Diary of the Investigator — Part 3
Day 12
I tried to speak to Inspector Webb today. I wanted to tell him the truth plainly — the mirrors, the grin, the way the room seems to breathe. Instead, I found my voice thinned to a rasp. He set his hat on the table and asked if I had had enough sleep. He suggested I take leave. He did not laugh. He did not call me mad — not to my face. Perhaps that is mercy.
When I returned to the cellar, the mirrors reflected me as a man who had never left: calm, composed, the ideal image for a policeman. The real me stood there, trembling, a copy that had been left behind.
Day 13
The tapping behind the living-room mirror grew louder last night. I sat on the floor and listened until the lamp guttered. At one point the sound stopped and something else began — a slow, patient scraping, like a pen across paper.
I checked the journal. The ink on this page felt colder than the others. My hands shook as I wrote these words.
Day 14
Dreams are no longer dreams. They are rehearsals. Every night I am dragged back to that chamber and forced to walk its aisles. The dead watch me with the patience of judges. Tonight one of them lifted a hand and pointed at me — not accusingly, but as if to mark me.
When I woke, there was an imprint on my palm: three small grooves in a triangular pattern. I could not remember making them.
Day 15
I found a photograph tucked behind the frame of the kitchen mirror — one I have never seen before: a group of men in uniform, faces blurred. The same photo, the same faces, stare back from each shard as though repeated. I have no memory of who they are. My name is not there. Yet the grain of the image felt familiar.
I questioned myself: do memories leak into objects? Or do I find them there because I am searching?
Day 16
Went to the yard to consult the coroner. The man glanced at me and then at the case file, then into my eyes — very long. "You should rest, friend," he said in a voice that matched the railing of the morgue: cold and sure.
On the way out, I saw the caretakers near the old glassworks. One of them met my stare and quickly looked away. People are closing their doors. Perhaps they, too, feel watched. Or perhaps I imagine it.
Day 17
Another dream with the chamber. This time the mirrors did not only reflect; they answered. Not in words I can record. Instead, impressions: a smell of rain in a room that never had windows, the taste of iron on the tongue, the memory of a bell tolling when no bell exists. I awoke knowing certain faces — faces of nameless victims — as though they had been introduced to me. I could have sworn I remembered the sound of a child humming.
It is worst at dawn. The world outside the window seems a thin thing — a paper city I can press my thumb through.
Day 18
I tried an experiment. I covered my dressing-room mirror with a sheet and sat beneath it. If the mirror is a door, perhaps blocking it might stop whatever looks back. I waited until late, until the house settled and the night animals fell quiet. In the dark under the sheet the tapping returned, firmer now, urgent as a fist. It lagged, as though something heavy was fumbling with the glass from the inside.
When I threw the cloth aside, the mirror was whole. No cracks, no smudges. My face looked exactly as it always had. But the reflection raised its hand of its own accord and tapped three times on the glass, slow and deliberate. I did not move. I watched my mirror-self do what I could not bear to do.
Day 19
I found a ticket on my coat when I returned from taking statements — an old rail ticket, stamped with a destination I did not recognise. The TT's hand had written a name beneath the stamp. It was not mine. My hands came away sticky with something I could not clean, though I scrubbed until blood warmed beneath the skin.
There are marks, too, on the inside hem of my coat: tiny white flakes, like glass dust. I have not been near broken glass for days.
Day 20
My handwriting falters here. The lines on the page bow under the weight of the letters. This morning I woke to find that my table was rearranged. The cup I always left at the corner was pushed to the centre as though by an unseen hand. The small pocket knife I keep for opening sealed bags was on the floor, blade open. I do not remember leaving it so.
I go for a walk to clear the fog. Yet the streets seem to loop back upon themselves. In a shop window I glimpsed not my face but an old photograph of the mirror-room, taken in black and white. There is a place in the photograph where a man stands apart from the rest, his face blurred as if the camera refused him.
Day 21
(Notes become fragmented)
— dream shorter but sharper; a child — no sound — points (down?)
— tapping like a Morse code; I tried to transcribe; letters unreadable
— spoke to Webb; he recommended rest again; his eyes sad this time. He asked who tended my house; I could not name anyone.
— the room breathes — how can wood do such?
— the voices are near; not words; a rhythm; wait / name / go / stay?
Day 22
I woke to the distinct impression of having been at the mirror-room all night. The curtains were open though I had closed them before bed. The small chair by the window bears my imprint. My pen has bled across a page; I had written one line in a hand that is not mine: "the mirror knows my name." I do not recall writing it. I remember only the pressure of paper under the palm of a hand that was not entirely mine.
Day 23
I cannot trust the act of seeing. The mirror apparently cannot be trusted either. Tonight, I placed a ring upon my finger that I know I do not own — cold metal, engraved with a single word: Fool.
I am not certain how it got there. I certainly did not put it on. My skin tingles beneath it as though it were a brand.
Day 24
(Entry essentially incoherent; sentences collapse into fragments)
— men in suits in the corner of mirrors — not men I know but dressed as if for weddings that never occurred
— glass smells like salt — like the sea — like the bridge case — memory threads tangling
— voices insist: "choose one reflection, leave the rest" — the command or the petition?
— i write but the nib skips — the ink spells out letters different from my intent — names i have seen — her face — the bakery — the bridge — pinecones
Day 25
I pen this slowly, each letter a labor. The house feels smaller. The shadows crowd about the corners. When I walked past the streetlight tonight, my reflection did not follow me until a beat later. A lag where something aligns, then catches up. I fear what falls behind.
Day 26
(Last coherent line) Perhaps that is the way it is: I have been watching reflections so long I have become unkind to the living. I mistake a friend for a phantom and a phantom for a friend. If I am to be of any use at all, I must tear down every silvered surface in this house and sleep with shutters closed until dawn.
— end of day.
---
(The entries thin thereafter: ink blots, smudged scrawl, jagged slashes across the page. The penultimate line is half-formed: "I thought—" and then a long empty space. The final page is clean except for a single sentence written with such pressure the paper indents the page beneath:)
Day 27
They are inside the glass now. They are kind. They call me by name.