Chapter 6: The Mocking Image

Chapter 6: The Mocking Image

Alex’s apartment was no longer a home; it was a cage he shared with an invisible predator. He returned from Blackwood Creek with a backpack full of Elara’s instructions and a heart full of cold, hard dread. The knowledge of what he was—a Vessel, a hollow shell chosen for its emptiness—was a heavier burden than the haunting itself. Every quiet moment was now filled with the horrifying implication of Elara’s parting words: it’s starting to learn the shape of yours.

Elara had been clear. A full-on exorcism was impossible. He wasn’t strong enough, and the entity’s roots in his bloodline were too deep. What she’d given him was a first aid kit, not a cure. A simple banishing ritual designed to strengthen the walls of his mind and his home, to push the parasite back, even just a little. To prove to it, and to himself, that the house wasn't entirely vacant.

He waited until the sun had set, the city lights painting a false warmth on his windows. He followed the instructions meticulously, his movements precise and deliberate. He lined the doorways and windowsills with coarse sea salt, the tiny crystals a gritty, white barrier against the unseen. He lit thick, white candles in every room, their clean, steady flames a stark contrast to the oppressive shadows that clung to the corners. He lit a bundle of sage, the pungent, acrid smoke coiling through the air, a cleansing fog in a contaminated space.

The final step was the incantation. An ancient phrase, not of command, but of defiance. A declaration of ownership. He stood in the center of his living room, the heart of the apartment, and took a deep, shaky breath. The air was already changing. The familiar, invasive cold was gathering, pushing back against the candle-warmth, a palpable wave of resentment. The low whispers that usually skittered at the edge of his hearing grew louder, coalescing into a sibilant, overlapping hiss.

“This space is mine,” he began, his voice trembling but clear. “This body is my own.”

He felt a pressure build in the room, the atmosphere thickening as if the air itself was turning to syrup.

“You are not welcome here. You have no claim, no anchor, no hold.”

He repeated the words, a mantra against the rising tide of fear. He focused on the candle flames, willing them to be a shield. For a moment, he thought it might be working. The hissing quieted slightly, the cold receded a fraction of an inch. A fragile seed of hope began to sprout in his chest.

That’s when it started.

His gaze flickered to the kitchen, to the polished chrome kettle on the stove. In its convex, distorted reflection, he saw the living room behind him. The candles, the smoke, the white line of salt. And standing in the middle of it all, his own reflection. But it was smiling. A wide, predatory grin that stretched his features into a grotesque mask, a silent mockery of his defiant stance.

Alex’s breath caught in his throat. The words of the ritual died on his lips.

The reflection in the kettle turned its head, its grin never faltering, and looked directly at him.

Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through him. He stumbled back, his eyes darting away from the kettle, only to land on the dark, blank screen of his television. And there he was again. Not one of him, but dozens, his image repeated across the glossy surface. One reflection was him as he was now, frozen in terror. But the others… the others were changing.

In one, his skin turned a mottled, putrid gray, his flesh appearing to rot and slough off the bone. In another, his mouth was stretched wide in a silent, unending scream, his eyes hollowed out into pits of black despair. A third version of him was on its knees, weeping, clawing at its own face, the very picture of pathetic, broken desperation. It was a gallery of his deepest fears, projected for him to see.

A voice slid into his mind, smooth as silk and cold as the grave. It was his own voice, his own cadence and tone, but it was hollow, stripped of all warmth and life.

No one is coming, Alex.

He squeezed his eyes shut, but the images were seared onto the inside of his eyelids. The voice wasn't in the room; it was inside his skull, a perfect imitation of his own internal monologue.

Did you really think a little salt and smoke would stop me? You can't even fight your own boredom. How could you possibly fight something that has been wearing souls since before your family had a name?

“Get out,” he whispered, the words barely a puff of air. The candles flickered violently, their flames dancing as if in a gale.

The reflection in the darkened windowpanes shifted. It was him, but older, his face etched with decades of exhaustion, his hair thin and grey. The tired, haunted eyes of Lillian Vance stared back at him from his own face. It was the future the parasite had planned for him. A long, slow, agonizing decay.

Empty, his own voice whispered in his head, twisting Elara’s diagnosis into a damning insult. Hollow. A perfect, quiet place to live. Thank you for the invitation.

The psychological assault was relentless. Every insecurity he’d ever had, every fear he’d ever buried under layers of apathy, was being excavated and thrown in his face. His carefully constructed numbness was no shield; it was an armory, and the Dybbuk was using every weapon against him. He was a spectator to his own vivisection.

He felt the cold surge, breaching the salt lines as if they were nothing. It wrapped around him, a physical presence now, a crushing weight that made it hard to breathe. The candles sputtered one by one, their flames pinched out by an unseen force, plunging the room into a deeper gloom, lit only by the city lights outside.

The ritual was broken. He had failed.

He collapsed to his knees, his head in his hands, unable to fight, unable to run. The whispers were a chorus now, all in his own voice, a cacophony of self-loathing and despair.

And then, above the whispers, a new sound began. A low, vibrating hum that seemed to emanate from every reflective surface at once. The glass in the windowpanes began to tremble. The dark screen of the television vibrated. The microwave door, the chrome kettle, a framed picture on the wall—they all hummed with a rising, malevolent energy.

CRACK.

It started with the TV, a single jagged line appearing on the screen.

Then, in a deafening, explosive crescendo that ripped a genuine scream from Alex’s throat, every single reflective surface in his apartment shattered at once. The windows didn’t just crack; they blew inwards, spraying shards of glass across the floor. The microwave door exploded. The glass on the picture frame burst. The kettle dented as if struck by a hammer.

Silence descended, absolute and profound, broken only by the faint tinkle of a final shard of glass falling from a window frame. Alex knelt amidst the wreckage, shaking uncontrollably, his ears ringing. He was surrounded by devastation. The barriers were gone. The windows were broken. He was completely exposed.

And in the ringing silence, echoing not in the room but in the hollow, terrified space inside his own head, he heard it. It wasn't a whisper. It wasn't his voice.

It was a low, chilling, triumphant laugh.