The mirror pulsed in the corner of the room, as if it were breathing.
Joy couldn't look away. A faint web of cracks glimmered across the glass twelve of them. One more, and the Hollow would open.
Tony stirred behind her on the floor, groaning like he was coming out of a deep sleep.
"Joy…?"
She turned quickly. "Tony! Are you okay?"
He looked at her, eyes normal again, brows furrowed in confusion. "Why are we in your room? What happened?"
She didn't know how to answer. How could she explain the figure in the mirror, the voice, the diary that wrote itself?
Instead, she helped him sit up and said, "Don't look in the mirror."
***
The rest of the day passed in a blur.
Their parents had gone into town for groceries, leaving Joy and Tony alone. She stayed in her room, watching the mirror from the corner of her eye. The diary sat on her desk, closed now. Still. Waiting.
But she knew it wasn't over. Not yet.
That evening, just as the sun dipped behind the trees and shadows stretched long across the walls, Joy heard a sound.
*Crack.*
Her heart froze.
She turned her head...just slightly and saw it.
The thirteenth crack.
A tiny, hairline fracture that ran straight through the middle of the mirror. It glowed faintly, like veins of silver.
Joy grabbed the diary and flipped to the last page.
New words had appeared:
"It's open. Now they can see you too."
She dropped the book and backed away, chest tightening. The mirror began to ripple like water. And then something came through.
A hand,thin, pale, and impossibly long emerged from the glass, followed by another. The figure dragged itself forward, as if pulling its body out from another world.
Joy screamed and ran to Tony, grabbing his hand.
"We have to go. Now!"
But the mirror figure moved faster than she expected. It wasn't walking ...it glided across the floor, eyes like hollow voids, mouth stretched too wide.
It didn't speak.
It just watched.
***
Joy pulled Tony through the hallway, mirrors cracking around them as they passed. The lights flickered. The floorboards groaned like something massive was shifting underneath the house.
"We can't go outside!" Tony cried.
"The Hollow's not outside," Joy whispered. "It's in the reflections. Just don't look in the glass."
But as they passed the living room, something changed.
Every window shimmered turning into mirrors.
Dozens of them.
Dozens of reflections.
And in each one, the shadow creatures were closer.
Joy fell to her knees, clutching Tony tight. She closed her eyes.
And then… a voice. Soft. Familiar.
"You saw them. You heard them. You let them in."
She opened her eyes.
Elsie stood in front of her pale, fragile, ghostly. She was the girl from the diary. But her eyes were not human anymore. They were full of swirling black mist.
"Why?" Joy whispered. "What do you want?"
Elsie tilted her head. "I wanted to be seen. I was forgotten. Trapped. But now I have YOU."
Suddenly, Joy felt her limbs go cold.
Her reflection in the nearest mirror smiled back at her.
But she wasn't smiling.
The reflection lifted its hand, and so did Joy.
No... The reflection was controlling her.
Her legs moved without permission. Her arms reached out for Tony.
"Stop...please!" Joy cried.
Elsie's voice echoed again, but it was layered now hundreds of whispers beneath her own.
"She wore your skin once. Now she wears it again."
***
Joy realized it too late.
She wasn't being haunted.
She was being replaced!
Her body was still standing there… but her mind was being pulled somewhere else.
Somewhere cold.
Somewhere silent.
The Hollow.
It swallowed her whole.
***
When her parents came home, they found Joy and Tony calmly sitting at the dinner table.
Smiling.
Laughing.
Normal.
But when Joy looked up at the mirror in the hallway as she passed, her reflection didn't smile back.
Instead, it watched with wide, terrified eyespounding silently against the glass.
Trapped.
THE END.