Eleanor Crisp didn’t believe in haunted objects. A practical historian and part-time antique dealer, she spent her days cataloging dusty armoires and ornate clocks for the small museum in Wren Hollow. So when an elderly widow offered her a mirror that said to “reflect what shouldn’t be seen,” Eleanor chuckled politely and loaded it into the back of her estate car.
The mirror was heavy—Victorian, she guessed—its wooden frame carved with twisting vines and a single stag at the top, its antlers reaching toward the corners like frozen lightning. It was a curious choice but not unusual. The Victorians loved their woodland symbolism.
She propped the mirror against her hallway wall at home, intending to clean it the next morning. She passed it to bed that night, catching her reflection in the dim light. She paused. Her face looked oddly pale, though she chalked it up to the hallway bulb flickering again. But just behind her shoulder, in the reflection, there was something else. A shape. Slender legs. A narrow face. Large and dark eyes.
She turned sharply. Nothing there.
Eleanor’s breath caught, but she laughed it off. “Too many ghost stories,” she muttered. Still, she covered the mirror with an old bedsheet and went to bed.
The Stillness Was Watching
The next morning, the sheet was on the floor.
There was no breeze, draft, or pets. The fully uncovered mirror stood silent and perfect in the gray light. Eleanor stared at it, unease crawling like frost up her spine. She stepped in front of it and looked.
Her reflection stared back—normal. Tired. Same messy ponytail. Same slightly uneven eyeliner.
But then… something shifted.
Not in the room—in the glass.
Behind her again. There it was. A deer. Tall. Motionless. Not soft or gentle, like a woodland creature ought to be. This thing looked aware. Its gaze was level. Alert. Not confused. Not scared.
Curious.
She spun around. Again, nothing behind her.
But this time, her reflection didn’t move. Eleanor froze. Her real body had turned. Her reflection hadn’t. It just stood, staring back, the deer now beside it, the two of them looking out like they shared a secret.
The reflection then turned its head—slowly—and smiled.
Eleanor stumbled backward, hitting the wall, her breath sharp in her chest. And then, just like that, the mirror was empty. Her reflection returned, perfectly ordinary—the deer gone.
That afternoon, she took the mirror back to the museum, quietly placing it in the storage basement and locking the door behind her. She never wrote a catalog card or mentioned it to her supervisor.
But sometimes, on quiet nights, when she walks past a window or glances at a polished doorknob, she swears she sees antlers waiting behind the glass just for a second.