Chapter 2: The Second Shadow

Sleep came in fragments after that—brief, uneasy drifts punctuated by sudden jolts of awareness. Each time Liam's eyes snapped open, he found himself staring at the mirror's dark frame, searching for any trace of that impossible glow. But the glass remained mercifully black, reflecting nothing but his own paranoia.

Just stress, he told himself for the hundredth time, rolling onto his side to face away from the offending mirror. Three months of eighteen-hour days, the Hartwell disaster, Marcus's passive-aggressive bullshit—your brain is just processing all the trauma. Textbook stress response.

The explanation felt hollow even as he repeated it like a mantra. He'd had stress dreams before—usually about missing deadlines or clients screaming at him over pixelated mockups. But this had felt different. More real than real, if that made any sense.

By three AM, exhaustion finally won the battle against anxiety. Liam's breathing deepened, his grip on consciousness loosening as the old cabin settled around him with familiar creaks and sighs. The darkness pressed against his eyelids like velvet, and despite everything, sleep pulled him under.

He dreamed of drowning in pixels and broken code, of Marcus laughing while the Hartwell client's nephew danced on the grave of his career. Normal nightmares. Rational nightmares.

Then something changed.

The dream-drowning stopped mid-gasp, leaving Liam suspended in a void that felt less like sleep and more like floating in dark water. He could feel himself surfacing, consciousness rising through layers of exhaustion, but something was wrong with the ascent. It was too slow, too deliberate—as if something was controlling the pace of his awakening.

His eyes opened to darkness so complete it seemed solid. For a moment, he couldn't tell if he was actually awake or still trapped in some liminal space between sleep and consciousness. The silence was absolute—no wind, no water lapping against the shore, no settling sounds from the old wood.

Then he became aware of light.

Not the warm glow of sunrise creeping through curtains, but that same sickly luminescence he'd seen before, emanating from the mirror like foxfire in a swamp. His throat constricted as he forced himself to turn, knowing what he would see but helpless to look away.

His reflection sat up in bed, mimicking his movement with perfect precision. But this time, the incomplete image wasn't alone.

Behind his partial reflection, barely visible in the mirror's diseased light, stood a figure.

A woman.

She was tall and gaunt, her presence filling the reflected bedroom like smoke. Long, dark hair hung in greasy strands around a face so pale it seemed translucent. But it was her eyes that made Liam's blood freeze in his veins—hollow pits of shadow that somehow managed to convey both infinite sorrow and predatory hunger.

She wore what might have been a nightgown once, but time had faded it to the color of old bone. The fabric hung loose on her skeletal frame, stirring with movements that had nothing to do with any earthly wind.

This isn't happening. This can't be happening.

But even as his rational mind screamed denials, Liam found himself unable to look away from those hollow eyes. The woman—if that's what she was—stood perfectly still behind his reflection, close enough that he should be able to feel her breath on his neck. But when he glanced over his shoulder, he saw only the empty bedroom, shadows undisturbed.

In the mirror, she moved.

A step closer to his partial reflection, her movements fluid and wrong, like she was walking underwater. Her mouth opened, revealing teeth that seemed too sharp, too numerous. She was trying to say something, her lips forming words that Liam couldn't hear through the glass barrier.

His reflection—still incomplete, still wrong—turned its head slightly, as if listening to her whispered words. Then, slowly, deliberately, his mirror-self smiled that same inhuman smile from before.

No. No, no, no—

Liam jerked backward so violently that he rolled off the far side of the bed, hitting the floor with a crash that should have woken the dead. He scrambled to his feet, pressing his back against the wall, breathing like he'd just run a marathon.

The mirror showed only darkness.

He stood there for what felt like hours, watching that tarnished glass, waiting for the impossible light to return. His legs shook with exhaustion and adrenaline, but he couldn't bring himself to move closer to the bed. Not while that thing might be watching from whatever hell lived behind the mirror's surface.

You're losing your mind. Complete psychological break. Maybe you should call someone—

But who? Marcus, who'd already written him off as damaged goods? His sister Sarah, who lived three time zones away and had her own problems? The handful of friends he'd alienated during his workaholic spiral into burnout?

The truth was, he had no one to call. No one who would believe him, and worse, no one who would care if they did.

Dawn came eventually, creeping through the curtains like a reluctant apology. In the growing light, the mirror looked perfectly ordinary—just an antique with a tarnished frame and spots of age on its surface. Liam approached it cautiously, studying his reflection in the morning light.

He looked like hell—hollow-eyed, stubbled, with the pallor of someone who'd spent too many years indoors. But he looked complete. Normal. No missing pieces, no impossible companions lurking in the background.

Stress hallucination. Had to be. Maybe mild carbon monoxide poisoning from that ancient furnace. Something with a rational explanation.

But as he stared at his reflection, he noticed something that made his stomach clench. There, in the lower right corner of the mirror, was a small handprint on the glass. As if someone—or something—had pressed their palm against the surface from the other side.

The print was too large to be a child's, too small to be a man's.

Just the right size for a gaunt woman with hollow eyes.

Liam stumbled backward, his heart hammering against his ribs. The handprint remained, a smudged outline against the silvered glass that hadn't been there the night before. Or had it? Had he simply not noticed it in the dark?

You're not losing your mind. You're tired, stressed, probably coming down with something. People see things when they're exhausted. It's completely normal.

He forced himself to approach the mirror again, reaching out with trembling fingers to touch the handprint. His fingertips met cold glass—nothing more. The smudge was on the surface, could have been left by anyone, at any time. The previous renters, the cleaning crew, hell, even himself when he'd first arrived.

Rational explanations. There were always rational explanations.

But even as he told himself this, Liam couldn't shake the memory of that hollow-eyed figure standing behind his reflection, close enough to touch but existing in a world he couldn't reach. The way she'd moved, fluid and wrong. The way his own reflection had smiled at her whispered words.

Get out of here. Pack up and leave. Forget the deposit, forget the week you paid for. Just get back to civilization where things make sense.

The thought was so appealing it was almost painful. His apartment might be a testament to his failures, but at least it didn't come with mirrors that showed impossible things. He could be back in the city by noon, surrounded by the familiar chaos of traffic and crowds and normal human problems.

But then what? Go back to staring at his phone, waiting for clients who would never call? Sit in his empty apartment, eating takeout and watching his bank account dwindle while he pretended to work on projects that would never materialize?

At least here, his breakdown was private. Spectacular, maybe, but private.

Liam made coffee with hands that barely shook, proud of this small victory over his fraying nerves. The familiar ritual helped—measuring grounds, waiting for the ancient machine to wheeze to life, the rich smell of caffeine cutting through the musty air. Normal things. Rational things.

He spent the morning on the couch, laptop closed, forcing himself to read the thriller that had defeated him the night before. The words still swam occasionally, but he managed to focus enough to follow the plot. A detective investigating a series of murders in a small town. Bodies found in impossible places, evidence that defied explanation.

Of course. Even my recreational reading is about things that don't make sense.

By noon, the events of the night had taken on the quality of a half-remembered nightmare. Stress hallucination made perfect sense—he'd pushed himself to the breaking point, isolated himself in an unfamiliar place, and his overtaxed brain had conjured up some gothic horror to process his anxiety.

You're not the first person to see things when they're exhausted. Won't be the last.

He made a sandwich for lunch, something else normal and rational. The peanut butter stuck to the roof of his mouth, but he forced it down anyway. Fuel for his recovering sanity.

The afternoon passed quietly. He even managed a short walk down to the lake, letting the mountain air fill his lungs and the sight of water and sky remind him that the world was vast and beautiful and mostly free of supernatural mirrors. A few other cabins dotted the shoreline, smoke rising from chimneys, cars in driveways. Normal people living normal lives.

See? You're not alone up here. If something weird was happening, other people would notice.

By evening, he was almost convinced he'd imagined the whole thing. Almost ready to laugh at his own paranoia and settle in for a proper night's sleep.

Then the sun set, and the darkness returned.

Liam found himself standing in the bedroom doorway, staring at the mirror as the last light faded from the windows. In the growing gloom, he could swear the glass looked different—not quite as reflective, somehow. As if it were showing him a room that was almost, but not quite, the same as the one he stood in.

Don't look. Just go to bed, face the wall, and get some sleep. In the morning, this will all seem ridiculous.

But even as he told himself this, his feet carried him closer to the antique glass. His reflection appeared gradually as he approached—tired, hollow-eyed, wearing yesterday's clothes. Normal. Rational.

Until it wasn't.

The change was subtle at first. A slight dimming of the reflected lamplight, as if the mirror-world's bulb was burning out. Then the shadows began to move, shifting and flowing like smoke behind his reflection.

And she was there.

Closer this time. Much closer.

The pale woman stood directly behind his mirror-self, so close that her face appeared over his shoulder in the reflection. Those hollow eyes stared directly at him—not at his reflection, but at him, as if she could see through the glass barrier into his world.

Her mouth moved, shaping words he couldn't hear. But this time, he thought he could read her lips:

Let... me... out...