The Mirror In a Casket

Separating Darlene Winchester and her gold-rim mirror actually did happen over her dead body. Nobody had believed her when she first proclaimed it around the summer of 1994, a story my mom had told me all about. But for all her paranoid years to come, it remained in her hands so long as any eyes could see it in her possession.

Roughly two decades later, there it was, still in her hands in the coffin, over a pair of ash-white ribs and a pale, wrinkly body. Over a life spent in a reflection. I was around six then.

The mirror was there until it horrifyingly wasn't. And just as anybody could imagine, the search party was underway ( effective immediately ) to find it. A hanging dread was cast throughout the entire funeral home, that without that damned mirror in her bony hands, they'd all be possessed and haunted for the rest of their lives. So they flipped every pew and table, even paying out some handymen to check the sewage in case someone had flushed it. The Winchesters bawled even harder than at their grief for Darlene, and some dropped to their knees heavily, clasping their hands together and praying extensively that this disaster would not poison their bloodline.

But the mirror must have had a sense of humor, because nothing came of it in the months to come. Even years passed, and all that prayer and worship seemed to kill whatever demons tried to come out of that heirloom, and never was it found.

Although somewhere in that story, that has been repeated a million times, they always forget a piece. A detrimental "oopsie" that could changed everything, and it scares me to this very moment that it starts and ends with me.

I remember the start of the funeral. I was young, but I've always had a pretty solid memory, so the important parts have stuck. It began with my mom and dad, Olivia and Alex Winchester, having a conversation with some old guy I hadn't met yet. Still don't know who he was, but he does have an apartment in my mind and rings the bell on his door sometimes.

"Yes, so who will be carrying the, um...besides Alex, y'know." My mother had begun, or at least where the memory starts, before the old guy replied to her.

"It will be Mack, her eldest grandson, nice young man if you haven't met him already. Not completely sure who else, but they made sure to get the sturdiest fellas they could find. I mean, god forbid that mirror get misplaced when she's moved. She always stared into that damn thing, pardon my french, but...it's like if she ever looked away from it," he continued before heaving a big breath between sentences. "that her hair would fall off or something." He gave one of those elderly chuckles with rasp and a history of cigarettes on it.

There were some more bits and pieces, but most of it had drowned out after the discussion of Darlene's cursed mirror that she never looked away from. I was little, so whatever the grownups said had to be true. I remember holding the hem of my mothers black dress, staring ways from where I stood to the coffin, seeing a glimmer of that golden-rim mirror on top of my grandmothers chest, while she slept peacefully with a chiseled stillness to her. She was pale, like a vampire, with lipstick that was drawn on way too thick.

Six year old me had imagined it was blood from her last victim, but I knew saying that would likely get me whipped by my mother. She didn't really like my imaginative side at times, and in all fairness I understand why now. A lot of times it was disrespectful, and it led me exactly to the position I'm in right now. But we'll get to that.

I had stuck around with her for a couple more conversations that I didn't understand until I eventually got bored. I saw a line forming, so I got in the back, and pulled out a lollipop to suck on while I waited. They were in a big glass bowl when I walked in, and I remember taking a few giddily, knowing I should probably only have one. But the bowl had stared me in my face, and sugar is like drugs to kids below the age of twelve. You don't see bowls of tobacco or opioids sitting around, because if you did they would be empty pretty quick, even if you think otherwise.

I justify myself in that, and my walk through the line was a lot quicker than I expected. Nobody made a second trip behind me, and it seemed like less and less people were around when the line got shorter. I passed the time in exactly three lollipops and six paintings, which adorned the walls all the way to where the line was headed.

When I got to the end, I realized I was at the footrest of the coffin. A little chill went down my spine. It was cold. The last adult had just walked out of the doors ahead of me, setting up the hearse to take her away, or having their last moments of condolences before they would return to lug Darlene to the grave.

I took a few baby steps first, until I could see a small fabric of her garment. My tiny hands made sure they held tightly to the edge of the box, as if she would pop up with her fangs and suck my blood dry. I kept moving forward, and my first idea was to sprint to the doors ahead and find mom or dad. But during my countdown, right about when I was ready for takeoff, I saw that dazzle again. A small white streak came from her chest, and then a sparkle of gold.

It was like the big glass bowl of lollipops. Staring me in the eyes, while nobody was watching. I'm surprised how easily I forgot the the mirror was supposedly haunted just because of a little shine. I slowly moved my hands up, and every inch of me was moving in slow motion. I kept scanning around, with a little more haste to it, afraid a grown up would walk in and spank me for taking it. I also still awaited the vampire to jump from it's place of sleep and bite me, so I could never go in the sun again to play and I'd look like a marshmallow.

I pushed through those fears and yanked it from her hands, scrunching my shoulders with the mirror clutched to my chest. I heard her wrinkly hand thud against the side of the casket, and assuming she was coming for me, I bolted. As fast as a six year old could move, I felt the wind in my eyes and the cold of the mirror in my fingers, and my blood only warmed once I had pushed my way into another room, far and alone.

"Deep breaths," I told myself. I'd heard it at school, and honestly it helped in that moment so much I couldn't keep track of how many breaths I had exhaled or inhaled. I knew what I'd done was wrong, and I always hated getting in trouble: I could put the mirror on the ground and leave it, but that wouldn't work. It wouldn't just magically appear there, so I had to improvise something believable. My critical thinking wasn't top notch yet, so my final decision, and the very one that haunts me now, was to keep the mirror. Lost, but to be forever in my hands.

The chaos to look for it was more than the truth. I stood behind my dad while he cussed to pieces about it over the phone and saw the construction people dig deep beneath the funeral home to ravage the pipes down there for it. I was super guilty and quiet, but being six in a moment of crisis, the focus wasn't on me. So I sat still, like I had before, with the mirror tucked inside my pants, the only place I assumed nobody would think it was.

Years passed since that. I had some experiences with the mirror that I could never explain, and it started the first night I took it home. Anytime I wasn't looking in it, there were these deep heaves and creaking noises from everywhere, always just silent or vague enough to consider me crazy. I shrugged it off as a conspiracy at my fault for stealing it, fully on board with what my Google search told me it was.

Once I grew up to my teenage years, and my skills in hiding the mirror had exponentially grown, I was now completely responsible of it, and with now even more years behind me of guilt and fear, there was no chance I could give it back. Every part of me wanted to get rid of the thing, but somehow it felt attached now. Stuck. Like there was a bond I created, and the humanistic side of me wouldn't be able to let it go.

I didn't look at it very often due to this feeling. The few times I did, I wished to undo it, because there was something utterly wrong about how normal it was. The reflection didn't change; it was like any old mirror, but sometimes it felt like sirens to a shipwreck. There were noises in it that I couldn't differentiate. I wondered if Darlene Winchester had spoke to them in her time as the mirror's owner, but as a teenager, I figured that was the dumbest conclusion I could have came to.

Until a couple nights later, when I almost did myself. For the first time, when I was seventeen, I decided to stare into it, to finally disprove all my kiddish theories after all this time. But I heard them. Familiar, familiar voices, sometimes close, sometimes far. The only division was the sounds came out of frame, and so of course I tried to experiment with it and find where they came from. I was young and thought I was brave.

At first I thought that it was just a voice. Sound. Not belonging to anything but maybe souls or some wild shit like that, but that was wrong. They had distance to them, direction. I followed them, but sneakily, because if anyone saw what I was doing I'd be mistaken as insane. Especially around the house, where that mirror is illegal, and it's of all my importance that they never find out.

I found myself gazing into it more often. I tried limiting myself, but my curiosity was a lot bigger than I was.

I had to wait to really discover anything I cared for. I was twenty-one when I was stable enough and had a good car to get me places, and I used the mirror as a compass.

It drove me out to a field, past backroad on backroad, where all the sudden the mirror was screaming at me with a feminine shrill, almost forcing me to drive my car off the road in surprise, and I turned off into a ditch where luckily the car wasn't totaled.

I walked forward through the overgrown field until I reached a clearing. A square, probably a couple yards long and wide, with a tombstone right in the middle of it. Crickets kept chirping around as dawn was only darkening, and the cold breeze was nipping at my arms. I held up the mirror, which now was deathly silent, and continued forward before stopping right at the head of the stone.

"Darlene Winchester"

I don't think my body was capable of moving in that moment. Frozen there, with a gold-rim mirror in hand, it felt like something right out of Pet Sematary.

But nothing came. No hand protruded from beneath the rock tomb but silence. Breathing. Mine specifically, but there was another, that felt like the wind itself and moved the clouds looming above my head.

I turned around, ready to go home with my discomfort, but I looked down to the mirror and the breathing got heavier. It was mine, but not, and I slowly raised the mirror, wanting to see what was behind me, but nothing. Just breathing. Croaky breathing, like it took effort.

I adjusted the reflection down slightly. A small shape. Beside the tombstone, almost swaying back and forth. Huddled up with a bony spine, wet and disgustingly greased hair showered down it.

I didn't know what to do. If it was real. But every shaky breath besides mine came with a convulsion from the shape, then it would descend back into itself, and continue smacking back and forth gently. There was an eye. What I made out as the head looked like a grayish-blue decay, with a small pupil that had rotted fungi pouring out from it.

I threw down the mirror and looked behind me to the tombstone. Nothing. My breath was one again, and I rushed to the car with no time to waste, images of the rotting fetus chasing me down, dripping condensation and the slip of skin from bone like pizza sauce. The mirror stayed in that field with whatever the hell I saw, and I made it home ten minutes before the GPS said I would.

I rushed into my apartment once I got there and slammed the door shut, feeling like it was the smartest thing I could do. I cried, whimsical and weak tears, but nothing could compare to the silhouette I saw, and so I let myself break down. Once finished, I assured myself that it was gone, right with Darlene and the damned mirror, the only place it could belong.

I walked towards my bathroom, completely avoiding the mirror above the sink. I hated staring into them, even the normal ones, and after the experience I just had, there was no way I could see just myself in them again. It took me almost four more decades until I was semi-okay, and now in my seniority, I still feel the fear from that mirror. I hear breathing everywhere I go that my reflection may be, and I question myself when thinking about Darlene and her obsession.

I don't think Darlene was the thing I saw that night. I believe that it was there for her, for the gold-rim mirror that it believed was inside her grave. That once I left it there, it got what it wanted, and that's how after all this time I've merely been afraid and not hurt. That it's odd obsession was fed, and I'm finally alone across a glass screen.

I'm sixty-one today, and proud to call myself a grandfather. Even though most people my age are beginning to forget, I've always had a solid memory. Memories I'd like to forget, like the guilt still in my chest from a decision I made as a young boy. Memories of things nobody else has seen and demons we all fight but can never defeat.

But nothing can compare to the feeling of seeing a gold-rim mirror show up on your doorstep; the sound of breathing in your ear, knowing the only way you can see it making the sound is if you look in the reflection, unsure of what awaits you when you do. Only sure that now the pit in your stomach is merely for something you cannot face, that the feeling of liquid dripping down your neck is inevitably real, unless you use the very thing you fear most.

So you pick it up.