The Shattered Mirror of Hollow Creek

In the autumn of 1987, in the sleepy town of Hollow Creek, two best friends, Marla and June, were sixteen and restless. They had heard the rumors about the old Brannigan house, abandoned for decades after the family vanished without a trace. The house sat at the end of a dirt road, surrounded by skeletal oaks, its windows like vacant eyes. One moonless night, fueled by boredom and a dare, they decided to hold a séance in the mansion’s dusty parlor, using a homemade spirit board they had crafted from a piece of oak and a shattered mirror shard as the planchette.

They lit a circle of black candles, their flames flickering in the stagnant air, and sat cross-legged on the cold floor. The only light came from the candles and the faint glow of a dying flashlight. At midnight, they placed their fingertips on the mirror shard, its jagged edges glinting. Marla, the bolder one, initiated the ritual. ‘We call upon any spirit that lingers in this house,’ she said, her voice steady but her hands trembling. ‘Speak to us through this board.’

They asked the usual questions: ‘How many children will we have?’ ‘What will our husbands’ names be?’ But the mirror shard remained stubbornly still, as if it were nailed to the board. June pushed it slightly, but Marla yanked her hand away, insisting no cheating. The shard didn’t budge. Annoyed, June asked, ‘How many people are in this room right now?’ The board seemed to vibrate, but the shard stayed put. They asked again, and the candles flickered wildly, their flames bending toward the boarded-up windows. Still, the shard moved not an inch.

On the third attempt, as the words left June’s lips, the mirror shard jerked violently, ripping from their fingers. It flew across the room and embedded itself in the cracked mirror that hung on the far wall, spider-webbing the glass. Then the spirit board itself lifted off the floor, slammed into the mirror, and slid down, leaving a streak of something dark. All the candles snuffed out simultaneously, plunging the room into absolute darkness. The air grew cold, and a faint, rhythmic scraping sound came from the floor above, like something dragging itself across the dry boards.

Terrified, Marla and June scrambled to their feet and bolted for the front door, their footsteps echoing in the empty house. They didn’t stop running until they reached the main road, gasping for breath. They never spoke of that night again, but both carried a lingering dread. Years later, June confessed to Marla that she still had nightmares of a woman’s face in that mirror, her mouth open in a silent scream, and that the mirror shard had cut her palm, leaving a scar that would never heal. Marla, too, bore a scar—an identical one on her wrist, in the shape of a crescent moon, even though she had been cut on the other hand. And sometimes, in the dead of night, they both heard a faint whisper, not in their ears, but inside their skulls, asking: ‘How many are in the room now?’