The power went out at 8:07 p.m., and by 8:09, Mr. Lowell from Apartment 3B was knocking on my door.
"Marla, you got candles? My wife's got that oxygen tank, and—"
"Battery's dead," I lied, my palm pressed to the peephole. His sagging face distorted like a fish in a bowl. I didn't have candles. Didn't have anything but half a bottle of rye and the VHS tape on my coffee table.
The storm had killed the grid for the whole block. No sirens, no hum of streetlights—just the wet thwap of palm fronds against my window. Perfect. I'd waited six months for a night like this.
The TV buzzed to life, its blue static painting the room. The tape's label, handwritten in my mother's looping script, read For Marla, When You're Ready. She'd been dead a decade. The cancer ate her voice first, so her last words to me were scribbled on a morphine-stained napkin: Don't watch it.
I pressed play.
The footage was grainy, late-'80s. Mom's old living room, the one we lost to foreclosure. She sat cross-legged on the shag carpet, 32 years old and grinning at the camera with a cigarette between her fingers. "Testing… okay, it's running. Hi, future me! Or—hell, hi, Marla. If you're watching this, you're either really bored or…" She trailed off, her smile faltering. "Remember that summer you turned five? How you kept crying about 'the lady in the light'?"
A cold knot tightened in my gut. I didn't remember.
Onscreen, Mom leaned closer, her eyes glinting. "You said she lived in the TV. That she wanted to trade places with you. We thought it was nightmares, but…" She reached off-camera, producing a Polaroid. My breath hitched.
It was me, age five, in a Cinderella nightgown. Behind me, in the hallway mirror, a woman stood—skeletal, her jaw unhinged like a snake's, one hand pressed to the glass.
"We moved. Changed our number. But after the divorce, your dad found these marks on the walls…" The camera panned to a close-up of the wallpaper. Claw marks. Dozens, maybe hundreds, all at a child's height.
The TV flickered.
Mom's voice sharpened. "Don't turn around, Marla."
I turned.
The room was dark. Silent. But the air smelled like burnt hair.
Back onscreen, Mom was crying. "She doesn't want you. She wants through. And if you watch this—"
The tape glitched.
When the image returned, Mom was gone. The camera now pointed at the hallway mirror. The reflection showed the room behind it—my room, tonight, lit by static. And there, in the mirror's surface, stood the woman.
No. Not stood. Pressed.
Her skeletal fingers curled around the edges of the frame, nails scraping. Her jaw stretched wide, a black slit of a throat vibrating with a sound that bled through the speakers: skreeeeee.
The TV died.
The room plunged into black. My hands shook as I fumbled for the rye bottle. But the smell worsened—spoiled meat, copper. A wet drip echoed from the hallway.
"Marla."
Mom's voice. From my bedroom.
"Baby, I'm so sorry."
I lunged for the door, but the floorboards stuck to my soles like tar. The hall mirror glinted, and in its reflection, I saw her: the woman, her face inches from mine, eyes hollow pits.
The real me screamed. The reflection me smiled.
"Almost," the woman hissed through the mirror-Marla's lips.
I smashed the rye bottle against the glass. Shards rained down. But in every fragment, her face multiplied—smiling, hungry, closer.
The front door burst open. Mr. Lowell stood there, flashlight in hand. "Heard screaming—Christ, you okay?"
I grabbed his arm. "Don't look at the glass!"
Too late.
His flashlight beam caught a shard near his shoe. In its reflection, the woman's hand shot out, skeletal fingers clamping his wrist. He jerked, eyes bulging, as his skin grayed and cracked like dried clay.
"Run," he gurgled, crumbling to dust.
I fled into the storm. But the streetlights flickered back on as I hit the sidewalk. In every puddle, every car window, every shard of a broken Corona bottle in the gutter, I saw her.
"Almost," she mouthed.
I'm in a motel now. 3 a.m. I duct-taped the bathroom mirror. But the TV won't stop whispering. Static shapes move in it when I'm not looking.
Mom's tape ended with a message I didn't see the first time. "If you're watching this, it's already in the light. In the glass. In you."
I think she's right.
My reflection just blinked.