The Riverside Mirror

The town of Ashford had always been quiet, nestled among the rustling cornfields and the slow, muddy river that cut through the county. I was seventeen when I moved there with my family, into a farmhouse that had stood for over a century. The house creaked with age, and the wind through the cracks sounded like whispers, but I never believed in ghosts. Not until the dreams started.

It began with a recurring nightmare: I was standing at the edge of the river, watching my own body float face-down in the murky water, my hair spread like black weeds. The water was thick and dark, like old blood, and I could smell decay. I would try to scream, but no sound came, and then I would feel a gentle but insistent shaking at my shoulder, pulling me awake. I’d sit up in my bed, my heart pounding, and find the room empty. The feeling was so real that I began to dread falling asleep.

The dreams grew more specific. I saw myself in my grandmother’s bathroom at her house, which was four miles away. The bathtub was filled with a liquid so dark and thick that it looked like oil, but I knew it was blood. My body was submerged, eyes open, staring at the ceiling. I was a cadaver, a relic of something awful. Again, the gentle shaking, and I’d wake up gasping, covered in sweat, the smell of iron clinging to my nostrils.

One night, the dream was so vivid that I woke up to find that I was not in my bed but standing in front of the bathroom mirror in my own house. My reflection was wrong—my hair was wet, my skin pale, and my eyes were the color of the river at dusk. The mirror was fogged, as if someone had just taken a hot shower, and I saw a handprint on the glass. I didn’t remember getting out of bed. I felt a panic so cold it was like ice in my veins.

I decided to visit my grandmother’s house the next day, hoping to exorcise the fear by facing the place. The house was the same as always—a creaky Victorian with peeling wallpaper and a musty smell. My grandmother, a woman of eighty with kind eyes and a sharp tongue, welcomed me with a hot cup of tea. But when I mentioned the nightmare, her face went pale, and she dropped the cup, which shattered on the floor.

‘That bathroom,’ she whispered. ‘You must never go in there alone.’

I pressed her for details, but she refused, saying only that something terrible had happened in that room many years ago, long before I was born. She made me promise to leave the door locked, which I did, but my curiosity was a gnawing worm.

That night, the dream was worse. I was submerged in the tub, my lungs filling with the thick liquid, and I could hear a voice, muffled, like someone speaking through water. It said, ‘You are not to leave.’ I fought against the weight, and then I felt the shaking again, rougher this time, and I woke up with the sheet twisted around my ankles, the taste of copper on my tongue.

I couldn’t take it anymore. The next morning, I drove to my grandmother’s house, determined to unlock the bathroom door. The house was empty—she had gone to town. The key was in the lock, as if waiting for me. I turned it, and the door swung open with a sigh that was almost human.

The bathroom was like a time capsule: hexagonal tiles, a claw-footed tub, a mirror with a tarnished frame. The air was thick with the smell of violets and something else, something metallic. I approached the tub, which was empty, but the drain was stained with brownish rings. I looked into the mirror, and for a moment, I saw a reflection that wasn’t mine. A woman with hollow eyes and a gash across her throat, standing behind me. I spun around, but there was no one.

I felt a cold hand on my shoulder, and I knew it was the same hand that had been shaking me awake all these weeks. But this time, it didn’t wake me. It pushed me gently, but insistently, toward the tub. I tried to resist, but my legs were like lead. I stumbled, and fell, my hand reaching out to catch myself—and then I plunged into the tub. The water was dark, thick, and it closed over my head. I tried to scream, but I breathed in the liquid, and it felt like drowning.

I woke up on the floor, the tub empty, my clothes soaking wet and stained with something that might have been rust. My grandmother stood over me, her face a mask of horror. ‘You found it,’ she said, her voice shaking.

She told me the story then. My great-aunt Eleanor had died in that tub in 1924, a suicide attributed to grief, but it was murder. Her husband had cut her throat, and the authorities had covered it up, calling it an accident. Her ghost had been trying to reach out, to tell someone the truth, and I, with my sensitivity, was the first to hear her. The shaking was her attempt to wake me, not to harm me, but to save me from the same fate. My dreams were not premonitions of my death, but of hers.

After that, the dreams stopped. But sometimes, when I look into a mirror, I see her reflection behind me, and I feel a draft on the back of my neck, as if she’s still trying to tell me something. I moved away, but the memory lingers, like the smell of violets and blood. The river still flows, and sometimes, when the water is calm, I see a face looking up at me from the surface, and I know that some stories never end, they just wait for someone else to listen.