I didn’t notice it until I moved into his house, about a year ago. I’ve been married to my husband Jack for around 6 months, and things have only gotten stranger.
At first I thought he was crazy, as much as it hurts me to admit that. He always woke up in the middle of the night, claiming there was something in the room with us. He’d cover up the mirrors in the house, and he’d constantly check behind him whenever he walked anywhere. Whenever I told him that I couldn’t see anything, he’d tell me that was a good thing. It can’t hurt you if you can’t see it, he’d say.
Then I started seeing it, too.
It started one night, after we had eaten dinner. We were still sitting at the dinner table, too lazy to get up. Jack had said something offhand about the news, and I looked up from my phone to respond to him.
There it was. In the reflection from the window behind him, what looked like the zombie of a woman, flesh falling off and face mangled, standing directly behind him, her partially decomposed hand on his shoulder. I jumped back and let out a small gasp, quickly trying to compose myself.
“What’s wrong?” Jack asked. “You didn’t- you didn’t see anything, did you?” He looked concerned.
It can’t hurt you if you can’t see it, I remembered.
“No.” I said. “Didn’t see a thing.”
Then I started seeing it more and more.
I never saw it in person, only through reflections. In the mirrors whenever Jack forgot to cover them, in the water when I tried to have a bath, in the shiny metal dishes when I was cleaning them.
Maybe it was stress, I told myself. Things hadn’t been great with Jack lately, admittedly. He had been wanting to have a kid for a while, and kept begging me to have one with him. I told him I wasn’t ready. but he never listened. Maybe I was just seeing things.
But then again, why would Jack be seeing it, too? Could two people be seeing the same hallucinations?
Jack had been getting more and more paranoid, I had noticed.
I tried to go down into the basement, which I had actually never been down to, to look for a screwdriver I needed. Jack had stopped me.
“No!” He shouted desperately. “Please, please, stay out of there.” He grabbed my wrist, pulling me back.
“I…I don’t want it to hurt you, too. Please, darling, I’m only trying to protect you. Do you trust me?” He looked me in the eyes, and I realized, even if we fought, even if he was super paranoid, that all he wanted to do was protect me.
“Yes. With all my heart.” I said.
“Good, good. Now, promise me you’ll never go down there. For your own good.” He said, pulling me into a hug.
“I promise.”
I thought that would be the end of it. I thought that if I patched up my relationship with Jack, that things would go back to normal. They didn’t.
I still saw it, even more than before. At least once a day, that horrid, rotting corpse would be in reflections, staring at me, staring at Jack, anything.
One day, it all came to a head.
It was night, and Jack wasn’t home. I was getting ready for bed, when I saw it in the mirror. Usually if I looked away and then looked back, it would go away, but this time, it didn’t work.
“What do you want?” I asked, not expecting a response.
“Avenge me.” It responded in a raspy, broken voice.
I stepped back. “W-what do you mean?”
“The basement. Go down and find the truth. Set me free” It said.
“And why should I do that?”
The thing laughed. “I was just like you, you know. Blinded by love. Go into the basement. See who he really is.” It said, and suddenly disappeared.
Cautiously, I stepped down the stairs leading to the basement, armed with a kitchen knife. I found a box in the very corner of it, and I opened it, hoping it was just a box of Jack’s childhood possessions, or maybe a collection of baseball cards. I was wrong. Documents, thousands of documents and personal belongings spilled out of the box.
Arthur McDonald. Jack’s real name was Arthur McDonald, a man who was apparently guilty of first degree murder. And apparently, he was also legally dead.
“Jack…” I said in disbelief. “You couldn’t…”
“Oh he could,” a voice suddenly said, scaring me half to death.
A small hand mirror in the box held the thing. It was staring at me.
“Go ahead. Read the other documents, darling.” It said, laughing.
She was Michelle McDonald, Arthur’s wife who he had brutally murdered.
“I really thought he loved me, you know.” Michelle said sadly. “But all he wanted was a child. Another heir to his family name. I was a fool.”
“You weren’t a fool.” I said. “You were in love. And so was I.”
“We really are alike, darling.” Michelle said. “I tell you what; so long as Arthur keeps this con up, I’m doomed to stay on earth forever. Set me free.”
I watched as a hand reached through the mirror, offering me a silver blade.
“Do it.” She said.
“Oh I will.” I answered, taking the knife. “But I can’t do it alone.”
I waited about a week to confront him, waiting for the perfect time. Michelle and I had a plan. Arthur and I were getting ready for bed when Michelle appeared in my phone reflection and nodded. It was time.
I discretely uncovered the mirror as Arthur got into bed.
“What should we do for dinner tomorrow, darling?” He asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I answered. “Arthur.”
He looked up. “Babe, what are you talking about?”
“I think you know. Just like you know about Michelle.”
He laughed uncomfortably. “How do you know about Michelle?”
“I’m the one asking the fucking questions here. Why did you kill her?”
He stared at me with cold eyes. “All I wanted was a son, you know. And she couldn’t give me one. Infertility, you know? 1 in 5 women, crazy, right? So I thought, if she couldn’t have kids, who would ever want her? Don’t you see? I was doing her a favor. And afterwards, all I had to do was start going by my middle name, and marry another woman! I mean, what were the odds I’d marry two barren ladies, you know? One of you had to have a child bearing body. And now that you know, we can start a family together! Wouldn’t that be nice?” He said.
“No.” I said, beckoning to Michelle. “It wouldn’t.”
I watched Arthur’s eyes fill with fear as Michelle stepped out of the mirror, filling the room with the foul smell of rot. She limped towards Arthur as I sneakily pulled the silver blade out from my bra, where I hid it.
Arthur stood protectively in front of me. “Don’t worry, darling. She won’t hurt you.”
I laughed. “Oh, Arthur. Silly.” I said. Without a second thought, I plunged the blade directly into his back. As he crumbled to the ground in pain, I stood beside Michelle triumphantly.
“I know she won’t hurt me.”