Chapter 2: The Echo in the Mirror

Chapter 2: The Echo in the Mirror

The slam of the apartment door was a gunshot in the dead of night. Alex fumbled with the deadbolt, his fingers trembling so violently it took three tries to slide the bolt home. He pressed his back against the cheap wood, heart jackhammering against his ribs, his breath coming in raw, ragged sobs. The silence of his cramped, stale-smelling apartment offered no comfort. It was just an empty stage for the two words that continued to detonate in his mind.

Not you. Me.

"Hallucination," he gasped, the word sounding flimsy and foreign in his own mouth. "Just... a hallucination."

It had to be. He was sleep-deprived, malnourished, living on a diet of cheap coffee and self-loathing. His mind, already a shattered landscape of guilt and grief, had finally cracked completely. He’d wanted an end, and his broken brain had simply projected a monster into the woods to give him one. A deer. A talking deer. It was pathetic. It was insane.

He stumbled into the main room, a sad collection of second-hand furniture and dusty surfaces. He didn't turn on the lights, preferring the familiar gloom, streaked with the cold blue of a distant streetlight filtering through the grimy window. Light felt too revealing now, too honest.

He sank onto the lumpy sofa, burying his head in his hands. He tried to force the image out, to replace it with the familiar, comforting misery of his past. The screech of tires. The smell of rain and gasoline. Her face. But for the first time in years, the ghost of his guilt was pushed aside by a new, more immediate phantom. The deer's obsidian eyes. The chilling, resonant voice that had spoken not to his ears, but to the very core of his being.

He sat there for an hour, maybe more, locked in a desperate battle with himself. Every time he almost convinced himself it was a trick of the mind, the feeling would return—a cold prickle on the back of his neck, the distinct, unshakable sensation of being watched.

He jerked his head up, scanning the shadows pooled in the corners of the room. Nothing. Just a stack of unread books and a coat slung over a chair. But the feeling didn't leave. It was an invisible pressure, an alien awareness occupying the same space he did. He felt... crowded. It was as if someone were standing right behind the sofa, their breath cold on his hair.

He shot to his feet, a strangled cry caught in his throat. He spun around. Nothing. He was alone. Utterly, completely alone in his locked apartment.

And yet… he wasn't.

The rationalizations were starting to feel like thin paper shields against a tidal wave. This wasn’t just panic. This was different. An intrusive thought, cold and sharp, cut through his own frantic monologue: The woman in 3B. She lost her son last year. Her sorrow is… ripe.

Alex recoiled as if struck. Where had that come from? He barely knew the old woman in 3B, just saw her shuffling to the mailboxes, her face a permanent mask of quiet grief. He’d never spared her a second thought, too consumed by his own pain. The word—ripe—was not his. It felt hungry, analytical. Predatory.

The floorboard in the hallway creaked.

Alex’s blood ran cold. He hadn’t moved. He held his breath, listening. Silence. Just the low, electric hum of the ancient refrigerator in the kitchenette. For a terrifying second, that hum seemed to deepen, to take on a guttural, almost growling timbre before returning to normal.

"This isn't real," he whispered, his voice trembling. "Get a grip, Alex. You're losing it."

He needed to see his own face. He needed to see something normal, something that wasn't haunted. A reflection. Proof that he was still just Alex Miller, a miserable wreck of a man, but a man nonetheless. Alone.

He lurched toward the bathroom, his steps unsteady. He flicked the switch, and the bare bulb above the vanity mirror flooded the small, tiled room with harsh, unforgiving light. Alex flinched. The man staring back at him was a stranger. Sunken, haunted eyes stared out of a pale, gaunt face. Disheveled dark hair. The uniform of the damned. For a moment, he felt a flicker of the old self-loathing. This was the man who had driven her into the rain. This was the face that deserved to be erased.

He gripped the edges of the porcelain sink, knuckles white, and leaned in close. He stared into his own eyes, searching for the familiar despair.

"It wasn't real," he said to his reflection, his voice a low, desperate rasp. "It was not real."

For a heartbeat, nothing happened. It was just his own pathetic face staring back at him. The relief was so profound it almost brought him to his knees. A hallucination. A stress-induced psychotic break. He could deal with that. He could check himself in somewhere. Anything was better than the alternative.

He blinked.

And in the mirror, his reflection blinked a fraction of a second too late.

A cold dread, so absolute it felt like ice water injected directly into his veins, seized him. He stared, frozen, at the image in the glass. It was still his face, but something was wrong. Behind his head, for less than a second, a shadow detached from his own. It wasn't the shadow cast by the bare bulb. It was darker, colder, and it rose up from behind his shoulders, branching out into a familiar, terrifying shape.

The shape of fire-blackened, twisted antlers.

A macabre crown of pure darkness, superimposed over his reflection for a single, impossible instant. Then, it was gone.

Alex scrambled backward, away from the mirror, a raw, animal sound of terror finally tearing itself from his throat. He crashed against the shower curtain, tangling in the cheap plastic, and slid to the floor. He stared at the empty space where the shadow had been, his mind a canvas of pure, white-hot horror.

The creature from the woods hadn’t just spoken to him. It hadn't just looked at him.

He had fled, but he hadn't escaped. A piece of that ancient, patient darkness, that thing with obsidian eyes and a voice like grinding stones, had followed him. It had answered his invitation.

It had come home with him.