The Mirror That Smiled

I did not sleep after that message. I remained standing before the door, watching the darkness and trying to understand the last sentence. How could I have returned to a place I had not entered? I reached my hand toward the handle, but I stopped when I heard three knocks from inside. One knock, then a second, then a third. I remembered my father. He used to knock on My Bedroom door in this way when he wanted to wake me when I was small. I opened the door. The House was dark, although I had left the lamp on before I went out. I turned on my phone light and went in. I found no one. But the wet footprints stretched from the entrance to the stairs, then up to the upper floor. I followed them without realizing it. At the end of The Corridor My Bedroom was open. I went in and found on the bed a wooden box I had never seen before. My name was engraved deeply on it. I opened it and found old photographs of me and my father. I turned one over and found a date going back ten years, and beneath the date a sentence in my father's handwriting: "If you find this box, do not trust your memory." I laughed nervously. I told myself that my father had perhaps been writing strange riddles, but I found another photograph that made me stop. I was standing in front of this House, although I remembered that I had not visited it until a few years ago. In the photograph my father was behind me, his hand on my shoulder. And beside him a third person, tall and thin, but his face was smeared with ink. I heard a voice behind me. "You remember the photograph wrong." I turned quickly. There was no one there. The voice returned, this time from inside the mirror. "Ask yourself: who took it?" I approached the mirror. I saw my reflection, but something was different. My reflection was not looking at me, but staring behind my shoulder. I turned. No one. And when I looked back at the mirror, my reflection was smiling. Then it raised its finger to its mouth. And at that same moment, the bedroom door closed by itself. I tried to open it, but the handle would not move. And from behind the door I heard my father's voice whispering: "Don't open, no matter what sounds you hear." Then someone began to laugh...