The Mirror

“What do you think happened,” I overheard someone saying at the lunch table. It was my first day of working at JELD-WEN.

         “Who knows. All I know is they tried to keep it open, but no one would go in there afterwards. Then people kept missing work or quitting, so the company boarded up the building.”

         I’m not one to leave things hanging, so I took it upon myself to respond to the unanswered question of what happened.

         “My grandma was there that night. She always blamed herself for what happened and this is what she used to tell our family,” and so began the story of the JELD-WEN 2008 Halloween party.





         I saw it leaning in the corner of the store, dusty and forgotten. The gnarly branches engulfed the sides of the six foot tall mirror. A single, black skull sat atop, it’s blood red, smoky eyes glaring down at whoever stood before the glass.          

I wiped a section of the mirror clean with my sleeve and the reflection startled me. Looking back at me was not the young, twenty seven year old blonde I had come accustomed to seeing. Instead was an old wooded path and I had a feeling I could step into the scene if I hadn’t been frozen in place. I fiercely rubbed my eyes in disbelief and when I opened them again, the young blonde returned my gaze and all was well.

         As unnerving as the whole experience was, I couldn’t pass up this ghoulish item to use as the final touch in decorating for the party on Friday.

         Friday came sooner than I thought it would, but I was pleased with the final results of the decorations. The room had been decorated with black construction paper, spider webs, and orange mini lights strung along the ceiling and corners of the room. All of the windows and doors had been covered, blocking out all light.

         I had a few employees help build a small haunted house which began to the left of the entrance of the break room. It was set up so that only one person could enter at a time. Running the full length of the wall, it also rounded the corner and full length of the next wall, ending with the mirror carefully hung against one of the exterior doors.

         When entering, there was a layer of fog preventing the floor from being seen. Twigs, branches and spider webs were placed along the walls, giving the illusion of being in a dense forest. Strobe lights prevented the ease of focusing on any one object, therefore disguising the false spiders, crows, and other creepy crawlies. Crows were heard along with soft whispers through small speakers placed throughout the attraction. As a person rounded the corner they were met with what appeared to be someone ahead of them on their path, walking through them through the fog. Just as they reached the point where they were able to tell it was just a reflection, a woman’s scream would be set off by motion detector.

         I tested it with the lights on and without the fog and it was creepy. When I rounded the corner, the reflection sent chills up my spine. If I hadn’t seen myself, I would have thought I was experiencing the same phenomenon as I had in the store. With the branches hung on the walls to resemble an overhang on the path, it appeared to be an endless tunnel stretching through the looking glass. The smoky eyes of the skull watching my every move, raised the hair on the nape of my neck, but I ignored it, hoping everyone would enjoy it.

         Soon the room was filled with ghouls, zombies, and every other kind of imaginable things Halloween inspires people to become. The room was buzzing with laughter and everyone commenting on who wore the best costume. Every so often a scream could be heard from inside the haunted house.

         I stood in the far corner for a moment, smiling at the success of the party when I overheard a couple arguing. The man was dressed as a mobster, wearing a black, pin striped suit. His wife, dressed as a 1920’s flapper girl, wore a short, red fringed dress. He had just been through the haunted house and was trying to convince her to go in.

         “It just doesn’t feel right,” she mumbled, rubbing her arms as if she were cold.          

“Come on, hon,” he pleaded. “It’s cool. It’s not very long and not all that scary, and it might help you get over your fear of ghosts. This is a new building, so you know it’s not haunted.”

         “I know,” she responded, doubt creeping into her voice. “I’ve never felt uneasy here, but tonight something feels wrong. It’s worse when I stand near the haunted house part.”          

         “Fine,” he muttered under his breath.

         “No, you’re right,” she sighed, not wanting to ruin his night. “I’ll go through it if it means that much to you.”

         “What’s the worst that could happen? You jump a little?” he smiled, nudging her softly.

         “Or I could wind up in the courtyard fighting off some demon,” she shot back sarcastically.

         He laughed, wrapping one arm around her as they made their way to the entrance. I watched as he kissed her forehead and she smiled uneasily at him before disappearing into the attraction. I could relate to her feeling of uneasiness and found myself holding my breath and listening intently for the sound of the motion activated scream, the signal that she’d reached the end.

         Several minutes went by and I never heard the scream. Just as I was about to go in after her, something hit the outside, unblocked door leading to the courtyard. It was a huge bang as if something or someone had been thrown against it. Most people ran from the door, unable to see what had hit, but wanting to be away from it in case it hit again.

         The mobster, however, ran to the door and ripped the paper from the glass. His eyes and mouth widened in terror as he saw the scene his wife had described just moments earlier. By the look of the girl, she had been what had hit the glass and there she was, in the courtyard, circling a creature unlike anything I’d ever seen, trying to stay out of its reach.

         The mobster yanked at the doors, trying to get to his wife to help her. The rattling of the doors distracted the beast and it turned to look at what the noise was. I gasped in horror as I recognized the black skull and smoky red eyes from the mirror. Gone was the mirror and branches and beneath its head was a slender black body with large wings reaching from its bony wrists to its back side. Large talons extended its spindly fingers and its serpent tail whipped around in one swift motion, wrapping around the flapper girl in a fierce grip, knocking her unconscious.

         The creature smiled a sinister smile at the mobster and with one of its talons, etched the mobster’s silhouette into the glass and uttered a deep, guttural laugh.

         “Let her go,” the mobster yelled, pounding his fist against the glass. He tried the door again, but they were still jammed.

         The skull smiled again and laughed louder. He drew his tail around to rest the girl between his arms. She awoke with the movement and screamed, loud enough we could hear her through the glass.

         “Help me,” she shrieked and the smoky eyes of the beast seemed to wince at the high pitched sound. In one swift movement, its jaws opened wide, revealing rows upon rows of razor sharp teeth. It sunk them into the girl, stifling her cries and removing her head, splattering the door with blood.

         Until this point, we all had been silent. Our voices stuck in our throats from the initial shock of seeing a real live monster. Along with the other women who hadn’t fled the room, we all started screaming in unison. The monster, hearing the shrillness of the screaming, put its hands to its head in an attempt to block out the noise.

         While yelling at us to keep screaming, the mobster ran from the break room and into the main building. He returned, a split second later, chair in hand and sent it hurling through the air, smashing the glass in the door. Our screams no longer muted, the thing writhed in agony. It wrapped its wings around itself and the smoke that once filled its eyes blew out from its mouth and nose until we could no longer see it.

         A strong wind blew through the courtyard, swirling around the smoke and taking it with it as it travelled up and away from the building, leaving no sign the creature or the girl had been there.

         “Where is she?” the mobster sobbed, finally reaching his breaking point and falling to his knees.





         “Everyone who’d attended the party never returned to the building. They quit and most of them moved away,” I finished the story I’d heard my grandmother tell.

         “Did she figure out what it was?” one of my audience members asked.

         “No.” I said, getting up from my chair to return to work. “The only reason she blamed herself was because she knew the head on the monster was the skull from that mirror.”

         “What about the guy?” another asked.

         I shrugged, “My grandma once mentioned that he went mad and had to be put in a mental institution and that he had died less than a year later, still screaming ‘let her go’.”

         I went back to my desk, wondering if I should have told them the rest of the story. Grandma had also mentioned that if you dialed the girl’s extension number, you’d hear her screaming ‘help me’ into the phone. I left it out because I didn’t want to get fired for having a lot of people bombarding some poor employee’s extension number. I stared at the phone, wondering if I should try it. I could always say I had the wrong number.

         Curiosity got the best of me. I dialed the extension and waited. One ring, two rings, three and just as I was about to hang up, the phone was answered.

         “Hello,” I whispered into the receiver, my heart pounding.

         A woman’s loud shriek answered from the other end, “HELP ME!”