Keepsake

A flash of embers filled the sky, fireflies of ash and soot twirling higher into the dark, as a burning log crashed deeper into the fire. Jess pulled her legs back from the intensity of the heat, her skin already warm in the humid summer night. 

“I’m gonna grab another beer,” she said. “Anyone else?” All four of her friends held up a hand, illuminated by the fire. She headed into the old farmhouse they’d rented for the weekend, a needed break for them all. 

The linoleum in the kitchen was oversaturated under the bulbs in the ceiling lamps, too bright after sitting around the fire, and her eyes refused to adjust. Jess reconsidered that next beer, then grabbed the next round out of the fridge anyway, nestling bottles in her arms as she counted out five. She was on vacation, anyway, and she should enjoy herself. The fake wood handle of the fridge was cool in her hand. It was, like everything else in the house, old enough to be trendy again, past outdated and back to vintage. 

The farmhouse reminded Jess of her grandma’s house, full of furniture and things with a certain heaviness, a story to them. She rested her back against the counter as she adjusted the bottles in her arms, scanning the kitchen. A gray pitcher, mottled with cobalt blue paint, waited next to the stove for someone to need one of the wooden spoons or rust-stained whisks poking from its top. The pitcher had one little chip on the rim and she wondered if at some time there had been a resident of the farmhouse who would laugh and tell a story, decades old, about what chipped it and how.

When they’d arrived, they’d gone room to room like they were in an I Spy book, searching for treasures in old cabinets and drawers. Kait had found a pile of old scarves, draping them around her neck until they could barely see her face, tossing loose ends over her shoulders like she was on stage.

“I’ll not accept drinks from gentlemen who disapprove of me!” Kait had quoted Breakfast at Tiffany’s through the scarves, mimicking a starlet with her head tilted just so. Jess had been glad to see her open up a little and join in; she seemed to make Adam happy, but they hadn’t really gotten to know each other yet.

Jana had found an old sewing box, green plastic molded to look like basket weave. It was full of old costume jewelry, and they’d draped tarnished bracelets over each other, stuffing their fingers into rings with enormous plasticky stones, until they collapsed in a heap of giggles. Jana had picked out the only thing in the box that wasn’t hideous, opening a gold-papered cardboard box and plucking a silver pin off a layer of cotton batting. The filigree was still shiny, delicate strands of silver wrapping and weaving to outline a dahlia, a luscious full bloom in the peak of summer.

“Jess, come on, we want to take pictures!” Adam yelled from outside, his voice carrying through the screen door, through Jess’s daydream. When he saw her swing the door open with her hip, arms around a precarious pyramid of bottles, her chin tucked around one of them, he jogged over to help.

“Get together, guys!” Jana said as they set the bottles down, the screen of her tablet illuminating her face with a blue glow as she waited for them to pose.

“Who takes pictures with a tablet, anyway?” Ethan teased her. They all knew Jana did, and they also knew she would filter them to death before posting them everywhere. This one might end up an artsy black and white, the shadows heavily emphasized. Or maybe it would have the flames in focus, their faces slightly blurred in the background. They’d tease her, but they all sometimes found themselves scrolling backwards through their unofficial photographer’s stack, letting the memories wash over them in the dark when they were lonely or stressed. 

“I am an old lady and I am not ashamed,” Jana laughed. She did keep a purse full of sunscreen and granola bars she would offer anyone.

Jess stared at the dot of the camera lens on the back of the tablet, trying to smile naturally, the muscle in her neck tightening awkwardly as she held her arm around Ethan. Jana wouldn’t count when she took pictures, protesting that their expressions wouldn’t be as natural. Instead she’d hold up the camera until it felt right and then lower it unceremoniously. But this time she stayed frozen in place too long, the tablet obscuring her face as her knuckles whitened, straining against themselves.

Jana’s fingers released like a snapped rubber band, as if the tablet were singeing her. She leapt back, hands drawn to her chest. The tablet fell, crunching as it hit the ground screen-first.

“Oh, shit,” Ethan said for everyone. They were still posed for the photo, their attention still fixed on the tablet now laying face down in the hot, dry dust next to the fire. The confusion lifted slowly, and Jess ran to comfort her friend in her unknown distress.

“There was someone there,” Jana whispered to Jess. “There were faces right next to mine in the glass, behind me, a reflection. Not you guys.” Her face twisted as she tried to hold back tears.

Adam picked up her tablet and whistled at the cracks on the blank screen. Jana took it back, cradling it, the tears overflowing now. It hadn’t been more than six months since she bought it, but her expression didn’t read to Jess like a kid who had dropped their ice cream cone on the hot pavement. She looked shaken, her eyes wide as they brimmed over.

“Hey, you said they were in the reflection, right? I’ll be right back,” Ethan ran into the house. He had to be Mr. Fix-it, especially if a woman shed a tear.

“Are you ok?” Kait asked, reluctant to intrude. Jana’s mouth opened to say something, but she settled on nodding instead. She sat back in her camping chair, looking over her shoulder into the darkness beyond the fire’s glow. Quietly, she tried to let her friends’ conversation flow around her, tried to let the night get back on track.

The screen door creaked on its hinges again, Ethan emerging with a silver serving tray the size of a card table. He walked it over to a tree near the fire pit, across from where Jana sat, nestling it against the bark. “Now you can see behind you. In case the boogeyman comes back. Or more importantly, you can see nothing’s there right now,” he offered.

“Thanks Ethan. You’re like a were-elf from Hallow Shield, always coming to the rescue,” Jana teased. Ethan stood on his tiptoes, arms to his chest, and howled into the night air. 

“I’m on guard,” he said, pleased with himself that he could cut the tension and make Jana laugh. He bayed up at the clouds again, his wolf howl more of a siren this time, and then choked himself giggling. 

Kait and Adam kitten-eyed each other behind the theatrics, holding hands. Adam stood up and put on a show of stretching, then sauntered toward the back door. Kait sheepishly smiled her excuses and caught up to him. Ethan and Jess rolled their eyes at each other as the happy couple disappeared inside. 

“Guess it’s a good thing I got this last round already,” Jess said, popping the top off a bottle and handing it to Jana, her hand lingering to pat Jana’s arm.

 ***

Jess blinked awake in the darkness, a few seconds passing as the unfamiliar surroundings came into focus before she got her bearings. She was in the room she was sharing with Jana and Kait for the weekend. Her hair smelled deeply of campfire; her mouth dry from that last beer she knew she shouldn’t have opened. Sleep beckoned, but when she rolled over her bladder called even louder. She fumbled her hand on the floor by the bed, sitting up as she slipped her glasses on. The bathroom was at the end of the hall, she knew, but she tried to remember if that was left or right.

On the other side of the room, the towering wardrobe’s mirror reflected back at her, a dim nightlight silhouetting the beds, the door. She looked at her own face, pale in the moonlight slicing through the window. 

A long shadow slipped across the wall behind her in the reflection, then another. Jess stiffened, craning her neck to see the wall over her shoulder. The wall was stubbornly beige, giving no hints to explain the shadows. Jess shook her head, remembering all the times as a child she’d see shadows in the dark grow into monsters, only to disappear if she turned on a light. The room stayed still, Jana and Kait sleeping soundly, their slow breaths reassuring her.

Jess slid her feet out of the covers, standing up. Still uneasy, she crept softly towards the door, every sound a house makes in the night sounding like a clatter or roar. Jana stirred, her rustling under the covers as loud as whitewater rapids. Jess’s gaze passed over the mirror again, at first skating the surface, then stopped there, hanging in fear. A deep terror shot like lightning up her spine, and she screamed before she had told her mouth to move. 

The house came to life, Kait and Jana shooting up out of bed, Ethan and Adam crashing down the hall. Her scream had been the kind nobody would wonder about; a primal understanding of warning and danger blossoming deep in the part of the brain humans don’t often interact with. They all stood there, hackles raised, looking for the danger.

Jess stared at the wardrobe, unmoving, her shaking hand hovering over her mouth. Adam flipped the lights on as Jana moved to comfort her. Jana paused, her eyes on the wet stain spreading across Jess’s leggings, and changed course to grab her a fresh pair of pants instead. Jana ushered her into the bathroom, cooing at her, telling her it was alright, it could happen to anyone. Jess looked down and realized why her pants were wet, why Jana was starting the shower for her.

“I’ll stay in here with you if you want, Jess,” Jana offered, plopping the toilet lid down to make a chair.

“Does Jess… do that?” Kait asked, a stage whisper echoing down the hall. Jess felt the color return to her cheeks, embarrassment heating up what fear had drained. 

“No way, no. Something must be wrong, I guess. I mean, something else.” Ethan answered. 

Jess switched the now-hot water from the faucet to the anemic showerhead, drowning out their voices as the water pinged on the steel tub. She scrubbed at herself, absentmindedly at first, and then more fervently, as though she wanted to get out a stain that was more than skin deep. Jana tried to distract her, telling her some embarrassing story from her past to try to lessen her friend’s pain. It would have worked, normally, Jess warming up in the glow of their friendship’s new secret. Not this time. She paused her scrubbing to study Jana through the beads of water trickling down the shower curtain, wondering how she would tell her what she had seen hanging over her as she slept.

The hushed speculations of their friends were interrupted as the two women came back from the bathroom. Jess’s hair dripped on her shoulders, while Jana hovered behind her like a worried mother hen. Ethan sat up, expectant, but Jana could only shrug.

Jess squeezed through her friends to sink down on her bed, studying the wardrobe like it might bite. She pulled her knees in tight and wrapped the quilt around herself.

“It’s no big deal, Jess, happens to the best of us,” Kait tried to smooth the night back out, a sheet so wrinkled nobody could sleep.

“It’s not … I saw them too,” she mumbled at the floor, then turned her eyes on Jana. “Who you saw earlier. Outside. I couldn’t see them really, not right in front of me, but I could see them in the mirror. Right above you, Jana. You were asleep, and they were hovering,” she gestured, holding her hand inches from her cheek. Her eyes were lost in the mirror, her friends following her gaze uneasily.

She wished she could replay the scene in the mirror, dispel the disbelief on her friends’ faces. At the same time she didn’t want anyone to see what she had, and especially not Jana. The figures in the reflection had been quiet, drifting in the air like seaweed reaching for the surface, but there was nothing calm about them. The woman’s hands had extended toward Jana’s throat, pallid skin pulling across raw bone. She had gorged on anger until it seeped from her presence. Behind her, a man had waited, his face tightening into a threatening grimace. His eyes burned with a pure form of wanting, untempered, no concern for collateral damage. 

They’d been fully-formed in the mirror: not shadows, not suggestions. But in front of her, in the room, there had been nothing but a sleeping Jana in the bed, one leg sticking out from under the quilt. Jess wondered what would have happened if the woman’s hands had reached their destination.

“So everyone’s upset, and this house is kind of spooky, and—” Kait started, stressed and failing to hide it. She trailed off, out of ideas before she’d had one.

“Why don’t we switch rooms? This creepy mirror doesn’t scare me!” Ethan said, posing like a Victorian pugilist ready to fight a specter, his fists floating in the air as he shadowboxed the mirror.

 ***

In the morning, Jess woke with a fuzzy, aching head, her hair a moist bog on the pillow. A fresh pot of coffee downstairs was a siren’s song echoing up the stairs. The last one up, she nibbled at the extras of what her friends had made for breakfast. A soft rain was falling, Ethan pacing the floor as he watched it bounce off the ATV waiting next to the shed. It had been the deciding factor for him in choosing this house for the weekend, and he hadn’t gotten to ride it yet. Kait and Adam excused themselves when the coffee ran out, mumbling about taking a nap.

“Did you sleep ok? I know not great, but once we switched rooms?” Jana asked Jess. Both women were uncomfortable in the house, Jana wearing a hoodie pulled tight across her chest despite the sun blasting in the kitchen windows. The house closed in around Jess, small despite its square footage. The cozy charm she’d thought it had the day before had burned off like a fog.

“I slept fine I think. I didn’t wake up again, at least.” She was exhausted, but she wanted the weekend trip to go back to feeling like a vacation with her friends. “Maybe I just imagined it, you know? Sometimes you wake up and your dreams don’t fade fast enough,” she mused, half-believing herself. “Do you want to go treasure hunting again?” 

“Mhm,” Jana’s voice caught in her throat, and she tried to pass it off as a cough. Jess studied her as she looked at the floor, nodding. She returned her gaze and smiled convincingly. “Yeah, let’s find some new stuff.”

They dug through boxes and drawers again, hoping to recapture the spirit of the previous afternoon, but trying to resurrect the fun was like trying to laugh twice at the same joke. They ended up cataloging the contents of rooms like they were preparing an estate sale instead, sneezing as they kicked up dust. It was just more stale knickknacks until they found the pictures.

The first frame they pulled out was heavy in Jana’s hands, her fingers catching a wire slung across the back over fragile brown paper. She sat on the edge of the couch, balancing the weight on her knees. The centerpiece of the portrait was a square box of a tractor, the family around it showing off its shiny newness. A toddler with bouncy curls sat in the driver’s seat, hands on the wheel. A young boy in his Sunday best rested a hand on the tractor, staking a claim to his someday-inheritance, while his sister held a kitten up for the camera, her white dress and patent leather shoes promising to be dirty by the end of the photo shoot.

But it was the parents who caught their eye. Jana tapped her finger on the glass over the man’s face thoughtfully. 

“I wonder who this is,” she muttered. Jess leaned over and squinted at him, a balding, rounded face on a spindly man who looked like people would describe him as ‘a man of few words’. The woman had not mustered a smile for the picture either, her face too weathered for joy, her hands crossed in front of a dark-flowered dress. At the neck, the fabric was pinned closed with the filigree flower Jana had found yesterday in the sewing box. Jess’s fingers reached for her own collar as though she were fiddling with the pin.

“This must have been their farm, Jana. Before it was a vacation rental?” Jess said. The voyeurism grabbed her, then, and she went back to pull out more photos from the collection tucked against the wall behind a corner cupboard full of mismatched china. As they looked through them, the kids got older, a fourth child appeared, a grown one left.

The last photo, a silver-framed oval, showed the kids all grown up, circling their now-elderly parents as they sat on the couch in a suburban house somewhere else. The matriarch and patriarch maintained the same icy glare at the camera, still no energy to spare for a smile in retirement.

Jess put it down on the floor and backed away. Their faces weren’t just mysteriously familiar anymore. Jana hovered over the picture, a sharp intake of air marking the moment the realization hit her, too. 

“That’s her. The face I saw,” Jana said. “The ghost,” she corrected herself.  She clamped her hand over her lips, stifling whatever might have come next. 

“They look like whatever I saw in the mirror too,” Jess said, her brow scrunched. “It can’t be though, can it?” Jess tried to explain it to herself. “Are there any pictures of them on the walls?” She couldn’t remember anything, though, except some hotel-reject art in the bedrooms. 

Jana picked up the frame and marched into the kitchen, where Adam and Kait were dangling string cheese threads into each other’s mouths, and put the picture on the counter.

“This house,” she announced, holding the frame out for examination, “is haunted.” The lovebirds froze on their perch, string cheese still dangling. “We found a picture of the people who used to live here, and it’s who we saw. Jess and I both recognize them. They’re haunting their house, this house,” she continued, expecting her urgency would be contagious.

Kait leaned over the silver-framed photo, wrinkling her nose at it. “They look like everyone else. I mean, if you asked me to imagine an old white couple that had lived on a farm, they look like what I’d imagine.”

“Yeah, if you told me we saw them at the store on Friday, I’d believe you,” Adam agreed. “What’s the word—nondescript. They’re the burlap sacks of people. Maybe you guys already saw this picture, and so when you saw the ghosts, it looked like them?”

“He doesn’t believe us,” Jana said, turning to Jess in the kitchen doorway.

“No, I didn’t mean…” Adam started, hesitating over his words. “I believe you guys. I am not real into ghosts and stuff but you guys were both so scared. I’ve never seen either of you that scared.” He made eye contact with Kait as he continued. “Maybe the thing you saw was this couple.” 

“Yeah, hey. I didn’t mean to, like, doubt your experiences,” Kait chimed in, a high-strung earnestness in her voice.

Jana let the silence settle in thought, and then told them, “I don’t think I can stay here. What do they want? Are they pissed we’re in their house? I’m crawling out of my skin.”

 ***

Shoving her duffel bag into the backseat, Jess wrinkled her nose at the fast food bags on the floor from the trip down barely a day before. The weekend trip had turned into an overnight, but even those hours felt stretched out and overlong. She unzipped the bag and dug out her bottle of ibuprofen, cupping three in her hand.

As she swallowed them down with a gulp of water from yesterday’s bottle, Ethan appeared behind the house on the ATV, coated head to toe in mud.

“You guys going somewhere?” he yelled over the thrumming engine, waving his arms above his head.

“Yeah,” Jess called back, knowing he would pout at them. “I think we’re going to head home, actually.” She squinted at him, her hand resting on the open driver’s side door.

“No way! Come on guys,” he said, his lower lip protruding as predicted.

“House is haunted, you know,” Jana yelled from the passenger seat. He studied their faces from his ATV, knees bent as he stood up on the footrests.

“Alright, well. I’m sorry it turned out like it did, guys. We’ll have to hang out sometime this week, ok? Text me.” He pulled his helmet back down, riding off across the grass again, the rumble of the engine fading into the distance as Jess settled in for the drive.

“Pick something fun to listen to and let’s get out of here,” she said, handing Jana her phone to control the music.

“I feel bad you’re leaving. Are you sure I’m not making you go? Someone else might give me a ride.” Jana wasn’t just being polite. Jess knew her friend would stay if she asked, even though they’d had to ask Kait to pack their bags because Jana was too scared to go upstairs.

“Yes. I am very sure. It was kind of a bummer, and Adam and Kait kept disappearing until it felt like we were all crashing their date. I want to go home and take a shower with actual water pressure,” Jess reassured her. She reached up and flipped the rearview mirror out of view, not wanting to chance any more night-terrors while driving. 

They eyed the sign marking the vacation rental, a splintered post rising from an overgrown evergreen bush. A ring of stones surrounding the sign tried to hold back the overgrowth, instead drowning in it. The sign had been painted white years ago, hanging to its post through winter blizzards and spring storms, the paint sloughing off like sunburned skin. The black letters spelling out Robinson Farm kept their watch though, refusing to fade or peel away. Jess almost missed the stop at the end of the driveway, imagining the man from the portrait dipping a brush in a pot of black paint, painting the letters to mark his family’s place in the world. Then he turned, his eyes fixing them with a gaze, following the car as it rolled by, gravel crunching under the tires.   

Jess shook her shoulders as she took the turn out onto the road, trying to fling off the vision the best she could, as Jana pressed play on a playlist that started with Taylor Swift. By the time they hit the highway, they were both singing into water-bottle microphones as loud as they could.

***

Jess’s knuckles rapped out a frantic beat on Jana’s door. She hadn’t heard from Jana since dropping her off last Saturday. Jess’s messages were left on read, no selfies or omelets appeared on Jana’s feeds, only a couple of likes on other people’s. Ethan hadn’t heard from her either, and most urgently, he said she hadn’t been online to play the stupid game they were both obsessed with that Jess never remembered the name of. Adam wondered if Jana was still annoyed with him, and asked her to pass along his contrition when she saw her.

She breathed a sigh of relief when she heard the lock slide, but she drew it back in when the door cracked open. Greasy hair hung in vines around Jana’s face. The dark circles under her eyes, normally a hint, were puffy bruises left by stress. Her eyes darted around the hallway, never stopping to focus on Jess, and she didn’t say anything as she creaked the door the rest of the way open.

“I’m worried about you,” Jess said, bluntly. She had meant to be much more nonchalant about it, had rehearsed in her head what she would say in case Jana was just busy, not wanting to seem pushy. But looking at Jana now, a feral, skittish creature of a woman, she was sorry she hadn’t been more pushy.

She stepped over the threshold, hands on Jana’s shoulders to spin her around. “What is going on? You can tell me,” she started, pointing at a little square mirror masking taped to the wall. Another one was taped to the wall not far from the first, and another. Jana’s apartment was a disco ball turned inside out, mirrors taped to the walls, leaning up against plants, poking out of shelves. Shower mirrors hung from the blinds, credit-card-sized plastic camping mirrors littered the walls, a mylar emergency blanket spread across the ceiling above her bed.

“Been, uh, doing some redecorating?” Jess asked, her voice gentle. Jana’s apartment was one of her favorite places to hang out, a studio with high ceilings, tall windows, shiny wood floors, no roommates. It was usually full of flourishing plants and purple tapestries, string lights casting a cozy glow. The string lights on their rose-gold wires were dark now, the sallow lights in the kitchen and bathroom blaring instead. The lamps were all turned on, their reflections bouncing off the mirrors like hundreds of miniatures. Jess felt like she was looking through one of the fly-eye kaleidoscopes from the prize counter at the arcade. 

Jana stopped hanging her head and focused on Jess with an intensity that made her uncomfortable. “They followed me home,” she said, her voice a dead-serious whisper. 

Jess sat on the edge of Jana’s bed, a nest that smelled as unwashed as her friend, and waited for her to continue. She hoped desperately that ‘they’ didn’t mean what she thought it did. 

“At first, everything was fine. Sunday was fine. Monday, it was like I would see something out of the corner of my eye, in the reflection on my phone, in the bathroom mirror. Then, I could feel them watching me. I started carrying this compact with me. I’d open it up, and they’d be there. Sometimes closer. Sometimes waiting,” Jana breathed, “I ordered a bunch of these camping mirrors to keep tabs, went to the dollar store and got shower mirrors.” She stopped, looking around her own apartment like it was the first time she’d seen it, seeing the scattered mirrors through new eyes.

“So, you are going to come over to my place tonight, and we will hang out. You cannot stay here alone staring at mirrors in the dark,” Jess commanded. “Pack up, let’s go. Lucy is at her girlfriend’s this weekend so you can sleep in her room.” 

Her fingers traced the outline of a pin on Jana’s bag as she waited for her to get ready. When she looked down at the pin, the familiarity of it shocked her. It was the beautiful silver flower from the farmhouse, the hidden jewel in the collection of costume jewelry.

 On the way back to her apartment, Jess’s thoughts kept snagging on the pin. She didn’t want to confront Jana about it, but she was sure it was the same one, and she was sure her friend hadn’t acquired it by accident because she had put it back in its box herself. Jana had enough going on right now, so Jess decided to keep the new information in her pocket, talk about it later when things were settled down.

 “Have you eaten anything today?” Jess asked as she pressed the elevator button. She wasn’t surprised when Jana answered with a shy shrug. “We’ll start with popcorn, obviously, but I think I have some pizza rolls too. Oh, and Red Vines!” When the doors opened, they both stood there, staring at the maw of a mirrored box. Neither of them moved toward it.

“Let’s just take the stairs,” Jana said as the mouth slid closed. They climbed the stairs together, skipping the jokes about not needing to go to the gym that day as they didn’t want to acknowledge why they wouldn’t take the elevator. In her living room, Jess began the sacred ritual of comforting a friend with snacks and old movies.

“13 Going on 30, Legally Blonde, Tangled …” Jess read out, the remote in one hand, the other tucking a fuzzy blanket around Jana’s shoulders as she burrowed into the couch. She nodded on the last option. “Tangled it is.” Jana reached toward the popcorn bowl on Jess’s lap, her hand trapped under the blanket, and they laughed as she searched for an opening in the folds. “We should get those blankets with the sleeves. Then we could sit here forever watching old movies,” she said, moving the bowl closer to her blanket-mummy friend.

 ***

Stretching, a cat in the sunshine, Jess felt the bedside table for her glasses. She was hungry, her mouth watering as she tried to remember what options she had in the fridge. Or maybe they should walk down to the diner with the enormous waffles. She decided to wait until Jana came back from the bathroom, scrolling on her phone as she listened for the shower to turn off.

“How long has the stupid elevator been out this time?” Lucy asked her from the doorway of her room, scrunching her wet hair with her towel.

“Lucy?” Jess asked her, confused. “Where’s Jana? I didn’t know you were here,” she said, looking at Jana’s bag on the floor, proof she hadn’t gone home. The spot the pin had been in was replaced by two gaping holes in the fabric where it had been yanked out, puzzling Jess. If she’d decided to hide it, she had to have known Jess had already seen it yesterday. But why would she take it with her to get coffee or bagels or whatever?

“Yeah, I came home like fifteen minutes ago. Hazel had to go home for her cousin’s baby shower. Haven’t seen Jana though. If she slept in my room can you wash the sheets?” her roommate said, shaking wet hair all over Jess’s room. 

“Sorry, I think I drank the last of your coffee yesterday. I was going to run to the store and get some more. And I’ll wash the sheets, too, I figured you’d be at Hazel’s all weekend.” Jess said, halfway distracted. “The elevator was fine yesterday, I think. We used the stairs last night though. Were they fixing it?”

“That’s fine, Hazel’s been really into pour-over coffee and I probably drank too much already today. The elevator was all messed up when I came in, it looked like the mirrors broke or something. I hope they fix it today,” Lucy said, trailing down the hall.

Jess felt her chest tighten. Maybe Jana went to get breakfast, she reminded herself. She sat there a moment, then jumped up, pulling on a sweatshirt, not sure what she was going in search of. Her foot knocked into Jana’s bag, and her compact spilled from one of the canvas folds. It popped open as it hit the floor, and Jess wasn’t sure whether the crack splitting its mirror in half had been there before it fell. Whatever she was searching for, it now felt urgent.

“Be right back, Lucy!” she called, a muffled “Ok” reaching her as their front door closed behind her.

The stairs went on forever beneath Jess’s feet, four flights of chipped railings and pocked concrete before finally spilling her into the building’s entranceway. Yellow caution signs stood guard in a circle around the open elevator. The building super, Ron, stood just outside them, arms folded, watching two men working. The three mirrored panels that lined the elevator’s insides were shattered. Some shards had been raked into piles like leaves by the maintenance crew already, a mountain range of broken glass.

Scarlet streaks ran from a bloody edge on one of the jagged edges of mirror still attached to the elevator wall. There were splotches staining the floor below the mirror and dribbling from the handrail, too, but the trail of blood stalled within inches of the shattered panel. Ron stepped over to join her in surveying the damage.

“I guess the punk ass kids who busted all my mirrors cut themselves doing it. You think the cops’ll run a DNA test for a busted mirror?” he laughed. He was perpetually one decibel shy of ear-splitting, but this laugh crossed the threshold. Ron—and his volume—annoyed Jess on the best days, but right now he was nauseating.

She couldn’t breathe under the weight of her disbelief. She dug her phone out of her sweatshirt pocket and texted Jana, asking where she was, half expecting an explanation that she was getting donuts, half expecting—well, it was too awful to allow the idea to take up space.

As she waited, silent, refusing to allow what she already knew to become a fully-formed idea, she heard the tinkling of a phone. Not hers, but further away. A little ding, a petite bell of a notification. She texted Jana again. Heard the ding again. This time, she narrowed in on the source. A single question mark this time, sent. A single ding rang out from the elevator.

From the perimeter set by the caution signs, Jess called Jana, something she’d never do except in an emergency. The default ringtone trilled out in reply from the elevator. The workers paused. Ron stepped back, never one to pursue more responsibility when he could have less. As the ringtone looped again, the confused workers jostled a trash bag of sweepings to find it, but the sound didn’t change.

The younger half of the elevator repair duo pulled his hat off and tilted his head against the wall inside the elevator, careful not to brush the shards. He pulled back, eyebrows high, and put his gloved hand behind the broken glass still hanging in the mirror’s frame. He pressed in just a bit, then yanked, the shards coming free like a rotten tooth coming out in his hand.

The now-bare wall of the elevator released Jana’s phone, still ringing as it fell to the floor. It had been wedged behind the mirror, well beyond the reach of human hands. The repairman crouched down, plucking the phone from the shards, and held it out to Jess, assuming it was hers to take. She couldn’t though. Jana would be back—from somewhere—to take her phone herself. 

The trail of blood leading into the elevator wall, into the mirror, was some kind of accident of forensics, some kind of mistake. The mirrors broke, sure, but that didn’t mean anything in the mirror had come out or anyone had gone in. Jana, of course, would come through the front door, bagels in hand, and complain she’d lost her phone. The thought Jess had refused to have bubbled back to the surface, unfolding itself against her will, now taking up all the space in the room as she stared at the ringing phone in the repairman’s hand. 

 Behind her, a sudden boom echoed from the door like a pigeon flying headfirst into a window. She spun around, looking for the source, hoping to see Jana standing there. But the door hadn’t opened, and there was no dazed bird recovering on the pavement. The surly food cart owner was setting up across the street, as usual, ready to sell chips, cans of soda. 

A shadow moved across the glass in front of the mailbox, and she refocused her eyes to find it. A hand was pressed up against the window panel at the bottom of the door, the flesh flattening out with the pressure. Jess dove towards the door, crouching in front of the glass to see the hand trapped inside. It went only as deep as the reflection, like clouds on the surface of a lake. 

The hand had been drained of color, blue-black and white. It wasn’t ghostly though, it looked like a photo of someone’s hand pressed up against a bus window, put through a filter to be an artsy black and white. 

Another set of fingers swam out of the dark inside the glass and snatched at the hand, fingers Jess recognized, waxy skin taut over bony knuckles. The fingers pried and yanked, a trapdoor spider snapping up its prey and retreating into the shadows. The fingers were gone, and so was the hand—Jana’s hand. 

The door in front of Jess was just an ordinary rectangle of dented metal and window. She tried to reach through it, knuckles battering against the cold smoothness. Knocking, she demanded that Jana come back. A man walking by outside with his fluffy dog jumped sideways, startled by the woman on the floor inside, tearfully banging at the door. 

“Hey, don’t break that, too,” Ron yelled, appearing behind her to supervise the door. Jess put her hand up where Jana’s had been, mirroring her, but nothing returned. Her fingers sank down the glass in defeat.