Three Mirrors

I’ve always been a sucker for rituals. You know what I’m talking about, the ones that are supposed to summon some otherworldly entity for no other reason than proving you can.
Except, of course, you can’t.
I was a teenager when I first heard about one. You know the one, everybody does, it’s the old legend of Bloody Mary. I immediately felt compelled to try, and I did it the first chance I had.
Needless to say, nobody answered my call, but that’s when everything started for me.
What was the reason I could not say, but I started looking for similar invocations and testing them one by one.
Did I feel the need to get in touch with the unknown? Was I so tired with life that I wanted a creative way to put an end to it? I don’t know.
All I know is that I tried every single one I found, from the easiest to the most complicated, from trying to call the Midnight Man to even messaging Momo while she was all the rage, just to name a few.
Nothing ever happened. What else were you expecting?
That is, until I found something I had never seen before.
It was written in a comment to a fairly unrelated post in a forum, and it was pretty straightforward, which was just as well because, as I was reading it, the page refreshed on its own accord, and once it did, the comment was nowhere to be found. I tried my best to recover it, and probably, had I been a little more computer-savvy, I might have succeeded.
However, I had read the most of it, and I was confident I could give it a try.
As I said, it was fairly simple.
All it took was three identical mirrors – shape and size didn’t matter – set in a triangle so that each mirror reflected the other two, and a paper triangle with a name written along each side, facing inward. Then, all you had to do was place the paper inside the triangle of mirror and set it on fire.
The part I was missing was what you were supposed to accomplish by doing it.
Not knowing that, I also wasn’t sure whose name I was supposed to write, but I guessed that I didn’t want it to be mine, so I opted for the name of my last ex.
Petty? Vindictive? Maybe, but don’t judge me. You don’t know what she did to me, and anyway nothing was going to happen, as usual, was it?
So I bought three cheap, small mirrors from a dollar store, set them on a tray – this part wasn’t in the instructions, but I wasn’t going to set my carpet on fire – cut a triangle of paper, wrote her name on it three times and placed it right in the center of the three mirrors. I lit a match and took it to the paper. It burned nice and clean, leaving behind just a few wisps of smoke and a pinch of ash.
And, as I was expecting, that was all.
Three days passed and the whole thing was already out of my mind when one morning, while brushing my teeth, I glimpsed something in my mirror that shouldn’t have been there.
It was just a flash, a translucent reflection more like the one you’d get from a window at night, and it was there too briefly for me to really see it, but enough to recognize that blond hair and those lips too red for her own good.
On a hunch, I called her.
Her mother answered.
I don’t know if she didn’t know that and how we had broken up, or if she just didn’t care, but she explained in tears that her daughter had abruptly lost consciousness the previous night and was now in a coma. Nobody seemed to know why.
I had a suspect I wasn’t going to share.
Still, it could have been a coincidence. I needed further proof.
I know, you’re wondering how I could be so uncaring about what had happened. To tell the truth, my curiosity was too piqued for me to realize in full what had happened, so my mind just told me she was still alive, maybe about to wake up, and moved on to more interesting things.
A new subject, that was.
I opted for my boss. Not just because I hated him. I also needed someone I could monitor closely during the following three days, and unfortunately I was due to spend a lot of time with that asshole in sight, every working day of the week.
This time, something was different. When I lowered the match to burn the paper, in the light of the flame, a face appeared in one of the mirrors. It was my ex, much clearer than how I had seen her in the bathroom. It was almost as if she was physically standing in front of that mirror, very much alive, if not for her eyes that were entirely white, no irises or pupils to speak of.
In spite of that, I was pretty sure she was looking up at me. I was about to say something, then the flame got too close to my fingertips. I dropped the match, shaking my hand as if it could actually ease the pain of the burn, and it fell on the paper. Like the first time, it easily burned to ashes, and then the face was gone.
The following day at work nothing was out of the ordinary. The second day, though, it was clear something had changed. My boss was pretty nervous. Many times I saw him looking around as if expecting someone to jump on him from the shadows. I could swear his hands were trembling at times. By the end of the day he seemed in the throes of a full-blown paranoia.
He didn’t come to work the third day, but he called in sick so I knew nothing had happened still.
The day after we got the news, which was no real news to me. I had already seen the faint reflection in my bathroom mirror. His boss came down and told us what had happened, as related by the asshole’s wife. You can figure it out. He was in a coma, passed out with no apparent reason at 3am that morning.
The third time I put the three mirrors together, I didn’t spare a second glance to my boss’ face in one of them, although I pointedly avoided to look at the one still showing my ex’s. Yes, I know what you’re thinking, I was acting like a serial killer, or a serial coma-inducer if you will, but the confirmation that the ritual had indeed worked had made me inebriated. I had jolted down a list of people I wanted revenge against, and I was more than determined to take them down one by one. Also, I kept telling myself their situation wasn’t permanent, although I am not sure I ever believed that. As far as I knew, their souls were imprisoned in the mirrors and would remain there forever. 
The third time I didn’t even bother to check if it had worked, I took the ghost reflection in my bathroom mirror as a confirmation and went on with my life. Even if someone had found it strange that all these comatose people were suddenly turning up, there was no way they could blame me.
The fourth time, the flame showed all three mirrors occupied each by a different face. That gave me pause – where would the fourth go? – but I had no time to really think about it. A chill wind coming from all around my hand snuffed the match. It was as if the three souls in the mirrors had blown on it from beyond the grave. Then the glass of the three mirrors cracked. It started slowly, from a single point in the center of each, then the cracks spread to the borders like a spider web. I unfroze just in time to pull my hand back before they exploded in a shower of shards, raining on my father’s name written thrice.
A sudden scream erupted from what was left of the mirrors and eerie tendrils of light sprung forth and raised in the air, dancing and intertwining in the dark room for just a few seconds before disappearing through the ceiling and leaving me in darkness and silence.
Almost three days have passed from that moment, and I know I don’t have much time left. I constantly feel as if someone is watching me, as if something is following me wherever I go. I see shapes from the corner of my eyes, but nothing is ever there when I turn around to look.
It doesn’t matter, I have just an hour or so left. It’s not 3am yet, but the clock is ticking. I don’t know for sure what is going to happen. There is no mirror left to trap my soul, but I won’t try to deceive myself telling me this will save me.
I don’t know what happened to my victims either. My ex, or her mother, has been trying to call me for days, but I won’t answer. I don’t want to know if she’s dead. I don’t want to know if she’s alive, and if she knows. All I want is to leave my story where people can read it and be warned.
Yes, I know that now some of you will want to go and try the ritual for yourselves. And I know I don’t want anyone to. This is why earlier, when I described it, I omitted a crucial element, without which I am quite sure it will not work.
Still, maybe someone will be able to find out what it was, or stumble into the same ghost comment that led me on this fateful road. So let me leave you with one last warning: if you ever do what I did, be sure to never try it more than three times.
Category:Ritual
Category:Mirrors