Chapter 4: A City of Glass

The three-hour drive back to the city passed in a blur of asphalt and desperate rationalization. Liam gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles, forcing himself to focus on the mundane details of highway driving—speed limits, turn signals, the gradual increase in traffic as he approached civilization. Normal things. Rational things.

It's over. Whatever happened back there, it's over. You're safe now.

By the time he pulled into his apartment building's underground garage, the events at the cabin had taken on the surreal quality of a fever dream. In the harsh fluorescent lighting of the concrete structure, surrounded by the familiar urban sounds of car doors slamming and elevator chimes, the memory of grinning children and pale women seemed absurd.

Stress-induced hallucinations. Isolation psychosis. Carbon monoxide poisoning. Pick your explanation—they're all more believable than ghosts in mirrors.

His apartment building was a converted warehouse in the arts district, all exposed brick and industrial fixtures. The kind of place that had seemed edgy and sophisticated when he'd signed the lease two years ago, back when his career was still ascending and his bank account could handle the rent. Now it just felt pretentious and overpriced.

The elevator ride to the fourth floor gave him time to construct his narrative. He'd tell anyone who asked that he'd come down with food poisoning at the cabin and decided to cut the trip short. Simple, believable, requiring no explanation of midnight visions or impossible reflections.

Because that's all they were. Visions. Hallucinations. Not real.

His apartment door stuck slightly as he turned the key—it always did when the weather changed—and he had to shoulder it open. The familiar smell of his space hit him immediately: coffee grounds, the faint ozone scent of electronic equipment, and the mustiness that accumulated when someone spent too much time indoors.

Home. Safe. Real.

Liam dropped his duffel bag just inside the door and stood for a moment, letting the normalcy wash over him. His drafting table sat exactly where he'd left it, covered in sketches for projects that would probably never materialize. His computer setup dominated one corner, three monitors dark but ready to spring to life at the touch of a key. Books lined the exposed brick walls—design theory, typography guides, art history texts that he'd accumulated during his optimistic student years.

Everything exactly as he'd left it. No mysterious children. No pale women with hollow eyes. Just the detritus of a stalled career and a life that had lost its momentum.

See? This is reality. The cabin was just... a blip. A stress response. You're home now.

He made it exactly three steps toward the kitchen before he saw her.

The pale woman stood in his bathroom doorway, clearly visible in the mirror above the sink. The same gaunt figure, the same hollow eyes, the same bone-colored nightgown that seemed to move with its own wind. But here, in his sanctuary of rationality and familiar chaos, her presence felt like a violation of everything sacred.

No. No, this isn't possible. The haunting was tied to the cabin, to that antique mirror. It can't follow me here.

But even as his mind scrambled for explanations, the figure in the mirror raised one skeletal hand and pressed it against the glass. Just like before, the surface rippled at her touch, creating concentric waves in what should have been solid reflection.

Her mouth moved, forming the same desperate words: Let... me... out...

Liam stumbled backward, his legs hitting the edge of his drafting table. Pencils scattered to the floor, and one of his monitor arms swung wildly from the impact.

This isn't real. You're having a psychotic break. Call someone. Call 911. Call your sister. Call anyone.

But his phone was in his jacket pocket, and his jacket was still draped over the duffel bag by the door, and the pale woman was moving in the mirror now, drifting closer to the glass with that same underwater fluidity he remembered from the cabin.

Behind her, the reflected bathroom looked wrong. The tiles were grayer, older, stained with something dark around the edges. The lighting was dimmer, casting shadows that moved independently of any earthly source.

And in those shadows, barely visible but unmistakably present, stood the grinning child.

They followed me. Somehow, they followed me home.

The realization hit him like a physical blow. This wasn't a location-based haunting tied to some cursed cabin in the mountains. This was personal. Attached to him specifically, riding along like some spiritual parasite that had latched onto his soul.

The pale woman pressed both hands against the mirror now, her face contorting with desperate hunger. The bathroom mirror began to bulge outward, just as the cabin's mirror had, the frame creaking under impossible pressure.

She's going to break through. She's going to—

"NO!"

The word tore from Liam's throat as something inside him snapped. Not fear, not rationality, but pure rage. Rage at the violation of his space, at the impossibility of what he was witnessing, at the complete collapse of everything he thought he understood about reality.

He grabbed the first thing his hand found—a heavy glass paperweight from his drafting table—and hurled it at the bathroom mirror with all his strength.

The impact was spectacular. Glass exploded outward in a shower of crystalline fragments, each piece catching the apartment's light like frozen stars. The paperweight punched through the mirror and struck the tile wall behind it, leaving a spider web of cracks in its wake.

For a moment, blessed silence.

The pale woman was gone. The grinning child was gone. There was nothing left but ordinary destruction—broken glass scattered across his bathroom floor, a ruined mirror frame hanging askew, and the acrid smell of shattered reflections.

It's over. Whatever connection existed, breaking the mirror severed it.

But even as relief flooded through him, Liam's rational mind began cataloging the problems this created. How would he explain the destroyed mirror to his landlord? How would he explain it to himself when the adrenaline wore off and he had to confront the fact that he'd just committed an act of violence against his own bathroom fixtures?

Because that's all this was. A stress-induced episode. You saw things that weren't there and reacted accordingly. Perfectly understandable given the circumstances.

He found a broom and dustpan in his kitchen closet and began the careful process of cleaning up the mess. Each shard of glass clinked into the dustpan with a sound like tiny bells, and he found the repetitive motion oddly soothing. Normal activity. Rational consequence. Cause and effect in a way that made sense.

See? Problem solved. You broke the mirror, the hallucinations stopped. The connection—whatever you imagined it to be—is severed.

But as he swept, something nagged at him. A memory of the pale woman's desperate expression, the way she'd pressed against the glass as if the mirror were a prison rather than a portal. And the child's grin, which had seemed less malevolent and more... playful. As if this were all some elaborate game.

Stop. Don't go down that road. There were no ghosts, no supernatural entities. Just stress and isolation and your brain's attempt to process trauma through gothic imagery.

The cleaning took longer than expected—glass fragments had scattered farther than seemed possible, hiding under the sink and behind the toilet where they caught the light like tiny accusations. But eventually, he'd gathered every visible piece, leaving only the empty mirror frame hanging on the wall like a wound.

I'll get a new mirror tomorrow. Something simple from the hardware store. No antique frames, no mysterious history. Just plain glass in a plain frame.

He made dinner mechanically—pasta from a box, sauce from a jar—and ate it while standing at his kitchen counter, too restless to sit. The familiar routine helped, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong with his apartment. Not supernatural wrong, just... off. As if the proportions were slightly different than he remembered, or the lighting had changed in some subtle way.

Post-traumatic stress. Your brain is still processing the hallucinations. Everything will feel strange for a while.

As evening approached, Liam found himself avoiding reflective surfaces without consciously deciding to do so. He kept his laptop closed, left his phone face-down on the counter, and positioned himself so that the dark windows wouldn't show his reflection.

Just for tonight. Tomorrow you'll feel ridiculous about all this precaution.

But when he finally worked up the courage to glance at his phone's black screen, his heart nearly stopped.

There, in the faint reflection cast by the screen's surface, was his own face. But it was wrong—pale and gaunt, with hollow shadows where his eyes should be. And behind his reflection, barely visible but unmistakably present, stood another figure.

The pale woman. Still watching. Still waiting.

Still pressing her hands against the glass that separated her world from his.

The mirror was just one gateway. She doesn't need antique frames or cursed cabins. Any reflection will do.

As this realization hit him, Liam became acutely aware of just how many reflective surfaces surrounded him in his modern apartment. The dark windows that lined one wall. The chrome fixtures in his kitchen. The glossy screen of his computer monitor. The polished surface of his coffee table.

His entire life was built on glass and metal and surfaces that could show him things he didn't want to see.

And somewhere in those reflections, patient as stone and hungry as winter, the pale woman was waiting for him to sleep.

Waiting for her chance to whisper her desperate plea one more time:

Let me out.