The storm had been circling the lake all afternoon, but it didn’t break until Mara stepped onto the old porch. Rain hammered the roof in sudden, furious sheets, turning the world beyond the treeline into a blur of silver. She wiped her glasses on her sleeve, though it didn’t help—nothing could make this place look less abandoned.

The door was already cracked open.

Her uncle’s letter had said “Come before dusk. Don’t touch the mirrors.”
He hadn’t explained anything else.

Inside, the air smelled like cedar and dust. The house felt… paused, as if someone had left mid‑breath. A single lamp glowed in the corner, though the power lines had been down for years. And on the table beneath it lay a journal, open to a page written in a frantic, slanted hand.

“If she knocks again, don’t answer.”

Mara swallowed hard.
Something knocked—three slow taps—on the window behind her.

Mara whipped her head around, but there was nothing through the window pane.

She felt a shiver down her spine, as if something was breathing on her.

Her eyes met the journal once again, new words were formed.

”We’re waiting for you, cross over.” The journal wrote.

Mara saw a framed photo fall off her nightstand, it was her aunt Clara’s frame.

Was it a sign?

She then thought deeply, her uncle sent the letter, and her aunt’s photo was the only one to fall out of the three on the nightstand.

Who was trying to protect her, her aunt or uncle?

Mara hastily opened the window, the golf ball sized hail hit her hands harshly, but then she saw it.

A delicate snowflake with her aunt’s initial in the pattern.

It had to be a sign.

What else could it be?

”Aunt Clara, if you can hear me, give me another sign.” Mara muttered.

The earlier framed photo suddenly had a year written on the wooden frame.

1982, the year aunt Clara passed away.

Mara took a deep breath before grabbing the earlier journal and writing in it.

”You can’t scare me, you’re behind all of this, Uncle Richard.” Mara wrote as she felt a hand on her shoulder, it was ghostly, it was Clara’s.

With trembling hands, Mara walked out of her room and down the hall, into the restroom where the mirror lay upon the wall.

With a huff of air, she touched the mirror, her hand glowing.

It was unfathomable what happened next.