Mirror Witch

*"Mirror Witch" is my entry into the Horror Villians Contest. I got Bloody Mary, and decided to do a story somewhat based off of a few of the legends I've read. Without further ado, here it is.*

Mirror Witch

If you grew up in America, you are probably familiar with the legend of Bloody Mary. If you’re not, here’s some background on the legend. Bloody Mary is a ghost that is supposed to appear in a dimly lit room with a mirror. You summoned her by chanting her name three times into the mirror. According to the version I was told, she appears standing behind you in the mirror, as a skeletal woman dressed in a bridal gown drenched in blood. She will scream at you for a few seconds, and if you don’t flinch, you can ask her three questions about the future. She answers your questions truthfully, and then disappears. If you do flinch, depending on who told you the myth, she will either scratch your eyes out or drive you insane.

I remember playing the game when I was a child. I stood in the bathroom with my older sister, Katie, on the right, poised to flick on the lights just in case. I began chanting her name, and stared into the mirror. At first nothing happened, but then suddenly I saw Katie stiffen behind me in fear. She whispered that she saw something in the mirror standing over my left shoulder. I suddenly froze when I saw a skeletal hand coming up behind me, reaching for my shoulder. I screamed when the hand clamped down hard on my shoulder. My sister burst into laughter and flicked on the light.

“Gotcha,” she said, as she held up her left hand, which she wore a glove fashioned to look like a skeleton’s hand. “I wish I had a camera, you should’ve seen your dumb face, Anna.” She took the glove off and still laughing, left the bathroom. I stood there, feeling humiliated. After that, I decided it was time I stopped believing in everything from Santa Claus to the Tooth Fairy. Life went on, my sister grew up and went to college, and soon, I did too. I didn’t think much about my sister’s prank on me anymore, but it did awaken in me a desire to study urban legends and myths, so when I went to college I majored in Creative Writing.

It was in my freshman year of college that I met my best friend, Harriet. Harriet was a Psychiatry major, and a horror fanatic. She had a tattoo of a Freddy from ‘’*Nightmare on Elm Street’’* on her left shoulder and a tattoo of Jason from ‘’*Friday the 13th* ‘’ on her right. She was a bombshell of a woman, about 5’6 without her combat boots on, and she always styled her blonde hair into a faux mohawk. She wore small square glasses that always seemed to slip down her nose. She almost always wore a heavy metal band T-shirt and jeans with holes in them. We became friends after our professor had us partner up for one of the many projects he assigned us that semester. We became fast friends through our shared love of folklore. She introduced me to her boyfriend, Carl a few days later. Carl was a mildly successful novelist, and we hit it off discussing Shakespeare and Hemmingway.

Halloween was just around the corner, and Harriet and Carl invited me over to their house for a Halloween get together. There was going to be plenty of booze involved, and naturally, horror movies. None of us really enjoyed going to parties, so it would just be the three of us. Midterms had just ended and I needed to blow off steam, so I agreed. Halloween that year was on a Friday, so it wasn’t like I had any other plans that Saturday. We spent the next week gathering the supplies we would need for Friday’s debauchery and the recovery on Saturday morning. Harriet brought the horror movies, I brought the booze and all the fun stuff to mix it with, and Carl brought the pizza and popcorn. We settled on Harriet and Carl’s dorm, and I mixed up the most appropriate Halloween drink – Bloody Mary. We watched a few slasher classics like ‘’*Scream’’* and ‘’*Friday the 13th’’*.

It was during the end credits of ‘’*Candyman’’* that we made our fateful decision that night to play Bloody Mary. Harriet was curled up into Carl, an arm around his waist and a Bloody Mary in her left hand.

“Did you know that ‘’*Candyman’’* was based on the legend of Bloody Mary?” she asked Carl.

“Really?” he replied. “Huh. I knew there were somethings that they had in common – violent ends, and broken families, etc.”

I nodded and added, “Yeah, not to mention you invoke them in a similar way – chanting their name three times.”

Harriet suddenly sat up and looked between Carl and myself. “You know what we should do?” she asked, before continuing without a response from us, “We should play Bloody Mary.”

I laughed and shook my head, “No, let’s not. It’ll just be a waste of time.”

“You don’t believe in the legend?” Harriet asked, looking at me.

“I don’t – not after my sister’s prank on me when I was little,” I replied. “I’ve told you the story before.”

Harriet nodded then said, “You also didn’t play it on Halloween.”

“Why should that matter?” I asked, perplexed.

“Well, some of the older legends say that you can only invoke mirror witches – like Bloody Mary – on Halloween,” Harriet answered, “Generally they say at midnight, but that doesn’t matter, the veil between worlds is thin all day.”

“Really?” I said, filled with disbelief.

“Yeah, I thought you were supposed to be a folk lore pro,” Harriet quipped with a smirk.

I shrugged, “There’s more to folk lore than dreamed of in your philosophies, Harriet.”

Harriet smiled, and turned to Carl and asked, “Well, what do you think? Should we play Bloody Mary?”

Carl looked between the two of us and shrugged. “I guess, it’s not like anything is going to happen, right?”

Harriet grinned, “Or it might. You never know!” She then playfully punched her boyfriend’s arm. I rolled my eyes.

“You can count me out,” I said with a shake of my head. “I have no interest in it.”

“Don’t be such a killjoy,” Harriet chided me.

“Oh no, the peer pressure, whatever will I do?” I asked, faking a swoon as I leaned against the couch. “Just go have fun, Harriet, okay?”

Harriet chuckled and shook her head. “Okay, c’mon Carl, let’s let little miss Killjoy over here do her thing.” She got up and grabbed her boyfriend’s hand and dragged him to the bathroom.

“Make sure you use protection,” I shouted after them. Harriet rolled her eyes and Carl chuckled, his face flushing a little. Harriet grabbed a candle from her bookshelf and entered the bathroom, closing the door behind herself and Carl. I grabbed the bottle of vodka and began mixing myself another Bloody Mary, listening to them chanting Bloody Mary three times in Harriet’s bathroom. It went quiet for a few minutes, and then suddenly I heard a blood curdling scream. I jumped up out of the couch and rushed over towards the bathroom. I tried the handle but it wouldn’t budge! It felt as if something was holding the door shut tight. I pulled and wrenched the handle, and pounded on the door, shouting Harriet and Carl’s names.

Then I heard the laughter, and I felt my face turn red with embarrassment first, then anger. I yanked the door open and glared at the pair rolling on the floor, laughter bellowing from them both.

“I can’t believe y-y-you did that!” I stammered angrily.

Harriet and Carl stopped laughing, and I could immediately tell Carl felt guilty about it.

“I’m sorry,” he said as he regained his composure, pulling himself and Harriet up off the floor. He then nudged his girlfriend with his elbow.

Harriet looked up at me and after a moment, also mumbled out an apology.

“I couldn’t resist,” she said, looking in the mirror with a small mischievous grin.

I looked between them and then grunted. “Alright, apology accepted just… please don’t do that again okay?”

Harriet and Carl both agreed, and we finished the night off with some more horror movies and booze, the incident quickly forgotten. We were all pretty hungover the next morning, and we ate the leftover pizzas to help dull the headaches a bit, but we survived the night, no eyes scratched out or anything weird. But, that wasn’t the end of it. We went through the next week like normal, and then the three of us decided on a weekend trip to a natural history museum in the area. We look a lot of photos of the exhibits and ourselves on our cellphones, and it was over all, a fun experience. It wasn’t until we looked at the photos when we got home that we noticed something weird.

In all of the photos of Harriet and Carl – no matter whose phone it was taken on – we could see in every reflective surface a faint image of a thin woman in a bloody wedding gown in the distance. Nobody else seemed to notice her, and we sure as hell didn’t. It wasn’t just one or two photos though – she was in every single photo. To make things worse, each photo the woman got closer in the reflections. By the time we had left the museum, we could see the whites of her sunken eyes in the reflection of the glass doors of the museum. It scared the hell out of me, and I could see Harriet and Carl’s faces both turn pale.

“What are we going to do?” Harriet asked, looking at me.

“I don’t know,” I replied, “The legends never said anything about this.”

Harriet chewed her lip and looked to Carl who I could see was sweating.

“Can you think of any ways to get her to go away?” she asked, turning back to me.

“No, I mean, we could try the usual ghost things, like burning sage and such, but I don’t think that’s going to work,” I replied with a shake of my head. “There’s a gift shop that sells some on the way home, c’mon.”

We loaded up in Carl’s black sedan, with Harriet and Carl in the front, and myself in the back. I carefully clicked in my seatbelt, and at the time I assumed they had to. We made it as far as the freeway before I heard Harriet shriek and then felt the car lurch and crash. I barely had time to register both Carl and Harriet launching out of the windshield before I cracked my head against the driver’s seat and passed out.

I awoke a few days later in the hospital with my parents seated around me, my mother asleep in one of those uncomfortable green plastic chairs that seemed to permeate every hospital. My dad was the first to notice I was awake.

“Hey sweetheart, how are you feeling?” he asked quietly.

“Where’s Carl and Harriet?” I asked immediately thinking of my two friends.

“I brought you some gummy bears, you know, your favorite snack?” he said, completely ignoring my question as he held up the candy.

“What about Carl and Harriet?” I demanded again. I tried to sit up and winced as my chest protested.

“They… didn’t make it,” he finally said, looking down.

I sank back into the bed and looked out the window and saw a featureless grey sky stretching for miles. I couldn’t feel anything at first, and then came the tears. I cried myself back to sleep.

 The next time I woke up, I saw a photo of the crash during the news. In the distance, I could see the back of a thin, gaunt woman in a bloody bridal gown walking away from the crash.