Caroline slips into a forgotten school wing and finds a mirror that doesn’t show her reflection. Behind it, a boy reaches for her as something unknown closes in.
The old primary school had never looked like anything worth noticing to Caroline: peeling paint, bowed floorboards, and windows that held the last light like tired eyes. She passed it every day on her way home from the library and never once thought about going inside.
That changed the evening the corridor door gave a soft click behind her.
Caroline froze. The building was supposed to be empty after hours. She looked back at the exit, then down at Wafer, her cat, who had slipped ahead of her with the easy confidence of a creature that had already made up its mind. When he vanished through the half-open door into the darker wing of the school, she muttered a curse under her breath and tightened her grip on the torch in her backpack.
She followed.
The hallway beyond the closed wing felt wrong at once. The air was colder there, and the walls were covered in mosaic tiles she was sure had never been part of the school before. Some of them shone faintly, catching the torchlight in sharp flashes. Caroline reached out and brushed one with her fingertips.
It shifted.
Not much. Just enough to make her pull back. A shiver ran up her arm, as if the wall had breathed against her skin. The silence deepened around her, thick and waiting.
Then footsteps rang out somewhere ahead.
Caroline spun toward the sound. Not Wafer. Too heavy. Too slow. Her pulse kicked hard against her ribs as the footsteps drew closer, echoing through the corridor in a way that made it impossible to tell how far away they really were.
She backed up into the nearest wall and saw the mirror.
It was old, dust-blurred, and cracked at one corner. For one wild second she thought she was looking at her own pale face, torch in hand, hair falling into her eyes. Then the surface rippled.
Her reflection vanished.
In its place stood a boy about her age, staring at her as if he had been expecting her all along. He raised one hand slowly, palm pressed to the glass, and his expression sharpened with urgent warning.
Behind him, shadows moved.
Not the kind cast by lamps or windows. These moved on their own, spilling forward too fast, too dark, and too close. Caroline took an unsteady breath and stepped nearer to the mirror just as the footsteps in the corridor stopped behind her.