I had heard whispers about it, just like everyone else. They said it lived in the old houses near the edge of the woods, where the trees grew thick and the air smelled like rot. People who lived nearby knew to stay away, especially after dark, when the sun sunk below the trees and the shadows stretched like fingers across the land.
But I was always the curious type. I didn’t believe in the stories that parents would tell their children, or the warnings that the elders muttered under their breath. I thought it was all superstition. Until I saw it.
It happened on a late autumn evening. The sun had set early, and the wind whispered through the cracked windows of the old house I had wandered into. I had heard about this place for a while—a decaying relic from some forgotten era. I’d heard that people had vanished in the area, but it didn’t faze me. I was alone, with only my curiosity guiding me through the narrow, dark hallways of the house.
At first, it was quiet. Too quiet. The only sound was the slow creaking of the floorboards under my feet, the echo of my breath, and the faintest whisper of something in the air. I couldn’t explain it. It wasn’t a breeze or a rustle. It was more like a presence, one that I couldn’t shake.
I moved deeper into the house. The walls were damp, covered in mold, and the air thick with dust. It felt like time had forgotten this place, and whatever had lived here had long since decayed.
But then, I heard it.
A sound—soft, at first. A faint scraping. I paused. My heart skipped a beat. I turned slowly, and that’s when I saw it.
In the far corner of the room, near the old, cracked mirror, something stood. At first, I thought it was just a trick of the light, some strange shadow playing with my mind. But no. It was real.
It was a figure, standing completely still, just barely visible in the dim light. Its head was unnaturally large, like it had been stretched out of proportion. The skin was taut, almost shiny, like it had been pulled too tight across the skull. There was no hair, just smooth, bald skin that seemed to glisten in the darkness.
Its eyes… God, its eyes. They were pitch black—utterly black. No iris. No whites. Just a solid, void-like darkness that seemed to pulse and reflect things that shouldn’t have been there. It wasn’t just the darkness I noticed—it was the reflection in those eyes. It was as if the eyes themselves were windows into a twisted version of the room, a distorted, broken reality. I saw myself in those eyes, but… wrong. I saw my reflection, but it wasn’t mine. It smiled back at me, an expression I couldn’t remember ever making. The eyes… they weren’t just looking at me. They were watching me. Waiting.
The creature’s face was stretched unnaturally wide. Its mouth was open, revealing large human-like teeth, but they weren’t normal teeth. No. The teeth were far too large for its face, each one jagged and yellowed, and the gums were blackened and decayed, like they had been rotting for years. The smile it wore was wide, too wide, stretched unnaturally around its face. The teeth gleamed in the dim light, sharp and predatory.
Its nose was large, far too large for its face, round and bulbous like it had been pressed on too hard. It seemed to twitch, as if it were smelling something, or perhaps someone. It was a grotesque parody of human features—familiar, yet so wrong.
And then it moved.
I swear, it wasn’t there one second, and then suddenly, it was in front of me. I couldn’t see how it moved. There was no sound, no noise, but it was just there, right in front of me, so close I could feel the coldness radiating from its body. The air around me grew colder, sharper. Its presence was suffocating.
The thing didn’t speak. It didn’t need to. I could feel it in my bones, in the marrow. I could feel it in my mind. It wanted me. It wanted to consume me, not just in body, but in spirit. It wanted to steal who I was, take my soul, and leave me nothing but a husk.
And then, as I tried to turn and run, I caught sight of something—its shirt. The creature was wearing an old, worn-out white shirt, the fabric stained with dark, unidentifiable blotches. The shirt was so worn, it looked as though it had been part of its body for ages, fused with it in a way that made no sense. It was tattered, the edges frayed, and yet the thing wore it like a second skin.
The reflection in the mirror twisted, and suddenly, I was the one who was trapped. The reflection grinned wide, its mouth opening impossibly wide, stretching far beyond the limits of its face. The teeth, the gums, the horrible smile—it all seemed to leak out of the mirror, surrounding me, as though the reflection itself had a life of its own.
I could hear its voice now, though it wasn’t really a voice. It was a whisper, a hiss, echoing in my head.
“You saw it. Now you’ll never leave.”
And then everything went dark.
They never found me. Not really. They found the room. The mirror. The clothes. But I was gone.
The next time you look into a mirror, take a second. Just one. Look into your reflection carefully.
Is it still you looking back?