Chapter 1: The Stillness of the Lake

The gravel crunched under Liam's tires as he pulled up to the lakeside cabin, the sound unnaturally loud in the pristine silence. He cut the engine and sat for a moment, hands still gripping the steering wheel, watching dust motes dance in the late afternoon sunlight streaming through his windshield. The silence pressed against his eardrums like cotton.

Perfect.

For the first time in weeks, his phone showed no signal bars. No urgent emails from panicked clients. No passive-aggressive messages from his business partner asking when he'd "get his shit together." Just blessed, complete disconnection from the digital leash that had been slowly strangling him.

Liam stepped out of his car, his joints protesting after the three-hour drive from the city. At twenty-eight, he already felt ancient—shoulders permanently hunched from years bent over a computer, designer stubble doing little to hide the gaunt hollows beneath his cheekbones. The mountain air hit his lungs like a shock, clean and sharp compared to the stale recycled atmosphere of his apartment.

The cabin squatted on the lakeshore like something from a postcard, all weathered wood and stone chimney. It was smaller than the photos had suggested, but that suited him fine. Less space meant fewer places for his thoughts to echo. The realtor had mentioned it was a "period piece"—built in the sixties and barely updated since. Perfect for someone who needed to disappear for a while.

He hauled his duffel bag from the trunk, along with a cooler of groceries and enough instant coffee to survive a nuclear winter. The wooden steps creaked under his weight as he climbed to the front door, fishing the key from under a ceramic frog exactly where the property manager had promised.

The door swung open with a groan that seemed to come from the house's very bones.

Inside, everything was frozen in amber-tinted time. Macramé wall hangings drooped like dead spiders, and the furniture bore the geometric patterns and earth tones of a long-dead decade. A massive stone fireplace dominated one wall, cold and dark. The air carried the musty scent of disuse, underlaid with something else—something that reminded him unpleasantly of his grandmother's house after the funeral, when no one had lived there for months.

Liam dropped his bag and explored the small space. Kitchen with avocado appliances. Living room with a couch that probably contained enough dust to choke a horse. A bedroom barely large enough for the queen bed and a single nightstand.

And mirrors. Lots of mirrors.

The largest hung on the bedroom wall, an ornate antique thing with a tarnished silver frame carved with intertwining vines. Probably worth more than everything else in the cabin combined. His reflection looked back at him, tired and pale, the late-day light casting deep shadows under his eyes.

Jesus, when did I start looking like a corpse?

He turned away, suddenly uncomfortable with his own appearance. The Hartwell campaign disaster had taken more out of him than he'd realized. Three months of eighteen-hour days designing what should have been his breakthrough project, only to have the client's nephew—fresh out of art school with zero experience—convince them to go with his "more dynamic vision." Translation: clipart and Comic Sans.

The memory still made his jaw clench. Thirty thousand dollars down the drain, along with his reputation and most of his client base. His business partner Marcus had been "understanding" in that particular way that meant the friendship was as dead as the partnership.

Stop. That's why you're here. To not think about any of that shit.

Liam unpacked methodically, trying to impose some order on the chaos in his head. Clothes in the dresser. Laptop on the kitchen table, though he'd promised himself he wouldn't open it. Groceries in the ancient refrigerator that rumbled like a dying animal.

By the time he'd finished, the sun had begun its descent behind the mountains, painting the lake in shades of copper and gold. He stood at the window, watching the light fade, and for the first time in months felt something that might have been peace.

The feeling lasted exactly until he tried to make dinner.

The gas burner wouldn't light, clicking impotently while he wrestled with matches and increasingly creative profanity. The refrigerator chose that moment to shudder to a complete stop. And when he tried to call the property manager, his phone—despite promising three bars in town—showed nothing but the digital equivalent of a middle finger.

Of course.

He made do with a peanut butter sandwich and warm beer, eating while watching the last light die over the water. By full dark, the silence had transformed from peaceful to oppressive. No traffic. No sirens. No neighbor's television bleeding through thin walls. Just the occasional lap of water against the shore and the settling sounds of old wood.

The isolation he'd craved suddenly felt less like freedom and more like being buried alive.

Liam found himself pacing the small living room, his footsteps echoing hollowly on the hardwood floors. Every shadow seemed deeper than it should be, every creak of the house unnaturally loud. He'd lived alone for years, but this felt different. In the city, solitude meant being alone with eight million other people just outside your door. Here, he might as well have been on Mars.

Get a grip. This is exactly what you wanted. Peace and quiet to figure out what the hell comes next.

He forced himself to sit on the musty couch and pulled out a paperback thriller he'd grabbed at the airport. The words swam on the page, refusing to coalesce into meaning. His eyes kept drifting to the bedroom doorway, where he could just make out the edge of that ornate mirror frame.

By ten o'clock, exhaustion was winning the war against anxiety. The drive, the stress of the past months, the mountain air—it all pressed down on him like a lead blanket. He brushed his teeth in the tiny bathroom, avoiding his reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror, and stumbled toward the bedroom.

The antique mirror dominated the wall opposite the bed, impossible to ignore. In the lamplight, its surface seemed to ripple like dark water. Liam stared at his reflection—pale, hollow-eyed, looking like a man who'd been running from something for too long.

Maybe that's exactly what you are.

He clicked off the lamp and collapsed onto the bed fully clothed. The mattress was softer than expected, pulling him down into its embrace. Outside, something that might have been an owl called across the water, a lonely sound that seemed to come from another world entirely.

Sleep took him like a tide, deep and dreamless.

Until midnight.

Liam's eyes snapped open with the jarring suddenness of a fire alarm. He lay frozen, heart hammering, trying to identify what had woken him. The room was pitch black, no trace of moonlight penetrating the heavy curtains. For a moment, he couldn't remember where he was—the silence was too complete, too alien.

Then it came back. The cabin. The lake. His desperate flight from a life that had crumbled like tissue paper.

He started to roll over, to sink back into sleep's merciful embrace, when something made him look toward the foot of the bed.

The mirror.

In the absolute darkness of the room, the antique glass seemed to hold its own light—a faint, sickly luminescence that cast no shadows. And in that impossible glow, Liam saw his reflection.

But it was wrong.

Horribly, impossibly wrong.

The figure in the mirror sat up in bed just as he did, moved when he moved, wore his face and his rumpled clothes. But it was incomplete—as if the glass had somehow consumed everything below his shoulders. Just his head and the upper part of his chest floated in the silvered surface, the rest of his body simply... absent.

Liam's breath caught in his throat. He raised his hand to his chest, felt the solid reality of his own body. In the mirror, the partial reflection raised its hand as well, but there was nothing below the wrist—just empty space where his arm should continue.

This isn't real. Stress hallucination. Sleep paralysis. Something.

But even as his rational mind threw up explanations, some deeper part of him—the part that had once been afraid of the dark and closet monsters—whispered that this was very, very real.

The reflection in the mirror smiled.

Liam didn't smile back.

The partial figure mouthed something, its lips moving in perfect synchronization with words Liam hadn't spoken. The smile widened, becoming something that belonged on no human face.

With a strangled gasp, Liam rolled away from the mirror, pulling the musty bedsheet over his head like a child hiding from nightmares. His heart slammed against his ribs so hard he was sure it would wake whatever nightmare logic governed this place.

Count to ten. Breathe. It's not real. It can't be real.

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi.

Just stress and exhaustion and too much isolation too fast.

Three Mississippi. Four Mississippi.

There's a logical explanation. There always is.

Five Mississippi. Six Mississippi.

The sheet was suffocating him, but he didn't dare lower it. Didn't dare look back at that impossible mirror with its incomplete reflection and its knowing smile.

Seven Mississippi. Eight Mississippi.

Something creaked in the room—just old wood settling, nothing more. Nothing more.

Nine Mississippi. Ten Mississippi.

Slowly, hands shaking, Liam lowered the sheet and turned back toward the mirror.

Darkness. Complete, blessed darkness. No supernatural glow, no impossible reflection. Just the vague outline of the antique frame against the far wall.

Hallucination. Had to be.

But as he lay there in the suffocating silence, listening to his heart slowly return to normal, Liam couldn't shake the feeling that something was still watching him from the depths of that tarnished glass.

Waiting for him to fall asleep again.