Chapter 7: Reflections of a Stranger

Chapter 7: Reflections of a Stranger

The radio was back under the floorboards, the footlocker was back in its cavity, but the silence it had left behind was permanent. Leo no longer heard quiet in the house; he heard the pause after the inhale. He felt the weight of a gaze that didn't need eyes. Putting the radio back did nothing. He had picked up the receiver, and the thing on the other end of the line knew his name.

His life had shrunk to the four walls of his bedroom. Sleep was a series of panicked jolts in the dark, his ears straining for the tell-tale cessation of sound that preceded the 3:17 a.m. appointment. But it didn't come. For two nights, the entity was silent, and that was somehow worse. It was the unnerving stillness of a predator that knows it has its prey cornered. The hunt was over; now it was just waiting.

Leo’s desire had been whittled down to a single, desperate point: he wanted to feel solid ground beneath his feet again. He wanted to believe in physics, in cause and effect, in a world not governed by whispers from a dead frequency. He had to prove to himself that the house was just a house.

On the third day, driven by a claustrophobic need for motion, he forced himself out of his room. Cal was in his usual spot at the kitchen table, meticulously drawing the three-pronged symbol on a placemat. He didn't look up as Leo passed, his focus absolute. The vessel was dormant, its passenger content to wait.

Leo started cleaning, a frantic, mindless activity. He scrubbed at countertops, swept floors, his actions a rebellion against the creeping decay he felt in the very air. As he wiped down the living room window, his cloth moving over the crinkled surface of the tinfoil, he saw it.

Out of the corner of his eye, the foil rippled.

He stopped, his hand hovering. It wasn't a draft. It was a slow, deliberate undulation, like the surface of a pond disturbed from beneath. A single, three-foot section of the foil bulged outward slightly, held its shape for a beat, and then smoothed itself out again. It was as if something unseen had pressed its hand against the other side of the window, a window that only looked out onto the overgrown backyard.

He stared, his heart a cold, heavy lump in his chest. The entity’s influence was bleeding out, seeping from Cal’s body and into the very structure of the house. The foil wasn't just to block signals from getting in; it was to keep something from getting out. Or perhaps it was now serving as a conductor, amplifying the presence that was already here.

He backed away from the window, his attempt at normalcy shattered. The house was a cage, and the bars were starting to feel malleable, thin. He retreated toward the hallway, needing the sanctuary of his room. It was then that he saw the one place he had been subconsciously avoiding for over a week.

The bathroom.

Cal, in his paranoid crusade, had covered every reflective surface he could think of—the living room mirror, the television screen, the windows. But he had missed one. The small, cheap medicine cabinet mirror in the bathroom, its surface clouded with soap scum and grime. It was an oversight that now felt like a deliberate, gaping wound in the house's defenses. A gateway left open.

Leo stood before it, his reflection a pale, haunted stranger. His eyes were bruised with exhaustion, his face gaunt. He looked like a man already half-devoured. He needed to wash his face, to feel the shock of cold water, to perform a single act that belonged to his old life. He gripped the edges of the porcelain sink, the cold seeping into his fingertips, and leaned forward. He splashed water on his face, the sensation sharp and real. For a moment, it worked. He was just a guy in a bathroom.

He raised his head, water dripping from his chin, and looked back into the mirror.

And he was no longer alone.

It wasn't a sudden appearance. It was a coalescing, a gathering of shadows in the space directly behind his own reflection. A figure was standing there, tall and impossibly thin, its form wavering like a mirage on a hot road. It had the basic shape of a man, but the proportions were all wrong. Its limbs were too long, its neck too slender, its head a featureless oval of deeper shadow. It was a sketch of a person drawn with static and dread.

Leo was frozen, paralyzed by a terror so profound it transcended sound. He couldn't scream; he couldn't even breathe. He and his reflection stared at the thing that stood between them. The entity in the glass, this stranger made of whispers, slowly lifted a long, skeletal arm. The movement was fluid and unnatural, like a tape being played in reverse. Its shadowy, indistinct fingers reached out and, in the mirror, came to rest on his reflected shoulder.

The moment the touch was made in the reflection, an unbearable, piercing cold bloomed on Leo’s actual shoulder. It wasn't the chill of a draft; it was a dead, cellular cold, a void of heat that felt like it was sinking directly into his bone. He gasped, a ragged, painful intake of air, and stumbled backward, breaking eye contact with the mirror. He crashed against the bathroom door, his hand flying to his shoulder, trying to rub away the phantom chill.

He threw the door open and scrambled into the hallway, his mind a whiteout of panic. He didn't stop until he collided with something solid.

It was Cal.

Leo recoiled, expecting to see the vacant eyes of the vessel, to hear the layered, static voice. But he was wrong. He was looking at Cal. The real Cal. The old man’s eyes were wide with a frantic, desperate clarity Leo hadn’t seen since the day of the mirrors. The confusion and raw terror in them mirrored his own.

“He saw you,” Cal rasped, his voice a panicked, human whisper. He grabbed Leo’s arm, his grip a vise of wiry, desperate strength. It wasn't a threat; it was a plea. “He’s testing the connection. Calibrating.”

“Cal, what is it? What’s happening?” Leo stammered, the cold on his shoulder making him shiver violently.

“No time,” Cal hissed, his eyes darting nervously towards the living room, as if he could feel his passenger stirring. “It chose you. Your mind… it’s quiet. Not like mine. All the noise, the memories… it makes for a dirty signal.”

The words were a direct, horrifying confirmation of everything Leo had feared. The entity's assessment, Cal's own history—it was all one terrible, converging path leading straight to him.

“Listen to me,” Cal said, his grip tightening, his knuckles white. He leaned in close, his breath smelling of stale coffee and fear. The words were a torrent, a final, desperate broadcast from a man about to be cut off the air for good.

“It wants a stronger signal,” he whispered, his eyes boring into Leo’s. “It’s making space. You have to… you have to…”

He stopped. A tremor ran through his body. The light of recognition in his eyes flickered, struggled for a moment, and then was extinguished as if a switch had been flipped. The fierce grip on Leo’s arm went slack. Cal blinked slowly, his expression smoothing into that familiar, placid blankness. He looked down at his own hand, still resting on Leo’s arm, with a look of mild, detached curiosity.

Then, without another word, he turned and shuffled back toward the kitchen, the moment of lucidity gone as quickly as it had arrived. The vessel was back online.

Leo was left alone in the hallway, the echo of the warning hanging in the silent air like the afterimage of a flashbulb. It wants a stronger signal. The forum post, the entity's own declaration, and now the desperate plea from the prisoner inside the machine. He was no longer just the next target. He was the upgrade. And the thing in the house was beginning the installation.