Chapter 9 - The Voice from the Mirror
The sound of footsteps on the staircase was agonizingly deliberate. Each step groaned under substantial, corporeal weight. Sarah scrambled backward across the kitchen floor, dragging Toby and Brendan with her until her spine collided with the base of the island counter. She set Brendan between her knees and reached up onto the countertop, blindly groping until her fingers wrapped around the heavy wooden handle of an eight-inch chef's knife.
The weapon felt pathetic in her hands, a hollow comfort against the unnatural, but she gripped it with white-knuckle intensity.
""Toby, close your eyes and don't open them, no matter what happens,"" Sarah commanded, her voice dropping into a fierce, low growl.
""I can't, Mom,"" the boy replied, his hazel eyes fixed unblinkingly on the kitchen doorway. ""If I close my eyes, she gets closer faster. That’s the rule.""
The shuffling reached the bottom of the stairs. The parquet hallway floor creaked. Then, silence settled over the first floor. The air grew dense, heavy with the sickly sweet scent of embalming chemicals mixed with rot and dry lilies.
From the decorative gilt mirror hanging on the dining room wall adjacent to the kitchen, a reflection began to materialize, glowing with a dull, phosphorescent gray.
Sarah could see the empty kitchen doorway in physical reality, but inside the mirror's reflection, someone was standing there.
It was Evelyn. Her burial gown was ripped at the hem, streaked with sticky, black dirt. Her skin was the waxy, bruised gray of refrigerated tissue, and her jaw hung loosely, unhinged slightly as if the embalmer’s wire had snapped. But her eyes were horribly alive, burning with a furious, deranged maternal resolve. In the mirror, her gaze locked onto Brendan.
Give him to me, Sarah, the voice emanated not from the doorway, but from the glass itself, vibrating against the dining room wall like a warped cello string. His heart will fail in the hospital. The machine will crush his spirit. Let his brother rest. Thomas has waited so long for a playmate.
""He is my son!"" Sarah screamed into the empty air, pointing the trembling kitchen knife toward the mirror. ""You don't get to touch him! You died, Mother! You're dead!""
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The reflection in the mirror smiled—a grotesque, skin-splitting tear of dried lips. You think death breaks a contract signed in blood? Look at your own wrist, daughter.
Sarah glanced down involuntarily at her left wrist. Beneath the pale skin, the blue veins were visibly darkening, turning a sickly, branching black that pulsed in time with Brendan's erratic heartbeat.
