Chapter 6: Mirrors and Mockery

Chapter 6: Mirrors and Mockery

The morning after the disembodied voice in his hallway, Ash felt like a stranger in his own skin. His small apartment, once a refuge, now felt like a cage he shared with an unseen predator. He sat on his couch, phone in hand, staring at the group chat he’d started with the others. It was a digital lifeline in a sea of encroaching dread.

Ash: Everyone okay? Anything happen last night?

Zach’s reply was almost instantaneous. Zach: Still at my sister’s. Not going home until I can afford a priest to bless my birds. Not even kidding.

Josh was next, his usual bravado tempered with a new, nervous edge. Josh: All good here. Slept with the lights on, though. And my crucifix from my First Communion. My mom thinks I’ve found Jesus again.

Ash waited. A knot of anxiety tightened in his chest as he stared at the screen, waiting for Maya’s name to pop up. When his phone finally rang, her name flashing on the display, a wave of cold relief washed over him, immediately followed by a surge of terror. People didn't call anymore unless it was an emergency.

He answered, his voice hoarse. “Maya? Are you alright?”

“Ash?” Her voice was thin and brittle, all its usual warmth and composure stripped away, leaving behind the raw, frayed edges of fear. He could hear her ragged breathing, the sound of a muffled sob. “Ash, it’s here. It’s in my apartment.”

“What’s happening? Talk to me,” he said, his own fear forgotten, replaced by a fierce, protective urgency. He was already on his feet, grabbing his keys, his jacket.

“I was watching TV,” she began, her voice trembling so badly he could barely understand her. “Just… trying to distract myself. I turned it off an hour ago. The screen went black.” She paused, taking a shuddering breath. “There was a reflection. A little girl. Standing behind me in the reflection of the TV.”

The words hit Ash like a physical blow. The entity was changing its form, using new masks to terrify them. Reflections. It loved reflections.

“She had long, dark hair covering her face,” Maya continued, her voice dropping to a horrified whisper. “She was just… standing there, in the dark screen. But Ash, when I turned around, there was nothing there. The room was empty. But she’s still in the screen. I can see her right now, she’s just… watching me.”

“Get out of there, Maya. Go to a neighbor’s, go anywhere, just get out of the apartment right now,” he commanded, his mind racing.

“I can’t,” she sobbed, and the sound was one of pure, heartbreaking despair. “It’s not just her. It… it started talking. But it’s not the girl’s voice.” She choked back another sob. “It’s my mother.”

The world seemed to tilt on its axis. Ash stopped dead in the middle of his living room, his keys slipping from his numb fingers and clattering to the floor.

“My mom… she passed away from cancer two years ago,” Maya whispered, the words ragged with grief and terror. “And I can hear her. Her voice is coming from the hallway. It’s calling my name. It’s telling me she misses me, that she’s cold and she wants me to come to her. It’s her voice, Ash. It’s exactly her voice.”

The sheer, calculated cruelty of it was breathtaking. This thing didn’t just want to scare them. It wanted to break them. It was digging into their deepest wounds, finding the people they loved and lost, and twisting their memories into weapons. It had used Maya’s voice to lure him, Zach’s beloved pets to torment him, his own voice to mock him, and now, Maya’s deceased mother to torture her with grief.

“Maya, listen to me,” Ash said, his voice hard, trying to cut through her panic. “That is not your mother. Do you hear me? It’s a trick. It’s a lie. It’s the same thing from the arcade.”

He didn’t know if she heard him. All he could hear was her broken, terrified weeping before the line went dead.

He stood frozen in the silence of his apartment, the phone still pressed to his ear. The guilt, which had been a constant, dull ache, now flared into an agony so profound it buckled his knees. He sank onto the floor, his back against the couch, and dropped his head into his hands.

This was his fault. All of it. Zach’s terror, Maya’s heartbreak, Josh’s newfound fear. He had brought this plague into their lives. He had opened a door ten years ago, and now the monsters were pouring out and hunting his friends.

His gaze fell upon his left palm, and the jagged, faded scar that bisected his life line. He traced it with his thumb, and the walls he had built around the memory crumbled to dust.

He was fourteen again. The air smelled of damp earth and cheap beer. He was in the old cemetery on Miller’s Hill with three other kids, all of them filled with the stupid, invincible bravado of youth. In the center of their circle, resting on a flat-topped tombstone, was a glow-in-the-dark Ouija board from a toy store. It was a game. A joke.

The planchette had moved sluggishly at first, spelling out nonsense. They’d accused each other of pushing it, laughing in the cold, moonlit darkness. But as the night wore on, the air grew heavy, the temperature dropping until their breath plumed in front of them. The laughter died.

Then it was his turn. Feeling bold, feeling reckless, he had placed his fingers on the planchette and asked the question that had sealed his fate. “Is there anything here? Anything that wants to connect with us?”

The planchette had shot across the board as if jolted by electricity. It didn't spell a name. It didn't say yes or no. It moved with a terrifying, deliberate speed.

A. S. H.

M. I. N. E.

A bottle of beer, sitting on a nearby grave, had exploded with a sharp crack, spraying them with glass and foam. They had screamed. In the ensuing panic, as they scrambled to get away, Ash had tried to sweep the board and planchette off the tombstone. The edge of the plastic eye was sharper than it looked. It had sliced his palm open, a deep, bleeding gash.

But it was the sensation that followed that he had truly suppressed. As the blood welled up, he felt a sudden, invasive cold seep into the wound. It wasn't the chill of the night air. It was a deep, internal cold, a feeling of violation, as if an icicle had been plunged directly into his soul. He felt something… latch on. A presence, formless and ancient, sinking its invisible hooks into him, making him its anchor.

He had run home that night, washed the wound, and never spoken of it again. But he had never been truly alone since. For ten years, it had been his silent passenger, a shadow at the edge of his vision, a whisper of dread in his quiet moments. It had been content to feed on his low-level anxiety and guilt, keeping him isolated, keeping him weak.

He looked around his apartment now, seeing it all with a horrifying, new clarity. The reason the haunting at The Pit had escalated so quickly. The reason the mimicry was so personal, so targeted. The reason the spirit box had named its nature to him.

The Pit wasn’t haunted. Not really. The land was probably sour, a place with bad memories that made the veil thin, but it wasn't the source.

It was an amplifier.

The demon hadn't been waiting in the arcade. He had brought it with him. He had carried it through those doors on his first day of work and every day since. He was the epicenter. He was the ghost. The Pit, with its negative energy and labyrinthine darkness, had simply given his personal demon a bigger, stronger playground, and the power to finally reach out and touch the people he cared about.

The fight wasn't about saving an arcade. The horror wasn’t about a haunted building. It was about the monster he had been carrying inside him all along. And now, it was done playing in the shadows. It was out, and it was savaging his friends to get to him.