The Mirror Knock

My grandmother believed the dead could climb through windows if you left them open even a millimeter. She nailed ours shut before the movers had even dropped off our furniture, sealing the sills with salt and beeswax for good measure. Most of my friends thought she was insane. I always shrugged and told them, “She’s survived this long. Might as well go along with it.”

She glowered at me from my doorway: a small, ferocious silhouette wrapped in her green wool cardigan as if it were chain mail. “Aiden! Kitchen. Now.” Her accent sharpened every syllable into a threat.

I peeled myself off the floor, where I’d been somewhere between writing an essay and melting. It was easily ninety degrees inside. Grandma didn’t believe in central AC. My brain felt like soup. I glanced at the clock: 9:30 AM. “How can it be this hot already?” I muttered, dragging myself toward the kitchen.

The warm, lived-in room smelled like herbs and yeast. Celtic knots carved into the walls, tea always brewing, dough always rising. She stood at the counter with her arms crossed over a mound of biscuit dough. “What took you so long? The biscuits nearly rolled themselves.”

I headed for the rolling pin, but she pinned me in place with her stare. “Did you knock?”

I groaned. Wrong move. In a blur of strength (that must have been borrowed from her ancestors) I was steered down the hall and into the bathroom.

She smoothed a curl from my forehead, both of us facing the mirror. “Not everyone appreciates the old ways,” she whispered. “But they keep us safe all the same.”

I sighed, nodded, lifted my hand.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The knock echoed, ordinary and dull, but it left me feeling like I’d been seen. I shook it off and followed my grandmother back to the kitchen, sweat sliding down my spine. She handed me the rolling pin, and I went for distraction. As I leaned over the dough, I avoided the window glass, just in case it had something to say.

Grandma never explained things straight. She ladled them out like soup: thick, a little strange, but comforting once you swallowed. That morning, after the biscuit dough was safely in the oven and her third cup of tea was steaming in her favorite chipped mug, she leaned back in her chair and studied me.

“You know why we do it, don’t you?” she asked.

I shrugged, already bracing for the layered response. “Because you like scaring children?”

Her mouth curved into a half-smile. “Because a fetch always waits.”

I rolled my eyes and stole one of the cooling biscuits. “Sounds like a ghost story.”

“A spirit double,” she corrected, sharp as flint. “The fetch is you, only not. It comes as a warning. Sometimes of death, sometimes just bad luck,” she paused, sipping her tea. “Back home they swore if you saw your fetch walking toward you in the road, it meant your time was borrowed.”

I dunked my biscuit in tea, pretending the story didn’t send a chill down my back. The smell of rosemary and yeast should’ve grounded me, but it didn’t.

“So the knocking… what, scares it off?”

Her gaze landed on me like a weight. “Not necessarily. The knocking is a reminder. Three knocks so it knows you’re already inside. Otherwise…” She looked me in the eye, “it may decide it’s you instead.”

She said it as if she were giving me instructions on how to roll dough evenly. Practical. Plain.

I laughed as if that didn’t rattle me, because what else was I supposed to do? “If my evil twin climbs out of the mirror, I’ll send her your way.”

Grandma didn’t laugh.

Later that night, when I went to brush my teeth, I caught myself watching the mirror too long. My reflection leaned back half a second late, smile hovering a beat after mine had gone. I told myself it was just the old glass, warped and warped again. When I turned away, the hairs on the back of my neck rose like my reflection in the glass hadn’t turned with me.

I was late. My essay had printed crooked, my phone was dead, and Grandma had unplugged the toaster “because it was humming like a banshee.” I barreled through the bathroom, splashed water on my face, and brushed my teeth with one shoe half on. I didn’t look in the mirror.

By the time I realized it, I was already outside, fumbling for my car keys in the Sacramento heat. The air was humid and thick with exhaust and dry grass. I told myself it was fine. Nothing happened. The world didn’t end.

At school, my best friend Jade waved at me across the quad, then faltered. Her smile froze like she’d just waved at a stranger. “Weird,” she said when I came closer, squinting at my face. “For a second I thought you were… someone else.” She laughed it off, but I felt the laugh land wrong.

Later, checking voicemail on my lunch break, I barely recognized my own voice. Tinny, hollow, stretched thin. Like someone trying on my words for size.

By afternoon, I unintentionally started avoiding reflective surfaces; the shiny metal of a locker, the bus window. In one class, we took a group photo for the yearbook. When the teacher passed me the printout to label names, I froze. Everyone else’s smiles aligned. Mine lagged, lips curling just a beat late. Wrong, in a way that makes your stomach turn before your brain catches up sort of wrong.

“You blinked,” the teacher said, snatching the photo back. But I knew I hadn’t.

The walk home felt longer than usual. The sun hung low and orange over Sacramento, the kind of light that turns everything into a weird silhouette. I kept telling myself the tightness in my chest was just the humidity, but every reflective surface, a parked car window, a puddle of irrigation water… caught at the corner of my eye.

Halfway down my street, I stopped. Someone was standing at the end of the road, exactly where the sidewalk dipped into shadow. Waiting. Then, she walked toward me, slowly and surely. Her stride was mine.

I blinked, and she was gone. Just an empty street, heat shimmer radiating off the pavement.

By the time I reached the house, sweat had glued my shirt to my back. Grandma was humming in the kitchen, rolling dough like nothing was wrong. I swallowed the story with a lump in my throat. She’d only give me that look; the one that meant I told you so.

The next morning, I wasn’t late. To be honest, I hadn’t slept well. The bathroom light flickered when I flipped the switch. Steam from the shower clung to the edges of the mirror, blurring my face into something softer, less certain.

I raised my hand, knuckles ready.

This time, the reflection raised hers first.

I froze, my hand still halfway up; but the glass version of me was already waiting, fingers curled into a fist against the surface.

“Not funny,” I whispered. But the air between us swallowed the sound.

I knocked once.

She knocked at the same time, too exact, like she’d been waiting for my cue. The sound reverberated deeper than it should have.

By the third knock, her mouth stretched into an eerie smile that wasn’t mine. Too wide. Too long.

I stumbled back, almost slipping on the bathmat. The mirror looked ordinary again, just streaked with steam, but I couldn’t make myself step closer.

Grandma must’ve heard me, because she appeared in the doorway, her cardigan pulled tight. Her eyes flicked to the mirror, then to me. “You skipped, didn’t you?”

I didn’t answer. My throat had closed.

Her face went pale in a way I’d never seen before. Not anger. Fear. She muttered something under her breath in Irish, words I’d only ever heard when she lit candles for the dead.

I gripped the sink, knuckles white. “It’s just… glass. You can’t really believe…”

“You think it matters what I believe?” she snapped. “It matters what believes in you.”

The kitchen smelled like rosemary and flour again that morning, but it didn’t comfort me. Every reflective surface had turned suspect. My spoon. The chrome of the kettle. Even the back of my phone. I shoved it face-down on the counter, heart thudding every time I caught a glimmer of myself where I shouldn’t.

Jade texted me a picture from the group shot yesterday with a joking caption: still looks like you blinked lol. But I stared at the image until my stomach dropped. Everyone else was blurred just enough by motion, little smudges of life. Only I was too sharp, too still. Like I’d been waiting for the camera.

I almost smashed the phone right there. Instead, I shoved it in my pocket and went back to rolling biscuit dough with Grandma, pretending my hands weren’t trembling.

By twilight, every surface in the house seemed to have come to life. A low hum emitted from the mirror when I brushed my teeth, a vibration I felt in my jawbone.

I turned away before I could see my reflection smile again.

On the final morning, I didn’t want to get up. My stomach churned, my skin itched with salt and dried sweat, and the silence in the house was wrong. Too heavy.

But the ritual wasn’t optional anymore.

I crept into the bathroom, every step dragging more than the last. The mirror was waiting. No steam, no blur; just my reflection, clear as glass, waiting.

I lifted my hand, slow.

Her hand was already up.

We knocked together.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

The sound reverberated like a drumbeat throughout my entire body. On the third strike, the mirror cracked, a sharp boom that rattled the walls. Fractures spiderwebbed outward, slicing my reflection into shards.

She didn’t even blink.

Every piece of her face kept staring, perfectly still, while mine flinched from the noise.

I stumbled back, breath tearing in my throat. The bathroom light flickered once, twice.

Grandma’s voice floated from the kitchen, low and steady: “Hurry, love. The fetch doesn’t wait forever.”

I looked again, but this time, I couldn’t tell if I was the one behind the glass.

My reflection smiled through the cracks before turning and walking out the door.