The first time the Shadow appeared was the night that Holly's father left. She was sitting on the floor, next to her bed, small arms wrapped around her knees, rocking back and forth as she tried to ignore the sounds of her parents screaming at each other. It wasn't the first time this had happened. Silent tears streamed down the six year old's face as her mother screamed at her father to 'Just get out'.
They never used to argue and shout. They used to be happy and laugh. But then Holly's older brother, Brett, had fallen into the icy lake at the back of the house and no one had been happy since.
Holly jumped as the sound of the front door, downstairs, slammed shut and then there was nothing but silence. Holly held her breath, waiting for something, anything, to happen, but it didn't. It was if the whole world went away, not just her father, and Holly was left all alone.
That was when she heard it. At first she thought it was the sound of her breath as she finally breathed out, it was so quiet, but after all the air had left her body she could still hear it. A quiet, whispered murmur. It sounded like someone was trying to oh so very quietly talk to her, but she couldn't understand what they were saying. Holly looked around for whoever was whispering to her, but there was no one in the room except her. She looked around again and that is when she saw the smallest movement to her right. Slowly her head turned and there, in front of her was her mirror, which was nothing unusual. It had always been there. In the mirror was the other her, also sitting on her bedroom floor, hugging her knees, her eyes red and puffy from crying. That also wasn't unusual. It was a sight she had seen many times over the past couple of weeks. What was unusual was the Shadow that sat next to her, just a little bit bigger than her, and almost in the exact same position.
Holly turned her head, ever so slightly in the direction of the Shadow, but still kept her eyes on the mirror in front of her. The Shadow turned it's.....head(?)...slightly towards her, as if it was studying her also.
Holly raised the arm furthest from the Shadow in a timid greeting wave. The Shadow raised its ....arm(?)....furthest from Holly in the same gesture. It's arm dropped back down when Hollys did. The whole time it whispered to her and even though Holly could not make out the words it was uttering it was one of the most comforting things she had heard in a long while, so she sat and whispered things back. She whispered her fears and her losses and her deepest wishes, the whole time the Shadow mimicked her movements, only in the opposite direction, and always a fraction of a second slower.
Holly sat and whispered to the Shadow until she grew sleepy. The whole time the Shadow whispered back and copied her movements, even down to the slow droop of it's head as Holly struggled to stay awake. It was then that the Shadow did something unexpected. It moved on its own. It stood up and reached a hand down to Holly's reflection. Holly raised her hand and watched as her reflection took the Shadow's hand and she stood up, an ever so gently the Shadow pushed her towards her bed.
Holly climbed onto the bed and under the covers and turned to look at the mirror. Although she could no longer see her own reflection, the Shadow was still visible. "Stay" she whispered, and the Shadow nodded its head, whispering comforting sounds as she fell asleep.
The days turned into weeks and they then turned into months and before long two years had passed. The bond between Holly and her Shadow grew stronger. It was there when she needed it, to calm and sooth her when she was angry or upset. It made her laugh when she was sad and it was there, nearly every night, lulling her to sleep. The nights it wasn't there, such as on the odd occasion one of her very few friends would sleep over, or on the occasional trip her and her mother took, Holly couldn't sleep. The silence of the night, without her Shadow's murmurs and whispers, was unsettling, and when she did sleep, it was fitful and filled with nightmares of dark rooms and evil whispers, not at all like those of her Shadow.
It was two years after her father left, the night her Shadow appeared, that her mother announced that she was getting married.
Holly didn't like her mothers new husband. He expected to call her dad, even though she already had one of those, and he called her poppet. She didn't like it. She didn't like the way he was always too nice to her and she didn't like that he did everything for her, even though she didn't ask him to. And she especially didn't like it when he came into her room in the middle of the night.
He would come into her room and sit on the edge of her bed and talk to her, bringing her a glass of milk and biscuits. He would call it their 'midnight tea parties' but she wasn't allowed to tell her mother because she would say that Holly wasn't old enough to stay up that late and would yell at her. Holly didn't want her mother to yell any more. She had yelled too much when Brett had died. She didn't want to hear it any more, so she didn't tell her mother about the tea parties. During these midnight visits her Shadow stayed mostly quiet, but every now and then she could hear a whisper and it sounded angry. Thomas, her new step-dad, didn't hear these whispers because he was too busy chatting.
Soon Thomas went from sitting on her bed, to climbing under the covers, (after all, winter was setting in and it was starting to get cold), then he went from sitting in her bed to laying in her bed, pulling her down with him so he was hugging her. She didn't like it when he would whisper in her ear how he thought she was so special, and if anyone found out that she was his favourite person they would take her away and put her in a special home, away from him and away from her mother, so it had to be their little secret. Her Shadow didn't like this either as its whispers got angrier and angrier every night. Thomas still didn't hear them.
Holly especially didn't like it when one night Thomas took Holly's hand and placed it over a hard lump between his legs. He told her that, that meant that he was happy about being with her. She did that to him. This made her scared because it made her Shadow so angry that the whispers became angry hisses, which didn't stop, even after Thomas had left.
Holly would have slept much better if she had known that that was the last night Thomas would ever come into her room.
The next morning Holly was woken to the sound of scream. A scream that left her scared and shivering. Slowly, she made her way out of bed and left her room, moving down the hallway to where her mothers scream had turned into mournful sobs. Slowly she made her way to the bathroom and peeked around the door. The first thing she saw was her mother,kneeling on the grey tiles, cradling Thomas' head in her lap. The next thing she saw was the straight razor, as Thomas called it, ("You'll never get a closer shave, poppet" he had told her), sticking out of his throat. There was so much blood. Holly couldn't look at it any more, so she looked away, her eye catching the mirror above the sink. She couldn't be sure, but she thought she had seen a shadow, just briefly, in the corner, but there was nothing there now.
Thomas' death had been ruled an accident. It seems he had slipped on the wet tiles while shaving. Just an unfortunate accident. After the funeral Holly's mother announced that they were moving. There were too many bad memories in the house and she couldn't stay any longer. Holly panicked. They couldn't move. Her Shadow was here. It couldn't go anywhere else. She had since dismissed that brief glimpse, in the bathroom mirror, as her eyes playing tricks on her, as her Shadow had not appeared in any other mirror, except the one that was the door to her wardrobe. A part of the house. Not able to be packed up and taken away. She couldn't leave. But her mother had made up her mind. In fact, another house had already been purchased and this one was on the market to be sold.
Holly ran to her room screaming, as tears ran down her face. Her screams turned to crying and her crying turned to sobs, and the whole time her Shadow comforted her, calming her down and whispered reassuring noises in her ear. She wanted to believe it was all okay, but how could it be? Eventually she wore herself out and fell asleep curled up in front of the mirror with her Shadow gently rubbing her reflections back.
Holly was quiet in the time leading up to the move. She was quiet during the move and she was quiet after the move. She didn't sleep well, she didn't want to eat and she stopped playing with her friends at school. The new room, in the new house, had a mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door, and in her spare time Holly would sit in front of it. She never shut the door. She would sit and watch the glass, ignoring her own reflection, searching for the black blotch that used to bring her peace and comfort. Two weeks she sat and watched the mirror, then that night as she lay in bed she heard a familiar whispering. It was soft and gentle and she instantly felt herself falling into a restful slumber. "Welcome home" she whispered and then she was asleep, a small smile pulling on her lips.
Again the days turned into weeks, which then turned into months. The seasons left and then returned again, and Holly grew. So did the bond with her Shadow. It was so strong now that Holly could see it any mirror, always whispering to her gently. It always made sure to stay out of sight when other people where around, which made Holly glad. It was her Shadow. She didn't want to share it with anyone else. But as the gap between her and her Shadow grew less and less, the gap between her and her friends grew more and more, until before long she only had one friend at school, and they never had much to talk about. She had stopped all after school activities and spent all of her time, in front of her mirror, studying and whispering to her Shadow. As she got older, this became a problem. The other girls no longer ignored her, as they had decided that it was much more interesting to pick on her. It started off small, with name calling and taunting. Then it escalated to damaged property such as clothing and books and tripping her in the corridors. Then the hair pulling and the threats started. The problem then got to the point where Holly was coming home with cuts and bruises on her body from where the other girls had ganged up on her and she had no chance to defend herself. Her Shadow hissed angrily when it saw these, and would then murmur soothing sounds to Holly, to get her through the trauma of the bullying.
The bullying stopped one day when the girls cornered Holly in the toilets at school. They pushed her up against the sinks. One girl snatched her bag out of her hands and emptied the contents into the nearest toilet. Another one yanked the hair tie out of her hair so hard, that a small clump of hair came with it. The third girl, the worst one out of the group, then reached up and slapped Holly across the face. They taunted her about the loner that she hung around with and they taunted her about how her mother was nothing but a depressed alcoholic. (This was untrue. Her mother never drank alcohol. Her behaviour was due more to the medication that she probably overdosed on to help with her depression and anxiety!) And they taunted her about whispering to herself. She was weird, queer, freakish. She didn't belong here. She belonged in a padded room with all the other loonies. That was when the girl, the ringleader of the group, spun Holly around and grabbed her hair, yanking her head back. That was when Holly learned that her Shadow could do a new trick. Her Shadow situated itself in front of the bully's reflection, and slowly the girl's image changed from a trim, pretty little blonde thing, to a hideous, deformed version of herself. The bully saw the change and her grip on Holly's hair loosened as she screamed at the scarring and the bulging veins that were spreading over her face. Boils appeared along her jaw line and her left eye grew red, crusted over with a yellow substance. Festering sores broke out on her cheeks and forehead. Her teeth, what was left of them, were a sick shade of green and her hair was all patchy, balding on one side. She screamed and screamed and screamed. Holly used this time to slip away and collect her now sopping wet belongings as the bully's friends came to pull the girl away, only to suffer the same treatment. Holly quickly left the toilets before the girls screaming attracted the teachers, whispering a quiet thank you to the mirror as she fled past.
Two of the girls were never seen at the school again. One of them returned, but she was quiet and withdrawn and avoided the girls bathroom, and Holly, at all costs.
Holly kept growing. Her mother, although better, was never the same, and never paid too much attention to Holly, but that was fine with her, as that meant more time she could spend with her Shadow. The connection between her Shadow and the real world became stronger. One example was when Holly fell asleep, on her bed, and her Shadow had pulled the blanket over her reflection. This also caused the blanket over the real Holly to be pulled up as well. When her Shadow touched her reflection she could feel the warmth of it's hand, feel the motion of it patting her shoulder. When she woke up during the night she could feel her Shadow curled up next to her. It was a comforting feeling that helped Holly fall straight back to sleep.
Holly's Shadow continued to follow her through life, as her companion and her protector. When she left home to go to university Holly got her first boyfriend. When this happened her Shadow disappeared for a week, which worried Holly to the point where she could no longer hold food down. When it returned it was silent for another week, and then things returned to normal. Three months later her boyfriend came back to her apartment after a party. Holly thought he was drunk, again, but something was different. Usually when drunk he was loud and uncoordinated, but happy. This time he was dark and moody. When Holly asked him about it he started yelling at her. This reminded Holly of her parents, after her brother had drowned, frozen, in the pond behind their house. She told him to leave. This only made him angrier, and before Holly knew it her boyfriend had knocked her down to the ground, face down, his knee on the small of her back, his hand pushing her face into the carpet. He told her that if she ever told him what to do again, she would regret it. Unfortunately for him, his back was to the floor length mirror next to the bookshelf.
That was the last thing he ever said to Holly. When he woke up it was three days later and he was in a hospital room with broken ribs and severe head trauma.
Over the following three years, Holly had many short-term relationships. None of them ever lasted for one reason or another. One was convinced her apartment was haunted, as every time Holly left the room he could hear vicious whispers and murmurs, although he could never figure out what they were saying. One said that any time he saw Holly a message appeared in his bathroom mirror the following morning, etched in the steam, telling him to leave her alone. One had yelled at Holly, and had suddenly felt like he was being strangled. Others just said that there was a weird vibe. Each time one of them left her, Holly was consoled by her Shadow.
It wasn't until she started work that the real problems began. Holly tried to make friends with her co-workers, now that her spare time wasn't chewed up with study. She looked forward to having a bit of a social life, but that apparently wasn't the Shadow's plan. Every time she went out it was always there, in every mirror. Bumping into her friends, knocking over their drinks, whispering in their ears. Holly tried talking to it, but it just whispered back, sometimes trying to sooth her into agreeing with it, other times hissing and wheezing.
Holly tried dating one of her co-workers, but the Shadow pulled the stunt of changing his appearance every time he looked in a mirror, making him look thin and hollow and gaunt. He became depressed, convinced he was ill and dying. He became obsessed with it, wondering why nobody else could see it. He was eventually committed to a psych ward following a nervous break down.
Holly became frustrated and smashed the mirror in her bedroom. Right before her eyes, the cracks slowly healed themselves, the mirror looking like new again, with the Shadow standing next to her reflection, humming happily. Holly removed the mirrors from her house, only to wake up and find them replaced the next morning. This made the Shadow very angry and it spent a week whispering and hissing what sounded like violent words to Holly, even as she tried to sleep. Every time Holly went to work, it was there. Every time Holly drove in her car, it was there. Every time Holly went out, it was there. Holly suddenly found it alarming at the amount of mirrors that where everywhere. Work, clubs, restaurants, shopping centres, the dental surgery, the hair dressers, the newsagent. Every where she went, there was a mirror, and in every mirror, there was the Shadow, keeping her close, making sure she didn't stray.
It got to the point where Holly couldn't take it any more. She wasn't eating, she wasn't sleeping. She was paranoid wherever she went. Anyone she tried to befriend got spooked or injured. She was a danger to the people around her. That was why one night Holly went out and got so drunk she forgot about the Shadow. It's whispers and murmurs blended in with the buzzing noise that the alcohol made, therefore she didn't see the Shadow while she let that nice looking guy buy her a drink. She didn't hear the shadow while she let that nice looking guy chat her up, and she most certainly didn't notice the Shadow at all when she took that nice looking guy back to her place. But when Holly heard the mirror across from her bed shatter, she did plead with the Shadow as it grabbed one of the shards of broken mirror and plunged it repeatedly into the reflection of the nice looking guys back, over and over again, until the body on Holly's bed was a lifeless, bloody, lump.
Holly fought tooth and nail when the police officer tried to walk her, handcuffed, into the interrogation room. Any room but there, she pleaded with them, because she knew what was in that room. They eventually got her in the room and placed her in a seat, facing a huge mirror. She was a alone in the room, but she knew there was a detective on the other side. It wasn't that which troubled her. It was what was in between her and the detective that scared her almost lifeless. She pleaded to the mirror to let her out of the room, but the only answer she got was little whispers and murmurs, that sounded like they were trying to tell her that everything was going to be okay. And then there it was. The Shadow, standing to the left of her reflection, its hand on her shoulder, comforting her. She stood up and moved to the other side of the table so she didn't have to look at the Shadow, but she could still hear it and that was just as bad.
Eventually a man entered the room and introduced himself as the detective who would be handling this case. He asked her why she switched chairs, she refused to give a straight answer. He asked why she killed Jacob Mellot. She told them that she didn't. She pleaded with him to understand, but she couldn't give a straight answer without sounding like she was crazy. He told her that every single piece of evidence pointed to her, including a suspected rather violent attack on her ex-boyfriend four years ago. It was then that Holly noticed that the detective was starting to sweat. He excused himself a few times to take a mouthful of water from the paper cup on the table. Holly again pleaded for them to leave the room, but the detective continued his questioning. He didn't get far before he started coughing and spluttering. Holly turned around to see the Shadow with it's hands around the detectives neck. So it was as she pleaded to the mirror for the Shadow to let go, when more officers ran into the room in aid of their colleague, but it was too late. The detective was dead and any efforts to revive him were futile.
Holly liked her room at the psychiatric hospital. It was dull and plain and quiet. No one bothered her and she was free to carry out her days as she wanted, obviously within reason.
But best of all, there were no mirrors.
They never used to argue and shout. They used to be happy and laugh. But then Holly's older brother, Brett, had fallen into the icy lake at the back of the house and no one had been happy since.
Holly jumped as the sound of the front door, downstairs, slammed shut and then there was nothing but silence. Holly held her breath, waiting for something, anything, to happen, but it didn't. It was if the whole world went away, not just her father, and Holly was left all alone.
That was when she heard it. At first she thought it was the sound of her breath as she finally breathed out, it was so quiet, but after all the air had left her body she could still hear it. A quiet, whispered murmur. It sounded like someone was trying to oh so very quietly talk to her, but she couldn't understand what they were saying. Holly looked around for whoever was whispering to her, but there was no one in the room except her. She looked around again and that is when she saw the smallest movement to her right. Slowly her head turned and there, in front of her was her mirror, which was nothing unusual. It had always been there. In the mirror was the other her, also sitting on her bedroom floor, hugging her knees, her eyes red and puffy from crying. That also wasn't unusual. It was a sight she had seen many times over the past couple of weeks. What was unusual was the Shadow that sat next to her, just a little bit bigger than her, and almost in the exact same position.
Holly turned her head, ever so slightly in the direction of the Shadow, but still kept her eyes on the mirror in front of her. The Shadow turned it's.....head(?)...slightly towards her, as if it was studying her also.
Holly raised the arm furthest from the Shadow in a timid greeting wave. The Shadow raised its ....arm(?)....furthest from Holly in the same gesture. It's arm dropped back down when Hollys did. The whole time it whispered to her and even though Holly could not make out the words it was uttering it was one of the most comforting things she had heard in a long while, so she sat and whispered things back. She whispered her fears and her losses and her deepest wishes, the whole time the Shadow mimicked her movements, only in the opposite direction, and always a fraction of a second slower.
Holly sat and whispered to the Shadow until she grew sleepy. The whole time the Shadow whispered back and copied her movements, even down to the slow droop of it's head as Holly struggled to stay awake. It was then that the Shadow did something unexpected. It moved on its own. It stood up and reached a hand down to Holly's reflection. Holly raised her hand and watched as her reflection took the Shadow's hand and she stood up, an ever so gently the Shadow pushed her towards her bed.
Holly climbed onto the bed and under the covers and turned to look at the mirror. Although she could no longer see her own reflection, the Shadow was still visible. "Stay" she whispered, and the Shadow nodded its head, whispering comforting sounds as she fell asleep.
The days turned into weeks and they then turned into months and before long two years had passed. The bond between Holly and her Shadow grew stronger. It was there when she needed it, to calm and sooth her when she was angry or upset. It made her laugh when she was sad and it was there, nearly every night, lulling her to sleep. The nights it wasn't there, such as on the odd occasion one of her very few friends would sleep over, or on the occasional trip her and her mother took, Holly couldn't sleep. The silence of the night, without her Shadow's murmurs and whispers, was unsettling, and when she did sleep, it was fitful and filled with nightmares of dark rooms and evil whispers, not at all like those of her Shadow.
It was two years after her father left, the night her Shadow appeared, that her mother announced that she was getting married.
Holly didn't like her mothers new husband. He expected to call her dad, even though she already had one of those, and he called her poppet. She didn't like it. She didn't like the way he was always too nice to her and she didn't like that he did everything for her, even though she didn't ask him to. And she especially didn't like it when he came into her room in the middle of the night.
He would come into her room and sit on the edge of her bed and talk to her, bringing her a glass of milk and biscuits. He would call it their 'midnight tea parties' but she wasn't allowed to tell her mother because she would say that Holly wasn't old enough to stay up that late and would yell at her. Holly didn't want her mother to yell any more. She had yelled too much when Brett had died. She didn't want to hear it any more, so she didn't tell her mother about the tea parties. During these midnight visits her Shadow stayed mostly quiet, but every now and then she could hear a whisper and it sounded angry. Thomas, her new step-dad, didn't hear these whispers because he was too busy chatting.
Soon Thomas went from sitting on her bed, to climbing under the covers, (after all, winter was setting in and it was starting to get cold), then he went from sitting in her bed to laying in her bed, pulling her down with him so he was hugging her. She didn't like it when he would whisper in her ear how he thought she was so special, and if anyone found out that she was his favourite person they would take her away and put her in a special home, away from him and away from her mother, so it had to be their little secret. Her Shadow didn't like this either as its whispers got angrier and angrier every night. Thomas still didn't hear them.
Holly especially didn't like it when one night Thomas took Holly's hand and placed it over a hard lump between his legs. He told her that, that meant that he was happy about being with her. She did that to him. This made her scared because it made her Shadow so angry that the whispers became angry hisses, which didn't stop, even after Thomas had left.
Holly would have slept much better if she had known that that was the last night Thomas would ever come into her room.
The next morning Holly was woken to the sound of scream. A scream that left her scared and shivering. Slowly, she made her way out of bed and left her room, moving down the hallway to where her mothers scream had turned into mournful sobs. Slowly she made her way to the bathroom and peeked around the door. The first thing she saw was her mother,kneeling on the grey tiles, cradling Thomas' head in her lap. The next thing she saw was the straight razor, as Thomas called it, ("You'll never get a closer shave, poppet" he had told her), sticking out of his throat. There was so much blood. Holly couldn't look at it any more, so she looked away, her eye catching the mirror above the sink. She couldn't be sure, but she thought she had seen a shadow, just briefly, in the corner, but there was nothing there now.
Thomas' death had been ruled an accident. It seems he had slipped on the wet tiles while shaving. Just an unfortunate accident. After the funeral Holly's mother announced that they were moving. There were too many bad memories in the house and she couldn't stay any longer. Holly panicked. They couldn't move. Her Shadow was here. It couldn't go anywhere else. She had since dismissed that brief glimpse, in the bathroom mirror, as her eyes playing tricks on her, as her Shadow had not appeared in any other mirror, except the one that was the door to her wardrobe. A part of the house. Not able to be packed up and taken away. She couldn't leave. But her mother had made up her mind. In fact, another house had already been purchased and this one was on the market to be sold.
Holly ran to her room screaming, as tears ran down her face. Her screams turned to crying and her crying turned to sobs, and the whole time her Shadow comforted her, calming her down and whispered reassuring noises in her ear. She wanted to believe it was all okay, but how could it be? Eventually she wore herself out and fell asleep curled up in front of the mirror with her Shadow gently rubbing her reflections back.
Holly was quiet in the time leading up to the move. She was quiet during the move and she was quiet after the move. She didn't sleep well, she didn't want to eat and she stopped playing with her friends at school. The new room, in the new house, had a mirror on the inside of the wardrobe door, and in her spare time Holly would sit in front of it. She never shut the door. She would sit and watch the glass, ignoring her own reflection, searching for the black blotch that used to bring her peace and comfort. Two weeks she sat and watched the mirror, then that night as she lay in bed she heard a familiar whispering. It was soft and gentle and she instantly felt herself falling into a restful slumber. "Welcome home" she whispered and then she was asleep, a small smile pulling on her lips.
Again the days turned into weeks, which then turned into months. The seasons left and then returned again, and Holly grew. So did the bond with her Shadow. It was so strong now that Holly could see it any mirror, always whispering to her gently. It always made sure to stay out of sight when other people where around, which made Holly glad. It was her Shadow. She didn't want to share it with anyone else. But as the gap between her and her Shadow grew less and less, the gap between her and her friends grew more and more, until before long she only had one friend at school, and they never had much to talk about. She had stopped all after school activities and spent all of her time, in front of her mirror, studying and whispering to her Shadow. As she got older, this became a problem. The other girls no longer ignored her, as they had decided that it was much more interesting to pick on her. It started off small, with name calling and taunting. Then it escalated to damaged property such as clothing and books and tripping her in the corridors. Then the hair pulling and the threats started. The problem then got to the point where Holly was coming home with cuts and bruises on her body from where the other girls had ganged up on her and she had no chance to defend herself. Her Shadow hissed angrily when it saw these, and would then murmur soothing sounds to Holly, to get her through the trauma of the bullying.
The bullying stopped one day when the girls cornered Holly in the toilets at school. They pushed her up against the sinks. One girl snatched her bag out of her hands and emptied the contents into the nearest toilet. Another one yanked the hair tie out of her hair so hard, that a small clump of hair came with it. The third girl, the worst one out of the group, then reached up and slapped Holly across the face. They taunted her about the loner that she hung around with and they taunted her about how her mother was nothing but a depressed alcoholic. (This was untrue. Her mother never drank alcohol. Her behaviour was due more to the medication that she probably overdosed on to help with her depression and anxiety!) And they taunted her about whispering to herself. She was weird, queer, freakish. She didn't belong here. She belonged in a padded room with all the other loonies. That was when the girl, the ringleader of the group, spun Holly around and grabbed her hair, yanking her head back. That was when Holly learned that her Shadow could do a new trick. Her Shadow situated itself in front of the bully's reflection, and slowly the girl's image changed from a trim, pretty little blonde thing, to a hideous, deformed version of herself. The bully saw the change and her grip on Holly's hair loosened as she screamed at the scarring and the bulging veins that were spreading over her face. Boils appeared along her jaw line and her left eye grew red, crusted over with a yellow substance. Festering sores broke out on her cheeks and forehead. Her teeth, what was left of them, were a sick shade of green and her hair was all patchy, balding on one side. She screamed and screamed and screamed. Holly used this time to slip away and collect her now sopping wet belongings as the bully's friends came to pull the girl away, only to suffer the same treatment. Holly quickly left the toilets before the girls screaming attracted the teachers, whispering a quiet thank you to the mirror as she fled past.
Two of the girls were never seen at the school again. One of them returned, but she was quiet and withdrawn and avoided the girls bathroom, and Holly, at all costs.
Holly kept growing. Her mother, although better, was never the same, and never paid too much attention to Holly, but that was fine with her, as that meant more time she could spend with her Shadow. The connection between her Shadow and the real world became stronger. One example was when Holly fell asleep, on her bed, and her Shadow had pulled the blanket over her reflection. This also caused the blanket over the real Holly to be pulled up as well. When her Shadow touched her reflection she could feel the warmth of it's hand, feel the motion of it patting her shoulder. When she woke up during the night she could feel her Shadow curled up next to her. It was a comforting feeling that helped Holly fall straight back to sleep.
Holly's Shadow continued to follow her through life, as her companion and her protector. When she left home to go to university Holly got her first boyfriend. When this happened her Shadow disappeared for a week, which worried Holly to the point where she could no longer hold food down. When it returned it was silent for another week, and then things returned to normal. Three months later her boyfriend came back to her apartment after a party. Holly thought he was drunk, again, but something was different. Usually when drunk he was loud and uncoordinated, but happy. This time he was dark and moody. When Holly asked him about it he started yelling at her. This reminded Holly of her parents, after her brother had drowned, frozen, in the pond behind their house. She told him to leave. This only made him angrier, and before Holly knew it her boyfriend had knocked her down to the ground, face down, his knee on the small of her back, his hand pushing her face into the carpet. He told her that if she ever told him what to do again, she would regret it. Unfortunately for him, his back was to the floor length mirror next to the bookshelf.
That was the last thing he ever said to Holly. When he woke up it was three days later and he was in a hospital room with broken ribs and severe head trauma.
Over the following three years, Holly had many short-term relationships. None of them ever lasted for one reason or another. One was convinced her apartment was haunted, as every time Holly left the room he could hear vicious whispers and murmurs, although he could never figure out what they were saying. One said that any time he saw Holly a message appeared in his bathroom mirror the following morning, etched in the steam, telling him to leave her alone. One had yelled at Holly, and had suddenly felt like he was being strangled. Others just said that there was a weird vibe. Each time one of them left her, Holly was consoled by her Shadow.
It wasn't until she started work that the real problems began. Holly tried to make friends with her co-workers, now that her spare time wasn't chewed up with study. She looked forward to having a bit of a social life, but that apparently wasn't the Shadow's plan. Every time she went out it was always there, in every mirror. Bumping into her friends, knocking over their drinks, whispering in their ears. Holly tried talking to it, but it just whispered back, sometimes trying to sooth her into agreeing with it, other times hissing and wheezing.
Holly tried dating one of her co-workers, but the Shadow pulled the stunt of changing his appearance every time he looked in a mirror, making him look thin and hollow and gaunt. He became depressed, convinced he was ill and dying. He became obsessed with it, wondering why nobody else could see it. He was eventually committed to a psych ward following a nervous break down.
Holly became frustrated and smashed the mirror in her bedroom. Right before her eyes, the cracks slowly healed themselves, the mirror looking like new again, with the Shadow standing next to her reflection, humming happily. Holly removed the mirrors from her house, only to wake up and find them replaced the next morning. This made the Shadow very angry and it spent a week whispering and hissing what sounded like violent words to Holly, even as she tried to sleep. Every time Holly went to work, it was there. Every time Holly drove in her car, it was there. Every time Holly went out, it was there. Holly suddenly found it alarming at the amount of mirrors that where everywhere. Work, clubs, restaurants, shopping centres, the dental surgery, the hair dressers, the newsagent. Every where she went, there was a mirror, and in every mirror, there was the Shadow, keeping her close, making sure she didn't stray.
It got to the point where Holly couldn't take it any more. She wasn't eating, she wasn't sleeping. She was paranoid wherever she went. Anyone she tried to befriend got spooked or injured. She was a danger to the people around her. That was why one night Holly went out and got so drunk she forgot about the Shadow. It's whispers and murmurs blended in with the buzzing noise that the alcohol made, therefore she didn't see the Shadow while she let that nice looking guy buy her a drink. She didn't hear the shadow while she let that nice looking guy chat her up, and she most certainly didn't notice the Shadow at all when she took that nice looking guy back to her place. But when Holly heard the mirror across from her bed shatter, she did plead with the Shadow as it grabbed one of the shards of broken mirror and plunged it repeatedly into the reflection of the nice looking guys back, over and over again, until the body on Holly's bed was a lifeless, bloody, lump.
Holly fought tooth and nail when the police officer tried to walk her, handcuffed, into the interrogation room. Any room but there, she pleaded with them, because she knew what was in that room. They eventually got her in the room and placed her in a seat, facing a huge mirror. She was a alone in the room, but she knew there was a detective on the other side. It wasn't that which troubled her. It was what was in between her and the detective that scared her almost lifeless. She pleaded to the mirror to let her out of the room, but the only answer she got was little whispers and murmurs, that sounded like they were trying to tell her that everything was going to be okay. And then there it was. The Shadow, standing to the left of her reflection, its hand on her shoulder, comforting her. She stood up and moved to the other side of the table so she didn't have to look at the Shadow, but she could still hear it and that was just as bad.
Eventually a man entered the room and introduced himself as the detective who would be handling this case. He asked her why she switched chairs, she refused to give a straight answer. He asked why she killed Jacob Mellot. She told them that she didn't. She pleaded with him to understand, but she couldn't give a straight answer without sounding like she was crazy. He told her that every single piece of evidence pointed to her, including a suspected rather violent attack on her ex-boyfriend four years ago. It was then that Holly noticed that the detective was starting to sweat. He excused himself a few times to take a mouthful of water from the paper cup on the table. Holly again pleaded for them to leave the room, but the detective continued his questioning. He didn't get far before he started coughing and spluttering. Holly turned around to see the Shadow with it's hands around the detectives neck. So it was as she pleaded to the mirror for the Shadow to let go, when more officers ran into the room in aid of their colleague, but it was too late. The detective was dead and any efforts to revive him were futile.
Holly liked her room at the psychiatric hospital. It was dull and plain and quiet. No one bothered her and she was free to carry out her days as she wanted, obviously within reason.
But best of all, there were no mirrors.