“Oh, right! I never connected that. It was here,” George whispered.
“I think out back at the well, actually.”
He spun to look at her.
“Don’t even say it,” Amber said. “We’re not going anywhere near there.”
“Okay,” George said. He pointed his light up the stairs. Amber knew what was up there. She had visited once and sat in that kitchen, across from a man who was becoming a monster. She swept her flashlight over the electrical panel. The breakers were all tripped over to orange.
“Hey,” she said. “Look at this.”
George didn’t respond.
Amber glanced over to him just as George was shutting off his flashlight.
“What are…”
“Turn it off,” he whispered, pointing at her light.
There was such urgency in his voice that she almost obeyed him.
“Shut it off,” he said.
“No.”
Amber glanced over her shoulder and then the other direction. She began to back towards the bulkhead and her foot hit one of the mirrors that was propped up. George was pointing to his own light, as if that would persuade her to do what he was asking.
“George? What’s wrong with you?”
Amber reached the bulkhead stairs. She glanced through the opening to see her car’s headlights splashed on the doors above. There was sanity and safety up there. She barely contained the urge to run towards it.
“Nothing is wrong with me,” George said. “There’s something I need to see and I can only see it with the light off.”
Amber’s hand squeezed her stake so tight it felt like she might compress the wooden shaft.
“Nope,” she said.
“Fine.”
George clicked on his light and Amber was able to breathe again.
“We’re leaving,” she said.
“Can you grab your uncle’s mirror? I want to bring this one.”
“Nope, but I’m fine leaving it here.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yup.”
# # #
They entered through the kitchen door and Amber pressed it shut carefully before she locked it. The upstairs of the house was dark—Ricky and his parents were asleep. George set the mirror on the kitchen counter and began moving around the room, turning off the lights. Amber went to the cellar door and hooked the latch. Someone had left it unhooked.
“What are you doing?” Amber whispered.
George kept his voice low too.
“I’m telling you. There’s something. I saw it in the cellar out of the corner of my eye and I saw it a little in the car on the way here. You’ll see. Just let me finish.”
When he reached for the last switch, Amber got to it first. She put her hand over the light switch and made him wait until she pulled out her flashlight again.
“Just in case. Now what are we looking for?”
“I don’t completely know. Just look at it, but don’t really look directly at it,” he said, pointing to the mirror.
Amber tested her flashlight—on and off—before she nodded.
She flipped the switch.
A second later, while her eyes were still adjusting to the dark, George sighed and said, “Oh. I get it.”
Amber clicked on her light.
“Lit from below, his smile made him look a little crazy.”
“You get what?”
“You didn’t see it?” he asked. When she shook her head he said, “Try again. Please. Just try it.”
The second time, Amber finally understood the trick. She had to point her eyes directly at the mirror and the direct them just a few inches to the side of it. That’s when she saw it. It was incredibly faint and a little blue. It almost looked like the glowing algae that showed up in the waves at the beach sometimes. It was just a hint of light and it looked like it was deep in the reflection of the mirror.
Amber turned and looked behind herself, thinking that the glow must be coming from something in the room.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Is it something in the coating on the back of the mirror?”
She turned on the light and approached it. The frame of the mirror looked to be in pretty good shape, but there was one spot in the corner where the reflective surface was bubbling off the back. The edges of the glass were beveled and there was a scratch in one corner.
“You remember the journal? You remember what SE Prescott was looking for the first time he went out?”
“Some kind of beetle,” Amber said, “Right?”
“Yes. A glow worm of some sort. Doesn’t that remind you of a glow worm?”
“I was thinking more about glowing algae in the ocean.”
“Same thing, I think. I mean, same kind of mechanism. Almost like a lightning bug or something, but not as bright and constant instead of flashing.”
“How is it in the mirror?” Amber asked.
“The mirror ate their eyes, I think,” George said.
“It ate their eyes.”
“My brother said that someone told him about glowing eyes. Or maybe he saw them himself.”
Amber nodded.
“Well, Ricky said that they were hypnotic and he thought that the glow was something he imagined. Maybe we’re just imagining this, or maybe their eyes really do glow and somehow a part of that was captured in the mirror.”
“The mirrors try to eat my eyes.”
“Vampires and mirrors,” George said. “Right? That’s a thing. Maybe we found proof.”
“That’s a thing? What do you mean? With vampires, they can’t appear in mirrors—that’s all. They have no reflection, so they hate mirrors because they expose them for what they are.”
“And they don’t like garlic, and they turn into bats, and they can fly. People make up things to explain the unexplainable. It’s possible that people made up the thing about them not having a reflection, but that vampires legitimately avoid mirrors at all costs for a different reason.”
“Because the mirrors try to eat their eyes,” Amber said.
“Right,” George said. “Makes sense, right?”
Amber smiled. “Nope.”
George looked defeated.
“Don’t take it personally. None of this makes any sense. It’s not your fault.”
“Turn off the light again.”
Amber did. The mirror didn’t seem as frightening this time. She had the idea that maybe it was just reflecting moonlight off of something in the room, but then she couldn’t understand why when she looked directly at it the light disappeared.
Then, Amber heard a sound from
