When Alan saw the antique full-length mirror on the side of the road he stopped immediately, looked around for its owner, and then put it in the back of his truck.

“I know how much you love this old stuff,” he said tapping the end of the mirror protruding from the bed of his Tacoma.

He was right. Surprising me with old furniture is my love language.

And the mirror was amazing! It stood a full six feet tall, the bronze-colored wooden frame was so ornately carved that I wondered if we should get it appraised first. No, that didn’t feel right. It needed its place.

I helped Alan haul it inside. I knew exactly where it belonged – our bedroom, just to the side of the closet. Not in line with the bed – that’s bad feng shui – but still nearby so I could check out my outfit in the morning. Once in its place, it felt right, calm. I patted the intricate frame and was surprised that it felt warm to the touch – not warm like it just came in from sitting in the sun in the truck bed, but almost hot, like body temperature.

Almost immediately I noticed something so weird I thought it was a flaw in the glass or my mind playing tricks on me. When I looked at myself in the mirror, my reflection would be just a little bit off – not in a fun-house way, distorting my proportions, but like I would move my hands to pull my hair up and my image seemed be just a moment behind my physical movements. It felt like a lag of some kind.

Everyone has encountered lag when dealing with online meetings and such – this was similar, but it was a mirror, not some trick of a network. I stood and walked towards the bathroom and watched my reflection stand and retreat towards the bathroom… I shouldn’t have been able to discern a lag, right?

When I talked to Alan about it he dismissed me as just out of it. We both stood in front of the mirror and gesticulated wildly – there was no lag whatsoever.

“See, Trish? It’s fine,” he said and walked out of the room. I stared at his retreating figure in the mirror and saw my image smirk just a little out of the corner of my eye. I looked directly at my image and the smirk was gone – it was just me looking surprised and a little pale.

I didn’t see my image look any differently again, but the delay was there – sometimes a full second or two behind, sometimes barely any lag at all. But something was wrong with the mirror.

One night when Alan was away on business I was getting ready for bed and my peripheral vision picked up the delay of  my image in the mirror and it started getting to my head. I draped a sheet over the mirror, finished getting ready for bed, and then went to sleep. When I woke in the morning, the mirror sat uncovered, the sheet balled up on the opposite side of the room – the sheet would have had to have passed over the foot of our bed.

I was wary of the mirror after that. I tried not to stare directly at my image and, if I could avoid it, I wouldn’t look at my image at all. I tried to move it, turn it towards the wall, but I couldn’t budge it. I thought about asking Alan to help, but what would I tell him? The mirror has lag? It smirked at me? I just did my best to ignore it.

One Saturday morning, though, I caught my reflection in the mirror as I walked towards the closet. Again, my image seemed just behind my actual movements. But as I was about to turn past the mirror, a motion in the mirror caught my eye. I turned towards it and my image was waving at me. I actually looked at my own hand to make sure it wasn’t moving of its own accord – no, it was just the hand in the mirror that moved. As if to confirm my conclusion, my image smiled and nodded.

I waved back, hesitantly.

My image stared into my eyes, and it reached out its hand towards me. My heart raced and I don’t know why, but I extended my arm towards the mirror. Just as my fingers were about to touch the fingers in the mirror, my image’s smile turned predatory.