II
For a week now great-aunt lay below in the first-floor master bedroom surrounded by family and the prayers of a branch of the Catholic church that believed in demons. My great-aunt Olivia believed in all sorts of rituals, and especially that demons could collect a weak or an unrighteous soul. She was deathly afraid she would be dragged off by demons and had spent a great amount of time and money arranging her own rites and end-of-life care. She was always an eccentric. Being old and alone, great-aunt Olivia had tons of hobbies, all of which were displayed on the walls of her house. She collected life-like landscape paintings, and taxidermy animals. Only the majestic ones like a lone moose and imposing 12-point stag deer hung on the wall of the study and library, and a single white mouse dressed in a tuxedo that she kept on the fireplace mantle in the foyer. He was named Siggy after her husband Sigmund Richstein von Walberg. Olivia also loved antique mirrors. She said it made the house feel full even if it was only herself, with a mirror she always had company. An entire side wall in her bedroom was covered in gilded antique mirrors; the largest mirror she owned held prominence on one wall across from her curtained four-poster bed.
That night the priest and his assistants returned to this room, lighting their incense and candles reflected in the room's many mirrors. I could barely breathe in that room.
The air was thick with incense and sweat, clinging to my throat as the priest circled the bed. Their chorus of Latin rose and fell in harsh, rhythmic waves — not melodic, not soothing, but strained, like they were pushing against something that pushed back. The sick woman lay in the center of it all, her skin slick and shining, her hair plastered to her temples. Every few seconds her chest hitched, not like she was breathing, but like something inside her was testing the limits of her ribs.
I kept my eyes on the floor because the wall was worse. The window was only barely cracked open, dark green velvet curtain fluttering as the heat crept in. Someone had thought it would help but the warped frame had only allowed an inch of open air before it stuck, making the room even more stifling.
Every inch of the opposite wall was covered in antique mirrors — tall gilt frames, cracked hand mirrors, tarnished silver ovals, warped Victorian glass. A lifetime of collecting. Another obsession. But now every mirror was draped in heavy black cloth and muslin, pinned down at the corners so nothing could slip free. I asked the priest why they had covered all the mirrors.
"Your great-aunt requested it. You see our sect believes souls can get trapped in the mirror and will never ascend," Father Marquez had whispered to me earlier, his voice trembling in a way I'd never heard from him. "Especially when the body is… compromised. The soul gets confused just after passing."
I didn't ask what he meant. I didn't want to.
The chanting grew louder, more urgent. The woman's fingers curled against the sheets, nails scraping fabric. A low moan vibrated through her, too deep for her small frame, too resonant to belong to a human throat.
The fabric on the one great mirror across from the bed fluttered.
Just a ripple like a breath from behind it.
No one else seemed to notice, but my stomach dropped. I stared at the covered mirror, willing it to stay still, to stay silent, to stay covered. But the fabric trembled again, a slow, deliberate shiver, as if something on the other side was brushing its fingertips along the glass.
The priest kept chanting.
The elderly woman kept sweating, gasps getting fainter, low gurgling coming from the center of her chest. Her limbs grew cool and pale, though her hands gripped at her bed linens.
And the mirror's fabric kept moving.
One of the priest's helpers, a tall muscular man in black vestments could not stand the heat anymore. He moved to shake open the window, tapping with his large hand against the frame to loosen it and pull the window open further.
The moment that window cracked wide open, everything in the room changed.
The heat had been suffocating with bodies pressed close, candles flickering in trembling hands, the sick woman's breath rasping like sandpaper. But when the latch clicked and the pane finally slid up, a sharp gust knifed through the incense haze. It snuffed two candles outright and sent the others quivering wildly, shadows leaping across the walls like startled animals.
And then the wind hit the mirrors.
One of the coverings, an old cashmere knit, yellowed with age and soft from decades of handling was being lifted at the side nearest the window. Just a little. Just enough to expose a sliver of the gilt frame beneath. I opened my mouth to call out, to warn someone, but the draft caught the cloth again and peeled it halfway down the mirror in one smooth, silent glide.
That's when I saw it.
A shape. A darkness that wasn't a reflection, wasn't a trick of the candlelight, wasn't anything that should have been there. It sat behind the glass like a person crouched just out of sight, its head tilted up, peering over the edge of the frame. Not moving. Not blinking. Just… waiting. Finally, it slid away from the edge of the frame into the deep shadows beneath, barely a shape that could be mistaken as a crack or imperfection in the glass.
Waiting for her.
The woman on the bed let out a wet, rattling gasp. Her chest stuttered. Her eyes rolled beneath their lids. The priest and his helpers didn't notice the mirror. They were too deep in their chanting, voices cracking, sweat dripping down their collars. But I saw the shadow leaning forward, just a fraction, as if scenting the air. As if timing her breaths. As if counting them down it waited.
The cloth slipped another inch, and the darkness behind the glass stretched taller, clearer, more defined. Not a silhouette. Not a person. Something thinner. Longer. Its appendages, as if they were fingers, curled over the inside of the frame like hooks.
It was waiting for her last breath.
And I realized, with a coldness that cut deeper than the wind, that the mirror wasn't a barrier. It was a portal.
I used to think mirrors just reflected the world. Now I know they're doors.
It wasn't the first time I had seen this weird shape in the mirrors. It happened that night the house went silent. It was a disquiet, eerie silence, like every sound had been sucked out of the air. Even my own breathing felt muffled, as if someone had pressed a hand over my mouth. I was standing in front of the hallway mirror, the tall one with the ornate brass frame, when the glass rippled.
Not a trick of the light. Not my imagination.
The surface moved, like water disturbed by a fingertip.
I stepped back, heart pounding, but the ripple followed me — stretching, widening, forming a dark oval in the center of the mirror. And then something leaned through.
At first I thought it was a shadow. A ghost. A figure made of smoke. But as it emerged, its shape sharpened: tall, elongated limbs, skin shifting shades of gray like liquid metal, eyes that glowed with a cold, analytical light. It didn't walk. It slid, as if gravity didn't apply to it. A hazy cloak of shadow and darkness hid it from clear view.
I couldn't move. Couldn't scream. The air around me vibrated with a low hum, a frequency that made my bones ache. Then it raised a limb, extending tentacle like feelers from the more solid shadow within. Not to touch me — but to touch the space just above my chest.A thin beam of light flickered between its fingers, scanning me, passing through skin and muscle like they weren't even there. My vision blurred. My thoughts slowed. And for a moment, I felt something inside me tug — not physically, but deeper, like a thread being pulled from the center of my mind. The thing was trying to communicate.
That's when I understood. They weren't taking bodies. They were taking a souls. At the moment of death the soul is freed. These beings could somehow draw them out of the dead body and take the soul away. Extracting consciousness like data. Harvesting whatever made us human. And the mirrors weren't haunted — they were instruments. Gateways. Tools for collection.
The alien tilted its head, studying me with a curiosity that felt almost gentle.
Then it whispered directly into my mind a single, chilling truth:
"You have seen. Not yet ready. Witness must not be left."
The mirror behind it pulsed, waiting. I realized it wasn't here to haunt me. It had blurred my memories of that day. I was too alive for it to take my soul. It was here to take my great-aunt Olivia. Last time it was scouting the house, waiting for sickness to take her. Now whatever they were, they were here to finish the job.