Chapter 3: The Weight on My Chest

Chapter 3: The Weight on My Chest

By the time Elara was thirteen, the war had settled into a cold, grinding stalemate. Her life was a meticulously constructed fortress built to starve the enemy. Every mirror in her bedroom was covered with a thick blanket or a poster of some boy band she didn't actually like. The large, antique mirror in the hallway was permanently shrouded by a heavy sheet, a silent, shrouded monument to the day her mother’s patience had finally shattered. She had learned to navigate her world by avoiding its reflective surfaces: she showered in a steam-filled bathroom, brushed her teeth with her eyes fixed on the sink basin, and caught only fleeting, fractured glimpses of herself in storefront windows, never allowing her gaze to linger.

Her parents had ceased their attempts to reason with her. An unspoken truce had formed in the household, a fragile peace built on the agreement that they would not talk about “it.” They treated her fear like a chronic illness, something to be managed with quiet patience and a profound, unspoken sadness. They saw a troubled daughter, anxious and withdrawn, and loved her fiercely without understanding her at all. Elara, in turn, learned to suffer in silence, her screams locked behind her teeth.

Her desire was no longer for a normal life—that felt like a far-off, impossible dream. Now, she just yearned for a single night of dreamless, empty sleep. A few hours of true rest.

It was on a Tuesday night in the stifling heat of late August that the enemy broke the stalemate and launched a new, horrific offensive.

Elara went to bed exhausted, the day’s anxieties clinging to her like humidity. She performed her nightly rituals: checking that the quilt over her vanity was secure, angling her reading lamp so it wouldn't cast a reflection on the dark glass of her window, and positioning her pillow so she faced the solid, comforting wall. She fell into a heavy, restless sleep, tumbling into a dream of running through the endless, identical hallways of her school, the sound of a slow, rhythmic dripping echoing from just around every corner.

She surfaced from the dream not with a gasp, but with a terrifying stillness. Her eyes fluttered open. The dream was gone, but she was still trapped.

She was awake. She could see the familiar shapes of her room bathed in the faint moonlight filtering through her curtains. Her bookshelf, the lump of clothes on her chair, the covered mirror. She could hear the hum of the air conditioner and the distant rumble of a truck on the highway. Her mind was perfectly clear, screaming commands to her body. Roll over. Sit up. Scream.

But her body would not obey. She was pinned to her mattress as if by an immense, invisible force. Her limbs were leaden, her head locked in place. A low, vibrating hum filled her ears, drowning out the sound of the A/C. She tried to draw a full breath, but her lungs would only take in shallow, panicked sips of air. The scream was a solid ball of terror lodged in her throat, unmovable. This was not a dream. This was something else. Something worse.

From the darkest corner of her room, where the moonlight didn't reach, a shadow detached itself from the others. It wasn't a sudden movement, but a slow, deliberate peeling away from the darkness, a deeper black against the black. The shape resolved itself into a familiar, dreaded silhouette. The Girl.

She was older now, a gangly, horrifying mirror of Elara’s own thirteen-year-old self. Her limbs were too long, her joints too sharp beneath the tattered, filthy nightgown. She moved with a jerky, unnatural grace, drifting across the floorboards without a sound. The faint smell of damp soil and something sweet and rotten, like flowers left too long in a vase, preceded her.

Elara’s heart hammered a frantic, useless rhythm against her ribs. Movemovemove! her mind shrieked. But her body remained a statue of flesh and bone.

The Girl reached the side of the bed. For a long moment, she just stood there, her head tilted, the black voids of her eyes fixed on Elara’s face. The mattress dipped beside Elara’s hip. A real, physical weight. This wasn’t a reflection. This wasn’t a trick of the light. This was real.

With excruciating slowness, The Girl began to crawl onto the bed. Elara felt the shift in the mattress as the creature moved over her legs, her stomach. The weight was bone-crushing, and it carried a damp, penetrating cold that seeped through her blankets and into her skin. Finally, the entity settled itself directly onto her chest, straddling her, its bony knees digging into her ribs.

The pressure was immense. Each shallow breath was a struggle against the crushing weight. Black spots danced in her vision. The Girl’s matted, greasy hair fell forward, brushing against Elara’s cheek. The touch was like a spider’s web, both light and disgustingly sticky.

She leaned down, bringing her decayed face inches from Elara’s. Elara could see the fine web of cracks in her grey skin, the way her gums had receded from her teeth, the utter, light-swallowing emptiness of her eyes. The parody of a smile stretched her lips, a silent, mocking grin that promised endless torment. This was it, Elara thought, a distant, detached part of her brain taking over. This is how I die. Suffocated in my own bed by a monster that wears my face.

But The Girl didn't press down harder. She simply watched, her head cocked as if listening to the frantic, silent screams inside Elara's mind. Then, her cracked lips parted.

A sound emerged. It was not a screech or a moan. It was a voice. A voice that was almost Elara’s own, but hideously distorted, as if a recording of her had been left to warp and melt in the sun. It was thin, reedy, and wet, each word dragging itself into existence.

“Follow me.”

The two words were not a shout, but a sibilant, intimate whisper that slid directly into Elara’s ear. It was not a threat. It was a command. An invitation to a place Elara could not begin to imagine, a place that smelled of rot and cold earth.

And then, as suddenly as it began, it was over.

The weight vanished. The cold dissipated. The buzzing in her ears faded, replaced by the frantic thumping of her own blood. With a convulsive, ragged gasp, Elara broke free. She shot upright in bed, air flooding her starved lungs in painful, heaving sobs.

Her eyes darted around the moonlit room. It was empty. The corner was just a corner. Her clothes were still lumped on the chair. The air smelled only of clean laundry and the faint, dusty scent of old books.

There was no sign that anything had been there. No indentation on the mattress beside her, no strand of matted hair on her pillow. There was only the slick, cold sweat that soaked her pajamas and the phantom sensation of crushing weight on her chest.

And the echo of those two words.

Follow me.

Elara hugged her knees to her chest, trembling uncontrollably. She stared across the room at the hulking, blanket-draped shape of her vanity mirror. For years, she had thought the danger was in the glass, that the reflections were the monster’s only way in. A profound and terrifying understanding dawned on her. She had been wrong. The mirrors were never the prison. They were just the windows.

Now, the door was open. And her bed, the one place in the world she was supposed to feel safe, had just become the heart of the battlefield.