The Whispering Mirror


 (Filed under: Field Reports  Haunted Objects, Reflective Inconsistencies)


Three things you should know about mirrors:

  1. They’re terrible conversationalists.

  2. They always tell the truth  but never your truth.

  3. They remember.


I learned all three during my time in the village of Holt-on-the-Marsh, where the pub serves gin that tastes like regret and every second house has lace curtains that twitch unprompted.


The Call


Mrs. Alcott, seventy-three and armed with more indignation than mass, phoned to say her “hallway mirror had started gossiping.”

At first, I assumed early dementia or late loneliness. Then she mentioned the voice addressed her by my name.


That tends to narrow the possibilities.


When I arrived, she showed me the mirror: gilt frame, cracked along one edge, positioned at the end of a long, narrow corridor. It was the kind of object that looked like it had opinions about you.


“Every night at ten,” she said, “it whispers something new. Always just one line.”


I asked what it had said most recently.

She hesitated. “It said, ‘He’s almost figured it out.’”


The Investigation


I set up a small recorder and a thermos of tea (holy water being too expensive to waste).

At precisely ten o’clock, the house sighed the kind of sound plumbing makes when it realises it’s being watched. Then the mirror fogged, not from heat, but from breath.


Words began to form in the condensation:


“The missing one is seen in three.”


I noted the phrase, checked the room nothing amiss except the faint smell of lavender and static.


Then Mrs. Alcott asked the wrong question:

“Mr. Daark, do you have a twin?”


I don’t. Not one that’s corporeal, anyway.


The Clues


Before dawn, I discovered three curious details:

  1. The crack in the glass wasn’t random it formed the shape of an eye.

  2. The reflection of the clock showed 10:03, even when the real clock read 10:00.

  3. My own reflection blinked three times for every one of mine.


I left the house with the recording. It captured nothing except a faint whisper buried under the hum of static:


“Look at the mirror behind you.”


The Puzzle


I hadn’t brought another mirror. But there was one in my car.

Its surface was clear. No condensation. No whispering. Just me.

Until I noticed what I was wearing.


In the reflection, I had on my old trench coat the one I’d burned after the Butcher’s Parish incident.



I blinked. It smiled.


Then it wrote on the glass with fog that came from nowhere:


“Two solved. One remains.”


And that, dear reader, is where I leave you.


Your Task


If “The missing one is seen in three,”

and the reflection is three minutes ahead,

and something not me wears what I burned 

then who, or what, is speaking from inside Mrs. Alcott’s mirror?



What do you think the phrase means?
Who — or what — is the “missing one”?
I’ll post Case File 026-B: The Mirror’s Other Side once we’ve had enough theories (and assuming I survive the reflections).

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