At first, I thought it was just exhaustion. A trick of the light.But the mirror said otherwise.
My reflection was crying.Not clear tears .... they ran dark, slow, and heavy, streaking down like ink spilled in reverse. They didn't drip; they crawled.
I blinked hard. The mirror blinked later.
The room tilted, and for a moment I saw two versions of it ; one in color, one drained to gray, flickering like two films trying to play on the same reel.In one, everything stood still.In the other, the walls breathed.
A faint hum rose behind the plaster, low and steady, like a heartbeat out of sync with mine.
"You opened it,"whispered the knife from where I'd left it on the desk."Now you have to watch."
The floor beneath me shimmered, the carved symbol glowing faintly as if light were seeping from beneath the boards. My vision swam, and suddenly I wasn't in my room anymore.
I was standing in a hallway lined with doors ; none of them mine.Each door had an eye carved into it, and each eye wept the same black fluid that now streaked my face.
The air smelled of burnt paper and rain.
Somewhere ahead, someone was humming. A woman's voice .... soft, familiar.
"Hush now… hush, little one…"
My mother's song.
I walked toward it, barefoot, the floor cold and rippling under my feet. Every door I passed whispered. Names. Dates. Pleas. One whispered my name twice.
The humming stopped.
And all the eyes turned.
The walls shuddered, cracking like glass, and through those cracks I saw flashes — the kitchen table, my mother's hands, Tom's ring glinting, the knife lying clean and new.
A voice ... hers, I think .... drifted through the break in reality:
"Find what he buried in the dark. It's waiting."
Then everything imploded back into silence.
I hit the floor of my room, gasping, the taste of iron on my tongue. The mirror had shattered. My face was dry.But on the floorboards beside the knife, a single black droplet hissed, sinking into the wood like it had always belonged there....