My grandmother's mirror has been in the family for four generations. It came over from Eastern Europe with my great-great-grandmother, wrapped in cloth and packed in a trunk, and has been passed down through the women in the family ever since.
The warning comes with it: don't look at it after midnight. The reflection is not always yours.
My grandmother told me this when I inherited it at twenty-two. She said it plainly, the way she said everything — a statement of fact, no elaboration, no argument. She said her grandmother had told her the same thing and her mother had told her the same thing and presumably the mirror came with the warning from wherever it came from.
I set it up in my bedroom. I respected the rule for about a month. Then one night I was up late working and I walked past it at around 1 AM and I looked.
The reflection was me. Clearly, completely me — same clothes, same position, same room in the background.
Except it was slightly behind. Like watching video with a half-second lag. I moved my hand. The reflection moved its hand a beat after. I turned my head. The reflection turned its head, half a second later, then looked back at me.
I stepped back. The reflection stepped back half a second later.
Then it stepped forward. On its own. When I hadn't.
I turned on every light in the apartment and went to sleep on the couch.
I've kept the rule since then. The mirror is covered between midnight and dawn with a cloth my grandmother sent with it — old, dark fabric, pre-worn, the kind of cloth that's been covering something for a long time.
I've never looked after midnight again. But I've thought about what I saw. The reflection that was behind me — that was a beat slow — and what it was doing in those half-seconds while it wasn't imitating me.
What does a reflection do when you're not looking at it?
I don't think it waits quietly.