Where the Jackal Hides

It was Wednesday evening when the whispering started again.

This time it became too loud to ignore any longer.

“Of course it would be today,” Robert mused as he tossed his jacket onto the peg by the front door.

Any other day, and he would have ignored it or drowned it out with loud music. Today, however, he had just come home from securing the most important deal of his professional career. This was the sort of deal that not only benefitted his firm tremendously, but also set up so many side deals that Robert would be comfortable for the rest of his life. The deal had taken months. He had spent hours making interns do legally dubious work that was disguised as dubious legal work.

To use the old cliche, it had taken blood, sweat, and tears.

Almost none of it was his own, of course. What sense would that make?

Robert had considered going to the bar and celebrating there. He could have picked up some evening company by waving around stacks of money shamelessly.

That had all sounded like too much work however. So, he had planned to come home, open a very expensive bottle of bourbon, and get stupid drunk in celebration. If he changed his mind about evening company, he could always make a few phone calls and have someone delivered.

Now the whispering filled his house and ruined his perfectly good mood.

It seemed to come from the walls no matter where he went.

It was a low, whispered pleading filled with the sort of sadness so intense it might almost give Robert a case of sympathy… almost.

As ethereal as it seemed, Robert knew exactly where the pathetic noise was coming from. It came from that mirror he had pushed into the spare bedroom. He hated the thing, but he was hesitant to get rid of it.

When he had first stood in front of that tall mirror, he liked the way it looked. The antique wooden frame made the thing incredibly heavy, but the carvings were captivating. Even as just abstract lines in the wood, they gave the mirror a presence. Robert thought of it as an evil presence and found the aesthetic appealed to him.

For a while, he kept it in the master bedroom and spent more than a few hours admiring his reflection in the dark glass.

It was the reflection that started to change things.

Slowly, Robert began to feel like the reflection wasn’t quite his. There was a melancholy that would randomly creep into the reflection’s eyes. He would blink and it would return to normal, but it always happened again.

Then the whispering had started.

“Whimpering is more like it.”

Robert chuckled at the thought. Indeed, he had laughed when he first heard the horribly dismal muttering coming from the mirror. He hadn’t necessarily considered himself a sadist per se, but he had found the noise inappropriately delightful at first.

It was louder when he was in the room with the mirror. It was as though the mirror knew he was there and tried harder to plead its case.

The amusement hadn’t lasted.

Soon, the nights when the mirror whispered and sobbed grated on his nerves. It reminded him of his old reputation as simpering Mr. Stevenson. No one had respected him. It was at the office following such a night that he had made the abrupt decision to stop using his first name and start going by his middle name, Robert.

Robert Stevenson became a force to be reckoned with in the legal community. Simpering Stevenson would have been an intern forever. He certainly wouldn’t have masterminded today’s deal.

Being Robert was far better.

However, as much as the mirror had indirectly led to that pivotal decision, the matter had remained that its haunted whispers were getting bolder and more unsettling as time went on.

Robert wanted to push the thing out of the master bedroom, but suddenly found himself loath to touch it. Indeed, standing in front of it he couldn’t help but feel the pleading drone on and kept him rooted in place for far too long. He had lost hours just staring at his twisted reflection with its sad eyes drawing him in.

It was pure panic that snapped him away from the mirror that night. Desperate to be rid of the depressing haunt, Robert had managed to grab the blanket from his bed and toss it over the offending glass. It was the first time he had contemplated pushing out a window. It was also the first time he feared what would happen if he did.

What would happen if the mirror broke? Would it release the melancholy haunt inside? What would that do to him?

Robert didn’t want to find out. With the mirror covered, he managed to push it down the hall to the spare bedroom and close the door. For a little while, it stopped bothering him.

Only for a little while.

Even behind the closed door, the whispering and moaning got louder as time went on. Sometimes it was every day. Sometimes it would be blissfully quiet and Robert would almost find a sense of peace before being jerked awake by the beckoning cries from the haunted mirror.

Robert now climbed the stairs and stood outside the door to the mirror’s room. Despite the cruel, fearless reputation he had so carefully crafted, he was afraid to open the door. He remained haunted by the loss of self he had felt the last time he looked at the mirror.

“Snap out of it!” Robert rebuked himself.

“They don’t call you the Jackal for no reason. Get in there and face that pitiful poltergeist. Tell it to shut up and leave you alone because it isn’t getting out!”

With renewed gusto, Robert threw open the door to the guest room.

A thin layer of dust had started to form on what should have been a very nice blanket. That dust went up in a cloud as Robert snapped the blanket off and tossed it aside.

The mirror didn’t bother trying to lie to him this time. Though the general form in the glass was the same as ruthless lawyer Robert Stevenson, it was nothing like him. The reflection was gaunt and tired looking, as though it hadn’t slept all this time. The reflection’s eyes were red and swollen as though it had been crying.

“Oh get over yourself!” Robert scoffed.

The haunted reflection recoiled at first, but then it threw itself against the glass.

Robert jumped back and found his bravado somewhat diminished.

Always before the reflection he shared a face with had obeyed all the rules of a proper reflection, save for the sadness. Now it moved independently of his own movements. It was a sad thing to behold, but one clearly driven to madness and desperation. Even though they technically shared a face, the reflection was barely human now.

The cold, mocking side of Robert’s brain wanted to laugh at the thing in the mirror. That part of his brain wanted to regain control by reminding that simpering reflection that it was the weaker one here. That’s why it was in the mirror.

For the first time in a long time, laughter didn’t come so easily.

Robert barely managed a nervous chuckle and he hated that the sound had come from his own lips.

“You can’t get out,” Robert mumbled.

It was supposed to be this commanding statement.

It felt like more of a question.

And the mirror answered in a distant whisper that was suddenly far louder and far clearly than it had ever sounded before.

“Give me back my face!”

Robert smiled.

“Not your face. Not even our face. My face. Mine. Robert Stevenson. Mine! Mine mine mine!”

The reflection looked confused.

“Robert is my middle name,” it moaned, “My name is Lewis, Lewis Ro–”

“Simpering Lewis Stevenson!” Robert barked at the reflection, “That is your name. I go by Robert now. I… I…”

Robert couldn’t concentrate. His reflection was sobbing again. It was an open-mouthed sob like a child who just lost his favorite toy. All the while, those sad eyes stayed locked on him. Robert felt a pit in his stomach.

He hated feeling sad. He thrived on happy and even angry, but sad made him feel so weak. No one had ever been sad like this before. He could laugh at angry. He could mock terror and brush it aside until they went away. He didn’t know how to deal with sad.

Those eyes. They were drawing him in and–

He gasped so loud it hurt his throat. He stumbled back away from the mirror and flipped over the guest bed. All of it hurt, but somehow that seemed like a good thing.

Rattled and aching from what seemed like the worst depression cycle he’d ever dealt with, he pushed himself up onto his elbows. His face was so swollen that he felt it when he breathed. And breathe he did. He had won. And now he lay on the solid and grounding floor of his own home again.

“I am Lewis,” he said.

He jumped at the sound of someone pounding furiously on a window. No, not a window, but the mirror. Though after everything he had witnessed, calling it a window didn’t seem like too far of a stretch. He could hear the mirror rattling in its ancient frame, along with the distant angry shouts that came to him as barely a whisper.

He pulled himself up off the floor and dared to look in the mirror. On the other side, he saw something using his face, but it was a face twisted in rage. It banged against the glass until it saw Lewis appear. The thing in the mirror moved back from the glass, though it was clearly fighting against its own movements. It lowered itself to the edge of the bed’s reflection until it mimicked Lewis’ position exactly.

Then, as if nothing unnatural at all had occurred between them, it behaved like a normal reflection. It followed Lewis’ movements as he got to his feet, making sure to pick up the dusty blanket as he did.

The only sign of the recent experience was his face in the mirror. It was not puffy from crying hysterically at all hours, but sharp and angry. Lewis considered using the word evil. He started to cover the mirror, but stopped to look at the twisted visage one more time.

“My name is Lewis. This is my body and my home. You can stay in your mirror and rot!”

“You’re nothing without me, Lewis,” the reflection hissed, “I might reside in the mirror, but I am still a part of you.”

Lewis threw the blanket over the offending glass. He pushed it into the closet of the guest room and closed the door. Once he was back in the hallway, he closed the bedroom door and felt a wave of relief.

He’d bought the damned mirror at an estate auction because it called to him. At first, he felt like that was symbolic, but he now realized that it had likely been literal. He remembered the auctioneer saying the mirror was rumored to be haunted by a whispering spirit called the Jackal. There had been more legends and silly lore mentioned, but Lewis hadn’t given it much thought. He didn’t believe in ghosts and haunted mirrors.

At least, he hadn’t until he spent time in one while that thing wore his face.

It had promised in whispers and dreams to make him stronger. It said it would make him a better man. It wasn’t wrong to find that appealing, was it? After all, while he may have done well in school and passed the bar well enough, he had always been a little naive. He knew that. He knew there were others at the firm who, like the thing in the mirror, had called him Simpering Stevenson. He had always struggled with fits of depression. He wanted to feel strong.

Leaning against the door that led to the mirror, Lewis realized he did feel strong. In the end, he had overcome the spirit of the mirror and taken back his life. He never realized he had it in him.

He placed one hand on the door which he silently swore he would never open again.

“Thank you, Robert.”

He meant it. In a way, being haunted really had made him stronger.

He stepped away before the urge to try and reason with the thing took hold. He went downstairs and tried to make sense of his own life. He had no idea how long he had been in the mirror. Days? Surely it hadn’t been weeks.

Lewis headed out the front door. However long it had been, he needed to check in with the firm. He couldn’t imagine that the thing had diligently gone to file mindless paperwork all this time. Lewis prayed he hadn’t lost another job. Could he blame this one on his depression like he had the others?

Back in the house, tucked in the closet of a spare room, the covered mirror sat waiting.

“You’ll be back, Lewis,” a voice whispered from the dark, “You’ll be back when you see what I’ve done for you. They always come back.”

Just as Lewis closed the car door, he swore he heard laughter. It was distant, but rich. When the word evil again crossed his mind, this time to describe the feel of that cackling laugh, Lewis realized he couldn’t drive away fast enough.