The Yellowed Photographs

In the autumn of 2009, when I was forty-seven, my wife and I moved into a sprawling Victorian house on the outskirts of a mill town in northern England. It was a last-minute decision, driven by my new job at a nearby university, and the house, though grand, had a damp, neglected air. The estate agent was eager to offload it, and we, desperate for space, took it on a year’s lease. The previous tenants had left in a hurry, and the house was full of their abandoned belongings. It was in the upper rooms that we found the photographs.

They were in a cardboard box in the attic, among moth-eaten curtains and cracked china. The photographs were all of the same woman, taken over many years, from youth to old age. She was always standing in the same spot, in front of a large, ornate mirror in what was now our bedroom. In each photo, the woman’s face was obscured, either by shadow or by the angle of the camera, but her posture grew more hunched, her clothes more dated. The last photograph was of an empty room, just the mirror, and a faint, blurry shape at the edge of the frame. I dismissed it as sourceless, but my wife, Clara, was unsettled. She said she often felt watched in that room, a prickling at the back of her neck.

At first, it was small things. The mirror in that bedroom would be slightly askew, even after we straightened it. A faint, cold draft would sweep across the room, despite the windows being sealed. Clara began to have nightmares, waking up gasping, saying she saw an old woman standing at the foot of the bed, pointing at the mirror. I, a rational man, a scientist by training, attributed it to the stress of moving and the house’s gloomy atmosphere. I even took to sleeping in the spare room to escape her restless tossing, but the unease followed me.

Then, the photographs began to change. The one of the empty room was now not empty. In it, the woman’s reflection was faintly visible in the mirror, a mere shadowy outline. I showed it to Clara, and she went pale. ‘We have to get rid of them,’ she whispered. I agreed, and the next day, I burned the entire box in the backyard. The fire gave off a strangely sweet, cloying smell, and the photographs curled and blackened, but the woman’s face seemed to stare out from the flames, unburned. I told no one, but a cold dread settled in my stomach.

That night, Clara refused to enter the master bedroom. She slept on the sofa. I, stubbornly, went to our bed, turning the mirror to face the wall. I fell asleep quickly, exhausted. I dreamt of the woman. She was standing before the mirror, combing her long, gray hair. She turned to me, and for the first time, I saw her face. It was not old, not young, but etched with sorrow. She didn’t speak, but I somehow knew she was trapped, bound to the house, her image etched into the glass for eternity. I woke with a start, the room icy cold.

The mirror was facing the room again. And in its reflection, I saw not my own face, but hers. She was standing behind me, her hands hovering near my shoulders. I whirled around, but there was no one. When I looked back at the mirror, my reflection was my own, but there was a new photograph taped to the corner of the frame. It was a picture of me, asleep in bed, the mirror in the background, and in the mirror, the woman was clearly visible, smiling.

I tore the house apart looking for more photographs, but found nothing. My rational mind was crumbling. I called a friend, a historian, who told me that the mirror was said to be from a local asylum, where a patient, Eleanor, was kept in a room with that mirror until her death. She was reportedly obsessed with her own reflection, and after she died, the mirror was said to have ‘captured her spirit.’ The story was dismissed as folklore.

Clara moved us to a hotel the next day. But I couldn’t leave. I was drawn back to the house, to the mirror. I sat before it, hours on end, staring into its depths. I saw glimpses of the woman’s life—a lonely childhood, a broken marriage, the loss of a child. I felt her loneliness, her despair. And I heard a whisper, as if from a great distance, ‘You see me now. Don’t look away.’

I knew then that I was no longer just an observer. The mirror was calling to me, wanting me to join her. My reflection began to flicker, to age, to morph. I saw myself as an old man, standing beside her in the glass. I recoiled, but I was hooked. I spent every waking hour in front of that mirror, ignoring Clara’s pleas, my work, my life.

On the final night, the woman in the mirror reached out, and her hand passed through the glass. I took it. The mirror shattered, not into a thousand pieces, but into a cascade of photographs, all of them showing me and Eleanor, together, in this world and the next. And then, silence. Clara found me the next morning, collapsed on the floor, my face aged decades, my hair white. The mirror was whole again, and in it, my reflection was gone. I had joined her.

Now, I am the woman in the mirror. I wait for the next occupant, the next person who feels watched, who sees my photographs. I don’t want to trap them, but I cannot help it. The mirror is a prison, and I am its keeper. If you ever come to this house, do not look into the mirror for too long. You might see not yourself, but me. And I will see you.