The Twirling Blade

I was 16, it was a humid August afternoon, and the last school bus of the summer had just coughed me out at the end of the gravel driveway. The house, a creaky farmhouse we’d rented for two months, sat alone in a field of dry grass, its paint peeling like sunburned skin. I trudged inside, dropped my backpack by the door, and collapsed onto the lumpy mattress in my room, my face pressed into the stale-smelling pillow. I closed my eyes, letting the heat and exhaustion swallow me.

A few minutes later, I felt the mattress dip at the foot of the bed. My cousin, who lived a mile down the road, had a habit of letting herself in without knocking. Without opening my eyes, I muttered, ‘You’re not going to scare me.’

The weight shifted closer. A cold breath brushed the back of my neck. I rolled over to face my cousin, but my heart stopped. A girl who looked exactly like me, same tangled brown hair, same faded jeans, same pale freckles, sat cross-legged at the corner of my bed. But her eyes were too wide, and her lips twisted into a grin that split her face unnaturally. In her hand, she twirled a butter knife, slow and deliberate, like she was testing its balance.

I screamed, but only a dry rasp came out. I threw my arm over my face, pressing my cheek into the mattress, willing it to be a dream. I counted my heartbeats. When I finally dared to look again, the bed was empty. The only evidence was a faint shimmer of heat in the air where she’d been.

I didn’t tell anyone for weeks. But that night, I noticed the kitchen drawer where we kept the dull knives was slightly ajar. The next morning, I found a single blade of that dry grass, perfectly straight, on my pillow. I ignored it, convinced my imagination was playing tricks.

A month later, as we were packing to leave, I found an old photograph in the attic, hidden between the floorboards. It was of a girl who looked exactly like me, standing in the same field, holding a butter knife. The date on the back was 1987. I showed it to my mother, and she paled, muttering, ‘That’s my sister. She died here in a fire, but she always loved that field.’

I never told anyone else about the girl on my bed, but every time I close my eyes, I still feel that cold breath on my neck, and I know that somewhere, a mirror twin is polishing a knife, waiting for me to return.