Growing up, my grandpa always kept drapes over the mirrors in his house.
I was a kid, and he had a big house. I just assumed it was a fancy decoration. We moved before I was too old, and I kind of forgot about it.
Once when I was 15, he came to visit our house, and my mom had me help cover all of the mirrors in our house.
“You grandfather has a phobia of mirrors.” Was all she said on the topic.
I knew this was out of the ordinary now, and one night, while we were sitting in the living room together, I just blurted it out.
“Why are you afraid of mirrors?”
“Oh, your mother probably wouldn’t want me to tell you. It’s not a nice story. Let’s just say they remind me of your grandmother and leave it at that.”
“Come on. I’m practically an adult. I can handle it.”
“Well, okay maybe. When your mom was just a kid, we found this mirror-“
My mom walked into the room and glared at him.
“I brought the two of you some dessert. You’re not telling her that story are you? She’s too young to hear all of that.”
She handed us some ice cream, and my grandpa didn’t budge again.
I tried to get him or my mom to tell me for the following year or two. Every rejection added more intrigue to the story.
“The story is about your grandmother leaving us. It’s painful for us to talk about.” My mom offered once after I had pestered her about it.
I understood then why nobody wanted to talk about it, and over time, I lost the desire to hear it.
I almost forgot about it, until this morning.
My grandpa called me last week to tell me that he had a heart attack. He was okay and being discharged. I asked him if I could visit.
This morning, I arrived to his house from the airport to find the familiar drapes drawn over the mirrors. My curiosity came back, but I couldn’t ask an old man that had just had a heart attack to reminisce about the love of his life leaving him.
I didn’t have to ask.
“I never told you the story about the mirror.” He said after we had finished catching up with each other and sitting in an awkward silence. “I think now’s as good a time as any. I might not have long left”
“They gave you a pacemaker, grandpa, you’ll be fine”
“I’m still 89 years old.”
I didn’t have a reassuring response for that, so I just nodded. He started the story.
“We had just moved into our first real house after living in the basement apartment of my parents house. Your mother was about 6 and really needed her own room.
“We bought an old house, too remote to be called the suburbs, but I didn’t mind the extra commute to give the family some breathing room. We were still considering having more children, and with our own house, it seemed possible.
“The place was a fixer-upper, but your grandmother had a knack for it. She repainted inside and out, fixed lights, decorated, furnished the place beautifully, and even managed to fix the plumbing in one of the bathrooms on her own.
“There was an unfinished basement, and we got the idea in our heads to fix it up and turn it into an entertaining space. While we were preparing the space to start work and getting it inspected for asbestos, we found that one of the walls was built inside the foundation.
“It wasn’t like a false wall, it was real, but it wasn’t part of the original foundation, so we tore it down for the extra 10 foot or so of floor space.
“There was an antique mirror back there, one of those self-standing mirrors with a swivel covered with a sheet. The thing must have been as old as the house, maybe older. We talked about having it appraised to see if it was worth anything, but decided to keep it as a talking piece.
“We finished the basement, and set the mirror up as a decoration. At our celebration get-together, we realized there was something strange about the mirror.
“The reflections were off, like a funhouse mirror. One guy would be stretched too tall, another too short, and one of your grandmother’s girlfriends had no face. It was kind of creepy, but kind of funny- a defective mirror.
“We kept using that space for weekend gatherings. Your grandmother would cook some hors d’oeuvre, and we’d have some drinks. The mirror was always a fun little attraction.
“This is where it gets…strange. I guess the mirror was contagious or something, because the other mirrors in the house started to play with reflections.
“Sometimes my hair would look fine, but when I started driving to work, I would notice it was a mess. One time, I saw two of me standing there.
“I got out of the house to go to work, at least. Your grandmother was constantly assaulted by the mirror. She would tell me she was obese, or that her hair was falling out, and she looked the same she always had. I tried telling her she was just as beautiful as I had ever seen her, but when your own reflection is playing tricks on you, how can you believe that?
“She even told me one time that the mirror had tried to grab her and pull her in. I wrote it off as crazy.
“Our anniversary was coming up, so I came up with a plan to help bring the magic back. I got one of the neighbor girls to watch your mother, and took your grandmother out to dinner and dancing at a new restaurant. They had floor to ceiling mirrors throughout the place.
“When your grandmother saw her reflection in those mirrors, she sobbed. I thought I had messed up, but then she kissed me.
“‘Thank you’ she said, ‘thank you I haven’t seen…me in so long.’
“‘This is how I always see you baby’ I said back
“Sorry about the romantic stuff, but that night. That was the last time we were happy. It was amazing. Like when we had first met.”
My grandpa was crying now. I may have been too.
“Are you sure you want to keep going grandpa?”
“You need to know.” He said. He wiped his eyes and began again.
“When we got home, the sitter was a wreck. She was screaming about how she and your mother were playing hide and seek, but your mother had been hiding without being found for three hours.
“You hear these horror stories of kids locking themselves in dryers and things. We panicked and split up to search the house, calling her name.
“Your grandmother went to search the basement, and after I had looked through your mother’s room, I went down to check on her.
“She was sitting in front of that antique mirror sobbing and screaming at it ‘give me back my daughter! Please, take me instead!’
“I was walking up to her and said ‘baby, what’s going on?’ and she said ‘she is in there, I see her, it took her, give me back my daughter’
“I was almost to the point I could see the reflection, when the sitter yelled down the stairs that she had found your mother in her room, hiding under the bed.
“I had checked under the bed, so that meant your mother had been running around actively avoiding us. I was pissed, especially seeing the state your grandmother was in over it. She was probably 10 by then; she should’ve known better.
“We both ran upstairs and gave her a hug, but I told her she was grounded for a month and should know better not to make us worry like that. She just looked at her feet and apologized.
“After that, your grandmother became convinced that your mother had been replaced that night. She told me that your mother had started writing with her left hand instead of her right. There was a scar on her left ankle that had switched sides too. Finally she told me that she kept seeing our real daughter in the mirror in the basement, so she must have been replaced by something else.
“I talked to her about getting therapy, and she stopped talking to me about it. I thought maybe it had resolved on its own.
“I came home one day to your mother locked in her room while your grandmother pounded on the door with a kitchen knife in her hand. She was saying ‘give me back my daughter, you bitch’
“I tried to talk to her, but she lunged at me with the knife and accused me of being replaced too. I didn’t know what to do, so I called 911. It killed me to do it.
“Your grandmother looked at me with this hurt expression, one I’ll never forget, as I hung up the phone. She ran into the basement.
“I stood by the door to the basement until the cops showed up, but when we went downstairs, she was gone. Just vanished. There was no other way out of the basement.
“The cops took my statement, and eventually we settled on the idea that she hadn’t run into the basement, and I had mistaken which door she used in the heat of the moment.
“They never found her, but I started seeing her in the mirrors. First just the one in the basement, then all throughout the house.
“We moved to another house and it stopped for a bit, then got worse. Even in the mirrors at work I saw her. I put these drapes up at home to get some peace. I’ve been doing it ever since.”
He stopped. My head was still catching up.
“Can anyone else see her?”
He laughed, stood up, and walked over to a curtain on the wall. “You want to know if I’m just going mad? Let’s see.”
He pulled the curtains and smiled sadly at the mirror. I couldn’t see anything while seated, but I stood and froze.
An elderly woman stood on the other side of the mirror, behind my grandfather’s reflection. I had assumed he had PTSD or something. My mind was breaking. He pulled the curtains shut.
“You saw her? Not everyone can” he said
“Am…am I going crazy?” I asked
“I’ve been asking myself that for years, sweetheart. Sometimes I think your grandmother may have been the sane one.”
I finished my visit with him somewhat stunned and went to check-in to my hotel. I am staying a few more days.
Just before writing this post, my mom called me to see how my visit with grandpa went.
“Talk about anything interesting?” She asked
I couldn’t answer. I had glanced at the mirror instinctively when she asked and saw my mother’s reflection looking back at me.
“Hello, did I lose you?” She said
“Not really, just hospital stuff. Sorry, I got a text” I said, forcing myself back.
After I got off the phone, I put a sheet over the mirror.