"Samuel," Garrick shouted, finally waking him from his own head. He turned in shock towards his best friend as he brought a hand up to rest against his temple.
It took him a while to realize that he'd passed out because he was laying on his back and his back was smarting. Garrick kneeled beside him with worry etched into his thick brows. "What... ?"
He sat up finally with a groan before looking around him. He couldn't have sworn he'd heard someone laughing at the back of his head. The second the door opened, he could have sworn that he'd seen something crawl out the second the door had opened.
"You dropped so suddenly, it scared me. Are you feeling ok?" Garrick stated, but his voice was abnormally calm. The back of Samuel's head pounded and the second he got to his feet, he felt light headed.
"Did you see… did anything come out of the room?" Samuel asked, meeting his friend's eyes.
"No," he answered steadily. "Nothing. The Room is empty."
Samuel, you need to listen to me. Never open that door. Do you hear me? Don't open the door into the Room. Never. It isn't empty. His mother had once told him years ago, when they'd first moved into the house. She'd been so adamant that Samuel had never second guessed her. There were times he'd tried to open the door, and he'd just turn the knob a small bit before his mother was barreling up the stairs to yell at him. She'd torn him from the door in a fit of rage before sitting him in a corner downstairs for almost an hour.
Now, he'd finally opened the door and all the secret his mother would mumble and worry about were all fake. The room… it was empty. She'd lied to him. All those years. He grit his teeth as he stepped inside the Room before taking another deep breath. Behind him, he could hear Garrick follow.
"See. It's nothing to be afraid of," Garrick stated, clasping a hand on his shoulder comfortingly. "This whole time there was nothing inside the Room."
The Room felt as if it was chuckling and the sound dipped beneath his flesh and curled its cold tendrils around his bones. All Samuel could smell was must and mold, evidence of a room that hadn't been entered nor cleaned in years. He stepped across the middle of the room only to look towards his left where a simple cardboard box sat. For a few seconds he simply stared at it. The cardboard box was hanging together by threads. It squatted in the corner with bulging sides. The brown color had long since faded as the cardboard had started to deteriorate. Samuel squatted down beside it and pulled one of the flaps free.
"What's in it?" Garrick pressed as he came up behind the boy.
"Mirrors," Samuel answered with shock. He reached in and pulled out one of the mirrors before pulling it free.
It was old. It felt like it'd break apart in his hands if he so much as squeezed the sides. The mirror was cracked from the bottom corner all the way to the corner opposite of it. It seemed to have split the reflective glass in half. Inside the box, there were more in various different states. But all of the mirrors were cracked. Samuel held it up and stared into the top portion of the mirror.
Something ran across the floor behind him, but it only reflected in the bottom half of the mirror. He didn't get more than a second to see what the thing was, but it had seemed human like in form. Only that it ran on all fours with extremely pale skin. Samuel gasped in shock as his hands released the mirror. The mirror fell to the floor and shattered at his feet in thousands of different pieces.
"Samuel?" Garrick asked. "Dude, are you ok?"
Samuel turned his head and he squinted towards the pale monster, only to find it wasn't there. In fact, nothing had been there.
"Samuel, look at me! LOOK!" Something screeched and he could feel fingers on the back of his neck. He was frozen in place, too afraid to even utter a small breath. "Look at ME Samuel. Aren't I pretty?"
It was the same voice that had always talked just beyond his door when he was growing up. Whenever the Room opened on its own and the monsters would slam their fists against his door, only one voice would ever speak. It sounded like a woman's, but only if her throat was filled with sludge or water. She seemed far away, yet he could feel her tapping against the nap of his neck.
"I haven't seen you in forever. Why did you leave us Samuel? Why did you leave?" This time, it sounded like children. They ran through the room with the lightest of steps before disappearing. "We missed you Samuel. We missed you but you left us. Why are you so mean?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," Samuel replied quietly before closing the box. The only explanation for all of it was his imagination going nuts. Like it had used to do when he was still a kid. "Could I sell these online? Do you think anyone would be interested in them?"
"Cracked mirrors?" Garrick asked before shaking his head. "Cracked mirrors are bad luck, I highly doubt anyone would be interested in them. Probably just throw them out into the trash."
"Yeah…" Samuel sighed before pulling the blinds up from the window. Sunlight filtered through, giving light to the tiny particles that only had just started to settle.
"You know," Garrick said as he hefted up the box of mirror. He rattled the box in his hands slightly. "They say mirrors are windows into the soul. So whoever broke these, they must've been a terrible person."
"Is it possible for someone to get trapped inside a mirror?" Samuel replied before looking over at him. He eyed the box warily before glancing towards the doorway where he could have sworn he saw someone walking across.
Garrick scoffed before passing through the doorway. "In horror movies, sure. Not real life. It's ok."
Samuel rubbed his forehead with a frustrated sigh before he chased after the man. The room was only an excuse to be afraid of something he couldn't understand. Just like his therapist had said. It was all in his imagination. Anyway, Samuel had seen enough horror movies to know what was real and what wasn't. He chuckled quietly to himself, unbeknownst that the Room chuckled behind him.
~ ~ ~
"FUCK!" Garrick snapped as he fell down the staircase in a mess of loud bangs and shattering glass. The box lay flattened at the bottom of the staircase in a mess of its own remains whilst Garrick had come to a stop mere inches away from the first bits and pieces of glass.
Samuel rushed down the steps quickly to help the other man up before he stared ruefully at the mess that now awaited him. "That's like three years of bad luck."
"Ugh, don't remind me," Garrick answered before squatting down by the pieces. He threw the larger chunks into the box before he came to a sudden pause.
Blood dripped out of a small cut on his thumb. Not a lot of blood to be wry of, but it dripped into the carpet with the intention to stain. Garrick had pricked his finger on one of the shards of the mirrors. A few sullen, scarlet drops lay on its reflective surface as if it was staring right back up at them. He cursed before cleaning it off with one of the many tissues he kept in his front jeans' pocket.
"Do you need a bandaid? I'm sure my mom has some floating around somewhere."
"Nah, I'm good," Garrick answered simply before picking up the offending piece.
The second he picked it up, cold dread settled into the pits of Samuel's soul. Whilst they were now on the first floor after Garrick's disastrous fall, the mirror reflected the closed door to the Room. The very same door that they hadn't closed. Without sound, the reflection's door opened slowly and fingers wrapped around the wooden edge.
Bloody fingers with one having already been severed in a mess of rotten, mangy flesh. A head creeped around the edge of the door with a quiet cackle Samuel could only hear. There were no eyes, just maggoty bugs crawling free from the rotten flesh that held them. They dropped to the floor and wiggled pathetically on the stained champagne colored carpet at its feet. Some of that very flesh, pale in color, clung loosely to the white bone beneath. There seemed to be a soft glow emanating from the pits of the monster's eye-less sockets. The cheekbones poked out from the creature's skin in a bloody mess whilst black blood dripped from it's eardrums. It's long black hair was matted with mud and what seemed to be solid, fleshy chunks. It clacked its canine like teeth pitifully before tilting its head ever so softly to the side.
It moved slowly as it crawled its way free from the door. Now, on all four limbs it crawled out towards them and the smell, oh the smell was absolutely horrendous. Samuel tried to not gag, because all he could smell was death. He stumbled back.
"You shouldn't have opened the door Sammie."
"Samuel, what's wrong?" Garrick asked and Samuel realized he'd been lost in his own thoughts once more. Whatever had been in the reflection had long since cleared, and he was half tempted to run up the stairs just to check. However, something was tapping against the stairs from the very top.
"D-do you hear that?"
"What? Hear what?"
"GET OUT SAMUEL!" A voice screamed and it was so loud he could feel the wall's shutter. It was familiar in the way that any kid, regardless of how old they were, would recognize. It was his own mother's voice that echoed from the walls.