Chapter 3: The Hand on the Glass

Dawn couldn't come fast enough.

Liam had spent the remainder of the night huddled in the living room, every light in the cabin blazing, the old couch pulled to face away from any reflective surface. He'd discovered that terror was exhausting—his body had eventually surrendered to sleep around four AM, slumping against the armrest in a position that left his neck screaming.

But he'd made it through. And in the harsh light of a mountain morning, with coffee brewing and birds chirping outside like nothing had happened, the events of the past two nights felt increasingly surreal.

Stress hallucination. Sleep deprivation. Maybe a gas leak.

The rational explanations came easier in daylight. They always did.

Liam stood in the kitchen, hands wrapped around his coffee mug like a lifeline, and made his decision. He was leaving. Today. Right now, if possible. He'd pack his few belongings, drive back to the city, and find a therapist who specialized in burnout-related psychological episodes. There was no shame in admitting he needed help.

You can't run from yourself, a small voice whispered in the back of his mind. If this is a breakdown, it'll follow you home.

But at least in the city, there would be witnesses. Other people around to confirm that reality worked the way it was supposed to. Here, alone with his fraying sanity and a mirror that seemed to show impossible things, he was one step away from becoming another cautionary tale about city people who couldn't handle isolation.

He dumped the coffee down the sink and headed for the bedroom to pack. The mirror waited there, innocuous in the morning light, showing nothing but his own haggard reflection. No pale women. No hollow eyes. Just Liam Thorne, graphic designer, age twenty-eight, looking like he'd been hit by a truck.

See? Perfectly normal.

He threw his clothes into the duffel bag with practiced efficiency, not bothering to fold anything. Speed mattered more than organization. The laptop went into its carrying case, chargers wound hastily and stuffed into pockets. In fifteen minutes, he was ready to go.

One last look around to make sure he hadn't forgotten anything. The bedroom was exactly as he'd found it, minus the rumpled bedding. The bathroom revealed nothing but his own toiletries, quickly gathered. Kitchen clear except for the coffee maker, still gurgling through its cycle.

And then he saw it.

The living room mantelpiece held a mirror he hadn't really noticed before—a smaller, plainer glass in a simple wooden frame. Nothing like the ornate antique in the bedroom. Just a basic mirror, probably installed to make the small room feel larger.

In its reflection, a child was watching him.

Liam froze, duffel bag halfway to his shoulder. The child stood in the reflected living room, maybe eight or nine years old, wearing clothes that looked decades out of date. A simple button-up shirt and dark pants that belonged to another era entirely. But it was the child's face that made Liam's blood turn to ice water.

The boy was grinning.

Not a normal child's smile—this was something far too wide, far too knowing. A rictus of delight that stretched the young face into something that should never exist on features so innocent. The eyes above that terrible smile were dark holes, empty of everything except a hunger that no child should possess.

This isn't real. This can't be real.

But even as Liam's mind threw up its familiar denials, he found himself unable to look away from the small figure in the glass. The child stood perfectly still, that grotesque smile never wavering, watching him with the patient intensity of a predator.

Slowly, deliberately, Liam turned around.

The living room was empty. No child. No figure in period clothing. Just dusty furniture and macramé wall hangings and the morning light streaming through windows that showed nothing but lake and forest.

He spun back to the mirror.

The child had moved closer.

It now stood in the center of the reflected room, that impossible grin stretching even wider. One small hand was raised, fingers spread, as if waving hello. Or goodbye.

Run. Just run. Get in the car and drive and don't look back.

But Liam's feet seemed rooted to the floor, his entire body locked in place by the sight of that grinning child. There was something hypnotic about the figure, something that demanded attention even as every instinct screamed at him to flee.

The child's lips moved, forming words in perfect silence. Unlike the pale woman's desperate pleas, this seemed almost playful. A child's game of charades, with stakes Liam couldn't begin to understand.

Want... to... play?

The small hand pressed against the inside of the glass.

The mirror's surface rippled like water where the child's palm made contact, concentric circles spreading outward from the point of touch. But it was still glass—Liam could see the solid reflection of the room, the furniture, the morning light. Yet somehow, impossibly, the child's hand was pushing against it from within, creating small waves in what should have been an unyielding surface.

This is not happening. Glass doesn't work that way. Physics doesn't work that way.

But the evidence was right there in front of him, defying every law of nature he'd ever learned. The child's handprint was now clearly visible on the inner surface of the glass, small fingers spread wide, pressing outward with enough force to make the mirror bow slightly in its frame.

The grin widened further, stretching the young face into something that belonged in nightmares. The dark eyes never blinked, never looked away from Liam's horrified stare.

Then the child mouthed something else, and this time there was no mistaking the words:

She's... coming...

The temperature in the room plummeted. Liam's breath began to mist, and frost started forming on the windows with impossible speed. The morning light dimmed as if clouds had covered the sun, but when he glanced outside, the sky was clear.

Behind the grinning child, the reflected room began to change.

The walls took on a grayish tint, as if viewed through smoke or dirty water. The furniture remained the same, but somehow looked older, more decrepit. And in the growing gloom of this mirror-world, another figure began to materialize.

The pale woman.

She appeared at the edge of the reflection like smoke given form, her hollow eyes fixed on the back of the child's head. But there was something different about her now—a sense of urgency, of barely contained rage. Her mouth moved constantly, forming words that Liam couldn't hear but whose meaning was unmistakable.

She was angry.

The child's grin faltered for just a moment, the small head turning slightly as if sensing the woman's approach. But then the smile returned, even wider than before, and the boy pressed both hands against the glass.

The mirror's surface bulged outward, the wooden frame creaking under impossible pressure. Hair-thin cracks appeared at the corners, spreading slowly but steadily toward the center where the child's hands pushed against reality itself.

It's going to break. Whatever barrier exists between their world and this one, it's going to shatter.

The realization broke Liam's paralysis like a gunshot. He stumbled backward, his legs finally remembering how to move, his survival instincts overriding the hypnotic horror of what he was witnessing.

"No," he whispered, then louder: "No!"

But the child only grinned wider, pressing harder against the straining glass. The cracks spread faster now, spider-webbing across the mirror's surface with tiny crystalline sounds. Behind the boy, the pale woman reached out with one skeletal hand, her fingers extending toward the child's shoulder.

Liam turned and ran.

He burst through the cabin's front door like a man on fire, not bothering to close it behind him. His car keys were already in his hand—when had he grabbed them?—and he fumbled with the locks while his hands shook like leaves.

The engine turned over on the second try, and he threw the car into reverse without bothering with his seatbelt. Gravel sprayed as he backed out of the driveway, and he caught a glimpse of the cabin's interior through the open door.

Every mirror inside was glowing with that same sickly light.

Drive. Just drive. Get as far away from here as possible.

But even as his car ate up the miles of winding mountain road, carrying him toward civilization and sanity and the promise of rational explanations, Liam couldn't shake the image of that grinning child pressing its hands against the glass.

Or the memory of the pale woman's hollow eyes, filled with a rage that seemed to burn cold as winter stars.

She's coming.

The words echoed in his mind as he drove, and despite the morning sun streaming through his windshield, despite the normal traffic beginning to appear as he approached the highway, Liam couldn't escape the feeling that he was being followed.

Not by another car—there was nothing in his rearview mirror but empty road.

But by something else. Something that didn't need roads or cars or any of the normal rules that governed the world he thought he understood.

Something that had found him in that mirror and marked him as its own.

His phone, wedged in the cup holder, remained silent. No signal bars. No connection to the outside world.

Just like at the cabin.

No, he told himself firmly. Mountain roads always have bad reception. This is normal. Everything is normal.

But as he reached for the radio, hoping for the familiar comfort of music or news or human voices, his reflection in the rearview mirror caught his eye.

For just a moment—so brief he might have imagined it—his reflection seemed to smile back at him.

A smile that was far too wide, far too knowing.

A child's smile.