The Holder of Attachment

In any city, in any country, direct your steps towards the oldest antiques shop you can find. You'll know you have found the right one as soon as you see it: An old brick edifice anachronistically standing among bigger and more modern buildings; looking almost painfully encumbered by decades accumulating the relics of the long-gone. Invariably, once you step inside, a small old man will welcome you with a phlegmy voice and a warm grandfatherly smile. You must not waste time in pleasantries, though, nor get distracted with the panoply of trinkets encroaching the already reduced standing space.

In a firm voice demand to be presented to the Holder of Attachment. The old man will immediately start to tremble and with shaking hands will try to interest you on some other of his curios. Know well that you are being tested; even if untold wonders or legendary lost artifacts are presented to you, your determination must not waver as the cost of such wares will be measured in your blood.

After you've endured this peddling for a time, the old man will cave in. With a snort of disgust and scalding hatred shining through the cataracts in his eyes, he'll instruct you to follow him as he makes his way to the back of the store. There, in a dark, strangely cold corner he'll pull off a moth-eaten curtain from a splendid full body mirror with an exquisitely carved wooden frame. At that moment, you may hear a scuttling sound coming from everywhere around you. That is your cue to pick up the mirror and leave the store as quickly as its encumbering weight allows you. Worry not about payment nor about the old man's fate: if you don't leave the store soon enough you will never leave it at all; your soul will join the many trapped in the discoloured wages forever rotting inside.

Once you are back home, place the mirror in your basement or in some other space where you can make sure that not even the faintest ray of light -natural or artificial- can reach. The next step but be done at the midnight of that very day (I hope I don't have to tell you not to spend a sleeping night with that thing in your home): grab a box of matches and shut yourself in the dark room where you placed the mirror. Stand in front of it with your eyes wide open and wait. Don't utter the slightest sound and don't let fear stir your breathing. Do NOT touch the mirror even if you feel as losing your balance in the adimensional dankness.

After a while, when your eyes have grown accustomed to the oppressive absence of light, it will seem to you as though dark shapes -somehow darker and more substantial than the pitch black obscurity in which you dwell- start forming on the mirror's surface. Don't close your eyes nor turn them away even if this impossible, lightless sight cause excruciating pain to your over-strained eyes. As you stare, it will seem to you as though the shapes had a vaguely humanoid shape and are moving slowly in and out of the mirror's frame. That's when you must speak loud and clear, stating again that you wish to meet the Holder of Attachment. The shapes in the mirror will stop their slow wandering as if disrupted by your interruption, then ooze together filling the whole frame, the mirror now an open window to a cold void, blacker than what your mind can possibly comprehend. Listen carefully and you'll hear the sound of slow, rustling steps from far, far away but approaching you from the other side.

When the steps stop, right before they reach you, quickly light a match. You'll immediately notice that the light of the match is not being reflected in the mirror, but the outline of your faintly lit features is. But this is not true reflection: it is the face of someone who perhaps once looked like you but now it's been made decrepit and vile by the passing of untold ages. Next to a twisted, cruel smile there's a deep scar in his saggy left cheek. Lose no time in these contemplations, though, for if the match goes off before you are done, your body will melt into the cold darkness and your soul will join the wretched beings into the mirror forever. Rather, ask carefully "Can we possibly let go?"

As your reflection's grin widens unnaturally you'll feel your own mouth stretching in a mirroring fashion and then, utter with your voice: "No, I will never let go." Immediately, you'll feel as though liquid, freezing darkness poured into your nose and mouth crushing your internal organs like a living hand causing you unimaginable agony. Without hesitation you must hit the mirror with all your strength, breaking it. You'll manage to catch a gasp of air before you feel the fragments of the mirror cutting and slashing deep gashes into your flesh as if possessed by a murderous mind. Hope against all odds that your history of misadventures and bizarre experiences hunting other Objects have accustomed your feeble mind to being pushed beyond the restrictive boundaries of sanity, for only a crazed, inhuman might will allow you to pummel the mirror shards to dust before you are shredded to death.

If by unlikely chance you are victorious, you'll soon pass out in a pool of your own blood. You'll wake up safely in your bed several days later to find out that most of your wounds have already healed; every cut-off limb,regrown, pink and new. In less than a week, your body will be mended completely back to normal with the exception of a deep scar on your right cheek.

The scar is Object 400 of 538. You now bear His face and for better or worse, They'll recognize you.