling with the nozzle and watching the heat shimmer off the asphalt. The station was old, with a wooden porch and a screen door that creaked every time it opened. After a few minutes, I saw Clara emerge, but she looked wrong. Her face was the color of the bleached cow skulls we’d seen decorating local fences. She walked toward me like a zombie, her eyes wide and fixed on something beyond me. I asked her what was wrong, but she just pointed a trembling finger at the store’s large front window.

‘Look inside,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper. ‘Tell me who you see at the register.’ I squinted through the sun’s glare and saw Mrs. Alvarez, the elderly owner, standing behind the counter, slowly ringing up a customer. I told Clara it was just the owner, and asked why she was so shaken. She grabbed my arm, her nails digging into my skin. ‘I saw Mamá,’ she said, using the name we’d called our grandmother since we were kids. ‘She was standing right behind Mrs. Alvarez, clear as day. She was wearing that old floral dress she loved, and she was looking right at me. And then she was gone.’ Our grandmother had died when we were eleven and thirteen, back in our hometown in Ohio. We were in our early twenties now, and the thought of her ghost appearing here, in this dusty little town, was impossible. Yet Clara’s terror was real.

I dismissed it as a trick of the light, a heat haze playing with her mind. But Clara was adamant, and she refused to go back inside to get our change. I went in myself, feeling a strange unease as I crossed the threshold. The store was dim and cluttered, packed with canned goods and dusty souvenirs. Mrs. Alvarez smiled at me, but her eyes held a knowing glint that made my skin crawl. I paid, and as I was leaving, I glanced at the register. For the briefest moment, I saw it: a reflection in the old, scratched metal of the cash register’s side panel. It wasn’t my reflection. It was a woman in a floral dress, with kind eyes and silver hair. She was standing beside Mrs. Alvarez, but when I blinked, she was gone. A cold shiver ran down my spine, and I hurried out to the car.

Over the next few weeks, the sightings didn’t stop. Clara and I would see flickers of our grandmother in the most mundane places: in the rearview mirror, in the reflection of a store window, in the surface of a still pond. Each time, she was just there, watching us with a gentle concern that felt more ominous than comforting. We started to research the history of Dusty Hollow, digging through the local library’s archives and old newspapers. We discovered that the land where the gas station now stood had once been the site of a mission church, and that during a brutal flu epidemic in the early 1900s, the church had served as a makeshift hospital. The dead were buried in a mass grave nearby, but the grave had long been paved over. The name of the church: La Misión de la Madre, The Mission of the Mother.

As the sightings intensified, so did the sense of dread that hung over our little home. My children began to complain of a lady in their room at night, whispering in a language they didn’t understand. They drew pictures of a woman in a long dress, crying over a cradle. I tried to rationalize it, but the drawings were too detailed, and the features matched the woman in the register reflection. I started to feel like our grandmother, or something wearing her face, was trying to tell us something. I decided to confront the phenomenon head-on, armed with the knowledge that she had never meant us harm in life. Maybe she was trying to warn us about something.

One night, I sat alone in the dark living room, the only light coming from a flickering candle. I called out to her, using her old nickname, ‘Mamá, what do you want?’ The air grew cold, and I felt a presence coalesce in the corner. A faint shimmer appeared, and then she was there, more solid than before. Her lips moved, but no sound came out. She pointed toward the hallway, where my children’s bedroom was, and then toward the front door. As I watched, she mouthed the words, ‘They are coming.’ Then she vanished, leaving me in a sudden silence. A moment later, I heard a low rumble outside, like distant thunder, but the sky was clear. The rumbling grew closer, and the ground began to tremble. I ran to the window and saw a procession of figures emerging from the desert, their forms indistinct, like heat ghosts. They were advancing toward the house.

I woke up screaming. It was a dream, but it felt prophetic. I rushed to the children’s room and found them sleeping peacefully, their drawings scattered on the floor. But one drawing was different: it showed a line of shadowy figures standing before our house, and a woman in a floral dress holding her arms out as if to bar their way. I knew then that our grandmother wasn’t just a ghost; she was a guardian, and whatever was coming, she was trying to prepare us. In the weeks that followed, we made plans to leave Dusty Hollow. The occurrences didn’t stop, but they became less frightening. The sightings of her grew fainter, as if she was satisfied that we were heeding her warning. We packed our belongings and drove away, leaving the town and its spectral history behind. But I never forgot the image of that reflection in the register, and I still wonder if she’s there, watching over the next family that stops at that old gas station, waiting to protect them from the things that lurk just beyond the desert’s edge.