The Unpainted Circle

My grandfather built our house in 2015, a modest two-story in the foothills of the Appalachians. The land had been in our family for generations, but the house itself was new, fresh lumber and drywall, no history to haunt it. Yet I can’t explain what happened, and I know I wasn’t dreaming. It was just past noon, the sun high and bright, casting sharp shadows across the kitchen floor.

I was sitting on the edge of my mother’s bed, waiting for her to finish a phone call downstairs. Her bedroom door was open, and through it, I could see the hallway that curved around the landing, and straight ahead, my own bedroom door, also open. My dresser, a heavy oak piece I’d inherited from my grandmother, stood against the wall right by my door, its mirror reflecting the hallway. I had never paid it much mind; it was just furniture, sturdy and old.

As I glanced up from my phone, I saw something on the dresser’s side. It was a circle, about the size of a dinner plate, a few inches above the wood grain. It was solid, not translucent, and the color was a strange, unnatural green, like oxidized copper or old moss. It didn’t shimmer or glow; it just sat there, flat and opaque, as if painted onto the air. I blinked, rubbed my eyes, but it remained. I felt a cold prickle at the back of my neck, the kind you get when you know you’re being watched.

I stood up slowly, my heart beginning to pound. The circle didn’t move. I took a step closer, and my reflection in the dresser mirror caught my eye. But it wasn’t my reflection. It was a woman, older, in a faded floral dress, standing behind me in the mirror, her face pale and featureless, like a blank canvas. I spun around, but the hallway was empty. When I turned back to the mirror, the woman was gone, but the green circle was now on the mirror’s surface, directly over where my face should have been reflected. It was as if it had transferred.

I stumbled back, trying to call out to my mother, but my voice came out as a croak. The circle began to grow, its edges becoming ragged, like something was eating into the glass. It pulsed, a slow rhythmic throb, and I felt a strange suction, as if it was pulling at my skin. I grabbed the doorframe, my knuckles white, and yanked my gaze away. When I looked again, the circle was gone. The mirror was clear, and the woman was nowhere to be seen. But on the dresser’s surface, where the circle had first appeared, there was a faint ring, like a water stain, that I had never noticed before.

I tried to tell my mother, but she just laughed it off, saying I’d seen a spot of light or some other harmless thing. My therapist suggested it was a classic trope of the mind, a waking dream. But I know what I saw. And I know that since that day, my reflection sometimes lingers a half-second longer than it should when I pass the dresser. And sometimes, if I look directly into the mirror, I see the faint outline of a green circle, just barely there, like a memory of something that never was. I’ve tried to sell the dresser, but every time I do, something brings it back. Now, I just keep it in the corner, covered with a sheet, hoping that one day it will fade away. But I know it won’t. It’s waiting.