Chapter 3: Teeth in the Mirror
Harper stayed the night.
Neither of them slept.
They sat on the living room floor with flashlights and salt scattered in a broken circle around them. Clara's apartment was dead silent—no humming refrigerator, no creaking pipes, no traffic outside. Just a silence so full it felt like pressure on their ears.
At some point after 4 a.m., Harper turned to Clara.
"I think your shadow is hunting you now," she said softly. "Not following. Not reflecting. Hunting."
Clara didn't reply. She hadn't taken her eyes off the TV screen since the thing had crawled from it. Even now, unplugged and dark, she thought it might flicker back on again. That it would show her what came next.
Instead, she whispered, "How do we stop it?"
Harper hesitated.
"There's a ritual," she said finally. "Not a banishing. A reflection trap."
Clara's eyes flicked to her. "What's that?"
"You give it something to reflect—a false self. A decoy. If it accepts the copy, it binds itself there. You can trap it in a reflection and break the anchor."
Clara didn't breathe for a second. "What kind of decoy?"
Harper looked away. "Something personal. Something it thinks is you."
Clara blinked. "Like what?"
"A photograph. A doll. Hair. Blood."
A chill ran down Clara's spine.
Harper pulled a small wooden box from her backpack. She opened it slowly. Inside was a worn mirror, cracked diagonally across the middle. Beneath it were three black candles and a folded page—handwritten, in old ink.
"I kept this for emergencies," Harper said. "This counts."
They prepared the trap at dawn.
Clara found an old childhood doll in a storage box under her bed—one with porcelain skin and blue button eyes. She wrapped a lock of her own hair around the doll's wrist, then dripped three drops of blood from her finger onto its dress.
Harper nodded grimly. "It'll think it's part of you."
Clara placed the doll in front of the mirror, then they lit the candles and recited the binding words:
"Shadow without master,
Mirror without light,
Come find your anchor,
And be bound this night."
They repeated it three times.
Then they waited.
Nothing happened.
The air didn't shift. No lights flickered. No wind. No moaning.
Just stillness.
Then Clara looked down at the doll.
Its head had turned.
It had moved.
The mirror began to cloud. Not from steam or dust—something inside the glass was swirling, like black smoke trapped behind the surface.
Clara backed up.
Harper held her ground.
"Don't break the circle," Harper warned. "It has to choose the doll."
Clara watched, heart pounding.
The smoke in the mirror thickened until a shape formed—a figure. Her shape. But not quite. Its limbs were longer, face hollow, eyes deeper than any reflection should hold.
The shadow.
It reached for the doll—but stopped.
Then it turned toward Clara.
And smiled.
Again.
Only this time, there were teeth.
Dozens of them.
Razor thin. Too many for a human mouth.
Clara's blood went cold.
The mirror cracked further. A sound like ice splitting. The air groaned.
Harper shouted, "Now! Finish it!"
Clara raised the final piece of the ritual—her own reflection, caught in a hand mirror.
She shattered it on the floor inside the circle.
The mirror on the wall screamed.
Not the glass. The thing inside.
The shadow writhed, twisting violently inside the swirling smoke. It clawed at the edges, trying to escape the doll, the binding, the broken reflection.
The mirror exploded.
Glass flew.
Then—silence.
When Clara opened her eyes, the room was dark.
All three candles had gone out.
The doll lay still.
The mirror was gone.
Just shards left.
And her shadow…
It was back at her feet.
Still.
Breathing.
With her breath.
She moved her hand.
It followed.
No delay. No hesitation.
Normal.
Except…
In the center of its chest was a small, jagged crack.
Like a flaw in black glass.
Harper looked at it too. "We didn't trap it," she whispered. "We wounded it."
Clara knelt slowly, staring down.
"It's still inside me."
Harper didn't argue.
"But now," Clara said, voice low, "it's angry."
Later that night, Clara stood alone in her bathroom.
She'd taped over every mirror, except the small hand mirror Harper had brought. Even that she held at arm's length.
She peeled the tape back from her reflection.
Her face stared back, pale and tired.
But then—the mouth moved.
Just a twitch. A smile.
Clara hadn't smiled.
Her reflection whispered: "You shouldn't have run."
Clara dropped the mirror.
It shattered.
Behind her, her shadow twitched.
To be continued…