Ripples in the mirror II

Journal Entry – October 27, 1871

He speaks now. Not through sound — through suggestion. Words that bloom inside my mind like smoke. I can feel them settle behind my eyes before I understand their meaning.

Last night, the mirror shuddered in its frame, and the frost receded — not melting, but retreating, as if something on the other side no longer needed to hide. His outline stood sharper than ever, and when I reached toward him, the surface gave way like water.

He asked for a name. Not his. Mine. He said it was the last key, the only thing still separating us. But the way he said it — with such patience, such certainty — I knew it wasn’t just my name he wanted. It was the weight of it. The meaning. The life threaded through it.

The clasp on my wrist has begun to change. Its metal darkens each night, the engraved sigil twisting into new shapes when I’m not looking. Once it resembled a crescent and flame. Tonight it looks like an eye. It blinks when the room goes still.

I asked him what he seeks. He showed me flashes — the orchard, the trapdoor, the cellar where voices hum in the soil. He showed me blood soaking into wood and the way light bends when it touches it. And then he whispered:

“To finish what we began.”

When I woke, my hands were streaked with dirt. My fingernails packed with soil. I haven’t left the room since sundown.

But the mirror is no longer just a mirror. It’s a threshold.

And he is patient no longer.

— K